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The police found seven bodies that morning.Three in the first house, and four in the other. The Smiths and the Walkers. Two unassuming families, living adjacent to one another, in a quiet neighborhood in the suburbs of town, up until late the night before. The call came in earlier in the morning, when the mailman noticed the Smiths’ front door had been broken into, left ajar as an unsettling cold draft, accompanied with an overwhelming stench of blood, escaped from a small crack in the door. When police officers first arrived at the scene of the crime to assess what happened, one of the neighbors pointed out that that none of them had seen the Smiths’ neighbors, the Walkers, this morning, and had tried to knock on their door before realizing it was unlocked, and a similar stench began to emanate from within the house.Detective Abigail Bishop hadn’t even entered the Smiths’ now-abandoned abode when one of the rookie officers approached her with the alarming news.“So much for a triple homicide,” the blonde detective mumbled to herself as the officer left to clear the area and tape off the new crime scene, but it sounded loud and clear to Dr. Jane Wang, the medical examiner, who was just about to walk her through the first few bodies in the Smiths’ household.“And the bodies keep stacking,” the black-haired doctor mused with a solemn look on her face, still walking toward the Smiths’ porch, albeit at a much slower pace than before. “How is it that the one time I get called here for a homicide, you have seven whole bodies handed over to me?”“You get to dissect them,” Bishop scoffed, her fingers fiddling with the camera in her hands while the other hand held the rest of the equipment, while her eyes wandered to the Walkers’ quiet, near-untouched home. “I’m supposed to be the one to put the bastard who did this behind bars.”“Bas-tards,” Wang corrected. “Seven bodies, in one night?”“Can’t jump to conclusions yet,” Bishop replied with a sigh, looking down at the camera. “Maybe some psycho did do this all in one night. Difficult to do, but it might not be as impossible as it seems. I’ll have to at least see the crime scene first, you know.”Wang shook her head. “Yeah, I’ll leave the investigating to you,” she said, turning around to continue her path up to the porch. “But I do think you’d like to hear what I’ve got on the first three bodies so far.”The first victim was a teenager—sixteen years old, found dead in his bedroom, lying face down on the bed, sheets stained with a pool of his own blood.“Neighbors said the kid’s name is Jordan Smith,” Bishop announced when she entered the room, nose scrunching at the stench. Wang, the seasoned expert in her job, approached the fresh corpse without so much as a wrinkle on her face.“Possible cause of death seems to be major blood loss from two incision wounds in his upper abdomen, right around where the kidneys would be.” The M.E. was cautious in navigating through the scene, picking up the hem of Jordan’s shirt before pulling it up to show the detective the wounds she was talking about.The first thing that Bishop noticed were the dried bloodstains all over the skin, including small splotches that could’ve been from the culprit’s fingers, but no prints. The next thing that caught her attention, however, were indeed the wounds themselves; there were two of them, one at each side of his abdomen, tilted at rather odd angles.“Note that I said incision wounds, and not stab wounds,” Wang continued. “The skin was sliced clean with some sort of sharp cutting tool, maybe a small knife or an x-acto knife, or even a surgical scalpel. I’ll be able to tell more when I cut these stitches open.”The detective didn’t even notice the stitches until she took a photograph of the wounds and observed the resulting photo. Sure enough, there were, in fact, stitches on the skin of the teenager’s abdomen, all along the line of the slits. The thread was deep red, stained from the blood it had absorbed, and was, in fact, rather thick for surgical suture—like a common sewing thread more than anything. The suture itself was uneven, ragged as though the supposed surgeon was having a panic attack amidst the procedure. The skin around it was also ripe red and swollen, with flakes of dried blood covering the area around the wounds, with the notable exception of a few dried spots of black liquid, scattered all over the stomach and abdomen area, and even a couple on the bedsheets beneath him.“The killer went through all the trouble to stitch them back up,” Bishop muttered, and Wang responded with a nod.“But if he thought doing this could save their lives, it didn’t,” the medical examiner retorted back as she readjusted the shirt back on the teenager’s abdomen. “Whoever did this is worse than even the most amateur of medical students. I’ve seen old grandmothers in the nursing home stitch better than this.” Bishop almost scoffed. “I wouldn’t be surprised if the kid bled to death.”“You’re not sure if he did?”“I can’t be a hundred percent positive until I get back to the morgue,” Wang noted as she stood up, readjusted her gloves and began navigating her way out of the room, while Bishop continued to take more photographs of the room. “There’s not a lot of blood around here to suggest he just bled out like that. There’s always more than meets the eye, Abigail.”Bishop couldn’t help but rolled her eyes, suppressing a smile.The door to the master bedroom, not unlike the front entrance, wasn’t just left with a small crack, but rather thrown wide open, allowing the stench of the Smiths’ corpses to flood the hallways. The master bedroom itself was a mess; small shards of shattered glass and ceramic on the floor, near where the smashed lightbulb protruding from the broken lamp was, all with traces of blood. The lampshade was across the room. Feathers from pillows thrown and strewn apart all throughout the room, making it difficult to traverse the area without disturbing the crime scene. A man, lying face-up on the floor amidst the shattered glass, in a small pool of blood that grew beneath him and staining what was once his beige carpet. On top of the bed was who Bishop assumed to be the man’s wife, sprawled on the mattress and appearing much more peaceful than the rest of the room.“John and Marilyn Smith.”“Both in their late forties,” Wang confirmed with a nod. “Both also suffered from two large incision wounds in the upper abdominal area, all of them stitched.” She approached the patriarch lying on the floor, picked up one of his hands and pointed towards the light bruises lining the skin of his wrists. “Mr. Smith, however, also has minor defensive wounds around his arms and wrists, and signs of blunt force trauma on his head. Mrs. Smith doesn’t.”“So all of this was from a possible struggle between the killer and the victim.” Bishop made a brief scan around the room, taking occasional photographs to follow her gaze. “Positioning of the bodies means that Mrs. Smith might’ve been asleep when the killer came in—she wasn’t able to defend herself, but could’ve woken her husband up, who fought against the killer for a bit before his head was smashed in with the lamp.” She took a photograph of the lamp. “We’ll need to run tests on those traces of blood to determine that for sure, though.”“I’ve also noticed little dots of what seems to be a dark fluid substance on the surface of the skin of all three victims,” Wang added as she set the man’s arm back down, and just as Bishop pointed her camera at another such dark-colored droplet that had stained the carpet, not too far from where John Smith was. “Looks like someone left quite the mess in these rooms.”Bishop took a photograph of it and frowned. “No kidding.”By the time the two of them were done with the first house, the two other officers in the scene were still interviewing a couple of the gathering neighbors, all the while trying and failing to control the curious crowd. Bishop had to admit, she wasn’t surprised at the commotion this created—it wasn’t often that something like this happened in a quiet, suburban neighborhood near to the edge of town, and she had no doubt that a homicide case of this magnitude would attract the attention of even people who lived in crime-ridden districts in more denser cities. She wasn’t even sure if she could handle something like this, but by hell, was she going to at least try.Just like the Smiths’ house, the bottom floor of the second house was left quite untouched—no signs of struggle yet, but the stench of blood was more overwhelming than the Smiths’, stinging their noses the second both women entered the premises. Even Wang scrunched her nose a bit, blinking several times and furrowed her face for one split second before her expression turned back to normal.“You never get used to it,” Bishop said jokingly, but Wang shook her head.“I am,” she said with a monotonous voice. “But I sure can’t wait to see the bodies in this one.”She wasn’t wrong in assuming the bodies would be different than the Smiths. There were two children in this household, an eldest daughter and a younger son, who lived along with their two parents. The younger son’s bedroom was first; instead of pillows like the Smiths’ bedroom, the child’s toys were strewn about all over the room, though some were beheaded, while others had their cotton insides torn out. It was done on purpose, Bishop noted, because there didn’t seem to be signs of struggle anywhere else in the room—there weren’t even bodies there, either, but there was a rather medium-sized blood trail leading out of the child’s bedroom, down the corridor and towards the master bedroom. A similar trail led out from the daughter’s bedroom, and that, too, had no evident bodies nor signs of struggle.She held her breath, and prepared for the worse.The Smiths’ house was clean compared to the Walkers’. Bishop had to put a hand over her mouth so she wouldn’t throw up on the spot. A bloody handprint was smeared across the wall and ending where the hand was, half-attached to its owner whose guts had been ripped out like the dolls in the other room—a quick look at the person’s face and Bishop realized it was the matriarch of the family. Her husband was on the other side of the room, his chest decorated with multiple stab wounds, with trails of blood leaking down from the wounds and almost soaking his entire shirt. Their children, as she had suspected, had been dragged into the room with them, lying face down on the carpet floor, entrails laid out for all to see.Bishop swallowed hard when she noticed there was something odd with the blood smeared across the wall, right above where the husband laid. It was painted with what looked to be two fingers of a hand, too smooth to obtain prints from, with what Bishop could assume to be the victims’ blood, considering the thickness of the crimson letters spelled out for her to see.GO TO SLEEP, it said.“That’s,” Wang spoke up, as soon as she, too, read the message the killer had left them, “not something you see everyday.”Bishop hesitated for a moment before she lifted the camera up and took a photo of it.“Well, I can assume what the causes of death are for these poor folks in here.”Bishop looked down, pointed the camera at the body of the family’s patriarch, and tried not to gag as she took the photos.“Multiple stabs to the chest, some in the abdominal area, and cuts along the arms.” The doctor carefully raised one of the arms with both hands, head moving around as she tried to get a better look on the body. “From what I can tell, the killer struck most major organs and severed quite a few major arteries, enough to kill them within seconds. It’ll be like solving a jigsaw puzzle trying to perform autopsies on these poor souls.”“Are there any specific incision wounds like the Smiths’?”Wang shook her head. “These are stab wounds—all about the same length and width. A larger blade, for sure—one that’s significantly larger than the weapon used to cut the Smiths’ open.”“So, basically a completely different M.O. altogether.” Bishop sighed and looked around the room. The mere presence of the bloody message was already enough to send shivers down her spine. “Two families, both neighbors with adjacent houses, and two different M.O.s.”Wang looked up. “Two different killers?”“Sure starting to look like it.” It was uncanny how vastly different the two crime scenes were, and yet, they both occurred on the same night. When she was first informed of the case, she thought it was the result of a burglary gone terribly wrong, but this was far worse than simple burglary. The scene was staged—the children’s bodies, the message on the wall. “Whoever killed these people had that intention from the start.”Wang scoffed and nodded back to the message on the wall. “Well, that’s for sure a telltale sign of the making of a serial killer, if I’ve ever seen one.”“Let’s hope not.” At least, she hoped not. Seven bodies in a single night was not looking to be a great beginning to a potential serial killing case. “Time of death?”“Rigor mortis hasn’t fully set in for any of the bodies so far,” Wang said with a tilt of her head. “I would say both families were killed last night, around midnight and about a similar time frame with each other. Again, I’ll be able to tell once I start examining them in the morgue.” She set the arm back by his side. “I think I’ll be taking up on that drink offer by the time we’re done with this.”Bishop couldn’t help but scoff. “Seven bodies—that’s what it takes for you to go out for drinks with me?”The doctor stood up and started heading for one of the other bodies, but even despite the nonchalance in her expressions as she glanced over the abandoned entrails of the children, Bishop could tell she was at least a little bit perturbed still. “Well, if you lived closer to the city,” Wang said with a semblance of a smile, “I would be more than happy to.”Bishop’s gaze turned distant at her friend’s words. “I’ve got a good job here,” she said as she turned her camera towards at the nightstand. “A good life in a good community. People who I can greet and smile at every single morning. Why would I give it up for the city life?”“Because you’ve got potential,” Wang retorted back, looking up briefly to glare at the detective before returning back to examining the matriarch’s body. “The folks over there can always use an extra pair of hands, especially ones as good as yours. They’ll be thrilled to have you there.”Bishop looked up from her camera and glared at her friend. “Jane.”“And besides,” Wang continued, disregarding Bishop’s protest. “It’s about time you moved out of this little old town, don’t you think? I mean, there’s nothing left holding you back here besides this job. And how often is it that you get a case here? This is the rare outlier of the bunch, I’m sure, but I know I don’t get bodies that often from this place. That’s always a good thing, of course, but you know what I mean.”She brought up some good points, but she had been urging her to move out for the past couple of years now, so Bishop was no longer a stranger to this sort of conversation from her friend and colleague of almost a decade now. All she could do was smile at the doctor and resumed her work.“I’ll think about it.” She wasn’t going to, but Jane was a stubborn woman, much more than Bishop could ever be. She was one of those people who wasn’t going to take a ‘no’ for an answer—evidence being that, despite having grown up in a typical Asian-American household, she chose to go against her parents’ wishes of her becoming a physician and went on to become a forensic pathologist instead. Bishop knew this conversation, too, wasn’t going to go down easy unless she herself surrendered, no matter how much she didn’t want to.Of course, she also knew the real reason Jane had been trying to get her to move out of town and to the city. The pathologist was a good friend, first and foremost, despite surface appearances.But she wasn’t going to think about that now. Like Jane said, they had a case now—Bishop had a case now, with quite the impressive body count. She hadn’t been religious for a long time, but she hoped to God this count was final. The chief of police called her into his office later that noon.Bishop had no idea what she would be called in for. She had never been in trouble throughout her line of work, or with the chief or fellow colleagues, for as far as she knew. She also wasn’t due for a promotion or anything, with the slow trickle of work coming in for her to make progress with her achievements, both professional and personal. The chief himself was often a man of few words; he would lend a hand or ear out to his subordinates if needed, but almost never requested their presence in his office unless it was either of the aforementioned reasons.But as Bishop approached the door to the chief’s office, she could’ve sworn she heard two distinct male voices—one of them the chief’s, and the other being one that she could not recognize at all.She knocked on the door and waited.“Come in.”She turned the knob and opened the door, stopping dead in her tracks when she noticed the man sitting opposite to the chief, who turned his head towards her upon her entrance. The first thing she noticed was the suit—a formal business suit, complete with tie and everything but lacking a briefcase to complete the businessman look. He looked to be about a few years older than Bishop was but still younger than the chief, clean-shaven, somewhat rugged with the exception of the deep-set frown that made him appear older than he was, with a sharp nose, cold steel eyes and short dark hair.On the other side of the desk was Chief McCormick, greeting the detective with a warm smile on his round face. “Bishop, come in. Have a seat.”Bishop entered into the room as prompted, trying to not stare as she took a seat next to the man in the suit.“What’s this about, sir?”He pulled himself closer to the desk, his palm resting on a brown manila folder. He never had much clutter on his desk, other than a pencil holder and a wood-framed picture of his wife and daughter on the corner of the table. Most files he had was kept in cabinets and drawers behind him, so she couldn’t help but think that the fact that he had a rather thick folder in front of him, in addition to the man in the suit, was just the slightest bit disconcerting.Even more so when she soon noticed the man had a similar folder wedged between his hands and his arm, securely in his rather protective hold.“This,” the chief began, gesturing to the stranger, “is Special Agent Joel Gilliam of the FBI. He will be joining you under a joint investigation over the mass homicide case you were assigned to this morning.”She stared at him and frowned. “What?”“This is not a debatable issue, Bishop—not this time.” He turned to the man in the suit, who she didn't notice had took out his badge and held it up to her for a few seconds before returning it to his pocket. “Special Agent Gilliam, this is Detective Abigail Bishop, the detective in charge of the case. You will be working with her for the duration of the case.”“Sir, I can handle the case myself—”“And I’m sure you can,” the chief spoke over her, his voice calm despite hers, as he glanced over to her with a sympathetic gaze. “I know you can. But I am aware of how severe the circumstances surrounding this case is, and I do believe you wouldn’t mind having an extra pair of eyes and hands helping you get this job done sooner. I’ve seen the evidence you’ve gathered thus far, and we believe it is in our best interest to catch the bastards who did this before it’s too late.”Bishop hoped it wouldn’t resort to this. Wang wasn’t wrong when she said the bloody message was a characteristic trademark of a potential serial killer, especially considering the ambiguity and latent message within it that she hadn’t even gotten a chance to look over yet. But Bishop had her own fair share of experience in the matter, so she was no stranger to it, either. She knew she couldn’t dispute the chief’s stance on this.“But this case is in our jurisdiction.”“And the feds have every right to take it from us, if they so choose it,” the chief reminded as his voice turned stern but not strict—it was, however, enough to force Bishop to slump in her seat, shoulders dropping in defeat. “That was Agent Gilliam’s original intentions. However, I was able to negotiate a joint investigative effort between the FBI and our department instead, as I am sure that both of you offer invaluable effort and insight to solve this case as soon and efficient as possible. In fact—”The chief briefly glanced over towards the federal agent, who gave him a curt nod, before the former picked up one of the brown manila folders and handed it over to Bishop. She sat there almost confused, but took it anyway, immediately flipping the cover over as soon as it was in her hands.“—Special Agent Gilliam has reason to believe he has knowledge of who may have potentially killed those families.”Bishop’s eyes widened, as her eyes immediately shot up, gaze turning from the chief to the man in the suit. “What?”“Well, there is strong evidence against one of the potential suspects.” Special Agent Joel Gilliam’s voice was about as pleasant as his appearance—distant, professional and cold. The type of person who didn’t have many friends outside of work, Bishop thought to herself. “A known spree killer, with preference for entire families as his victims, especially those with young, teenage children—but otherwise a textbook serial killer with, should I say, several exceptional peculiarities.”Bishop furrowed her eyebrows, frowning at the man’s words. Then she looked down at the open file in her hands, and her eyes immediately landed on the small photograph that was attached to the front page of what turned out to be a criminal profile—it was a picture of a person, or what resembled a human being, but with striking paper-white skin, a pair of large, wide-open bloodshot eyes with small black pupils, and disheveled black hair of significant length, but what sent spiders crawling down her spine was the smile—their lips were smeared with red though she doubted it was lipstick, and the corners were inhumanly wide, almost as if they had been torn or ripped open up to their cheeks.She almost dropped the folder straight to the floor. “What the fuck is this?”Instead of a direct response, she heard a rather aggravating sigh from her right. “I should’ve warned you beforehand,” the man in the suit spoke, with a rather gentle tone that became unsettling as it came off as rather monotonous despite his presumably well-meant intentions. “His name was Jeffrey Woods. A troubled child with a violent streak—his former neighbors indicated he might have been a victim of bullying throughout childhood, until the boy snapped one summer day in 2008, and attempted to murder who I assumed were the children who were bullying him.”Children, the man had said. Children. Not teenagers—no older than thirteen, at most.“A few days later,” the agent continued, “his house was set on fire, and though the boy was saved on time, he suffered from second-degree burns, became permanently disfigured and was hospitalized for weeks. Hospital staff said it drove him mad—he started laughing to himself erratically and talking incoherently to himself. The night after he was discharged from the hospital, he killed his parents in their bedroom, as well as his brother, before he disappeared.”“Disappeared?”“A few weeks later, another family turned up dead in their home just a couple miles from the Woods’ former residence. Another family was targeted a week after, but the attempt left one surviving victim alive who was able to fend off his attacker before the perpetrator escaped. The description he gave of his parents’ murderer matches almost perfectly to the last known physical description of Jeffrey Woods.”Bishop was almost tempted to look down at the file again. She wanted to read if what was written there, on an apparently official, typed-out report, matched what seemed like a strange urban legend that the man just told her. She was debating whether having that image once again ingrained into her mind was worth verifying the agent’s words.Instead, she glared at the man in the suit, making sure the skepticism was obvious in her expression. “And how come this is the first time I’ve heard of this? This kid who turned himself into some serial killer who murders entire families? How is he not in federal custody?”His eyes weren’t meeting hers. He didn’t dare to, she thought.“We have been putting significant effort to keep this under wraps—prevent this information from leaking into public media, which, you should know, is understandable.” She pretended to ignore the condescending tone in his voice. “The first time his case did make it to the media, people made him into an urban legend—a horror story used to scare kids at night. People started calling him ‘Jeff the Killer’, which spawned more attacks with shorter cooling off periods, as well as messages left behind to taunt the police, all signed with ‘JTK’—Jeff the Killer.”He glanced between Bishop and the chief now, with every possible wrinkle on his face furrowed. “But despite being a reckless individual, with absolutely zero inhibitions and leaving every single possible evidence pointing his crimes towards him and him alone, he just disappears. Every single time we have gotten close to catching this bastard, he just disappears off the face of the planet, only to resurface some weeks or months later with another stack of bodies, all under the same M.O.—multiple stab wounds made with a kitchen knife, puncturing multiple major organs and blood vessels, often with bodies disemboweled, some bite marks and bloody messages meant to taunt us.”Disembowelment. Like those children in the second house.“And how are you sure this isn’t some copycat killer?”The man looked at her with a knowing look, and a hint of a smug smile. “He left his trademark, should I say, catchphrase in your latest crime scene.”“’Go to sleep’,” Bishop recounted almost immediately, suppressing a curse under her breath.“His few surviving victims all mentioned multiple things in common, all tied to their attempted murderer,” the agent said, with a single, acknowledging nod. “His physical description, the weapon he had, and one trademark demand: ‘Go to sleep’.”Silence. Maybe he took her lack of response as bewilderment, perhaps mixed with confusion and a subsequent loss of words—that was, until she couldn’t help but find herself laughing. A small chuckle, coming off as somewhat of a half-hearted scoff, but she felt the corner of her lips turned upwards just ever so slightly, as she briefly looked towards her superior—who, surprisingly enough, had an expression more grave than usual—and shook her head before tilting it at an angle as she turned to stare back at the agent.“And I’m supposed to believe this—this kid-turned-serial-killer, who has been evading both the police and federal agents for nine whole years, by somehow magically disappearing just before he gets caught?” She shook her head again. “Why do I find this extremely hard to believe?”His answer was almost instant. “Because it is,” he promptly said, as calm and collected as ever. “I am aware that it is. I had doubts about coming in here—” He briefly turned to the chief, “—even more so to concur with the terms of our agreement, sir.” He turned back to Bishop, though his gaze did not seem as hostile as before this time around. Or he turned it down on purpose. “But I was told that your skills and insight are, as the chief had described, ‘invaluable’ to this case, and I agree. I know of your track record, Detective Bishop. I am not overwhelmingly impressed, but I would say it’s quite remarkable, considering your relative experience.
Relative experience. He compares federal agents to a local detective from a small town in the middle of nowhere.
“Sir.” The chief’s expression had not changed, even as he turned to address her. “You believe him?”“He is a federal agent, Bishop,” the chief said without hesitance. “There’s things that even our mayor has never told us about, and I dated her for three years in high school. God knows what else the government is hiding from us.”At least she tried to put up a fight, Bishop thought to herself. At least she tried, even when she had a feeling from the beginning that it was a fight she had little chance in winning.So much for a big break in her career.But. She started chewing on her bottom lip as she forced herself to glance down at the file in her hands, trying her hardest to stop her eyes from wandering to the picture. I’m still in charge of this case. And if the feds can’t catch this bastard, I sure as hell can.At the very least, she thought, she could try.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
“The kidneys are missing.”“The what?”“The kidneys are missing. Who are you?”Bishop smiled as she followed Wang’s glare towards Gilliam—the FBI agent, the man in the suit—as he was closing the door to the morgue, eyes drilling into the back of his suit jacket. The man didn’t even realize he was being stared at until he turned around to face the two women, noticed both pairs of eyes fixated on him, frowning in apparent discomfort.“Special Agent Joel Gilliam, of the FBI.” He moved forward and offered a hand to the otherwise kind doctor, but all she did was stare at the hand for two solid seconds before she lifted a single latex-gloved hand—powder blue stained with dried vermillion. Noticing the glove and the blood, Gilliam quietly retracted his hand away and made a small, acknowledging nod. “It’s a pleasure, doctor—”“Jane Wang,” the woman replied with a deadpan voice, glancing briefly over to Bishop before her eyes turned back to Gilliam. “Head medical examiner. Since when is the FBI involved in this case?”“Since he came to the station this morning,” Bishop quickly replied, peering over at Gilliam just to see the deepening frown on his face before turning back to smile at her friend and colleague, “and tried to take over the entire case. Luckily, the chief made an agreement with the feds for a joint investigation instead, so here we are.”A sigh came from beside her. “Considering we’ll be working together from now on,” he said, “I would appreciate it if you didn’t talk about me as though I’m not in this room, detective.”Bishop didn’t even bother turning to look at him. “Dr. Wang, the bodies?”“Oh, yes.” Wang quietly clapped her hands together and led the other two towards the closest autopsy table, where one of the seven bodies laid, the overall figure indicating it was an adult, draped in a large white cloth long enough that it was hanging over the sides of the table. Bishop knew Wang wasn’t able to get through all seven bodies by the time they arrived at the morgue later that afternoon—she didn’t expect her colleague to finish them all within a span of just a few hours—but she did call the police department to inform them she was done with the patriarchs of both families. That was more than enough, Bishop thought, because there could be something from either body that she hoped would give them some lead about the case.Wang stood at the other side of the table opposite to the two investigators, looked towards both of them with a nod before she uncovered half of the cloth covering the first corpse. Bishop immediately recognized him to be John Smith, from the family with the stitches. She could tell Wang was done performing the autopsy on the man—his skin was clean of blood, and there was a large Y-shaped incision across his chest that had been stitched closed to spare the two investigators from the sight of the man’s insides. The stitches were, Bishop quickly noticed, very much cleaner than the ones in his abdomen, but as Wang uncovered the corpse down to said area, she noticed Wang had removed the initial stitches and replaced them with her own professional handiwork.“John Smith’s cause of death was not, in fact, severe blood loss,” Wang stated, barely able to hide the intrigue in her voice. “He died of a cardiac arrest.”Beside the detective, Gilliam arched an eyebrow at the doctor’s statement. “Cardiac arrest?” he immediately inquired. “You mean, the victim had a heart attack?”Wang briefly glanced up, between Bishop and Gilliam, before her eyes settled on the former. “The victim’s medical records did not indicate that he had any cardiac problems prior to his death,” she stated instead, taking a deep breath before continuing. “In addition to signs of cardiac arrhythmia, I also found some damage to the lungs, the liver, as well as the trachea.” She turned her gaze back down at the body, pointing to each of the organs she mentioned. “With that, I have reason to believe the victim suffered acute chloroform poisoning just before he died, one that likely triggered the cardiac arrest.”“Chloroform?”Bishop suppressed a sigh when Gilliam spoke up again, noticing Wang turning to glare at him from across the table.“I know what I observed, Agent Gilliam,” the doctor quickly responded, her expression remaining unfazed, softening only when she looked back toward Bishop. “I’ve sent some blood and tissue samples for analysis to Forensics upstairs. They should be working on them as we speak.”“And the kidneys?” Bishop asked. “You said they were missing?”“I was just about to get to that.”Wang turned her attention to the abdominal area, pointing towards the newly-done stitches. Bishop noticed Gilliam’s marked interest towards the abdominal wounds—he immediately switched his attention to them, peering at them, into them, with rather unusual intrigue.“In case I need to repeat myself—” Bishop tried not to snicker at the emphasis in Wang’s voice, “—the victim suffered two incisions located just above where the kidneys should be, which had been stitched shut when we first discovered the bodies earlier this morning, albeit very poorly.” Wang looked up, addressing both investigators. “I was able to cut them open when I performed the autopsy on Mr. Smith earlier today, and the first thing I noticed was the missing kidneys.”Bishop stared at her in disbelief. “Both of them?”The doctor nodded. “They were carved out post-mortem. However, I can definitely tell that, just like the stitches, it was not professionally done—the bastard didn’t have the slightest clue in the world what he was doing and tried to gut the man out like a pig on a butcher’s block, and I’ve seen butchers do better. The cuts were almost an entire inch off, and the killer had to slice through the skin and flesh several times before he managed to cut the man open. There was significant collateral damage done to the surrounding tissue. If Mr. Smith hadn’t died of the chloroform, the procedure would have no doubt taken his life instead.”Bishop turned to her partner briefly, expecting some sort of remark from him. Gilliam’s face was about as expressive as a stone.She looked back at the doctor. “And the murder weapon?”Wang took another deep breath. “Judging from the incisions, I am positive that the killer used a smaller blade—much smaller than the one used on the Walkers, smaller than a common kitchen knife or a switchblade for that matter.” She tilted her head up, raising a single gloved index finger as a gesture. “In addition to that, I also found some traces of the unknown dark substance that you found at the crime scene, in the tissue surrounding Mr. Smith’s missing kidneys. I’ve also sent those samples up to Forensics for further analysis. From what I can tell, it did not come from any bodily fluids he could possibly have inside his body.”Bishop looked towards Gilliam. He had turned his face away from her direct gaze, but the corner of his mouth was twitching, like he was trying to hide the frown to match the creases in the corner of his eyes and his forehead. He had yet to make another comment on the doctor’s findings, but it was clear that he was six feet deep in whatever thoughts he had in mind right now, unaware even as Bishop stared straight at him. She didn’t want to admit her slight curiosity of what he thought of the nature of John Smith’s death—that folder he gave to the chief, who later gave it to her, held information of just one potential suspect, and she could take a confident guess on which victims Woods’ modus operandi could match with. She noticed the agent had another file in his hands, when she was sitting beside him back at the chief’s office. Did he have another potential suspect in mind for the Smiths, too?After several seconds of silence, Bishop averted her eyes from the agent and turned back to the doctor. “What about the Walkers?”Wang led the two investigators to the next silver table over, reassuming her position on the other side opposite to them. Bishop remembered how the two of them discovered the Walkers’ bodies, in the bloodbath that was once the master bedroom of their house. Part of her was mentally preparing herself before Wang could start uncovering the cloth upon Samuel Walker’s body. She was hesitant to even take a second look at the photographs she took of the crime scene, let alone the mangled corpse of the poor man before them.“This one didn’t stand a chance against his killer,” Wang remarked before she even took hold of the cloth. She was much gentler with her movements this time around, as though the man was still alive and very much in pain, and she wanted to disturb him as little as possible, however much she could. She folded the cloth about halfway through, showing just the upper half of his body and stopping right where his stomach should be. Indeed, the Walker patriarch did not look much better than when the two women first found him—long lacerations across his chest and forearms, with much larger, deeper wounds decorating the skin, though most of them had been carefully stitched up by the good doctor, and most of the blood had been cleaned off. Like Smith, a large Y-shaped incision adorned the majority of the chest, though it almost looked indistinguishable with the other injuries the man had suffered prior to his death, very much in contrast to Smith’s.“No major surprises with this one,” Wang said, nodding to the corpse. Her gaze was, once again, near sympathetic, more than the average person would upon looking at any mere corpse. “Some bruising around his wrists, just like Mr. Smith, but Mr. Walker also had large gashes on both of his palms.”“He got a hold on the blade of the killer’s weapon.”“I believe so,” Wang confirmed. “The size of the injuries indicates the same weapon was used throughout the entire process, though he was cut apart with varying strength and angles. Some of the wounds were done post-mortem—the killer struck him in a number of major arteries, veins and did significant damage on the heart, lungs, and most of his vital organs even after he expired. Cause of death could either be severe blood loss or the massive trauma done to his organs, but either way, he had no chance of surviving the night.”It was an overkill, Bishop thought. The killer murdered the man for the sake of murdering him, as though he was getting high on the adrenaline it must’ve brought him. She’d read about killers like these before—dealt with a couple of them herself, even. It was a certain kind of high—a certain kind of addiction that could only be sated one way, and one method alone.Whoever this killer might be, Jeffrey Woods or otherwise, was going to kill again. There was little doubt about that.Gilliam had yet to make a statement of this. When Bishop looked at him from the corner of her eye, the FBI agent was still as silent as ever, though his gaze on Mr. Walker’s body held just the slightest hint of what she could recognize as pity—an emotion she didn’t think he would have, considering their interactions thus far.She pulled the corner of her lips back for a brief second as she turned back to her colleague. “Anything else?”“I have about four and a half more bodies to get to,” Wang stated with a quiet, grave tone. “I don’t expect to see any stark differences between them and their patriarchs, but I will inform you if that statement changes.”“Nothing? Just nothing else you want to comment on—no snide remarks about how the victims were killed, or contradictions to whatever theories you have in that head of yours?”The ceramic mug fitted in the coffee stain on Bishop’s desk was devoid of coffee, so the machine in the back of the room became her first objective the second they arrived back at the station. She was dismayed when she noticed a dark figure appearing in her peripherals seconds after the machine started to churn out spurts of dark liquid into her mug and the surrounding area of the counter it sat on, and she turned to her right to see the FBI agent standing there, a respectable distance away from her, and with a familiar brown manila folder in his hands, flipped open as his eyes scanned through whatever page he was on.He barely noticed her speaking to him, lifting his gaze up to address her, briefly glancing when the coffee machine started making questionable sounds as though it was going to burst into flames right in front of them. In any case, Bishop wouldn’t be surprised if it did.“What?”Bishop suppressed the urge to roll her eyes at him. “You’re clearly still hiding something from us,” she said, nodding towards the file in his hands. “You were talking big smack up until Jane told us the results of her autopsies. You know, if we’re going to be working together from now on, I expect you to be transparent to the lead investigator of this case.”“Co -investigator,” he corrected, glaring at her for a brief moment before he turned his attention back to the file. “And I am being transparent. I told you about Woods, didn’t I?”“You clearly have something else in mind.” The machine beeped and she moved her mug from underneath it, raising it up to her lips and taking a short, careful sip of the lukewarm liquid. “I’m not an idiot, agent. Woods might have killed the Walkers, but you think someone else killed the Smiths, don’t you?” She tried to resist the urge to make a face at the bitter liquid in her mouth but failed. “And why are you following me around the office, anyway?”He briefly glanced up again, frowning. “I was going to ask you if there are any available desks I can use while we work on the case,” he said, then did a quick scan around the room. Indeed—and Bishop wasn’t surprised by this—the limited number of desks available at the station were all occupied, let alone one that was close enough to Bishop’s that he would not have to yell across the room just to attract her attention.Bishop did roll her eyes this time; she briskly walked back to her desk, replaced her mug on its circular stain, and, noticing Gilliam still trailing behind her, went to grab a spare folded chair in the corner of the room and set it down on the vacant space right beside her desk, after relocating her trash bin to beneath her table.“There,” she announced, gesturing towards the chair. “You can sit there for the time being. I don’t care—I don’t give a shit about what you do as long as you don’t mess up my workspace, and—” Before he could do anything else, she quickly snatched the file straight from his hands and slammed it down on her desk. “—you start being transparent about what’s going on with this case, what and how much you know about it, because bullshit some kid in his—what, twenties now—has been out there, killing entire families and evading the cops and feds for nine whole years.”He glared at her now, just bordering on hostile but still somehow keeping his composure, before his eyes went to the folder that had just been in his hands one second ago, now securely pinned underneath her palm on her desk. She could just lift it up and look at it herself now, but she unknowingly found herself amidst an intense staring match with the FBI agent, both of them keeping silent for longer than she was comfortable with, and perhaps longer than he expected as well.She could’ve sworn she saw the corner of his eye twitch before he eventually breathed out a long sigh, moving to pull the folding chair out a short distance and then sitting down, pulling it back close to her desk. When she had yet to move, he looked at her with confused eyes, then nodded back at the file.“Take a look, then,” he said, quietly, much more than the usual. “Go ahead. You’re right—I agreed to the terms the chief had set for the agreement, and we will be working together for the remainder of this case. He set the bar quite higher than what I would expect.” He took another deep breath and leaned back against the chair, though seemed to have quickly made a mental note to himself to not lean back too far, stopping himself just before he could tip the frail chair over and send himself plummeting to the ground. “Therefore, I should have no reason to distrust you, or invalidate your opinions on the case.”She narrowed her eyes at him. “You’re being sarcastic, aren’t you?”He was feigning innocence on his face—she had been on the job long enough to tell with a single glance at his facial features. “No, I assure you, I am not,” he insisted. “I am genuinely interested in what you think of my so-called ‘theories’ and the ‘contradictions’ to them, with what evidence we do have on hand.”Which were not that many, Bishop thought to herself. There was a kitchen knife missing from the knife block in the Walkers’ kitchen, which could be the murder weapon used to kill them, but it had yet to be recovered, and it was likely the killer disposed of it in a nearby dumpster before the garbage collectors got rid of the evidence for him when they went through the neighborhood earlier in the morning. On the other hand, one of the other officers who were at the scene did recover a scalpel, of all things, dropped at the Walkers’ front lawn, almost hidden amidst the grass. It was covered in dried blood, which was still undergoing analysis, though with Dr. Wang confirming the weapon used to kill the Smiths, Bishop was confident the Smiths’ DNA would be on that scalpel.There were still the samples that Wang had sent to Forensics after conducting her autopsies, though those had yet to turn up with results, either.Bishop kept her glare on Gilliam as she took a seat on her creaking desk chair, pulling it up close against the desk as she slid the file over closer towards her. Before she could flip it over, however, she almost jumped out of her seat when she felt something latching onto the back of her hand, and looked down to see Gilliam’s hand over hers, and over the folder, before tilting her head up to see him staring at her.He realized what he had done and promptly removed his hand, pretending as if that hadn’t just happened.“I have to remind you, however,” he said with a quieter voice, and she didn’t miss how his eyes wandered from hers for a split second, as though to make sure no one else was listening. “The details written in these reports are considered classified material. You are not to discuss this with any of your co-workers, or anyone else in this department, much less any civilian outside this building. Not even Dr. Wang, regardless of your personal and professional relationship with her.” He paused. “And I have only shown the chief the extent to which he is allowed to know about this case.”Bishop frowned, and, with furrowed eyebrows, found herself staring back at the folder underneath the palm of her hand. He seemed genuinely serious about this—he always did, but the creases in his forehead were deeper than usual, and the dark glint in his eyes almost sent shivers down her spine, and not the good kind, but still unlike the ones she had when she first saw Woods’ image, or the Walkers’ bedroom. It created a certain uneasiness in her stomach, making her feel like she was about to throw up any second soon.“I am making an exception to you, detective.” He leaned back, putting appropriate distance between them, and between himself and the floor. “I am putting trust in you that I know I shouldn’t, but I know I have to, considering the circumstance.”Part of her wanted to think he was messing with her—making her believe this was as serious as he made it seem to be, more serious than the situation actually was. But the other part of her still had that sinking feeling in her stomach that was making her believe the horrible facts about the crime scenes and the bodies alone was barely scratching the surface of how deep the iceberg went.She shouldn’t believe him. There were more traditional methods of how to proceed with the case, despite the lack of leads and evidence available to them as of that moment. She could go interview the neighbors again—the other officers did what they could and she tried to help them out as well, but all they could obtain from them was a highly questionable witness account of someone screaming from either of the houses in question, and another who claimed to have heard sounds of struggle, though could not be a hundred percent positive if that came from one of the houses, or a raccoon rummaging through the dumpster, which was apparently a common occurrence in the area.She could run background checks on people that both families associated with—see who they had mutual connections or relationships with. Their activities prior to their deaths. People in the area who had a history of violence, or known criminal records, specifically home invaders or robbers. Anybody who had any reason to harm either of these families.She had the intention to do so upon returning to the station, but it seemed that her plans were being thrown out the window, for now.Without averting her eyes from Gilliam, watching him with careful intent, she flipped the file over and finally turned her eyes away from him and looked toward the page.She skimmed through the first few rows and columns of the report before she made another comment.“What the hell is this?”Her tone wasn’t condescending—at least, she tried to not make it so. She was confused, more than anything. She had no idea what she was reading—had no idea if the coffee she just drank made her read something that wasn’t even on the page she was staring at.“His name was Jack Nichols.” Gilliam’s voice sounded distant in her ears, her mind struggling to process what he was saying and what she was reading at the same time. “Upstanding college student from Colorado. Had no history of violence or mental health issues. Like most victims, he was just at the wrong place, at the wrong time.”Just like Woods’ file, there was a photograph attached to the top of the page as well, one that looked like a photo from a student’s ID or even a high school yearbook. It was a picture of a young man at the end of his teenage years, with short light brown hair, fair skin and hazel eyes. He was smiling, too—not a large, beaming grin, but a small, polite smile indicative of a picture taken for some kind of ID. Last recorded age was nineteen, and his last recorded location was what she assumed to be his college campus, where he was pursuing a degree in medicine.His last known status was declared dead in absentia .“There was a cult operating on campus grounds,” Gilliam continued, his voice lacking all emotion. “It was no doubt a religious cult—the kind you see in movies and TV shows, with cloaks and masks and a sacred text describing some demonic being they worshipped as a god and everything. Nichols’ roommate informed us he last saw Nichols heading off to the forest just outside of campus grounds when the two of them spotted a fire coming from a cave in the middle of the forest—the roommate recalled Jack claiming he had visited that cave before, along with a girl he just recently befriended at the time, named Jennifer Smith, who we had reason to believe was part of said cult.”This time, she was reading along the typed-out paragraphs in the report as he spoke, as if he had memorized the contents of the report and was reciting the words to her in real time. It felt like fiction—a piece of fiction she was reading, printed out as some sick prank, but it looked to be a legitimate photocopy of an official federal police report that was signed and stamped with the word ‘CONFIDENTIAL’ in big block letters at the top of the page. Nothing about it seemed forged whatsoever, and it terrified her unlike anything else.The man sitting beside her suppressed a sigh, but his last intake of breath was slightly longer than usual. “We still do not know exactly what happened in that cave,” he said. “But there were a number of students reported missing after that night, including Nichols. The local police organized a search party, and eventually stumbled across the cave, and discovered the mutilated bodies of almost every single student missing from that campus.”Bodies disemboweled, throats ripped open, eyes gouged out. A bloodbath, as it was described in the report—and, Bishop thought, not quite unlike how the Walkers were murdered in their own home just the night before, with one notable exception.The kidneys were missing from all the bodies found in the scene, and one pair of enucleated eyes that did not belong to any of the students identified at the scene—a pair that DNA analysis determined to have belonged to one Jack Nichols.Bishop looked up. His expression had not changed. “ Almost every one of them?”“Nichols’ body was never recovered,” he promptly replied. “He was still reported missing and became our prime suspect for the mass homicide. Last February, he was officially declared dead, and the case officially went cold.” Bishop frowned. “If the boy is presumed dead, why are you saying he is a potential suspect for our case?”“About a week after the first incident in that cave, another homicide case was called in from the neighboring town.” Gilliam straightened his back, reassuming a proper sitting posture as his distant gaze landed on the file in her hands. “A group of hikers were found dead on a hiking trail. All of them were enucleated and disemboweled, with the notable exception of their kidneys, which were all discovered missing from their bodies during autopsy. Another similar case turned up in the same town a few weeks later, and even more in the years since, but the killer’s M.O. was evolving—the victims were no longer disemboweled, but their kidneys were always removed. Over time, more and more victims survived, only realizing they had been attacked because they noticed pain and stitches in their abdomen, and eventually discovered one of their kidneys had been removed overnight.”Bishop’s eyes momentarily averted away from Gilliam, and towards the rest of the office space. No one else seemed to be paying attention to their conversation—everyone around her was busy with their own devices, most of them doing paperwork or just chatting with their fellow co-workers. Other than a few occasional glances from her desk neighbors—it wasn’t every day that they had a federal agent visiting, much less working together on a homicide case here in town—no one else gave a damn about what they were doing.That was good, she thought. Because God knows what they would think about what Gilliam was telling her the past few minutes.“How are you so sure it was him?” she found herself asking back. “Couldn’t it have been just some sick bastard harvesting organs from people in the middle of the night after sedating them or something?”“His signature, detective,” Gilliam replied, confidence still unwavering. “Just like Woods, there is one thing in common with almost every single victim of his that we have encountered so far: traces of an unknown dark-colored fluid substance, with an undetermined composition, containing no bodily fluid or chemical substance that modern science has identified so far.” Like the ink-like substance we found at the first crime scene . She cursed under her breath.“We were, however, able to determine that all the traces we collected in all similar cases, as well as those found in the original crime scene in that cave in the forest, were all of the same fluid substance,” he concluded. “We just have absolutely no idea what it consists of.”“How is he still out and about?” Unlike their conversation at the chief’s office, Bishop didn’t raise her tone of voice—she asked with genuine curiosity, though her voice, she realized, came off more as confusion, despite her attempt to mask it.“The incident occurred near a small college campus, involving freshmen students at said campus,” Gilliam stated matter-of-factly, returning her gaze. “I am sure you know how teenagers are these days, detective.” He looked back at the folder in her hands, eyes almost seeing through the manila backing and straight at the police report. “The kids there called him ‘Eyeless Jack’. Quite the tongue-in-cheek nickname, if I do say so myself.”He was right—it was difficult to take him seriously, with all that he just told her that still seemed like he was just recounting some urban legend to her. She expected him to burst into laughter at her now-grave expression at some point, assuring her that he was joking and all of this was indeed one elaborate lie—an elaborate attempt to prank her, which she honestly wouldn’t be surprised of.But as the seconds ticked by and she continued to read the rest of the apparently-legitimate federal report, there was no laughter coming from the agent. No lighthearted smiles, nor any attempt to negate the tense atmosphere around them. His expression stayed the same—emotionless, with faint hints of uneasiness and aggravation written across his rather tired face.“Let me get this straight,” Bishop finally said after some time, closing the folder and gently setting it back on her desk, straightening her posture as she turned to face him. “You are trusting me with this sort of ‘information’, or so you call it. Why?”“I have told you why,” he replied instead. “This is an exceptional circumstance. I believe my superiors will not object to me revealing this information to you, considering the nature of the case.”“The evidence is still circumstantial.” Because they weren’t done being processed yet, but she said nothing further about that. “This can still be a copycat killer for all we know. And if so, if what was written on this report was indeed true, you may have potentially revealed federal government-classified information to me.”“On the account of the evidence,” he replied, readjusting his sitting position after remaining as still as a statue on that severely uncomfortable-looking chair for quite a while now, “that is for you to decide. That is why I offered this file for you to read. I want to know what your opinion is, concerning everything on the table so far. As for the legitimacy of the report, I assure you, on my badge, that it is as legitimate as it can be. And again, whatever repercussions that may come from revealing this information to you, I will ensure my superiors take into account the extreme conditions of the current status of our case. You’ve seen the bodies—you’ve seen the message on the wall. Even if Woods nor Nichols are not responsible for any of the deaths that occurred last night, you know that whoever did this will strike again. The body count will not stop unless drastic measures are taken, detective.”She wished he was wrong. She wished this was all some sick joke. She still did, even as she returned the file back to him, and exchanged glances when the telephone on her desk started ringing. The two of them remained silent as Bishop moved to pick up the phone, eyes still staring down at each other as she answered the call.Gilliam watched her every movement, listened to every word she spoke to the phone until she thanked the other person for calling in and hung up the phone.“C’mon,” she announced, pushing her chair back and picking up her phone, her badge and the handgun she kept in her drawer, returning it to the holster secured around her belt. “Forensics got something. Time to get a move on, agent.”He nodded silently and moved to stand up as well, but instead of immediately following her out to the building exit, he reopened the desk drawer and stashed the manila folder inside before closing it shut.She stood halfway through the room, eyes following the man as he did a light jog to catch up to her, offering her a tight-lipped smile as well as a firm nod of confirmation.“It’s time to get a move on,” he agreed.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
After Forensics confirmed the traces of blood on the scalpel belonged to one of the Smiths, Gilliam had one of his colleagues from his home office trace its serial number. To our collective luck, it matched to a batch delivered to a medical clinic in town, which happened to only be a block away from where the murders took place.Gilliam insisted on paying the clinic a visit despite how late it was, and even when the two of them saw the red ‘CLOSED’ sign on the clinic doors facing outward as Bishop drove the car past the front door. But the lobby and reception area were still well-illuminated, prompting Gilliam to ask the detective to park the car by the curb before exiting the door as soon as she turned the engine off.Letting out a small sigh, Bishop exited the car after him and watched as he knocked softly against the glass door, then fished a small black leather object—his badge—before presenting it up to whoever was on the other side of the door.As the detective wordlessly moved to join him by the door, a woman, just a little shorter than she was, with disheveled brown hair tied to a loose ponytail and dressed in a pastel blue uniform appeared in the other side of the door opposite to them, head bowed down as she made quick work of unlocking the door. When her head turned back up, her brown eyes briefly went wide, likely at the sight of not one but two federal officers, before she moved to the side, picking up the broom propped up against the wall beside the door, to allow the two visitors entry into the clinic.“Thank you very much, ma’am,” Gilliam greeted in a slightly more uplifted tone, a bit uncharacteristic to Bishop’s ears considering everything thus far, as the pair entered the building. “My name is Special Agent Gilliam. I’m with the FBI.” He nodded over his shoulder towards his begrudging partner. “And this is—”“Detective Bishop, is it?” the woman suddenly interrupted, despite her pale expression, eyes now fixated on the detective in question. “I remember you from that incident three years ago.”Bishop froze, and felt the color drain from her own face. She barely registered Gilliam turning his head fully around towards her, as she pursed her lips and turned her gaze down to the floor with an uneasy smile. “Oh. I didn’t think—”The other woman gave her a single nod, then cleared her throat, offering the detective a small smile. “I never had a chance to personally thank you for your efforts back then, and for everything you did for us. And of course, my condolences for your loss.”The detective bit down on her bottom lip. “Thank you,” she breathed out, forcing herself to lift her head up and nod once to the other woman, trying to disregard Gilliam’s piercing gaze still directed toward her, but briefly nodding her head towards him. “We wanted to ask you a few questions, if you don’t mind?”The other woman furrowed her eyebrows. “Oh, what about?”“We found a scalpel involved in a more recent incident,” Gilliam quickly began, offering the detective a short glance before turning back to the lady in uniform. “We tracked the serial number down to a supply batch that came into this clinic about a month ago.” He then produced his phone, pulling up what Bishop presumed were details of the scalpel that his colleague had sent him, before offering the screen over to the woman. “We wanted to confirm for ourselves if the scalpel did indeed come from this clinic.”The clinic staff glanced over the screen with a frown. “It does look like the type we use here. But a month ago, you say?” She looked back up towards both investigators. “I may need to check our inventory records for that. It is possible that scalpel was out of our hands by the time this, err, recent incident of yours happened.”As the woman hurried over to disappear behind the front desk, the two investigators briefly exchanged glances before following after the former, moving to stand on the other side of the counter. “How so?” Bishop asked first, as Gilliam offered his phone again to the lady when prompted.The other woman didn’t respond immediately, bent over behind the desk as her fingers busily typed away on what sounds like a keyboard, occasionally glancing up to read the information on the tiny phone screen. Several seconds later, she lifted her head, but her gaze remained fixated on the glowing computer monitor as the frown deepened across her face.“I’m afraid I can’t help you with this one, off—err, detective, agent,” the woman replied instead with an uneasy sigh. “The scalpel belonged to one of the batches of supplies that was stolen in that burglary last month.”Both investigators exchanged another glance. “Burglary?” Bishop asked. “I don’t think I’ve heard any reports about a burglary from this area.”“Oh, um.” The other woman straightened her back and finally looked back towards both people standing opposite to her. “Well, uh, you see, we never reported it to the police. The manager told me not to. A couple days later, he came in and told the staff not to worry about it, said he’d dealt with it himself, so there was no need to get the police involved.”“Dealt with it himself?” Gilliam shook his head with a sigh before stashing his phone away. “Well, regardless, it’s important to our current case that we know where this scalpel went, so we will be needing to speak to your manager about this. Is he still in the building?”The staff member immediately nodded, then gestured towards the hallway beside her. “His office is in the back. I would advise knocking before you enter, though. He gets upset when people barge in.”Thanking the lady for her help, Bishop turned back to her partner only to realize he had already disappeared from her side, already leaving the area and marching down the hallway ahead of her, forcing her to speed-walk to catch up to him. The hallway lights were already turned off, but they could see the glow of light from underneath the closed door at the very end of the hall, as the staff lady had indicated. Gilliam raised his hand to knock rapidly on the door, just as the detective finally reached his side.There was a voice on the other side of the door—deep, loud and abrasive, like nails on sandpaper—but no signs of response to the initial knocking, prompting Gilliam to try again, this time pounding his balled fist moderately against the wooden surface.“Come in.”Gilliam didn’t waste a single breath as he turned the knob and burst into the room without much fanfare, with the detective reluctantly in tow just behind him, and his eyes zeroed in on the large, stout man sitting at the desk in the far-left corner of the room. “FBI Special Agent Gilliam, and Detective Bishop with the local PD. We need to ask you a few questions about the burglary that took place here last month.”Bishop almost scoffed at the agent’s directness before finally noticing the state of the room. While the rest of the clinic had been kept clean and pristine, as expected of a health institution, the back office was cramped and cluttered, with papers and files stacked upon each other on top of the desk and cabinets, not to mention the numerous stains on the carpeting below their feet and the overflowed trash bin beside the desk.The clinic manager, with his balding scalp and untrimmed mustache above his scowling lips, glared at the two investigators, even more so at the badge Gilliam immediately retrieved from his coat pocket as soon as he stood still a fair distance away from the desk. “Burglary?” The man threw what looked to be a greasy, mangled taco into the container in front of him and wiped the bits of food around his mouth with a single swipe of his sleeve. “What? I never reported a burglary.”“We found supplies missing from your inventory, and your staff informed us about the burglary that happened here last month, which should still have been reported to the police so they can take the proper steps forward,” Gilliam responded without a single blink of hesitation. Bishop held her breath; whatever amity he showed to the other woman before had no doubt dissipated the second he entered this room, and to be honest to herself, the detective didn’t wonder why.The clinic manager snorted. “Yeah, so? What about it? I already dealt with it. No reason to report it to the cops, and no reason for you badges to come in here asking me about it.”“Well.” Bishop blinked, glancing toward her partner before turning back to glare at the manager. “One of those stolen supplies is currently involved in a federal investigation. We would appreciate it if you could tell us more about that burglary.”“Involved?” the manager sneered then scoffed. “Involved how?”“Homicide,” Gilliam said curtly. “We traced the murder weapon back to those supplies that were stolen from this clinic.”At the mention of ‘homicide’, the burly man leaned back against his chair, staring back at the investigators no longer with annoyance, but with apparent bewilderment. “Hey, look, I know nothing about a murder, okay? But in all honesty, I’m not surprised that crazy bitch would do something like that.”Bishop exchanged another glance with Gilliam before glaring down at the other man. “You know who the burglar was?”The burly man scoffed. “Skye Sullivan. Used to be receptionist here, until I caught her stealing meds a couple months ago. Fired her on the spot. Last I saw of her until the burglary happened, so I went over to her place to confront that little thieving bitch.”“What’d you do to her?”“Nothing.” He made another scoff, lips curling back to show misshapen, dull yellow teeth. “Asked her to pay me back for all the shit’s she’s stolen, or fork over whatever profits she made from selling that stuff off the black market.”“And did she?” Gilliam asked, and the other man shook his head.“Bitch had the audacity to tell me she didn’t do it.” Another scoff. “I mean, she admitted to stealing the drugs, probably ‘cause I caught her red-handed. But she insisted. Then, that’s when she went nuts.”Bishop closed her eyes briefly before her eyelids flew open to glare down at the man. “Went nuts?”“Went nuts how?” Gilliam echoed.The man scowled under his breath. “Bitch went psycho on me, like she was possessed or something. She was yelling at me—she was actually threatening me, that psychotic bitch. Probably could’ve chopped my head off or something if I hadn’t gotten out of there before she really went ballistic.”“And she wasn’t like this before?”“No.” The man readjusted his posture in his chair and snorted. “She talked behind my back, sure, but never once raised her voice at me, or anyone really.”“Did she actually do it, though?” Bishop felt two pairs of eyes glance towards her as soon as she spoke up again, but kept her gaze fixated on the burly man. “Do you have evidence that proves she was the one who did the burglary?”“Well, no, not exactly, but who else could it be?”Bishop closed her eyes again and pursed her lips.“Bitch had been stealing from me for months,” the man continued. “Then she lost her job, her only job. She’s stolen from me before. She needs the money. Why the fuck not, am I right?”“And you weren’t surprised,” Gilliam asked, “that she would make the jump from stealing, to burgling, and right down to homicide?”“Look.” The burly man leaned forward, planting his elbows on his desk. “She looked like a good kid, all right? Did her job decent enough, earned her pay, and then I caught her stealing from me. Then, there’s what happened at her house.” He shook his head and breathed out a heavy sigh. “All I’m saying is, it’s not that big of a leap, if you ask me.”“But you didn’t do anything to her?” the detective queried again.“No, I didn’t do shit.” He leaned back and huffed. “Didn’t even get my money back. Not that I want anything else to do with her after what happened.”The humid air inside the confined room was still for another five seconds before the federal agent breathed out a long, heavy sigh, before turning around and exiting the room without another word. The detective watched this from her peripherals, then turned back towards the clinic manager, arms crossed in front of her. “We’ll be needing Sullivan’s current address—”“Get it from Nancy,” the man grumbled under his breath, turning his head away from her as he pulled himself up towards his desk, picked up his taco and took a large bite out of it. Bishop closed her eyes for a moment and suppressed her own urge to seethe through her teeth. She wasn’t going to get anything else out him, at least not for now. “Details should still be in the system. Nancy’ll pull up her records.” “What happened three years ago?”Bishop almost slammed the door when she entered the car and settled back into the driver’s seat. Gilliam was at least an entire minute ahead of her, seatbelt already strapped across his chest and his back already shaping a faint mold in the faux leather seat.“Why are you asking?” she almost snapped back, biting down hard on her own jaw as she jammed the key into its hole and started the engine.“Am I not allowed to ask questions now?”The car roared to life and she leaned back against her seat with a sigh. “It’s not related to the case.”“But it was a case.” In her peripherals, she saw him turn his gaze out the window when she started pulling the car out from the curb. “I did some research before I came here. It’s a rather small town.”“I’ve seen smaller towns.”“But not a lot happens here,” he continued, disregarding her. She pursed her lips, trying not to roll her eyes. “There was only one case from here to catch the FBI’s attention over the past ten years. I suppose it’s safe to assume that’s what the lady was referring to earlier?”“What’s your point, agent?”There wasn’t traffic in the streets since the rush hour had passed, but Bishop was forced to slow the car into a stop when they reached the red light just down the road from the clinic. She slumped back against the seat, eyes drilling into the red glare as a wave of exhaustion started to creep over her body.“Five victims. A middle school kid, then a couple of teenagers.” She almost cast a glance to the side, to see if he was reading this from somewhere, if there was something on his lap or the dashboard of the car. “The last two were adult women: a single mother, and a schoolteacher.” He paused and breathed. “Daisy Bishop.”She gripped the top of the wheel, gaze unwavering until the red light blurred and fractured in her eyes.“Family?”A slow breath escaped her lips. “Sister,” she said.“My condolences,” he murmured, then cleared his throat. “Were you in charge?”“I was an officer.” She closed her eyes for only a moment, just as a flash of yellow blinked in front of her, prompting her eyelids to fly open as her hands tightened their grip on the steering wheel. “I wasn’t promoted until two years ago. What is your point, agent?”“Five victims.” He didn’t stop to think, didn’t pause for hesitation. The car sped forward at the turn of the light, and so did he. “A serial murder.”“And we currently have seven,” she quickly interjected, immediately stepping on the pedal as soon as the light turned green, causing the car to lurch before it started moving forward. “And a mass murderer. Your point, agent.”“Well.” Gilliam cleared his throat, leaning his back flat and fidgeting in the car seat. “One can’t help but ask a question about how the two most notorious incidents in a small town involve a fairly high body count.”“Coincidences happen, Agent Gilliam.” She pursed her lips and tilted her head to the side, before looking over to the sideview mirror. “Not unlike your alleged suspects, you know.”Pause. “You don’t believe me, do you?”She glared at him from the corner of her eye. “You don’t believe me not believing you?”“No,” he admitted without hesitation, and she scoffed. She saw him glance out the window and could’ve sworn she saw a hint of a smile in the corner of his lips. Smug bastard. “But benefit of the doubt, detective. Like this town, I do believe there is still more to this case than meets the eye.”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
“I don’t think she did it.”She was right. Gilliam didn’t even give her a chance to sit down with her cup of coffee—a much-needed double-shot cappuccino she picked up on her way to the station—because just as she was pulling her desk chair out, she heard someone call out her name from across the squad room, turning around only to see the agent—in a fresh suit not unlike the set he wore the previous day, though without a tie this morning—lingering near the entrance, neck stretching out as his eyes found hers, his voice somewhat echoing through the near-empty squad room.She sighed, picked up her coffee cup, and headed back towards the building’s exit to join him in his car.They hadn’t spoken a word since yesterday. She entered the passenger’s seat, pulled the door shut, and slotted her coffee into the cup holder. As she strapped the seatbelt in, she made quick notice of how much more luxurious his car was compared to hers—it was a black sedan, not a sports car or anything, but its seats were leather and its interior was polished, like it was brand new, unlike her secondhand Corolla.They still had yet to speak a single word as he pulled from the station’s driveway, turned the car around and started driving down the road.She only spoke because it was about the one thing that kept her awake the entire night, and dawn, up until she decided it was time to leave for work—her actual work, in the hours she was supposed to be working, and the ones she was paid for.“Hmm?” Gilliam offered her a brief glance, before turning his attention back to the road as Bishop told him to take a left. She should be the one at the wheel, she thought. She was the one who knew these streets better than most people in town, and no doubt more than Gilliam ever did for the incredibly limited time he had been here.“I don’t think she did it,” she repeated. There was no annoyance in her voice—just persistence. “Skyler Sullivan. I don’t think she could’ve done it.”His voice, too, showed no hint of malice, nor irritation—rather, it was laced with genuine curiosity. “And what makes you say that?”“It just doesn’t make sense.” She told him to turn right, and again at the next intersection, which would put them on the main street. “She’s twenty-two. No criminal record, not even a minor infraction whatsoever—the only bad thing about her so far is the fact that her old boss thought she was stealing from him, and then she supposedly burgled the clinic after he fired her.”“Nothing suspicious from her file?” She immediately noticed the change in his tone—the curious questioning pitch in his voice that melted into an implicating suggestion.She turned and glared at him. His face did not move a single muscle.“Well, no,” she forced herself to respond, swallowing hard and turning her focus back on the road. “The earliest record we could find about her was when she moved into town about a year ago. She lives together with two brothers—I think—but that’s it. We don’t know where she comes from, what her life was like before she moved here—nothing. It’s like she never existed at all before last year.”“Don’t just think, detective.” The car began to slow down as soon as they approached the town center—some light traffic had accumulated down the road ahead of them, which was always an expected sight at this early hour. “Know.”“Well, I can’t know unless I dig into civilian records beyond what we have on hand, agent.” With a soft groan, she ran her fingers through her hair and forced out a heavy sigh. Her frustration was quite uncalled for, she thought in retrospect—she quickly blamed it on her evidently severe lack of sleep. She snatched her coffee from the cup holder and took a long sip. “We don’t have the kind of resources you do. We don’t even have the manpower to do that overnight.”“Well, it almost seemed like you did.”“One of the junior officers owed me one,” she murmured as she moved to take another sip, clouding eyes gazing distantly out the window. “He often stayed after hours a lot, anyway. Thought I might as well give him something to do than just digitizing old records into the system.” She tried to blink away the exhaustion from her eyes, but was well-aware she was very much in the losing faction in this one-sided battle against her own exhaustion. “Anyway, I hate to admit it, but the more I look at it, the more it’s likely we’re going after two people instead of just one. And even if it is the latter, I don’t think someone like Sullivan can do it.”“Two people?” She gave a short wave out the window when one of the pedestrians—an old man running a thirty-year-old general store right near the end of the street—recognized her through the glass and tipped his hat at her. “Any specific two people in mind?”“You’re still thinking it’s Woods and Nichols, aren’t you?” She grabbed her bag from the second row, where she threw it into as soon as she entered the car, and quickly fished out the two manila folders she brought from home—the same ones that he brought with him, and showed to her, just yesterday noon. “I reviewed those reports again when I got home last night.”“And?” Curiosity again—at least, she thought it was. She could see his side profile but not his entire face. He was solely focused on the road, though the clear interest in her gradual deductions, regardless of how exhaustion-fueled they were, indicated he was investing quite a bit of his attention to this.“I’m struggling to accept the fact that these people exist,” she admitted with a small, almost faint voice. “People don’t just go on killing sprees, not get caught by the police, or federal agents, at that. People also don’t just get their eyes ripped out of their heads, and go on killing sprees, and still live to tell the tale.”“I am well aware of that, yes.”She was still waiting for him to tell her it was all a lie—a prank, all designed to keep her on her toes or something of the sort. She wouldn’t put it past her co-workers to do such a thing, or even the chief for that matter. But when the silence started to settle between them as they emerged out of the main street and headed out in the direction of the suburbs, she found herself leaning back against the leather, eyelids growing heavier by the minute, exhaling her breath awfully slowly as he continued to drive.“Did you get any sleep last night, detective?”He almost surprised her with his sudden inquiry, and it took her several seconds before she replied him. “Not so much, no,” she confessed, sighing in resignation. “Something about the case just…” She trailed off, her voice beginning to lose its coherence. “It bothers me. Something’s off about it, and I don’t know what.”“The chief spoke very highly of you, Abigail.”Her brain briefly woke up at the mention of her first name. She blinked away the tiredness, turning her head against the leather to stare at him. “Don’t call me that.” Not you, anyway. “And yes, I know he did. I don’t know why, though. I don’t think I’ve given him any reason to. And I certainly don’t think it’s because I’ve pulled a lot of all-nighters when cases like this gets into my head a bit more than it should.”“Well, it must’ve been something you’ve done.” The commercial buildings became infrequent as suburban houses began to blend into view, white picket fences and green backyards and all, and less vehicles and pedestrians scattered around them. An elementary school was just down the road—the only building around evidently bustling with life at the moment. “So, who do you think is the prime suspect of our case right now?”“I thought you said I should know, not think.”“Well, I’m asking for an opinion, not so much the ultimate truth behind the murders. We wouldn’t be here if we already knew that, now would we?”“I don’t think it’s Sullivan,” she sighed, fidgeting in her seat as she leaned her head against the corner of the door. “But she’s our best lead right now—plus, there’s the whole ‘ambiguous background’ ordeal we need to clear up before we can entirely dismiss her from having any involvement with the case.” And at least they had a lead. It was certainly better than nothing, she thought grimly. “And if Woods and Nichols are somehow still out there, I don’t think it’s them, either. We have no direct evidence against them—everything we have is circumstantial. For all we know, it can still be some copycat killer—killers, sorry.”She could see him nodding from her peripherals. “Do we have the lab results from Forensics yet?”“It’s eight-thirty in the morning, Gilliam,” she groaned, closing her eyes and rubbing them with a single feeble hand. “If they’ve found something, they’ll call us later this noon, or afternoon, maybe.”He nodded again and, thankfully, didn’t press any further. Her eyelids fluttered shut. He was an impatient man, but he was also respectful.Her head throbbed only slightly. She held it in her hand, and when her eyelids flew open again, she found them driving down a familiar road, with familiar sights of a chain-link fence to her right, a pale blue-painted Cape Cod house with a peach terrace to her left, and a semi-detached family home with a treehouse, for sale, just around the corner.“Turn left up ahead,” she murmured, peering out the window to squint at the house numbers. A little further past the intersection, she remembered, and they would be heading back in the direction of the crime scene.Had he checked them out, she wondered? He was with her almost all day yesterday—attached to her like a benign tumor too dangerous to carve out with a simple surgical procedure. Maybe they should come back, after they were done with Sullivan—review and revise what they knew now, answering questions that still needed answers. With any luck, she thought, they would hear back from Forensics by then, and have something to compare their findings to, and hopefully produce some sort of new lead, in case this one—perhaps inevitably, as she thought to herself—drove them to a dead end.She stared out the windshield as the car turned around the corner, and the sight ahead of them shifted into more unfamiliar territory. It was almost frightening how much these locations were in close proximity to each other. It would provide an easy escape, she realized, if Sullivan was indeed behind the murders. But she always hated the thought of homicidal neighbors. It didn’t make the whole ‘moving out of the family home to your own place’ element of the past few months any easier than it should be.She told him to pull over when they arrived at the address in question—the address that the clinic had on record, anyway—and stared up at the building before them with great puzzlement and equally-as-great concern. It was a modular home, single story, almost identical to the houses adjacent to it, save for the pale green exterior, reflected orientation and weathered white beams barely supporting the structure altogether, not to mention the few patches of missing roof tiles glaringly obvious even from their angle of perspective. There was a small porch area in front of the main entrance, occupied by a withering potted plant and what looked to be an old wicker chair. The single porch light was still on, and the interior as seen through the half-curtained windows was still dark.The Sullivans were paying mortgage for this building. Bishop could easily think of much better real estate elsewhere in town.This part of the neighborhood was eerily silent compared to the Smiths and Walkers’ area of the district. As soon as she exited the car, Bishop couldn’t resist glancing at their surroundings, taking quick note of the lack of lively noises commonly associated with these areas. The exterior of the crime scenes was quick to fill up with curious, and horrified, passersby and housewives just itching to take a peek at their neighbors’ grim fates.There was barely a single soul around here that Bishop could inquire about the Sullivans’ presence here.The two glanced at each other before walking up, through the bare front yard and up the porch steps, the wood groaning from their combined weight, creaking even underneath a singular foot.As Gilliam raised a closed fist to the door to knock, Bishop raised her palm to pause, eyes darting back and forth between him and the door.The TV was on, she tried to tell him. The noise was faint—static mixed with the familiar but near-unrecognizable voice of a TV advertisement for a brand of kitchen appliances—but it was there.She lowered her hand, and, with a nod of confirmation, he made three, firm knocks against the white wooden door.The noise disappeared.“Skyler Sullivan,” the detective called out, voice almost cracking in the beginning but ringing loud and clear with the second word, gaze quickly meeting her partner’s. “New Haven Police Department.”Something fell inside the house—it wasn’t a loud crash, but it sounded like a book hitting the ground after toppling over the edge of a shelf—followed with a low groan—a couch or a chair being moved a mere inch from its original position.“Coming!”The voice was undoubtedly female. The two investigators shared another look before turning back to the door, moving back just a small step as soon as they heard footsteps practically rushing up to the door, followed with a rather harsh series of coughs, and various clicks and the familiar jangling of keys echoing from the other side of the door.“She could still be an accomplice,” Gilliam murmured almost inaudibly beside her, but didn’t give her a chance to respond when the wooden door gave a louder click and creaked open, revealing a small, and rather pale face peeking from behind the door frame.The young woman’s near-doe-like brown eyes stared wide between the two of them, and a small frown formed across her lips.A metal door chain kept the door from opening all the way.“Yeah?” she asked in a fainter, very apparently honest voice, gaze still glancing back and forth between the two of them as any average civilian would be—she stopped very briefly at Gilliam, likely because of his suit, a stark contrast to Bishop’s more casual coat, blouse and trousers. The detective watched the curiosity in the young woman’s wide eyes slowly transitioning into a look of worry.This did not look like the ‘crazy little bitch’ that her former employer spoke about just last night.Bishop fished her badge out of her pocket and held it up for the young woman to see. “Miss Sullivan, my name is Detective Bishop. I’m from the local PD—” She tilted her head in her partner’s direction, as the agent did the similar standard action. “—and this is Special Agent Gilliam from the FBI. Sorry to disturb you this morning, but we’re here to ask you a couple questions, if you don’t mind?”The younger woman’s eyes, understandably, grew wider at the detective’s words. “The FBI?” she repeated, blinking rapidly. “What does the FBI want from me?”Bishop took a deep breath as she returned her badge to its home. Beside her, Gilliam was silent and stiff as stone. “Do you mind if we come in, Miss Sullivan?”The question didn’t sit well with the young woman—her forehead furrowed, and Bishop could see her physically leaning away from the doorway, almost avoiding a temptation to look over her shoulder before she turned her whole attention back at the two strangers standing on her porch.“Uh, I don’t think this is a good time right now,” she answered instead, voice straining briefly as she paused with hesitation. She held back a cough, forcibly clearing her throat instead.Bishop frowned, but Gilliam beat her to a response. “Please, Miss Sullivan,” he said, his voice laced with almost the same amount of amity he initially offered the clinic receptionist from last night, but with a certain amount of strain that was just enough for Bishop to notice a few seconds later. “It would be best if we discuss this matter in private.”Bishop had thought the ambiguous urgency in his words did nothing to help them; to Gilliam’s credit, however, it seemed to strike her right where he wanted to. To the detective’s initial panic, the young woman suddenly retreated back to the shadowed confines of her home for a brief moment, door moving to reduce the size of the crack that she had opened up, only to halt right before it closed entirely. A loud click and sound of sliding metal later, the door reopened, wider than it did before, allowing the sunlight to cast long shadows on three of them and into the darkened entryway of the house.Bishop quickly came to realize it was dark, not because the Sullivans hadn’t turned the lights on yet, but rather because the lights inside were so dim, with almost all the curtains drawn, to the point that any sunlight that leaked through into the house was like an industrial flashlight in comparison.Skyler Sullivan stood by the door, shoulder-length brown hair unkempt like she had just woken up before the two law enforcement figures showed up at her door, dressed in a brown sweatshirt and grey cargo pants.“Come in, I guess,” she muttered, holding the door for her two guests to enter. Unlike Gilliam, Bishop thanked her for her cooperation and hospitality, carefully stepping into the household, lagging just slightly behind the agent.The detective would be lying to herself if she did not expect the house to still have a CRT television or something of the sort. But there was a flat-screen television in the living room, sitting atop a wooden television stand, albeit rather small for a household of at least three. In front of it was a simple wooden coffee table and a weathered beige L-shaped couch that looked like it was bought from a neighborhood garage sale, mismatched with the lime green sofa chair sitting right beside it. Behind the living room was the small, combined dining-kitchen area with a breakfast bar—for ease of convenience, Bishop thought, for such a small space. Two short hallways branched out from the open concept living room, leading to what she could presume were bedrooms for the residents of this space.When she turned back to face Sullivan—Skyler—the younger woman was opening the curtains of the outside-facing windows, allowing natural sunlight to illuminate the living space in place of the ceiling lights.“Coffee, or tea?” she asked, moving to the kitchen to pick up a kettle and pour its contents into a mug she retrieved from one of the cabinets.Bishop politely shook her head, and Gilliam followed suit. “That’s fine, thank you.”The young woman hummed in acknowledgement, but continued with whatever drink she was making regardless, before making her way back to the center of the living room to speak face-to-face with her guests. At her gesture, the two women moved to sit down on the couch and sofa chair each, while Gilliam insisted he stood up, instead beginning to pace slowly around the room, seemingly still in the middle of taking in their surroundings.“We wanted to talk to you about the burglary at the, uh, North Valley Medical Clinic—your former workplace?” the detective began, watching as the younger woman set two mugs of dark liquid—presumably coffee—down on the coffee table before taking a seat, posture noticeably stiff.At the mention of the clinic, however, her expression soured.“Oh, is that what this is about?” The detective didn’t miss the hint of annoyance in the young woman’s voice. “I didn’t think the bastard had the balls to call the cops on me, or anything like that. Didn’t think he’d get the feds involved, too. I thought he hated you guys.”“That’s—” In a moment of hesitation, Bishop looked over the couch at Gilliam, only to find his back was turned to them, as if he had tuned out of their conversation. She sighed and turned back to the brunette. “Well, that’s not really why we’re here.”The younger woman quirked an eyebrow, staring back at the detective in confusion. “You just said you came here to talk to me about that.”“Yeah, well…” Bishop looked down at her hands. Still no word—not even a single sound—from Gilliam. She took it as a sign to proceed. “We’re currently investigating a homicide case. We have reason to believe it has something to do with the burglary at the clinic last month.”The younger woman’s eyes went wide. “Homicide?” Bishop gave her several seconds to process her words, watching as the brunette started shaking her head. “Did that sonofabitch dig out his own grave or something?”Bishop shook her head. “The victims were two families who lived about a couple of blocks from here. Seven people, all murdered in one night.”The younger woman’s eyes immediately met with Bishop’s, wide with unmistakable horror, shoulders dropping in an instant. The detective had witnessed countless of reactions like this over the years on the job—reactions to the big murder reveal. She had little doubt that Skyler Sullivan’s was genuine.“Oh my god.” She leaned back, dazed eyes blinking in disbelief. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.”Bishop moistened her lips, realizing she was leaning forward herself, sighing as her posture slouched. “We believe the murder weapon is among the items that were stolen during the burglary last month.”“Oh—oh.” She bowed her head down, hand reaching up to scratch the back of her ear. Her eyes darted away again. “Look, I don’t know what to tell you, detective, but I didn’t do it.”Bishop glared questioningly at her. “You didn’t?”Brown eyes flickered back to the detective as the younger woman shook her head again. “I don’t know what that bastard told you guys,” she said, briefly glancing in Gilliam’s direction, then back at Bishop, “but I didn’t rob that place. I haven’t been back there since the day he fired me for stealing from him.”“But it’s true, then?” Bishop asked again. “You were stealing from the clinic?”The younger woman didn’t respond at first—couldn’t, as her eyes blinked, stunned, then looked away again, presumably in embarrassment. Her hand lingered on the back of her neck, jaw muscles flexing as she swallowed hard in confession.“My brother needs the medicine,” she murmured, only occasionally glancing at the detective. She took a brief moment of pause to clear her throat again. “I barely make enough to pay for utilities, and groceries, and the mortgage. We can’t afford the medication he needs, and he needs it bad. I didn’t know what else to do.”Bishop nodded slowly. So, she’s not lying about the medicine. “Your former boss also said you were stealing medical supplies—equipment, and things like that.”“Oh.” The brunette wasn’t even looking back at the detective now. “Yeah, I thought I could sell that stuff off somewhere—make some extra cash while I’m at it. It’s only whenever we’re really short on finances—it’s mostly just the medicine.” A brief pause, as she flexed her elbow and coughed into her sleeve. “Sorry. I’m, uh—I’m going to get arrested for this, aren’t I?”“Well, you’ve been completely honest to me so far.” Once again, Bishop tried to look to Gilliam for guidance. He was slowly but gradually making his way around the room, eyes staring at the furniture, the picture frames on the wall, at the kitchen—almost everything except the two other people in the room. She couldn’t resist another sigh. “And I understand where you’re coming from, Skye.” She took a deep breath. “How sick is your brother?”“He’s…” Her voice started off with bright optimism at first, but it didn’t even take a heartbeat for her tone to falter, ending with a sigh of resignation. “He’s been better. It’s a rare disease. I don’t know if there’s a cure, but I do know there are some things he can take to make it better—prescription drugs, so not the ones they sell over the counter.”“Don’t you have—” Bishop snapped her head around the room, eyes searching for Gilliam, who was now standing in the middle of the kitchen area, peering out the window into the backyard, his back still turned to them. “—Another relative, of some sorts? The one you signed the mortgage with—Timothy Sullivan, was it?”The younger woman’s expression was blank for a brief moment. Several seconds later, she blinked, and it was as if her mental focus had just arrived back in the present. “Oh, yeah—uh, Tim.” Her voice was still distant as ever. “He, uh—he moved out earlier this year.” She nodded, though it almost seemed like she was nodding to herself more than to the detective. She cleared her throat again. “I’m the only one left around here who can actually pay the bills.”Bishop mimicked her nod, eyes still paying attention at every little movement the brunette made. She had been avoiding eye contact for longer gaps now, even as she reached over to pick up one of the mugs on the table to take a sip of what Bishop could definitely identify as coffee.“Is he also your brother?” Bishop asked, eyes glancing at her own apparent mug, or at least the one placed on the coffee table directly in front of her.“Yeah—yeah, he is.” There was a noticeable lack of warmth in her voice, sending an odd chill down Bishop’s spine. “He was.”Bishop’s eyebrow quirked up. “Was?”“Yeah.” The brunette took a deep breath, eyes only glancing towards Bishop for a split second. “I mean, after he left and all, things just aren’t…” She trailed off, lips breaking into a smile—a pained one, if Bishop knew any better. “Things aren’t the same anymore, you know?”“That shed in the backyard, over there.” The sudden voice speaking up behind them almost scared both women, as Bishop’s head immediately shot towards where Gilliam was standing. His body was half-turned in their direction, his eyes briefly glancing towards them before he nodded back towards the window he was peering through earlier, at a contrasting shade of dark brown that soon caught the detective’s eye. “What’s that for?”“Hmm?” The brunette straightened her posture and looked toward where Gilliam had indicated. “The shed? Oh, just use that space to store old junk—stuff we don’t need inside the house. Oh, and the lawnmower, too.”“Old junk?” Gilliam turned back to them, frowning. “I thought you just moved here a year ago.”“Yeah.” Skye cleared her throat again. “It’s, uh, stuff from our old place. We can’t find anywhere else to put them, so we just stash it all back there. We’re actually thinking of having a yard sale soon—get rid of all that junk we don’t need.”“From your old place, huh?” Gilliam was bobbing his head absentmindedly, but his frown lingered. Bishop stared at him, expression blank as a canvas. “That actually reminds me about something we’ve been meaning to ask you—” the agent added, tearing his gaze away from the wooden shed in the backyard, and instead towards the detective for only a few seconds, then back again at the younger woman, “—since we first started looking into your background. Where exactly did you move from, Miss Sullivan?”Skye’s frown deepened. “I’m sorry?”Unlike last time, Bishop noticed Gilliam’s lack of response—as well as the brief knowing glance he shot in her direction a few seconds into the silence—and turned back towards the brunette. “We looked into your records—IDs, documents, everything,” she started, pulling the young woman’s attention back to the detective. “We didn’t really find anything on you prior to last year, when you first moved in here.”The silence settled again, for much longer this time. Never once did Bishop tear her gaze away from the brunette—not even when Gilliam started approaching the two women, only noticing his movements from the peripherals of her vision. She studied the younger woman’s expression, watching as it slowly evolved from confusion, to clear cognizance, and finally to apprehension.“Look.” The younger woman took a deep breath, shoulders lifting and deflating with her slow exhale. “My brothers and I—we had a rough past,” she started, voice noticeably lower and quieter than before. She glanced between the agent and the detective, the tension of her jaw varying with each second. “We moved out here, from our hometown, for a new start—a fresh start, if you will. And I know it looks like I’m hiding something from you—which would be stupid, considering you guys are cops and all—but it’s not because I want to be secretive, all right? I just—” She took another deep breath, leaning back slightly, arms wrapped tight around herself. “We don’t like talking about it. We just wanted to start somewhere new. That’s all.”Start somewhere new—a speech that was far too familiar in Bishop’s ears. It was as though Jane’s words were being parroted back through the lips of this young woman before her.Instead of unease and exasperation, however, these same words struck a different chord within her.Bishop had lived here, in this old town of New Haven, for her entire life. Never once, in her entire life, had she ever heard someone seeking for a fresh start here, of all places.There’s always a first for everything, the detective wanted to think, to herself, staring almost distantly at the figure of the mysterious young woman before her. She wanted to think this woman was innocent—she seemed to be truthful the entire time, and indeed, she still did not look like the type to murder seven people in one night.Abigail still remembered what her father told her years ago, back on her first day at the police academy. Always trust your gut, which seemed like a phrase almost stereotypical to cops on TV and in the movies she’s seen, but it was good advice, and one that had brought her this far into her career—one that she knew would still carry her through this job for years to come.And now, her gut was telling her there was something else—a missing piece of the puzzle, or perhaps a couple, or even several. Something was missing here. She just didn’t know what it was yet.“You said you had a lawnmower back there?”The brunette blinked. “What?”Bishop almost repeated the same word when she shot a look at Gilliam, who was, much to her growing irritation, staring back out the window—at that same wooden shed out in the backyard.“A lawnmower,” Gilliam repeated, hands shoved into the pockets of his suit jacket, his head craning back towards the two women. “You said you had a lawnmower in the shed, but then I noticed that little patch of grass over there.” He took one hand out of his pocket, pointing his index finger out the window. “That one patch in the corner—where the grass is taller than the rest of the lawn? The rest of the yard seems fine, all except that one little patch in the corner over there. Why is that?”The frown returned on the young woman’s face. “I don’t see how my lawn maintenance should be of much importance, sir.”The detective didn’t miss the slight change in the woman’s pitch with that last word; she turned her attention back at the younger woman, eyes observing her with careful attention.“You’re right—of course not,” Gilliam chuckled, very coldly, smoothing his hand down one side of the jacket. “I’m just curious how you have that big of a shed, and a perfectly mowed lawn, with the notable exception of that one patch in the corner, is all.”The brunette looked back towards Bishop, then back at the agent in his suit, as a different light crossed her eyes. “Look, is that all you want to ask me about?” she questioned, voice no longer distant—no, she was very much grounded back to the present now, her eyes almost glaring at the two investigators with what Bishop could’ve sworn was a hint of apprehension, or even hostility, for that matter. “The burglary—which, again, I have absolutely nothing to do with,” she reminded—at least, reminded Bishop, who blinked several times as she realized the younger woman had a point. “You thought I had something to do with these murders because that bastard accused me for robbing his damned clinic, right? Well, it can’t be me—I have an alibi for that night.”“Which is?”Skye glared at Gilliam, eyes lacking any signs of unease she had in them before. “I was working,” she stated matter-of-factly. “At my new job—the convenience store down by Cooper at Harvey. A job that I’ll actually be running late to, if I don’t leave in—” She glanced over to the clock above the television. “About five more minutes or so. And I really don’t want to lose this job, so—”She was standing up now, brushing her hands against her jeans before turning back to the two investigators. “If the burglary is all you wanted to ask me about, then I’m sorry to say, I can’t help you, ma’am.” She shot one last glare at Gilliam, but it faltered at the last seconds—her eyelids fluttered, eyes once again averting away from either people. “Sir.”Bishop was already standing up—she didn’t want to leave, not yet, but Gilliam was already starting to deviate their conversation towards directions that even she had yet to know about. And clearly, she couldn’t ask about him right here, right now. She could, however, ask him about it outside, and possibly get a search warrant in the meantime, in the case that they needed one, before they could return and ask more questions about the Sullivans. It was something that her gut was telling her to do, if she wanted to get to the bottom of this case as soon as possible—or, at least, to find out why Skyler Sullivan was still being so cagey about her past.Of course, Gilliam started to open his big mouth again—the damn thing that just couldn’t stop asking the strangest questions, or the wrong ones, or maybe even the right ones, for that matter. “It’s barely midday,” he said.“And I’m taking double shifts—triple, sometimes.” And that was it—Bishop heard the bare inklings of annoyance in Skyler’s voice, pursuing her lips as she resisted the urge to move in between them. “I don’t know how much the government pays you FBI agents, but I’m sure it’s more than enough to support your family, and then some.” The younger woman turned her exasperated glare at Bishop, and though the detective knew it wasn’t entirely directed towards her, she felt herself take a deep intake of breath. “I have a high school diploma—that’s it,” the younger woman continued. “I have that, and I have a really sick brother who needs help that we cannot afford. So, unless you’re going to charge me for trying to do whatever I can to help him—” She turned back to the agent. “I think it’s best that you leave.”Bishop had questions—many of them. Some for Skyler, others for Gilliam. Because now, she realized, it would be a miracle if the two were allowed back inside this house with as much warmth and hospitality as they did the first time they passed through that front door. Maybe the search warrant would come in handy, after all, if Gilliam’s strange observations were indeed pointing towards something he wanted Bishop to know about as well—something that they could hopefully use for the case.“We’re really sorry for disturbing you, Skyler.” Bishop almost nudged Gilliam ahead of her as both began walking back towards the front entrance, and the brunette, being the ever-polite host as she seemed to be at first, followed suit, lagging just a few steps behind, ensuring she saw the two investigators out. “We just want to get to the bottom of this case—that’s all.”“Yeah.” To the detective’s slight chagrin, the resident of the house reached over to open the door herself, allowing fresh air to flood back in and replace the perceived warmth of the house that Bishop knew no longer welcomed them. “And, uh, it’s just Skye—Skyler’s a real mouthful sometimes. And, uh, I wish you the best of luck with that case, detective. I really do.”Gilliam went down the porch steps and headed back to the car without missing a beat, though managed to throw one last glance at the house, at Skye, and over her shoulder towards the kitchen—through the window to the backyard—before he gestured to Bishop that he was heading back to the car ahead of her. The detective nodded, twisting around to face the younger woman once more. At least she was trying to seem regretful for having to kick the two investigators out of her house, addressing the blonde woman with a small, almost apologetic smile.“Take care, Skye.” Bishop offered her a sympathetic look, because even if Skye was still hiding something from them—something that might link her back to the case, or otherwise—she could tell that Skye Sullivan was in trouble. As a decent human being, Bishop thought, she could offer them some kind words. “Both you and your brother.”“We will.” Bishop almost wanted to ignore the emptiness in Skye’s voice. She tried to, even later when she headed back to the car, and even when she and Gilliam were back on the streets, making their way back to the station. Instead, she thought of the sincere smile the younger woman offered back to her, and the sorrow written all over her face that lingered even after she disappeared back into her house. “Thank you.”
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“Please tell me you were doing what I thought you were doing.”Gilliam turned the engine on and pulled the car away from the curb. His face was a mannequin mold, eyes gazing straight ahead, never once turning to look at the detective sitting beside him.“What?”“The shed.” She took a deep breath and sighed. “You think she’s hiding something, don’t you?”“I was pointing out things that I thought were weird—that’s all,” he said, shrugging, then leaning forward to peer through the windshield, making sure they were indeed going down the same road they came from.Bishop was glaring at him. She had never seen him like this. She knew him for barely a day, but in the extensive number of hours she had already spent with him, she never saw him like this.“Don’t you think it’s weird?” he asked. “How that one patch of grass is taller than the rest of the lawn?”“Gilliam.” She shook her head once and turned her attention back to the road. “We can’t get a warrant based on some… weird patch of tall grass in the girl’s back lawn. The court’s not going to accept that.”“No.” She watched with furrowed eyebrows as he took one hand off the wheel, shoved it into one of his pockets and fished something out—his cell phone—then turning it on with a single press of a button. “You can’t.”She saw the corner of his lip twitching, and that knowing glint in his eye. She frowned. “And you can?” she asked.He shrugged again, his left hand holding his hip as he brought his phone up to his ear. “I have connections.”“Oh, is that who you’re calling right now?” She crossed her arms in front of her. “Some district attorney friend of yours who can get a warrant for some… hunch you’re running off of? I swear to God, Gilliam, I am not going to lose my job for this.”“You won’t,” he reassured, and to her confusion, his tone of voice was light—genuine. “I promise. I’m the one making the call. I’m the one putting my job on the line here.”“And for what?” She told him to take a left, and without question, he wedged his phone between his cheek and his shoulder as he used both hands to turn the wheel. “Look, I get it. This case is important to you, as much as it is important to me. We both want to get it done as quick and efficient as we can. But what you did back there—what you’re doing now—is getting ridiculous, don’t you think?”Driving down a straight road, Gilliam shot her a brief glance. “Abigail Bishop.”“I told you not to call me that.”He ignored her. “Look at me in the eye and tell me you don’t think that Sullivan girl is suspicious.”She couldn’t do that—not technically. The best she could manage was turning her head at an angle so her gaze could meet his for two seconds before he had to turn his attention back to the road. “I do,” she said. “We still can’t clear her background, and she doesn’t want to talk about it, either—not willingly, at least.” Maybe not within the confines of her own home, Bishop thought. Interrogation 101. “We still haven’t cleared her alibi yet. We didn’t even get to ask her about what happened when her boss confronted her the other day.”“No, we didn’t,” he agreed.“There’s something off about her.” She took a deep breath and leaned back against the leather seat, before gesturing him to take a right in the upcoming intersection. “I can’t tell what it is. But there’s something she isn’t telling us.”“And that’s why we’re bringing her in for questioning,” he stated, then paused when he finally—finally—felt her glare piercing through his skull, and turned briefly to meet her eyes. “We are bringing her in, aren’t we? You just said so yourself—you think something’s up with her. You think she hasn’t told us everything about her involvement in the case.”“I said she was hiding something,” she reiterated. “I didn’t say she was still involved in this case somehow.”“But we are getting a search warrant for that house.”“No.” She pointed to his phone when she heard noise and static-masked rustling coming from its direction. “You’re getting the search warrant for that house.”Once again, she caught the rare sighting of the corner of his lip twitching, as he once again offered her a knowing glance. “Touché, Fräulein Detective,” then he started talking into his phone.She tuned out of his conversation with whatever contact he had, from whom he was asking for help now, instead gazing out the window while still somewhat paying attention to the road, to make sure the pair didn’t get lost on their way back to the neighborhood of the crime scene. Gilliam might have not realized it himself—not yet, at least, despite his hand on the wheel still driving them in the direction she pointed towards, but she knew he would at least appreciate taking a look at the scene of the crime, assuming he had not done so the day prior.It also gave them something to kill the time with—Bishop was constantly checking her phone every five minutes or so, in case she received a text or an email from the forensics lab, or maybe even one from Jane, in case the good doctor found something else worthy of note from the bodies.The families. Two unassuming, ordinary suburban families who died just two nights ago.Detectives weren’t supposed to think too much about the victims—who they were, what they were like before the crime, beyond the scope of the case. But Abigail herself wasn’t too different from her father; he would come home from work exhausted, drained, evident even in his young daughter’s innocent eyes. He would still greet her with open arms as she ran into them, but she could almost always tell whenever something at work took a hit on him—mentally, emotionally, such and such.Her mother expressed doubts when Abigail first told her she was joining the police force. She would be lying if she said she didn’t have doubts of her own. Handling crimes—even the petty ones—meeting people from all sorts of backgrounds, with all sorts of complicated pasts, and now dealing with murder—it wasn’t just anybody’s cup of tea.Bishop sank in her seat as she pondered this over. It was difficult to not let things like this get the better of her. But if someone were to ask her where else she would rather be, all she could think about was in bed, at home, trying to sleep. Except that she knew she still couldn’t sleep—wouldn’t. Not with all this in her head.She turned her head to Gilliam when she heard him bidding his acquaintance goodbye and hung up the phone. He stashed it back in his pocket, briefly glancing at her in acknowledgement of her distant glare, then sighed.“It’s being processed as we speak,” he said.She lifted her eyebrows. “The search warrant?”He glanced over to her side for a second before turning back to the road. “Did you want me to get the arrest warrant as well?”“As many favors you have that your so-called ‘friends’ owe you—” She pointed him to take a right at the incoming intersection. “—I don’t think that’s even possible.”“I was joking, detective.”“Yeah, well.” Can’t really tell when you do, but there’s a lot of things about you I still have yet to figure out. “You seemed like you were going to anyways, even without my consent.”He did as she told him to, as the car made a semi-harsh turn down a familiar street. “The FBI technically doesn’t need the local police’s consent.”“Under certain circumstances, perhaps. This is still my case.”“A collaborative effort, detective.”She folded her arms in front of her. “Which means that I still have a say in what you choose to do, as long as it pertains to this case.” She watched in amusement as his expression started to fall halfway through her sentence. “Correct?”“Where are you taking us, detective?”She resisted rolling her eyes, instead turning her head back to the road. “The scene of the crime,” she said. “I thought you would appreciate a little look-see before we proceed—and, you know, while we’re waiting for the warrant and all. You haven’t checked it out, have you?”“No.” He sounded surprised. “I would, in fact, appreciate that very much.”“See?” She leaned back against her seat, mentally preparing herself for the exposure that was to come. At least now, having seen the scene a first time, she knew what to expect—and, with the case still open, she hoped to God that all she was expecting was indeed all they would be getting once they got there. “I can play nice.”Both houses were left untouched since Bishop was last there—as untouched as it could be, aside from the lack of bodies and any other samples of evidence still being processed at the forensics laboratory.The pair of investigators entered the Smiths’ former place of residence with great caution. It was the first crime scene she herself checked out, and, in her opinion, the less gruesome one—a taste of what was waiting for the FBI agent in the Walkers’ household. It didn’t mean the house was any less disturbing, however, even with the bodies removed; there were still large areas of dried blood where the bodies were discovered, enough to indicate that something gruesome had occurred in this building not too long ago.“This was where we found Jordan Smith,” she said as she held the teenager’s bedroom door open a little further, then pointing to the massive bloodstain on the bedsheets. Beside her, Gilliam peeked in, eyebrows knitting as soon as his eyes fell on it.“The kid?”“Yeah. Sixteen, only child, goes to the local high school just up the road—the one we passed by earlier.” Would his friends miss him? Have they even heard the news yet, though? What did he aspire to be growing up? Or was he one of those kids who just wanted to get out of his parent’s house the first chance he got? “Grandparents from both sides have passed away. No other known relatives.”She watched him with a hawk’s eye when he carefully stepped past her and into the room, approaching the bed. His gaze followed another stain trail—that of the mysterious unknown black drops Jane had pointed out the first time—as it led to the wooden floor, suspiciously stopping right after it moved past the bedside drawer, where a yellow evidence marker was placed right by its foot.“Still nothing from Forensics yet?” Gilliam asked, and Bishop shook her head. “Huh. That’s strange.”Bishop frowned. “What is?”Gilliam crouched down, pointing to where the trail stopped. “The sizes of the droplets are all about the same, all along the trail, with very slight variation.”She blinked. “Do you have, like, microscopic eyes or something?”“No.” His voice strained as he stood up. “But I’ve been at this line of work long enough to tell the difference.”She tried to ignore the alternate implication of his words. “Any significance to that, though?”“Not yet,” he admitted with a sigh, but his eyes were still staring at the trail. “Other than the fact that it’s almost deliberately done.”“The black stains?”Gilliam nodded. “Think of it like a bleeding, open wound—the blood trails would grow smaller and thinner the further the distance, right?” He turned his attention back to her. “The trail would be messy—all over the place. Other than the distance between each droplet, it seems as though whoever left this trail—presumably our killer—did this quite deliberately.”Bishop made a point to show clear hesitation before she could cut through the police seal that would forbid most people from entering the Walkers’ residence. It wasn’t to be tampered with in general, but considering the co-lead investigator had yet to take a look at the scene of the crime, it was necessary harm, to say the most.And when Gilliam noticed her hesitation, she gave him a pointed look and a sigh.“I’ve been to a number of Woods’ crime scenes,” Gilliam said, in a rather calm voice, though she wasn’t sure if the tone was directed at her specifically or otherwise. “If this is his doing, then I am more than prepared to see whatever lies in store for us here.”“Good to know,” she grumbled, mostly to herself, before she broke the seal with her pocket knife and opened the door.The message was still there, displayed across the wall of the master bedroom like the graffiti at the back of city hall. Someone might see it as beautiful—there were still nothing but spiders crawling up Bishop’s spine the second she laid her eyes on them this afternoon.Gilliam stopped in the middle of the room and stared at the bloody letters painted on the wall. “So, that’s the thing you were talking about.”Bishop moved to stand beside him, arms folded in front of her. “Yeah.”“This—” He raised his hand halfway, index finger gesturing towards the message. “This is new, though. I’ve never seen this before.”“You said the whole ‘go to sleep’ thing was part of his M.O.”“But he never wrote it out like this,” he said, waving his hand at the three words. “He says it to his victims before he attacks them. He doesn’t write it out for them after killing them.”“Maybe it’s directed at us?” She tried to look toward him for confirmation. “This is a taunt, if I’ve ever seen one.”“Maybe.” Gilliam’s voice was distant, however. “Woods is most certainly a thrill-seeker—he enjoys the act of killing itself. He knows we haven’t caught him yet because we can’t.”“Why can’t you?”The question came out on a whim. The bluntness of her voice pulled the agent’s attention towards the detective, eyebrows relaxing and raising in genuine surprise. “What?”“Why haven’t you caught him yet?” she asked with specific wording, leading him to frown.“I’ve told you this before, detective.” He shook his head, suppressing a scoff under his breath. “Every time we get close to catching him, he just disappears. We pin-point his location, we give chase, and he’s not there. It’s like this kid is two—three steps ahead of us at all times.”“You’re the FBI.” She shrugged. “How can the FBI not catch some twenty-something-year-old kid running around the streets all by himself?”“I don’t know.” Words she never thought the apparent know-it-all would say. “The bastard’s a smart one—a tricky one. Slips right through our fingers every single damn time. I was hoping this will be the one time we finally catch him.”“If this is him,” she reminded with a stern voice. “The evidence we have so far isn’t quite matching up, you know.” Watching the lack of change in his expression, she knitted her eyebrows at him. “You are aware of this, right? The puzzle pieces aren’t fitting together.”He turned to her, eyes blinking blankly. “Is that so?”She sighed. “Well, I mean—from what you’ve told me about them, anyway. If they really are literally professional serial killers, then some of these things aren’t quite adding up—”She was given no more room to further her argument—a sharp, unfamiliar series of beeps echoed throughout the lifeless bedroom, drawing both hers and Gilliam’s attention to it, and the apparent source location of the sounds—Gilliam’s trousers.Without tearing his gaze from Bishop’s, he fished out his cellphone, tapped on his screen and brought it over to his ear.“Special Agent Gilliam.” His forehead furrowed when a muffled voice emanated from the phone’s speaker, and Bishop looked on with curiosity. “Oh. Right. I understand. Much appreciated, Barton. Thank you.”He hung up the phone and stashed it back in his pocket.“The warrant’s ready,” he said.Bishop took a deep breath and nodded. “Let’s go, then.”“Why am I here?”Bishop’s eyes stared at the young woman sitting behind the table, facing straight at the two investigators entering the interrogation room. Gilliam had stridden inside ahead of the detective bearing a case file in his hands, reading it as he walked down the hallway—it was most certainly not the file for the current case they were investigating, as that was in Bishop’s hands—for what reason, even Bishop didn’t know. But he was almost paying absolutely no attention to Skye Sullivan, who, having realized Gilliam was a dead end, now looked to the detective for an answer to her demand.Bishop closed the door behind her, fully entrapping the three of them within the cold, grey room.“I’m telling you guys,” the younger woman added, her voice stern as it was when they left the Sullivan household, but not loud, “I have nothing to do with those murders. I didn’t even know they happened until you told me about them this morning.”Bishop took a deep breath as she tried to offer the younger woman a sympathetic look. “And we believe you—”“No—” Gilliam interrupted, having moved to the other corner of the room, briefly looking up from the case file in his hands to look at Skye, but pointing towards Bishop, “—She believes you. I don’t.”The detective sighed, choosing not to correct her partner. “—But there’s something else that we need to talk about.”Unsurprisingly, Skye scoffed—it was quickly cut off, however, when she lurched forward and started coughing, prompting her to bring a hand up to cover her mouth—before folding her arms in front of her and leaning back against her metal chair. “About what? The fact that I’m not being upfront about where I came from? My lawn maintenance that you kept on grilling me about?”Now, Gilliam fully turned his head up from the folder in his hold, but continued holding it between his fingers as he stared at her with mock curiosity. “That’s actually precisely what we’re here to talk about—” He straightened his posture. “—Miss Sullivan.”Bishop took the opportunity to quickly take a seat on one of the chairs across from Skye. Once settled, she looked up to face the younger woman, placing her arms flat on the cold surface of the metal table. “We conducted a thorough search of your house, Skye.”“Yeah, I know,” she near-scowled, bringing her hand up again to swipe her sleeve against her sniffling nose. “Your co-workers quite literally dragged both me and my brother out of the house when you did. I mean—” She scoffed feebly, almost laughing even. “Do you guys even have a warrant?”“Yes, we do.” Bishop took out the search warrant from the case file in her hands and placed it flat on the table. She wished she didn’t have to do this—she really did. “We conducted a thorough search, including your backyard.” At the mention of the backyard, Skye’s eyes fell towards the printed document laid out in front of her. “We found something quite interesting there, Skye.”In the uneven patch of grass. Gilliam, that sonofabitch.“Yeah?” Her tone of voice was an empty threat. An echo. She turned her head away to cough into her elbow.“Yes.” The detective swallowed hard, looking straight into the brunette’s eyes. They seemed to have taken on a slightly darker tint, looking almost more tired now than they were when they met her before—and it had only been a few hours since their visit. “We brought in the search dogs—took them through the entire property. They started barking as soon as we got to the backyard.” She opened the case file again and took out one of the photographs taken during the search of the house, laying it out for all three of them to see. “And, after some careful digging done on the efforts of my fellow officers, we found a dead body—buried right there, in your backyard.”Skye averted her eyes away as soon as the photograph was on the table. It was of said dead body, half-decomposed, still with chunks of rotting flesh and bits of clothing attached to the skeleton, freshly dug out by the search team just a couple of hours prior. It was, once again, an image Bishop wouldn’t be able to get rid of from her mind in the days to come.She took another deep breath before continuing, the detective’s voice almost straining the entire time. “We have positively identified that the body that we found in your backyard—” She took out another picture—a profile image of a man bearing short brown hair, “—is your brother, Timothy Sullivan.”They didn’t—hadn’t, not yet. The decomposing corpse wasn't even on its way to Jane's office in the city yet. It was a very early presumptive identification, based solely on strands of brown hair that matched the picture she just pulled out—just printed out minutes ago while pulling together the case file for the interrogation—as well as a very rough estimate time of death based on stage of decomposition, which itself was a fair consensus based on Bishop and Gilliam’s collective knowledge pool.But they had to say something to make the girl speak, even if it meant near-baseless theories that should be proven true, or otherwise, in a matter of a couple of hours or so.Fortunately for them, it paid off—Skye didn’t seem the slightest bit surprised at the photograph of the freshly-dug-out corpse, or the mention of her brother’s name. Instead, her right hand went up to her lips, and she began to chew on the corner of her nail as her eyes stared intently at the photograph of her brother. A second afterwards, she tried to suppress another cough in the back of her hand.Gilliam approached the table, snapping his folder shut and placing it down on the surface, pinned beneath his hand. “So, you do know about the body,” he stated matter-of-factly, eyes drilling into the young woman’s scalp. “Were you the one who killed him?”The girl’s head immediately snapped up, eyebrows knitted together, dark eyes glaring at him. “What? No! No, of course not.”“But you do know he’s dead.”“I—” She froze for several seconds, then blew air harshly through her nose. She tore her eyes away from the agent and at an empty spot on the table. “I don’t want to talk about it.”“You said he left the house a few months ago,” Bishop said in a much softer tone—at least, relative to Gilliam’s. Good cop, bad cop. She looked toward the girl with worry. “You lied to us, Skye. Why?”“Because—” She took a deep breath. “I know what it’s gonna look like when you do find his body, especially with you guys accusing me of murder the second you came to our house.” She turned her glare to Bishop, then back towards Gilliam. “But I’m telling you now, I didn’t kill him.”“Then did Tobias kill him?”Bishop couldn’t stop Gilliam from pressing further—as soon as he spoke those words, Skye redirected her fierce glare at the federal agent, fury written all over her face. “No,” she snapped harshly, despite the small volume of her voice, but her body was leaning forward, like a threatened animal in a cage. “No. Toby wouldn’t hurt a fly.”“That scar across his cheek indicated otherwise.”“That’s not—” She paused to take a deep breath, turned her face into her elbow again, before continuing. “That’s his sickness, all right? His disorder—he can’t feel pain. Literally can’t feel any pain whatsoever. He doesn’t know when he’s hurting himself more than half the time.” She shrunk back slightly. “He had this… this habit that he got when he was a kid—he would chew the inside of his cheek, and because he couldn’t feel how painful it was, he did it often enough and bad enough that he…”She trailed off, and Bishop, realizing what the younger woman was implying, spoke nothing of it. She thanked the Heavens that Gilliam, too, didn’t press on that matter any further.“That still doesn’t mean he couldn’t have killed your older brother,” the agent said instead, his voice oddly neutral.“And I’m telling you, he didn’t.” Skye leaned back against her seat, once again folding her arms in front of her. “Toby looked up to Tim—he practically adored him. He wouldn’t dare hurt him—neither of us would.”“Then, who did, Skye?” Bishop tried again, pulling the girl’s attention back to her.Skye scoffed. “What makes you think he was even murdered?”There was a brief pause—Bishop thought Gilliam would explain it for her, but oddly enough, he had pulled away from the table, swiping the file beneath his hand along with him, almost shrinking back into the shadows filling the sides and corners of the room.Bishop sighed and turned towards the photograph of the body recovered from the backyard. “Preliminary observation indicates Mr. Sullivan sustained severe wounds prior to his death.” Her voice was almost too monotonous. It made even Bishop herself uncomfortable at how dreadful she sounded. “Despite the decomposition on the body, we were able to identify several large wounds around his chest area—enough to have killed him, if done antemortem.” She then looked up at Skye, whose hostility front was slowly breaking down before her eyes. “He was stabbed to death—wasn’t he?”“I don’t—”“If Toby didn’t do it, who did?” Gilliam spoke up. The roles they were apparently taking, without Bishop’s prior acknowledgement, were still well in place. “You know who killed your brother, don’t you?”Deafening silence. The interrogation room was built for this—the enclosed space, the lack of sounds or noises coming from anywhere else except perhaps the barely-noticeable humming of the air conditioner in the room. There was no other furniture aside from the table, one chair on the side of the person being interrogated and two on the side of the interrogators. In the far-left wall was the one-way mirror—it showed nothing more than a completely perfect inverted image of the exact same grey room the three of them were in, including reflections of themselves, at least from this side of the mirror. It was always curious to see how witnesses and suspects interacted with the mirror—even when most people knew of its one-way property, Bishop could argue the feeling of being watched from the other side of the mirror had its own effect on the interrogation.There was no one on the other side now, however—there was rarely anyone on the other side of this one, in fact, but even placebos can work wonders.Eventually, Skye heaved out a strained sigh, clearing her throat before speaking. “It was… some burglar,” she choked out, eyes glaring away from both Bishop and Gilliam. “I was, uh—I was still working at the clinic. Toby was fast asleep. Someone tried to break in, and Tim was there, and he…” She trailed off again—very understandably, in Bishop’s eyes.“Wouldn’t Toby have woken up at some point?” Gilliam asked.“He takes sleeping pills—some of the stuff that I took from the clinic sometimes.” The answer came out smoothly this time around, with very little thought behind it. It was almost her recurring theft of the clinic was a feeble matter now—something trivial compared to everything else at hand. In all Bishop’s honesty, it might as well be. “He can’t get a wink of sleep without them. Whatever happened in the living room that day—he didn’t hear a single damn thing. And, he, uh—” She paused, swallowing hard. “He still blames himself for Tim’s death. Says things like, what if he had woken up the second anything happened—that sort of thing.”Bishop sighed, leaning just slightly back against her chair as she studied Skye’s expressions. “Why didn’t you just tell this to us sooner? Why did you lie?”“Because—” She paused, breath caught stuck in her throat as she offered the detective a helpless shrug. “I didn’t know what to do, okay? You were coming in and accusing me of murder. Imagine how bad it’ll seem when you find out we had to bury our own brother’s dead body in our backyard.”“Why did you bury him in the backyard?”Skye turned to Gilliam. “What?”“Why not bury him at the cemetery?” the agent added nonchalantly. “There’s one about three blocks from where you live.”Bishop nodded, confirming his statement, but soon deflated her shoulders when the realization came upon her. How does he know there’s a cemetery in the area?Skye glared at him, livid. “We barely have a roof over our heads and food in our bellies. You think we can afford a burial?” Then, she leaned back, blowing air harshly through her nose as her hand went up almost automatically at this point, waiting for her throat to choke out another cough sooner or later.She didn’t appear to be sick when they visited her this morning, though Bishop did notice she was coughing more than the typical person would—it was a dry cough, like a smoker’s cough, but she didn’t recall smelling any cigarettes when they were at the Sullivan residence earlier.“Are you okay, Skye?” the detective found herself asking, and Skye’s eyes briefly shot over to Bishop.“Yeah.” Her voice was faint again. “Yeah, I’m fine. Why? What’s wrong?”Bishop shot a brief glance at Gilliam. No comments. “Did, uh—was Tim a smoker, Skye?” A long shot, she thought, but she should at least ask.The brunette blinked. “He was, yeah—he tried to quit a little while back, though. Before he, um…” She looked away, clearing her throat while a single finger scratched the back of her scalp. “Why? What’s wrong?”It’s been half a year since he died, though, Bishop thought to herself, frowning. Maybe she’s still a passive smoker, but should it be this bad?At best, she decided, it was the reason for her constant coughing. At the very least, it was something worth mentioning to Jane concerning the late man’s autopsy.“Nothing,” Bishop said instead, once again offering a brief glance to every single person in the room with her. “It’s just—you have quite the bad cough there.”“Hmm? Oh—yeah.” Again, Skye cleared her throat, though it sounded much harsher this time. “I, uh, must’ve caught the flu or something. I’m sure it’s fine.”The detective, however, didn’t miss how the brunette’s dark eyes briefly went over to the door behind the former—how she started chewing on the corner of her lip as her gaze lingered there for quite some time.Beside her, however, Gilliam cleared his own throat, but under an entirely different context than the young woman sitting across from them. “Detective,” he said lowly. “The shed.”“Hmm—oh, that’s right.” The shed. Bishop took another deep breath before reaching back into the folder to pull out several more photographs—the ones taken of the shed that Gilliam also questioned about during their visit that morning. Goddamn bastard. “Until we’ve received full autopsy results on Timothy Sullivan, we also wanted to ask you a few questions about your shed.”Whatever Skye was pondering about, the mention of the shed brought her focus back to the concurrent interrogation, dark eyes growing wide as they glared back at the detective, then the agent. “My fucking shed?”“Yes,” Gilliam retorted almost harshly. “The fucking shed.”“We found a mattress—” Bishop pointed to one of the photographs taken of the shed’s interior, “—a mini-fridge—which has been emptied out—a desk, a toolbox, among several other items on the metal shelving unit inside that shed. Oh—and, of course, the lawnmower, too.” The detective looked back up at the brunette, whose face turned a shade paler at everything the former just listed out. “Someone’s been living back there, isn’t that right, Skye?”“Wh—” The brunette scoffed, eyes still staring intently at the photograph. The back of her hand, once again, shot up to her mouth to cover the unruly noise that escaped her throat soon afterward.Gilliam approached the table, hands buried inside his pockets as he stared at the silent girl. “Not to mention the traces of blood found all over the shed—on the floor, on the mattress, around the desk—everywhere.”Bishop matched Gilliam’s gaze, forehead furrowing with concern. “Who was living back there, Skye?”“I don’t—” She took a deep, labored intake of breath, shaking her head. “I don’t know, okay?”“Bullshit.” Gilliam scoffed, walking a few paces away from the table. “You’re lying. You know that shed’s there—you know what was in it, and you know what you were saying when you told us about it.”“I—I don’t know, okay?” She was breathing hard now, eyes wide open, dark pupils contracting as they glared at the agent, then at Bishop. “I don’t fucking know!”“Skye.” The tension in the room made it difficult for Bishop to stay calm, but someone had to. “Whoever you were housing in that shed—he or she is very likely a dangerous person, with all the blood we found inside. You can’t have housed someone in that shed without knowing who they are.”The brunette turned her gaze to the detective in desperation. “Detective, I don’t—”“Skye.” She made her voice stern, but calm—as calm as she could remain to be, at least. “Skye. You need to start telling us the truth.”“I am!”“No.” There was no more sympathy in Gilliam’s voice, if there ever was any—just hostility now. “No. You know who lives there—who was living there, don’t you? And you’re lying to us right at our faces.”“I’m not lying—”“Skyler—”A series of sharp knocks cut through the thick tension in the air like hot knife through butter—loud enough that it cut Bishop off from what she was about to say, and immediately yanking everybody’s attention towards the door. Stunned, the detective finally snapped out of her stupor to exchange a frown and questioning glance with her partner, who seemed just about as confused as she was, before taking the liberty of being the first to stand up and move.From the corner of her eye, Skye was struggling to breath, chest heaving, eyes wide like a deer in headlights.The detective marched across the room, took hold of and twisted the knob, before pulling the door open just the slightest crack.Her frown deepened when she saw a junior officer standing right in front of the door, his hand still raised where he had knocked, eyes quickly trailing up to Bishop’s the second he noticed the door was open.“What is it, Parsons?” she questioned rather hastily. He should know better than to interrupt an ongoing interrogation, she thought.And he must’ve, because the wide-eyed worry lines all over the younger man’s pale face indicated something was wrong—enough so that he risked disturbing the interrogation just as they were getting somewhere.“We’ve, uh—” A bead of sweat trickled down the side of his face as he swallowed hard. His voice, already naturally meek compared to his co-workers, sounded like a terrified child in that exact moment. “Sorry to interrupt you, ma’am, but we’ve got a situation. There’s something going on outside—something real bad.”She knitted her eyebrows together. “What? What do you mean? What’s going on?”“Uh, I—I think you should go see for yourself, ma’am.” The poor man was stuttering uncontrollably. Behind her, she heard Gilliam’s chair scraping against the ground, and Parsons’ gaze went past Bishop’s shoulder. “And, uh, you, too, sir. I—I think he’s asking for those two people you just brought in earlier.”Two people? Skye and Toby, she quickly thought, in a late realization.“Who is?” Gilliam’s voice inquired from behind her.“I—I don’t know, sir!” Parsons managed to stutter out in panic, but the second he did, Bishop almost reeled back in surprise when another officer came up behind Parsons and rushed past them, down the hallway and towards the front desk, yelling something she didn’t manage to catch.Parsons himself immediately pulled back away from the door and, despite some hesitation, immediately went after where the other officer had gone. Seconds later, she heard people yelling from that same direction, demanding for more backup to head towards the building’s main entrance and exit.With wide eyes, Bishop snapped her head around towards Gilliam, hoping for an explanation, but he, too, had the same look of confusion overtaking him.Behind them both, Skye looked uneasy. “Wh—What’s going on?”“Well.” Bishop looked toward Gilliam again, who gave her a brief nod as he stood up and started heading towards the door as she threw it wide open. “We better find out.”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
“What’s going on?” Bishop asked the person in front of her as soon as she reached the end of the hallway, tapping his shoulder, turning him around and realizing it was her desk neighbor, Torres—an well-renowned detective, at least in New Haven, in his own right, just a couple of years her senior both in terms of age and experience.He was already drawing his Glock from its holster as he addressed her with a frown. “We got an officer down,” he growled underneath his breath, though she knew it wasn’t directed at her. “Another one tried to shoot the bastard, but it didn’t do jack-shit to ‘im. You didn’t hear the gunshot?”“No.” Bishop’s frown deepened. “We were interrogating a suspect.”“Suspect?” Torres threw a glance over his shoulder. “Oh—for that mass homicide case you were working on with that fed, right?”“Yeah.” Behind her, she could hear Gilliam’s footsteps as he caught up to them, and resisted the urge to say anything else.“Well.” Torres clicked the safety of his Glock as he moved to join the others crowding by the entrance, guiding Bishop along with him. “Looks like that case and that fed coming in here sure stirred things up around here, huh?”Almost all of the officers on duty and on site were gathered by the front entrance—some were just arriving, others were standing by the staircase, most with their guns drawn out and pointing it towards something, guarding the entrance as the first line of defense against someone.That someone—Bishop soon realized the moment she burst out into the daylight—was a figure, dressed head to toe in nothing but black, standing in the margins of the parking lot, with what she could confirm was another one of their officers—her colleagues—lying in a growing pool of blood at the figure’s feet.She gasped, hand flying to cover her mouth as Gilliam appeared beside her and froze.It was Clarke—Bishop could instantly recognize the downed officer by his larger build and balding ginger-haired scalp exposed to the air as he lied by the mysterious figure’s feet face down. He was moving, just barely, but enough to indicate that he was still alive, as long as he was given medical attention very soon, if not immediately.Bishop’s eyes trailed up from her fallen colleague to the black-clad figure who she could rightfully assume did this to him. She could not tell if it was a man or a woman—her gaze was immediately drawn to the person’s face, which was entirely covered with blue. It was a mask, she decided and later realized, completely lacking in facial features with the exception of two holes for eyes and the vague outline of a nose, except that, staring into said eyeholes, Bishop could see nothing—literally nothing, but two bottomless abyssal pits that ran shivers down her spine the second she looked at them.The figure was quite tall—taller than Bishop was, if she wasn’t standing above the staircase leading up to the entrance of the police station—and quite lean, perhaps quite fit even, if the body wasn’t entirely clad in its loose black clothing. The hood of the jacket was flipped up to cover most of the person’s head aside from the mask and a few strands of dark hair peeking out from the small exposed area. The cargo pants and sneakers were generic, chosen for functionality more than aesthetics.It took her another second to realize his clothes were not perfectly seamless, nor spotless—a small but glaring hole was embedded in his right shoulder, just below the blade, staining the jacket in a darker, wet shade than it already was.A gunshot wound.As if to make a point to all the officers on the scene, Bishop saw the slightest twitch coming from the figure’s right hand—gloved in black—as the sunlight glinted off something that was just peeking out from the sleeve of the hooded jacket and caught everybody’s eye.A blade, covered in fresh blood, crimson droplets falling to the concrete below.Bishop yanked her own sidearm from its holster and raised it to point it at the figure.“Put the knife on the ground, now!” she yelled out without a second thought, moving to walk down the staircase one step at a time. Beside her, Gilliam mimicked her actions, but did not utter a single word.Another slight movement, as the figure’s head seemed to be tilting up to meet Bishop’s gaze. There was still nothing through the eyeholes, even in the clear view of the sunlight above them.“Where are they?” It was a male’s voice—deep, but loud and clear and smooth, muffled only due to the mask. It wasn’t a voice of someone who was above the age of forty—that’s for sure. What caught her off-guard, however, was the slight, deeper reverb she could’ve sworn was echoing a millisecond from the end of each syllable he spoke, ringing in her ears even seconds later.“Who are ‘they’?” she retorted back, trying to be louder and clearer than the intruder. “Who are you talking about?”The figure tilted his head almost imperceptibly, as if he were surprised that she didn’t know who he was talking about. “Skyler Martin,” he growled back, “and Tobias Rogers. Where are they?”
Skyler Martin? Tobias Rogers?
Skye and Toby.
“They’re inside, Jack.”Bishop snapped her head to the side, eyes glaring questioningly at her partner for speaking for her when she didn’t expect him to. He wasn’t quite yelling as much as she was, but it was a much louder volume than she ever heard him spoke, with the notable exception of what transpired in the interrogation room just a couple of minutes ago.His voice turned the mysterious man’s attention towards the federal agent, undaunted by the pistol the latter pointed straight at the former with unwavering confidence.“Both of them—they’re inside,” Gilliam continued. “They’re all right. They’re safe.”There was a beat of pause as the black-clad man seemed to consider Gilliam’s words for a moment. “Not from the likes of you, they are,” he retorted back. To her surprise, some of the previous hostility laced in his voice seemed to be lifted, though replaced with something else she couldn’t put her finger on. “Agent Joel Gilliam, is it?”The corner of his lips twitched at the mysterious man’s words. “So,” he called back in mock curiosity. “You remember me.”“Can’t quite forget a bastard like you,” the stranger retorted back, briefly tilting his head at an angle. “Not after what you’ve done to us.”Bishop frowned at his words, resisting the urge to turn her glare at Gilliam. When she spared him a glance from the edge of her peripherals, what she could see of his face was stone cold, almost completely lacking in expression, but noticed his hand tightening even further around the handle of his gun.“What do you want, Jack?” he called back out again, disregarding the eyes occasionally glancing at him in question. “What are you doing here?”Another pause—the mysterious figure was tilting his head around again, but instead of at an angle, it was as if he was sweeping his gaze across the entire front entrance of the police station, surveying the situation and taking note of the dozen of guns, all pointed straight at him and ready to shoot, should he make another threatening move.She assumed the first gunshot was a retaliation, for what he had done to Clarke, who had gone still on the ground beneath his feet. Of course, it would be difficult to even retrieve him from the scene with his assailant still standing above him.“I’m turning myself in,” he said. Bishop almost let her shoulders fall. “Under one condition.”“Which is?” At the sound of her voice, the man’s gaze turned and locked onto Bishop. She tried not to swallow too hard.“You bring me in,” he said, nodding towards the building, “and the other two walk free.”Bishop’s eyes grew wide in bewilderment. A trade, she thought, but not a fair one—at least, she didn’t think it was. She had no idea who this person was, as dangerous as they seemed to be, though she could take an educated guess on who it might be, considering what Gilliam had been calling him thus far.Without loosening the grip on her sidearm, she once again turned to her partner, eyes searching his expression, her own lost in desperation. He offered her a brief look, lips slightly stretched in contemplation before he turned back to the mysterious man standing before them.“You know we can’t do that,” Gilliam stated decisively.“You can’t,” the stranger asked, “or you won’t?” When Gilliam gave no response—to Bishop’s alarm—the man cocked his chin up, barely exposing the skin of his neck. Bishop held her breath as soon as she noticed the inhuman, dark greyish tint that was once hidden behind the mask and underneath the hood. “Look, I’m giving you a choice: either you arrest me right here, right now, and let those two walk free, or—”His fingers twitched, and the blade he held in between them slid down into clear view, the silver reflecting and glinting underneath the sunlight. At least half of the officers on the scene flinched at this single action.“—I’m bringing them back home with me.” Bishop frowned as soon as she caught his words. Home? “And all three of us walk out of here alive.” She could almost feel his gaze sweeping across them all, and yet, his head made barely a single movement. “Not the same would be said with your fellow officers, however. Of course, that’s entirely up to you—” The blue mask turned to face Gilliam. “—Agent Gilliam.”Her breath caught stuck in her throat. None of the rest of them had a say in this—it was clear that these two newcomers were more than well acquainted with each other beforehand, but she didn’t appreciate the new stranger’s threat. Even more so, she was perturbed at his confidence more than anything—never once did she see him flinch, even with a dozen loaded barrels pointed straight towards him.He can’t actually take on all of us all by himself, right? she thought grimly, though she almost winced when she reminded herself of the gunshot wound on the man’s shoulder, and how he seemed to be carrying himself as though the still-bleeding wound was never there at all.“Gilliam,” she called out in hesitation, her voice soft enough that the stranger shouldn’t be able to hear the weakness behind it.His pupils briefly darted to the corner of his eyes. “Detective—”“Remember what I did to your men back at that containment facility, Agent Gilliam,” the black-clothed stranger called out once again. His posture remained stiff as a statue, but there was something sinister behind his voice—something absolutely filled with malice—that sent shivers crawling down Bishop’s spine. “How many of them were there again? How many guards did you send after us? Was it ten? Twenty?” She couldn’t miss the pride in his sneer. “You’ve seen what I did to them, yeah? Those were armed guards—the equivalent of an entire SWAT team, if I remember correctly. Do you really want to see what I can do to just a mere handful of police officers barely in protective gear, agent?”An entire SWAT team? Bishop tried to swallow the lump in her throat. He can’t be serious, can he?Much to her immediate dismay, he raised a single foot and placed it right upon Clarke’s right side, then applied enough force onto his leg to roll the injured officer a few inches towards the rest of them, until Clarke was lying down with his back against the concrete. The officer’s hand was barely resting above his abdomen, where a large dark red stain continued to spread throughout the fabric of his shirt.He desperately needed medical attention if he was going to live—and fast.Bishop watched in horror as the stranger began rolling his right shoulder around, tilting his head to the side as if he were feeling the bullet still lodged in his shoulder digging further into his flesh with each movement his muscle made. With the mask, she couldn’t tell if he had winced from the pain at all—or if he could even feel such pain, with how nonchalant he seemed to be with that awful gunshot wound.“Time’s ticking, Agent Gilliam,” he called out, voice unwavering as always. “This poor man right here needs help real soon, doesn’t he? Wouldn’t want to make his suffering last any much longer than it needs to be, now would we?”He was a sadist, Bishop decided. He was taking great pleasure from this. What kind of monster was he, she wondered.“Sir?” One of the officers who stood beside Gilliam looked toward him with fear very much evident in his eyes. “Should we open fire?”The FBI agent took his time in deliberating his decision—thankfully, it wasn’t too long before he finally blew out a harsh sigh through his mouth, and swallowed, Adam’s apple bobbing behind the collar of his shirt.“No,” he said quietly at first, then, slowly, lowered the weapon in his hands until the barrel was pointed towards the ground, before loosening the tension of his grip on its handle. “All right, fine,” he called back out to the stranger, tilting his head up a small angle. “You have yourself a deal. You turn yourself in, and both Martin and Rogers walk out of here as free people—but only after we finish interrogating them.”The stranger tilted his head. “Interrogating?”“They won’t be charged with anything,” Gilliam continued, perhaps reassuring the stranger, but his face displayed nothing but begrudging regret. “We just need to ask them questions for our case—that is all.”The stranger continued staring him in silence for several more seconds before he finally tilted his head back, seemingly pleased with the agent’s words. “Fine. As long as they walk free.”Before anybody could say anything else, Bishop watched with wide eyes as Gilliam produced a pair of handcuffs from his back pocket and started striding down the steps, navigating past the officers in his path, and straight towards the stranger in black before she could even move to stop him.“Drop the weapon,” Gilliam said as he approached the stranger, a few steps away from reaching where the latter stood. “And hands where I can see them.”Much to perhaps everyone’s surprise, the stranger seemingly co-operated with the federal agent—he released his clutch on the silver blade in an instant, allowing it to fall and clatter against the concrete, before raising his hands up to the back of his head in stereotypical fashion. Gilliam made sure not to avert his glare from the stranger as he walked behind him, grabbed the stranger’s hands and pinned them to the base of his spine, presumably securing the handcuffs around the man’s wrists.She could hear the echo of the final clicks from the handcuffs, still doubting whether such restraints could even deter him from doing anything that could result in Gilliam’s injury, before the agent started shoving the stranger forward, pushing him in the direction of the station.Her partner’s eyes only briefly fluttered over to hers before his gaze returned to his straightforward path. Around her, all the other officers watched in a mix of shock, amazement, worry and fear as Gilliam led the stranger into the station.Seconds later, her feet spurned into action, marching after where Gilliam and the stranger had gone, tailing them just a few steps behind.She couldn’t bring herself to call out to her partner—not yet. She simply moved at the same pace as they were, as Gilliam appeared to be leading him towards another one of the few interrogation rooms they had—the one immediately adjacent to where they were detaining Skye in.She almost stopped when the door to the room in question flew open, and Skye’s now-familiar brunette head peeked out from the open doorway, just as Gilliam and the stranger moved past it.The look in the brunette’s eyes was an unmistakable blend of realization, recognition, and horror.“Jack?” she called out, lips hanging open as her eyes followed them.Gilliam stopped only briefly at the sound of her voice, turning both himself and the stranger around, freezing them on the spot as the brunette’s gaze met the black-clothed stranger’s.“Sorry, doll,” the stranger murmured in a surprisingly softer tone, but could say nothing further as Gilliam threw the adjacent room’s door open and promptly shoved the mysterious man—Jack—inside.“Jack?” Skye’s entire body appeared in the hallway, but Bishop was quick to catch her shoulder, forcing the younger woman to turn her head around at the detective.“Skye—”“Why is he here?” The brunette’s eyes searched Bishop’s pleadingly, and the detective stared back at her in confusion. “Wh—Why is he here, detective? Where are you taking him?”So, she does know him, Bishop thought curiously to herself, but she was even more curious to find the lack of fear in her features—instead, her eyebrows were furrowed together in concern, not for herself, but for whoever this Jack is.“Detective?”Bishop barely registered the second interrogation room door closing shut in front of her—she didn’t even realize when Skye was beginning to struggle against her grip, and she forced herself to step in front of the younger woman to hinder her and guide her back inside the first interrogation room. Skye herself showed little resistance in her own confusion, however, seeming more distraught than ever when Bishop entered the room after her and closed the door behind her as well, trapping the two alone in the room—in the deafening silence falling between them.When Bishop finally snapped back to her senses, she raised her head to find Skye pacing across the other side of the room, hands holding her face in silent frustration.“Skye.” Her voice was low at first, but when the brunette paid no attention to her, she raised it just a little bit louder. “Skye. Sit down, please.”“Why is he here?” She stopped, hands sliding down her face and wrapping around herself as she marched right up to the detective. “Detective Bishop, why is he here?”“Skye.” Bishop raised both her hands and placed them below the younger woman’s shoulders. “Sit down.”Skye stared up at her for several more seconds before realizing her pleading questions were meeting a brick wall—an awfully apologetic brick wall, but a brick wall nonetheless.With a heavy sigh, she forced herself to turn around and dragged herself back to the chair, letting herself fall against the seat with her arms folded across her chest.Bishop herself walked over, pulled out the chair she was sitting on before, and calmly took her own seat across from her witness.“All right.” The detective leaned back against her seat, eyes staring intently at the brunette sitting before her, avoiding her eye contact. “Let’s start from the beginning. You know who that man is, yeah?”“I…” Skye licked her lips as her gaze fluttered onto the table. “Yeah. Yeah, I know who he is.” One of her hands went to her forehead to brush away the bangs falling on her face, lingering only to hide her facial expressions from the watchful detective. Her hand went up to her mouth as she coughed into her sleeve. “He’s, uh—He’s a friend of mine.”“A friend of yours?” Bishop leaned forward, pulling her chair closer towards the table. “Skye, he injured one of our officers, suffered a gunshot wound to the shoulder, and threatened the rest of our police force without so much of a flinch.”The detective’s words immediately registered without much delay, and it struck a nerve within the girl; her eyes grew wide and her pupils contracted, as she stared back at the detective with furrowed eyebrows. “He what?”“Skye—”“He’s injured?”Bishop’s expression fell the moment she realized what the younger woman had said. “Skye—”“Let me see him.” The words came up as a soft murmur, but was blurted out without second thoughts nonetheless. Her breaths were growing unsteady, almost feverish. “I—I need to see him.”“Skye, you’re not allowed to—”“Please.” She lurched forward, standing up from the chair, but Bishop stood from her seat just as forcefully, if not more, reaching over to catch her by her shoulders if she moved another inch. “Please, detective. I need to see him.”“No, Skye.” The detective tried to put some finality into her tone of voice, hearing the distress in Skye’s quite clearly despite not loudly. “Skye, you’re not allowed to go in there.”“B-But—”“He is an extremely dangerous individual, Skye.” The girl didn’t seem the slightest bit perturbed at what she was trying to say. “He might have just killed one of my boys out there.” Bishop would need to ask for updates about Clarke’s condition, but that could come later. She hoped that at least, by now, the paramedics were already on their way here. “He said something about having dealt with an entire SWAT team before, and he seemed awfully confident about it, Skye.”The young woman seemed to be processing Bishop’s words when she fell back down against the chair. “What? He—He said that? Why would he say that—why would he do that?”Bishop gave a fleeting shrug. “I don’t know.”“How did—” She groaned, then buried her face in her hands once more. “Why is he here? How did he even get here?”“He came here—I think.” Bishop was here, with Gilliam and Skye, right in this room when the man presumably first appeared. “He just appeared out in the parking lot. By the time I got there, one of our best men was lying on the ground, bleeding from his stomach.”Her head shot up from her hands, eyes staring wide at Bishop. “What? Wait—he came here?”“He was asking for a trade.” The detective deflated her shoulders, scoffing as her eyes wandered around the room. “His arrest, for your freedom—both you and Toby’s.”She didn’t think the girl’s eyes could grow wider, but she watched as Skye’s face dropped in a single instant, her expression turning from bewilderment to absolute disbelief. “He did what?”“Skye—”“That fucking idiot!” Skye suddenly shot up from her seat again, but the chair’s legs scraped horribly loud against the floor, completely startling the detective. “I can’t believe he would—”“Skye, sit down.” Bishop tilted her gaze up at the woman, legs ready to push herself up in case things went from shit to worse. “Please.”“He’s turning himself in!” The younger woman scoffed, lips stretching to a grimacing smile as she gave a feeble laugh. “Doesn’t he know what this means? This is just like the fucking containment facility all over again—” She was only stopped when all of her sudden her chest lurched forward and her stomach retracted inward, and a harsher series of coughs burst out of her throat before she could even stop herself. Her hands went up to her face just a split second too late, and the next thing either women knew, Skye was bending over the table, covering her mouth with both her hands cupped around her face, knees wobbling as she struggled to force everything out of her throat.“Skye!” Bishop immediately stood up, circling around the table and placing a hand around the younger woman’s shoulder. “Skye, are you okay?”She had yet to stop coughing—it was a wet cough, at least by the sounds of it, but fortunately, it soon faded in severity as Skye seemed to be expelling the last of what was caught in her throat, if there was anything at all. Eventually, the brunette weakly nodded.“Yeah,” she choked out. “Yeah, I’m fine.” Another cough. “Can I have some tissue?” she stuttered out. “Please?”“Yeah, of course.” Without giving a second look at the poor girl, Bishop exited the interrogation room and headed out to the coffee counter—the nearest place where she knew had tissues—grabbed, the tissue box, and promptly headed back to the interrogation room.She stopped only when she went past the adjacent room, where Gilliam and Jack presumably still were, and tried to listen in to any voices coming from inside the room.Nothing. No sounds, no voices, no noises. Absolutely nothing but deathly silence coming from inside that room.Sighing, she headed back to the room she was in before and closed the door behind her.Skye was still there, sitting down but hunched over, eyes closed and hands still covering her mouth. Bishop walked over and placed the tissue box in between them as she took her place back on her own seat, and the noise seemed to catch the younger woman’s attention as her eyelids fluttered open, revealing glazed eyes and slightly reddened sclera.“Thanks,” she sniffled as one of her hands quickly snatched a sheet of tissue from the box and started wiping her mouth with it.All Bishop could do was nod and watch in pity as the woman before her began gathering herself together again.“Skye,” the detective spoke slowly, cautiously, when all that remained of Skye’s earlier coughing outburst were just a few sniffles, and her hands started peeling themselves off her face, adding another crumpled tissue to the now-growing cluster off to the side of the table. She could’ve sworn, however, that she saw a brief flash of red somewhere in that cluster. “What do you mean, ‘containment facility’?”Her words took a moment to pull Skye out of daze she had fallen into, glassy brown eyes staring up at the detective in confusion. “What?”“Earlier, you were saying something about this being like the containment facility all over again,” Bishop stated calmly. It was a specific term, she realized—containment. Not detainment—not like a detention center, or a prison. Containment. “Jack mentioned something about that, too—out there at the parking lot.”The younger woman blinked, then tried to scatter her gaze, though was unable to do so with Bishop staring so closely and directly at her. “Oh. He did?”“Yeah.” Bishop placed both her arms on the table and leaned just slightly forward to stare at the brunette more intently. “Skye, what kind of containment facility are we talking about here?”“I…” Her gaze had yet to meet Bishop’s. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”“Skye.” Bishop allowed her shoulders to fall. “This isn’t your first run-in with the law, is it?”“What?” She sounded bewildered, but it didn’t sound genuine. “No—no, it’s not like that.”“Then, what containment facility are we talking about here?”Another sniffle. “I—It must’ve just slipped out of my mouth.”“Stop lying to me, Skye.”“I’m not,” the younger woman choked out—it must’ve meant to sound more forceful, more convincing and persistent, but her voice was too weak to muster that much energy, and all it did was make those words sound strained, losing volume towards the end. “We’re here to talk about the case, right? This has nothing to do with the case.”“It does when someone comes barging in here, threaten my boys, and all in exchange for yours and Toby’s freedom,” Bishop reminded. “And all because we brought you both in here for questioning. That means that the two of you, and Jack, have something to hide from us, for Jack to be so willing to turn himself in.” Bishop pursed her lips, then clicked her tongue. “Your friend—he’s Eyeless Jack, isn’t he?”She had been mulling it over this entire time, near the recesses of her mind. Jack—that was the name from the second report that Gilliam gave her. Jack Nichols, the college student who was involved with the demonic cult—the one who had his eyes gouged out. The killer who disemboweled his victims and removed their kidneys. The one who became the so-called urban legend Eyeless Jack.“Wh—” When Bishop turned her attention back to Skye, the latter was chuckling weakly under her breath. “What makes you think that?”“Gilliam showed me his file,” the detective admitted. “It had everything about him. The cult ritual, the massacre at the college, and the murders—that’s why he wants to turn himself in. It’s why he can turn himself in, and Gilliam knows that.” She took a deep breath before continuing, “That’s him, isn’t it? Eyeless Jack?”She didn’t think she would have to state it out loud—it sure sounded weird when she said it loud. Like she was telling fairytales or campfire stories, because that was what the report still sounded like to her. And she was still denying it this whole time, regardless of what Gilliam’s suspicions were. But, considering what she had just seen out there—the skin, the bullet wound, and those outlandish claims that Gilliam did not even call bullshit on, despite everyone else thinking otherwise.“He—” Skye’s voice was shaking as she spoke, then she pressed her lips shut, its corners almost twitching upwards as she tilted her head down, bangs once more casting shadows on her face in another attempt to hide herself from the detective. “It’s just ‘Jack’—he hates it when people call him that.”Bishop’s own mouth fell open, though only slightly. “So.” She blew out a harsh breath. “He really is real.”“As real as he can get.” Bishop could hear the pain in her voice, even more so in the next feeble chuckle she made and let out. “I don’t know if I should even be telling you this—”“Skye.” The words came out of Bishop’s mouth on their own volition, until she stopped herself, took a deep breath, threw a quick glance at the still-closed door and looked back down on the girl sitting before her. “If everything in that report is, in fact, real and true—” She shook her head. “That means he is an extremely dangerous individual—and quite possibly our number one suspect for this case.”“What?”Was she parroting Gilliam’s words now? Perhaps so. It was insane before, but now, after seeing that man with her own eyes, and Skye sitting right in front of her almost completely confirming that what just happened was all real, Bishop wondered how much longer she could deny this.“The evidence fits his M.O.” One of them did, anyway. “The killer struck at night. The victims’ kidneys were removed during the murder process, and the wounds were stitched back shut.” Albeit poorly, she noted to herself. “We also found traces of an unknown black fluid substance all over the crime scene—exactly as it is with all of Jack’s other cases.”That was the consensus as determined from the police report, anyway. It was all Bishop could extract information from, all that pertained to Eyeless Jack, and though the puzzle pieces didn’t quite fit together, Bishop had to do something to pull more information out of Skye, and hoped to the heavens this was enough to do the trick.“All of that—” Skye took a deep intake of breath. “That’s from Gilliam’s… file?”“Yes.”“Your partner,” she spoke softly now. “Special Agent Gilliam, is it?”“Yeah.” She paused and frowned. “Why? Is there something wrong?”“I’ve seen him before,” the girl replied. Slowly, she turned her gaze up to meet Bishop’s. “I remember it now. I wasn’t sure earlier, but I can tell you now, for sure, that I’ve seen him before.”“What do you mean?” The detective stiffened her posture. “Where have you seen him?”This time, Skye showed some hesitation in voicing her thoughts, pressing her lips together as her gaze briefly fleeted over towards the door behind the detective. “He’s not working for the FBI,” she murmured, almost whispered. “He’s a Foundation agent, isn’t he?”Bishop blinked and stared at the younger woman. “What?”“The SCP Foundation.” Skye’s shoulders fell, and she took another moment to pause before continuing. “It’s a secret government agency—I think. It says it dedicates itself to containing and securing anomalies found all over the world. Very few people know about it. If you do, then you either work for them, or you’re one of the people who got the short end of the stick, like me.” Another pause, and one corner of her lip twitched. “Like us.”“I don’t—” Wait—containing? “Skye, what do you mean, ‘short end of the stick’?”“The containment facility,” she said simply, her expression relaxing the more she talked. “Your partner, Gilliam—he’s not tracking us down because of your homicide case. He’s tracking us down so he can—”“I think it’s about time we’re done telling bedtime stories, yeah?”Bishop almost jump straight out of her seat at the sound of the voice coming from right behind her; she snapped her head around and, to her shock, immediately saw a figure standing in the now-open doorway to the interrogation room—it was Special Agent Joel Gilliam himself, face stone-cold as ever, even despite the small smile stretching across his face as his eyes landed on the two women in the room.“Gilliam—”“You.”Bishop heard the scraping of the chair before she could turn her attention back to Skye; the brunette was standing up again now, hands balled into fists against the table as her eyes darted straight for the intruder, scrunching her face into a mix of anger and disgust.“I remember you,” she choked out as her bottom lip quivered. “You work for the Foundation, right?”“Ms. Sullivan—”“Don’t you dare, you bastard!” Bishop was quick to react when Skye began launching herself in the direction of the door, stopped only when the detective sidestepped and caught the girl by her shoulders. Unlike before, the younger woman was putting up a struggle now, though her thinner frame was still no match to Bishop’s own strength. “You’re not doing this for those murder victims! You’re doing this to lock us back up in that fucking facility, aren’t you?”Lock them back up. Containment facility. Even while restraining Skye, the detective found herself frowning at her words as the dots slowly began to connect in her mind.“Detective.” Bishop almost gasped when she heard Gilliam’s voice calling out for her again—something in his voice, and the realization that just now occurred to her, caused her muscles to tense at the word, but she forced herself to turn back to her ‘partner’—he was staring at her now, expression grave, but giving little else away. “I think time for you to leave.”“No.” Skye’s voice was pleading—Bishop turned her attention back to Skye, whose still-glazed eyes stared back up to hers now. She had seen that look in her eyes many times before, and could identify it within a fraction of a heartbeat—it was fear, clear as day and the single tear now sliding down the younger woman’s face. “Detective Bishop, please—”Her breath caught stuck in her throat, as she turned to face the agent again. “Gilliam—”“I’ll explain everything to you later.” When their eyes finally meet once more, Bishop eventually noticed the lack of hardened features across his face now—his eyes weren’t pleading like Skye’s, but they weren’t cold, either. “I need to talk to you first. In private, if possible.”That was never a comforting statement, even much less in this sort of situation. It was going to be a confrontation, not a discussion—that much was certain, at least, though which side was confronting which had yet to be determined, considering what Skye had told her thus far, and what Gilliam was trying to hide from her up until this point.There was also the question of whose words she should trust—Gilliam’s, or Skye’s. There was but less than a day difference between how long she had known the two of them, and either of them was just as translucent to her as the other.She took a deep breath before staring back at Gilliam, then turning back to Skye. “I’ll be back later.” She had to hear him out. She had to hear them both out. “All right, Skye?”It almost hurt her to see the look of bewilderment overtaking Skye’s face, followed with sheer panic and fear. “No.” Her fingers were reaching for Bishop, but the latter forced herself to put some distance between them and follow Gilliam out the door. “Detective—”“I’ll come back soon,” was all Bishop said before moving past Gilliam, who held the door open for her to walk through, and perhaps to close it behind them, so Bishop didn’t have to.When she did turn around for a brief glance at the distraught young woman she left in that room, Skye was just standing there, frozen, eyes blown wide before a flash of rage crossed over her.“Agent Gilliam!”The door was closed shut before she could even launch herself towards it, and all that was left was just Bishop and Gilliam, standing in the now-empty corridor, amidst a deafening silence and the suffocating tension between them that only came as a result of what had just transpired within the past half an hour.After what seemed like forever, Gilliam let out a heavy sigh, ran a hand through his forehead and hairline, and finally turned to Bishop.“Anywhere we can talk privately?” he asked, in an oddly neutral tone that she wasn’t sure what to make of.She swallowed hard, took a deep breath, and forced a weak smile on her face. “Lunch break?”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
“Is that a chicken salad?”Bishop hadn’t meant to use such a condescending tone, but couldn’t help it; she kept her mouth shut as soon as she noticed Gilliam’s knitted eyebrows the second she arrived back at their table—one out of the two tables in the station’s break room, really—with her microwaved ham sandwich in hand.“I went for a medical check-up last week,” the agent said as he pierced a white plastic fork through several layers of lettuce leaves drenched in what she could assume was ranch dressing. “The doctor said I need to watch my calories, hence the salad.”The detective pulled a chair out beside him and sat down. “Then cut the chicken.”“I’ve already cut back on eggs,” he replied with faux offense, before shoving the forkful into his mouth. “I still need my energy, you know. The job is tough enough as it is—I don’t need to pass out in the middle of the day while I’m at it.”Bishop took a deep breath just as she began unwrapping her sandwich, unintentionally breathing in the mixed scents of processed ham and lukewarm American cheese. “Speaking of the job.”“Right.” Gilliam chuckled at her words. “On to the matters at hand, then. ‘Good cop’ in front of the suspects, ‘bad cop’ in front of the shady government agent, I see.”Her fingers fell still on the top of her sandwich. “That’s not how I—”“I was kidding, Detective Bishop,” Gilliam interrupted her, waving a feeble hand at her. “I was just trying to lighten the mood before we proceed with our business.”“I was thinking I should have at least have a nice meal,” the detective sighed, staring at the sandwich and finding herself struggling even more so to find her appetite, “before you pull out some device that will erase my memories of the past two days or something—telling me it was all just a dream, and that the so-called FBI will take over the investigation, for real and for good, this time.”When she looked up, he gave her another pointed look of mock offense. She didn’t know what to make of it—didn’t know what to make of him, with all that happened. “We are not the Men in Black, detective,” he said, turning his attention from her as he used his fork to stir the salad contents with the dressing. “And I assure you, for I hope the last time: I will not take your case away from you, detective. And besides, I did plan on coming clean to you about it, sooner or later. I suppose it will have to be sooner, than later.”“Oh, you did, huh?” She flipped the upper slice of bread open, double-checking the contents—idle action. “When would that have been? After we solve the case? Maybe after we confirm that Nichols and Woods were behind it?”“Bishop—”“What would happen if we find that neither of them were responsible for the murders? Will you ever going to tell me then?”“Bishop.”She stopped then, taking a long, deep breath as she stared hard at the agent. Instead of answering her, however, he began gathering another small stack of leaves and bits of shredded chicken with his fork. Then he paused, his eyes darting towards her sandwich and nodding at it.“You should eat,” he said as he brought the fork to his mouth. “Before it gets cold.”“I can’t eat,” she stated, narrowing his eyes before sighing as she turned back to the sandwich.“You were the one who offered a lunch break.”“It’s past noon,” she said, but he had a point. She just didn’t have any idea how or where to discuss the elephant in the room. It wasn’t like she could pull him into another interrogation room and grill him herself—after all, the station only had three interrogation rooms, and they already had two of them booked.“Eat, Bishop,” Gilliam insisted. She couldn’t hear any malice in his voice—it was out of pure goodwill, for as far as she knew, which seemed all too suspicious to her. But maybe he’s not as bad of a bad guy as the others say he was. “You didn’t have breakfast this morning, didn’t you? And yes, you should have a nice meal before shit goes to worse, as one might say. Besides, it’ll be more difficult to interrogate our suspects with an empty stomach.”She cocked an eyebrow at him, frowning. “You’re still going to let me interrogate them? All three of them?”At her inquiry, Gilliam froze for a second, took a deep breath and left his fork idle on the bed of leaves. “We still have a case to solve, detective,” he then said, turning to stare at her with a sincere glint in his eye. “And yes, we still need to determine that Eyeless Jack is, in fact, responsible for at least one of the murders. If so, we can all then rest easy knowing that taking him into custody means we can close this case, as we will with at least a dozen others of his. If not…”He trailed off, but she knew what he was implying—it could mean someone else was behind this, which would make this all more complicated than it should be.She looked away as she tried to push the nagging thought back to the depths of her mind. There were more pressing matters at hand at the moment.“And after we do,” she continued, “that’s it, then? We’ll just part ways and pretend none of this ever happened? Pretend I didn’t hear anything about this whole secret government conspiracy thing at all?”She watched him—studied every single twitch his face made, the look in his eyes, the tensing of his jaw, and the idle hand still resting on the fork. She watched as he seemed to be processing her words, staring at his salad for a good few seconds before he spoke again.“It’s not what you think it is,” he said.“Oh, is it?” she challenged, and he let out another sigh.He took a moment to readjust his bearings—re-positioning his elbows as he leaned forward, a gesture that was soon followed, as she expected, with him glancing around to ensure no one else was in the vicinity eavesdropping on them, like the true unscrupulous character she began to think of him as.“I was going to be transparent with you, detective,” he stated, eyes glancing from her to the table, then back to his salad as he picked up his fork and smothered dressing across the leaves. “I showed you my case files, didn’t I?”“FBI case files, yeah.” She double-checked those case files. She was positive the FBI seal was legitimate, as legitimate as they could be. “Not SEP or whatever or whoever it is you work for.”“SCP,” he corrected without pause, then turned his gaze back to her. “It stands for ‘Secure, Contain, Protect,’ because that is what we do. And yes, those are the official case files that the FBI has on the two of them, because those are the files that you’re allowed access to.” The corner of his lip twitched. “And I can state that with confidence because I have clearance, and also because I was the one who wrote those reports. As for the case files that the SCP Foundation has on them—those are still off-limits, I’m afraid.”“Wait.” The detective blinked and glared at him. “So, who do you really work for?”“The Federal Bureau of Investigation.” With one hand still holding the fork, the other took out his badge from his pocket, placing it on the table in front of her. Without hesitation, she immediately snatched it up and inspected it as thorough as she could. “And the SCP Foundation. I would show you my identification card, but then I would have to kill you.” Her blood ran cold, until he looked up from his salad with another, more noticeable twitch on the corner of his lips. “Just kidding. There’s no reason to have it on me right now. Left it back at the motel.”“Huh.” She set the badge down on the desk. Nothing to indicate it was a fake—not as far as she knew, anyway. “You’re working undercover?”He retrieved his badge, pondering her words and the ones he was about to say in the meantime as he returned it to his pocket. “It’s complicated,” he said. “But in case you were wondering, I am working on full capacity for both agencies. Officially, I’m here on behalf of the FBI, because we do intend on closing the dozen cold cases we have courtesy of Jack Nichols—as well as those of Jeff Woods, of course, but clearly he is nowhere to be found as of right now.”“And unofficially?”He gave her an earnest look, and she could feel the air changing around them. “Eyeless Jack is a dangerous individual, and officially classified as an SCP anomalous object,” he stated, his tone sounding even more monotonous than usual, like a pre-programmed robot. “My primary objectives as both federal agent and SCP field agent are in alignment with each other, detective. I would still be here, even if I didn’t happen to be working for the Foundation as well.”“But you were here for them.” She scoffed, folding her arms in front of her as she leaned back against the flimsy chair. “You’re here to ‘contain’ them, or whatever it is you called them. To conclude this manhunt of yours that’s been going on for—what, five years now?”She heard the sharp breath he blew from his nose, but even if he was getting aggravated, he made an impressive feat of holding himself back, like a parent educating a child.“I’ve been on their cases since the beginning, detective,” he continued, tone noticeably gentler now. “I’ve been face to face with people whose lives have been impacted by them—family members, friends, lovers of those whose blood are on their hands. They are all still looking for closure. Don’t we all?”Closure. She almost scoffed at that word, but that would be too harsh. She didn’t want to blink—didn’t want to close her eyes, knowing the intruding thought would barge back into the forefront of her mind like a battering ram.She was used to noticing the little details of a person’s movements—all the tells, all the little twitches, jerks and shudders one would make, because it meant a person was hiding something, lying, or something similar of the sort—and she had no doubt Gilliam could, too, being a trained federal agent and all.She didn’t need him micro-analyzing her facial reactions, too.“I know you’re trying to paint me in a negative light, detective.” When she turned back to him, he was picking his fork back up again, tossing leaves and bits of chicken around in the dressing. “Considering the past two days, I assure you, I take no offense from it.”She drew in a sharp breath. “I’m not trying to paint you in anything.” She might have been a little biased, sure, but she saw the look on Skye’s face—remembered the fear and panic in her eyes when she realized who he was. She almost scoffed under her breath—the chief was right. God knows what else the government is hiding from us.“Martin and Jack were both trying to make me seem like the enemy,” Gilliam stated bluntly, picking up a piece of chicken and stuffing it into his mouth. “I was too late. I wasn’t able to tell this to you first, or at least before they did—but I’m well aware of what this looks like: secret government agency, man in a black suit, all the works. It is what it is, and I don’t blame you for it.”He had a point—even though Bishop herself worked with law enforcement, her perception wasn’t immune to what she’s seen in television and movies. This seemed much like some multimillion-dollar action thriller movie, involving some secret government conspiracy being hidden from the public, for the sake of the public as well—allegedly, at least. That’s how it was with those movies, right? Because the government thought it was better if the public were kept in the dark about what the powerful could do, and have done, in the shadows, all to maintain order in the modern society.This entire case could be an entire movie in itself, from the moment she accepted the case, and everything that went downhill from there. If not, it sure had been one hell of a ride, and the detective was positive she was barely even past the first peak in the rollercoaster, far from being even close to its climax—the highest peak in the mountain that led to the most awful plunge approaching her way.“Gilliam—” she tried, but he was quick to cut her off.“Full disclosure, detective,” he stated instead, clear and concise as expected from his demeanor. “Well, as much as I’m allowed to disclose, of course.”“Skye and Jack.” Bishop took a deep breath, mind wandering back to the two being detained in their respective interrogation rooms downstairs. “You knew who they were the moment you saw them?”“And Tobias, too,” he quickly added as he chewed the food in his mouth, all without sparing even a single glance at her.She nodded. “Right, the brother.” Jack did mention both of their names—demanded their freedom in exchange for his surrender.“He’s not her brother.” He swiped his fork around the sides of his bowl, gathering whatever was left of his salad to pool on the bottom of his tilted bowl. “Neither was Timothy. They faked their names.”Bishop sighed. “That would explain their records.”He scooped up the last remaining bits of leaves and chicken and stuffed them into his mouth, giving her a nod and a hum of confirmation as he finished the last of his meal. “Skyler Martin, Tobias Rogers and Timothy Wright.”Skye Martin and Toby Rogers. She recalled Jack saying those names outside. He had confused her at first, because those weren’t the names that she recognized, or at least the ones she read from the civilian records she had with her. In retrospect, however, she should’ve seen this coming from a mile away, and she could only be disappointed in no one but herself but not having done just that.“So, you knew who they were since the very beginning.”“I knew something was up the moment I found out those three names were living together under the same roof,” he admitted, lifting his shoulders very briefly, she almost didn’t catch it. “We knew the three of them—well, four, including Jack—were all acquainted by the time they were contained. We believed that if we found just one of them, we could find at least two and, if we were lucky, we could find all four of them.”“How so?”“They all broke out of containment together.” He pulled out a paper napkin from inside his suit and began wiping his mouth with it. “Martin and Rogers were contained at around the same time. Nichols came shortly after, presumably after he realized his two associates were missing.”“And Timothy Wright?”Gilliam’s reply wasn’t immediate this time; he finished wiping the corners of his mouth first, then threw the used napkin into the salad bowl and replaced its plastic cover. “The details of his—” He paused to clear his throat. “Should I say—his reason for containment—are classified, but I can tell you that unlike the others, Wright had surrendered himself over to us—well, he surrendered to the local police first, and then we took over custody of him and properly contained him.”“This ‘containment’ all you guys keep talking about.” The detective took a deep breath, then scoffed as she shook her head. “You talk about them like they’re some kind of viral disease, or some wild animals or something.”“That’s—” Gilliam paused, as though taking time for her words to fully register in the forefront of his mind. “We are not supposed to have any subjective opinions about the anomalous objects we deal with, but I can still slip up sometimes, especially when you’ve been assigned to their cases for as long as I have.”She felt the corner of her lip twitch as her gaze drifted back down to the sandwich in front of her. “Yeah, well, you were living up to your own stereotype there for a second.”“It’s just as difficult not to,” the agent sighed, meeting her gaze when her eyes flitted back up to face him. “And because of that, I was hoping you could provide a different perspective—a fresh pair of eyes looking into this case, because coming into this with an objective mindset also comes with its own biases.”She couldn’t resist cocking an eyebrow. “Like, for example, when you immediately started suspecting Woods and Nichols to be the ones behind the murders?”“The M.O. matches, detective,” he reminded, offering her a knowing look. “And the two of them have had a matching killing pattern about a year or so before. I would not be surprised to see two murders, bearing their signatures, and occurring within such a small window of time and in such close proximity with each other.”She blinked, then knitted her eyebrows together as she glared back at him. “You didn’t mention that before.”“No, I didn’t think it mattered,” he admitted. “But you had a point there, you know—about me jumping to conclusions.”Bishop leaned back against her chair and folded her arms in front of her. “It’s too convenient,” she said. “I mean, if you had told me about the patterns, I would’ve bought into your theory a little bit more, but even so—”“There are some things that don’t add up,” Gilliam finished for her, his head slowly nodding at their common opinion. “You spoke before about how the puzzle pieces aren’t fitting together.”“You said the bloody message was new,” she pointed out, recalling their most recent visit to the scene of the crime. “You pointed out that the black droplets were deliberately placed there. What are those supposed to be, anyway?”“Ah, about that.” Gilliam drew in a deep breath, then sighed. “Supposedly, Eyeless Jack has these—I suppose, tears, for a lack of better words—leaking from his, well—his eye sockets.” Eye sockets. She made a visible shudder and looked away. “We’ve tried to determine their composition in the past, but it is not made up of anything science has discovered so far. We do know that it is the same substance that makes up his blood, though.”“Okay, too much information. Pretend I never asked.” She cleared her throat. “Copycat killers are a thing, you know.”“I’m well aware of that, detective.” He pressed his lips together, sighing through his nose as his eyes wandered to his abandoned salad bowl. “But I admit, I did not want to consider that possibility because of what it would implicate about our case, and the people who we’re really supposed to be after.”She didn’t, either. She wished it were an open-and-shut case, too. She didn’t want to be the skeptic, the spoilsport—the one to present the awful prospect that would lead the direction of the case elsewhere but the obvious, and that was as obvious as it could be considering the fact that Gilliam hid quite a lot about his affiliations and motivations up until just a few minutes ago.When she focused her attention back at the agent, he was nodding towards her sandwich. “You should really start eating, detective. That sandwich is stone-cold, and it’s not healthy to go through the rest of the day with an empty stomach.”She tried not to scowl under her breath as she picked up the sandwich with one hand, just so he wouldn’t bring her attention back to it over and over again. “Have there been cases like these in the past?” she asked, before taking a bite out of the sandwich and falling silent to chew the food stuffed in her mouth. She winced at the temperature, however—he was right, because it sure tasted as if she hadn’t popped it into the microwave at all.“Not for Jack,” he replied with a shake of his head. “His M.O. is too specific to replicate, and I can imagine it would be difficult to hide all the evidence leading back to the killer, unless it was Jack himself who did it.”“Speaking of which—” She paused to swallow, holding a fist up to her lips as she did. “Why the kidneys? Does he always take both kidneys? You said some of his victims had survived, right?”Jane made it clear that both of each victims’ kidneys were removed during the botched overnight procedure that would have most definitely killed them if they weren’t already dead when it happened. And yet, she distinctly recalled what Gilliam told her about Nichols’ case file—he had surviving victims, those still alive to tell the tale of an overnight organ removal.She couldn’t help but shudder at the mere thought of it. If this case weren’t keeping her awake tonight, the anxiety of that realization she came to surely would, even if the killer in question was being detained downstairs as she spoke.Gilliam took a deep breath and sighed. “It’s a developing theory.” He paused, and she soon noticed his stare was lingering longer than usual at the sandwich in her hand. “One I will not indulge into while you’re eating something, that is.”“Great.” Not that she had that much of an appetite anyway, but she appreciated the sentiment.“But I can tell you that his more recent cases—which, excluding this one, goes as far back as two years ago, anyway—more and more victims have turned up alive, and missing just one of their kidneys.”“Enough to keep them alive.” She nodded as she took another bite. Maybe she should pop it back in the microwave. “It’s deliberate, then.”“He was evolving,” the agent corrected with another nod, “and quite literally, in fact—from feral animal attacks, to mere disembowelment, to illegal organ removal.”She never thought someone would describe disembowelment with the word ‘mere,’ but this case kept surprising her at every turn of the corner, and so far, it sure felt like the case was a maze, with a thousand different paths to take but no exit at the end.“And now it’s back to murder,” she sighed.“After two years of almost no activity at all.”“And he was ‘contained’ or whatever it is in your ‘containment site,’ was it?”“For about six months or so, yes,” Gilliam confirmed. “This was his first case since their escape.”“And what about Woods?”He took a brief moment of pause before he finally answered her. “He is the complete opposite of Nichols. It’s difficult to pin-point which cases are his because his M.O. is too erratic—too easy to replicate, and too similar with any vicious killer out there who kills for the sake of killing itself. It’s safe to assume any unsolved homicide case can be attributed to him, given the brutal nature and lack of concrete evidence.”“Did you guys ever catch him at all?”“No,” he huffed, casting a glance off to the far wall of the room. “The bastard keeps slipping right out of our hands, as with most of them.” Most of them? “We wouldn’t have captured Jack, either, had we not caught Martin and Rogers beforehand.”Martin and Rogers—Skye and Toby. The three of them must have been very well acquainted with one another if Jack was willing to give up his own freedom for their sake, not to mention Skye’s reaction the moment she realized he was being apprehended because she and Toby had been. Then, there was the shed in the Sullivans’ backyard, too—the one that, at this point, was safe to assume had belonged to Jack, considering the lengths Skye went through to protect him.The question now was, how far was she willing to go for the sake of protecting him?“What are the chances that they did it?”Gilliam frowned as he turned back to the detective. “What?”“Skye or Toby, or both.” She took but a nibble out of her sandwich. “They’re both familiar with Nichols, right? Could they have done it?”“It’s not completely out of the realm of possibility,” he reasoned, leaning back against his chair as he weighted the thought in his mind. “Probability on the other hand?” He shook his head once, then leaned forward to press his elbows onto the table. “From what we know of Martin, she’s a pacifist. Unlike the others, she is the definition of ‘all bark but no bite’. She will threaten to hurt us, to kill us and the sort, but she won’t have the heart to do it herself.”Well, that was one theory dangling out the window. “And Toby?” she asked, then deflated her shoulders. “Skye mentioned he was sick.”“I’m not certain about which conditions he suffers from,” he confessed, covering his mouth with his hand, elbow still planted on the table. “Medical records state he has been diagnosed with Tourette’s syndrome, which in itself makes it difficult to replicate Jack’s M.O.”“Difficult, but not impossible.” Drawing in a deep breath, she straightened her posture as a significant weight began to settle in her stomach. She hated being the bearer of bad news, but that was all she was doing for the past few minutes or so. “Dr. Wang said the incisions and stitches were sloppy. Could it be because it was Toby who did it?”Gilliam slowly lifted his head from his hand and craned it back towards her, eyebrows furrowing as if pondering the possibility of what she was suggesting for the first time.“I don’t like it,” she quickly added with a shake of her head. “Skye’s been very protective of him.”“Which is all the more reason for us to suspect them,” the agent pointed out with a curious glint in his eye.“But she won’t like it when we start accusing someone she so far as claimed as her own brother.”“Someone has to do it.” She stretched her lips into a scowl and blew out a harsh breath, before begrudgingly bringing the sandwich back to her mouth and taking another sullen bite out of it. Gilliam twisted his entire body to face her now, resting his elbows on his thighs as he addressed her. “This is what I was talking about, detective. You see things that I won’t be able to.”“I don’t want to be the one to break the girl’s heart,” she scoffed.“We won’t be able to solve the case unless we ask the tough questions, detective.” He reclined back against his chair, eyes still staring intently into her. “If you won’t, I will, but we both know the girl trusts you more. She will clam up the moment I start accusing the boy, but with you—”“That is, if Toby is the one behind the murders.”“We still need to question the girl regardless of who we think did it,” he quickly interjected, lifting his shoulders ever so briefly. “Excluding everything we collectively know about Nichols and Woods, she is the only lead we have on the case so far.”He wasn’t wrong. They approached her in the first place because she was the only one with a connection to the only murder weapon they were able to recover from the crime scene. It just so happened they found a half-decomposed corpse buried in their backyard that made her even more suspicious than she already was.“We’ll head back as soon as you finish up your meal,” Gilliam said after a few moments, nodding towards her before moving to gather the trash that had accumulated on the table. “Fresh eyes, detective. We’ll get to the bottom of this case.”“And if we don’t?” Bearer of bad news.He stood up without answering her, nor so much as offering her a glance that indicated what he thought of the mere prospect of failure. He had been assigned to this case—the bigger picture, at least, than the single stroke she had been analyzing for the past thirty hours or so—for much longer than her, and even now, she was still having an information overload—still trying to sort out the details in her mind in an attempt to make some sense out of all of this.She fell back against her chair this time, stuffing the half-eaten sandwich in her mouth but not biting into it until a few moments later, then bending forward over the table with a hand covering her forehead as she started chewing again.She felt a migraine coming in soon. Maybe it was time for her to use up the vacation days she had saved up over the years she has been working in the force, once the two of them were done with this case.If we’ll ever be done with it.But that in itself was another question, was it?What would happen after all of this was over?
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
“Why is he still here?”The moment Bishop re-entered the interrogation room, Skye’s eyes flew up towards the open doorway, before her entire body shot out of her chair, metal legs scraping against the concrete floor from the sheer force of her sudden outrage. The detective didn’t dare look at her—she couldn’t, as she soon heard the thumping of Gilliam’s shoes following closely at her heel, followed with the sound of the door swinging back shut behind them, entrapping the three of them in the suffocating room once again.“Skye—”“Detective Bishop.” She raised an accusatory index finger at the agent. “Why the fuck is he still here?”“Skye, calm down.” She felt like a broken record now, and they hadn’t even started the interrogation back up again. “Take a seat.”The brunette quickly turned her glare towards the detective, eyebrows furrowed and mouth scowling worse than before. Had her eyes always been this red before? Her face seemed rather flush, too—like she had been crying, Bishop thought. “I will not, thank you very much.” She tilted her head ever so slightly, enough to feel her glare darting straight past her shoulder at the federal agent behind her. “Not while he’s here. Not until he’s gone.”Bishop threw a brief glance over her shoulder—Gilliam had once again positioned himself at the corner of the room, arms were folded in front of him in an odd display of indifference as his facial expressions gave almost nothing away, all but the complete opposite to the malice the younger woman glared at him with. “I am here to fulfill my capacity as an FBI agent, Ms. Martin— not as a Foundation agent.”“Bullshit, you sonofa—”“Skye.” Bishop sidestepped the moment the brunette launched herself towards Gilliam, catching the latter by her shoulders and effectively blocking her path before she could even move two steps towards the agent. “Sit down. I am not going through all of this again, do you hear me?”The brunette didn’t seem to register the detective’s hands grasping her shoulders, but she didn’t seem to actively resist the restraint, either, much less put up a fight against the detective. Instead, she began blinking rapidly, frown deepening and eyes growing wide as she finally turned her gaze back toward Bishop. “Detective,” she breathed, almost laughing in complete despair. “Please—”“Skye.” Bishop guided her back towards the chair on the other side of the table, and sat the younger woman down, trying to ignore the sinking feeling in her chest when the latter continued to show no further signs of physical resistance. “We’re here to question you about the homicide case—nothing more, nothing less.”The brunette remained silent for a few moments, eyes trained at the spotless table between them. Eventually, she let out another scoff, but her breath was shaking, even more so as she turned her head up, eyes still staring back and forth between the detective and the federal agent standing behind her. “Detective Bishop, Agent Gilliam is—”“Yes, Skye, I know who he is.” Bishop drew in a sharp breath as she moved to take her own seat opposite to the brunette, setting the case file in her hand down on the table between them. “He’s told me about the Foundation.” Not everything, but enough. “But, as Agent Gilliam has said, that’s not what we’re here for.”“He’s lying, detective.” Skye shook her head as she turned her gaze back down to Bishop. “He’s not going to let us go. No matter what Jack said out there—the Foundation isn’t just going to let us go like this.”Bishop held her head down, eyes staring at the front cover of the case file laid out in front of her. Maybe she was right—maybe Gilliam wasn’t going to let them go, because judging from what he told her thus far, it wouldn’t make sense for him to let these apparent fugitives walk out of here as a free people, but it was none of her business—she didn’t work for this Foundation, Gilliam did. She could feel the younger woman’s gaze weighing down on her, enough to feel a sickening feeling rise up in the back of her throat. Had Skye thought of her as a source of salvation of sorts? Someone like Bishop, who apparently had no authority whatsoever when it came to secret government agendas like this?The detective silently apologized to her witness sitting before her, before reaching out to uncover the contents of the folder she had placed right in front of them. She hadn’t changed the contents much since the last time she was here—not that she had a reason to, anyway.“Let’s start with the basics.” She took a deep breath in anticipation of what’s to come, then turned her head up to face the silent brunette sitting across from her. “Where were you on the night of the 25th?”She didn’t respond at first; her attention was unfocused, eyes still directed at an empty spot on the table until the detective called her name again, after which she blinked several times and finally shifted her gaze back over to Bishop.“I was working,” she murmured, almost stammering the answer as Bishop noticed her attention beginning to waver again, directing her stare back on the same empty spot on the table as before. “Late night shift at the convenience store I told you about. My manager was there all night, shadowing me like a creep—nothing new.” Despite the slight annoyance in her voice, her volume was small and rather muted, as if her mind were wandering elsewhere outside of the enclosed space. “You can check the cameras—I was there, and I didn’t leave ‘til dawn.” She swallowed briefly, then finally, she redirected her focus back to the blonde woman sitting across from her. “Detective, I already told you I had nothing to do with the murders. I didn’t even know what happened until you came by the house this morning.”Maintaining the glare for just a second longer, Bishop’s eyes then wandered to her peripherals ever so briefly before looking back down at the folder in her hands. “We’re just double-checking the facts—making sure that you do have an alibi for that night.”She started flipping through some of the photographs, before stopping at the portrait of one of the victims. Her fingers picked through the subsequent printouts, gathering a stack of the victims’ portraits before separating them out one by one, placing them all across the table and orienting them to allow her witness a full view of all the lives that were taken that one fateful night.“Do you happen to recognize any of these people?” the detective queried, eyes carefully watching the younger woman’s facial expressions, waiting to see any reaction the portraits might elicit from her upon first sight. “Have you seen them around the neighborhood before? Have you seen them around the store, maybe?”Skye glanced up at Bishop for a short moment before she leaned forward and peered down at the photographs. She took time in studying each and every single one of them, slightly longer, in fact, than the time a typical person would look at the victims’ photographs, before she finally leaned back against her chair with a slight shake of her head.“No,” she said, pressing her lips down and shutting her eyes very quickly as she cleared her throat. “I can’t say I have. I don’t think I’d be able to remember if they’ve ever been down to the store—I get at least fifty people coming in and out of that place every day. ”“Well.” Bishop threw another glance over her shoulder, long enough to catch a brief glimpse of a slight nod from Gilliam before turning back around to look down at the case file again. She took hold of the next pile of photographs—the ones Jane had taken of the Smiths after she finished conducting their autopsies, and sent over to her email earlier this afternoon—then placed each of them on top of the portraits of the corresponding victims. “Maybe you’ll recognize them better now?”She turned her gaze up to watch the younger woman’s reactions again, hoping there would be some change—some progress, however slight—this time around. She was intrigued to find Skye’s gaze fixated on the new photographs laid out before her now, as the younger woman began to scrutinize them in what seemed to be great detail, even more so than she did with the previous photographs.People have different reactions to the sight of dead bodies, but it was much less settling to see them laid bare on top of the distinct metal table, the camera zoomed in to capture their immobile, expressionless faces, their bare chests bearing large red sutures in the aftermath of their autopsies. Some of them even showed the incision wounds on their abdomens, which were sure to have caused their deaths if the chloroform poisoning didn’t beat them to it.But the longer Bishop stared at the woman sitting across from her, the more she realized Skye wasn’t so much perturbed at the sight of the dead bodies, as much as the implications of what the detective was showing her.“Detective Bishop, I—”And then she stopped, as though she was frozen in time—Bishop had to blink and lean forward, fearing she had missed something when the girl’s expression seemed to fall apart so suddenly without warning.The brunette furrowed her eyebrows as a single wandering hand reached out, creeping onto the table until the tips of her index and middle fingers rested on the corner of the photograph placed closest to her. The corner of her lip twitched.“Oh,” she sighed, voice almost too quiet for even the detective to hear. Her shoulders deflated, but her backbone stiffened. “I get it now.” Her brown eyes flickered back up to meet the detective’s as a small frown returned to her face. “You think that Jack did this, don’t you?”Bishop couldn’t resist taking in a deep breath, posture mimicking the younger woman’s as she held her gaze for a few more moments, before turning in an attempt to find Gilliam again.The two investigators’ gaze met for a brief moment, before Gilliam redirected his back to Skye again, and Bishop caught sight of him pushing himself off the corner of the wall he was leaning against as she turned back to face the witness herself.“What makes you say that?” she asked, clicking her tongue as she pushed her chair and herself closer to the table.She could tell from how Skye’s eyes darted back and forth between the two investigators, and the quiet footsteps approaching behind her, that Gilliam had decided to enter into the playing field himself, something she appreciated despite how much her mind was telling her how bad of an idea it was.Despite the clear unease written across her face, Skye eventually bowed her head back down towards the photographs, but not without one last lingering look at Bishop. “The incisions on the abdomen,” she murmured, index finger gently tapping on the photograph it rested on—a top view of one of the bodies on the autopsy table, showing its right side, cutting off where the hips began and the person’s wrist ended. She cleared her throat again, though this time it was followed with a light cough. “It’s right around where the kidneys should be.”Bishop drew in air through her nose as she felt Gilliam’s presence approaching beside her. She knows , she thought to herself, turning her head around briefly to see the agent peering down on the photographs as the girl was.When she turned her attention back to the girl, she caught a glimpse of her dark eyes fluttering back up at her before quickly shifting her attention back to the photographs. “Look,” she murmured with a sigh, and another light cough. “I can’t weasel my way out of this, all right? If I’m not going back to containment, I’m getting arrested for being an accessory to a crime.”She made a sharp intake of breath, before closing her eyes shut and bending her head down as she cleared her throat rather harshly, as if something was lodged stuck in her windpipe.“So, you do know who he is.” Bishop frowned, staring at the girl with a tilted head. “Skye, you know what he is.”The younger woman’s dark pupils flew up to the edge of her eyelids, shooting a brief glare at the detective before her gaze began to wander again. “He is my friend, detective.” She retracted her hand away from the table, wrapping it tighter around herself as she slumped back against the chair. “And he’ll always be a friend to me—to us —above everything else.”“Is that why you’re protecting him?” Bishop pressed her lips tight, trying to study the look on Skye’s face in hopes that the girl would give something more away through her expressions. The girl was shutting her out, though—she lowered her gaze away from both Bishop and Gilliam, crossing her arms in a poor attempt to guard herself as her fist briefly reached up to her mouth, giving her something to cough lightly and politely into. “Skye—”“Those incisions.” Bishop shut her mouth the moment the girl began speaking again, watching as the latter’s hand continued to linger at her mouth, little finger poking past her lips and into her teeth. “You think Jack did those, right?” She quickly shook her head, teeth biting into her nail. “Those aren’t his.”Bishop deepened her frown. “And why would you say that?”“It’s too messy.” Skye took another deep breath, readjusting her seating position to straighten her posture, as her hand fell back down against her lap and she licked her lips. “The stitching’s sloppy,” she continued, nodding at the photograph. “The killer sliced into the skin way more than he needed to. That either means his weapon wasn’t sharp enough, or it’s not big enough to cut through all the layers of the skin.” Her voice was startlingly even and stable throughout, without a single pause or hitch in her tone as she continued to speak. “The victim would’ve died in minutes, if not treated—an hour or two, at most.”Bishop wanted to shake her head at the younger woman’s statement. Her body language indicated she was lying—her nervous behavior, biting into her nail and her pattern of speech. She would’ve called her out sooner if the young woman hadn’t just parroted the medical examiner’s words back to her, down to details that she was sure no ordinary person could even fathom about—it wasn’t something that would easily come up in some average trivia night, that’s for sure.An amateur’s work, as the good doctor told them yesterday. If he thought doing this could save their lives, it didn’t .“What about this?” She flipped through the photographs again, and took out the one taken of the dirty scalpel—with the evidence in question itself still in the hands of the forensic scientists who themselves were not even in this building, they would have to settle with an image of it. “We recovered this scalpel not too far from the crime scene. We believe it was the murder weapon used to kill the Smiths—the family who we suspect Jack had killed.”It didn’t take long before Skye’s hand began to wander again, reaching for the corner of the photograph Bishop placed in front of her and sliding it closer to her as her jaw began to tense.“We tracked down the serial number and traced it back to North Valley Medical Clinic,” Bishop continued, lifting her head up to observe the younger woman’s expressions, “which is where you worked at up until half a year ago.”She couldn’t tell at first whether Skye had heard her or not—the girl’s attention was fully fixated on the new sheet of paper before her, eyes scanning from the top to the bottom of the page then back up again, almost analyzing it before she suddenly snapped her head up at the detective, realization dawning on her face when Bishop’s words finally settled within her.“Are you thinking I’m supplying for Jack?” she asked with a slightly higher pitch than normal, but her voice remained rather quiet even in her bewilderment. “I told you, I have nothing to do with the robbery, and I have nothing to do with the murders.”“But you’ve admitted to stealing from the clinic before.”Skye started a scoff, but breath stopped short only when she had to pull her fist back up again to give her somewhere to lightly cough into, her face making a visible albeit slight wince even as she turned her attention back to the photograph. It’s getting worse , a small voice whispered in the back of Bishop’s mind, but she wasn’t even sure what’s wrong with the witness sitting before her—other than the coughing, and with nicotine cigarettes out of the question, there seemed to be no further symptoms that could indicate what ailment she was suffering from.“This scalpel isn’t even his,” Skye eventually wheezed out, index finger tapping once at the scalpel’s blade as she inhaled a deeper breath. “This is a number 11 blade, detective. Jack usually uses a number 22—maybe a number 10 sometimes. Says it’s easier because he doesn’t have to switch blades that often.”Bishop tilted her eyebrows. “You can tell the difference between scalpel blades?”If she took any offense from the rather uncouth remark, Skye didn’t seem to show it—her eyes remained fixated on the photograph, giving it a second inspection as though to confirm her statement. “I worked inventory at the clinic, detective—I learned to know the difference,” she said without a hair of doubt in her voice. “Number 11 blades are more commonly used than number 22 ones, and in other places outside of a clinic, even.” Though her gaze lingered, her hand slowly crept back down underneath the table until it was nowhere to be seen again. “I remember using it in a Biology class once—cut open a frog with it. I used it to peel an onion in the same class, too.”“And you’re completely sure about this?”“Jack didn’t kill them.” Her statement was definitive and final, with an odd note of objectivity to it, almost like a seasoned professional handing in her final report to the detective. She glanced up at Bishop, mouth set in a hard line upon noticing the heavy gazes weighing down upon her. “And I’m not just saying this because I want to protect him, detective—I know he didn’t kill them. He hasn’t killed anyone since we—” She stopped to draw in another breath. “He hasn’t killed anyone since we escaped.”“Since you’ve escaped containment?”Bishop wanted to roll her eyes at Gilliam’s quick retort, but had just enough of self-control left that she didn’t.“You fed him cow kidneys for six months,” Skye immediately fired back, though with a lack of energy to support her voice, it quickly faded to another low scowl. “As much as I hate to admit it, your so-called ‘containment procedures’ helped him. He’s been living off animal kidneys since we escaped.” Animal kidneys? Bishop felt herself frowning again, stopping short from glaring at Gilliam when she heard him sigh heavily beside her.“Ms. Martin,” he called out, taking a single step forward to stand right next to Bishop. “How familiar are you with Eyeless Jack’s work? How can you be so sure he didn’t do this?”Skye leaned away from the table, gaze drifting off to the side, to the stone-cold floor beneath them. “I’ve seen him work,” she admitted, but when she noticed the two investigators’ reaction to her statement, her eyes blew wide. “No, I didn’t mean I saw him when he—” Her breath stuttered, and she forced another light cough into an enclosed fist. “I never see him killing people, but I have seen him stitch Toby up a few times.” She relaxed her fist to stretch her index finger out, waving it around the left corner of her mouth. “Jack helped him with that ugly gash on the side of his cheek. He was also in med school before he—you know.” She closed her eyes. Before he died , the detective thought in silence. “He wanted to be a surgeon—could’ve been one, if he, uh—if what happened didn’t happen.” She scoffed, shaking her head before coughing into her fist again. “What I’m trying to say is that he—” Another deep breath, and another heavy sigh. “He wouldn’t have messed up this bad.”There was a certain sense of melancholy hanging from the edge of her voice. In another life, Bishop thought, Nichols would have been a surgeon. His apparent medical expertise made sense now; it was unfortunate that whatever he learned in college before that night he went missing, was instead repurposed for something else—something far more sinister than the intentions he originally had for them.Animal kidneys. Gilliam—or, more likely, the SCP Foundation, was feeding Nichols animal kidneys. She had to thank her partner later, for helping her keep her appetite regardless of how nonexistent it already was half an hour ago, because she sure couldn’t even think of stomaching any food now that she knew exactly what Nichols did with the kidneys.Before she could say anything to him, however, he presented the room with yet another question—one the detective was dreading to ask herself.“And is Toby familiar with his methods as well?”The mention of her alleged younger brother caught the girl’s attention unlike anything before—her eyes shot back up to address both investigators in a startling instant, almost like a catapult, staring back at them with wide eyes and knitted eyebrows.“Toby?” Her voice was a mix of surprise and confusion, and the detective hung her head low. “Why? Why Toby?”What were the chances, she wondered? Neither of them had obtained the opportunity to interrogate the apparent youngest of the three—the boy was sitting in a separate waiting room down the hall, with an officer assigned to keep an eye on him in case he had any funny ideas. Of course, Bishop wasn’t expecting she would have to interrogate him at all this afternoon; Skye was the one with a more direct connection to the murders, through the murder weapon, not to mention she was the one who tried to hide Tim Sullivan—no, Tim Wright ’s corpse, buried in their own backyard, as well as the state of their mysterious shed. Bishop didn’t think the boy had anything to do at al with the murders, with what Skye told her of him, but after what they discussed back in the break room…“No.”Skye had straightened her back while Bishop was still neck-deep in her thoughts, as the latter realized her questioning glare had turned into a full-blown, wide-eyed stare of suspicion and disgust.“Toby didn’t do it,” she asserted, frowning as she cemented her glare on both the detective and the agent. “He couldn’t have.”“And why is that?” Gilliam asked without missing a beat.“Toby wouldn’t hurt people.” She sat up straight, and Bishop could almost see the anger boiling within her, even more so than even her prior outrage at the mere sight of Gilliam entering this room. “He wouldn’t hurt anybody, much less kill them.”Gilliam, however, remained unfazed. “Tobias Rogers murdered his father in cold blood. What makes you think he wouldn’t do it again?”Bishop froze at his words. Wait, what? “That bastard abused his family.” Skye scoffed, crossing her arms as she leaned forward against the table. “And then some. He wasn’t there after the accident—hell, he wasn’t even there for his daughter’s burial. That bastard got what he deserved.”“That doesn’t excuse the fact that your alleged brother is still the prime suspect in at least seven separate cases of murder.”
Seven murders?
“That wasn’t his choice.” Skye’s lips twisted to form a scowl. “You know this, Agent Gilliam.”“He tried to burn his entire neighborhood down.” Gilliam— Bishop turned her head back to her partner, who planted his fists firmly down on the table as he leaned forward in a challenge against their witness. “ Your neighborhood, Martin, where you and your grandfather and your neighbors lived.”“You think I didn’t know that?”“Gilliam.” Just hold on a second— “He almost killed you. He almost killed your grandfather.”“And I still have the scars to remind me!”“And yet, you’re still adamant on protecting that boy—”“Gilliam.”“Toby didn’t do it!”The room stood still. The scraping of the chairs’ legs against the floor and the echoes of their voices were still screeching in the detective’s ears, leaving an imprint in her brain that lasted for seconds after.“Skye.”Skye’s glare didn’t falter. Her breaths were one of the few sounds still audible in this room, stuttering every now and then, as her chest heaved with every inhale and exhale she took. Her thin frame was almost shaking as much as her breathing was, but she didn’t look like she was holding back tears nor her anger—the detective couldn’t quite put a finger on what she was trying to hold back, whether it was a mixture of all of these emotions and more, or something else entirely.“Toby couldn’t have done it,” the brunette suddenly murmured in a single exhale, breaking the silence in the room. Her eyes went back and forth from the detective to the agent, before her breathing settled and she eventually sat back down on her own, without the detective prompting her to do so. She dragged in a long breath before she continued. “You know how I’ve been stealing medicine for him?”Bishop was the first to nod. She moved to sit back down on her own chair, without sparing even a single glance at her partner as she waited for the other woman to continue.“Some were for his sickness.” Her shoulders slumped, and she took a loose strand of hair and tucked it back behind her ear. “Some of the others were sleeping pills.”“Sleeping pills?”Skye nodded. “Ever since we got out, Toby’s been having nightmares.” She paused as soon as her voice started croaking, forcing her to clear her throat again. “I don’t know when it started happening. Maybe it’s been going on since before we were in containment—I don’t know, but he says he can’t get a good night’s sleep nowadays. The nightmares have been keeping him up.”“Nightmares?” the agent asked, and the girl nodded again.“He says he keeps seeing faces,” she continued, voice diminishing as she began to shrink in her chair. “Faces of people who died around him—people whose lives he ended, either by his hand or otherwise.” Her voice sounded dismal—a depressing pair when combined with the distress written all over her face. It was a sister’s concern for a brother, Bishop thought, regardless of blood relation. “He also sees other faces—faces of the people who made our lives literal hell on Earth.” She paused with hesitation. “He sees him in his nightmares, too.”Bishop frowned. “Him?”Skye chewed on the inside of his cheek, eyes glancing back up at the wall behind her, but when Bishop followed her gaze, she realized the girl was leering towards Gilliam, and was almost surprised to see the agent’s hardened façade falling apart before her eyes; his stiff shoulders fell almost imperceptibly, and she watched as the creases on his forehead was relieved of tension, as the man in the suit took a deep breath and stowed his hands into the pockets in his trousers.“The tall man?” he asked, voice unusually low and cautious as he returned the younger woman’s gaze with a different light in his eye.After a brief moment of hesitation, Skye began to nod. “Obviously, I’m not surprised.” The corner of her lip quirked up. “It’s difficult for me to get sleep these days, too, and it’s not because I’m constantly looking over my shoulder, and terrified I’ll wake up surrounded by white walls again.” She sniffled, coughing quietly with her lips pressed tight, as her eyes bored down deep into the table. “I take multiple shifts on purpose, so by the time I get home at night, I can just pass out from the exhaustion. Toby’s got nothing to distract him—he’s terrified of falling asleep. He thinks they’ll get him in his dreams—pull him back in and make him hurt people again.”When she stared back up at Gilliam, there was no more malice left in her—just emptiness, with a shadow of somber melancholy looming over her.“He never wanted to hurt those people,” she said as her voice began to strain again. “None of us did. You know better than anyone in here, aside from ourselves, about what happened to us—about what they did to us.” Her head shook once. “So, tell me—why the hell would he put any more burden on his shoulders than he already has?”“Skye.”The detective shook her head. Gilliam had fallen silent behind her, and she didn’t know what else to say. There was just one lingering question in her mind, that she knew Gilliam would bring up at one point or another. It was bad enough the federal agent had brought them to this point—might as well rub salt into the wound while they were at it.“You’re not protecting them, are you? I know you care for them—both Jack and Toby, but—”“Detective.”She was tired—Bishop could see it in her eyes and hear it in her sigh, overshadowing whatever animosity she could ever harbor towards the detective.“Everything I just told you the past ten minutes alone is enough to press charges and convict me for at least fifteen years, if not more. If I’m going to jail, or back to SCP containment after all this is done—which I know is inevitable, because you’re not going to just let us walk like this—I might as well spend whatever time I have left as a free woman to prove to you that neither of them did it—that neither of them were responsible for the murders of these people. After all—”Her breath stuttered when she sighed, and her eyes glazed over when she smiled.“A person with nothing left to lose has nothing left to hide.”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
“You can sit this one out if you want to.”They were standing outside in the hallway, halfway between the door to the interrogation room they were just in, and a similar door almost adjacent to it, just a few feet of distance apart between them.“What?”Gilliam sighed, lips set in a hard line as he held a hand out to her. “We are doing Jack next, aren’t we?”“Didn’t you hear what she said?” she reminded, tilting her head towards the room they just came from. “Gilliam, I think we have to consider the possibility of a copycat here.”“She’s lied before, and she can lie again.” He took a step forward, arms crossed in front of him. He didn’t look like he was trying to threaten or intimidate her, however—his pupils briefly darted to the corner of his eyes, and her ears almost automatically honed in to the sound of footsteps approaching from the other end of the hall. “Can we really trust a fugitive on the run, detective?”“Well, she’s not on the run, is she?” She sighed, finding herself mimicking his posture. Her attention was only briefly taken away from him when the footsteps grew louder, and she felt someone gliding through the hallway past them, her eyes trailing the figure until they could continue their conversation outside of anybody’s earshot. “You’re not going to let them go, are you?”For as far as the difficult questions went, she didn’t expect this one to hit him straight in the bullseye, considering what he had been doing since the moment he got here—Gilliam turned his gaze away from her, air hissing through his gritted teeth as he shifted his weight from one foot to another, but without disturbing the safe proximity between them.“I can’t,” he confessed, his voice just barely audible now. She frowned—no one else seemed to be within eavesdropping distance, at least not anyone she was aware of. “We can’t just let them go like that, not when they pose as much danger as Eyeless Jack does.”“I don’t get it,” she scoffed, shrugging her elbows. “Am I missing something here? Because Skye and Toby—they seem pretty normal to me. I don’t get why this SCP Foundation you’re working for is after them in the first place.”Gilliam offered her a brief glare. “Looks can be deceiving, detective. Trust me when I tell you, you do not want to know the answer to that.”“Is it the ‘tall man’ you mentioned earlier?” she questioned, and immediately noticed the change in his posture—from mere cautious to alert and vigilant, in a mere blink of an eye. Her frown deepened. “What is it? Who were you talking about?”“No one,” Gilliam quickly uttered out without glancing at her, as he threw another wary glance over his shoulder and hers. “But yes, it is about that ‘tall man’ we were talking about. And as transparent as I’ve been with you for the past hour, detective, you really don’t want to know who or what that is.”She wanted to sigh and roll her eyes, but it was getting late—it had been quite the long day, and she barely got enough sleep the night before. Of course, without the exhaustion, there was no doubt she would be kept awake tonight as well, but she thought back to what Skye just said minutes ago—about how she would exhaust herself to sleep because she couldn’t even force herself to get some shut eye otherwise.Oh, how she could relate to that feeling right in this exact moment.“She seemed pretty honest to me,” Bishop breathed out instead, holding her face in her palm as she began to rub her eyes a little. “And besides, we were already thinking it wasn’t Jack. The M.O. just doesn’t match up—not exactly, anyway.”“And knowing that his M.O. is being replicated for these murders—” Gilliam tilted his head, as if forcing her to look at him again. It wasn’t as though there was anywhere else for her to focus her attention on otherwise. “We will need to question him all the same, detective. Maybe none of them have any direct involvement in any of the murders, but this is the only lead we have. Not until we can verify Martin’s alibi from that security footage she mentioned earlier.”“Right.” She blew air through her nose, then took another deep breath. “Fine. But I’m not sitting out of this one.”With some reluctance, she handed the case file over to Gilliam, who gave her a slow nod as he took the file, but not without some hesitation of his own. She then pushed herself off where she was leaning against the wall, and was about to reach for the handle to the adjacent door when Gilliam’s hand reached out and placed itself on top of hers, forcing her to look back up at him.“I’m still taking lead,” he murmured, his voice anything but cold, lips stretching as he stared back at her. “Make no mistake—he’s not as irritating as his partner is, but Jack is still not an easy one to deal with.”Her jaw tightened. “I can handle it, agent.”“I know you can.” His hand felt oddly warm on top of hers, but a mere second later, he was slowly lifting his palm from her knuckles, hovering over her hand with a great deal of caution. “I believe you can, but you saw how it was out there, and back in there with Martin. They’re vulnerable, which means they’re volatile.” His eyes briefly darted over to the door standing in front of them, mouth twitching into a small scowl. “Remember what the girl said.”
You’re gonna interrogate him next, aren’t you?
Bishop hadn’t answered the girl then, still unsure if she should, or if Gilliam would want to, anyway.I was gonna ask if I could talk to him first. The brunette’s head was bowed down, staring at her interlacing fingers resting above her lap. I know you won’t let me, so I won’t bother, but I just wanted to talk to him about whatever dumbass stunt he tried to pull earlier.Skye— ‘Dumbass stunt.’ She spoke of him like an old friend, not the murder suspect both Bishop and Gilliam had been trying to make him out to be.He’s a smart person, she added later on. Smartest man I know. But he’s done some dumb things, and what he just did out there was the dumbest thing he’s ever done—and that’s including the time he almost blew up the school lab during Biology.They really were friends, Bishop thought afterward. High school friends, probably. When did things go terribly wrong for them—for him?If and when you do go in there, Skye continued, though still refusing to look up at the detective, just… please don’t bring up any of the stuff that happened at West Point—at least not in front of him.
West Point?
The college he went to. It was where he became— She then tilted her head to the wall beside them, towards the adjacent room where she knew Jack was being detained. That. He doesn’t like talking about it. It doesn’t have anything to do with the case, but since Agent Gilliam is so fond of bringing up the past…“What do you mean?” Bishop asked the agent now, frowning.“Remember when I told you he’s evolving—and quite literally so?” Gilliam shot her a look, quirking an eyebrow. “He is not always this civilized. And as I said before, he’s volatile—one wrong word can trigger something in there that you won’t want to see.” He paused, prolonging his stare. “Are you still sure you want to do this, detective?”Funny Gilliam was the one saying it, when Skye was directing that warning more towards the agent than Bishop herself. Then again, the detective was no doubt familiar with interrogation tactics, and Gilliam was more familiar with these people than she ever could be at this point in time. Maybe he knew better to be cautious around one of them instead of the other—knew what it was going to take to break them apart, but just enough that it wouldn’t cost him his neck.Bishop withdrew her hand from the handle, but instead of leaving as Gilliam might be anticipating, she crossed her arms in front of her and shrugged. “I’ve got nothing and no one waiting for me at home, anyway.”Gilliam gave her another look—amusement, perhaps?—before nodding in acknowledgement. “Maybe you should fix that, then.”He turned his head forward, hand clamping around the handle, then paused to look back over his shoulder at her.“But please,” he added with a twitch of his lip. “Feel free to jump in at any time, detective.”She didn’t know what to expect when he finally opened the door to the room that held the alleged cannibal for the past half hour or so. What she definitely didn’t expect, however, was Gilliam holding the door for her—a clear invitation for her to enter first, and she wasn’t sure if he did this deliberately out of politeness, or for his own private shits and giggles.Regardless of what his intentions were, she couldn’t care less the moment she did step into the room and lifted her head up, eyes immediately zeroing in at the figure sitting on a chair behind the steel table in the center of the room, aligned so that he was staring straight at the outer-facing wall of the interrogation room he was trapped in.If he took any notice at all of the two people who were now entering the room, he didn’t seem to show it. He appeared almost the same way as she last saw him outside, when he was standing above her colleague’s limp body—the little hole of the bullet wound was still there on his right shoulder, almost invisible with how pitch-black his jacket was. His arms reached around the back of the chair—he was handcuffed, it seemed, likely for the safety of everyone in this office considering the ‘stunt’ that he pulled outside, as Skye had phrased it earlier.Bishop soon realized, however, that unlike earlier, there was no mask covering his face, nor a hood casting shadows over the top of his head—she spotted a navy blue dome lying on the table in front of him, facing skyward, exposing his true appearance for all of the world to see, and it was undoubtedly one of the most nightmare-inducing, least pleasing sight one could ever see in a lifetime.True to his alias, Eyeless Jack was, in fact, eyeless—where his eyes should be, were instead two hollow sockets, much too reminiscent bottomless pits, drawing in anyone who dared stare into them and sending spiders crawling down her spine the moment she so much as glimpsed at them. His eyelids were strangely still intact, but one other aspect of his appearance that drew her immediate attention was how dark his skin was—an unnatural shade of ash grey, almost akin to charcoal and definitely not a tint that any normal human would possess, from the top of his head where his hairline was visible, down to the neck where the collar of his jacket began.With the exception of those few features, everything else was almost perfectly identical to his original appearance, as seen in the photograph in his case file—youthful appearance, looking to be about no older than his twenties, and short albeit tousled brown hair on the top of his head, with the longest strands reaching no further past his ears.She barely registered her partner closing the door quietly behind them, her spine turning stiff when the sound triggered the eyeless man’s eyelids to twitch and blink, acknowledging the noise without fully turning his head to address them.Gilliam stepped forward to stand beside her and cleared his throat. “Jack.”Almost instantly, she could see another twitch in the corner of the eyeless man’s lips. “Agent Gilliam.”He finally tilted his head up ever so slightly, though his gaze was still directed straight ahead, and not at all close to where the two of them were standing at the corner of the room where the door was. His voice was as she heard it before outside, though significantly less muffled considering the distance, the acoustics of the enclosed room, and the lack of a mask covering his face.“I was beginning to think you’ve forgotten about me,” Jack quipped, then paused as he subsequently turned his head at the slightest angle to address them, but his empty gaze was now directed straight at Bishop. “And you brought a friend, too.”Bishop stared back at him, trying to maintain eye contact with him despite the spiders crawling down her spine. “Detective Abigail Bishop,” she breathed out, before taking another deep breath. “I’m from the local PD.”Jack slowly nodded, and she could feel his gaze growing distant, almost passing through her despite staring directly at her. “Yeah, I remember your voice,” he muttered, voice fading as he spoke, as if his mind had begun to drift. His face was still pointing towards them, however—stiff and still like a stone statue. “I remember you from outside. You were also the one talking to Skye earlier, yeah?”So, he remembers. “She was quite worried for you.”“I figured as much,” he murmured, nodding once. Was that sentiment she heard in his voice? “Yeah, that wasn’t my best moment out there,” he sighed, scoffing as he turned his head down, staring at where the wall joined the floor directly in front of him. “But we sure have a habit of getting ourselves in trouble these days.”“So.” Gilliam took this as a sign to proceed, finally taking the first step forward away from the doorway and towards the center of the room, taking his place in the seat directly across from the apparently eyeless man and placing the folder in his hand right in front of him.Bishop herself didn’t move. As much courage as she might’ve mustered before entering the room, there was no way she was going anywhere away from the nearest exit now.“You know what we’re here to talk about, yes?” Gilliam asked as he opened the case file, licked the tip of his finger then began turning the pages one at a time.“The murders that happened two nights ago,” Jack promptly replied, nodding once, then turned his head up to the ceiling. “I mean, that’s why you brought them in here, right—Skye and Toby? They have nothing to do with it, you know.”“Oh, we know.” Does he? Bishop knew—or, at least, she was convinced so. “That does not mean that all three of you are off the hook just yet. We still have a few questions to ask you.” Gilliam paused, then looked up to stare back at his suspect. “All of you.”Jack’s forehead furrowed as he scoffed. “I just told you they have nothing to do with it, and you confirmed it—”“Based on the evidence we have right now, we can’t let any of you go just yet.” Gilliam clicked his tongue, then turned back to the case file, almost completely unfazed at the eyeless man’s glare burning straight through him. “But, answer our questions truthfully, and this will go by quickly and smoothly, and you’ll all be off the hook before you even know it.”“Until you put us all back in containment.” Jack scoffed again, lips curling back as he threw his face aside. “Isn’t that right?”“Where were you on the night of the 25th?”An odd silence fell across the room. Gilliam didn’t even look up when he completely ignored Jack’s accusation, diverting the subject of the conversation within a blink of an eye. He’s not going to let them go, Bishop thought grimly to herself, leaning against the corner of the wall with her arms crossed in front of her.Jack, too, appeared to be stunned at the agent’s response, staring at him for several more seconds before he leaned back, handcuffs clanging against the back of the chair.“Burgling.”Bishop quirked an eyebrow, almost choking on her breath as her wide eyes stared at the eyeless man in instant disbelief. Even Gilliam’s head shot up from where he was hunched down on the table, finally addressing the eyeless man face-to-face in an automatic response to what the latter just said.“Pardon me?”“You heard me right.” Jack’s posture stiffened as he drew in a long breath. “I believe it was a pharmacy around the corner past a bakery and an auto-shop, somewhere downtown—it’s not easy to forget that smell.”Bishop frowned. Voices, and smells, and how there was always something off with his gaze, something that became quite apparent to her even though she only observed him for the past few minutes that they had been here.She almost laughed. He really was blind, she thought, though she should’ve known better—after all, he quite literally had his eyes gouged out all those years ago, as his eyeballs were all that the police could recover of him, despite all evidence pointing to him having died back then.“And you’re just confessing this to us?” Gilliam questioned again, and judging by his voice alone, it was clear he was in just as much disbelief as she was with the eyeless man’s candor.“Well, in case you couldn’t tell, I can’t just walk up to the counter looking like this,” Jack replied, tilting his head at an angle then nodding to himself to prove his point. “After Skye was fired from the clinic, someone has to go out there and get the meds they need.”Bishop froze again, realizing what he had just said. The meds they need?The coughing, she thought grimly.“Why you?” Gilliam quickly asked.“Toby can’t go out for obvious reasons, and because he wouldn’t know which ones to pick out,” Jack replied, still not missing a single beat. He shifted in his seat, handcuffs jingling behind the chair he was bound to. “And Skye’s the only one of us left who can actually pass as a normal working citizen. She has a job, she’s trying to pay off the mortgage—she can’t risk getting in trouble with the cops now, not when everything’s starting to get quiet again the past couple of months.” He drew in a deep breath, then sighed just as heavily. “Still, it doesn’t mean they have a lot of ready cash right now, so I had to improvise.”That’s one hell of an improvisation, Bishop thought, suppressing her scoff and snicker.Gilliam, on the other hand, shook his head. “And we’re supposed to just believe that?”“You know the kind of medicine they need,” the eyeless man retorted back, glaring at the agent sitting across from him. “I couldn’t even get the usual ones—I was only able to snatch the ones that Toby needs, and that’s it.” He shifted uncomfortably in his seat, then hung his head over the table with a sigh. “Check the security cameras—I heard them as I was entering through the back.”“If you knew there were cameras, shouldn’t you have avoided them, or cut the wires or something?”Bishop didn’t even realize she had spoken something until she saw Jack directing his gaze back at her, almost forcing her to shrink further into the corner, probably without even meaning to.“I’m a wanted fugitive, detective,” he murmured with a scoff and a shrug, his tone of voice sounding more feeble than the blunt retorts he had been firing back in response to Gilliam’s questioning. “And besides, it proves that I have an alibi for when those murders took place, right?”And, if Bishop’s own memory served her right, he was also on the other side of town from where the murders occurred, which was at least a half hour drive by car.“You’ve never had a problem moving around within short periods of time before,” Gilliam stated, head bowed down to the folder in his hand, but his eyes were staring straight at the cannibal before him. “What makes this any different?”Jack’s reply didn’t come quick this time around. “What was the estimated time of death?”“Between eleven and midnight.”“I got to the pharmacy at maybe around a quarter before eleven.” Jack relaxed his shoulders as he slumped back against his chair. “I left about half an hour after that, then I stopped at the convenience store about a couple blocks from there. I stole a couple of snacks and some soda, then went back to the house to drop off the meds. Skye hadn’t come home yet, but Toby was still awake—he saw me come in. I only stuck around about another half an hour to keep him company until she finished her shift, and by then it was already around one-ish, I think. That should be more than enough to prove my alibi.”And Skye’s to an extent, Bishop thought, but in the most unorthodox way possible. It wasn’t often that someone would so casually confess to other, and admittedly pettier crimes, to verify an alibi for a homicide case, but the nonchalance of his speech almost disturbed her, enough that it forced a harsh reminder back to the forefront of her mind about how this young man sitting within a few feet from her was reportedly responsible for organ harvesting at one point.To Eyeless Jack, burglary and shoplifting were almost inconsequential compared to what other crimes he had committed in the past.“Did Ms. Martin see you at the house when she came back from work?” Gilliam asked.“No, I don’t stick around the house too long these days, if I can help it.” The eyeless man made a loud sniffle, nose scrunching as he bowed his head down. “Not that I don’t want to be there when she is, it’s just—” He took a deep breath and shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “They’ve gone without the meds for a while now, and it’s starting to show. I can barely smell the rust from Toby, but that thing is still inside her, and without the usual meds—” He shook his head. “If there’s anything I tolerate less than the smell of humans, it’s the smell of those things—the tall man’s puppets.”Bishop frowned. There it was again—the tall man they were talking about earlier.His ‘puppets.’ Was Jack talking about Skye then? Was that the connection—why Skye and Toby were targets for the Foundation in the first place? And what did the medication have anything to do with it?She was almost compelled to ask more, but felt she would be overstepping her boundaries if she did. They came here to ask about the case, not to inquire further into whatever weird things these people were involved in. Maybe, if she were lucky, she could ask them about that later, after this case was over.Despite the disgust laced in his voice, however, Jack’s facial expression showed almost the complete opposite; his frown was bordering on a snarl, lips twitching to curl back on instinct, but his eyebrows were furrowed in confliction, almost apologetic. His gaze was fixated below as he hung his head over the table, avoiding the gazes of the two other people in the room with him.With a firm press of his lips, Gilliam briefly glanced down at the table, then turned his head back up, eyes boring into the eyeless man slightly bowing his head down in his own contemplative silence.“Did Toby seem suspicious to you at all when you saw him that night?” the agent asked.This time, Jack didn’t hesitate to shake his head. “All I smelled from him was his own blood,” he murmured but with smooth confidence, then scoffed. “He was starting to pick on his stitches again. I’m starting to think maybe we should get him one of those cones they put on dogs after surgery. Maybe then he’ll stop tearing the stitches out every three days or so.”“And have you been in contact with Jeffrey Woods at all for the past month or so?”“Jeff?” At Gilliam’s question, Jack was quick to raise his head and lift an eyebrow, glaring at the agent with widened eye-sockets. “No. Why? You think he has something to do with this?”“The M.O. of the murders we’re investigating matches yours.” Gilliam paused, turning to send a brief acknowledging glance towards Bishop, before turning back to face him. “Both yours and Jeff’s."Jack’s expression dulled at the mention of his associate. “I don’t know what to tell you,” he said with a shrug. “I haven’t seen or spoken that bastard since—I don’t know, since before containment, I think. That’s two years now?” He shook his head to the side. “Why would you think I was with him?”“Well,” Gilliam said, “the two of you did have similar killing patterns for a little over a year or so.”Jack scoffed to the side. “Yeah, but I haven’t spoken to him since then, and I don’t even have the means to reach out to him—not that I ever want to.” He sniffled and shifted his weight again. “I would know if he’s been around this area. He’s awfully pungent, and that dog of his doesn’t smell any better than him, too. If I had picked up their scent, we would have been gone from here long ago.”“Dog?” Bishop inquired without realizing she had spoken out loud, raising an eyebrow.“Smile Dog,” Gilliam answered, eyes flashing in recognition as he offered the detective another short glance, one she returned with a confused glare.In the corner of her eyes, however, Jack nodded. “Yeah. That dog hasn’t left his side once for almost the entire time that I’ve known him. But if I picked up even the slightest hint that either of them are nearby, we would’ve skipped town long before any of this ever happened.”“Why?”Maybe Gilliam shouldn’t have told her she could hop into the conversation whenever she wanted, considering how much she immediately regretted these jump-ins every single time she did.But it wasn’t breaking the flow of the conversation that she was worried about, no—she just didn’t like how it pulled the attention back towards her, including Jack’s hollow, bottomless glare as his head automatically turned in the direction of her voice, and she still couldn’t bring herself to keep eye contact with him for longer than three seconds.Fortunately for her, perhaps Jack himself was aware of what he was doing—he broke eye contact himself soon afterward, turning his head down towards the table instead.“Things have changed,” was all he said at first, his voice diminishing to a distant murmur. “I mean, since the last time I saw him. He doesn’t know about Skye, or Toby, or Tim. He doesn’t have people he can hold on to like I do.” He paused, bowing his head further down at the realization of his admission. “I don’t want to hurt them—I don’t want to hurt anybody. But Jeff—he doesn’t care. He doesn’t care about anyone, or anything, not even his damn self.” He tilted his head to the far wall, towards the other room where Skye was being held. “He’s going to hurt them. I’m not going to let him do that.”There was something odd about this—how contradictory the sentiment in his voice was, with how he appeared before her, in this demonic skin that would have no doubt terrified anybody who laid eyes on him, right out of their own skin. And despite the slight reverb echoing from the entrails of his voice just a millisecond behind, he sounded all too human now—a confounding difference that almost made her sympathize with the cannibal sitting before them.Sympathizing with a cannibal. Never in a million years would she ever thought of having to confess to that. At least, she could find solace knowing that these were her private thoughts—unless there was someone out there like these kids who could read minds or something of the sort, but she tried not to think about that, not now.“Did you mean it?” she found herself asking again, and his head briefly lifted towards her on impulse. She swallowed hard. “How you said you don’t want to hurt anybody?”His jaw immediately began to tense, forehead furrowing as his lips slowly began to pull back to form a snarl, revealing just a glimpse of gritted, sharpened teeth. “Did you think I wanted to be this?” he growled lowly, the reverb in his voice becoming more prominent than ever before. Though he turned his head in her direction, the line of his pitted gaze was bouncing off the side of the table, and with a lack of pupils to track, she wasn’t exactly sure where he was staring at now. “That I chose to be this—this thing?”His shoulders lifted ever so slightly as he took in a deep breath of air, his teeth poking out from his upper lip to bite down on the bottom lip as he held his breath for a few seconds, his breath stuttering when he finally expelled the air out of his own lungs.“I can’t change what my stomach chooses to digest these days, but the last couple of years that I was—well, you know what I was doing back then.” His voice had regained its stability, but the reverb was barely wavering. He scowled, but from where his head was turned, it sounded like it was more directed towards himself than even any of the other two in the room. “I’ve been trying to make sure I don’t hurt people more than I need to.” He turned heavenward as he made another intake of breath. “It’s difficult enough considering I don’t have the proper materials like some fancy surgeon or something, and it’s insane for a blind man to want to practice suturing in the first place, but I tried. And after what happened with Skye and Toby, I’ve been getting better at it—I was helping with her condition, and Toby gets himself injured often enough that it gives me something to work with—someone still alive, but also someone who wouldn’t scream out in pain whenever I poke the needle into the wrong spot.”Bishop stilled where she stood, turning her head at his words. Two thoughts entered her head—with the focus of the case in mind, only one propelled her to take a step forward, and another, until she realized her hand was reaching out to brush her fingers against the folder sitting idle in front of Gilliam.“You had a low body count the last few years you were active,” Gilliam stated, barely acknowledging Bishop moving beside him, other than his own hands closing the folder shut and wordlessly handing the folder over to her in one smooth movement.“Jeff called me out on it,” the eyeless man added then, bending his head back down to the table. “He said I was becoming soft. I don’t know what he thinks this is—some kind of killing competition, maybe, but I didn’t do it because I was some sick fuck chasing thrills and adrenaline from killing other people.” He turned his head up, lips frowning as he made another scoff. “He said I wasn’t the ‘same monster he used to go on killing sprees with’. I told him I never meant to be one.”Bishop took just two steps away from the table, taking the folder in her hands and flipping it over to the case report file, and then to the preliminary autopsy report Jane had faxed over to her earlier today. Her mind tried to hold on to the single thought in the forefront of her mind now, as her eyes quickly skimmed the papers until she found exactly what she was looking for.“Hold on a sec.”Her gaze was fixated on the papers, but she could see Gilliam turning in his seat at the peripherals of her vision. “What is it, detective?”She couldn’t confirm it before, but what Jack informed them confirmed one last thing that had been bugging in the back of her mind.“Jack, when you were—” Her head shot up, and her eyes instantly stared back into the young man’s hollow sockets where his eyes used to be, and couldn’t help swallowing hard at the unpleasant jolt spiking down her spine, forcing herself to take a deep breath. “When you were still doing—that, did you ever use chloroform at all?”“Chloroform?” Jack questioned back, in almost the sincerest voice she heard from him thus far, before he slowly shook his head. “No, chloroform’s too tricky to use. Contrary to popular belief, you can’t just shove a rag doused in chloroform up someone’s nose and expect them to stay under for longer several minutes, not to mention the complications that could come up with using that stuff. And besides, it’s never a good idea to trust a blind man who’s trying not to kill anyone with a bunch of chloroform.”Two additional thoughts popped up in her head at that exact moment—it might make sense that he would know these things considering he was a medical student in addition to being an apparent serial killer, but she tried her best not to snort at the last bit he spoke.She shook her head, shaking the thought out of her mind in the process, then turned back to the two men sitting at the table. “Wouldn’t you have at least used some anaesthetic during your work?” she queried now. “You said you practiced on Toby, but not everyone has an immunity to pain like he does.”“We’ve done tox screens of the previous victims before,” Gilliam quickly added, himself beginning to frown at the mention of the chloroform. “There were never any traces of any anaesthetics whatsoever—nothing in their bloodstreams, not anywhere on their faces or even their bodies.”“That’s because I never used them,” Jack retorted back, voice filled with a mix of genuine curiosity and puzzlement. “I didn’t know what the hell I was doing back then—I didn’t know where I would get those things, anyway.” He shrugged, handcuffs colliding with the chair again. “I just never really had a problem with trying to keep people from waking up. I would’ve been able to hear the spike in their heartbeat if they do.”Bishop glared at him with wide eyes and raised eyebrows. “You just cut into your victims and hope for the best?”Jack snapped his lips shut, pressing them to a thin line and taking a moment before responding. “It wasn’t my best moment,” he admitted, turning his head off to the side. “I was also trying to control my apparent cravings for human flesh at the same time, but like I said, I would’ve sensed it if the person whose renal organs I was about to have for dinner was about to wake up at some point during the procedures.” He knitted his eyebrows, though his head and neck remained stiff where he held them. “Why? Why are you asking me this all of a sudden?”Bishop shot a glance towards Gilliam, shifting her gaze at exactly the right moment to catch him doing just the same in her direction. She didn’t need to state it out loud—he already knew where she was heading with what she just brought up.“The victims of this case suffered from chloroform poisoning prior to their deaths,” the agent stated aloud, turning back to face the eyeless man sitting before him with a deep intake of breath. “We found high traces of chloroform around the victims’ nose and mouth—”“—which can result in asphyxiation, respiratory failures or cardiac arrhythmia,” Jack finished effortlessly, without even a single hair of hesitation or pause for thought in his voice. His eyelids blew wide open, and she could almost catch a glimpse of a dark viscous substance just barely spilling over the edge of his hollow eye-sockets. “There’s a reason why people have stopped using chloroform as an anaesthetic,” he continued, finally turning back to face the federal agent sitting in front of him. “And as much as I’ve been getting by without vision for all these years, I can and will never trust myself with something as dangerous as chloroform.”And if he were indeed being truthful about wanting to keep his victims alive, Bishop thought to herself, he would never be caught dead handling chloroform in the midst of his so-called ‘procedures,’ either.
Which means—
“Do you know anyone who might have done this?” she immediately asked again, taking a step forward as she crossed her arms in front of her, pinning the folder almost directly underneath her armpit. “Anybody who could’ve done this at all?”Jack seemed rather startled at her sudden question, but kept himself silent for several seconds, face twisting as he pondered about it with generous consideration.“Whoever this killer is,” he began, “they couldn’t have possibly mimicked my exact method, right?”“Incision wounds to the abdomen,” she stated, tilting her head to the folder in her hand, “cut into with the use of a scalpel, and stitched back shut several minutes after.”Gilliam nodded. “And we have confirmation that all six kidneys were removed from all three victims. Aside from the general sloppiness and the chloroform, it’s otherwise a perfect match to your method, Jack.”“Wait.” Jack straightened his posture. “Six kidneys, out of three victims?” He shook his head again, though significantly more vigorous this time. “I’ve only ever taken out one kidney from each victim.”The detective looked back toward Gilliam, anticipating some sort of contradiction from him. Instead, he returned her glare with a brief glance, before solemnly setting his mouth to a hard line in silent acknowledgement.“Well, shit,” Jack sighed, almost throwing himself back against the chair he sat on. “I see why you would think I did this, but I promise you, I had nothing to do with these murders.” He shrugged feebly. “I don’t even know who in their right mind would ever want to do this in the first place.”She believed him. She didn’t want to state it out loud, but from what he just told both of them in this very room, it was becoming more and more unlikely that he had any involvement with the case at all, other than the fact that the killer replicated both his and Jeff the Killer’s M.O.s.It was almost as if the killer knew it would mislead both Bishop and Gilliam—and especially Gilliam—into thinking Jack and Jeff were the ones behind these murders, in addition to so many others they had committed in the past. Perhaps, it was exactly their copycat killer’s exact intention.She was just hoping this wasn’t the start of some string of murders intending to replicate other serial killers like Jeff and Jack. With this in mind, however, she could only hope she didn’t just jinx herself.“I’m sorry.” And Bishop had no doubt that he was. “I wish I can help you, Agent Gilliam, Detective Bishop, but whoever your killer is—they’re trying to frame me for these murders.” The eyeless man nodded in no particular direction. “I’m not the killer you’re looking for—not for this case. Your killer is still out there somewhere, and as strange as it sounds coming from someone like me, I hope you find them soon, because someone who knows what Jeff and I are—someone who knows we exist—” He shook his head, lips curling back with a scoff. “That is never a good sign.”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
It was barely eight in the morning when Bishop pulled her sedan up to the curb, right across the street from where the police van was parked, and a few strides away from the front yard that was beginning to swarm with more curious neighbors and passersby than police officers. Just like the Smiths and the Walkers’ neighborhood, any slightest hint of disturbance sparked excitement among the usually quiet community—this corner of the suburbs was no different, she thought.She flicked the key to the engine off right as she spotted a dark figure approaching her car after emerging from the pale blue house of this morning’s center of attention. Fetching her bag from the passenger’s seat, she exited the car, throwing the door shut behind her before turning around, finding herself smiling as her gaze fell on the well-suited man walking up to her, then to the red coffee cups he held in each hand.“I came here as soon as I could.” She locked the car and stashed the key inside her pocket. Gilliam lifted one of the cups to her—a peace offering, she thought—and she accepted it without a second thought to it. “Thanks. So, what are we dealing with this fine summer morning?”“Two bodies—mother and son, one house.” The agent took a deep breath then sighed. “How much sleep did you get last night?”The detective’s eyes lifted from the coffee cup’s black lid up to the agent’s. “What?”“I could’ve called but I sent a text instead so I wouldn’t disturb your sleep,” Gilliam replied flatly, eyebrows knitted together as he stared at her. “You need your rest, detective. We could’ve done this without you.”“And keep me out of the loop even after I specifically told you not to?” She brought the cup’s opening to her lips and tilted it slightly, allowing the hot liquid to pour onto her tongue for just one brief second before her taste buds realized right away that something was wrong. She scrunched her face, almost spitting the liquid from her mouth before drawing the cup away from her, then turned to glare at the agent. “The fuck did you put in this one?” she half-coughed.“Extra cream and sugar.” His voice betrayed what little guilt he had as he casted his glance off to the side. “You’ve slept for a total four hours maximum, and you expect me to just hand you a cup of black coffee?”“Are you trying to kill me?” She nodded to the other cup in his hand. “What’s in that?”“Earl Grey.” Gilliam sighed again, lifting his head at an angle. “As good of an investigator as I know you are, Detective Bishop, you’re no good to us sleep deprived.”She turned to glare at him again, scowling under her breath. “Last time I checked, this was just a mass killing case. All of a sudden, I get a call this morning telling me there’s another two bodies to add to our pile, just three days after the first one, and you’re expecting me to just sit back, relax and take a nap?”“I’m asking you to take a breather, detective.” He threw a quick glance over his shoulder as if making sure none of the officers, even more so the nosy neighbors, were around within earshot, before turning back to her. “Considering all that’s been thrown at you in the past couple days alone, I wouldn’t blame you if you asked for time off or took yourself off the case.”“Take myself off—” Bishop closed her eyes, drew in a sharp breath, then blew it out in one go. “I’m fine, Gilliam.”“You were thrown into the deep end less than twenty four hours ago, detective.” He took a step closer to her, casting a slight shadow over her face. “If you need to take a break, I won’t blame you for it.”“I fought to keep myself on the case, agent,” she hissed almost harshly back, glowering at him even despite the slight height difference. “Why would I step away from it now?”“People need time to process new information.” He sounded sterner than usual, reminiscent of a parent scolding their rebellious child the tenth time for the same mistake—he wasn’t angry, per se, but rather disappointed, and tired even. “Normal people don’t just show up to work the next day saying they’re a hundred percent ready to deal with another fresh pair of bodies like it’s nothing.”“I never said I was a hundred percent,” she said with a shrug. “But you can’t expect me to just sit around at home or in the office while you’re out here doing the work—not when we’re already this far into the case.” She took another deep breath to stop herself, then exhaled it out with a sigh. “Did you take a look at the crime scene yet?”His silent stare lingered at her for a few more seconds than she liked, as if waiting for her to take another sip from the cup before speaking again. “Barely,” he confessed, expelling his breath in one go. He didn’t hesitate to speak louder this time, taking a single step back as if to replace the more comfortable distance between them. “I was still interviewing the mailman when you arrived.” He threw another glance over his shoulder, nodding to a man in blue uniform standing outside the house, and the officer speaking next to him. “He arrived here about an hour ago, saw the front door was broken into and immediately called 911.”“Does he know who lives here?”Gilliam nodded, motioning for her to follow him as he turned around and began walking back in the direction of the house. “Carrie and Chris Hoffman—single mother and her teenage boy. The mailman’s known the Hoffmans for years—said both of them were good people. Got along well with their neighbors, and the kid works part time at the soup kitchen downtown. Can’t think of a possible reason anyone would go after them like this.”“Are you sure this is connected with the other murders?” Bishop asked, frowning as she followed him towards a nearby police car to set their cups down above it, then continued to walk beside him until they reached the front yard. “Couldn’t it be some robbery gone wrong?”“The last crime scene’s about a couple blocks away from here,” the agent reminded, turning his head east towards the sun, as though pin-pointing exactly to the direction of the other crime scene. “All of them took place in the middle of the night in the victims’ homes, the front door broken into with a shit ton of blood left behind for evidence.”Though the detective was skeptical at first, true enough to the agent’s words, it took her just one step into the unassuming house for her to catch a whiff of the pungent smell of blood drifting from somewhere in the house. It was almost as intense as the Walkers’ home after their bloodbath, and she was thankful she hadn’t had breakfast yet because she would already be gagging otherwise.“All three families had teenage children,” Gilliam continued, wincing ever so slightly at the smell but otherwise keeping himself together much more than Bishop was as they made their way towards the staircase halfway through the living room. “Same age children, same area—I’ll take a bet they went to the same high school, too.”“That gives us the beginnings of a victimology,” Bishop said, lifting her eyebrow, “but not so much narrowing down how the killer’s picking his next target. There’s hundreds of kids attending the local high school, maybe a few dozen in the same grade and living in the same area, but the killer can’t be going after all of them.”“But it does mean that our killer can still be in the area.”“Either that, or the killer’s actually from this area.”Though she was staring at him from the back of his head as they headed up the narrow staircase, Gilliam nodded. “But if our copycat killer’s still replicating the M.O.s of other killers, as with our first two murders—”“Do you have any idea who they could be replicating next?” Bishop asked, genuinely curious.This time, however, the agent shook his head. “There are many others similar to our first two killers, some with their own signatures, others not so much—none that I know come from this area of the state. Plus, it’ll be hard to tell who our killer is replicating unless it’s something specific like the missing kidneys. Maybe we’ll get one of those if we’re lucky.”Bishop quirked an eyebrow. “Missing kidneys?”“A signature,” Gilliam breathed out with a sigh as they arrived at the top of the staircase, where the nauseating odor became more prominent than ever—a severe warning of what’s to come, she thought grimly to herself. “Our killer must have chosen Jeff and Jack for a reason.”“Maybe they know who they are?” the detective suggested, briefly skimming the area down the hallway they arrived at. Other than the odor, the rest of it seemed as normal as it could be—pastel blue walls, white ceiling, pale wooden floors. Three white doors stood before them, but only one was cracked open. “Someone who knows them both personally. Someone with a grudge against them.”He offered her a brief glance, the corner of his mouth twitching downward as he pulled out a pair of latex gloves and began putting them over his hands. “That doesn’t do anything to shorten our list, I’m afraid.” He then nodded to the door, placing a single hand against the wood. “Shall we?”The first thing she noticed upon stepping inside was the horrible bloody mess splattered across the far wall. It was the boy, she quickly realized—his body was slumped over, barely leaning against the wall, so that all she saw of him were the blond curls on top of his bowed head. There was a glaring redness in the center of his stomach, a stark contrast against the white shirt he had on. Crimson entrails poured out of the redness and scattered across his abdomen and lap. Underneath him was a large dark stain on the beige carpet, his legs stretched and bent at an awkward angle with his arms laying limp beside him, palms facing up towards the ceiling, baring the red slashes and streaks of blood across his fair skin for all in the room to see.“Oh god.”The words flew out of her mouth before she could stop herself. She turned her head away as she started putting on her own pair of gloves, trying not to wince and gag as she forced herself to match Gilliam’s pace as he ventured further into the room.“Must be quite the sight if it pulled that kind of reaction out of you.”Bishop turned around to find another figure standing by the doorway she was just in—a familiar face with dark hair and eyes, dressed in her usual fieldwork jumpsuit, greeting her old friend with a small smile on her face despite the unwelcoming circumstances.“Jane.” Bishop lifted her eyebrows in surprise. “You’re early.”The doctor closed her eyes and pressed her lips tight with a small nod. “I was on my way to pick up your latest body when I got the call. Might as well take a look at the fresh bodies before moving on to the older one. Speaking of which, are all of these part of the same case you just started a couple days ago? What is it—ten bodies now?”“Technically nine.” With a deep intake of breath, Gilliam squatted down just outside the edge of the blood stain, eyes peering into the large gaping wound in the center of the boy’s abdomen. “The one we found yesterday was only related to a former suspect of this case.”“Oh, look, you’re still here,” Dr. Wang scoffed, rolling her eyes as she fully entered the room with her bag in hand. “Still, nine bodies is a record, Abigail. You better find and stop this sonofabitch before he fills up my storage racks—I’ve only got so many of them.”Bishop sighed. “We’re working on it,” despite the fact that the two of them made little progress so far, considering they were now dealing with a copycat instead of the actual killer himself still held in custody back at the station.The doctor must’ve heard the somber tone of her voice as she stopped, turned around to address her friend, offering the detective a small but kind smile. “I know you are. Now.” With a sigh, she turned her attention back forward, gazing down at the dead teenager in front of her, scrunching her face at the hideous sight. “‘Oh god’ indeed. What in the hell did you do to warrant this fate, boy?”Gilliam stood up as the doctor crouched down to begin her inspection, walking to rejoin the detective at her side as his gaze moved around the room to take note of its state. “The boy put up quite a bit of struggle.”He nodded to the baseball bat that was broken in half, with splinters scattered across the carpet floor near the doorway. The nearby desk was a mess—the desk lamp had toppled over, and books and crumpled papers were scattered all over the surface and even the floor beneath it, and the chair was abandoned off to the side.On the adjacent wall, Bishop took quick notice of the large tears into the dark blue wallpaper, before observing the cluster of narrow slits dotted around them. A sharp weapon, she thought—something like a knife was likely, perhaps the murder weapon, or even the same one as the Walkers, if they were lucky.“He did, but it didn’t last long.”The doctor’s voice drew the two investigators’ attention back toward her, but when Bishop turned her head at her shoulder to look back towards the victim, she felt bile rising up her throat further than it did before, immediately wincing from a single brief glance at the boy’s upturned head.Beside her, Gilliam hissed lowly through his teeth. “His eyelids were cut off.”“It’s not a clean cut,” the doctor muttered, but Bishop’s eyes had shut themselves on instinct, as if terrified to share the same fate as the teenage boy before them. “The killer damaged the sclera during the process. The amount of blood loss tells me the killer did this perimortem, along with these other wounds the victim sustained prior to death.” “The kid was still alive when the killer did this to him?” Bishop asked, bewildered as much as she was disgusted, turning her head away from the corpse as she spoke.The doctor responded with a click of her tongue. “Like a true sadist.”“Those stab wounds on the hands,” Gilliam began as he moved from the detective’s side closer towards the body. “They match the bloody cracks on the wall above him.”Curious to see what Gilliam was pointing out, Bishop forced herself to turn her head back in the direction of the body, but kept her gaze away from the boy’s head even though all she could see in her peripherals were his blond curls again—Jane must have turned the boy’s head back down after making her point. Instead, the detective solely focused on finding the cracks on the wall Gilliam was talking about—sure enough, she spotted a small splatter of blood surrounding two engraved marks on the wallpaper, about halfway up the height of the wall, five feet apart from each other. A trail of blood had trickled down from the marks and disappeared behind the boy’s body now propped against the wall.“The killer pinned him up there,” Bishop deduced, voice hollow and distant at the mere thought of it.“And then slashed the kid’s stomach open,” Gilliam finished for her with a subtle nod. “They were torturing him—cut his eyelids open so he could see what the killer was doing to him. Have you determined the cause of death yet, doctor?”“Not here,” Wang quickly replied with a shake of her head. “Too much blood, and the organs are a mess. It’s more than enough to kill him, but I’ll be able to tell more once I get back to the morgue.”“What about time of death?” Bishop asked.The doctor turned to her with a solemn look on her face. “My best guess is sometime around midnight last night.”Gilliam crossed his arms as he turned to meet Bishop’s gaze. “Matches the time of death for the other murders, too.”The same killer, Bishop thought, as she turned her head down to gaze at her feet. Without another word on the matter, she turned around to face the other wall, gazing at the door to the desk, to the lamp and the marks on the wall.“The killer came in through the door,” she murmured, nodding at the open doorway. “Lock’s not busted, so the killer could’ve snuck inside—”“But the victim surprised them,” Gilliam chimed in, and she felt him walking back up to her to stand beside her, matching her stance. “He grabbed the baseball bat and tried to knock the killer out.”“It failed, and the two of them struggled around here.” She pointed to the desk and the adjacent wall. “The killer was stronger—either that, or the kid got scared of the knife. Either way, the killer threw him over there, by the far wall.” She turned around to face the direction of the body without staring at it for longer than a second. “He pinned the kid up by his hands—”“Brought more than two knives.” Gilliam nodded at the bloody marks on the wall. “Pinned him up by both of his hands, and another to slash his stomach open.”“Taunted him, tortured him until he passed out and died.” Bishop folded her hands in front of her and twisted around to face Gilliam. “The victim was already waiting for him—he tried to knock the killer out when he entered the room. He knew he was going to be attacked.”It took the agent barely a second to realize what she meant. “The mother,” he said. “The killer attacked the mother first.”Carrie, as with the other victims, died in her bedroom—the master bedroom at the end of the hall. Unlike her son, however, her death was less spectacular, but no less gruesome than his—the two investigators and the coroner entered the room to find her body still lying on top of her bed, head turned up to face the ceiling, eyes wide open, and a massive bloodbath sprouting from the center of her body, almost drenching the entirety of her white nightgown and the white sheets beneath her in crimson red.“She died quickly,” Wang commented within less than a minute since she entered the room, eyes skimming across the length of the corpse from head to toe. “No signs of struggle or torture whatsoever, but it wasn’t painless either.”“So the killer came in here first.” Bishop’s voice slightly muffled as her gloved hand hovered over her mouth, and she slowly spun around to study the rest of the room. It was relatively untouched compared to her son’s room—nothing out of place, nothing to indicate the killer was even here, aside from the dead corpse in the center of the bed. “Caught the mother by surprise, killed her in her sleep—she would have screamed or made noise or something, so by the time the killer went for the son, he was already waiting for them. Maybe, he was about to head out and confront the killer when they were still dealing with the mom, but was too late.”“The killer didn’t waste time with the mother.” Gilliam stepped aside, eyes staring distantly at the far wall as his eyebrows began to furrow. “They took their time with the son.”“The son must’ve been the target.” She could feel her own forehead wrinkling in worry. “I think you were right. I think the teenagers are the link here.”Gilliam clenched his jaw for a mere second, eyes staring distantly into the far wall. “But our killer’s been killing entire families. There’s another link we’re missing between the teenagers, but the rest of their families—”“The copycat M.O.s.” Her voice drew the agent’s attention back to her, though he frowned at her words in confusion until she sighed and looked straight into his eyes. “Jeff and Jack left a trail of bodies in their wake for each of their kills, right—well, back then when both first started out.”Gilliam rolled his eyes. “And unlike Jack, that sonofabitch Jeff hasn’t shown signs of stopping yet.”“Jeff massacred his entire family when he snapped.” She remembered reading it from his file. It shocked her at first—how a thirteen-year-old child could murder his own parents and brother in their own home. “Jack killed the entire cult when he became a monster.”She watched the furrows in his face beginning to even out as her words began to register inside him. She sucked her bottom lip behind her upper teeth as she took a step forward and stared intently back at him.“Gilliam,” she continued, “are there any other killers out there like Jeff and Jack who massacred an entire group of people for their first kill?”The agent blinked, almost scoffing under his breath. “The list is shorter, but that’s still a lot of names to go through.”“Someone who might know our first two killers,” the detective quickly added, throwing a quick apologetic glance over to the coroner when she felt the good doctor glaring at her, having taken a brief pause from her work presumably after the mention of their ‘first two killers’. Oh, Jane, you have no idea. “Someone who could have an M.O. almost exactly like this one.”Gilliam lifted an eyebrow and glared hard at her. “Excessive overkill, mutilation and torture?”Bishop clicked her tongue and feebly lifted her shoulders. “It’s a start, isn’t it? I mean, if this is the same killer, but this one isn’t supposed to replicate Jeff’s M.O., then our killer must’ve copied off someone, right?”Part of her wondered exactly how many killers like Jeff and Jack were out there. A long list, he had said—exactly how long of a list was it? And how come she never heard about any of these people? The Foundation must have been keeping all this under wraps really well if that was what they’ve been doing for all the bodies the duo had left in their wake in the past. But how many more of them were out there, running rampant in the streets across the country—hell, across the world? The U.S. couldn’t be the only one with freaks like them, right?The FBI agent remained silent for a good amount of time, enough so that Bishop was actually beginning to worry even more than before. She was about to throw in the towel and suggest they should look at the murder from another angle—a more methodical, perhaps less unusual angle, that didn’t involve strange killers coming back from near-death experiences to massacre everyone around them—when Gilliam’s face stiffened, eyes reverting back from their squinting state, and the wrinkles on his forehead and underneath his tired eyes began to smooth out the slightest bit.“I can think of someone,” he finally said, slowly, eyes drifting down to the ground as he pondered it over a second, third time. He hissed through his teeth, tilting his head at an uncertain angle. “It’s a weak assumption, but I can somewhat see how it can fit.”She took a deep breath and held it. It’s better than nothing, she thought. “Who is it?”His frown deepened as his eyes went back up to meet hers again, and the corner of his mouth stretched back into a scowl. “I think we need to go back and speak with Toby again."
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“Why Toby?”She slipped her now-cold coffee into the cup holder as Gilliam slid into the passenger seat beside her and slammed the door shut. She had asked where his fancy black sedan was—he was already at the police station, in the middle of processing the camera footage from the stores Jack had mentioned during interrogation, when the call for the new crime scene came in and he decided to hitch a ride with one of the other officers instead.“I thought the kid had an alibi for the night of the previous murders.” She plugged the key into the ignition and turned the engine on at the second try. “Plus, he’s been in our holding cells since last night—”“I’m not saying Rogers did it,” Gilliam sighed with a strain in his breath as he secured the seat belt over his chest. “But he might know who did.”Her eyes rolled briefly to the back of her head as she released the parking brake and planted both hands on the steering wheel. “You know, maybe at this point in time, you’ll stop speaking to me in ambiguous riddles and just go straight to the point—”“It’s his girlfriend.”She froze, then cocked an eyebrow as she turned to glare at him. “His girlfriend?”The agent nodded but kept his gaze down as he fiddled with the strap of his watch. “Natalie Ouelette—otherwise known as the self-named serial killer Clockwork.”“Another serial—” Bishop paused to close her eyes, take a deep breath, before turning her gaze back forward as she began to put the car into drive. “Are they all part of some serial killing book club or something here?”Gilliam tilted his head back and forth in uncomfortable uncertainty. “Something like that.”She scoffed, blinking several times in disbelief but kept her focus on the road as the car made a left turn to the direction of the main street.“And she’s about as crazy as they come—well, excluding Jeff, but she’s pretty close,” Gilliam continued. From her peripherals, she could see him gazing out the window, head bobbing slightly every now and then. “A thrill-seeker who kills for the sake of killing itself and just because she can. Like most of the others, we haven’t been able to predict where she’s going, or who she’s going after next. One of the few things that we do know about her is the fact that she has ties with the one and only Tobias Rogers.”“Toby? Really?” She tried not to wince at the thought as she tried to maintain her focus on the road ahead of them. From what little she had seen from the youngest in the bunch, he seemed rather quiet and timid—didn’t speak much unless spoken to. Never in a million years would she ever expect him to go for someone Gilliam literally described as ‘about as crazy as they come’. “Why do you think it’s her?”Gilliam took a brief pause, then shook his head before finally responding. “I can’t be a hundred percent sure about it, though. She has a signature killing style, but it doesn’t come out cut and dry through the evidence. All we know is that she likes to leave a mess and enjoys toying with her victims. She can also be quite—” He coughed into an enclosed fist and cleared his throat. “—‘artistic’ with her work sometimes.”Bishop cocked another eyebrow. “Like pinning her victim up against the wall, painting the entire area in his blood and tearing his insides out for all of us to see?”“Something like that,” Gilliam admitted with a single nod. “Among other things. As I said, it is a weak connection at best, but it’s an avenue worth taking a look at, considering the past two murders have been replicated to look like some of her ‘mutual acquaintances’, per se.” He paused to take a deep breath and leaned his head back against the worn-out headrest. “If our suspect is emulating all these other killers from the same group of psychopaths, then—”“Is there someone else in that group who could’ve done this?” She gave him a brief glance before turning back to the road and making a right turn. “Someone whose signature is copying other killers’ M.O.s?”Another shaking head. “Not that I know of, no. ’Group’ itself is a very loose term to describe these people—these freaks of nature.” He turned his head to gaze out the window again. “Most of them act on their own. Some of them know each other, but alliances are rare. Unless they’re achieving some sort of common goal or share a common enemy, it’s much more often to see them stabbing each other’s backs the second they are turned.”“What about Jeff and Jack?” Bishop asked again, frowning. “You said those two were partners at one point, right?”“And we see how Jack feels about his former partner now since his escape,” he scoffed, no doubt thinking back to their interrogation last night. The eyeless man did use some particularly unkind words when speaking about the other killer, even harsher than those he used when speaking to the Foundation agent thus far.“But I’m not entirely sure about those two.” Gilliam cleared his throat as he shifted in his seat, turning his head to gaze out the window. “Though I do have a developing theory of sorts about that partnership of theirs. It’s not anything pertinent to the case, of course—we’ve already confirmed Jack’s alibi with that footage I retrieved last night, and if what he stated about Jeff was true, then neither of them have much involvement with our current string of murders other than as victims of framing.” He paused then coughed again. “It’s just something to think of after the case is over.”Bishop chewed on her bottom lip as she nodded. “And what about Toby and this clock killer—”“Clockwork.”“Yeah.” Interesting choice of name, she thought. “Were they like partners or something?”He hummed and turned his head at a small angle. “Not quite. We have surveillance footage and a couple of cases with evidence to prove that those two were involved in them somehow.”“And you know they’re together because?”Though she trailed off, she frowned and turned to look at him when his response didn’t come as quick as she expected it to be. “After we contained them—Rogers and Martin, since they were living together at the time as well—” He made another deep intake of breath, and exhaled out slowly. “We found a stuffed giraffe among Rogers’ possessions.”She couldn’t stop the snort blurting out of her nose when his words quickly registered in her mind. “A stuffed giraffe?” she questioned, cocking an eyebrow. “Like a kid’s toy?”“A kid’s toy wouldn’t have bloodstains, nor look like it had been ripped apart limb from limb, then stitched horribly back together into some shapeless form barely resembling what it once was,” he scoffed, offering her a grimacing look before turning back forward with another sigh. “We have reason to believe it was the same stuffed giraffe Ouelette took from her family home after she murdered her parents and her brother.”Bishop blinked and sucked her lips behind her teeth. “Oh.”“Her aunt claimed it was her favorite,” the agent continued, turning his head down. “For Toby to be in possession of said stuffed giraffe, we can assume she held him in quite significant regard, to say the least.”“Where’s that giraffe now?” Bishop found herself asking, despite knowing it likely had nothing to do with the case at all. But she was curious—curious about these strange dynamics between apparent psychopaths and sociopaths, even if two of the three kept in the holding cells back at the station this moment appeared nothing like such.Gilliam hummed quietly. “Rogers snatched it out of our evidence locker when they escaped containment. I’ve had some of your boys search the house for anything incriminating after we arrested them yesterday—no signs of the giraffe yet, but we did find two hatchets stashed underneath one of the beds upstairs, likely the ones Rogers used to kill his father and all his other victims while he was still active.”Her first instinct was to slam the brakes right then and there, but she managed to restrain herself, resorting to snapping her head towards the agent with a wide-eyed glare. “So, it’s true?” she asked loudly. “Toby has taken lives of his own?”There was some time before Gilliam answered her again, the silence beckoning her to make quick glances in his direction, trying to study his expression with what little glances she could catch of him.“His father had a drinking problem,” Gilliam finally spoke, beginning with a sigh as he sunk slightly in his seat. His voice was low and even—an indication that it was a difficult topic, as if his first few words hadn’t told her that already. “His daughter—Toby’s sister—filed a restraining order against him, but it was waived soon after she died.”The detective grew silent as her partner spoke. She remembered Skye mentioning something about Toby’s father during yesterday’s interrogation. Her hands remained planted on the steering wheel even as they arrived at a red light, arms and legs stiff as she turned to him momentarily with a softened gaze.“How did she—”“Car accident,” he quickly replied with a small, solemn nod. “And Lord knows what a man with a history of aggression can do when he’s had too much to drink. Of course, I don’t condone murder, but a kid like Rogers with all these… conditions he had to live with his whole life—” He clicked his tongue and made a feeble scoff. “Kids can only take so much, you know?”From the corner of her eyes, she saw the stream of cars heading sideways beginning to stop, forcing her to turn her head back to the road as she waited for the red light to promptly turn green.“How old was he then?” she asked as she pressed her foot on the clutch and shifted gears.“Seventeen, I believe—it was a year after Nichols’ incident, so that’s about four years ago.”The traffic light flashed green, and she slowly pressed on the accelerator to let the car drive forward again.“He got a taste of blood after killing his father and didn’t stop?”In her peripherals, Gilliam shook his head. “Not quite.” He took a long, deep breath as he shifted in his seat. “I know what I said yesterday, but Martin was right. The kid took lives, but it wasn’t his choice—at least, not entirely.”She frowned. “What do you mean?”“It’s not something we can discuss right now,” he answered instead, and rather quickly, too, without needing to give much thought into it. “But I figured it wouldn’t be out of the question if the kid somehow decided to start killing again. Old habits die hard, you know—even if someone else enforced them upon you.”“But he has an alibi for all the murders so far,” she said with a shake of her head, trying to ignore what he said about Toby’s apparently enforced ‘old habits’. They made a deal, she thought—him and Jack, about Toby and Skye’s arrest. She was almost positive that in this situation, the FBI agent’s authority alone would almost certainly trump hers. “Unless he somehow snuck out of his holding cell last night—”“We’re asking him about his girlfriend, remember?” Gilliam gave her a tight-lipped smile as he straightened his posture, but leaned his back fully against the worn-out car seat. “He’s the only one of the three we haven’t questioned yet. Let’s just hope he’ll be able to give us some answers.”There was a commotion the moment they arrived back at the station. Just a few steps down the back hall to where the holding cells were, Bishop heard voices calling frantically and loudly from the end of the hall, followed with two junior officers rushing past from one side of the room to another, before another one darted into the hallway they were in, almost rushing past them until she reached a hand out to stop him by the shoulder, forcing him to look up at them.“Parsons.” She frowned at his wide eyes and pale face, then glanced back down the hallway. “Hey, Parsons, what’s going on?”The poor man almost looked like he was about to pass out but blew out a sigh of relief when he finally recognized their faces. “Oh, Detective Bishop, and Special Agent Gilliam. I was about to call you—we, uh—” He paused in between his stammers, heaving short breaths as a bead of sweat rolled down his face. “We’re not sure, ma’am. They’ve been sick all night, but it got worse this morning, and that monster thing has been demanding us to let them out—”Bishop’s frown deepened. “They?” Her eyes then blew wide in realization at what he just said, snapping her head around to meet her partner’s gaze. “The monster—”Gilliam nodded. “Jack.”“Ma’am—”She didn’t wait for Parsons to finish—she turned her heel around and immediately jogged towards the end of the hall with Gilliam following close behind her, arriving at the station’s detention section within mere seconds, and caught the sound of banging metal and a series of loud, unbelievably harsh coughs before she could even reach the cell block their three detainees had been kept in since last night.The detective froze upon hearing the coughing, and an image of Skye bent over the table in the interrogation room with her hand over her mouth flashed inside her head. It sounded worse this time, though—worse than that brief moment when the younger woman quite literally coughed out her own blood into those tissues she had to retrieve for her, the image of the deep crimson stain against the white still imprinted in the forefront of the detective’s mind.Whoever was suffocating moments ago had devolved into wheezing, forcing their entire lungs out like someone suffering from severe pneumonia—absolutely nothing like Skye’s coughing from last afternoon.“Let us out!” A deep voice shouted from the other end of the hall, from the exact same direction they were heading, followed with more banging against metal. She could hear the slight, deeper reverb echoing from those words, sending chills down her spine and almost gluing her feet into the ground until she forced herself to keep moving. “Agent Gilliam, you sonofabitch, let us out!”“Jack?” Bishop found herself calling out, then quickened her pace until she reached the end of the hall and made a sharp turn right to where the voice was coming from. “Jack, what’s—”She caught a glimpse of him before she could finish speaking—the ash-skinned cannibal with his fingers wrapped around the slightly rusted metal bars that kept him confined in the tiny, four by six-inch holding cell to the right, his eyeless gaze directed straight towards the two cells opposite to him.When she stopped to stare at him, he froze where he stood like a deer in headlights, then tilted his head and pointed his nose to the air for a brief second, as if sniffing out hers and Gilliam’s presence within the confined space, before finally turning his head toward them with furrowed eyebrows.“Detective Bishop,” he gasped out, licking his lips as he stepped over to the leftmost edge of the cell door, pressing his face against the small gap in between two of the metal bars. “Detective, please, you have to help them—you have to let us out—”“Jack.” Her frown deepened, and she shook her head in confusion. “I can’t—”Another series of loud spewing from her left drew her attention towards the other two cells, but even as she peered inside, it took her another second to fully register exactly what was going on.Skye was sitting on the ground of the cell closest to her, leaning her head and upper body against the far wall, making her almost completely hidden behind the metal half wall separating them. Her face was pale even under the dim light and the distance between them, and she was curled up in a fetal position with her legs overlapping each other, contorted at almost an uncomfortable angle, twitching and convulsing as though she was suffering a seizure—that was, until her body suddenly jerked and lurched forward, as another brutal wave of coughs overtook her, forcing her to double over and fold herself in half as her hands painfully clutched her chest and stomach, like she was choking on her own breath.A splash of blood shot straight out of her mouth and spilt over the concrete floor beneath them, except unlike last time, it didn’t stop there.“Skye—”The young woman’s heaving breaths overlapped with yet another series of harsh choking coming from the cell right beside her, the furthest one from them—inside was a young man, almost about Jack’s height and build but smaller and shorter, with chestnut brown curls on top of his head and his skin shaded in a deathlike pallor. She could see a fading scar stretching from where his mouth should be to halfway up his cheek, almost hidden behind the olive-green unbuttoned parka that he wore over his black shirt.Like his cell neighbor, he too was completely incapacitated, the entire length of his body lying on the ground with one of his arms pinned underneath his head and his legs outstretched towards the cell door. He was also shaking, writhing on the ground in the midst of a similar seizure overwhelming his entire form until he suddenly shot up to a sitting position, only for his hands to fly straight in front of him to cover his mouth, allowing only a small burst of blood to spray from the crevices in between his fingers, before his entire upper body fell limply against the same wall Skye had been leaning against—the only thing separating the two friends from each other.“Toby!”Bishop twisted her body around to see Jack now frantically rattling against the metal bars keeping him apart from the rest of them, closing his eyes and gritting his teeth as his knuckles began to turn white from the sheer amount of effort he was putting into his grip around the bars.“Wait, what’s—” The detective felt her own breath expel from her lungs as she turned towards back towards the two in the opposite cells, glancing back and forth between the two of them before she found herself rushing towards the nearest cell, legs propelling her forward until one of her own hands pressed against one of the rusty metal bars to Skye’s cell, eyes staring wide at the young woman curling on the floor in front of her. “Gilliam, what—what’s going on? What’s happening to them?”“I don’t know—”Her eyes widened even further as she snapped her head in her partner’s direction, glaring at him. “What? What do you mean, you don’t know?”“Let me help them! Let them out! Please, you have to—”“Someone call an ambulance!” Bishop threw her head over her shoulder, wide eyes casting a glance back down the hallway just as one of the other officers made a turn towards their direction. “Call an ambulance—now!”“No.”She inhaled sharply as she snapped her head back to the other cell, frowning at the eyeless man desperately gasping, leaning against his bars.“No, an ambulance isn’t gonna help them,” he seethed through his teeth, voice straining from overuse. “The pills—they need the pills—”“Pills?” She furrowed her eyebrows and shook her head. “W-What pills?”“The pills they had at the house—” His breath gave out just as one of the two in front of her began coughing again, although this time, it sounded worse—a lot worse than it was before, enough to yank her attention back forward to catch them heaving out another choke of harsh air and more blood spilling over their enclosed hands.“Skye?”“Gilliam! Gilliam, you let them out of there, you sonofabitch—”“The keys.” Gilliam turned on his heel towards the detective, a bead of sweat sliding down the side of his face as his forehead twitched, before he spun around and faced the other end of the hallway. “Someone get me the keys to their cells—”“Detective… Bishop.”Bishop forced herself to turn back to Skye the second she heard the latter’s straining voice gasping out to her, moving forward to press herself closer against the bars. The brunette had lifted her head weakly to face the detective, her sunken features twisting into a wince the moment she did so. “Skye—”“Officers!”“—we’re going to get help for you two, alright?” Bishop almost crouched down to meet the brunette’s gaze until the latter’s head fell again to spit out another few, larger droplets of blood. “Just hang in there, Skye—”“Get out.”Bishop shook her head. “What? No—”Skye clutched her collarbone as her neck lurched at an attempt to hold back another cough, throat gagging in the process. “It’s too late—” There was a strange echo in her voice that Bishop almost missed—a deeper, hoarse voice following her words that made the detective frown deeper until the younger woman started hacking out more droplets of blood onto the floor, snapping Bishop out of whatever stupor she was briefly in. “It’s too late. He’s coming.”“What—” The detective shook her head again, more frantically this time. “No, Skye, we need to get you both out of here—”“The pills.”Bishop snapped her head around at Jack’s voice. His forehead was pressed firmly against the bars, his eyelids were closed and his lips curled back, snarling toward them with his sharpened teeth bared toward them.“You need to get their pills,” he growled through clenched teeth. “They must’ve confiscated them from the house—”Beside her, Gilliam gasped. “The evidence locker.”“No, it’s too late—”Skye’s wheezing voice had grown too inaudible for anyone to hear her—only the detective crouching down in front of her could, but the latter found herself frozen in place, panic overwhelming her mind and breaking her line of thought as she struggled to even stand back up again.“Where’s the evidence locker? We need to—”Gilliam didn’t get a chance to finish his demand, because the next thing Bishop saw was a wince overtaking his face and both his hands reaching up to clutch his temples, before he plummeted straight down to the ground, forced to double over with his knees being the only one left to support his entire weight.“Gilliam!”His face contorted briefly towards her with gritted teeth before a blood-curdling scream split the air around them, but it wasn’t from him.It came from right beside her.She snapped her head around and caught sight of Skye back in a fetal position, mouth wide open as she screamed at the top of her lungs, hands clawing into her skull and almost tearing her own hair out of her scalp, but she couldn’t do anything about it, not when another ear-piercing screech stabbed through the air like a dagger—the last thing she heard before all that filled her ears was nothing but ringing.A loud, deafening, shrill ring that resounded in her ears, echoing through the depths of her skull and invading her mind unlike anything else. It felt like a needle drilling through her temple and straight into her brain, causing an unbearably agonizing pain to spike inside her head until there was nothing she could think about—nothing else she could feel but the ringing pain shrieking from inside her own head.She didn’t know when she had grounded herself to her knees, but with what little sliver of sane mind she had left inside her, she forced herself to peel her eyelids open, barely registering the entire world had tilted an entire ninety-degrees before her—barely registering the flickering lights and the black spots clouding her vision—until the static began to overwhelm her sight, clouding her mind and filling her ears, amplifying the ringing and creating yet another, more agonizing spike in her head the second it appeared, and a clog forming in her throat and blocking her windpipes, preventing her from screaming any louder than she could.With what little strength she gathered onto her arms, she propped herself up only to lurch forward and choke out the clog in her throat, before collapsing back down to the ground with her hands wrapped tight around her aching neck, and a small sliver of warmth began to trail down from one of her nostrils.Somehow, she managed to peel her eyes back open again—still trying to fight back the wave of unconsciousness threatening to overwhelm her—when whatever part of her mind that remained awake began to notice something different about what should’ve been the same blank wall she had been staring at for the past five seconds—something odd, flickering in and out of her vision as if it was flickering in and out of existence itself.It was a black shoe, she thought at first, attached to what she assumed was a leg, disguised amongst static distortions that grew worse the longer her eyes remained on whatever figure appeared before them all. But as she forced her head to tilt skyward for as much as she could to follow her gaze up the limb until she reached at what she thought was a torso, she noticed it had the figure of a man, albeit much taller than any ordinary human man could possibly be. Its towering figure almost reached the high ceiling, dressed in what she soon realized to be a black suit, complete with a dark tie, its entire image still blinking in and out of sight as she struggled to remain awake as long as feasible.And then her eyes finally trailed up to see its face, only to feel all the blood draining from her face when she saw nothing—absolutely nothing, but a plain, smooth layer of paper-white covering where she expected one’s facial features should be, save for slight indentations in either sides that almost resembled wrinkles, though she merely caught a glimpse of its entire face before another wave of noise and static engulfed her perceiving senses, forcing her to shut her eyes tight and her lips to part once more as another shriek left her throat the moment the throbbing pain returned to her skull.“No!” She couldn’t tell who was yelling—could barely even hear her own wailing in her ears—but the echo resounded at the edge of earshot, like a strange, whispering reverb creeping up from the back of her own neck. “No, no—you fucking bastard! Toby! Skye—”And then everything stopped.Bishop inhaled the deepest, longest breath her lungs could take and manage, nostrils flaring at the sudden burst of fresh, cold air rushing through her nose and down her trachea before another clog formed in her throat, forcing her to expel it out in a series of harsh, painful but dry coughs. Her face fell back down cheek-first against the concrete immediately afterward, feeling as though she just vomited her entire lungs out, as the noise and the ringing began to dissipate, becoming a dimming echo at first until suddenly, it ceased to exist at all.And yet, the throbbing in her head remained as dull flashes of aches like a pounding migraine, but she was able to muster enough strength into her arms to lift herself up so that, when she finally peeled her eyes open again, she was staring down at the concrete floor beneath her, watching in stunned silence as two drops of blood fell right below her hanging face.With a shaking breath, she threw herself back into a sitting position, head and shoulders almost slamming against the metal bars of the cell door behind her. Her chest was heaving as if she was breathing for the first time, and warmth began to brim in her eyelids and trail down her philtrum.In front of her, Gilliam was almost crawling on the floor until his arms came close to giving into themselves, and he was left with no choice but to throw himself back against one of the cell doors as well. He was pale and sweating, unlike she had ever seen him before—a small trail of red streaked down from one of his nostrils down to his lip.The room hadn’t stopped spinning, but the lights were no longer flickering—no longer giving her a sense that she was suffering from some epileptic seizure or something worse.All that filled the large space around them were their heaving breaths until she heard the now-familiar sound of banging against metal again, causing her to turn her head towards its source—Jack’s cell.“Skye?” the eyeless cannibal gasped out. Her eyes had yet to focus in on him—all she saw of him was a dark blur almost curled up at the edge of the cell door, slowly standing up before a blackness enclosed around one section of the rusting bars—a weak limb that looked like it was barely attached to his bending figure. “Toby?”A silent echo was all that responded back to him, save for their collective billowing gasps of air that seemed to resound all over the empty space of the cell block.“No.” His voice was straining into a stifled whisper, as he wrapped his other hand around the adjacent metal bar and leaned his head once more against the gap, trying and undoubtedly failing to squeeze his skull through the open crevice. “No, no, no—”He then began to lean back slightly, straightening his fragile posture until all of a sudden his arms began to tense and buckle before he started violently shaking the bars, shoving against them as his lips curled slightly back to show his gritted shark-like teeth as a low growl began to emanate from him.“Jack—” The rattling of the bars was enough to snap her entire consciousness back into her body and gather all the energy left inside her to push herself up to a standing position before propelling herself forward. She dragged herself all the way over to his cell with her arm stretched out in front of her, almost stumbling over her own feet as she made her way there. “Jack, stop.” Slipping her arm through the narrow gap, she caught him by his shoulder, holding him in a vice grip and digging her nails into the fabric of his jacket hoping it would stop him. “Jack, stop, you’re going to hurt yourself—”He almost yanked her arm with him as he tore himself away from the metal bars and was repelled a few steps back. The growl slowly began growing louder as his snarl grew wider, his eyeless gaze glowing in her direction, just slightly past her shoulder though it was more than enough to send her reeling back a few steps of her own as spiders began to crawl up her spine again.“They’re gone,” he wheezed out through gasping breaths, and despite his gravelling voice, she could see the way his jaw was trembling, even more so at the sheer force at which he was clenching his teeth together. “They’re gone again, and it’s all your fault.”Her breath caught stuck in her throat for a moment before she had to consciously choke it out herself, eyebrows furrowing as she struggled to process his words. “Jack, what are you—”“He took them!” The volume of his voice startled her, almost shoving her even further back until she heard the crack in his voice—a brief, slight glimpse of the conflicting emotions churning inside him, when his feral façade suddenly broke away, crumbling right before her eyes as his jaw loosened and his lips fell back to cover his teeth, his face stretching into a pained grimace while his stare lingered in the direction in front of him. “That bastard found them here and he took them—and now, they’re gone again, and it’s all your fault.”Bishop shook her head. “Jack, who—”Her breath gave away in one single exhale the moment she realized exactly what he was talking about, her eyes growing wide as she twisted her head around her shoulder to peer into the two cells opposite to him.She expected to see two people there, one in each cell, still lying on the ground or leaning against the wall, silent and unmoving, still trying to recover from what the hell just happened, same as she was, and as Gilliam was on the floor beside her.Instead, all she saw in the cells were the bare furniture they came with—a steel bench leaning against one side of the confined space and a steel toilet-sink unit built into the back walls—and small puddles of blood surrounded with crimson droplets in the middle of the floors of each cell.There were absolutely no signs of Toby nor Skye anywhere inside them.Staring wide-eyed at the small red pools, Bishop slowly began to approach them, still with heaving breaths as her mind struggled to process what she was seeing in front of her.“Wh—what—” She snapped her head around to find Gilliam in the midst of pulling himself up to his feet, his eyes also situated straight into the two cells opposite to him. “Gilliam—”“Where are they?” The words slipped quietly through his barely-moving lips, before his dark eyes wandered back up to the detective’s, meeting her perplexed, disbelieving gaze. “Where the hell are they, Jack—”“He took them.”The pain in Jack’s voice drew their attention back to the dark-skinned cannibal, who had turned his head down as his body fell against the side wall, leaning almost his entire weight against it before he choked out what she was absolutely sure was a bitter sob.“The Operator.” The eyeless man bowed his head down and raked his fingers through his scalp as one sob turned into two. “He took them again.”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
“Security footage’s a bust.” Bishop slammed the door behind her as she entered the interrogation room, glancing up to meet the gaze of the two people already in the room before her. “The cameras got nothing but static.”Gilliam lifted his eyebrows, but his eyes showed no surprise. “Nothing?”“There’s too much electronic interference from—” She closed her eyes and rubbed a hand over her face. “—something—from whatever that thing was that appeared in there.” She paused to sigh, shaking her head and rubbing her eyes, before turning up to stare back at Gilliam again. “Gilliam, what was that thing in there?”Her question was met with silence from both fronts. Gilliam paced over to the corner of the room, crossing his arms and holding his head down in contemplative silence, as though he hadn’t heard her. Jack gave no form of acknowledgement, either; he was bending over the table, his hollow stare fixated on the center of the spotless surface in front of him, maintaining this exact same posture since the minute he was sat down on the metal chair, with his wrists handcuffed together in the back.She was worried for him—both of them, really, but for two entirely different reasons altogether. Gilliam was about to walk away from the incident just fine until they decided to unlock Jack’s cell, and the cannibal gave them no warning before he took the agent by his collar and dragged him inside, then slammed him against the bars of one side of his holding cells. But when Bishop stepped in to tear them apart, she was surprised to see the eyeless man making no effort to resist whatsoever, resigning to his fate as she pulled his arms back behind him and handcuffed him on the spot.She studied him now, unable to offer him much more than a pitying glance, before bowing her head down when she felt a ghostly streak of warmth trailing down her nostril down to her lip.“Are you okay?”Her hand darted up to wipe the back of her hand against her philtrum before lifting her head up to meet her partner’s softened gaze, and started to chew on the inside of her cheek.“I’m fine.” The dull ringing in her ears amplified for a brief second as soon as she said it, but she tried her best not to wince on instinct, instead biting down just a little harder until the ringing would fade again. “You?”He gave her a small but firm nod, then shifted his attention back to the young man sitting at the table. The cannibal’s posture made him appear smaller than he actually was, but he still showed no signs of movement or response, nor did he have the intention to, from what it seemed.“Jack.” Gilliam’s voice was rather muted, and in a strangely neutral tone he never used in the eyeless man’s presence before. “Jack.”“Jack.” Bishop walked over to his side, then leaned the back of her hip against the table as she peered down at the eyeless man before her. “Jack, what happened in there?”“What happened in there?” he repeated. His voice was quiet as he spoke for the first time in the past half an hour, lifting his shoulders as he blew air through his nostrils. “You saw what happened in there—you were there, weren’t you?”The problem was not so much being there to see it, less than her struggle to process exactly what she witnessed in that brief moment in time—or rather, the entire seventy-two seconds that it lasted, according to the footage she and another officer tried to analyze while trying to discern what had just transpired then—trying to figure out what the hell that thing, that towering creature, did when it appeared—when the noise was at its heightened worst.“Where are they?” she asked, thinking back to what she saw on the screen a little while ago. There was a camera in that cell block pointed straight at that exact corner. They were there one minute—both of them, Toby and Skye—but only until the 11:55:28 mark, at which point the static took over. When it finally cleared up, they were already gone. “Toby and Skye. Where did they go?”“I told you,” he hissed lowly. “He took them.”“Who took them?”“The Operator.” Jack scoffed. “Isn’t it obvious? Who else did you think would’ve taken them?”“The what—”“Rogers was Neutralized.”Bishop twisted her head around to see Gilliam pacing towards the center of the room, approaching the table with his arms still folded in front of him. Neutralized?“And Martin hasn’t shown any anomalous activity since she woke up,” he quickly added, forehead furrowing as he stared intently at the eyeless man, ignoring his partner’s glare.Jack lifted his head now, a scowl forming across his lips as his hollow gaze pierced right through the agent’s skull. “That doesn’t mean they were in the clear. What did you think the pills were for?”“Gilliam.” She sighed as she pushed herself off the table and spun around to face her partner. “Gilliam, tell me what’s going on.”Despite her beckoning, the agent merely offered her a brief glance of indifference before directing his attention back to Jack. “You said he took them again. This happened before?”Jack’s face twitched, almost scrunching in disgust. “You really don’t know?” He tilted his head up at a small angle, making another light scoff. “Four years ago, Toby disappeared—Skye, a year later. You think they just got up and vanished to thin air? After what Toby did, too?” He finally stretched and leaned back against his chair, lips curling back into a mocking smirk, showing a mere glimpse of his shark-like teeth. “And now he’s found them again. Three years—three whole years we spent trying to get away from them—all for nothing.” He blinked, pressing his lips into a thin line as he held back another scoff. “Because you assholes kept them locked up here.”Bishop parted her lips but stopped herself when she noticed something dark appearing right at the edge of his hollow eyeholes—no, something leaking from the edge of his eyelids. She assumed they were tears at first—what else would be leaking from eyes, she thought. That was, until she noticed that its dark, almost pitch-black coloration, and a significant density as it slowly creeped over the precipice, sliding down to the side of his face like blood.“Jack, we only kept you here for one night—”“And their time was running out.”The cannibal launched himself forward without warning, and the detective immediately took two steps back away from him, her heart almost jumping right out of her throat at the sudden movement. Fortunately for the two humans in the room, the restraints keeping his arms bound behind the metal chair prevented the eyeless man from lunging straight for the agent, who had backed away himself, for the sake of his own safety.“They needed those pills.” The handcuffs rattled as Jack tugged harshly against them, balling his fists behind him. “They’ve been running out since that bastard fired Skye from the clinic. And as if that’s not enough, Toby’s been having relapses since Tim’s death, meaning she had to give some of her share to him to keep him sane.” His chest heaved up and down with each heavy breath he took through his open mouth, tongue curling to touch the tip of one of his canines. “And that thing is still inside her, killing her from inside out. And you know where that parasite came from—that thing was probably the one who called the tall man here in the first place!”“Jack, calm down—”“Calm down?” She flinched when he twisted around to face her, baring his sharp teeth at her like an angered feral animal. “Calm down? You expect me to calm down after witnessing the last two people I have left disappear in front of me just like that?”But when he jerked his arms again, something seemed to have snapped inside of him right then and there; he drew his next shaking breath through his clenched teeth before his arms suddenly buckled, pulling him back towards the chair like a rubber band as he fell backward, face twisting into a wince when his straining arms rolled painfully at his shoulder joints. A single drop of the black fluid from the pits where his eyes should’ve been began to slide further down the side of his face at his next heave of breath, falling silent for a short moment before he swallowed hard and, much to the others’ surprise, released a soft, feeble chuckle.“She wasn’t supposed to get caught in this mess.” His voice was trembling as he allowed his head to fall back, absent eyes pointing skyward at the ceiling above them. His lips were curled back, but his teeth were now barely peeking over his lips as he choked up another weak laugh. “First, there was West Point, and then Lyra, and then Toby—” He drew in a sharp, shuddering breath through his open mouth, then exhaled it all out in one go. “She came looking for us—she came looking for me, but she got too close. And then she got worse.” He paused, swallowing hard as his eyelids blinked. “I was there when he took her. It was my fault he found her—my fault she was taken. If she hadn’t been looking for us—”He bowed his head forward, feet shuffling on the ground as he struggled to reassume his previous posture, shaking his head pitifully presumably at himself. “I owed it to her to find her—to find them both, and bring them back home safe. But now they’re gone again. They’re gone—and I don’t know if I can find them. I don’t know if I’ll ever get them back again.”He was blaming himself, she soon realized, shoulders falling in time with the silence in the room. He blamed himself for what happened to them then, just as he was blaming himself now.“Those two years we spent tailing you across the country—” Gilliam released his bated breath as he took several steps forward to place his hand on the back of the chair nearest to him, exactly opposite to Jack’s. “You were searching for them, weren’t you?”Jack didn’t reply, not in words. He had depleted whatever reserves of energy he had left in him after the earlier ordeal, and all the agent received as a response was an audible, shuddering breath from the eyeless man as he bowed his head down, allowing himself to face the ground beneath him.The detective shook her head, sniffling when she could’ve sworn she felt something light sitting idle right beneath her nose. “But Jack, you—you found them once before, didn’t you? Can’t you just bring them back?”He craned his head towards her at the beckoning of her voice, but he wasn’t facing her, not quite. “I didn’t find them—they found me. ” He drew in another long breath before moistening his lips to speak again. “I was able to follow their trail, but the tall man—the entire Collective—they have their own way of moving around,” he continued with another shake of his head. “I can only track them to where they’ve been, not where they’re going next.”“The tall man.” Bishop furrowed her forehead. “That’s the Operator?”He froze before nodding weakly, then turned his head back forward, still keeping his hollow gaze down below him. “No one’s going to find them—not as long as they don’t want to be found,” he continued, then paused to take a breath. “I don’t know how they did it, but somehow they got out, and they found me. If they hadn’t got out, I would’ve never been able to find them. We would’ve never even been here.”“But they’ve gotten out before,” Gilliam noted, barely hiding the curiosity in his voice. “Can’t they just escape again?”“It’s not that easy,” the eyeless man sighed with a tilt of his head. “The tall man’s pissed after they slipped away from him the first time around—I doubt he’s going to let them off easy now. And besides, you saw how she was the last time they got out.”“What—” Bishop frowned, turning to find her partner. “Why? What happened to her?”When Gilliam caught her gaze, he waited another second before taking a quick breath and moistening his lips. “Martin,” he spoke slowly, carefully, angling his face to look away from her—from both of them, instead mimicking Jack to stare distantly at the table between them, “was found catatonic at the time of their containment. Was that the consequence of ‘getting out’?”Jack lifted his gaze slightly at Gilliam’s words. “The shock shut her entire mind down. I’ve tried to do something about it, but she wouldn’t wake up, not unless—” He paused abruptly, stiffening at the words caught stuck at the edge of his tongue. “Unless that thing shows itself and starts walking around in her body, but otherwise, that’s it. Who knows what it’ll do to her this time.”“Jack.” Bishop closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “This thing you keep talking about—”Jack straightened his back as he snapped his head towards her with furrowed eyebrows. “Wait—” He turned around to face Gilliam, tilting his head like a curious cat. “She really doesn’t know?”Gilliam glanced briefly at Bishop before shaking his head at Jack. “She’s New Haven PD, not Foundation personnel. The murder case was in her jurisdiction—I jumped in when I thought you and Jeff were the ones behind it. She didn’t even know you two existed until two, three days ago—didn’t even know the Operator existed until less than an hour ago.”“Oh.” Though she wasn’t looking at him, she could hear the genuine bewilderment in Jack’s voice. It was as if he had briefly forgotten all about his hopeless plight, now scoffing at her unfortunate predicament instead. “Damn. Must’ve been one hell of a week, huh, detective?”She sighed heavily and closed her eyes. You have no idea.“Word of advice, agent?” Jack quickly continued, as the previous light tone in his voice dissipated faster than it came. “Don’t drag more people into this more than you need to. You know what’ll happen if you do.”Gilliam exhaled sharply, mouth set in a hard line as he angled his face away from them. “Did you think I wanted any of this to happen? I thought I was just dealing with the two of you, and now—” He was interrupted when a series of knocks came at the door, silencing all parties the instant the noise cut through the air around them. Bishop shot a look at Gilliam who was quick to return it before looking towards the door, the former drawing in a deep breath as she took the initiative to march towards it, throwing her hand on the knob, twisting it and opening the door just a small crack in front of her.“Yeah?” She frowned as soon as she recognized the familiar face she was greeted with. “What is it, Parsons?”The officer blinked and looked up, almost flinching upon seeing her face through the doorway. “Uh, the mailman just dropped off a letter, ma’am,” he almost stammered out, before lifting a pearl-white envelope in his hand up to her view. “It was sent here, to the station.”Bishop frowned. “Who’s the recipient?”Parsons paused, swallowed hard, then casted a quick glance over her shoulder into the interrogation room. “It says here the letter is for Eyeless Jack, ma’am.”“Me?” Jack’s voice was loud and clear behind her, and unfortunately, so was the reverb in his voice that sent the officer cowering on instinct the second he began to speak. “Who’s it from?”“Uh, there’s no other name on the envelope,” Parsons murmured back, bowing his head down as he flipped the envelope over. “No return address either.”“Wait a second.”The detective whirled back around, staring intently at the eyeless man as he stiffened his back and tilted his head up, eyebrows knitting in a mix of confusion and intrigue.“I think I—” He tipped his head at a small angle again, eyelids blinking in his apparent bafflement. “Detective Bishop, could you maybe bring that letter over, please?”The officer was all too glad to relinquish his hold on the envelope as he handed it over to the detective, who thanked him for his help before closing the door on him, rotating herself back around to start walking back towards the table.“Is there anything else on the envelope?” Jack asked before she even reached him.She studied the envelope in her hand; it was flat, barely carrying much within it at all, and as the other officer had said, there was nothing to indicate who it was from. The recipient was, indeed, Eyeless Jack—not even Jack Nichols, for that matter—but the recipient address was in fact that of the New Haven Police Station, as if the sender knew he would be here at the time this letter arrived.A chill crawled down her spine as she flipped the envelope over and frowned. “Not much—there’s just this purple duct tape on the back—”“Wait, purple?” Jack almost shot up in his chair, suddenly alarmed, his frown deepening as his hollow stare became dead set on the envelope in her hand.“Yeah.” She picked the edge of the duct tape idly with a nail. “Never really seen a purple duct tape before—”“Shit—how the fuck did he find me here?”Bishop froze and blinked at Jack, before her eyes quickly tried to search for Gilliam’s. But when their gazes finally did meet, she frowned at the sight of the confusion written all across his face, same as hers, before he started glancing back and forth between Jack and the letter in her hands.“You know who the letter is from?” he asked.Jack slumped back down in his seat, lips curling back to replace the scowl on his face. “Yeah. It’s from HABIT, isn’t it?”Bishop frowned. “A habit?”“No, wait—HABIT?” All of a sudden, Gilliam began to tense as well, almost as quickly and stiffly as Jack did. “You mean, the entity HABIT?”Jack scoffed. “The only jackass in this world who’s worse than Jeff himself.”“You’ve encountered it before?”“That’s one way to put it,” the eyeless man scowled, lifting his eyebrows for a split second before turning his face to the side. “He was the one who killed Tim.”“Tim—you mean, Timothy Wright?” Bishop exchanged quick glances and frowns with Gilliam. “Skye said he died during a burglary gone wrong.”Jack immediately shook his head at her words. “No, it was HABIT. I was there when he killed him.” He paused, then shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “We all were.”“Wait, HABIT killed Wright?” Gilliam’s frown deepened. “Why? What for?”Jack shrugged weakly. “I don’t know. He just appeared at the house and started attacking us for no reason. If he had one, he sure didn’t tell us anything about it.” He lifted his shoulders then grimaced as he held them there and cracked his head to one side. “I’ve still got two ugly scars on my back and the side of my stomach to prove it to you if you don’t believe me. The rest of us got away from it all right, but Tim…” His eyelids closed shut as his head bowed down again, this time in mourning. “If his intention was to finish the job, why send me a letter? And to here, too?”“Well.” Bishop peered back down at the envelope in her hands and clicked her tongue. “There’s only one way to find out—”“Careful,” the cannibal immediately snapped, almost harsher than she could ever anticipate, forcing her attention back to him. “That bastard’s got all sorts of tricks up his sleeve—probably booby-trapped the letter or something.” His handcuffs rattled behind him before he nodded towards the envelope. “May I?”Bishop froze at his request, immediately meeting Gilliam’s eye as silence fell back between the three of them. Unfortunately for them, the eyeless man took instant note of it, sighing as he rolled his head around his neck until it landed back in their direction with a scowl on his face.“Look, I’m not going to claw your eyes out or take a bite out of your arm or anything, alright?” He inhaled slowly, reverting his head back to its previous upright position. “He sent that letter to me. He probably expects me to be the one to open it.”The two investigators shared another look until Bishop bit down on her lip and relented. She was fast to close the remaining distance between her and the table, placing the envelope right in front of the eyeless man before beginning to walk over to the back of his chair. Gilliam had yet to respond on his own, much less protest to what she was about to, which she took as his concession to her intentions; she fished a small key out her pocket, took hold of the handcuffs and inserted it into one of the holes embedded into the metal, twisting it sharply until it clicked loose and practically fell off his wrists, straight into her hands.She almost forgot about the fact that she had just removed restraints from a known actual cannibal until he drew his arms forward from around the chair and immediately rested them on the edge of the table in front of him, his hands hanging loose and free to do whatever he wanted.Bishop promptly backed away from the cannibal, never taking her eyes away from him for even a single second as she made sure to put a good distance between them before she could let her guard down again. The young man began rubbing and twisting his wrists around for a bit before one of his hands fell right on top of the envelope she had placed in front of him on the table, then suddenly froze. Several seconds later, his fingers took the envelope in his hold, exercising much greater caution this time around, holding it up to his face as though to inspect it one last time before he flipped it around and started picking at the purple duct tape in the back.The detective hadn’t realized her partner had joined her at her side, spectating with genuine intrigue of his own as the eyeless man spared no hesitation to tear the duct tape off the paper material. But when the latter suddenly stopped his motion, and instead slowly turned his head up to let his eyeless gaze stare right in their direction, Bishop almost had a heart attack on the spot until she noticed the slightest twitch in the corner of the young man’s mouth, allowing her to release her bated breath and silently curse at the cannibal sitting before them.
Jack, I swear to God—
After another moment of wait, Jack resumed his motion and hurriedly lifted the flap open, fishing out what looked like a sheet of folded paper from inside the envelope, before gently placing both items back down on the table in front of him, taking a deep, elongated breath afterward.“Okay, it didn’t explode in my face or send me to an alternate dimension, so that’s good.”Bishop wasn’t sure if she should laugh at his own apparent nervousness or be worried at what he just said, still watching with anticipation as he unfolded the piece of paper at a much calmer pace before placing it flat down on the table. He held one of his hands over it, the tips of his fingers skimming fleetingly over the surface.“No braille either, but then again, what was I supposed to expect coming from a shithead like him?” He breathed out evenly through his nose, then tilted his head at the smallest angle to look toward the agent standing beside her. “Agent Gilliam?”Though he requested only for the agent’s presence, both investigators wasted no time in rounding the table, moving to stand at a respectable distance behind the eyeless man in their shared curiosity. Bishop almost choked on her own breath as soon as her eyes landed on the letter in his hands, however; the paper had golden glitter lining the border, and the message was printed out in an unusual decorative typeface that was far from being appropriate for what she thought would’ve been a formal letter, of all things.Gilliam lifted his eyebrows when he took the letter from Jack’s hands, then offered Bishop a brief glance before clearing his throat. “’To whoever is looking over No Eyes’ shoulder,’” he read out loud in a monotonous voice, frowning almost as soon as he began. “’Read this out to him like the last bedtime story he will ever hear.’”Beside him, Jack scoffed. “Ha. Very funny.”Gilliam, on the other hand, gave no comment nor general response other than a stunned blink of his eyes. “’It has come to my attention that the stick-in-the-mud is quite displeased with your meddling of his plans, and in turn, he has bereaved you of your remaining fellow companions.’”Bishop frowned. Stick in the mud? But when she turned to Jack, she noticed his tensing jaw and his immediate silence, something she mimicked as soon as she realized the particular wording this HABIT person had used in the letter—an intentional jab at the cannibal, she figured, which now made sense considering Jack’s short, simple, and apparently apt description of him from earlier.Gilliam released an even breath before he continued, “’However, your meddling amuses me, and seeing that we all have a common adversary, I have decided to interfere with his schemes and relocate your comrades elsewhere that is questionably, but relatively safe from his reach.’”The detective narrowed her eyes, gears grinding in her head as she slowly turned her gaze back up at the white stationery in Gilliam’s hands.“’If you intend on searching for what you have lost—‘” Gilliam sighed as he rested the letter back down on the table. “’—then seek them where lost rabbits are found.’”Jack shook his head. “Where lost rabbits are found? What the hell is that supposed to mean?”“Wait, Jack—” Bishop held her breath as she took a step forward and nodded towards the letter. “’Relocate your comrades’? That’s—he’s talking about Toby and Skye, right?”“He’s saying the Operator doesn’t have them,” Gilliam confirmed with a nod of his own. “HABIT somehow interrupted the kidnapping or something, and now he has them with him.”“That’s not any better than if the Operator has them,” Jack scoffed again, craning his head toward them with a grimace across his face. “He killed Tim right in front of us—who knows what he’s going to do to them if he does have them. And besides—” He shrunk in his chair, running his now-free hand through his hair and forehead. “He could be lying for all we know. He could be trying to lure me into some trap or something. He’s not above doing things like that, you know.”“Well, is there any way to verify the letter?” Bishop turned her head toward the door. “We can track down the mailman who dropped it off—have the post office trace it back to where it was sent from—”“Not sure if that would work,” Gilliam interjected with a shake of his head. “From what we—the Foundation knows about him, HABIT is almost about the same caliber as the Operator.”“Which means he probably could’ve just made the letter appear right in front of me if he wanted to,” Jack chimed in. “But—” He paused, drawing in a deep breath and bending forward to rest his elbow on the table, then burying the lower part of his face into his hand. “I know someone who might be able to tell if he’s telling the truth or not.”“You do?” The detective took another step forward, peering down at the eyeless man. “Go, then. I mean, it’s not like you have much of a choice—if we can confirm that this HABIT person has them, then—”“It’s not that easy, detective.” He sighed, sliding his face down his palm and allowing it to cover his missing eyes and forehead. “I mean, of course, I want to go look for them, but I—” He then lifted his head from his hand, then snapped his face toward Gilliam. “Do I even get a chance to look for them? I mean, even without them, our deal was...”He trailed off, lips still parted but unable to utter the words hanging at the tip of his tongue. Right, the detective thought to herself, shoulders falling as she bit down on her lip as soon as she recalled the deal he made with the agent just last afternoon. Gilliam himself came to the same realization at the same time she did, tilting his head back as he made a deep intake of breath, shoving his hands into his trousers’ pockets before he leered down at Jack, deep in contemplation.“Well,” he began, casting a quick glance at Bishop, then at the letter lying idle on the table. “My orders were to contain all four of you, including Wright. I could bring you in and decide to deal with Rogers and Martin tomorrow—except for the fact that we haven’t been able to locate and isolate any other—” He cleared his throat. “—subjects undergoing the same circumstances as the three of them—the three in question being the two of them plus Wright.” Jack flinched in his seat. “You mean, the tall man’s stalking targets?”Gilliam made a near-imperceptible nod, gazing down at the floor as he stood stiffly before them. “HABIT appears to be the one responsible for Wright’s death, and now, he’s holding the other two hostage. I could mobilize a task force to attempt to retrieve them, but he did send this letter to you—not us, but you, which means he’ll be expecting you.”Jack leaned back against the chair, angling his head to face the agent directly. “So, is this your way of saying that—” “I will have to report this to my superiors,” Gilliam hastily reminded, glancing back and forth between the other two before tilting his head at the smallest angle once he realized he was once again at the receiving end of the detective’s glare. “However, they are not expecting any reports from me until after the case is over, so—” “And it isn’t?” Jack asked, almost turning his head fully towards Bishop before stopping midway. “Right, you still need to find the person who actually did it, don’t you?”Before she could respond, however, Gilliam cleared his throat, forcing their attention back towards him. “About that contact of yours,” he started, nodding at Jack. “The one you said could confirm if HABIT has them or not—”“He can’t tell if HABIT has them,” Jack quickly said, his tone grim and his voice low and even as he spoke, “but he can corroborate on whether the Operator has them with him instead. It’s not the same thing, but—”“It works.” Bishop shrugged. “I mean, it’s something isn’t it?”Jack nodded slowly, pressing his lips to a thin line. “I’ll need Skye’s cell phone. Technically, it’s her contact, not mine, so the number should be in there.”“I’ll go and get it—it should be in the evidence locker, right?”Bishop almost scoffed at Gilliam’s apparent initiative—despite his apparent ‘orders’, she thought, he didn’t hesitate to speak up and volunteer himself, making haste for the door without even another word or protest against the matter. Then again, it didn’t seem like Gilliam himself had much of an option to go about this—not that she understood everything the two were saying, but she was absorbing it all in one step at a time, and she could tell how dire the situation was from observing their expressions alone.Maybe Gilliam was right. Maybe she should’ve just stayed in bed today—taken the day off or something. Then again, she wouldn’t be able to forgive herself for sitting still and idle whilst Skye and Toby were somewhere out there, potentially in grave danger, so maybe it was indeed better this way. As he opened the door, however, Gilliam abruptly stopped, stood completely still, then twisted his head around to glare at Jack. “Please,” he said, “don’t maul my partner to death before I come back.”The cannibal furrowed his forehead, shrugging before glaring emptily back at the agent. “I have nothing against the nice detective. You, on the other hand—”“Alright, yeah, I get it.” Gilliam sighed, rolling his eyes. “Just don’t do anything stupid while I’m gone.” Bishop couldn’t help but smile as he started mumbling under his breath, spinning back around without another audible word as he exited the room, closing the door shut behind him.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
“How long have you known them?”The detective took a seat in the vacant chair opposite to the cannibal and relaxed her shoulders as she stared across the table at him. It took her a moment to realize she wasn’t afraid of him—she looked right at him, studied his expression like she would any ordinary witness. No shiver running down her spine, no goosebumps lining her arms. All she read from his expression, however, was grief—grief from losing two people he cared about, which was only a natural human reaction, one she recognized all too well.And even if he wanted to devour her insides like a rabid animal, he certainly did a good job of not showing it—his hands remained unrestrained since Gilliam left the room, but he sat there idle for the past two, five minutes, and still counting. His eyeless gaze was fixed on the open letter discarded to his side, frozen in time.“Jack?”He blinked, then looked up, but not at her. “Hmm?”“Skye and Toby.” She blew a slow breath through her lips. “How long have the three of you known each other?”“Oh.” His jaw shifted. “Skye and I went to the same school. We were two years apart, but I tutored her after school sometimes. She and Toby knew each other for longer than that. They were neighbors. She was friends with his sister, too.”“Lyra.” She recalled Gilliam talking about her in the car that morning, right before they got back to the chaos in the holding cells. “She died a while ago, didn’t she?”He nodded once. “Car accident, yeah. She was a good person and a good friend. A great sister, too, from what I’ve heard.” His voice was empty, hollow as the pits between his temples where his eyes should be. “I didn’t know her that well, but I knew how close they were, all three of them. I didn’t know about the accident until—” He shook his head. “I couldn’t be there for it. For them, I mean, when it happened. I was already at West Point. I was already a—”His voice cracked and he stopped himself, leaving his words hanging on the precipice. She knew what he was about to say. She knew he had every right to say it because it was true. She wouldn’t believe it, though, if he had said it. No monster would admit themselves a monster, especially when she knew he was trying to prove himself as anything but one.Jack took a single shaking breath, inhaling and exhaling through his mouth. “I wasn’t there for it, but she was,” he murmured lowly. “Skye, I mean. Then it was all downhill from there. She was there, too, when Toby was taken. I think that was how she became a target. Another puppet for the Tall Man to play with.”“Wait, is that it?” Bishop straightened her posture and stared hard at the eyeless cannibal. “Exposure? Is that how people become his targets?”Jack furrowed his forehead. “Honestly, I’m not sure.” Then he paused, turning only slightly toward her. “If you’re worried he’ll come after you, don’t. If that were the case, Agent Gilliam wouldn’t be here right now, considering what he does for a living.” He sighed and closed his eyes. “He was only here for them. And if they weren’t here, he would’ve gone after me first.” Scoffing under his breath, he added, “The Tall Man hates my existence, probably because of what I am, but also for keeping two of his favorite toys away from him. Trust me, his opinion of me is much, much lower than anything he has of you. He would rather get rid of me first than worry about getting another puppet to play with.”Bishop nodded, though unsure if his words were supposed to be reassuring or otherwise. “Speaking of which,” she said, nodding again but this time toward him. “Noticed you came out of that all right. Well, compared to the rest of us, anyway.” She reached up and swiped the back of her hand under her nose. “Is that why he hates you? Some sort of weird contradictory, supernatural thing between the two of you?”Jack shrugged. “Maybe. I have many questions, and I know I wasn’t going to get answers to most of them. Not easily, anyway. But I know the Tall Man doesn’t like me, and I don’t like him either, and I knew that before I even knew what he did to them. To Skye and Toby, I mean.” He scrunched his nose and sniffled. “His smell, for example. It’s like sticking your nose right onto a piece of metal that’s been left outside for about a decade or so. No one else can smell it but me. I figured that’s part of it, but who knows.” He paused, then scoffed. “His puppets smell like that, too, you know. The ones he created, especially the ones who still work for him.”“Wait, Skye—” Bishop stared hard at the eyeless man, frowning. “You said you didn’t stick around the house too long because of the smell. You said it was something inside her.”He suddenly froze at her words, hollow gaze resting on his hands hidden below the table. She could see his eyelids fluttering as he blew another breath through his lips. “Is this another round of interrogation, detective? Is this what I signed up for when I agreed to be left alone here with you?”His voice didn’t hold much strength, however, nor did his smile. A façade, she thought, just like when she first met him, right outside this very building less than twenty-four hours ago. She wondered briefly about the bullet wound, the one he got from before she arrived at the scene. When she asked about it last night, he only asked for a pair of clean tweezers, and for her to look away while Gilliam remained keeping watch. She heard a small grunt behind her and when he prompted her to turn back around, she saw him rolling his previously-wounded shoulder at its joint, as he set the tweezers down on the table, with a misshapen bullet pinched in between, dripping with a black, viscous substance.Impervious, she thought. Physically, he was more terrifying than any man she ever confronted before. Take away the two pillars of his life, however, and he was nothing but a scared, broken boy.“Here’s the thing.” He blew out another slow, long breath as he leaned back against the chair, head turning up to stare blankly at the ceiling. “The Operator isn’t from this world. No one knows where he comes from, but we know he can’t interact with this world, at least not physically. However, he can influence the minds of people—infect them like a virus, breaking them from inside out.” He licked his lips and the corner of his mouth twitched. “Then, he takes control of them, brainwashes them, bends them to his will. He turns them into his mindless puppets—proxies that can serve as an in-between so he could further spread his influence over this world.”She straightened her back as soon as she felt something crawling down her spine. The air-conditioner wasn’t on and it wasn’t even remotely cold inside the enclosed room. Her hand felt almost compelled to swipe under her nose, right across her philtrum again. She could almost hear a faint ringing echoing in the distance, almost as if it came from the back of her head.She closed her eyes shut, trying to will the echo away.“Detective?” There was no humor in his voice, just grave concern.“Yeah.” He wasn’t joking then. All of this sure felt like one long nightmare, though. “Sorry, what were you saying?”“Toby,” Jack murmured quietly. When she opened her eyes to look at him again, his jaw shifted and tensed, and his head was angled downward at his lap. “He became one of the Tall Man’s lackeys. Did some of the dirty work for him.” He paused, shaking his head. “The kid I knew could never hurt a soul, ever. But I met him once, when the Tall Man was in his head.” He breathed out a tired scoff. “Maybe he knew his master didn’t like me very much, or maybe he thought I was trying to pick a fight with him. It turned ugly real quick—too quick, even after I stopped holding back from him.”Holding back. The cannibal sitting before her took a bullet wound to the shoulder and quite literally shrugged it off like it was nothing at all. Toby was scrawnier than Jack—shorter, almost malnourished even. Both of them were evidently still alive, thankfully—well, Toby was yet to be determined, but she sure hoped he was. And when she remembered the hideous scar on the side of the boy’s face, she realized maybe she should have known better.His eyelids fluttered again, and his breath was shaking. He tried clearing his throat before she took note of it but was too late. She couldn’t resist bowing her head down a little, even when she knew he couldn’t see it.“But Toby was still at the bottom of the chain. A runt in the pack.” Jack cleared his throat again, restoring some clarity to his voice. “Some of them he created himself, so they have powers like he does. Messing with space and time, messing with people’s heads, all the works. But they’re still his puppets, deprived of free will. They’re also formless, like ghosts. They can possess people, here in our world—people like you and Gilliam. And when they do, they take over the person’s mind, kind of like a parasite. They infect their host until all that’s left is a mindless husk and the parasite that infected it.”A parasite. Invisible, formless bile rose up the detective’s throat. He can’t mean—He blew a soft, feeble breath from his lips. His voice was a small murmur, almost a distant echo. “She doesn’t deserve this. But who knows how many there are out there. All the unlucky ones.”The detective breathed slowly, trying to ignore the invisible spiders crawling up the length of her spine. “And that parasite,” she said. “Is it still inside her? I mean—” She shook her head. “The Skye I was talking to yesterday. Was she—”“Yes, and no,” Jack quietly said as he readjusted his posture in his chair. “She told me once it’s like driving a car. When the Tall Man was in control, he put that thing behind the wheel, and shoved her in the trunk of the car. But after they escaped, she woke up one day and she was in the driver’s seat again. And I guess it’s been like that since. It’s still there, but she said it’s like that thing is in the third row now. It rarely ever comes out these days.”“Have you met it?” the detective asked. “The parasite thing?”“Once.” He drew in a long breath then sighed. “It was after they escaped. I found them at the hospital. Toby was there, she was lying on the bed. He told me what the doctors told him, that she was catatonic, almost brain-dead. He insisted it wasn’t true, because she was the one who dragged them both there.” He scoffed as he turned his head to the side, blinking slowly. “I thought I should at least check, see if what the doctors said was true. But when I got close to her, she woke up. All of a sudden, with no warning whatsoever. She shot right out of the bed, snapped her head towards me and before I realized what was happening, my back was to the wall and her hands were around my neck.”“She tried to choke you?”“It wanted to kill me,” he clarified. “Again, maybe it’s a proxy thing, since Toby’s tried to do it before. But then I called her name—Skye’s name, because I thought it was her—and then she stopped.” He paused, sucking in his bottom lip. “I thought maybe she was delirious. Maybe the Tall Man did something to her mind. And then she called my name—it did, and it told me that she missed me.” He took a sharp intake of breath and scoffed lightly through his lips. “It said to me, Skyler missed me, and that she thought I was dead. And then it asked me to promise to protect her—Skye—and Toby, and myself, at all costs.” He shook his head only once. “And that was it. She passed out. I almost didn’t catch her. I haven’t spoken to it since.”Bishop scrunched her forehead, still trying to digest the cannibal’s words. He called it a parasite, and yet, its only request from him was that they took care of themselves and protected each other. There must be something else to it, she thought. Some ulterior motive, some sinister plan being put into motion. She learned to be skeptical from the career she chose. And yet the woman looked across the table now, at the serial killer without eyes, with nothing but sympathy in hers, and thought that if the alleged parasite’s intentions were true, it would protect both her host and her friend, wherever they might be.She tried to find solace in that thought. The unlucky ones, Jack had said.God, what an awful nightmare.“I was there,” Jack began again, quieter this time. She wasn’t even sure if he was talking to her, or out loud to himself. “When the Operator took her. I was there. Even then, I knew she wasn’t herself anymore. She was barely even there anymore. She didn’t respond when I called her name.” A long pause. “I’ve heard about others like her before. Word is, they’re usually gone within months. Maybe a year if they’re lucky, or not, because that could mean that the Tall Man is toying with them, making it worse than it already is. I don’t even know how much time she has left.”Bishop pressed her lips together as she leaned forward against the table, staring long and hard at the young man sitting across from her. “But she’s still there, Jack.” The words flew out of her lips almost automatically and without prompt, only from the despondent tone in his voice and the distant look in his gaze. It was a little rehearsed—she heard the same tone and saw the same look from many others before him, usually family members and friends and lovers in despair after something terrible occurred to someone close to them. The comforting tone in her voice came out as naturally as the words did, but at the same time, she found herself pausing, gears turning in her head as she tried to find the right words to say. This was still an unusual circumstance, after all. Never in a million years she thought she would ever be in this position, but here she was. “You said so yourself. She still has the wheel. From what I’ve seen of her, if that really is the true her, I doubt she’s letting that wheel go any time soon.”“But what if it was just the entity talking?” His jaw tensed. “What if she’s been gone this whole time and I didn’t know? What if it’s too late for her—”“You would know.” She leaned even further forward, folding her hands firmly flat on the table in front of her. “Of all the people in the world, Jack, you would be the one to know if that’s true. I don’t know what she was like before the Operator took her, and neither does Gilliam. Only you would know.” She blinked carefully, watching as he turned his head ever so slightly toward her. “Do you think she’s gone?”He didn’t get a chance to answer her; she immediately leaned back against the chair when she heard a click coming from behind her, and twisted her head around to face the door when it opened. Gilliam entered without much fanfare, and before he turned around to close the door behind him, he tossed a small, clear plastic bag through the air and across the room, straight in Jack’s direction. It caught the eyeless man off-guard when the object landed right on top of his lap, almost jumping out of his seat as he now cradled it in his open palms with raised eyebrows and blinking eyelids, empty gaze glancing quickly around the room like an alarmed meerkat.“There it is,” the agent huffed, somewhat out of breath, nodding towards the evidence bag as Jack carefully began fumbling with it. “Martin’s cell phone. Had a bit of trouble trying to find where the other officers stashed the evidence box.”“Oh.” Jack frowned, fingers beginning to tear the seal off the evidence bag. “Thank you.” Once opened, he fished a small, off-white object from inside and discarded the bag to the side, right beside where he left the letter and the envelope. He took time to orient the phone correctly, fumbling briefly with the buttons.The detective blinked in genuine surprise, however, when the eyeless man froze then reached across the table, handing the mobile device over to her instead. “What?”“You send the text,” he said, then tilted his head briefly toward the agent. “I don’t trust him to do it.”“Jack—”“We don’t have time.” He waved it a little, emphasizing his insistence. “Just take it. I’ll guide you through it.”She turned around automatically toward Gilliam, looking for his confirmation. Instead, the agent merely offered her a brief nod and a shrug before he turned around, crossing his arms in front of him as he began to slowly pace towards the next corner of the room in distinct nonchalance. With a heavy sigh, she faced Jack again and reluctantly took the phone from his hold, and tried to turn it on.It was an iPhone, but no doubt an older model. The screen was cracked and the formerly clear casing was tinted yellow. It took about half a minute after she pressed the power button for the distinct logo to appear on the screen, and she heard Gilliam’s soft footsteps stopping when he made the full trek across the width of the room behind her, before the screen finally brightened.She drew in a sharp breath and held it for a few seconds. Four faces greeted her from the lock-screen, and it didn’t take her long to recognize at least three of them. Skye was standing to the farthest left; she looked younger, her posture much more relaxed than the detective had ever seen before. She was smiling brightly, dressed in a light blue plaid shirt, white top and pale jeans. Her head was almost leaning against the shoulder of the tall young man standing next to her—Jack, the detective soon recognized, but not from the man sitting across from her, but rather the picture she saw in his case file. His hair was a little lighter than it was now, cast in the natural glow of sunlight, and against the lighter skin tone. His eyes were a brilliant blue and like Skye, he too was smiling wide, joyful and genuine, full of hope and youth and vigor. He was wearing a blue gown and flat-top cap, with a yellow sash draped around his shoulders—his graduation, Bishop realized, after she noticed a roll of paper clasped in between his hands.Dear god, she almost whispered under her breath. How long ago was this?Next down the line was Toby, standing shorter and skinnier than the older boy beside him, with disheveled mousy brown hair and pale, almost sickly skin, not too different than how he was now. His hands were shoved inside the pockets of the large blue hooded jacket that hid his smaller, slouching frame, lips contorted to form a strange mix of a smile and a scowl typical of teenagers of his age in this photo. His dark eyes darted to the right edge, almost glaring exasperatedly at the figure leaning against him. The detective didn’t recognize the face standing at the right edge of the photo, but felt it was familiar somehow—oval shape and a slightly pointed jaw, with straight blonde hair tied to a high ponytail in the back of her head and sideswept bangs covering her forehead. Her arm was locked around Toby’s and she was grinning wider than the others, a clear, stark difference compared to the other three in their current state, as the detective last saw them.Lyra Rogers. A kind soul taken too quick, according to what the detective heard of the girl thus far. The first of the four to meet an unfortunate fate, and it was all downhill from there.“The password is 430422.”She looked up. “Hm?”“The password,” Jack repeated, gaze locked onto an empty space on the table. For a brief second, the image of the younger Jack was almost superimposed on the sight of him now. His face had aged a little, as it should. If it weren’t for the inhuman abnormalities, she would’ve barely noticed the difference between the two versions at all. “It’s her grandfather’s birthdate,” he added quietly, casting his gaze off to the side.Did he know about the lock-screen? He might have, she thought. He must have. It would make sense why he didn’t want Gilliam to do it, and trusted the detective with the task instead.With a small nod, Bishop quickly unlocked the phone with no difficulty at all. Even the home-screen was depressing, bearing nothing more than the barest of essentials.“This contact of yours.” Bishop quickly cast a glance over her shoulder at Gilliam when he spoke. “It does exist, yes?”“Her contact,” Jack corrected before clearing his throat. “And yes, he does. Uh, go to Messages. Scroll down until you find the conversation labelled ‘F’.”“Eff?” Bishop frowned, but did as she was told anyway. “Like the letter?”“Yeah, the letter. Actually, I don’t know if she saved his number. You might have to scroll down a bit. It’s been a while since they’ve talked. Last time she complained about getting too many spam texts. If you can’t find it, you might need to find a text from an unknown number or something. The message should be signed with the letter ‘F’ at the end.”“Wait, F?” Bishop glanced up briefly at Gilliam’s tone, but quickly turned his head back down to focus on her task. “Your contact is Firebrand?”“I figured you knew him, but yeah, that’s the one.”“Firebrand? The one associated with Noah Maxwell? That Firebrand?”“I didn’t know there were multiple of them.”Bishop frowned, looking up between the two men after opening the message thread Jack asked her to find. “You sound very alarmed.”“Which he shouldn’t be, considering who Firebrand is,” Jack quietly retorted back, turning his head between the two investigators. “Remember what I said about the parasite inside Skye’s body?”“Parasite? Wait.” Gilliam inhaled sharply, then glared harshly at the cannibal. “You told her about the proxies?”“She asked,” Jack said with a shrug. “It’s not like knowing about them makes you his target.”“Knowledge leads to curiosity.” Gilliam tensed his jaw, gaze unwavering from the younger man. “Curiosity leads to compulsion, and you know what happens after that.”“All you people are of sane mind and good rationale,” Jack sighed, scowling under his breath. “Not a bunch of horny teenagers dumb enough to look up stupid scary urban legend online only because their friends from school dared them to. And besides, even if it happens, it’s not like you Foundation people can’t do anything about it, right?”Bishop held her breath. Again, she wasn’t sure if this was Jack’s attempt at reassurance, but at least he sounded genuine and devoid of ill will, for as far as she could tell.Jack turned back to the detective, the direction of his gaze only slightly off as usual. “Anyway, as I was saying, Firebrand is one of those parasites—or was, I don’t really know.”“You mean.” Bishop scoffed, shaking her head. “He’s one of the Operator’s proxies?”“Yes, and no,” Gilliam muttered, sighing exasperatedly as he continued his slow trek around the room. “We have reason to believe he defected from the Operator. We don’t know how or why, but like us, he does not like the Operator, and the Operator doesn’t like him. And you know what they say, ‘the enemy of my enemy…’”Bishop slowly nodded, eyes casting downwards at the mobile device in her hand. “So, we’re asking him for help? He knows where Skye and Toby are?”“Depends on if HABIT’s telling the truth,” Jack replied, then nodded at the phone. “Tell him, uh, tell him that they’ve been compromised. HABIT is interfering, but I need to confirm their location before I can go after them.”With a small frown on her face, Bishop typed out his exact words, but stopped short from sending the message right away. “He knows who you’re talking about?” she asked.“Oh, yeah,” Jack said with a nod. “He should. He and HABIT’s crossed paths before. Oh, and sign my name at the bottom of the message. Don’t think he’ll appreciate a text message coming from Skye’s phone under a stranger’s name.”Again, she did as she was told, adding the young man’s name at the end of the text before hitting ‘Send’ with a brief moment of hesitation. “So, is that it?” she queried, looking up as she placed the phone back down flat on the table between them. “We sit back and wait until this Firebrand person-entity-thing responds?”“I do,” Jack quickly said, and furrowed his eyebrows as he looked towards her. “Don’t you have a case to solve, detective?”Right. The case. With all this commotion so early in the day, before it was even time for her lunch break, it was hard not to get sidetracked. “We were planning on questioning Toby once we got back,” she said, exchanging a quick glance at her partner still marching leisurely behind her. “Seems those plans have to be put on hold.”“Toby?” The eyeless man frowned. “He has an alibi.”“We know.”“So, what do you need Toby for?”“We needed to ask him a few questions.” Gilliam stopped beside the detective and looked across the table at their former suspect. “About Clockwork.”Jack froze at the mention of the name, scrunching his forehead before slowly leaning back against his chair. “Clock?” He crossed his arms. “You think Clock did the murders?”“Is it possible?” the detective asked.“She’s not the first name I would think of,” Jack admitted, bowing his head down, deep in thought. “I mean, from what you’ve told me so far, your killer seems pretty methodical, trying to copy off me and Jeff like that. Clock’s anything but methodical.” He scoffed. “Why do you think it’s her?”Gilliam shifted his weight from one foot to another and pushed his hands into the pockets of his trousers. “The last crime scene was similar to Clockwork’s. We think she may be framed as you were, but we need to ask her a few questions before jumping to conclusions.”“The last crime scene?” The cannibal deepened his frown. “Wait, there’s more?”A short pause passed between them as the agent and the detective exchanged another glance. “Another murder happened last night,” Bishop finally said, breathing out slowly and carefully. “Two bodies. Mother and son. They were reported in this morning.”“Jesus Christ.” Jack scoffed again, turning his head to the side. She couldn’t tell if it was in surprise or in disbelief, but he certainly did not seem pleased. “I mean, I haven’t seen her in a while. Not since Tim died, actually.” He shook his head. “Bet she won’t be happy if she knows Toby’s gone, though. Not that I care what she thinks.”“Do you have any way to contact her?” Gilliam asked. “Aren’t the two of you part of the same group?”The eyeless man didn’t hesitate to turn and glare at the agent, lips curling back to form a slight scowl. “That is a very loose term to describe us, and you know that,” he said with caution, then turned his gaze away. “I don’t think even Toby has her number. I don’t even know if she has a phone. I don’t even know if they’re still in speaking terms, considering what happened—”He didn’t have a chance to finish speaking when the lights suddenly started blinking—once, twice, like the flicker of a firefly, until the bulb gave out without struggle, and the entire room was plunged into darkness.Everything was still. The room suddenly felt suffocating; the only source of light left in the room was through the small rectangular window on the steel door, but even so, barely any light at all leaked from the hallway outside into the enclosed space they were all now trapped in at this current moment. There was no sound, no voices, no hum of any machinery vibrating through the walls, nothing. The silence didn’t last long, however; a mere second into the darkness, noise erupted from somewhere down the hall, likely the squad room, an immediate sign that the interrogation room was not the only one being affected in whatever predicament this was.“Uh oh.” Bishop could almost feel her heart and breath quicken as she looked over her shoulder, at where Gilliam was standing before the lights went out. “You don’t think this is—”“No.” His voice was firm, definitive but assuring. “It’s usually flickering lights, not a full-on blackout. Must be a power outage.”At the echoing chorus of noise from the other room, Bishop forced herself to nod. “I mean, it sounds like it affected the entire building. The backup generator should kick in at any moment then.”“No.” She heard a sharp intake of breath accompanying Jack’s murmuring voice coming from across the room. “No, something’s wrong.”“What? What do you mean, something’s—”“Hey, hey, wait, you can’t be in here—”Bishop immediately fell silent as soon as she heard the exclamation coming from outside the room, even further down the hall. She immediately stood up from her chair, the metal groaning softly when it scraped against the concrete floor, when the sound was immediately cut off by the loud, unmistakable echo of a gunshot coming from the hallways outside.The detective drew her gun from her holster on both impulse and instinct, and a similar clicking and shuffling told her Gilliam had done exactly the same.“Do you know anything about this?” the agent murmured lowly over his shoulder.“Why would I?”In the faintest of luminescence coming from outside the door, Bishop could see Gilliam’s outline turning briefly towards her. “Stay with him.”“Go.”Gilliam carefully crossed the short distance between where he stood and the door, then placed his hand on the knob and twisted it, making no other sound other than a near-inaudible click that almost sounded deafening in the still room, though still nowhere as loud as the earlier gunshot. He pulled the door open just wide enough for him to slip through and out to the hallway, before quickly but quietly closing the door behind him as he left, returning the room back to its previous darkened state.“Someone’s here.”Bishop drew in a deep, slow breath and tightened the grip on her weapon. “One of your friends?”“The Operator just took the only friends I have.”Another gunshot echo silenced them. It was slightly louder than the first, and was quickly followed by another soft groan of metal against concrete coming from inside the room.“Whoever it is,” the detective uttered quietly, in between her slowing breaths, “it seems they have a penchant for making an entrance here like you did.”Except the gunshots were audible to those inside the enclosed interrogation room, meaning that unlike the cannibal’s theatrics from the day before, whoever this intruder was, was already inside the police station.“Oh, c’mon. That’s hardly—”Another gunshot, and this time, it was accompanied by a muffled scream.“Shit.”A soft thump came from somewhere behind her. “Detective, step away from the door.”“What—”Something else thumped. This time, it came from the door, or more accurately, something thrown against, and then scratched at the door, as faint shadows moved and skittered across the narrow slit underneath the opening. The detective only caught a glimpse of a patch of dark red when another thump came, and a low, feral growl emanated from right outside the door.She swallowed hard and tried to still her shaking hand. When she took a step back, a sharp, resounding bark vibrated through the door, and she forced her hand to raise the gun, pointing it straight at the doorway.The growling continued for another two solid seconds before it stopped, and everything was silent again.She couldn’t even hear her own breath, nor her heart pounding against her chest. The next thing she could hear was the doorknob squeaking as it twisted, the click of the locking mechanism when it was undone, and the creaking of the hinges as the door slowly flew open.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
A pale hand reached around the doorframe and she pulled the trigger.Something collided against the open door, slamming it hard against the wall behind it, almost as loud as the echo of the gunshot. As soon as she turned the barrel at it, a dark blur moved in between them and slammed itself against the wall in the hall outside, before moving back into the darkened room again and crashing against the wall right beside the door, almost two steps away from where the detective stood, stunned.Jack took a step back to separate himself from the blur, now standing in the dim light flooding in from the hallway into the enclosed room. She could hear the low growl reverberating from his throat as he stared down at something crouching against the wall—something almost brilliantly white that stuck out like a sore thumb in the darkness of the room.She barely registered Jack calling for her to stand back when the white figure launched itself off the wall and towards the latter, dissolving the two back into another incoherent blur. The next thing she knew, a flash of white hurtled across the table and crashed hard against the chair on the other side, collapsing once again into an unmoving chalk-white lump half-entangled with the bent metal chair.“Get out, detective!” His voice was rasping in between his heaving breaths, and a shiver crawled down her spine. “Now!”She saw a brief glimpse of something moving in front of her and snapped her head back just in time to see the white figure flung itself straight for her; she felt the slight recoil from her gun when she pulled the trigger before her knees collapsed, and the next thing she knew, air rushed past above her skull, and something struck the wall behind her, missing her by only a mere quarter of an inch as little chipped flakes of concrete started falling onto her hair. Within the same breath, a dark blur rushed over and slammed the white figure to the wall beside them, then threw it over back to the chair and across to the other side of the room. Jack’s hand reached up and snatched something above her head before appearing over the intruder in the blink of an eye, and she caught the glint of a silver blade too late before he drove the weapon straight into the shoulder of their pinned-down assailant.She clamped her hand around the grip of her gun and raised it, pointing the end of barrel straight at the cannibal.A slow, rasping cackle echoed from across the room.“Oh, I’ve missed you, too, old friend. It really has been too long.”She could barely hear the grating speech over the pounding of her own heart against her ears, but a cold shiver ran down her spine the moment it spoke. Keeping her gun aimed in their direction, the detective slowly got back up to her feet, and with shaking legs, limped her way halfway across the room. Her eyes caught a glimpse of the pinhole-pupiled eyes and the wide, red-lipped grin stretching painfully across a bleached face staring up at the eyeless cannibal towering over him, and her grip started to shake.She almost jumped when whiteness suddenly blinded her vision, for at least two seconds before she forced herself to blink and the glare dimmed gradually into a comfortable amount of brightness illuminating the room they were in. The back-up generator shouldn’t have taken this long, she thought.A low snarl rose from the cannibal’s chest as he glowered down at the intruder, pressing a single boot down on the latter’s chest. “You shouldn’t have come here,” he breathed out through seething teeth.A rasping growl appeared from the doorway and the detective spun back around to face it. A dog was her initial thought—a Siberian husky with dark grey fur covering most of its body, and large white patches over its entire face, ears and abdominal area, except she could’ve sworn it was tinted with a light shade of pink even in the dim lighting. It wasn’t any ordinary dog, though; she was sure no ordinary dog would have the wide, toothed, almost human-like sinister grin stretched underneath the muzzle, like the dog standing in the open doorway, staring at her now.And when its eyes found her, the growl grew louder and it stretched its lips even further, when a short, sharp whistle rang through the room, immediately turning the mutt’s attention to where Jack stood, hovering above his former friend.“Heel, boy,” he called out to the dog, and much to her surprise, it stopped growling, briefly returning its mouth back to normal before it obediently trotted across the room, avoiding direction Bishop was in, and over to the cannibal’s side. The creature then plopped down beside his heel, beside the ever-grinning, paper-white face whose scoff quickly turned into a painful grimace.“Smile always did like you more than me.” A few droplets of blood sputtered out from the intruder’s mouth, onto the white collar of his ivory clothes. “Must be something about you feral freaks. You know, between one mutt and another.”“Shut up,” Jack growled back at the stranger, then pressed his boot harder against the latter’s chest. “The fuck are you doing here, Jeff?”Jeff the Killer tilted his head to the side, the spine-chilling grin returning to his face as he stared back at his former ally. “What am I doing here? What do you think I was doing here? I’m rescuing your sorry ass, you sonofabitch, and this is how you repay me?”“Rescue me?” The cannibal scoffed. “The fuck do you think I am? Some damsel-in-distress?”Jeff grinned even wider, though the detective could’ve sworn there was a slight twitch in his eye in spite of him. “Well, I thought I’d do my old buddy a favor and spring you out before shit goes to worse like the first time around.”Jack scoffed again. “Yeah? And where were you that first time, huh? Why now? Why not then? Too much of a coward to go up against the big guns?”“Hey, look, about that—” Jeff closed his eyes briefly and clicked his tongue. “I didn’t know you got caught until after you got caught, okay? You know, those walls are pretty thick, and they’ve got some tough security in there. It would’ve been, like, trying to bust you out of some maximum-security prison, or worse, the Tall Man’s playground.”The Tall Man . So, he knows about him, too. “That’s never stopped you before.”Jeff frowned, though the upward-carved corners of his mouth created a distorted mess sent an uneasy chill down the detective’s spine. “Well, I’ve been thinking the past few months. Been putting some more value on my neck.”“Didn’t know you could even think.”“I don’t have super healing powers like you do,” the killer quickly interjected, furrowing his forehead at the cannibal for only a brief second before his face relaxed and the twisted grin returned. “But, hey, look, I’m here now, aren’t I? So, why not let bygones be bygones, and we get the fuck out of here while we still can?”Jack closed his eyelids and sighed loudly. “I didn’t get caught, dumbass. I turned myself in.”The ever-grinning killer’s lip began to quiver, and his eyelids twitched. “You’re kidding.” He paused, likely thinking Jack would refute his own statement, but when the cannibal turned his face away from him, Jeff frowned. “You’ve got to be shitting me. They have one of those Foundation freaks in here, Jack. He’s out there in the frickin’ hallway, for Christ’s sake! Smile pounced on him before I even told him to!” Jack briefly glanced at the dog with clear indifference before turning back to his former comrade. “You think I haven’t known that by now?”Jeff blinked, staring wide back at the cannibal as his smile began to falter. “Are you high? Are you, like, smoking or something? Have you eaten in a while, or—”“It’s none of your business, jackass.” Jack pressed his boot down harder, and a small sound came out of Jeff’s throat. “You really, really shouldn’t have come here.”“And what about that bitch over there?” Jeff spewed out another few more droplets of blood, almost spitting in Jack’s direction. “She’s pointing her gun at you, and you’re okay with this?”Jack turned his head ever so slightly, as though acknowledging the barrel of the detective’s Glock aimed right at his chest, and her index finger twitched. She might have acknowledged this was a young man in pain a mere few moments ago, but the past minute had been her wake-up call; he was stronger than anybody in this building, moved faster than the rest of them, too. Her eyes couldn’t even register what he did and where he was going until all the action was over. He made quick work of the bloodthirsty serial killer pinned underneath his boot without so much as batting a single eyelid. He could snap her neck before she could even pull the trigger if he wanted to.But he didn’t. Something inside of her had to tell herself that. He didn’t, and she wasn’t going to, either.And he gazed in her general direction as if acknowledging this same fact, before he turned his head away and stared back down at the grinning killer. “Check on Gilliam,” he murmured, just loud enough for her to hear him, then gave the dog another brief glance. “He might need some medical attention.”A single ringing chime echoed through the room. Her arm tensed involuntarily and then she blinked hard, consciously letting her bated breath escape her lungs as she turned her attention to the source of the intruding sound.Skye’s phone was on the ground, right between the table and where she stood, its screen lighting up like a single Christmas light amidst the shadow of the table.Glancing one last time at Jack, the detective slowly lowered her gun and quickly bent down to pluck the phone from the floor. “It’s him,” she said upon reading the text notification.“What did he say?”“What? What did who say?”She unlocked the phone and opened the message. “’Not here,’” she read aloud. “’But take caution. Expect the unexpected. If you’re lucky, you all escape alive, or you die a swift and painless death. Nevertheless, best of fortunes.’” How thoughtful , she thought grimly. “’P.S. if you find them, tell her the chessboard is waiting.’ Signed, F.” She glanced up from the phone and looked toward Jack. “Chessboard?”The eyeless man shrugged. “Their business, not ours. But it looks like HABIT’s not lying. He does have them with him.”“Who has who with him?” Jeff snapped his head at both of them, frowning. “The fuck you guys are talking about?”“That settles it,” Jack continued, completely ignoring the grinning killer as he finally lifted his boot from the latter. To the detective’s surprise, Jeff laid still on the ground, his features twisted into curious confusion, still entrapped in a child-like trance. “I’ll go find them, then I’ll come back here as soon as I do. And here’s hoping he won’t have done anything to them by the time I track them down, too.”“Wait, Jack.” The detective scoffed, taking a step forward as the eyeless man started towards the door. “You can’t go in there alone.”He stopped and turned back to her, his gaze just a few inches off to the side of her direct line of sight. “I don’t have a choice,” he murmured insistently, shaking his head once. “I can’t just sit here and wait. I actually have a chance now. I’m not going to waste it while it’s still there.”She raised the phone in her hand. “You heard what that text said. You need backup.”“I’m not going to risk any more lives on us.”“Someone is trying to frame you for murder.” She took a deep breath and sighed. “Can call it witness protection, if you ask me.”He took a few moments to ponder exactly what she meant, frowning deeply when the realization came over him. “No. I can’t let you do that, detective. Gilliam won’t either. Look, no offense, but you have your own job to worry about.” He shook his head again. “There may be something in Toby’s belongings that can lead you to Clock—his room is at the end of the hallway. You already know who we are, we’ve got nothing left to hide. Feel free to ransack the whole place if you have to. It wasn’t going to last, anyway.”Her shoulders fell. “Jack—”“Update me on the case when I get back, okay? I want this bastard caught as much as you do.” If he gets back , she thought with a frown. It was a suicide mission. She didn’t even need the text to tell her that it was. “And what about him?” she asked instead, and nodded to the side, where Jeff the Killer remained lying still on the floor, his own weapon still buried deep into his shoulder.“I’m right here, you know,” he chirped, grinning slyly at the two of them.She frowned. “You’re just going to leave him here with us—”“We can take him.”Bishop spun to face the door and didn’t bother masking her sigh of relief. Gilliam stood in the now-brightened hallway, leaning his side against the doorframe—his hair was a disheveled mess, his jacket was unbuttoned with a torn left sleeve, his shirt was soiled and his tie was crooked, and she could’ve sworn there was a bite mark on the collar of his shirt. He looked like he had been mauled by bears, she thought grimly, but she was all too relieved he was still standing otherwise, when the black-and-white mutt in the corner of her eye started growling again.Gilliam shot a stink eye at the dog and scoffed.“I came here because I thought it was you two who did the deed,” he sighed instead, turning back to his partner at first, then at Jack, then finally to Jeff. “I suppose one out of two is good enough for now.”“Oh, hell no.” Jeff’s hand shot up and grasped at the handle, not realizing how deeply embedded it was until he tugged on it and scrunched his face from the pain. The dog whimpered. “You are not throwing me over to the fucking G-men—”“Actually, you know what? I won’t,” Jack suddenly said, turning his direct attention back to his former comrade, hollow sockets staring down at the grinning killer without so much as a single hint of emotion across his face. He inhaled deeply, then sighed. “I’m taking him with me.”“Wait, what?”“What?” Bishop echoed Jeff in her own bewilderment, eyes glancing back and forth between the eyeless man and the grinning killer below them. “Jack, you can’t be serious.”Jack looked up and stretched the corner of his lip, before quickly returning to his neutral expression as he turned back to Gilliam at the doorway. “Well, as long as it’s okay with you.”“Can you even trust him?” she asked.He shook his head again. “No, but I’m not giving him a choice.” As if to illustrate his point, he slowly lifted his foot again and hovered it above Jeff’s injured shoulder, then began to press down next to where the knife handle stuck out. Despite his unwavering grin, Bishop could almost see the embers of red flaring in the killer’s eyes.Gilliam slowly shifted his weight from one foot to another before taking a single step into the room, eyes glaring at everyone. “This was not part of the deal, Jack.”“And I’ll still uphold my end of it,” the cannibal bargained, briefly glancing at the agent before turning back down to Jeff. “Me and him, package deal. Can’t promise I’ll bring him back in one piece, but I’ll try.”Beneath the boot, Jeff scoffed. “Great. So now I’m a bargaining chip, huh?”“Shut up.” If Jack still had his eyes, Bishop thought, she could see them rolling up to the ceiling before turning his head back at Gilliam. “I would assure you I’m a man of my word, agent, but Skye and Toby aren’t here to attest to that. So until then…”Bishop looked toward her partner and saw the wrinkled lines across his face. She wasn’t sure how much pain he was in—it didn’t look like there was bleeding anywhere, but his face and torso were all scratched up, with chunks of fabric missing from the torn sleeve. Gilliam closed his eyes as his hand went up to swipe the corner of his mouth, and a few moments later, he sighed.“One piece, Jack,” Gilliam breathed through his teeth, raising a single index finger up to the cannibal as though the latter could even see it. “I assume you want the dog, too?”Jack glanced at the mutt, who had since remained silent in the former’s presence, and made a small nod. “His nose is still better than mine,” he said, sniffling a little. “One thing I know about HABIT’s domain, there’s no reliable way to track down the nearest portal, but the dog should be able to sniff it out sooner or later. Sooner than I can, at least.”“The entryways. Right, speaking of—” Gilliam cleared his throat and tried to straighten his posture, doing his best to take another limping step into the room. “I figured that might be a problem for you, but I’ve been thinking about a way to work around that.”Jack gazed at the agent, eyebrows arching upwards, body leaning a little forward when both he and the detective saw Gilliam’s unstable form tipping a little too much to one side, only for the agent to stretch his arm out and grasp the corner of the steel table in the center of the room before he could fully topple over.“I’ll need to make a few calls first.” Gilliam managed to reach the closest chair and didn’t hesitate to sit down, as his hand reached to his back pocket to fish out a pair of handcuffs which he quickly tossed over to Jack’s direction. “And pull a few strings, maybe call on a couple favors. It’ll only take a minute.”Jack stood still for a few solid seconds, gaze fixated on Gilliam until he had to bend down and twist Jeff over so he could restrain the crazed killer with the handcuffs. “You don't have to.”“No, but it should help get things moving along right away,” Gilliam pointed out, and fished out his own cellphone from the inner pocket of his suit jacket. “Better than waiting for one of those portals to appear somewhere. No telling if there even is one in this state alone. The sooner you get them out, the better it is for all of us.”Then he turned to Bishop, and she couldn’t help sharing a small smile with him before he punched a button on his phone and turned his sole attention back to it. She crossed her arms as she switched over to Jack, watching him toss the helpless Jeff over to the bent chair, glaring at the latter as though daring the latter to retaliate. He didn’t though, instead grumbling under his breath as he tugged the arms bound behind his back, hissing through his teeth and finally resigning when the knife in his shoulder shifted a little too much, and the deep red stain on his white clothes started growing again.Staring at the embedded blade, Bishop clicked her tongue and sighed. “Can’t talk you out of this, huh?”To her surprise, the eyeless man blew a breath through his nose, making a strange sound that bordered between a scoff and a laugh. “You know, you remind me of someone, detective,” he said, stuffing his hands in the pockets of his jacket as he leaned against the wall behind him, casting his gaze to the table between them. “A friend of Skye’s. I think he was a journalism student, but he had the nose for these things like you do. Curious and stubborn, often to a fault, too.” Then he paused, lowering his gaze. “He tried to find her, too, after the Operator took her the first time. I told him it was too dangerous. Don’t think he listened.”“Is he still alive?”“Think so.” Jack nodded solemnly. “Think she went to meet him when we passed Colorado. You know, when we were running from the Foundation.” He tilted his head at Gilliam. “Wanted to tie loose ends and all that. He’s lucky, though. Didn’t go too far into the deep end of the pool.”“I joined the force to protect people, Jack.” Bishop drew in a deep breath and stared straight at him, studying his features. “People like you and Toby and Skye included. And if I have to get my hands dirty to do it, then—”“You forget that I’ve killed people, too, detective.” He threw a brief glance at Jeff. “I’m not proud of it, but I know I’m worse than some of the others you’ve tossed in those cells back there. Worse than this pathetic bastard, too, even.”Jeff snickered under his breath.“You can’t protect everyone,” Jack continued, turning his hollow gaze to the detective for a single moment before casting it off to the side again. “You can’t save everyone, either. Not without sacrificing yourself along the way. I mean, look what happened to Skye.”“Looks like we’re in luck.”Gilliam sighed loudly as he forced himself to stand up, taking his phone away from his ear and returning it back to his pocket, glancing between Bishop and Jack, who immediately fell silent after the agent spoke. Gilliam noticed this, of course, but paid no mind to it, grunting under his breath as he started making his way back towards the door.“It’s only about an hour’s drive from here,” he said.“What is?” Bishop asked, frowning.“The nearest confirmed entryway to the Ark,” Gilliam replied, sharing a brief glance with Jack before turning back to her with a hint of a smile on his face. “I know this ordeal has been sidetracking us for too long, but—” He clicked his tongue and nodded at her. “Are you up for a ride, partner?”The detective stared blankly at him, crossing her arms and looking towards the side before turning her attention back to him with a smirk of her own. “A ride?” She shook her head. “Hey, you know what, I’m just glad you offered in the first place.” As the agent held back his chuckle, she nodded at his attire. “Might want to freshen up before we leave, though.”Gilliam raised an index finger and tipped it at the detective. “Thank you, for that reminder.”He spun around and headed out the door, while Bishop lingered behind him, looking over her shoulder and watching as Jack grabbed Jeff by the collar and hauled him off the chair, dragging him over to the detective waiting for them by the hallway.Behind them, the deranged sociopath’s cackle rang through the air. “Just like the good old times, huh, buddy?”Jack growled under his breath, but said nothing in return.“We’re here.”Bishop unbuckled her seatbelt and peered out the window, frowning at the sight. “Gilliam,” she said. “Where are we?”When they mentioned ‘portal’ back at the station, the detective was expecting to see some magical swirling, circular doorway hovering mid-air in an open field, like something straight out of a fantasy or science-fiction movie. And when Gilliam drove the car into yet another mundane suburban neighborhood close to the outskirts of town, almost too similar to the locations of their crime scenes as of late, she thought he had taken a wrong turn, or at the very least was going through the area on their way out to the highway leading out of New Haven.She didn’t expect that when they arrived at their destination, she would be looking out to a three-story Victorian house standing solemnly tall at the end of a deserted cul-de-sac, sectioned off with yellow police tape.Gilliam switched the engine off and unbuckled his own seat belt, leaning a little towards her to gaze out the same window. “SCP-630-S,” he said, then leaned back and unlocked the doors. “Also known as the No-End House.”“The No-End House?” Jack scoffed from the back seat, though his voice was tinged with a little nervousness that was almost too easy for the detective to miss. “You can’t be serious, right?”“What?” Bishop opened the passenger door and exited out the car, still unable to tear her eyes away from the building looming before them. A cold shiver crawled down her spine as she studied the structure. There was a little patio with a small set of stairs leading up to the singular front door in the center. The windows were too dark to peer through, or perhaps boarded up from the inside. It was built out of wood, with an eerily dark coloration as though painted black but worn down over countless years of harsh weather. The only splashes of color before her were the police tape, which presumably encircled the entire property, and the slightly desaturated patches of grass and dirt directly surrounding the wooden structure. It was the only building in this entire street, a lonesome house sitting at the end of the road, isolated away from all the other modest homes several yards back down by the intersection. “Is this like a haunted house or something?”“Or something,” Gilliam replied, moving to stand beside the detective as he stared up at the house alongside her. “Not your average haunted house, though. For one, the inside is bigger than it looks. There’s no telling how many rooms there are in there, but people can only go through about six to nine, maybe ten at a time. Which ones they go through, is a different question on its own.” He nodded at the house. “Urban legend says each room houses a horror more terrifying than the last.”“Sounds like something they would advertise to kids to make them spend their money here on Halloween night,” Bishop said.Her partner scoffed. “Yes, besides the fact that the deeper you venture into the house, the less likely you are to come back out.”“Yeah, I’ve heard a lot of bad things about this place.” Jack called from behind them as he yanked Jeff out of the back door by the latter’s forearm, while the eerily-grinning dog leaped over them and settled by the eyeless man’s heel. “Nothing about the House being a portal to the Ark, though.”“We have a working theory,” Gilliam stated, looking over his shoulder at the two killers. “The handful of people who have gone through the house and survived, have all described different experiences in each of their final rooms. Mostly parallel universes, each with different defining aspects of their own.” Parallel universes . Bishop closed her eyes. Her head was beginning to spin again.“We think the House is a hub connecting all these different realms and such. It all depends on which door you choose to go through. One of them might even lead you to the Operator’s realm, if you’re that unlucky.” Gilliam leaned back a little and sighed. “You just need to find the right one.”The Operator’s realm. If you’re unlucky . Bishop scoffed.Jack walked up to the two investigators, still dragging his former comrade behind him as the dog trotted beside them. “And how can we know which door is the right one?”“Well, you said the dog can sniff it out, right?” Gilliam glanced briefly at the deformed Siberian husky, then turned his attention back to the eyeless man. “Our research on the House has been very limited, considering it moves too much and we have yet to find a reliable method to contain it, much less navigate it. But the House should narrow down your options, better than having to trek through the entire country to find one of those portals.”“And if we don’t come out?” Jack retorted back with furrowed eyebrows. “You said only a handful of people have ever survived it. How can we even know for sure the portal’s in there?”Gilliam remained silent for a few moments, enough to draw Bishop’s attention back to them. He glanced between the other two, drawing in deep breath before expelling it out with a long sigh. “Out of the people who’ve been through the house and lived to tell the tale,” he began, “one of them didn’t go out through the same way they came in. In other words, they went into the house, through the front door, through some of the rooms, but came out someplace else. A Seven-Eleven, to be exact.”Bishop raised an eyebrow and frowned. “A Seven-Eleven.”Gilliam nodded. “The final door he went through was like some of the others. The door led him out of the House, but into a world that looked exactly like ours, with few key differences: it was always perpetual night, and not a single soul was around for miles. When he checked his phone, he said the date was almost three months before the date he first entered the House. When he reached a footbridge, someone jumped him from behind, said something about not inviting him there. Next thing he knew, he burst through the back door of a Seven-Eleven, back in broad daylight, all the way in New Jersey, eight hundred miles away from where the House was.”Jack scowled. “Yeah, that sounds like something HABIT would do.”“So, I take it the house does lead to his realm. This Ark, or whatever it is.” Bishop nodded slowly, breathing out a quick sigh. “Speaking of which, I almost forgot something.”She spun around and headed back for the car, opening the passenger door to pluck something from the glove box, before throwing the door back shut and returning to where she stood before. When she finally reached the men, she held her hand out and handed the brown paper evidence bag over to Jack with a muted smile over her face.“Your personal effects,” she said, and Jack’s hollow sockets grew a little wider. “I figured you’ll at least be needing your equipment back for the time being. And, well, another weapon aside from a bloody kitchen knife.”Jack held the evidence bag in his hands for several seconds before his hand finally let go of Jeff’s sleeve to reach inside, immediately out a familiar deep blue mask with both cheeks streaked with trails of dried black substance. She wasn’t sure if the mask was the first immediate object in the bag he would be able to pull out, but Jack stared at the mask for another moment before replacing it over his face, once again concealing his true features away from the rest of them.Beside him, Jeff snickered under his breath. “Back at it again, aren’t we, buddy?”“Shut up.” He retrieved his other belongings from the bag, including two silver scalpels, before stashing them away on his person, in his jacket or the pockets of his trousers before discarding the bag. “So.” Jack’s voice was a little muffled behind the mask, and Bishop felt as though she was staring at a completely different person than the young man standing beside them moments before. “I guess this is where we part ways.”Gilliam nodded then took a step forward, discreetly placing something in Jack’s hand. Bishop saw a glimpse of the metallic sheen of what she presumed to be the key to Jeff’s handcuffs before Jack enveloped his fingers over it and stuffed it into one of his pockets.“If HABIT does decide to throw us out in the middle of nowhere in New Jersey,” the eyeless man continued, turning his hollowed gaze between the agent and the detective, “We’ll head straight back to the police station?”“We’ll be around. There is no telling how far this case goes, not yet anyway. But even after the case is closed, I’ll be around,” Gilliam assured with another nod, offering Bishop a quick knowing glance as the detective returned it with a mildly confused frown. “I hope you will keep your word, Nichols. Remember, we can and will find you if you don’t.”Even despite Gilliam’s slight threat, Jack offered them both a feeble shrug, hand once again clasped around Jeff’s sleeve as he started tugging the latter towards the patio. “Not like I had anything planned for the next few years, anyway,” he called back towards them with a shaky chuckle. “Honestly, rotting in a cell in some containment facility with your freaks in lab coats poking instruments at me for the rest of my life doesn’t sound too bad, come to think of it.”“Yeah, maybe for you—”Jack shoved the white-clad killer up the stairs, not even caring less about how the latter came close to stumbling over his own feet. The eyeless man then turned back to the other two, giving them one last friendly salute before climbing up the steps himself and placing his hand on the knob of the front door.“Are they going to be okay?”She could see Gilliam gazing down from beside her, jaw tensing before turning his eyes back up to the house. “If it eases your worries for them,” he murmured lowly, as though to make sure that only the two of them could hear him, “they will be. All things considered, I’m surprised they’ve survived this long. And after all they’ve been through, I doubt they’ll stop fighting now.”“Good.” Bishop swallowed the lump in her throat, turning her head down before she heard the front door click one last time, and forced herself to breathe. “Then let’s get back to work, shall we?”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
She snapped her eyelids open and woke up.She parted her lips, drawing air into her lungs, until she felt her windpipe constricting from the sudden rush of cold air searing her nostrils and throat. The next thing she knew, she launched herself forward and coughed the air back out. She felt the ground moving beneath her, the darkness shifting before her, and she closed her eyes, hoping it would stop the pounding in her head. Something began to fill her mouth. Her body moved on its own, spasming violently, and when she felt the ground begin to steady underneath her arms, she opened her eyes, and stared down at the crimson droplets she spat into the dirt below her until black spots clouded her vision.She tried to breathe again. Her lips drew in another burst of cold air and she could taste a vile metallic tinge in the back of her tongue before she had to choke it back out again. Through the nose was easier, she thought. Something was blocking the flow of air through one of her nostrils, but at the very least she hadn’t started choking herself with the blood in her mouth again. The black spots were finally beginning to dissipate, her narrow gaze wandering to the curled fist sitting inches from her face. She traced it up to her elbow then her arm, keeping her face hovering mere inches from the growing pool of blood and drool in front of her. With another long breath, she moved the muscles in her arm and felt her body tipping back around, until her head collided softly onto a patch of untainted soil, and she closed her eyes.She was awake. This can’t be right . How was she awake? Something is wrong . Something must have woken her up. That had to be it. She wouldn’t wake up on her own. She made sure she wouldn’t.
The pills.
Her hand flew to her chest and roamed across the fabric, from her collar to the full sleeves covering her arms. No pockets on this one , she thought. Then her hand went down, trying to find the pockets in the pants she was wearing. It feels so cold here . Her other hand grasped around as well, attempting to feel anything against her person. Nothing .She closed her eyes. Someone must have taken them. The pounding in her head was beginning to subside. Too long , she thought, hands reaching up to touch her face as she blew out a soft sigh. There had to be something more to this, though. The pills alone couldn’t have done this, because even if she could wake up, it didn’t mean she wanted to. Something else must have forced her out. Something outside of their hands.She opened her eyes and stared up at the cloudless dark skies above her. She could hear sounds in the distance, amid the dull, low foreign hum and the pounding of her heart resounding through both her ears. She gathered strength in her limbs and forced herself into a sitting position. A tall lamp post entered her vision, its amber light dim and muted, providing little illumination in the darkness that surrounded her. The dark spots returned, and she blinked hoping it would clear them out. Then her eyes snapped wide open, and she stared long and hard back at the lamp post, sitting there in wait.She could’ve sworn the light just flickered. She could’ve sworn she heard a buzz, too. Like a bee hovering above her head, or a fly fluttering its wings beside her ear. She felt her neck twitch involuntarily at the mere thought. She let her face fall to her palms, allowing darkness to overtake her vision, and felt the ground beneath her disappear, and she was floating in empty space. It’s been too long . She was seeing things, and hearing things, too, now. She felt sick. Her head was pounding harder. Or maybe that was her heart, she couldn’t quite tell. The contents of her stomach were stirring. Everything around her was spinning. It felt much like waking up for the very first time after the disconnection. Like waking up to the real world for the very first time, when everything around her was no longer black and white static and noise, but in vibrant technicolor, and the strangest sensations pricking her skin, filling her nostrils or resting in the back of her tongue. Voices and sounds weren’t just scratching in her ears. It was disorienting, and took her a longer while to adjust, but it improved over subsequent times. But it had been too long now, and she almost forgot what it genuinely felt to need to purge her insides out all at once.Was this what Skye had to go through the first time around, too? And all the countless times afterward? She often wondered that, when she would wake up, or whenever she wasn’t fully asleep and Skye was waking up instead. As if she needed anything else to add to the guilt still weighing her down in the back of her throat.The ache in her head was easing now, and she could feel the ground beginning to solidify beneath her downward-facing palms, her legs and her feet. The black spots and the static were slowly fading from her vision, and when she finally felt like she could move without triggering her gag reflex, she lifted her head and tried to focus on her surroundings straight ahead, blinking.She couldn’t make out much beyond the singular bubble of light directly radiating from the lamp post—the shrubbery beneath it, the metal and brick fence behind it and the cobblestone path that stretched out underneath her. There was no motion, no smells, no sounds, not even crickets or the electric hum from the lamp post. It almost looked like an oil painting, its details too delicate, a disorienting mix between surrealism and hyper-realism. Underneath her fingertips, the gravel and stone felt cold, almost frigid even, colder than the air that pricked at her skin like tiny invisible needles. She was hardly dressed warmly enough for such a climate.When she drew in another breath, an itch persisted in the back of her throat, and with it, the copper fluid.She coughed and swallowed. Gaze fixated on the lamp post, her fingers reached over down to her ankle, slipping underneath the pant leg, then the sock, then the boot where her fingertips grazed upon a small but hollow gap. Shit . First the pills, and now the knife. Skye knew better than to forget either of them. Something, or someone must have taken them from her. She might have been asleep for a while, but she made sure the girl never left home without either of those things. It was the least she could do.So now they were lost and defenseless. Great . Her worst nightmare, she thought. Well, perhaps not the absolute worst, but it was certainly the beginning to it. She didn’t think she would ever feel this much dread her entire existence—the sickening feeling in the pit of her stomach, the hairs standing up in the back of her neck, and the millions of terrible thoughts running through her head that almost brought the pounding back to her ears. It wasn’t so much of a foreign feeling, but it was the first time she felt her muscles paralyze from her own dread, her own fear. And she was almost cherishing it as much as she was despising it.She tried to focus on something else. Her fingers, her hands and arms and legs, her toes in the warmth of the socks. The tension in her muscles as she bent her leg with her feet flat on the ground, slowly pulling herself upright like an inflatable doll, but more awkward and clumsy, with quietly cracking joints. Unsurprising, of course, since Skye was never one for sports anyway, but she knew the girl worked hard, did too many things in a single day than she could handle. The dull ache in her shoulders as she craned her neck to the side attested to that. Lost . She slid a single foot forward and shifted her weight onto it. Defenseless . She curled her middle finger into her palm and rubbed her thumb over it. Another intake of breath and she coughed to clear her throat. She closed her eyes, and was about to take another breath when something disturbed the air around her, piercing the silent stillness of her surroundings, and she froze.A dog, barking in the distance. No, something barked in the distance. The echo reverberated through the air, once, then twice, before everything went still again. She didn’t have a chance to even ponder what it was when an invisible blade suddenly stabbed right through her skull, forcing her to shut her eyes tight as her fingers clutched her head and her teeth clenched themselves from the pain. She felt her breath leave her lungs when all of a sudden the ache disappeared, as quickly as it came, but as she opened her eyes, she realized her mind had gone blank, and the echo had evaporated from her memory.Her breath doubled in pace. She whipped her head around, almost cracking her neck, but saw nothing more than the darkness that surrounded her, tame and held at bay for the time being as the glow from the lamp post ahead persisted. Her heart was pounding in her ears again, and a freezing chill started crawling slowly down her spine. He’s not here , she told herself, eyes now wide and alert, carefully observing the terrain before her for any of the littlest sudden movements. He’s not here . She would know if he was here. Even when she was asleep, she would know. I would, wouldn’t I? Even after the disconnection, even despite everything that happened, she would know, wouldn’t she?She took another step forward, but quickly shifted her weight back to the other foot just in time before the body could tip over from imbalance, her heart stopping the moment her breath escaped. Miniscule specks of dust began to cloud her vision again and she rubbed her hand across her eyes until she could see the cobblestone beneath her again. She then lifted her head with her palm on her temple, eyes trying their best to focus on the lamp post as she took a second step, then another, and more until the light drew closer and closer towards her, enveloping her in its warmth and banishing the shadows further and further away from her.She felt her heart stop when the light flickered, or at least, she thought it did. She could’ve sworn it flickered. She forced herself to blink once, then twice, then frowned. The low buzzing hum still persisted, though grown duller as her ears grew more attuned to her surroundings, and she attributed it to the electricity running through the bulb in the foggy glass chamber above her. But those flickers—her eyes were open the entire time, weren’t they? She could’ve sworn they were.She placed her left hand on the stem of the lamp post, and flinched slightly from the freezing coldness of the metal surface. Turning her head to the right, she saw the cobblestone path stretching wider out into shadows ahead, then into another two bubbles of light in the distance, both adjacent to each other, illuminating what looked to be the end of the path as it disappeared under a set of vertical lines—a barrier, a form of fencing of sorts, but much taller than the low brick walls to her left.A gate, she thought. Whether it was real or a figment of her imagination, it looked to be her next destination for now.Her hand left the metal pole just as the surface was beginning to absorb the heat from her palm, and she took another step forward, and another, blinking away the blots of blackness and little dust specks threatening to cloud her vision again as she strayed further away from the glowing warmth behind her. She took an extra stuttering breath when the tip of her foot touched the shadows for the first time, and almost stopped her pace entirely when she drowned the other foot in the darkness, feeling herself sigh in relief when she felt the bottom of her shoe still making contact with solid ground. Just a few more steps. The darkness was starting to welcome her back into its cold embrace, but within a few seconds, the front tip of her boot was dipping into light again. She could see the wrought iron gate now, standing tall and stiff at a mere few yards away, seconds from within her reach. She could see a narrow gap in between, an empty space that offered her a sparing glimpse of a different road stretching from the gate into parts unknown.More than anything, she remembered this feeling of warmth, an invisible blossom blooming from the center of her chest, yearning for the first rays of sunlight breaching through the darkened overcast.
Finally—
“He’s coming.”She heard the soft thump of her own footstep after the voice and immediately froze where she stood.“What are you doing?” She held her breath. “We don’t have time to take a break, you—”“Go on without me.”She took a step backwards and stilled. It wasn’t coming from her head. Those voices were real, she was absolutely sure of it. And there were two of them, both leaning to the lower end of the vocal pitch, one more nasal, the other hoarse, as though on the verge of a coughing fit much too similar as she did mere minutes ago. Though audible, the near-hushed whispers were faint and rather distant, likely a few yards away, behind the very gates she was limping, almost dragging herself towards until a literal half second ago.The same gates her eyes remained fixated upon, as she slowly blew her breath out through her lips, silent as possible as to not disturb the stagnant air around them.“Are you kidding? This isn’t a time to be a goddamn hero!”She took another step back, and bit down on her lip when she felt her boot skid a mere half inch against the cobblestone. She blew her breath out slowly through her nose, and held her breath again.“I know, I know.” She took another step back. “But I can’t go anywhere with this leg. Nowhere far, not right now.”She was approaching the center of a light dome now, standing stiff with a lamp post towering behind her. Her right hand reached back until she felt her fingers wrap across the cool surface of the metal pole, and she brought herself around until something tiny but many in numbers pricking the side of her left arm. Never once did her gaze stray from the gates, cautiously watching for any slightest disturbance in the idle image before her with bated breath.“What are you going to do, huh? Just let him catch you like this without putting up a fight?”“I’ll hide. Wait until he’s gone.”There was something about that second voice that irked her. An invisible itch in the back of her head that she couldn’t scratch because she didn’t know where it was or where it came from. It was too faint for her to discern whether it was a familiar one or not, though. Trying to single out each coherent word was taking more than enough toll on her focus as it already was.“You can’t be serious.”“He’s not going to be down here forever. He’ll get bored soon.” A cough. It sounded rather harsh, she thought. Nowhere as bad as hers earlier, but very reminiscent to a physical ailment, something worse than a common cold or a simple flu. “You heard what that Jeff guy said. He still has unfinished business up there.”“Up there. Yeah.” A short pause. “You can’t hide from him. You know that.”“I can try. And I still have this.”“That’s not going to stop him.”She ducked her head down, slowly creeping further into the shrubbery while trying her best to ignore the little twigs grazing and scratching against her skin and her clothes. There was a narrow spacing between one row of shrubs to the next one behind it, wide enough for her to remain hidden without disturbing the vegetation too much to alert anybody of her presence there.“Just go. I’ll meet you guys there.” Another pause. “Go.”“Are you sure—”“Just go.”Another slow breath. Her eyes stared at the gates, not even daring herself to blink once.“We are not losing you, man. Not like this.”“Hey, I’ve been the last man standing before. I’ll make it out, I promise. We all will.”“You better.”Footsteps. Soft and fleeting, as though the soles were barely touching the ground at all. Whoever, or whatever it was, they didn’t pass through the gates, even as the light tapping of the footsteps grew further and further away until she couldn’t hear them anymore. It was definitely only one pair of feet, however, not overlapping enough to discount the other individual in the two-way conversation she was eavesdropping on seconds ago.A bad leg. That put the other party at a disadvantage, against whoever was pursuing the pair, from what she could gather from the earlier conversation—but also against her, in case the situation should ever come to that. She was still slightly disoriented, sure, but at the very least, she had full conscious control over her limbs now. These were her arms, her legs. She might be lost, but she was certainly not defenseless, not anymore.Keeping her body crouched down low, she gradually started creeping forward until she was at the edge of the light, almost resorting to her hands and feet to keep the muscles in her legs from straining too much under the tension. She immediately stopped when she heard more footsteps, slower and heavier with a much more irregular pace, with one short skip following each almost dragging scrape against the ground. The bad leg, she thought. It might actually be worse than she initially thought it would be.Her hand skimmed across the soil beneath her, hoping to find a loose but sturdy branch somewhere she could use as a makeshift weapon for the time being. The footsteps were drawing closer, and when she briefly glanced down after thinking her fingers stumbled across something, she quickly glanced back up towards the gates and caught a glimpse of a shadow through the wrought iron bars, moving across the length of the first half of the gate.She drew in a sharp, haphazard breath, then held herself perfectly still when the shadowed figure stopped, right in the middle of the gates, right where the narrow gap in the center was.The metal shifted then groaned, as one half of the large structure started swinging open, creating a gap wide enough for a single human person, wide enough for the shadowed figure, to slip through with ease, creaking again only when the figure slowly nudged the gate back into its original stationary state, closing the gates shut.She rested her hand on the soil beside her and steeled her will. She could wait it out. She had to. Until this person, whoever they were, made their way past her and down the cobblestone path where she initially came from. Until they would reach the other lamp post further down the path, out of sight and out of mind. Then she could head back to the gates, and slip out herself, and continue back on her way, avoiding anything and everything. No conflict necessary, she thought.She almost scoffed to herself. Easier said than done.Heavy feet continued to drag almost forcefully across the cobblestone, with a suppressed grunt following each erratic footstep the stranger made. In the fringes of the dim glow radiating from the nearby lamp post, she could further make out the shape of the shadowy figure: they were humanoid, no doubt about that, and looked to be the size of the average human male, albeit poorly postured with a slightly bent spine, likely from the bad leg. As the figure stepped further and closer into the illumination, their brown shoes first came into her view, then the jeans, with a large crimson stain blooming in the right thigh; then a shade of dull mustard yellow, before the lamp finally casted light upon the figure’s face, and she couldn’t stop herself from gasping. It can’t be .She didn’t even realize her feet losing their balance until she heard rustling behind her, and she felt herself turn into stone. “Who’s there?”She tried to silence her heaving breaths to no avail. Her head was spinning, pulsing and pounding against her ears again, and the ground was vibrating beneath her, threatening to give away. Her eyelids fluttered shut, and in the midst of the static noise filling her ears, she could almost hear her calling out in the back of their head.“I can hear you.” She took a deep breath and focused on the voices, hoping they would drown the noise out. “I know you’re there.”Her breath left her lungs in a rush and she almost lost all energy in her knees and legs, almost falling completely back into the shrubbery behind her.“And I know you’re probably not who I think you are. You would’ve already killed me if you were.”She heard a faint click and it felt like a switch turning off the pulsing in her head. She opened her eyes and glanced up, catching only a glimpse of a silver barrel aiming right above the top of her skull.“I’m not going to shoot. Just come out of there now, and we can have a little talk.”Her hands almost felt weightless as she lifted them off the earth, slowly raising them to the side of her head while directing her remaining strength to her knees, to gradually pull herself up to her legs until she was standing upright, just barely out of reach of the light radiating from the lamp post.When she took her first step forward through the vegetation in front of her, his arms started to falter and his shoulders fell, until the barrel of his gun was pointing at a few inches away from her knees. His eyes grew wide, and she could almost hear his gasp escaping from his parted mouth.Her own shaking breath expelled forcefully out her throat, and her lips moved before she could even think of a single word to say.“Tim?”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
The following morning, Bishop went back to the house alone.She took a bite out of her bagel and a long sip from her cup before exiting the car, and looked up towards the front porch. The lights on the porch and inside the house were still off and the curtains were drawn shut. Yellow police tape encircled the lawn and again around the porch, warding off potential intruders and curious onlookers, not that there was another living soul across the entire street besides the detective herself.That didn’t mean the Sullivans, as they once called themselves, didn’t have any neighbors. Bishop noticed a few pairs of eyes staring at the commotion in the house from a good distance the last time she was here; inevitable, with two police cars and an ambulance parked curbside, with two officers dragging Toby Rogers through the doors in handcuffs, and into one of the cars, and not without significant struggle after the young man had tried to deny them entrance. Then a body bag emerged a few minutes later, and Bishop could only assume what the neighborhood gossip was like after they had left the scene.But the street, like the house, was abandoned now, leaving Bishop to her own devices as she approached the front lawn and ducked under both police tapes. She produced a pair of latex gloves and a pocket knife, which she used to cut the paper seal pasted on the front door and its frame, making sure not to damage the wood. Stashing the knife away, she twisted the knob and pushed the door open.Her entrance blew a cloud of dust off the furniture and sent particles dissipating throughout the living room. She coughed involuntarily, a sharp echo that broke the silence in the stagnant air, then waved a hand over her face as her eyes began to scan the interior to see anything out of place, even despite the seal. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary within the house, though, except for the disorderly mess left behind from their last visit. The couch and the coffee table were slightly crooked and out of place from the shaded markings on the floor left behind from where they once were—an aftermath of Toby’s well-fought struggle. The back door was still ajar, and there was a trail of dirt leading from the backyard, disappearing into the kitchen. Through the window, she could see a small rectangular plot left unearthed in the corner, near the edge of the weathered white picket fencing.She left the front door open with a small gap, hoping it would allow some fresh air to circulate and replace the suffocating atmosphere inside the house. She trod lightly and carefully across the living room; there weren’t many personal effects lying around—no photographs, no house decorations like flower vases or rugs and such, aside from bare bones furniture, at least not in the common spaces. There were a couple of used glasses and dirty dishes left behind in the sink, and an untouched bowl of cereal doused what she quickly determined was curdled milk on the breakfast counter. Not many signs that showed previous occupancy, she thought, leaving her to wonder if the company would have ever considered this place to be a home at all if the past few months had never happened.The five doors were identical, with nothing to indicate which one led to which room. She tried the lone door to the left of the living room first, but after twisting the knob a few times, realized it was locked. She could break it down, of course, but it would have to be a last resort. Wouldn’t want them to come home to a broken door. The second door she checked was the bathroom, the third being a small storage space that, both surprisingly and unsurprisingly, bore only a few cardboard boxes gathering dust and spider webs in the back corner.The fourth door finally led her to a bedroom. A queen bed, with floral-patterned duvet and pillow covers, was pushed into the back corner of the wall near the window looking out to the front lawn. Beside it was a wooden nightstand with a ceramic lamp sitting on top, and opposite to the bed was a matching dresser with a handful of bottles and containers sitting on top. Directly beside the door was a bare wooden desk and chair. On top was a reading lamp, a couple of pens and a notebook, and an old paperback novel split open in the middle, with the open pages pressed against the surface of the table.The dresser was out of the question—a breach of privacy, she thought, and a line she didn’t dare cross, at least not at this time. There weren’t any drawers on the desk either, merely hollow shelves that held nothing but dust. Reluctantly, she crossed the room, keeping her hands to herself, towards the nightstand, and carefully pulled the drawer out without making a single sound.There were two photographs in there, likely kept hidden from plain sight on purpose. The first one was instantly familiar, because she had seen it before: four people standing side by side with glowing smiles—Jack’s graduation photo, the exact same one she saw on Skye’s lock-screen. The second photo, however, was older, with yellow peeling edges and faded colors, and smaller, about two-thirds of the size of the first one. There were only two people in it: an older gentleman, in about his fifties or sixties with greying hair, grinning widely and fondly at the camera. His arm was slung around the shoulder of a young child, with brown eyes and brown hair tied back into a ponytail, wearing a t-shirt and overalls, a little frail and thinner than the average child should be. Unlike the older man, the child merely offered a semblance of a polite smile, eyes staring almost emotionlessly into the camera.Bishop stared into the second photograph. It was from a much, much simpler time, she thought, more so than the first photo. It didn’t take a genius to figure out who was the child in the photo, but there was something odd about it—something in the child’s eyes, and the blank look on her face that was nothing like her more expressive present-day self, or even the smile she wore in the first photograph. Something that sent a chill down the detective’s spine before she forcefully tore her eyes away from the photo, and returned them both into the drawer where they belonged.After another quick scan around the room, she finally headed to the last room she hadn’t checked. It was unsurprisingly another bedroom, with furnishing not unlike Skye’s, but with one glaring difference: the entire space was nothing less than an absolute mess. The bedcovers were halfway across the bed and draping towards the floor. Clothes and books were strewn across the bed, the floor, the top of the dresser and the desk, along with other personal effects including an old PlayStation Vita, a soccer ball, hamper, some cardboard boxes, and an open bag of chips. For as bare as the rest of the house was, whoever this room belonged to clearly made themselves feel comfortable, likely unlike everybody else.She made sure to exercise more caution as she trod across the room, trying to peer through the disorganization to look for anything that could help her case, but it didn’t help that she didn’t even have the slightest clue of what exactly she should be looking for. Toby didn’t have his cellphone with him when they patted him down at the station, assuming he had one in the first place, but it was a start, and the only thing she could think of for now. He didn’t look like the type to keep sentimental photographs, or a journal of sorts, and though she was prepared to be proven wrong, she wondered if she could even find one at all considering the current state of the room.At least one other officer had already searched through the room, though. She remembered they had found a pair of hatchets underneath the bed—they were poorly hidden, surprisingly enough, haphazardly stashed there as though he didn’t even bother to properly hide them from plain sight. Gilliam had told her they were the exact same weapons the kid used to kill his father four years prior. The mere thought of it sent another chill down her spine, but she also remembered what Gilliam had said about the victim, about the drinking problem, and the things that happened since then.Taking a deep breath, she scoured through the small piles of fabric on the bed and on the desk, the likeliest of places where she should be able to find a phone. If she were lucky, she thought, maybe there would be a laptop of sorts, something that she figured would keep the homebound young man occupied while the others weren’t home.She raised her forearm to wipe the side of her temple as she trudged to the other side of the room, fetching articles of clothing off the floor, and hauling them up to the bed to join the others. When she finally caught a glimpse of the carpet beneath them, she stopped and huffed out a breath. Her eyes zeroed in on the unmistakable discoloration in the beige, and she bent down to gather the remaining items off the floor to set them aside. Sure enough, it was there—a distinct patch of darkened fibres, horizontally flattened towards the south of the room in stark contrast to its lighter-colored neighbors that stood perpendicular in attention. She traced the arching outline of the patch to none other than the dresser, and nodded to herself with a sigh.With most of Toby’s clothes anywhere but where they belonged, the dresser wasn’t too difficult to move, and her eyes flickered over to her objective before she even finished making a gap wide enough for her to peer through behind it—a white metal vent grille, about the size of an A4 paper, just above the baseboard moulding. She had to crouch down and stretch a little to reach it, but quickly realized it wasn’t even screwed in when her finger bumped against its corner and immediately nudged it loose.Setting the grille aside, she held her breath as her hand reached into the vent and gently searched around, in fear of anything potentially dangerous in the ducts, but also hoping she might find something without having to shift the dresser more than she already did. Sure enough, the back of her hand brushed against something within a single swiping movement, and her fingers grasped onto it as lightly as she could before extracting it out of the vent duct and into the dim light of the room.It was a plush toy, standing at about ten inches tall, soft and malleable in her clutch. The vent duct was possibly the worst place to store something like this though; from what the detective could tell, its fur coat was once a warm orange or light brown with darker patches all over, now darkened and desaturated from years of neglect, soot and dust that had embedded themselves into the fabric that no dry cleaners could ever restore it back to its prime state.Coughing into her flexed elbow, she drew it out from behind the dresser to take a closer look. She could make out its beady little black eyes, a lighter patch of fur to indicate the center of its face and its snout, then its ears, four legs and tail. It had a rather long neck, longer than typical stuffed animals, and two protrusions from its head that resembled horns or antlers.A stuffed giraffe, she thought, then frowned. Gilliam had mentioned something about a stuffed giraffe before. One of Toby’s possessions, but didn’t belong to him. No, it belonged to his girlfriend, this ‘Clockwork’ individual he mentioned.“FBI—hands where I can see them.”Bishop immediately shot up from where she was crouched down and spun around towards the direction of the noise—towards the door, outside of the room she was in—immediately drawing the gun from her hip holster, but froze the moment her eyes zeroed in on the figure standing in the doorway. The first thing she noticed was the eyes—bright green in color, almost unnaturally so, as if it was radiating with a strange, unsettling luminescence, but it was only in one eye, because the detective quickly realized the right eye was, in fact, not a human’s eye at all—it was a silver clock face.The stranger’s arm twitched, and a brief glint of light quickly caught Bishop’s attention, drawing it down to the clean, serrated silver blade in the intruder’s hand.A gasp left the detective’s throat as she locked eyes with the intruder, tightening her grip on the handle of her gun.The stranger’s lip twitched, then stretched into a smile—at least, Bishop thought it did, what with the thin black line extending from the corner of the stranger’s mouth up towards their cheek, disappearing behind unkempt locks of mousy brown hair. Without turning their gaze away from the detective, the stranger turned their head at the smallest angle, off beyond the door frame towards the direction of the living room.“Trespassers,” the stranger murmured under their breath, their single green eye flickering out to the living room, before they slowly lifted their hands to the side of their temple, letting go of their clutch on the knife as they did, sending the blade clattering to the ground. “Or a trap. Came prepared, though. Well, he did, anyway.”Bishop glared hard at the stranger—a young woman, no older than her early twenties, judging by the sound of her voice and the youth in her face when she tilted her head up towards the glow of the ceiling lamp. As she finally forced herself to take a deep breath, she heard shuffling and noise from outside the room, until finally another person came into view of the doorway—Gilliam, producing a pair of handcuffs as he kicked the knife away, and yanked the stranger’s arms down to handcuff her wrists behind her back.The detective closed her eyes and drew in another breath, allowing her shoulders to fall as she returned her gun back to its holster. “You scared the shit out of me,” she admitted under her breath then opened her eyes to lock eyes with the stranger again, whose single glowering green eye remained fixated on her, sending an instant shiver down her spine.“Be thankful I even decided to come check up on you,” Gilliam retorted back, glaring down at the intruder who hissed at him as soon as the handcuffs clicked into place. “I figured it wasn’t too long before this one comes looking for lover-boy right after he disappeared.”“You mean, right after you took him in?” the intruder sneered as she rolled her head around her shoulder, turning her glare towards the FBI agent behind her. “Missed us already, huh? Don’t you fuckers have anything better to do than stalking us? Wife and kids, crop circles and aliens, golfing—anything?” Then she lazily whipped her head to the side as Gilliam led her back towards the living room, loose brown strands falling over her face as the green eye flickered back at the detective, eyeing the other woman from head to toe. “You’re new, aren’t you? Let me guess, first day on the field?Gilliam blew a harsh breath through his nose, giving neither woman a chance to respond as he shoved the younger women across the living room then out out the now-ajar front door, leaving Bishop to trail a few steps behind them, her eyes staring at the back of the other woman’s head. A black sedan was parked behind her car, but Gilliam chose to bring their apprehended suspect towards the latter instead, quickly securing her in the back seat with surprisingly minimum struggle. As soon as he threw the door shut, he spun around and heaved a sigh as he turned his head up to look towards the detective still standing on the porch.“How’d you know where I was?” she questioned him as she lifted her head forward, eyes quickly scanning up and down the soulless street. “I haven’t even stopped by the station this morning.”He placed his hands on his hips and bowed his head down. “I heard Nichols saying you should take another look around the house.”“What made you think I would listen to what he had to say?”“I wouldn’t have, but you would. And you did.”She threw a glance over her shoulder, through the open door and into the house. “The stuffed giraffe—it’s hers, isn’t it? You said something about it yesterday.”There was a brief pause before the agent slowly nodded. “Natalie Ouelette, also known as ‘Clockwork’. Rogers’ girlfriend.”“The third copycat target.”He nodded again. “I would say she’s also our killer, but I’m more inclined to believe she was also being framed. She’s not exactly the type to be meticulous about her killings. I doubt she would bother going through all the trouble of copying Nichols and Woods for the first two murders.”She hummed in confirmation, then paused herself. “You weren’t actually trapping her, did you?”“What?”“What she said earlier.” Bishop pressed her lips together and turned her gaze down at her partner. “Was that supposed to be a trap, or—”“I can understand Nichols, but you shouldn’t take the others’ words at face value,” Gilliam immediately interjected, though his voice was light and amicable as he offered her a knowing look, before turning his head down, then his back towards her. “You’ve seen how Woods was like. Ouelette is no more different than him.”She almost wanted to scoff, but didn’t have the heart to. She had hoped it wasn’t true. “You didn’t have to come back, you know,” she said instead, with a small shake of her head as she hardened her gaze on him. “You came here for Nichols and Woods, didn’t you? I could’ve gone on without you.”“You could,” he quickly agreed, to her surprise, as the corner of his lip twitched upward. “But it’s not just a cover, you know? It is a job. I’m still working for the FBI as much as I am for the Foundation.”“The FBI doesn’t need to get involved in this.”“On the contrary.” He clicked his tongue, turning his head up and casting his gaze to the side. “Copycat murders based on prolific serial killers, with a body count of nine and still rising.” He shook his head, lips stretching to form a thin smile. “There’s another pattern here. I can’t confirm what it is yet, but if my assumptions are correct, that means we better start moving before both of us and the morgue have our hands full.”“What’s the broad doing here?”Bishop frowned, closing the door behind her as soon as she stepped into the room. “Excuse me?”A singular green eye glanced back and forth between the blonde and the dark-haired man, before eventually stopping at the latter. “Doesn’t take a genius to tell she’s not one of you white coats, so what’s she still doin’ here, with you?”Bishop looked towards Gilliam, whose gaze was hard set on the young brunette sitting behind the table at the center of the room. “White coats?”“You—” Metal handcuffs rattled as the clock-eyed killer raised her right hand, pointing her index finger at the detective. “—are an open book, and you—” She turned to point at Gilliam. “—need something from me, don’t you?” She laid her hand flat on the metal surface and stretched the stitches at the corners of her mouth into a chilling smile. “Yeah, I can tell. I’m in handcuffs, not an electric chair.”Gilliam turned his head down as he moved to take his place on the other side of the table. “Let’s make this quick. Where were you four nights ago?”“What’s your offer?”He set the manila folder down in front of him but stopped to raise his head. “What?”Natalie Ouelette—Clockwork—leaned back against her chair and shrugged. “What’s the offer?” she repeated, and made a condescending scoff. “I’ve been through this before. You want something from me. I don’t have to tell you shit unless you have something on the table for me.” She nodded forward. “So, out with it, suit.”From across the room, Bishop positioned herself in the brunette’s blind spot—the clock face that had replaced the latter’s left eye—and studied her. The younger woman’s posture was relaxed, slouching in the chair even with the bindings around her wrists, much unlike most people who have been in that chair before her. Brash, confident, very much the ‘in-your-face’ type. Potentially reckless, clearly outspoken. Dominant. A glaring contrast with her supposed boyfriend, but to each their own, she thought. A tough nut to crack, but not the preferred type of challenge that Bishop would normally welcome.Ten seconds after she spoke, Gilliam lowered his shoulders. “What do you want?”“What do you think?”“We didn’t take him,” he immediately answered. “But we can tell you who did.”His opponent quirked an eyebrow. “Then spill.”“Not until you answer the question.”She closed her eyes—both of them, though there was a noticeably unnatural bulge through the left eyelid—and threw her head back with a groan. “Tulsa. Wait, no.” She hummed to herself in thought. “It was some crappy old town just outside the city. Was heading south, then I got Toby’s text, so I took a detour and made a pit stop. Was there for like three days before I left for here. It was a very long walk, in case you can’t tell.” Then she opened her eyes and the smile returned to her face. “Check the news there. Someone should’ve found the dead bodies by now.”“Dead bodies?” Bishop repeated, blinking, glaring at the younger woman. “You’re confessing to committing murder?”“Can’t be any fresher off the factory, can you?” Clockwork retorted back, snapping her head to the detective, smirking. “I mean, look, why bother? You know who I am. You know what I do.” She turned back to Gilliam. “Besides, might as well claim credit for my kills before someone else does. I mean, can you believe kids these days? I’ve seen those little punks, shoving their faces to TV cameras for my kills. Mine! The audacity.”“All right, enough with that,” Gilliam huffed, taking out a notepad and opening a fresh page to start jotting things down. “So when did you arrive here?”“I don’t know, last night?” The serial killer scowled and threw her back against the chair. “Toby texted me a couple days ago, told me not to visit. He must’ve got into trouble, so naturally, I came to surprise him.”Bishop frowned. “He told you not to come, and you decided to anyway?”Clockwork narrowed her eyes at the detective. “Why are you trying to rationalize what I do? Even I don’t.” She huffed a breath through her nose and glanced to the side. “Besides, what’s the worst that could happen?” Her smirk returned. “Anything else? I don’t have all day, you know.”Gilliam opened the case file to the page with the portraits of the victims, then turned it around to face the serial killer. “Do you recognize any of these people?”Clockwork merely gave the page a quick glance before lifting her gaze back at the agent. “Nah, can’t say I do,” she said. “Not that I would tell you if I did, but I don’t.”“What about these?” This time, Gilliam flipped over to the page with photographs of the autopsies and crime scenes, laying some of them out between him and the younger woman.A wide smile slowly crept its way back up to Clockwork’s disfigured face. “Now you’re speaking my language,” she said, almost too delightedly, before peering over to look more thoroughly at them. She pointed to the photo in the furthest left. “This one’s too clean. Too planned. Like one of those psycho killers in books and movies.” She moved her finger to the furthest right. “This one’s a frenzy. Someone really got off from this one.” She waved her finger around the photos in the bottom of the triad cluster. “These are still a bit too sloppy for my taste. Needs more finesse to it. A little feminine touch, if you know what I mean.”“But you’ve never seen these before?” Gilliam asked, and Clockwork shook her head.“I remember my kills,” she stated with confidence. “Like I said, I’ll gladly take credit for the ones I did, but these aren’t mine. Besides, Toby said this place’s off-limits, and I’m not having another argument with him about this.” She leaned back against the chair again, slowly this time. “If those happened here, it wasn’t me.”Bishop nodded once to herself. Another copycat killing. Of course, Clockwork could be lying—these people could always lie about anything—but as the detective listened to her tone of voice and studied the younger woman’s face, in short bursts to not attract the latter’s irritation towards her, it didn’t seem like Clockwork had much to hide, not for this case at least.“Do you know anybody who would do something like this?” she asked softly. “Any acquaintances, any mutuals?”“What, you think we have some kind of group chat or something?” Clockwork sneered, and scoffed. “In case you can’t tell, I don’t like people. I like Toby. He has friends. We’re not friendly, but I know them, and they know me. That’s it.” Her eye flitted back to Gilliam. “Jack probably knows more than I do. He was with Jeff once. That fucker’s been around. Ask them.”Gilliam shot a brief glance at Bishop and she pursed her lips, nodding to the side. Without another word, the man gathered the photos and stashed them back to the folder. He then stood up from his chair and turned his back to the younger woman, and Bishop took a step forward to join him at his side.“Hey! Hey! We’re not done here!”Bishop turned around first, to look back at Clockwork. The green-eyed killer didn’t care about her, though; her eye glowed and glowered at the back of the agent’s head.“You said you didn’t take him,” she growled, leaning forward against the table with a shadow across her face. “So, where is he? Who took him?”Gilliam peered over his shoulder, briefly glancing at his partner, before finally turning his body at a small angle to look back at the serial killer. His expression was blank.“The Operator did.”Something changed within the younger woman. It was like a steel ball bearing barely striking the surface of the invisible wall that the green-eyed woman had built in front of her, shielding her from the other two in the room and likely everybody else in the world long before she even entered this enclosed room. But the second the ball bearing touched it, the wall instantly turned into glass, and shattered right before Bishop’s very eyes.“No,” she whispered, voice cracking. “Bullshit.”Gilliam looked almost remorseful when he turned his head down to the floor for a brief second, before looking back up again. “I was there. We both were.”When he glanced to his side at Bishop, the detective gave them both a single solemn nod.“No, no.” A shaky smile broke across the younger woman’s stitched mouth. “You’re lying.”“I have no reason to lie,” Gilliam said before sighing. His voice was low and steady, very much unlike how he spoke to her mere minutes ago. “It happened here, almost 24 hours ago. We would show you the camera footage, but you know how he works.”“No.” Clockwork closed her eyes and shook her head. “You’re lying to me. You’re lying.”Bishop drew in a harsh breath. “Natalie—”“Do not get familiar with me!” the other woman suddenly snapped, shooting up from her seat and slamming her clenched fists against the table, almost startling the other two in the room. Her eyes narrowed dangerously at the detective, but the latter took another deep breath, swallowed hard and tried not to waver her gaze away from the brunette.“We were there when it happened,” the detective continued, speaking more quietly than usual. She had this before—the glint in Clockwork’s one green eye, and the flurry of unstable emotions the detective knew was churning in the forefront of the younger woman’s mind. After all, eyes were windows to the soul, and this reaction had little difference to what Bishop saw in Jack just the day before. “We saw him take them. We couldn’t stop him.”“Them?” Clockwork’s eyes blew wide, and her voice went quiet. “Wait, them? You mean—”“Skye Martin was there as well,” Gilliam said slowly, carefully. “The Operator took them both.”A gasp of breath escaped her disfigured lips. “No, no. Not again,” she stuttered out, shaking her head. “W-Well, where the fuck is Jack, then? W-Wasn’t he with them?”“He went to go find them,” Bishop replied. “He’s going to bring them back.”“Bring them back? There’s no bringing them back.” The younger woman practically fell back to the chair behind her, all the strength gone from her limbs and her speech. She weakly lifted her head, eye staring at the two people standing before her. “I’ve seen what that thing did to Toby. I’ve seen what he can do.” She made a small shake of her head, voice stuttering with each breath. “He’s not going to let them go. Not again.”Bishop briefly looked over toward Gilliam and saw the lack of expression across his unmoving face before turning her head down, choosing to keep silent. He could have told Clockwork about HABIT if he wanted to. But he knew Clockwork better than she did, knew the situation better than she did. He hadn’t told her, not yet, perhaps not ever, so the detective wasn’t going to either.She could’ve sworn she heard Clockwork sniffle before the younger woman snapped her head to the side, away from the investigators, away from even the camera in the corner of the room, to the far corner of the back wall with a single feeble scoff.“Jack.” She closed her eyes and shook her head. “Thought he’s supposed to be the smart one. Some smart-ass he is. Turns out, he’s just another one of us, isn’t he?” She inhaled sharply, hiding another sniffle. “Another dumbass suicidal maniac. Well, at least he’ll die faster than the rest of us, won’t he?”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
After work, Bishop would usually be found in one of two places. First, of course, was a local bar—there were several along the street, none of which were open yet at this hour of the day. The second was the diner about a block away from the station, which was about a five-minute walk, give or take, well known for its coffee, apple cobbler, and warm company.
“Mostly the apple cobbler,” Bishop concluded to Gilliam as they sat down in the corner booth, and a waitress came up to them with an award-winning smile and two menus. The detective returned the smile and thanked her, before turning back to her partner with a frown and a sigh. “So, we’re back to square one. We have zero leads, zero suspects, and nine bodies in our hands.”
“No, we do know a few things,” Gilliam said, glancing up briefly, then turned back to the menu. “Our killer is a local. The killings never crossed town borders. They were all in the suburbs, which is likely the killer’s hunting ground.” He set the menu flat on the table and pursed his lips. “Whoever did this also knows Woods, Nichols and Ouelette enough to replicate their M.O.s and signatures—”
“But not enough to replicate the exact details,” the detective finished with a tight-lipped smile, also setting her menu down. “I thought their files were classified.”
“It’s hard to keep civilian serial killings classified,” Gilliam replied, and Bishop silently conceded with a firm upper lip. “We do our best to keep the mass media out of it, but the Internet exists. People talk. These killers—they became rumors. Urban legends. Spooky stories shared in forums and blog posts instead of campfires.” He leaned back, clicked his tongue, and glanced out the window beside them. “Most people call them ‘creepypasta’, sort of like horror-themed Internet copypasta. We have a team back at the Foundation who monitors these discussion boards, making sure these stories are nothing more than that—stories and urban legends.”
“So, it’s possible that our killer knows about Eyeless Jack, Jeff the Killer and Clockwork—”
“—but doesn’t know they actually exist, no.” He looked back toward her for another two seconds, then peered back down at the menu. “It would explain the inconsistencies with the methods. Some of it is tied to the urban legends, but we keep the minute details under wraps. I know what you said about the apple cobbler, but is there something that’s more appropriate for lunch, preferably a proper meal?"
“The Breakfast Burger’s a good start,” the detective replied, and a more natural smile appeared across her face as she raised her hand to call the waitress back. “Those inconsistencies could be part of our killer’s own signature.”
Gilliam nodded. “It’s possible.”
“Okay.” Bishop closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and gently clapped her hands together. “Let’s take a step back, review the evidence with fresh eyes. We know most about Jack’s M.O. That’s the one we can compare the most to.”
“Based on the most recent one,” her partner began, setting the menu aside, “Organ harvesting, usually kidneys. He has surgical expertise: he uses a scalpel, makes precise cuts, clean sutures, but no anesthetics.”
He immediately paused when the waitress, a forty-something-year-old lady with curly brown hair, approached their table and took their orders. To Bishop’s surprise, Gilliam ordered both the burger and the cobbler. The detective decided on a club sandwich. Both asked for coffee.
“But our killer thought he did use one,” the detective added after the waitress had left earshot. “Our first three victims died from the chloroform before they were even cut open.”
“And based on the severity of the wounds, they would have surely died either way,” Gilliam agreed with another nod. “Poor overall execution, which means our killer is sloppy, much more so than Nichols is. They also do not have the same medical expertise that he does.” He paused and exhaled slowly. “Nichols almost never targeted entire families or large groups of people—that was more of Woods’ style. His more recent victims were almost always single, isolated targets. He knows better than to take that risk.”
“And it’s a pretty big risk to target two families in one night,” Bishop noted with raised eyebrows. She, too, immediately stopped when the waitress came back with two steaming cups of coffee, making sure to thank the latter even when the older lady gave the two investigators a side-eyed glance and a shaky, breathy laugh before departing again, announcing she’d come back later with their long-awaited meals.
“Woods and Nichols have worked together before,” Gilliam started again, speaking with a slightly lower volume and glancing quickly at their surroundings. “It wasn’t rare to see them pop up in the same area at around the same time. Our killer must have known that much, too.” Satisfied for now, he picked up his coffee and took a slow sip of the steaming dark liquid. “They’re not stupid, though. They took out the Smiths first with the chloroform. That kept them from alerting the neighbors.”
“But then they went after the Walkers anyway.” Bishop furrowed her eyebrows and frowned. “Was there ever a connection between Jack’s victims? Or Jeff’s?”
The agent frowned, then slowly tilted his head a little. “Not really. Woods tended to lean towards families, which is not surprising considering his background history. Nichols’ victims have varied greatly over the years. The last time he was active, he was targeting high-risk victims.”
“But they were both opportunistic killers, right?” Bishop scoffed, leaning forward. “An opportunity killer wouldn’t bother going after the second family. It would increase their risk of getting caught.”
Contrasting his partner, Gilliam leaned back, slowly nodding back at her. “The killer was targeting both families from the very beginning,” he concluded, and Bishop felt herself smile a little. “They were neighbors, though. There would be too much overlap between the two families to narrow down the suspect pool.”
Bishop leaned back against her seat, eyes staring down into her own cup of coffee. “Okay, then let’s move on to the other two. Jeff and Clockwork.”
“They’re both messier than Nichols,” Gilliam immediately sighed, with a light, exasperated scoff. “Ouellette has much overlap with Woods, though she usually targets boys and men.”
“Only one of the victims in the second murder was male.”
“The killer has killed entire families before, and there were only two of them this time.” Gilliam paused, moved to take another sip of his coffee, then momentarily sat in silence, deep in thought. “They also chose the Hoffmans instead of someone living on the same street as the others.”
Bishop shrugged. “They could’ve known we would be monitoring the first crime scene.”
“But they specifically targeted the first two. The Hoffmans must have been chosen for a similar reason,” the man continued, and took another sip of his coffee. “And it was only one household this time. That is a significant change in victimology.”
“Well, the first two families were nuclear families.” Bishop tilted her head briefly. “Carrie Hoffman was a single mother, with only one son. The Smiths only had one daughter, but the Walkers had two children.”
Gilliam leaned back a little as his shoulders fell. “But all three families had teenage children.”
Bishop froze. Something sank in the pit of her stomach, and she felt her head start to spin a little. A faint ringing echoed from the back of her head. Her fingers slowly raked through the strands by her hairline.
“I’ll have someone pull up their records,” Gilliam spoke, but his voice sounded somewhat distant in her ears. “See where the three of them crossed paths.”
She didn’t even realize her vision had blurred until a figure appeared beside her: the waitress who had returned with a tray holding two large plates almost completely piled with food at first glance, enough so that Bishop couldn’t help but smile faintly at the sight of Gilliam’s wide eyes as the waitress set his burger plate in front of him. He thanked the older woman, inspected his plateful, then exhaled a slow, long sigh.
“Clockwork said the murder that was mimicking hers needed a ‘feminine touch’,” the detective added, pausing briefly to thank and smile at the waitress. “If what she said was true, we could narrow it down to look for a male suspect.”
“I would take that with a grain of salt,” Gilliam quickly replied, but when Bishop turned her head up to glare at him, he cleared his throat before immediately adding, “But considering our body count, it is likely our killer is male, most likely young and physically fit. This burger looks like something my nana would have me eat for lunch whenever I went over to her place as a kid.”
“Fond memories?”
“She told me I was skinny,” he grumbled under his breath, surveying his plate. “Too skinny for the team, she said.”
“The team?”
“College football.” Gilliam briefly scrunched his face, lifting the top bun and started picking off the pickles. “There is also one more thing we need to consider: our first lead, the first murder weapon.”
“The scalpel from the clinic.” Bishop picked up the first half of her sandwich and took a modest bite, making sure to chew and swallow before speaking again. “The manager said Skye stole the supplies. Obviously, we can’t ask her anything more about it. Not right now.”
Gilliam nodded solemnly. “We haven’t even confirmed she was the one who did it, though.” He reached for the ketchup bottle at the edge of the table, adding a dash of sauce before replacing the bun. “At this point, it’s the man’s words against hers. He never showed us evidence that she did do it.”
“Receptionist said the security cameras were a bust.” Bishop took another bite of her sandwich and sniffled. “Just there to scare people from doing anything stupid. I mean, not surprising considering the state of the manager’s office.”
“What about traffic cameras?” Gilliam suddenly asked, lifting his head to look toward his partner. “We may be able to see who was around the clinic during the time of the robbery.”
“We don’t have a lot of those here,” Bishop admitted, stretching the corner of her lip, “but there is an intersection just down the street from the clinic. I can have someone pull up the footage, see if it goes back that far.”
She could’ve sworn Gilliam had a hint of a smile on his lips before he took his first bite into his burger and finally started eating. “See? We’re not completely empty-handed.” He paused to swallow, then pressed his lips together. “And you were right. We shouldn’t have gone into this thinking it was those two right off the bat—Woods and Nichols.”
Bishop quirked an eyebrow and glared at him. “We?”
“Me,” the agent corrected before turning his head down. “I should not have done that.” To her surprise, he placed the burger back onto its plate, staring at it instead of taking another bite, despite being the one who suggested lunch in the first place. “I have been on this case—the overall one, with those two and the others—for a long time, for both the Bureau and the Foundation.” He leaned back a little and sighed, once again turning to stare out the window beside them. “I have talked to victims’ families, possible witnesses and people they may have been close with before they became… this. I mean, I’ve worked on other cases in the meantime, but…”
“You want closure,” Bishop stated, drawing his attention back to her. She mimicked his movements, setting her sandwich down, but stared across the table at the man in the suit instead with a slow nod. “Isn’t that what we do? The ones who have suffered loss—we try our best to give them closure.”
Gilliam blew a breath through his nose and looked down at his burger. “You’re wiser than your years, detective.” Pause. “May I ask you a personal question?”
Bishop raised her eyebrows. “The FBI agent, asking about my personal life?”
“Not in that capacity,” he replied with a slight chuckle, then went quiet. “Why this job?”
She drew herself slightly away from the table, almost stiffening her posture. “Why not?” she asked with a feeble shrug and went to pick up her sandwich again. “Why did anybody choose this job?”
“Your sister was a schoolteacher.” His reply made her stop again, and she froze still. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—”
“No, it’s—it’s fine,” she quickly interrupted, slowly exhaling her breath through her lips. An image briefly flashed in her mind, and the corner of her lip twitched. “We both wanted to help people. We just did it in different ways.” She cleared her throat, then looked down at her idle finger picking at the top layer of bread of her sandwich. “My father was a police lieutenant. He served the force for a little over three decades, long before he met my mom, before they had Daisy and I.”
“Walking in your father’s footsteps.”
She closed her eyes and smiled. “Daisy never liked the violence,” she said with a brief shake of her head. “She was kind and gentle, a very caring person. Always loved children, loved working with children. I had other plans.” She stopped when her voice cracked and forced herself to take a deeper breath. When she opened her eyes, she glanced down briefly at the half-eaten sandwich, then turned back to the man on the other side of the table, stretching the corner of her lips. “What about you, hm? What got you into wrangling semi-supernatural serial killers?”
Despite the earlier atmosphere, Gilliam couldn’t resist breaking into a faint smile of his own, and she couldn’t help but mirror him as she went to pick up her coffee to take a long, well-deserved sip. “It’s a long story,” he said quietly, looking toward her with a glint of something in his eyes, something she couldn’t quite pinpoint. “And most of it is technically classified.” She scoffed and pretended to roll her eyes at him, until his smile started to fade. “But the reasoning behind it is not too different from yours.”
“Personal?”
He nodded. “I joined the Bureau to help people. I was good at my job, good enough that it caught the Foundation’s attention.”
“Guess you can’t just stroll in and hand them your resume?”
“Well, that’s assuming you knew they even existed in the first place.”
She smiled, blowing air through her nose while the man stretched his own smile even further. He wasn’t that bad of a man, she thought, definitely nowhere as horrible as she first thought he was. A fed in a suit, strolling in and demanding jurisdiction over the case that could’ve been her big break—it clearly wasn’t the best first impression he could’ve made, but she could understand where he was coming from now. It could still be her big break, depending on how it would end.
“That reminds me.” Bishop glanced down at her sandwich. Maybe she should take it to go. “What happens when all this is over?”
“Pardon?”
Her smile disappeared. “When the case is over.” She glanced over towards the counter. The servers were all busy tending to other customers. The lunch rush had already begun. They should leave soon. “This was supposed to be top secret, wasn’t it?”
He didn’t respond at first, not immediately. She looked toward him and saw him staring at her almost distantly, almost in realization in fact, before his expression turned blank and he closed his eyes with a sigh.
“You have been through a lot,” he finally said, turning his gaze down. “More than the average person would ever have to go through in their entire lifetime.”
“You’re being empathetic.” She shook her head. “You’re almost never empathetic.”
“I am a human, detective.” He tried to pass another smile, but both of them knew better. “And we still have a long way to go before we get there.”
Bishop scoffed lightly. “That’s not very comforting, Joel.”
“No, it’s not.” He shifted his weight in his seat. He hadn’t touched his food again either. “I’ll be honest with you, I don’t know. I don’t know what will happen tomorrow, I don’t know what will happen when this is over, if it will ever be. I’m still a pawn, Bishop. Despite what I do, I’m no different than you. I have my superiors. I have my orders. I’m only doing what I’m told to do, no questions asked.” Then he took a long, deep breath. “But I will say, I haven’t had the chance to report back yet. The last time I did, I told them I was pursuing this case, that there was a high likelihood Woods and Nichols were involved.”
“Wouldn’t you have said something about the, uh, No-End House, was it?”
After a brief pause, Gilliam shook his head. “No, not really. I called in a favor from a friend in another department. He was supposed to report 630-S—the House—to his superiors once he confirmed the House would not relocate again for the time being.”
“That doesn’t sound like something people like you would do,” Bishop scoffed, and Gilliam nodded.
“Not typically,” he admitted. “But they know I know what I’m doing, and they can’t help but allow some leniency. I was supposed to still be undercover, after all.” Then his gaze went back up to her, and he gave her a slight affirming nod. “But for what it’s worth, Detective Bishop, it has truly been a real pleasure working with you. I could not have asked for a better partner even if I could.”
She closed her eyes and scoffed with a smile. “Likewise,” she said, sincerely and truthfully.
He returned her smile briefly, then leaned back, eyes glancing up to scan the rest of the room behind her. “We should start at the high school,” he said and cleared his throat. For a short moment there, as strange as it was to state it aloud in her mind, she almost thought they had almost become allies—friends. “Ask around. They must have crossed paths somewhere there, at least.”
She turned her head down and nodded. “We can head over there now, after we’re done here.”
Gilliam nodded, and without further question, raised a hand above his head and called the waitress over.
Best leave their futures for tomorrow, because someone might not have one.
Long, near-empty corridors first greeted the pair upon their arrival at the high school, before a hall monitor marched up to them and begrudgingly led them to the principal’s office. Bishop stood off to the side, one hand wrapped around her elbow, not even casting a glance at her partner while the hall monitor peeked into the office and appeared back shortly after to inform them they could head on inside.
“Principal Baker.” A large, broad-shouldered man stood in between a wooden desk and bookcase, extending a hand out towards his guests the moment the pair entered his domain. “To whom do I owe this pleasure?”
“Detective Abigail Bishop, I’m with the NHPD.” She shook his hand, then nodded to her partner behind her. “This is FBI Special Agent Joel Gilliam. We’re investigating a case and would like to ask you a few questions, if you don’t mind.”
As the man shook Gilliam’s hand, his eyes flickered back and forth between the pair as the lines on his forehead furrowed. “Uh, um, sure. The FBI? Wait, is this about those murders on the news? The one about the serial killer?”
Bishop couldn’t resist exchanging a glance with Gilliam as the three took their respective seats. “We just wanted to ask about some kids who went here.” She took out her phone and pulled up the photographs before handing the device over to the man. “Do you recognize them by any chance?”
The principal took the phone from her, studied the pictures for a few seconds and slowly began to nod. “Yeah, I know them.” He looked up, stretching the corner of his lips. “Jordan Smith, Lisa Walker. Standard delinquents. Regulars in my office and at detention. Smith just earned his second suspension last month for beating up a freshman.”
Bishop heard a small noise from Gilliam’s direction before she took the phone back and pulled up another picture. “What about this one?”
Baker gave the third picture a good look before giving the investigators a more confident nod. “Yeah, yeah, I know him. Hoffman, right? Good kid, straight A’s, student council. Helped organize our food drive last month. Has—
had
—a bright future ahead of him.” He set the phone down, closed his eyes and shook his head. “He was a victim in the second one, wasn’t he? Poor kid. He’ll be missed, that’s for damn sure.”
“Were those three in the same classes, same grade at all?” Gilliam asked.
“Hoffman’s a senior,” the principal said, shaking his head. “The other two were juniors.”
“Any chance the three of them might have crossed paths?”
“Aside from rubbing shoulders in the hallways, unlikely,” Baker added, glancing between the two before him. “Hell, I don’t even see Smith or Walker or any of their little posse in the hallways sometimes. They probably spend more time in the back lot smoking a joint or something.” He paused, taking a deep breath. “Still, they’re just kids. Never thought they would end up the way they did.”
“Any idea who might want to hurt them?” Bishop asked, retrieving her phone. “Anybody the three of them might have crossed paths with, instead of each other? Or their families, maybe?”
Baker shook his head again with a sigh. “Can’t say much about the kids, no. Their teachers and classmates might have a better idea, but again, they’re not even in the same grade.” Then he looked towards Bishop and tensed his jaw. “As for the Hoffmans in general, I doubt anybody would have any grievances towards them. Carrie was a wonderful mother, outstanding as her son. The other two might not have been the best of the bunch, but their parents are good people. Struggling, but they’re good people.” A hand flew to his forehead and he blew another sigh. “Are the kids in danger, detective? Should we issue the PSA to the families?”
Bishop looked toward Gilliam who offered her but a mere glance before leaning forward against his chair towards the principal. “We can’t say anything for sure yet, but it doesn’t hurt to remind people to stay indoors and keep the doors locked after hours,” he said cautiously. “We are doing our best to find whoever did this.”
Baker nodded, almost leaning his entire body forward in his affirmation. “Thank you. And please, whatever you need, just let us know. We want to do whatever we can to help.”
“Their school records might be useful,” Gilliam said, nodding, glancing at Bishop for a brief second before turning back to the principal. “Anything you have on the three of them, and their parents, if possible.”
“Of course, of course.” Baker pulled his chair close to the table with a series of nods of his own. “Anything to help. I’ll have my assistant send you everything we have.”
“And we will contact you if we have any more questions, or if anything comes up.” When Gilliam stood up, Bishop followed automatically and offered Baker a sincere smile for the both of them. “Thank you.”
The detective waited until they were both back inside the car, doors closed, before she released her breath, heaving out a long, despondent sigh.
“Besides the fact that they all go to the same school,” she said, gazing out the windshield at the static five-story building, “It doesn’t look like they would have interacted much at school.”
“Different crowds.” Gilliam drew in a breath through his teeth as he started the engine. “Worlds apart.”
“It couldn’t have been random, right?” She frowned and turned toward her partner. “Wrong place, wrong time?”
“It could be our killer is targeting people from opposite ends of the spectrum,” Gilliam said, leaning back against his seat, eyes staring straight ahead. “It could be the start of a pattern. Almost like killers who switch between high-risk and low-risk victims.”
“That doesn’t explain the families, though. It also wouldn’t explain why the killer went after both Smith and Walker first, then just the Hoffmans in the second incident.”
His hands tightened around the steering wheel, and he finally turned to face her. “If this does turn out to be a serial, and not just a spree killing—”
“The killer might strike again tonight,” Bishop concluded with a nod and another sigh. She closed her eyes. “I really would rather not have another body turn up just to test our theories.”
“Neither do I, but we don’t have a choice.” The car lurched forward slightly when Gilliam finally began to pull out from their parking spot. “We don’t have much else information to narrow down our suspects.”
“Aside from the fact that he knows about your subjects of interest.”
Gilliam hummed, agreeing but displeased. “Male, between his late teens to early thirties, knows about unique serial killings in the media…”
“Maybe it is someone in the middle crowd.” Bishop tilted her head, casting one last glance at the high school building before he turned the car around. “The principal said Chris organized events, right?”
“Food drive. He was also in the student council.”
“Which means he must have interacted with kids even outside his own social circle. It might have been how he crossed paths with the killer.”
“It is possible.” The car made a right turn, returning them onto the main road and en route towards the police station. “We should still look into their backgrounds, see if anything else overlaps.”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
“Skye?” The gun fell, and the man blinked. “Is that you?”She felt something draining from her body, out through the soles of her feet and into the ground. The pit of her stomach began to stir.“Oh my god, it is. It really is you.”When he stepped forward, she took a step back. Her lungs suddenly remembered how to breathe again, and she stretched a frown across her face.“Tim.” Her head barely shook. “Skye isn’t here right now.”“What?” The dark-haired man frowned, his eyebrows knitted together. “Wh—What do you mean she’s not—oh.” His Adam’s apple bobbed and he closed his eyes. “You’re… You’re the other one.”She closed her eyes and nodded. “I’m sorry.”“No.” He turned his face away. “No, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have assumed.”“No.” She was unwanted. Big surprise. “I understand why you would.”“Yeah, it’s, uh—” He shook his head and sighed. “It’s been a while.”“I did not expect to wake up so soon.”He hummed, slowly bending down to pick up the gun, and tucked it away in his back pocket. “Don’t like the rest of us too much, do you?”“I don’t want to hurt her.” An odd feeling rose inside her chest. She took a deep breath, but the weight remained. “You know what I am. You know how dangerous this is.”“Yeah, I know.” He inhaled sharply, eyes scanning her from head to toe before his forehead furrowed. “Wait. You and Skye—you two aren’t… You’re not dead, are you?”She blinked and froze. “No.” At least, not that she was aware of. She turned her gaze down and weakly lifted a hand. “I would know, if we were.”“Okay. Good. That’s good.” He kept his hand on the handle of the gun as he glanced around. “C’mon, we need to keep moving. It’s not safe here.”Her forehead twitched, but she said nothing. She carefully stepped through the line of shrubbery, dragging her legs through when little twigs snagged and scratched against the stitching of her jeans. She almost flinched when something touched her elbow, and snapped her head up to see his hand barely grazing her arm.“You okay?”She forced herself to nod. A lump rose up her throat, and she closed her eyes for a moment when she felt needles pricking her eyes.“You really shouldn’t be here right now,” he spoke lowly, glancing back up to scan their surroundings again. His hand hovered below her elbow. “Neither of you should.”A cold draft blew past them. Her body shivered, but she forced herself to follow him. “I don’t know where we are.”“How long have you been awake?”She turned her head up and her eyes flickered across the landscape, breathing heavier the longer she stared at the distance. “Not long. Ten minutes.”“Shit.” He sighed under his breath. “Well, it’s a good thing I found you before he did. God knows what he’d do to you, both of you.”“He?”“HABIT.”She drew in a sharp breath and clenched her jaw. So he’s here.“Can you walk?”She forced herself to nod. “Can you?” she asked, eyes glancing at his bad leg.He followed her gaze briefly, then softly clicked his tongue. “I’ll be fine. Just a flesh wound. Been through worse, you know.”“I remember.”The buzzing from the lamp post grew louder as they walked toward its direction, flickering so briefly that she couldn’t tell if it was the lamp post or her own failing vision. The man beside her said nothing about it though, too preoccupied with dragging his left leg across the cobblestone to match her pace.“I’m guessing you can’t do that thing you did back at the facility?” he suddenly asked, and she shook her head.“I wouldn’t be here if I could,” she said, solemn. “It’s his domain. He wouldn’t let me.”“Figures,” he replied and scoffed, though not at her—at least, she didn’t think it was. “Means he probably knows you’re here, too.”“Is he looking for you?”He lifted his head and reluctantly nodded. “All of us, yeah. He forced us into playing his game, hunting us down like rabbits.” He scowled and scrunched his face. “You, uh, you know what he did to me, yeah?”She pressed her lips together. “I felt her pain,” she said. “It was impossible to ignore, even when I was asleep.”“Yeah.” He took another deep breath and couldn’t hold back his sniffle. “Not the best way to go. Must’ve given the others a hard time, huh?”She nodded. The images in her head were a fuzzy blur, but the emotions were all too vivid, almost as though they were her own, no matter how foreign they felt at the same time. And like any other image that has ever crossed her mind, she clung onto that emotion, swallowed the pain and the grief and the mourning, letting the strange feeling reside in the back of her throat and the pit of her stomach for as long as she could. “She missed you. They all do.”The man nodded, hanging his head low. “How are they? Can you tell?”She blinked again when her vision began to blur. “I’m not sure. She’s asleep and I can’t wake her up.” When she turned her gaze forward again, she realized they had reached the intersection she passed by earlier, though they were now moving past the first lamp post and now heading towards the direction she chose not to traverse, further away from the gates they started from. “She’s distressed.”“I don’t suppose you know why?”She shook her head.“Damn.” But he nodded again, barely this time. “Well, people don’t usually end up here willingly. I can only imagine what must’ve happened up there.” He gave her a sideways glance, then stretched the corner of his lip a little when he nodded toward her. “I can see she chopped off some of the blonde.”Her expressions froze for a moment before her hand rose on its own volition, touching the back of her head and the tips of her hair at the base of her neck. “I'm grateful,” she confessed, holding back a smile. “I didn't like the blonde either.""How does it work between you two?” he asked suddenly, and she quickly turned her attention back toward him. He cleared his throat. “I mean, how did you know she had it? I’m sorry if that came out weird, or insensitive.”"It’s fine.” The next lamp post was a little distance away, creating a large expanse of darkness throughout the path in the between, but she noticed herself feeling much less anxious as before, though not any less alert, when there was one familiar, non-hostile face in closer proximity now. “I can see through her eyes sometimes, if I’m not too far deep inside. I saw us, through a reflection in a mirror.” She narrowed her eyes slightly. “It felt weird seeing us like that.”He barely restrained his scoff. “Weird how?”“I’m used to this.” She shrugged at herself. “Brown hair, brown eyes. But seeing the blonde in the mirror—” She shook her head. “It felt weird. It wasn’t her, wasn’t us.”“I told her it was a bad idea.” A light chuckle rose in the back of his throat, but stopped when his face twisted to a slight wince. Just a flesh wound, he said. “I mean, I get it. Makes it harder for them to track us down when we don’t look like ourselves, but blonde? Wasn’t Toby’s sister blonde, too? I was surprised he was okay with it.”He turned his head away, casting his gaze off to the side of the path. She gave him a sideways glance and felt something stirring in the back of her head. There was something different about him, something she couldn’t quite put her finger on. It wasn’t something that unsettled her nerves—it was him, she knew and could tell as much—but it was clear that things had changed since the last time they spoke to each other. There were more wrinkles underneath his eyes, and his irises looked more dull, more muted than she remembered. A faint shadow stretched from the edge of his sideburns across his jaw and over his mouth. It looked as though his features were frozen, not in time but in emotion—the face of a man who had been through hell and back, over and over again.“I think Jack liked it, though,” he murmured, and exhaled another soft chuckle. “Probably why she chose to keep it. Are they still—you know…”She blinked and frowned. “Hm?”He turned towards her, glaring at her with a curious glint in his eye. “Oh, c’mon. Don’t tell me you don’t know. I mean, you can tell what she’s feeling, can’t you?”She blankly stared back at him. “Yes, but I’m not sure what you mean by that.”“You don’t—” His stare lingered for another second, then he closed his eyes and shook his head. “You know what, never mind. Forget I said anything.”She furrowed her forehead and deepened her frown. “No, tell me.”Instead of answering her, he glanced over his shoulder, making another scan of their surroundings when they reached another branch in the path. “Nah, it’s nothing. You’ll know when the time comes.”“I don’t appreciate you hiding things from me, Timothy.”“I don’t appreciate it when you call me Timothy.” His gaze returned to the path ahead and he nodded at the road stretching towards their right. “There should be another exit up ahead that leads back to the main road. It should be easier from then on.”“Where are we going?”“Safehouse, sort of,” the man replied after a brief pause, and she cocked an eyebrow. He glanced at her over his shoulder and sighed. “It’s hard to hide from a madman inside his own house, if you know what I mean.”She pressed her lips thin. “It’s part of the hunt.”“Yeah.” He grunted under his breath, trying to limp a little ahead of her to lead her down the path. “Just a matter of time before he finds us. Maybe he’ll stab one of us in the leg again before he sends us running with our tails between our legs again.”She closed her eyes, breathing deeply. “Why is he hunting you?”He shrugged feebly, suppressing another wince. “Who knows. Probably something to do with you-know-who.” She froze and he paused, face scrunching as he sucked in a breath through seething teeth. “I mean, isn’t that always the case when it comes to us?”He stopped moving for a moment, hand reaching down to grasp at the fabric around the darkened blot in his thigh when his body began to sway, lurching a little too forward. Her limbs moved on their own volition, hand reaching for his shoulder before he could topple over, until his better leg stomped forward, restoring his balance.“I’m fine,” he breathed out and closed his eyes. “I’m fine. Just… give me a second.”She stood stiffly beside him, fingers curling into her palm as she turned her gaze away from him and looked up towards the scenery instead. It felt like they had progressed into a different area of the park, though not much of their surroundings had changed—shrubbery bordering the cobblestone path, trees standing tall in measured distances, casting long shadows that could easily be mistaken as something else, perhaps something more sinister.Her eyes were more focused, though, and her head had stopped pounding, too. She was in this body now. She was in control.“How many of you are here?” she asked carefully, turning her attention back to the older man as he finally straightened his back, no longer heaving his breaths.“Uh, five now, I think.” He moistened his lips, drawing in one more longer breath. “All of us just happened to be entangled with you-know-who, in some form or another.”She bowed her head a little, and began walking as soon as he started too. “Anyone like me?”“No, thankfully, no,” he quickly said with a shake of his head, then turned to face her before averting his gaze off to the side. “I mean, no offense.”“No.” She drew in a long, silent breath. “That’s good. I’m glad.”“When I say ‘entangled’, I mean more like me,” he added quietly, stretching his shoulders back as his hand finally departed from his leg. “Not so much you, or Skye or Toby, if you know what I mean.”“Marked, you mean.”“Yeah, however you say it.” The corner of his lip twitched. “Do you know everybody who’s…”“Marked?” She shot him a brief look, then turned her head down. “We had our own assignments, strictly need-to-know.” Because if she did, maybe she would have found Toby sooner, and she wouldn’t have carried this burden the way she did now. “But we’ve seen the tapes, and the videos.”He nodded solemnly. “We used to be friends, sort of, before shit went south with you-know-who. Funny how we all ended up here.” His voice grew quiet; if she weren’t walking right beside him, she wouldn’t have heard him trail off like he did. “But we met this other dude just a little while back. Never seen him before, but I think… I remember him saying something about doing some filming thing, kinda like what we did.” He took a short breath and sighed. “He also seems to know more about HABIT than the rest of us—last I saw him, he was mumbling something about some people in the surface world or whatever. Maybe his friends are still alive out there.”She cast him a short glance before turning her head back forward. Amidst the darkness in the distance, she could see the outline of a large wrought-iron gate. He nodded ahead.“Let’s hope he’ll know something about getting you out of here, yeah?”“Guys, it’s me. It’s Tim.” He banged his fist against the center of the metal door again, and she could hear it echo through the interior walls and reverberating through the brick around it. “Open up.”“No one home?” she asked, wrapping her arms around herself as she turned her back to him, scanning their surroundings. The main street was no less abandoned, nor no more familiar than the park was to her; a few cars dotted here and there, parked by the curbside nearby buzzing lamp posts; a mundane row of shops with barred doors, windows, and storefronts; the moonless skies clouding them in quiet, still darkness.A howl echoed in the far distance.“Shouldn’t be,” Tim said, frowning. He pounded three times at the door, for the third time. “Hey guys? This isn’t funny, open the door.” He groaned and pushed himself off the door. After a brief pause, he sighed. “I brought the ukulele.” She gave him a look. He rolled his eyes. “Don’t ask.”Her lips parted, but before she could say anything, she heard the subtlest noises from the other side of the door—some rustling and shuffling at first, then a loud clang and the sound of metal dragging against metal, before everything returned to stillness.Tim gave her a quick glance over his shoulder before he placed his palm flat against the door and pushed forward, swinging it open. Without a word, she followed him inside, finding herself in a narrow corridor almost completely devoid of light, more than it was outside, and even more so when Tim swung the door back shut behind them. She could only see his outline when he started moving, keeping her arms wrapped loose around her when she trailed a few steps behind him.At the end of the corridor was a soft, warm glow—a dome of orange-yellow light, casting long shadows on the walls of the rectangular room the hallway had opened up to; she could already hear the hushed voices before they even reached the periphery of the radiance.“Tim’s here,” someone murmured lowly, and the whispers were muted.As Tim limped into the illuminated room, she stopped behind him, at the mouth of the corridor, barely in the dome of light, still largely cast in shadows.“Good.” A second voice spoke, more nasally but barely louder than the first. “So now we can—”“Who the hell is she?”Four pairs of eyes turned and stared at her. She swallowed dryly.“A friend,” Tim quickly said, his face turning to stone.“A friend?” A tall young man in a blue striped hooded jacket glared through his glasses, past Tim’s shoulder, throwing daggers at her forehead. His voice was accusatory, like sandpaper in her ears, taut but rather shrill for a male’s voice. She scrunched her nose. “I thought we were done taking in ‘friends’, Tim.”“She’s one of the kids I told you about,” Tim retorted back, turning to glare back at the other man but paused briefly. “Sort of.”“’Sort of’?” The other man narrowed his eyes. “What do you mean, ‘sort of’?”She lightly bit the inside of her cheek and averted her gaze.“Look, she’s fine, all right?” She frowned when Tim raised his voice. She only ever heard that tone once, a long, long time ago. “I trust her.”“Doesn’t mean we should too.”“Says the man who tried to kill us all,” the first voice spoke up, scoffing under his breath, and everything fell silent. She couldn’t see him from where she stood, with Tim still standing in front of her, blocking her view into the rest of the room.“Look, she doesn’t belong here,” Tim eventually sighed, eyes flickering between her and his supposed friends every now and then. “She’s still alive. HABIT brought her down here, so I’m gonna help get her out of here.”“And what about us?” the man in the blue striped hoodie retorted back, still no less aggressive. “You’re saying we belong here? What happened to us getting out, huh?”“We’re dead, Alex.” For as smooth as the first voice was, his words cut through the tension in the air like a hot knife through cold butter. “We’re dead, and this is hell. We’re trapped here. There’s no point in denying it anymore.”“And we belong here?” the third man—Alex—sneered back and scoffed. “In hell, or—or purgatory, or whatever the hell this is?”“Well, one of us clearly does.”Ah yes. Friends.Something stirred in the back of her mind—an echo of a smile.“I’m not asking you to help me.” Tim stepped forward, folding his arms in front of him. “I’m not asking anybody anything. You called to regroup, so here I am. We all know what it’s like out there, so I took her here, for now. But she’s my responsibility, so if you want to kick me out from here on out, then fine. I’ll leave.”She always loved the silence—calm, serene, peaceful—so she could never quite understand what people meant by ‘uncomfortable’ or ‘awkward’ silence. Now, standing here in this room, she could feel the pit of her stomach churning, the ghostly spiders crawling up the skin of her folded arms, and the almost-familiar sensation of the invisible tumor growing inside her skull.Alex glared between her and Tim, then rolled his eyes. “Whatever,” he scoffed and turned around, eyes following him as he disappeared past the hollow door frame behind him.Tim looked back at her, his gaze almost sympathetic.“You were being serious about these kids, huh?”Tim turned his gaze back forward, to one of the men still hidden from her around the corner, and pressed his lips firmly.“I just need some information from Jeff,” he said instead, eyes scanning around the room. “Is he here?”“No,” the nasal voice replied, followed with soft footsteps as a figure slowly entered her field of vision. He was barely taller than Tim, dressed in a musty brown hooded jacket and cap. His eyes briefly glanced towards her before turning back to their mutual friend. “We haven’t seen or heard from him since the last time we split up.”Tim sighed, moving his hands to his hips. “You don’t think…”“Let’s hope not,” the second man said, mouth squirming. “Why do you need him?”Tim shrugged. “He knows this place better than we do. He knows HABIT better than we do.”“Well, if he knew a way out, wouldn’t he have told us about it long ago?”“It’s not like he’s been entirely forthright to us, either.” The first man finally stepped forward, the last to enter her proper field of view. Barely different in height, almost a similar mop of light brown hair—the first distinctive feature of his that she noticed was his mustard yellow jacket and black gloved hands. He seemed to ignore her entirely at first, nodding towards Tim instead as his eyes quickly panned down. “How’s the leg?”Tim’s scoff was feeble, tired. “Been better, been worse.”The other man stretched his lip and nodded. “First-aid kit’s in the bathroom,” he nodded towards the doorway on the other side of the room, then finally turned to her, the apparently unwelcome guest, expressionless. “And you? How are you holding up?”She blinked. “I’m fine, thank you,” she forced herself to say, breathing in deeply, and the other man nodded again.“Brian.” He turned and bobbed his head towards the man in the cap. “That’s Jay. The asshole sulking in the other room is Alex.” His gaze moved to Tim, before finally returning back to her. “If Tim trusts you, then I do too. You’re welcome to stay as long as you like.”She wrapped her arms tighter around herself, but stretched the corner of her mouth and nodded slightly. “Skye.” She swallowed, then cleared her throat. “And thank you.”In the corner of her eye, she saw Tim frown.“I’m gonna go talk to Alex,” Jay announced flatly, eyes darting between the other two people in the room but deliberately avoiding hers as he started making his way towards the doorway their comrade had disappeared to. “Maybe stop him from throwing another tantrum before we can figure things out.”Brian nodded firmly, shoulders slowly deflating. “And I’m taking first watch.” He looked to Jay, then Tim, but also to their guest, before moving in the opposite direction. “I’ll let you guys know if anything comes up.”She watched and waited until both men went their separate ways, only barely easing the tension previously suffocating the room. Her breath finally escaped her lungs, but when she spun her heel to face Tim, he had already turned his back to her and left the room without another word.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
When she saw the black sedan pulling up behind her parked car, Bishop told the rookie officer standing in front of her to console the man by the police cruiser, thanked him, then turned to face her partner as he emerged from the sedan.“Another one?”She greeted him with a thin-lipped smile and nodded. He said nothing at first, retrieving something from inside his car, then nudged the door shut with his elbow before striding over towards her. One of his hands held his bag, and the other held a molded pulp drink carrier carrying two steaming coffee cups. “How many are there?”“Two.” She failed to suppress her smile when he placed the carrier on top of her car, and handed one of the cups—the one without a tea-bag string dangling from the secured rim—to her. It was still hot enough that she was thankful for the cardboard sleeve, and perfect for the cooling summer morning air. “Christine George and her son Liam. Neighbor said the mother usually comes out at around 6 a.m. to water the garden, take out garbage, and whatnot—she didn’t show, so he went over to check in on her.”She took a ginger sip of what she pleasantly discovered to be pure black coffee inside her cup, before panning her gaze over to the older gentleman standing by the cruiser, motioning for Gilliam to follow where she looked. “Was she a single mother?” he asked as he turned back to her, and she shook her head. “Karl George was on a business trip in Chicago for the weekend. He’s on a flight back as we speak.”He furrowed his forehead, squinting at the glare of the sun just barely peeking over the edge of the cluster of soft pearl-gray clouds. “So this wasn’t a family-annihilation.”“Could be a forensic countermeasure, leave no witnesses alive,” she suggested, with some hesitation. The killer was certainly meticulous in some ways, especially to orchestrate such grand scenes for the police to find the mornings after, but at the same time, reckless in others—the messiness, the discarded murder weapon. They certainly had the confidence to do it, but what she doubted now was whether the killer would think these many steps ahead just to cover up their tracks, this far into their game. “Maybe the killer wasn’t aware the father was out for the weekend?”“It’s possible,” he agreed, “but the M.O. has been thorough, through and through. This had to be deliberate, or something else had changed. Have you taken a look at the bodies yet?”She shook her head. “The neighbor’s still pretty shaken from the news, so we’ve been having a time trying to get statements out of him. Dr. Wang is inside doing the preliminaries. I was waiting for you, actually.”Surprise briefly flashed across his eyes when he flickered up towards her, before quickly turning his gaze back over her shoulder to the direction of the cruiser. “Well, judging by the ones we’ve had so far, I can’t imagine it would be a pretty sight. Did he see the bodies?”“No, but he said the door was unlocked and checked inside. Nothing looked disturbed, then he caught the stench and dialed 9-1-1.”In his defense, she quickly thought, no one would ever expect to catch the stench of death at any given day, especially not in a morning like this—at least, no one who lived in this type of neighborhood, that is.What was now their fourth crime scene did not look too far different than the others, or even its neighbors for that matter: two stories high, beige exterior walls with white and brown accents—the perfect suburban dream, excluding the yellow police tape surrounding the perimeter. The windowed front door had been left ajar for the technicians and investigators roaming in and out of the vicinity—the neighbor did say it was closed when he inspected it earlier this morning—but besides a few minor scratches on the metal from overuse, the lock mechanism looked otherwise untouched.“The alarm system was not turned on last night, either,” Gilliam noted as his gloved fingers inspected the small black box beside the interior door frame. “We’ll need to inspect the other doors and windows, just to make sure.”“There was nothing on the lower level that we could find,” said the crime scene technician who had been escorting them through the house, just as he began climbing up the stairs to the second floor. “We will start combing the upper level once we get the body down.”Bishop frowned and turned to stare at the technician. “Get the body down?”Stepping off the staircase to the upper level felt like stepping into another world, one that, unfortunately, had become too familiar to the detective, more than she would have liked. Stepping into the house alone allowed her to smell the aforementioned stench, but upstairs felt not like a home, but rather the back of the butcher’s shop—cold, dead, unwelcoming. There was some noise coming from the end of the hall, through the half-open door that should lead to the master bedroom; but through that narrow gap, Bishop was already able to catch a glimpse of a large opaque mass, hanging from the top of the ceiling, hovering just a mere few inches off the carpet floor.Gilliam silently offered to go ahead, sandwiched between the detective and the technician leading the two. Even the latter gave them a look before standing off to the side to allow the pair to enter the room, and as Gilliam laid his gloved hand on the white wooden door to slowly nudge it open, Bishop held her breath.The object, in fact, was a whole human body, suspended upside down, arms and legs bound together with a thick length of rope. Thin crimson lines trailed from a wide, hideous gash that spanned across the entire width of the deceased’s neck, trailing down the chin, across the soft jawline, the smooth feminine face, across the wide, empty eyes that stared right through the skulls of her new visitors; before finally pooling together, along with her hands and crumpling blonde hair, into the large crimson blot staining the beige carpet directly below her.Bishop released her breath, forcing her eyes away from the deceased woman’s bloodied face, only to see Gilliam looking down at her in concern.“Don’t,” she muttered before he could say anything, and turned her head to the wall to her right. “I’m here now. I’m fine.”“You don’t have to if you—”“I said I’m fine.” She closed her eyes, tasting the coffee rising up her throat, pooling into a suffocating clog in the back of her mouth. “I just need a minute.”“Estimated time of death was between midnight and two A.M.,” said a figure dressed in deep blue, appearing in her peripheral vision. Even the esteemed doctor had a tinge of sadness in her pause and her otherwise-monotonous voice. “The… weapon was a large blade with a clean, sharp edge. Judging by the state of the wounds and the amount of blood, the exsanguination likely took place antemortem—” She swallowed, calmly. “—possibly the cause of death.”“Anything else, anything peculiar at all?” Gilliam asked, turning to face Wang, sneaking only a glimpse at the body.“The eyelids were also removed,” the doctor said quietly, taking a step to the side to approach the deceased. “It was hasty job this time, though. Wasn’t as clean as the one before.”“Was she hung during or after?”“Hard to tell from this angle. The boys are bringing her down to the ground first before I can continue.”“And the boy?”“In the other room, down the hall,” Wang replied quickly, expelling her breath suddenly and forcefully, “lying on his bed. I haven’t started on him yet.”Gilliam nodded. “Well.” He inhaled shallowly. “At least we now know for sure this is the person we are looking for.”The detective stared off to the side, towards the floor. There were splatters and pools of crimson red scattered everywhere, of various sizes and diameters, on the bed, across the furniture—this was not a clean kill, and she wished it had been, because at least the victims wouldn’t have suffered as much as they did.“The eyelids.” She shook her head. “Like the Hoffmans.”“It’s not Clockwork’s.”“Well, she’s locked up at the station, so unless she can teleport…”Gilliam motioned towards the rope tied around a ceiling beam overhead, the same rope stringing the body up like a butchered pig being left to cool and dry. “She wouldn’t have bothered with those. Not to mention the positioning of the bodies—it’s too much effort, too careful. Neither Jeff nor Jack would have bothered either.”“So.” She drew in a long, deep breath through her teeth, trying to keep herself from inhaling too much of the reeking, stagnant air hanging heavily around them still. “Any idea who the killer is copying this one from?”“I have a guess.”She raised her eyebrows, peering quickly over to her partner in growing concern.“It was a little before my time,” he continued. He was staring distantly at the body as the technicians worked on cutting the rope and gently setting the suspended body down on the plastic tarp laid out underneath it, with the doctor’s help. “I have only ever read the case file, but it is the only one I can think of that comes close to matching this scale, this level of detail.” He paused, pressing his lips down hard into a thin line, as though he was doubting his own line of reasoning. “I think this one might be the Bloody Painter.”“The Bloody Painter?” She blinked twice, letting air vibrate slowly out her nose. “That’s a surprisingly mediocre name compared to the others.”“Relatively, yes,” Gilliam mused, but his voice sounded hollow still. “But at the very least, we can definitively confirm that we are not dealing with the actual Bloody Painter for this one.”“Really? How so?”“Because Helen Otis has been incarcerated since 2004.”Her head immediately snapped over to him, as her eyebrows furrowed and a frown stitched itself onto her face. “Incarcerated? As in, she’s in federal custody?”The corner of his lip twitched, but his face betrayed no emotion as he bowed his head down a little, his eyes scanning slowly, thoroughly across the room, observing the people standing a mere few feet away from them, still preoccupied with the recently-unsuspended body. “We could not determine anything inherently anomalous about Otis,” he spoke lowly under his breath so that only she could hear him coherently. “Only that he singlehandedly committed one of the deadliest mass murders in modern American history, alone, by himself. No firearms, no explosives, just a knife and a mask.”She hadn’t realized her own eyes growing wider as he spoke, nor the warmth and sensation slowly draining from her face as her gaze idly locked itself to the other side of the room, distant and unfocused. “Then why is he—Is he still in the same category, or whatever it is, as the others then?”“Some people think he’s an urban legend,” Gilliam confirmed, his head idly and subtly nodding to her question. “Something to scare the kids into staying indoors at night, and the like. Somewhere between the Son of Sam and Jack the Ripper, if you ask me. An outside-of-the-textbook mass murderer.”“But he’s in custody. In a federal prison?”He nodded once. “If he had escaped somehow, I would be one of the first to know.”“But our killer knew about him.”“That is as much of a concern for me, as it is now for you.”“Our killer deliberately chose the others, which means he deliberately chose this one, too.” She shook her head, then froze, before turning up to catch Gilliam’s eye once more. “We need to check the other body.”The Georges’ son was indeed lying down, perfectly stationary on top of a queen-sized bed pushed into the corner of the room beside the door. The first thing Bishop noticed, however, was his eyes—she couldn’t see them, not when they were presumably hidden underneath his closed but otherwise intact eyelids. His face was untouched but dimmed despite the youth he carried—he couldn’t have been any older than his late teenage years, the poor boy—but the rest of his body from neck down told a completely different story; most of his clothes were intact, thankfully, but whatever exposed skin on his arms and legs were littered with countless thin, narrow cuts, no longer than an inch and no deeper than a quarter of an inch. On the bottom right region of his abdominal area, however, was one large, deep red stain on the green t-shirt he was wearing, blooming from what she could easily discern was a larger and deeper piercing wound.She hissed a breath through her teeth and forced herself to look away, back towards the boy’s face. “This is different,” she murmured quietly, almost inaudibly.Beside her, Gilliam made a slow, sullen nod. “This is nothing at all like what the killer did to the mother—nothing at all like his M.O. so far.” He paused. “I don’t think I even know whose M.O. he’s emulating through this.”She lifted her eyebrows and turned to stare at him. “You don’t?”He gradually shook his head, though with evident initial hesitation. “The Bloody Painter was known for how he used the bodies of his victims as canvases for his so-called artwork, with the victims’ blood as his makeshift paint. That was what we saw with Christine George.” He stared long and hard at the boy’s body, and the cuts covering almost every inch of his pale skin. “This is nothing at all like I have ever seen or read about, let alone Otis’ work.”With her arms hanging idly beside her, she turned to face the rest of the room. She had noticed how clean the cuts were—no signs of much bleeding from what she could tell, something she didn’t need Wang to tell her through a close examination—but more notably, how relatively clean the bedsheets were, especially compared to the large crimson blotch pooling underneath Christine George’s body—it was a smaller pool just barely growing from beneath the boy’s body on the deep blue covers, with a few faded crimson lines smeared across the side of the covers. Sure enough, similar to Christine’s bedroom, there was blood scattered across the room, but instead of splatter, they were distinctly drops, at least from what the detective could tell. A few of them even trailed out towards the now-open doorway, and one was a larger, oblong-shaped blob on the ground—the exact one that she was just about to search for.“The killer moved the body,” she said to her partner, stepping carefully as she navigated over to the other side of the red blob and examined the rest of the blood patterns. “He likely would have been standing somewhere around here—”“Where he was stabbed by the killer—”“And dropped to the ground,” she noted, as she was barely able to make out a vague outline of something large—likely the body—having pressed down on the carpet furs, just barely outside the vicinity of the blood pool, before it was moved. “He bled out and died here—”“Then the killer moved him,” Gilliam continued, his eyes following the motion of her gaze as they both panned back to the bed, “and made those cuts all over the body.”“Why move him to the bed?” she asked, even though she knew he wouldn’t have the definitive answer, or at least not right away. “Why leave him there? Why stray away from finishing the M.O. like he did with Christine?”“Something was different about the boy, about Liam.” Gilliam nodded to the boy’s head. “The killer closed his eyes. He didn’t do that with any of the others, not even the other teenagers, not even the first ones. And we know this was deliberate—he’d cut the eyelids off Christine and both the Hoffmans, why not the boy?” He shook his head. “But this is assuming our killer killed the boy after the mother.”“He could’ve been pressed for time, didn’t want to go through all the trouble of having to tie and string him up from the ceiling.”“And if he wasn’t?”Bishop stared at her partner, before flickering her eyes back down to the boy lying motionless on his bed, too peaceful compared to the rest of what was once his home, compared to the rest of their week and their case so far.“You think—” she started, then stopped, only to take a slow, uneven breath through her mouth. “You think that maybe the victims might have known the killer this time?”When she looked back up at him, he was silent, stoic. He wasn’t outright denying the possibility she presented, merely pondering it over the way she actively was at that same moment.“No signs of struggle.” Not even in this room, she thought, nor Christine’s room, let alone the rest of the house. “The front door wasn’t broken into—they had an alarm system, but they never even had the chance to lock up for the night.”“It wouldn’t be impossible,” Gilliam acquiesced, meeting her gaze briefly once more before his eyes wandered elsewhere around the room. “Victims all lived in the same area. The children attended the same high school. We’re right in the middle of the killer’s hunting ground.”“We’ll need to talk to the father,” she immediately said as she navigated her way back to his side. “If there’s a chance that our victims this time knew our killer—”“The son,” he interjected, nodding his head vehemently. “It has to be the son. The teenagers are the link here—we know that much.”“If he knows who his son might have had contact with.” She mimicked his nod though slower, pressing her lips tightly together before turning around to observe the rest of the room again. “We’ll need to speak with the school again, see who Liam was interacting with the most at school.”She didn’t want to think they had just discovered a newfound hope—not just a new lead, but several in fact, pieces of threads they could finally follow in hopes of putting this nightmare to an end for good. There were already too many bodies—too many innocent lives, as far as she knew, whose years were cut far too short, all because they had entangled themselves onto one person, perhaps without them realizing it when they were still alive.But she didn’t want to think this was hope—tried to push down the warm, invigorating spirt newly blooming from the center of her chest. Even though it had been years since the last time it happened, she could still remember the last time she had this same feeling in her chest—it was a fresh memory, like a cold fish just bursting out of the water, but oblivious to the metal hook lodged in its mouth.It was too dangerous to get her hopes up like that again. Outside the door, she could hear Wang barking orders at the technicians, presumably still assisting her with handling Christine George’s body, preparing her for transport back to the doctor’s office several hours away from here, so she could properly begin examining these fresher kills. Hopefully—what a dangerous word—something useful could emerge from the doctor’s findings, too, something that could aid them in their search for this elusive killer—this monster wearing human skin.“Eleven victims, three—or four—separate instances of murder.” She breathed in deeply, shaking her head as she tried to meet her partner’s gaze once more. Gilliam had remained silent through the past few minutes—he certainly did not look like he was ignoring her, as his eyes flickered back over to her several times, occasionally wandering back to the boy’s body or the open doorway behind them. Once again, she merely took his silence as his assent—maybe he was starting to reach outside his element here, after discovering such a divergence in their killer’s methods. It was something he could no longer compare with the cases and the scenarios he had been comfortable with, as strange as this “comfort zone” was to anybody else but him.His gaze moved back to her now, his attention mostly, if not wholly, focused on his partner as she continued.“We have to be approaching the endgame, right?” she asked, again not knowing if he had the answer, or if one existed at all in the universe, at this moment, right now. “This can’t go on forever. I mean, this alone, it has to be either some sort of slip-up. Maybe the killer is devolving—something changed, something snapped inside him.”A crease line formed above his eyebrows, spanning across his forehead, and his jaw twitched faintly. “Hard to say,” he admitted, speaking lowly and quietly, even though no other living soul was currently in the room with them that she knew of. “Jeff has over twenty confirmed victims. Jack has about fourteen. Clockwork has barely a dozen.”She swallowed the lump in her throat and stared at his face, into his eyes, searching for anything she could pick out and untangle into a more coherent thought. “We’re not letting it go that far,” she said to him, trying to convince both him and herself of what could just be a vain conviction. “We can’t. Right?”He made a small noise, almost like a restrained sigh. “They don’t stop, detective,” he murmured with a subtle shake of his head. “They rarely do, not when they’ve already started.”“And you think our killer is one of them? You think he’s becoming like them?”“Eleven bodies, in less than a week?”She didn’t respond immediately then. A small bitter thought emerged from the back of her mind. She clenched down on her jaw, closed her eyes, and gently pushed that thought back down until she could forget it for now, perhaps for another day.“Jack did, though, didn’t he?” She opened her eyes and glared up at him. “He stopped. You said he hadn’t been active for some time, except this one time—and we’ve already proved that even this case wasn’t his doing.”“Six of the fourteen he killed was in the same month.”“That was the massacre at that college, wasn’t it?” When he nodded, she bit down on her lip.“You know, my point still stands—”“We still don’t know for sure who, or what our killer, is,” he quickly interjected, but then stopped himself just as abruptly. He closed his eyes, then offered her a sympathetic glance. “If we’re lucky, we may be able to stop him before he takes any more lives. But if you were thinking about something like rehabilitation—” He paused, shaking his head. “You’ve seen what Jack is like. You’ve seen how he is now.”“He’s making progress. Both of us can see that.”“He almost killed an officer back at the station.”She bowed her head down, closed her eyes, and sighed. Even though she couldn’t see him, she could feel him shift beside her, as well as the ghost of a hand hovering just an inch away from touching the coat sleeve covering her elbow.“We can shelf this conversation later,” he said quietly, softly, much more than she ever heard him before, yet at the same time his stoic determination remained steadfast, stubborn as ever usual. “For now, we need to focus on finding this killer, and finding him before he takes any more lives than he already has.” It took her a moment to process it, but she could discern a certain sense of emptiness in his voice, too, as he spoke in this moment. It sounded almost like despondence, she thought. “We still have a chance with this one. We can still stop him. And once we do, then we can talk about other things, yes?”Before she could reply, the presence hovering barely above her elbow disappeared, and she could hear several footsteps softly thumping on the hardwood floor in the hall outside, growing louder and louder as they approached the room they were in now.Bishop opened her eyes just as the doctor walked in and her own eyes fell upon the boy’s marked body. Wang breathed out her own heavy sigh as one of her gloved hands fell onto the skin of the boy’s left arm, when she suddenly turned her attention towards the two who had been in the room long before she arrived. Her eyes glanced quickly back and forth between the two investigators, but nothing came out of her lips.Instead, she turned her attention back to the boy, and gently ran her finger across one of the cuts. “These were shallow, most likely done post-mortem…”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Tim was sitting at the dining table, rummaging through the medium-sized white box beside him, aided only by the flame lantern on the center of the table. When he took out the roll of fresh gauze, he looked up and glanced at the young woman sitting across from him, then turned his gaze back down at the leg lying horizontal on the chair beside him.
“’Skye’?”
She stared at him for a moment, then raised her head to scan her eyes across the darkened room. “You introduced me as ‘one of the kids’,” she said simply. “Besides, it’s easier to explain, raise less questions.”
“Yeah, well.” Tim clicked his tongue and nodded to himself. “I guess ‘Siren’ doesn’t sound like a normal name, does it?”
A sharp thump echoed from the center of the room and he cursed under his breath, face scrunching painfully as he hissed through his teeth.
Her gaze softened. “I can help you with that.”
“It’s fine, I can do it,” Tim said quickly, shaking his head, but she was already standing up and encircling the table, stopping in front of him. He had rolled his pant leg up to his knee, showcasing the large, deep red gash, at least half an inch wide and seven inches long, sliced diagonally across his shin. In one smooth movement, she went over to the first-aid kit, found a pack of alcohol wipes, and pulled one of the chairs up to sit beside his leg.
“I’ve heard that amnesia only affects some memories. Life events, experiences, things like that. But the skills you’ve learned to do, stay with you,” Tim muttered quietly in front of her. She could feel his stare piercing through her skull as she took out several sheets of wipes and started cleaning the red blotches around the wound, slowly and gradually inching closer to the epicenter as she went. “Is it like that between you two? If you don’t mind me asking.”
“I do not mind.” She tried to be as gentle in her actions as she possibly could, trying to not make any sudden movements that could agitate the wound. “I do not remember learning how to stabilize a wound, but I am sure she would have done this better than I can.” He hissed sharply through his teeth when she accidentally brushed the alcohol wipe a bit too close to the wound, and her shoulders deflated. “Sorry.”
“No, no, hey.” He quickly shook his head. “You’re doing better than anybody else in this house can.”
She felt the corners of her mouth twitch before he leaned forward to tap her once on her shoulder—no doubt a meager attempt to reassure her, even if she knew that was a lie—only to inadvertently bend his leg, and immediately threw himself back against his chair as another wince struck his face and a loud hiss blew through his teeth. She froze, pausing to wait for him to eventually settle back comfortably into his seat, before she finally turned her attention back to the crimson gash.
“You don’t have to do this,” she said.
He threw his head back up and stared at her. “Do what?”
“Help me—help
her
.” She nicked at the remaining specks of blood before tossing the last sheet aside, then snatched the roll of gauze from him. “You worry for her.”
Tim drew in a deep breath and sighed. “She’s just a kid.”
“She is twenty-two.” Taking the edge of the strip, she began wrapping the gauze around the injured leg, over one end of the wound and slowly worked her way down to the other end, making sure it was loose enough that it wouldn’t hurt him too bad, but tight enough that it was applying enough pressure to keep the wound from opening again. “You were around the same age when you made those tapes.”
“First off, I didn’t make those tapes, Alex and Jay did,” he scoffed quietly. “And second, that was different. I’ve been dealing with this my entire life.”
“And so has she,” she immediately retorted back without missing a beat, but her voice remained calm, quiet. She paused and took a breath. “Did she ever tell you about her parents?”
She wound the gauze back up the leg again, adding more layers until the blood finally stopped leaking through the ivory.
“Jack did. I asked him about it, once,” he said with bated breath. She had a feeling it wasn’t because of his leg. “Was it you-know-who?”
She leaned over to rummage through the white box, trying to ignore the invisible viscous wetness on the palms of her hands, and the searing heat licking the surface of her skin.
“She does not remember much about it.” She drew in a quick breath, retrieving a pair of scissors and a roll of medical tape from the bottom of the box. When she sat back down, the wetness on her palms disappeared, and the room was cold again. “She was only six then. She was eighteen when he took her. I don’t think she remembers that, either.”
She cut the strip of gauze and several pieces of tape, using them to firmly secure the dressing. When she finally looked up at him, his gaze was turned downward, fixed at his leg. Then, after forever, he closed his eyes and sealed his lips firm, head bobbing into a mournful nod.
“Sometimes it’s better that way, not having to remember everything,” he murmured, almost whispering. “It doesn’t do much to stop him though, does it? Not when he’s the one making us forget.”
She tightened her jaw. “I can protect her, Tim.” She leaned back, fetching the pack of wipes again and taking out another sheet to clean her near-spotless hands. “I will protect her. I won’t let him touch her—not him, nor HABIT.”
He drew in a strained breath, his gaze following her as she gathered the materials and stored them back to the box they came from. “I know you will,” he said. “And I know you can. I’m not doubting that you can.”
“But you do not trust me.”
“I never said that.” His voice hitched, and he forced himself to clear his throat. “Everybody deserves a second chance.”
“Is that it?” The corner of her lip twitched when she flipped the lid shut and stood there, idle. “They’re your second chance.”
“I didn’t—” He stopped himself, and she huffed lightly through her nose.
“It wasn’t your fault, Tim,” she said.
“What?”
“I know what it’s like.” She circled back around to the other side of the table and sat down across from him. “But it wasn’t your fault.”
“I—” He sighed and scratched his nose. “I never said it was.”
“I have seen the tapes.” She straightened her back, placing her hands neatly on her lap. “We have known you for three years now.”
He sighed and rolled his eyes. “Can you please stop that?”
“Stop what?”
“Being a smart-ass,” he said, turning his head back to glare at her. “Of all the reasons I could hate you for, that’s the top of the list for me, you know that?”
Her eyes flickered down to the table. “You should hate me.”
“I don’t.” He paused, swallowing hard. “I don’t hate you, but I hate it when you do that—when you act like the smart-ass that you are.” He closed his eyes, drawing in a long, deep breath. “Look. What happened to the guys was my fault, all right? They wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for me.”
“But we are their surrogates,” she said, stating a fact rather than making an accusation. “You couldn’t save your friends, so you—”
“You needed the help,” he quickly interjected, then stopped himself. “They needed the help. Not a single one of them knew how to drive a car.”
“Skye does. Her grandfather taught her how to drive a stick.”
“Would you have trusted her to drive them all out of that place alive?”
She fell silent, and he leaned back against his chair, satisfied with her answer. “They needed help. You need my help.”
She breathed slowly, turning her gaze up to stare back at him. “But we weren’t your fault, Tim. You don’t owe us anything.”
His shoulders fell as he averted his gaze away from her, instead opting to stare down at his leg. “I know.” Another sigh—this time, with a light sniffle. “But I made a promise. I never got to fulfill that promise when I was still up there, but I am a man of my word, even if that’s all I am now.”
She stilled in her seat and pressed her lips tight. “Toby?”
Tim closed his eyes at the mention of the name, tensing the muscles of his jaw before he forcibly relaxed them. “I’m going to get you out of here,” he quietly insisted, as if trying to cement his own resolve as he spoke. He turned to face her again, very briefly, before his eyes quickly fell to the empty space on the table between them. “Even if it’s the last thing I do.”
She didn’t meet his gaze then—she couldn’t, because despite the mild, almost foreign sensation of warmth blooming from the center of her chest, a little voice echoing from the forefront of her mind told her he was speaking to Skye, wherever she is, however deep asleep she might be.
Not her. Never her. After all, why would he?
A series of knocks suddenly came from somewhere behind her and her muscles tensed; she immediately whipped her head around, her fists and heart clenching as she prepared to launch herself from her seat. A figure emerged from the shadows in the doorway, stepping forward until the dim light from the lamp in the center of the room slowly basked the visitor in illumination, and she forced herself to relax her shoulders when a now-familiar face came into view.
“Am I interrupting something?” Brian said, staring right over her head at presumably Tim, stopping his tracks a mere couple of feet into the room when his gaze eventually fell onto her.
Tim furrowed his forehead, looking back at his friend in concern. “Something happened?”
“No, no, nothing, yet,” the other man murmured, slipping his gloved hands into the pockets of his hooded jacket. His eyes briefly glanced back and forth rapidly between the other two people in the room, then he nodded towards Tim. “Leg feeling better?”
As she glanced towards her more familiar ally, Tim was quick to meet her gaze, and the corner of his lip twitched. “I had some help,” he said, then looked past her shoulder back at Brian. “You need me for something?”
There was a short, uneasy pause before the reply finally came. “Actually, I came to talk to her.”
She spun her head around again, immediately meeting the other man’s stare.
“Calm down, it’s nothing serious,” Brian assured, his voice calm and collected as it always had been, though it did almost nothing to settle the tension in her bones. He looked between her and Tim again, though cautiously this time. “I just want to have a chat—privately, if you guys don’t mind.”
Silence fell upon the room, inviting her to look back toward Tim who now stared right into her, as though trying his best to assess her expression, as little as she gave away, to determine his own opinion on the matter. It was almost amusing—he and Brian knew each other for much, much longer than he knew her nor Skye, but his hesitation could not be any more obvious from even the glint in his eyes alone.
“Promise me you won’t kill her behind my back,” he finally said.
Brian squinted his eyes at his friend. “You really think that low of me?”
“You’ve tried to kill me, like, five times now.”
Brian froze. “Things were different.” The lightly-playful lilt was gone, and his voice was quieter now, even more so than it usually was. It was not an unfamiliar tone of voice to her ears, however—she’d heard far too many people around her speak in almost the exact same tone, even and especially after the severance.
Brian’s gaze fell back onto her as he began turning his body around. “C’mon,” he murmured, subtly nodding towards the doorway he just came from. “I don’t like leaving the door unguarded for too long.”
The building was small—or at the very least, the areas accessible to them were very limited. The corridor was a minimal, claustrophobic nightmare, barely wide enough for two people to squeeze side-by-side, with no illumination whatsoever, besides the ailing reach of amber glow from the kitchen or dining room or whatever room she was just in. It took half a minute for her vision to accommodate to the poor lighting—it was almost as disorienting as the empty space she once could consider home, she thought—but what surprised her was Brian’s uninterrupted, almost confident stride across the long passage, almost as if he made himself right at home here in the dark, narrow space in no time at all.
“I wouldn’t blame you if you wanted to kill me,” she murmured softly, still keeping pace with him as his pale yellow back slowly materialized into view at a mere couple feet just ahead of her.
“What? No,” the man quickly replied, scoffing. “Don’t listen to him. He’s—He’s just saying things.”
“But you have attempted to kill him before.”
Another pause. She swallowed hard. “It wasn’t my best moment.” His voice was softer than hers now, sounding almost distant, as though he was at the other end of the corridor and all she was hearing was a whisper of an echo of his words. “Did he tell you about me?”
“I have also seen the videos.”
“Right, the videos. I almost forgot about them.” He scoffed again, this time less offended, but sounding rather tired instead, morose even. “Wait, you didn’t fall into all this because of those videos, did you?”
“No.” She shook her head, even though she knew he wouldn’t be able to see her. “It is a long story.”
“We have time.”
His pace slowed to a decisive halt when a wall manifested before them—no, it was a door, occupying an entire half of the width of the corridor, presumably the same door she and Tim entered through less than half an hour ago. He spun himself around on his heel, groaning under his breath as he planted his back to the wall and slid down until he was fully sitting on the floor. He stretched his legs out, for as much as he could within the narrow space, before finally turning his head to look up at her.
She stood frozen still and stared back at him, silent. He took a deep breath, and sighed with a slow nod.
“You don’t trust me,” he said, turning his gaze back down. “That’s fair.”
“That is not my intention.” She glanced behind her, assessing the space between her and the wall, and slowly descended until her legs were crossed and she felt her bottom hit the cold, hard surface, imperfectly perpendicular to the wall and the man now sitting across from her. “What did you want to speak to me about?”
“Hmm? Oh.” He nodded to himself. “No, yeah, I just wanted to ask,” he began, bending one of his legs and moving to dangle his arm freely over the knee, “about when, or if, you’re going to sell us out to your master, or whatever he is, once you get out of here. Or maybe even kill us, for that matter—personally, I like that option better.”
She froze, and turned her head up to stare at his outline in the darkness. “I beg your pardon?”
There was a stillness in the air—silence that filled the entirety of what space was available to them, for them to breathe, that now filled her lungs with one short breath, suffocating her inside out. At least, it felt that way for her—it certainly didn’t look like that to the dead man sitting calmly, almost relaxed, across from her.
“You’re probably, what, a few years younger than us?” he said quietly, with almost terrifying nonchalance—the complete opposite of how she usually was, because unlike her, there wasn’t a hint of effort from him to mask it with a practiced façade. In fact, it didn’t feel like there was ever a mask from him at all. “I’ve heard the way his people speak, seen the way they act.”
Her stomach sank. Something bitter rose in the back of her mouth, something that made her apprehensive to swallow the saliva pooling in the base of her tongue for fear it might induce something worse to regurgitate out instead.
“Tim trusts you.” Brian’s voice was calm, collected, and stable, like a smooth, fresh asphalt road. “You should know, trust doesn’t come around as easy to us as it used to.”
She drew in a long, labored breath, trying her best not to let it stutter. “I do not work for the Operator,” she said, but her voice didn’t come out as confidently as she thought it would. She knew this truth for herself, but she certainly didn’t expect it would be easy for her to convince others of the same.
“Then who do you work for?”
“No one.”
“I don’t believe you.”
She closed her eyes and took another breath. “I work for Skye,” she murmured in her exhale. “I work to protect her, and the people she cares about.”
There was a brief pause as the man considered her words, to her own surprise. “And that includes Tim?”
“Yes.”
Another, longer pause, before Brian clicked his tongue and glanced at her, head to toe. “Who is she?” he asked. “This ‘Skye’ person. Is she…” Then he nodded towards her, towards the body she woke up in, the body she carried now.
She nodded, ever so subtly. “She is my person,” she said slowly, carefully. “I would not be here, where I am now, if it were not for her.” Then she lowered her head, her voice becoming more and more quiet towards the end. “But she is here now, because of me.”
Her hand snaked up her arm, into the sleeves of the sweater, rubbing softly against the coarse, uneven skin hidden underneath the fabric. Sometimes they had dreams—hers, or Skye’s, neither could ever really tell. Sometimes those dreams were flashes of memories from the time before—how long it had been since the last time there was a smile on their face, and how long it had been since the scars failed to heal.
“And who is he, to her?”
She turned back to the man sitting across from her. She didn’t think he once turned his gaze away from her, or at least, she couldn’t tell if he did.
“Tim,” he clarified. “Do you know?”
She took her own brief pause, trying to hold longer onto the memories and the pictures and the sounds that were not her own. “He was the older brother she never had,” she near-whispered, very aware of how distant her own voice sounded. In her mind, she extended her hand and her arm, trying to reach for the silenced voice sleeping in the back of their head. She could feel it stirring. Just a little more, she thought hopefully. “They were younger. He knew what they were going through. He was there for them when no one else was.”
She could feel Brian’s stare still resting heavily on her shoulders before she reluctantly went to match his gaze. His facial features still had not changed since he sat down, with the exception of his lips when he spoke, but his image was otherwise a still-life painting she could barely make out in the shadows.
“You know he’s going to put his life on the line for you—for her, or I guess the both of you,” he finally decided, and sounded almost as if he was confirming this to himself more than to her. She heard him take a deep breath and exhale slowly, before finally, he turned his head at the smallest angle away from her, casting his eyes instead to a spot in the wall beside her. “We had a friend once. She didn’t have much to do with what we did, but Alex was an idiot, so he pulled her in, even though he wanted her out.” He made a soft sound, one she couldn’t discern whether it was a scoff or a cough. “Tim risked his life and limb to make sure she was safe—from Alex, and from the Operator, and even from us at one point. I don’t know where she is now, but we know how the rest of us turned out.”
She couldn’t remember if she knew this person, this friend of theirs. She couldn’t remember if Tim ever told her about this friend, or even told Skye about her either. Maybe it was better, she thought to herself now, that she never knew about this friend. She could still remember what the Keeper had her do, made her do, to Jack and Toby, and to others. In retrospect, she was relieved she barely ever crossed paths with Tim in the first place.
“I know it doesn’t seem like it now,” Brian then added, shifting his legs so he could straighten his bent leg and bend the other instead. “But I’m his best friend, and it’s my job to make sure he doesn’t do anything stupid, like that, ever again.”
“I never asked him to,” she murmured quietly, staring at the floor between them. “She was there when he died. I cannot remember what had happened, but I remember how much she wanted to go back to sleep back then, when it happened.” Sometimes, she wondered if this had become second nature to them—or at least, to Skye—to “go back to sleep” whenever something like that happened. It happened with Toby, and the fire. It almost happened in the forest, with the Operator, when Jack was there, and that other boy, too. “It is my job to make sure she doesn’t. So, no. I would never ask that of him. Not once, not ever.”
Brian met her gaze once more very briefly, then pressed his lips into a thin, straight line before his head began to slowly nod. “Well, he’s stubborn, and not the good kind,” he murmured in disappointment and breathed out a slow sigh. “I mean, I never thought he was the martyr type, to be honest. Depressed, and suicidal, maybe. Then again, I never thought we’d end up like this either.” He inhaled sharply, turning his gaze up to glance around at the walls that surrounded them. “Do you know anything about this place? Anything at all?”
“Only that HABIT rules this domain now,” she said regrettably, turning her gaze down briefly to her feet. “And that the Operator cannot touch us here. Though he will not let us leave, either.”
Brian hummed in acknowledgment. “Well, I figured it was either hell or worse for me. I know what I did,” he scoffed feebly to himself, before looking back towards her. “You’re not dead yet though, are you? Tim said earlier you weren’t.”
She shook her head. “Skye and I are only bound until death.” At least, she thought they were. She never thought she would be here where they were now, freed from the leash and his control. “HABIT must have brought us here for a reason.” She lifted her hand, turning it around in her gaze. “Maybe he knows what this place does to us, to me. He knows I would not have come back out here so willingly.”
She allowed her hand to fall back to her side before turning her gaze back up at him, only to watch the lines deepen across his weary face and beneath his tired eyes. His body remained still, however, frozen and unmoving even despite how cold the air was around them, how cold it must be for any ordinary human in general.
“Wait, he brought you here,” Brian reiterated, glaring at her without emotion. “That means he’s hunting you, isn’t he?”
She briefly parted her lips, though she couldn’t bring herself to make a single sound. It was a human thing to hope that as long as something remained unspoken, it would not and could not be the truth. Denial, she thought—vainly holding onto something even though the cruel reality of the world told them otherwise. Skye was all too familiar with it. Toby couldn’t possibly hurt someone, much less set the neighborhood on fire. He couldn’t have just disappeared into thin air, either. And Jack—he couldn’t have been the one responsible for what happened in that cave. And he couldn’t be dead. They were all still alive. They were all still fine. They had to be. She was sure of it.
What a fool
.
HABIT brought them here, to a place where she had to wake up, a place where the Operator could not touch them. He wanted them here—he wanted
her
here.
“I won’t stay for long.”
She pulled herself up to her feet in one swift motion, hands lightly dusting off her shirt and pants. She could almost feel the soot filling her lungs. “Tim said something about a person named Jeff. Do you know where I can find him?”
“Wait, no, I mean—” When she looked back up towards him, Brian was already up to his own feet, only slightly towering over her with his hands partially outstretched, palms facing towards her. “Hold on, I didn’t mean—”
“You were right,” she said, staring at him as a feeble smile blossomed on her face. “I have always been nothing but a danger to people around me, Brian. This much is nothing strange to me.”
“No, I meant what I said.” He took a step forward, speaking lowly as his eyes searched hers. “If Tim trusts you, then so do I.”
“Your friend doesn’t.” She tilted her head up to match his glare. “It’s a matter of time before he comes to the same conclusion you did.”
“You mean Alex?" Brian asked, raising his eyebrows with a scoff. “He doesn’t—”
“What about Alex?”
Both of them snapped their heads in the other direction up the hallway, catching a quick glimpse of a large humanoid shadow slowly creeping up towards them, growing larger and larger until they could barely see the dim light from the other room forming a soft glowing halo behind the figure’s spine. Her vision soon adjusted to the sudden change in lighting, allowing the dark outline to gradually form the shape of a limping adult man with a familiar face.
She quickly pulled herself up to her feet, stepping forward in preparation to catch him when he inevitably doubled forward. “Tim—”
“You’re injured,” Brian interjected in front of her, already up to his feet to mirror her actions.
Tim almost scowled at both pairs of outstretched arms, but settled for a heavy sigh as he held one arm against the wall for his own support. “Yeah,” he grumbled, “I’m aware.”
“Sit down,” Brian said sternly in almost an authoritative voice, one that she would have not expected from him considering his earlier demeanor, but was no longer surprised by considering recent developments. His hand grasped Tim’s shoulder, very lightly guiding the latter to sit down on the ground as they did mere moments ago. “You’re gonna make it worse.”
Even despite the darkness, she could see Tim rolling his eyes. “It can’t get any much worse.”
“You could lose your entire leg.”
“We’re already dead.”
“Yeah,” Brian said, as Tim hissed loudly through his teeth when he unwittingly bent his knee into an awkward position, as he plopped himself down hard on the ground. “But you still feel that, don’t you?”
“We need to keep moving,” Tim argued back and Brian shook his head.
“You need to rest,” the latter said, briefly glancing up towards the young woman who was standing off to the side, watching, feeling useless and unhelpful. Brian seemed oblivious to this, of course—he quickly turned back to face his friend, scrunching his eyebrows in concern.
Tim ignored this, as he shut his eyes and drew in a deep, long breath. “You know he’s going to find us.”
"He’s probably already found us anyway.”
“Which means we need to move.”
“Brian is right,” the young woman jumped in, and Tim frowned. “You need to rest, Tim.”
“No.” His voice was a little gentler when he spoke to her, and she clenched her teeth as soon as she realized this. “We need to get you out of here.”
“That’s my job, not yours.”
“Skye, we’re not doing this again—”
“I am not Skye.”
The hall fell silent, and her voice, though still rather quiet, seemed to echo through the hallowed air, so much so that for a moment, she was worried someone else down the hall could hear them speak. She could hear herself exhaling, however—with a breath, she felt what perhaps were a few small pebbles being lifted off the center of her chest, but a mild pleasant feeling nonetheless.
Her gaze shifted between the two men. Tim’s eyes were wide as they flickered over to Brian, whose own gaze rested upon her. It took a moment for Tim to notice the lack of surprise upon his friend’s face, and another for him to interpret what that meant, before his eyes turned back to her, querying unspoken questions.
She looked at him, then Brian one more time, then back again. “But I will keep her safe,” she murmured. “I promise.”
“No, I am keeping you safe,” the man insisted, wary eyes briefly shifting over to his longtime companion one more time before turning back to her. “Both of you. End of discussion.”
“But HABIT—”
“We’re already dead,” he scoffed, rolled his eyes, and shrugged. “What more can he do to me? To us?”
“I am not dragging any more of you into this.”
She leered back and forth between the two men, and this time, Tim was quicker to realize what she had meant. He pressed his lips thin and closed his eyes. “You’re not,” he said quietly, bowing his head down so he no longer locked eyes with either of them, sniffling before his hand went up to rub under his nose. “I’m going. Just me.”
She closed her eyes and clenched her jaw. “Tim—”
“No, not just you.”
Her eyes snapped open and she turned to Brian—he didn’t notice her, of course, not with his back turned to her, but the nonchalance in his voice struck silence into the room and he did not show a reaction to this either, merely staring down at Tim’s injured leg, as though he was solely devoted into inspecting what she anticipated was her poor handiwork dressing his wound.
“We’re going,” he mumbled almost idly under his breath, stating a fact rather than an assertion. “Both of us—we’re going.”
“What?”
“But you said—”
“I know what I said.” He slowly lifted his head to glance at her over his shoulder. “But he’s right. We’re dead, and you’re not. You don’t belong down here.”
She found herself blinking several times before she forced the invisible lump down her throat. Those words—that wasn’t the first time she’s heard them, not even since she woke up for the first time, but this certainly was the first time she felt grateful that someone said them, that she didn’t belong, at least not here, not right now.
“Brian—”
“No, I’m not having this debate with either of you,” Brian interjected, whirling his head back towards his friend. “Three heads are better than two stubborn idiots—no offense.”
“You don’t have to,” Tim muttered instead, in a lower voice this time, not unlike her own when she was arguing against him.
“And I didn’t have to die when I did,” the other man quickly replied, but somehow his voice remained gentle, calm and composed, like an old ally always ready and waiting for you behind the trenches with a gun pointed over your shoulder and a vintage doctor’s bag sitting on his lap. “But we’re already here, aren’t we? It’s not like we’ve got anything much to do anyway.”
Tim shook his head. “What about the others?”
“I’ll go talk to them.” Brian drew in a long, deep breath this time, bowing his head so he was staring at the ground. “I doubt either of them would want anything to do with this, and understandably so. But I’m technically the impartial party here, so I’ll go talk to them.” Inhaling sharply, he brought himself back up to his feet, catching Tim with one quick stern glare to ensure the latter remained where he sat for the time being. “In the meantime, rest. Nurse’s orders.”
To her own surprise, he didn’t give neither Tim nor her any room for further argument, something she thought she had done with Tim before but clearly not—Brian patted his friend’s shoulder twice as he spun around and departed, heading back up the darkened hall, towards the dim orange glow still pulsating from the other end of the corridor where Tim had first emerged from.
She was losing her edge, she thought. How the tables had turned.
“Hey, kiddo.”
Despite her better judgment, her head automatically turned itself back to Tim, who immediately nodded towards the cold, empty space beside him as he propped his good leg up and swung a lazed arm over it.
She closed her eyes briefly and sighed, before eventually descending back down to the floor, reassuming her previous sitting posture in the same exact space he had indicated towards.
“What’re you thinking?”
She breathed long and deep, taking her time to settle back into her emotions, almost in the same way she did into the body when she first woke up less than half an hour ago. “I can do fine on my own.”
“I don’t doubt that.” She felt something nudge against her shoulder. “But you’re not alone anymore, you know that? Not when you’re here with us.”
She knew that. Physically, it was clear she wasn’t alone—there were always people around them now—but even after all this time, she just still couldn’t believe it. Jack. Toby. Tim. Lyra. Isaac. Glen. And now more.
Humans. Such strange creatures they are.
“Can she hear me?”
She turned her head around her neck. He nodded towards her.
“In there?”
“Sometimes,” she whispered, feeling the corners of her mouth twitch, and a soft stirring in the back of her mind. “Like sleepwalking.”
“Good enough for me.”
She almost flinched when she caught his arm jerking upwards, then it paused for a brief moment, before continuing on its gradual ascent through the space between them. It landed, to her initial alarm, on the top of her head, but he was cautious, hovering above her hair for another moment before descending. Upon full contact, he made a brisk shake, enough to send a few strands of chestnut brown hair over the edge of her forehead, drifting over her light-impaired field of vision.
“We’re gonna get you out of here, okay, kid?”
Her shoulders slumped down, weak and feeble. The stirring was more prominent now—a ghost of a gasp turning into the song of a smile.
“We’re gonna get you out of here. I promise.”