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."