A/N: I know this seems very similar to the last chapter, but honestly, I had more fun writing this one, and I finally got to explore Jack's character here a lot more than what we've already seen of him. Also, I promise I'm not just name-dropping. Most of this is still a rewrite of the original 2017 version, so veterans from 2017 know what's coming next.

Reply to Anon Guest: Considering this is a creepypasta/Slenderverse fan-fic, the 'tall man' is probably exactly who you think it is.

"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."