"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 crept 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 myfault 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 comatose 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.