This was never going to be a great night for Jessica, but there was no way for her to anticipate it going this poorly. She was prepared for escaped zoo lions and her whole building burning down (not yet, and very close; the apartment was only temporarily unoccupiable), not being struck sober by that voice. Of course, she heard the laugh first, from far enough away that it could have been a paranoid hallucination, an inevitable side-effect of this annual nightmare. She could have left it well enough a-fucking-lone.
The power was out in the hotel, a blessing in this cat and mouse game once they had cleared through the building, Kilgrave herding her further toward the back of the building away from the windows facing New York's neon lights. Easier to hide, and, psychological trick or fucking whatever, but easier to listen for the sound of his boots on the moldy, frayed carpets. In the alcove, perched and straining above the silent vending machine, back pressed into the corner where the wall met the ceiling, Jessica slowly inched closer to the opening into the hall, fingers deliberately curling around the worn edge of the wallpaper with her camera brandished in the other hand, ready to bring down on his head.