Things could never be the same again, and by the time Jessica's feet left earth and she began soaring downwards towards the rocks, she knew she had made the right decision.
When she cleared the bushes and went further and further into the wilderness, she could not stop herself from openly crying, even as she walked and did not stop walking. All she wanted was one of the two people she had left in her life to promise her things would be okay. Not just for her, or for them, or for the three of them, but for everyone. She needed the girl she loved to tell her they would all be able to live. Even as she moved quickly through the rushing air she did not know whether she wanted her to lie to her or have a plan for her, but she wouldn't or she couldn't. Stephanie could only promise a world for the two of them, and Jessica knew the kind of person she was - there was never going to be just the two of them.
Because at the end of the day, Jessica was nothing without the people who made her who she was. Her friends, her aquaintances, her team members, they all shaped her into the strong, compassionate woman she was before she got on that bus. With every person who died at the hands of the terrorists, she lost more and more of herself, and by the time this game came to its conclusion, either she was going to be dead, or everyone who mattered to her was going to be. She was nothing without those people in her life, the people she'd been so intent on pushing to the back of her mind because she just so badly wanted her blood and her water to remain safe, and she didn't realize it until she put together just how different she'd become over the course of time.
When she opened the door on the mystery person, the person who knocks on the doors of empty houses, she was ready. She was ready for the worst to happen, for her to finally die at someone's hands, and she was okay with that. Everything was getting worse, and as sure as she knew she would never be able to play and win Survival of the Fittest, she knew there would be a time that she would die at someone else's hands, and it would most likely be drawn out and painful, and she just had to accept it.
And it wasn't until she remembered what it was like to be happy, to be in the arms of someone that she loved, that she could see how far she'd fallen. Being thrown from that waterfall by a boy who was now dead had done something to her, fundamentally changed who she was as a person, snuffed out some fundamental part of Jessica, a part which would never be reignited, indicated by just how badly she fell back into her despair the moment she couldn't stand to hear the truth.
So that was why Jessica had done what she'd done. If she couldn't win, and there was no chance for her to ever return to the way things were, then the only thing she could do for herself from this point forward was make sure she didn't suffer when she died.
As she walked, she felt a strange sense of unease, as though she was going to a place she wasn't allowed. Then, she heard her collar beep.
At once, her eyes widened, and she started sprinting.
Every bounce ached throughout her bruised and battered body, but Jessica did not stop. One foot propelled her to the other, sending her speeding past some sort of religious building that meant nothing to Jessica because it was not the right religious building, and gardens upon gardens. Eventually, she reached the scent of the ocean, and skidded to a stop.
She'd sealed her fate here. She was too far in to leave now, but she didn't have to submit herself to them that way. She saw the rocks of the cliff below, peaking through the foam. It was a much larger drop than the waterfall. Jessica could feel her heart beating through her chest, still faster than the beeping coming from the collar around her neck.
Jessica curled her fingers into her palms, took several steps back. By the time she'd taken her run and thrown herself from the cliffs, the beeping had doubled in pace.
It was of small mercy that Jessica did not throw herself out too far. She fell straight down like an anvil, despite her run, and she could see the earth rushing up to meet her. There was a strange sense of exhileration coarsing through her veins as she plummeted further and further from solid land. It was almost the opposite of what she'd felt on the first day, travelling through the different forms of water. A strange surge of energy, not enough to make her regret her choice, but enough to remind her why she'd made the right one. She could have experienced this if she'd ventured out a little more in her life before this island, maybe tried bungee jumping or something, and if she was learning something from an experience this horrible, then she didn't deserve to know it.
As the salt air began to rush into her lungs, Jessica wished she didn't have to leave the people in her life in such a way. Her girlfriend, her sister...her parents. This was going to make the people closest to her incredibly sad, something she'd never done in her life, at least with such intentionality. Given a thousand lifetimes, there was really no way to defend herself there. Taken before a jury of her peers, all she would be able to say was that she was just so constantly hurting and didn't want it to hurt anymore.
Her wish was granted when she met the rocks.
The fraction of a second before the crack, Jessica Rennes hoped she'd worshiped the right God.
G070, Jessica Rennes: DECEASED