"I have no idea how the hell anybody can live with these people."

We were standing in front of the interrogation room again. Most people had gone home at this hour, with just few lights in the main office remaining turned on. It was much quieter now, with the lack of presence of people whispering behind our backs about the sudden appearance of the monstrous yet humanoid figure right in front of the building—how we were insane enough to take up a case where the suspect was someone like Eyeless Jack. I bid goodbye to another fellow officer as she headed out the building, leaving me alone with Gilliam and the silent cannibal sitting inside the room before us.

His hands still handcuffed behind the chair, still and unmoving. It unnerved me a little—it wasn't every day that you see someone—no, something—like him. And even to this day, I still don't want to believe what Gilliam had been saying since the very beginning was true, but he was right there, in the flesh.

Skye was in there as well, chatting with him though there were no smiles in either of their faces now, while Toby was next door—not in an interrogation room, but in the waiting room, and without handcuffs either, per Gilliam's agreement with Jack. Both of the kids refused to leave after what happened, and I didn't even need to talk to them about it to know their intentions were to stay here, as long as their friend stayed in here.

"They're still people, Gilliam," I said with a sigh. "They were kids once. Normal kids. Humans. I think they still are."

"Humans don't just kill other humans without remorse," he retorted back. "Unless they're sick psychopaths who deserve to be locked up in prison, put in death row and burn in hell."

"For Christ's sake, Gilliam—"

"You're sympathizing something you don't fully comprehend, Detective Bishop." He turned to me with a hard, set gaze, and I found myself taking a step back in defense. "And do not patronize me or think that I am any less of a human than they are—I take my job quite seriously, Detective, and I suggest that you do, too, otherwise you are no different than they are."

He sighed, taking a deep breath, before he continued, "I have read your record, Detective. You have quite the reputation around these parts, and the Captain himself has stated that you are the best person they have here, which is why you were assigned to a case like this in the first place. And I respect that."

I swallowed hard. I never liked being lectured, and just as I parted my lips to say something in return, he cut me off right away.

"But you should not cloud your judgment around people like them. Many of them are known to be manipulative, and not just because of their nature. You are aware of this yourself—serial killers, known murderers who bend the truth so they can be let go easy. Even humans are willing to go through extreme lengths in desperate situations—if there is still some semblance of humanity in them as you claim they do, then they are no different than those people you put behind bars."

He glanced back into the room, his expression turning serious once more as he moved towards the door. Just before he entered, however, he gave one last glance in my direction, but he wasn't meeting my eyes.

"I'd invite you to join me," he said, "but I think you need to gather your thoughts—clear your head a little, Detective. No offense, but if we are to proceed, I suggest you do."

I didn't say anything in return—I just stared at him, watching as he entered the room with no prior warning whatsoever, startling the two teenagers inside, before closing the door shut behind him and starting the interrogation himself.

I didn't follow him inside. He was right, and I acknowledged that. I merely watched the entire thing unfold through the window blinds as nothing more than a mere witness. The two of them kept their distance as soon as he was in there with them, and their postures were much more defensive. Skye wasn't even looking at him at all, arms loosely crossed in front of her, while Jack was staring at the agent with no fear evident on his face at all—his blue mask was on the table, along with the scalpel, both in evidence bags.

But just a few minutes in, I could tell it wasn't really going anywhere, just from the frustration clearly etched upon Gilliam's face, Jack's stiff posture and Skye's unwillingness to say anything at all—I doubt she revealed anything much to him, as much as she was willing to open up to me about earlier in the cell.

I couldn't stand around any longer, knowing he wasn't going to get any useful information from either of them, and he wasn't going to let me inside—I had a feeling his 'suggestion' was more like an order from a superior, and there was no other way around it.

But instead of heading somewhere else to 'clear my head' as he wanted me to, I headed next door, to the visiting room, where the twitching boy was waiting. His hair was wild and unkempt, like he'd just woken out of bed. His skin had an abnormal pallor, but still more human than Jack's. His head was turned to the ground, not daring himself to look at anyone since the commotion earlier, with people shooting condemning glares at him as well. He was quiet the entire time he was here, just idly picking at the bandages wrapped around his hand—something I didn't notice since the first time he got here—the silence making me concern for him even more.

Then again, remembering Gilliam's words about these people, sometimes the quietest individuals hide the worst secrets, so I made sure to approach him with caution and my guard up as I normally would when interrogating suspects.

"Hey there, kid," I said with a gentle voice, as to not startle him. He glanced up, acknowledging my presence at the very least, but said nothing. "Toby, right?"

With slight hesitation, he finally nodded.

I nodded back towards the interrogation room. "They're good friends of yours, aren't they?"

Again, he showed the same response.

I sighed. This is gonna be difficult. "I'm not here to hurt you, Toby—I'm here to help."

"Th-that's what they all say."

His voice was gentle for someone as old as him, and it startled me to hear him even speak anything in the first place. Even so, it was no different than Skye's own voice whenever she speaks—it was a voice that belonged to a person who's been through more than enough of their fair share of horrors.

I shook my head. "I'm not like them, and I'm not lying. I want to help you and your friends, Toby—I really do."

"Your partner d-doesn't, though." I froze at this, but the boy continued to betray no emotion. "All-all of us know better, so don't think that h-he's getting anything out of any of us."

All of us know better. I frowned at those words. "What do you mean?"

He finally turned to me, his dark, somewhat bloodshot eyes wide, as though he was studying me. His tics even began to tone down a bit, then, all of a sudden, his blank expression turned to surprise then to understanding.

"Y-you don't know," he said, "do you?"

"Know about what?"

"A-agent Joel Gilliam." He turned to the direction of the interrogation room. "H-he hasn't told you everything, has he?"

"What are you talking about, kid?"

"He's not who h-he says he is, miss." His quiet voice now had hints of distress in it, and his eyes stared back at me with worry. "He's p-part of the Foundation—he doesn't seem like it, but we kn-know. I mean, after all t-this is done, you don't honestly t-think he's going to put us i-in jail, do you?" He let out a feeble scoff. "People like us—t-they're not just going to leave us be, just like that. T-they're going to take us back to the facility."

"Facility? Foundation?" I couldn't make sense of any of his words anymore—at that point on, I thought he was just spouting out nonsense. "He's an FBI agent—"

"But that d-doesn't mean he works exclusively f-for them. That's just h-his cover."

"And how the hell am I supposed to trust you?" I questioned. "How do I know you're not lying to me? How do I know any of you aren't lying to me?"

His gaze turned cold. "Would we have any reason to?"

"You killed your father, Toby. Timothy Wright killed his friend, and that friend of yours inside that room is a cannibalistic killer."

He flinched as soon as I mentioned Wright's name, and I felt a pang of guilt immediately after—the man must've been close to Toby as he was to Skye, too, and perhaps even Jack.

Hence why I felt sorry for them in the first place.

"Believe us if y-you will." His voice was emotionless, and he looked away from me, staring into nothingness. "Whatever happens, we're going back t-there, anyway. I g-guess it's inevitable. We c-can't run away forever." He paused, then added, "At least t-they won't be able to get us while w-we're in there."

"They?"

He didn't respond immediately; Toby stiffened, as though his breath was caught stuck in his throat, and then he began coughing. It was mild at first and he tried to wave it off, but then it started to grow worse, to the point that he was bending over in pain, putting a hand over his mouth as he struggled to contain it.

I was about to stand up, worried for his condition, until his free hand shoved into the pocket of his jeans and fished out something from inside it. Bringing it closer to him, I noticed the orange tint of a familiar-looking bottle full of pills in his hands, as he popped it open and poured out a few, before swallowing them whole and then going silent for a few moments.

After a while, his condition eventually steadied back to normal, save for his deep breathing. His shoulders relaxed as he leaned back against the couch, his head turned up the ceiling which he stared upon for some time until my curiosity decided to break the silence again.

"Those pills you have with you." I nodded to the orange bottle in his hand. "I saw same ones in Skye's possession, earlier when I visited her cell. Tim Wright had them, too."

This caught his attention, as he turned back to me with a quizzical look on his face. "Wait—h-how did you know that?"

"Marble Hornets." To put it simply into words. "Skye suggested I take a look into that. She says it explains what happened to Wright—and a little about what happened to you guys as well."

His gaze turned distant as he looked down at the bottle in his hands. "Oh, y-yeah. He, um… he always made sure we have them with us. So he can't get inside our heads again."

He. Toby must be talking about the Operator, I figured. But I could sense the fear evident in the boy's voice as soon as he mentioned it, like he was talking about Voldemort from Harry Potter, but it didn't sound fake whatsoever. There was genuine terror behind his voice, and I could've sworn the boy glanced around the room for a quick split second, as though he was terrified that the entity itself might appear right before his eyes.

But then I thought back to his words, how he phrased his sentences and his reactions. Then I recalled Skye's own personal account of the murder the boy had committed, all those years ago. I didn't have a chance to talk to the culprit himself before, but now that he was there, I had to ask for more.

"Toby," I began. "When you killed your father. It—he, was there, wasn't he? The Operator, I mean."

He stiffened, as though he'd been struck by sudden paralysis, then swallowed hard before he gave me a slow nod.

"Did you mean to kill your father?"

His breathing started to pick up and he cracked his neck to the side. "H-he deserved it. He didn't care about any of us—never d-did. There was never a night when he wouldn't c-come home drunk. He didn't even give a shit when Lyra…" His voice trailed off into nothingness. "When Lyra died. But I… I didn't want to hurt anyone. I mean, I-I'm glad he's gone, but…"

The pain in his voice was unmistakable. Not even the most perfect actor—the best liar in the world could fake something like that. Police reports detailing the incident stated his mother, the only surviving witness, had said the same thing about the incident—her son couldn't have done it. He was brash and reckless, like every teenager his age was, but never violent. Never murderous. Even though she witnessed the crime with her own eyes, she refused to believe it was true.

The boy suddenly began to clutch his head again, his hands covering his eyes. "The voices," he murmured in a strained voice. "The voices told me to do it—he told me to do it. I wasn't in control—I didn't know what I was doing. Then… all I could remember next was the look on my mom's face, and my dad's dead body in front of me. That's when I… I…"

"You tried to run away." I sighed. "And you set the house on fire."

"I didn't want to go to prison. I t-thought I could cover my tracks but then the fire got out of control, and then he was t-there." He bit down on his lower lip, trying to steady himself as he struggled to regain his breath. Me, on the other hand—I was a second away from calling paramedics in case something happened, then his breaths became deeper and longer. "I-I didn't see Skye—I couldn't see anything—but I think I heard her voice. But the r-ringing was too loud, then everything went to black. I couldn't remember m-much from then on anymore, but I remember… I remember blood. I remember screams. I t-think I did things—bad things while he was in my head."

I was overcome with shock as soon as I heard this. The boy had just confessed to me that he had killed others—not just one person, but others. There were others.

Maybe that was what Gilliam was talking about. Maybe he knew that this boy was a serial killer, too.

"How did you get here, then?" I asked. "Skye said she tried to find you. How did she? Where did she find you?"

His jaw became tense, and there was a long pause. "S-She shouldn't have. I wish I could tell her then—if she didn't, she wouldn't have needed to be here. I-It was my fault. She got too involved because it was my fault. I… I shouldn't have done it. I shouldn't have given in. We wouldn't be stuck here if it wasn't for me."

"No, it wasn't."

I almost jumped at the sudden appearance of a new voice in the room, and I looked up to see Skye standing in the open doorway, arms wrapped around herself, staring at Toby with a mix of pity and regret. The boy looked up as well, uncontrollably cracking his head to the side again before he averted his gaze away.

"None of it was your fault," she added. "They were going to find me sooner or later anyway—there's no escaping from that. But you were right; if it wasn't for you, I wouldn't be here—I'd be in whatever hellhole they put me into, half-alive and half-dead."

"But I led you to them!" Toby stood up, his fingers clenched into fists, almost looking like he was on the verge of tears. "If it wasn't for me, they wouldn't have found you so quickly—"

"Look, it doesn't matter anymore, okay?" She huffed out a sigh, then turned to me for a split second, eyeing me up and down as her mouth formed a slight scowl, before turning back to the boy. "I wouldn't be alive right now if it weren't for you, and the others, so stop blaming yourself for everything that happened."

"Is the interrogation done?" I tried to ask, and she turned to me in an almost agitated manner before her expression morphed into exhaustion.

"Your partner decided he wants to talk to Jack alone," she replied in a monotonous voice. "Not that it'll bring him anywhere closer towards the truth about your case, but I think he just wants to dig up the buried hatchets of the past again—understandable, but foolish in my opinion."

I sighed and crossed my arms, before standing up to talk to her face to face. "Skye, I need to talk to you about something, too."

This piqued her interest, though she managed to keep it hidden the best she could. "Hmm. What's up?"

"Earlier, Toby mentioned something about Agent Gilliam being part of some kind of foundation or something like that." I watched as her expression turned from confusion, to realization, and finally to shock, which she redirected to a glare at the young man beside me. "He also mentioned it's the reason why you've been withholding information from either of us—from him in particular. Is that true?"

She didn't respond to me at first. Instead, she glared at Toby in bewilderment, shaking her head in frustration.

"You said what?" she asked him, her tone more demanding than before. "Are you crazy?"

Toby shrugged as though it was nothing. "What? I figured the nice detective needs to know a couple secrets the agent is hiding of his own, since she knows too much about this anyway. We're not the only ones she should keep an eye out for."

"But you do realize that if the Foundation knows about this, they're not going to let it slide?" She closed her eyes and let out a deep exhale. "She knows too much, but that doesn't mean we can't let her know more than she should. We promised to ourselves we're going to keep outsiders out of this."

"Skye."

She turned back to me. I couldn't even read her expression anymore, but I'd had enough. She was right—I was an outsider, but talking about their own problems with some supernatural or paranormal entity was one thing, and talking about my own partner in this case was another.

Again, it was something I couldn't believe. And I figured I could trust the FBI agent assigned into this case with me, with the Captain putting his trust on him and everything. I thought his tale of having chased these freaks, the story he wove, checked out and seemed legitimate enough that I'd begun to be more motivated to help him solve these cold cases once and for all—not to mention my curiosity on how the Smiths and the Walkers met their bitter end in the first place.

But now we'd begun diverting our attention elsewhere, and now, it didn't seem like he minded that at all. Skye and Toby came under suspicion under their own circumstances, and those beyond the case we were working on, too. From what I knew from other officers, he conducted his own interrogations on both, and considering the bitter expressions on either of their faces whenever they talked about him, neither instances ended well.

I took the deliberation to close the door behind her and gestured for her to take a seat. It wasn't an interrogation room, but I was going to press for more answers, no matter what—I never liked people hiding things from me, anyway.

"So, tell me then," I said as I moved to take a seat opposite to them. "Who is he? And who are you? What happened all those years the two of you went missing?" When neither of them began to talk and merely exchanged uncertain glances at each other, I added, "Please, Skye. I need to know what I'm dealing with here. Why were you running away? And who are you running away from?"

After a long period of silence, she finally spoke up. "Too many," she said, chewing on the insides of her cheek. "Including that partner of yours—FBI Agent Joel Gilliam?" She scoffed. "More like SCP Agent Joel Gilliam."

I shook my head. "What?"

She took a deep breath before answering. "The SCP Foundation, an organization dedicated to investigation, research and containment of any anomalous individuals, entities, locations, phenomenon and the like in the world we live in today. Joel Gilliam, from what I can assume, is the agent dedicated to investigating, arrest and recovering SCP subjects like us, especially since we escape 'containment' all those months ago."

"You what?"

"I'm not done yet." She closed her eyes. "It's not like some ordinary, high-security prison, Detective Bishop—it's where freaks like them keep us all in solitary containment, not to keep the world safe from us, but to study us; they say the purpose of their organization is to 'secure, contain, protect,' but human curiosity knows no bounds." And for a second there, I could've sworn she gave me a look at that last bit. "They're the secretive, covertly funded by the government type of organization, but sometimes they'd like to go off-radar and go through unapproved and sometimes unethical procedures, with the government turning a blind eye and everything." She paused for a brief moment, then added, "There was a containment breach at the time—all four of us took advantage of it to get as far away from that damned hellhole as possible, and I guess we've been on the run ever since."

"Four of you?"

She nodded. "Myself, Toby, Jack and Tim. Jack was contained for obvious reasons. The rest of us weren't classified as SCP objects just yet, but they were considering it, with our ties to the Operator and all, but since things have been quiet these past few years, they just kept us in custody, but we were treated no different than SCP objects were."

"Well, well, look who's been telling stories to the class."

I almost jumped at my seat again, but as soon as I recognized who the voice belonged to, my blood ran cold. I snapped my head to the door—I didn't even hear it open, but there he was, hands in pockets, his cold, hard gaze sweeping over the three of us. Long gone was the respectable government agent I was working with the past week, as he stared back at me with a hint of annoyance in his gaze and even more so at the two others.

Behind him was Jack Nichols, hands handcuffed behind his back still, his head bowed down as he refused to look at even his two closest friends.

"I thought I asked you to take a breather, Detective Bishop." His voice was too monotonous for comfort, and I found myself wincing at his condemnation. "Not to conduct a little Q&A session of your own."

"So it is true, then?" I demanded, squinting my eyes at him. "You're part of that—whatever that SCP Foundation thing is?"

He looked away and sighed. "Hmm. I suppose it's nice that I no longer need to lie straight to your face, Detective. Especially since I'll be taking these three back to where they belonged."

He then began to approach the two others sitting next to me, but something happened. I wasn't prepared for it—didn't think something like that could happen at all, and I don't think that even to this day, I can ever recover from this.

It began with the ringing.

A loud-pitched noise, seemingly originating from nowhere in particular, like a sharp pin drilling straight through our heads and into our brains. It was near deafening and it immediately stimulated an agonizing pain aching through my head, and before I knew it, I had my eyes closed shut, my hands clawing at the sides of my scalp and I was doubling over on the ground. When I opened my eyes, everyone else in the room was just in the same horrifying state as I was, and then it got worse.

Static. Our ears were filled with static, like the kind from an old, broken television set, or a radio out of range from civilization. It filled our brains, amplifying the headache and making it a thousand times worse than before. Then it felt like something was lodged in my throat, prompting me to cough my lungs out, and even worse was that I felt something running down from my nostrils. When I peeked my eyes open, I was staring at the ground, the carpet before me stained with droplets of blood, the lights in the room flickering uncontrollably.

The others were in a worse state than I was. Skye and Toby were wheezing in addition to their cough, which seemed like a million times worse than mine, and soon I began to notice them spitting out blood from their mouths. The latter had started to scream, his hands running through his hair as he kept on yelling incoherent words.

In the hallway, both men were on the ground, with Jack leaning against the wall behind him, but his cough was tamer than ours, though he kept his face hidden away from us. Gilliam was leaning his weight against the doorway, his hand on his mouth, his eyes glaring at something inside this room.

A tall figure, towering over all of us, standing in the far corner of the room. My vision was too blurry to see it clearly, but all I remembered was blackness covering its humanoid figure from where its neck should be to its toes. When I looked up, all the blood rushed from my face and my curiosity was replaced with pure terror, as I realized the figure standing before us lacked a face, just nothing but blank whiteness.

I gasped. The Operator.

I threw myself back, my head almost hitting couch behind me as I struggled to contain my cough with my hands on my mouth, all the while ignoring my nosebleed. I couldn't believe what I was seeing, tears brimming my eyes as I tried to blink them away, keeping them shut and hoping it would end soon.

And then everything stopped.

And they were gone.

Not just the entity, who seemed to have appeared and disappeared in a blink of an eye—but so was the two teenagers who were in this room with me. All three disappeared without a trace, as though they were never here at all.

I panicked. I stood up, breathing hard and light-headed to the point that I could barely maintain my balance, eventually toppling over to where the two were.

I snapped my head to Gilliam, who was still trying to recover from the shock. Behind him, Jack appeared unfazed by what happened, but as soon as he noticed the absence of his friends, he rushed straight into the room, to where they were, and I could hear the heavy breathing mirroring his panic.

"Skye?" he called out, his voice still strained and hoarse. "Toby? No, no, no—where are you guys?"

"Jack—"

"No, no, no, no, no." His hands went to his head, raking through his hair. "No, this can't be happening. Not again—not again!"

"What the hell did you do?"

I turned to Gilliam, who had finally regained his composure and was back on his feet, approaching the cannibal with a hand stretched out but the latter twisted around, slapping the hand away.

"I didn't do anything!" And for the first time, I could hear the demon's voice inside him—the reverb in his voice was more obvious than ever, and it scared me, save for one thing about it: the fear hiding behind the voice. "H-He took them—the Operator took them!"