A solitary fight

The safe house is a dank run down place, only designed to be used for short stays. It was somewhere that been in disuse for a while but there were now signs that it was being used for a longer term resident.

Jessica entered cautiously, having doubled back several times to ensure that she didn't have any tails before returning. The residence is deathly quiet and the mess of equipment and clothes were just as they were when she'd left this place months ago. After confirming nothing was out of place and that the safe house was indeed safe, she went for quick shower to wash away her anxiety.

As she dried her hair, Jessica stared wistfully at her reflection, the dark brown locks that clashed with her original blonde hair. It was something she'd grown used to but it still didn't feel like it belonged.

The air was slightly chilly and goosebumps started emerging on her pale skin but she made no effort to get dressed. Instead, she slid the full sized mirror door of the wardrobe aside to reveal a hollow skinsuit hanging within it alongside a heap of female clothing, its blonde hair dangling and messy.

It was the French spy Helene Belamy.

Jessica reached into her hairline and fiddled around a bit before a gash started descending her back. With an unnatural stretch, she pulled off her face to reveal David's masculine one.

Using his still Jessica clad hands, he pulled the blonde skinsuit off the hanger and sat on the bed with a sigh.

"I'm sorry," he muttered quietly in his own voice. The regret at turning both Jessica and Helene into skinsuits and wearing them weighed on him.

Helene had offered him a choice in what seemed like a lifetime ago, to join up with the French spy agency and fight the Organisation together. But to him, the choice came with too much of a risk. Giving up the powerful C-set meant he had to put all his trust in a group of spies. Spies whose jobs it was to be deceptive on behalf of their country. David was a foreigner. The French owed him no allegiance and there was no guarantee that they'd keep him safe or keep their word. It was safer to go it alone.

What about Jessica then? David had tried bringing her into the loop, firstly by reviving her and explaining what he was doing but when she didn't take it well, he'd implanted memories into her mind courtesy of the white pen to help her get over the shock of losing months of her life and the fact the world was being secretly dominated by a shadowy organisation. That had worked for a while but she just wasn't cut out for it.

The cloak and dagger stuff wasn't for her. She didn't cope well with being isolated from normal society and she'd made a mistake. David had come home to find another Organisation's agent nestled within her skin but thankfully, he'd picked up enough skills to identify and subdue them before they'd done any harm. It was then that David realised that Jessica would never be safe while he was a fugitive and the Organisation still existed. So he donned her skin to keep her with him at all times, with a promise to release her once this was all over.

Helene, on the other hand, had been his fast pass to abilities far beyond his own. Training in her body, and absorbing her knowledge had given him spy craft abilities beyond his means. Even without wearing her skin, David could handily fight off trained fighters, infiltrate enemy strongholds and gather intelligence in ways he couldn't have imagined when he left his hometown. The memories he stole from her also told him that the DGSE had also been sincere in their offer to train him which made his theft of Helene's life all the more heavy but there wasn't any way he could go back in time to remake his decision now. All he could do was own it.

After pulling Jessica's face back on, she got to work donning Helene's form. Her own thin limbs slotted neatly into the blonde agent's before she inserted her arms into the hollow sleeves and pulled the torso over her own. The size similarity made this quite easy and before long, Jessica's head was thrust into the hollow skinsuit's and Helene's complete form appeared before the mirror.

A fire lit in her eyes. Months of investigation and information gathering had led up to this point. It was time to take the fight to La Dissumuler.