A/N: To those of you who don't know, HABIT and Firebrand are characters from Slenderverse series EverymanHYBRID and TribeTwelve respectively.
"How long have you known them?"
The detective took a seat in the vacant chair opposite to the cannibal and relaxed her shoulders as she stared across the table at him. It took her a moment to realize she wasn't afraid of him—she looked right at him, studied his expression like she would any ordinary witness. No shiver running down her spine, no goosebumps lining her arms. All she read from his expression, however, was grief—grief from losing two people he cared about, which was only a natural human reaction, one she recognized all too well.
And even if he wanted to devour her insides like a rabid animal, he certainly did a good job of not showing it—his hands remained unrestrained since Gilliam left the room, but he sat there idle for the past two, five minutes, and still counting. His eyeless gaze was fixed on the open letter discarded to his side, frozen in time.
"Jack?"
He blinked, then looked up, but not at her. "Hmm?"
"Skye and Toby." She blew a slow breath through her lips. "How long have the three of you known each other?"
"Oh." His jaw shifted. "Skye and I went to the same school. We were two years apart, but I tutored her after school sometimes. She and Toby knew each other for longer than that. They were neighbors. She was friends with his sister, too."
"Lyra." She recalled Gilliam talking about her in the car that morning, right before they got back to the chaos in the holding cells. "She died a while ago, didn't she?"
He nodded once. "Car accident, yeah. She was a good person and a good friend. A great sister, too, from what I've heard." His voice was empty, hollow as the pits between his temples where his eyes should be. "I didn't know her that well, but I knew how close they were, all three of them. I didn't know about the accident until—" He shook his head. "I couldn't be there for it. For them, I mean, when it happened. I was already at West Point. I was already a—"
His voice cracked and he stopped himself, leaving his words hanging on the precipice. She knew what he was about to say. She knew he had every right to say it because it was true. She wouldn't believe it, though, if he had said it. No monster would admit themselves a monster, especially when she knew he was trying to prove himself as anything but one.
Jack took a single shaking breath, inhaling and exhaling through his mouth. "I wasn't there for it, but she was," he murmured lowly. "Skye, I mean. Then it was all downhill from there. She was there, too, when Toby was taken. I think that was how she became a target. Another puppet for the Tall Man to play with."
"Wait, is that it?" Bishop straightened her posture and stared hard at the eyeless cannibal. "Exposure? Is that how people become his targets?"
Jack furrowed his forehead. "Honestly, I'm not sure." Then he paused, turning only slightly toward her. "If you're worried he'll come after you, don't. If that were the case, Agent Gilliam wouldn't be here right now, considering what he does for a living." He sighed and closed his eyes. "He was only here for them. And if they weren't here, he would've gone after me first." Scoffing under his breath, he added, "The Tall Man hates my existence, probably because of what I am, but also for keeping two of his favorite toys away from him. Trust me, his opinion of me is much, much lower than anything he has of you. He would rather get rid of me first than worry about getting another puppet to play with."
Bishop nodded, though unsure if his words were supposed to be reassuring or otherwise. "Speaking of which," she said, nodding again but this time toward him. "Noticed you came out of that all right. Well, compared to the rest of us, anyway." She reached up and swiped the back of her hand under her nose. "Is that why he hates you? Some sort of weird contradictory, supernatural thing between the two of you?"
Jack shrugged. "Maybe. I have many questions, and I know I wasn't going to get answers to most of them. Not easily, anyway. But I know the Tall Man doesn't like me, and I don't like him either, and I knew that before I even knew what he did to them. To Skye and Toby, I mean." He scrunched his nose and sniffled. "His smell, for example. It's like sticking your nose right onto a piece of metal that's been left outside for about a decade or so. No one else can smell it but me. I figured that's part of it, but who knows." He paused, then scoffed. "His puppets smell like that, too, you know. The ones he created, especially the ones who still work for him."
"Wait, Skye—" Bishop stared hard at the eyeless man, frowning. "You said you didn't stick around the house too long because of the smell. You said it was something inside her."
He suddenly froze at her words, hollow gaze resting on his hands hidden below the table. She could see his eyelids fluttering as he blew another breath through his lips. "Is this another round of interrogation, detective? Is this what I signed up for when I agreed to be left alone here with you?"
His voice didn't hold much strength, however, nor did his smile. A façade, she thought, just like when she first met him, right outside this very building less than twenty-four hours ago. She wondered briefly about the bullet wound, the one he got from before she arrived at the scene. When she asked about it last night, he only asked for a pair of clean tweezers, and for her to look away while Gilliam remained keeping watch. She heard a small grunt behind her and when he prompted her to turn back around, she saw him rolling his previously-wounded shoulder at its joint, as he set the tweezers down on the table, with a misshapen bullet pinched in between, dripping with a black, viscous substance.
Impervious, she thought. Physically, he was more terrifying than any man she ever confronted before. Take away the two pillars of his life, however, and he was nothing but a scared, broken boy.
"Here's the thing." He blew out another slow, long breath as he leaned back against the chair, head turning up to stare blankly at the ceiling. "The Operator isn't from this world. No one knows where he comes from, but we know he can't interact with this world, at least not physically. However, he can influence the minds of people—infect them like a virus, breaking them from inside out." He licked his lips and the corner of his mouth twitched. "Then, he takes control of them, brainwashes them, bends them to his will. He turns them into his mindless puppets—proxies that can serve as an in-between so he could further spread his influence over this world."
She straightened her back as soon as she felt something crawling down her spine. The air-conditioner wasn't on and it wasn't even remotely cold inside the enclosed room. Her hand felt almost compelled to swipe under her nose, right across her philtrum again. She could almost hear a faint ringing echoing in the distance, almost as if it came from the back of her head.
She closed her eyes shut, trying to will the echo away.
"Detective?" There was no humor in his voice, just grave concern.
"Yeah." He wasn't joking then. All of this sure felt like one long nightmare, though. "Sorry, what were you saying?"
"Toby," Jack murmured quietly. When she opened her eyes to look at him again, his jaw shifted and tensed, and his head was angled downward at his lap. "He became one of the Tall Man's lackeys. Did some of the dirty work for him." He paused, shaking his head. "The kid I knew could never hurt a soul, ever. But I met him once, when the Tall Man was in his head." He breathed out a tired scoff. "Maybe he knew his master didn't like me very much, or maybe he thought I was trying to pick a fight with him. It turned ugly real quick—too quick, even after I stopped holding back from him."
Holding back. The cannibal sitting before her took a bullet wound to the shoulder and quite literally shrugged it off like it was nothing at all. Toby was scrawnier than Jack—shorter, almost malnourished even. Both of them were evidently still alive, thankfully—well, Toby was yet to be determined, but she sure hoped he was. And when she remembered the hideous scar on the side of the boy's face, she realized maybe she should have known better.
His eyelids fluttered again, and his breath was shaking. He tried clearing his throat before she took note of it but was too late. She couldn't resist bowing her head down a little, even when she knew he couldn't see it.
"But Toby was still at the bottom of the chain. A runt in the pack." Jack cleared his throat again, restoring some clarity to his voice. "Some of them he created himself, so they have powers like he does. Messing with space and time, messing with people's heads, all the works. But they're still his puppets, deprived of free will. They're also formless, like ghosts. They can possess people, here in our world—people like you and Gilliam. And when they do, they take over the person's mind, kind of like a parasite. They infect their host until all that's left is a mindless husk and the parasite that infected it."
A parasite. Invisible, formless bile rose up the detective's throat. He can't mean—
He blew a soft, feeble breath from his lips. His voice was a small murmur, almost a distant echo. "She doesn't deserve this. But who knows how many there are out there. All the unlucky ones."
The detective breathed slowly, trying to ignore the invisible spiders crawling up the length of her spine. "And that parasite," she said. "Is it still inside her? I mean—" She shook her head. "The Skye I was talking to yesterday. Was she—"
"Yes, and no," Jack quietly said as he readjusted his posture in his chair. "She told me once it's like driving a car. When the Tall Man was in control, he put that thing behind the wheel, and shoved her in the trunk of the car. But after they escaped, she woke up one day and she was in the driver's seat again. And I guess it's been like that since. It's still there, but she said it's like that thing is in the third row now. It rarely ever comes out these days."
"Have you met it?" the detective asked. "The parasite thing?"
"Once." He drew in a long breath then sighed. "It was after they escaped. I found them at the hospital. Toby was there, she was lying on the bed. He told me what the doctors told him, that she was catatonic, almost brain-dead. He insisted it wasn't true, because she was the one who dragged them both there." He scoffed as he turned his head to the side, blinking slowly. "I thought I should at least check, see if what the doctors said was true. But when I got close to her, she woke up. All of a sudden, with no warning whatsoever. She shot right out of the bed, snapped her head towards me and before I realized what was happening, my back was to the wall and her hands were around my neck."
"She tried to choke you?"
"It wanted to kill me," he clarified. "Again, maybe it's a proxy thing, since Toby's tried to do it before. But then I called her name—Skye's name, because I thought it was her—and then she stopped." He paused, sucking in his bottom lip. "I thought maybe she was delirious. Maybe the Tall Man did something to her mind. And then she called my name—it did, and it told me that she missed me." He took a sharp intake of breath and scoffed lightly through his lips. "It said to me, Skyler missed me, and that she thought I was dead. And then it asked me to promise to protect her—Skye—and Toby, and myself, at all costs." He shook his head only once. "And that was it. She passed out. I almost didn't catch her. I haven't spoken to it since."
Bishop scrunched her forehead, still trying to digest the cannibal's words. He called it a parasite, and yet, its only request from him was that they took care of themselves and protected each other. There must be something else to it, she thought. Some ulterior motive, some sinister plan being put into motion. She learned to be skeptical from the career she chose. And yet the woman looked across the table now, at the serial killer without eyes, with nothing but sympathy in hers, and thought that if the alleged parasite's intentions were true, it would protect both her host and her friend, wherever they might be.
She tried to find solace in that thought. The unlucky ones, Jack had said.
God, what an awful nightmare.
"I was there," Jack began again, quieter this time. She wasn't even sure if he was talking to her, or out loud to himself. "When the Operator took her. I was there. Even then, I knew she wasn't herself anymore. She was barely even there anymore. She didn't respond when I called her name." A long pause. "I've heard about others like her before. Word is, they're usually gone within months. Maybe a year if they're lucky, or not, because that could mean that the Tall Man is toying with them, making it worse than it already is. I don't even know how much time she has left."
Bishop pressed her lips together as she leaned forward against the table, staring long and hard at the young man sitting across from her. "But she's still there, Jack." The words flew out of her lips almost automatically and without prompt, only from the despondent tone in his voice and the distant look in his gaze. It was a little rehearsed—she heard the same tone and saw the same look from many others before him, usually family members and friends and lovers in despair after something terrible occurred to someone close to them. The comforting tone in her voice came out as naturally as the words did, but at the same time, she found herself pausing, gears turning in her head as she tried to find the right words to say. This was still an unusual circumstance, after all. Never in a million years she thought she would ever be in this position, but here she was. "You said so yourself. She still has the wheel. From what I've seen of her, if that really is the true her, I doubt she's letting that wheel go any time soon."
"But what if it was just the entity talking?" His jaw tensed. "What if she's been gone this whole time and I didn't know? What if it's too late for her—"
"You would know." She leaned even further forward, folding her hands firmly flat on the table in front of her. "Of all the people in the world, Jack, you would be the one to know if that's true. I don't know what she was like before the Operator took her, and neither does Gilliam. Only you would know." She blinked carefully, watching as he turned his head ever so slightly toward her. "Do you think she's gone?"
He didn't get a chance to answer her; she immediately leaned back against the chair when she heard a click coming from behind her, and twisted her head around to face the door when it opened. Gilliam entered without much fanfare, and before he turned around to close the door behind him, he tossed a small, clear plastic bag through the air and across the room, straight in Jack's direction. It caught the eyeless man off-guard when the object landed right on top of his lap, almost jumping out of his seat as he now cradled it in his open palms with raised eyebrows and blinking eyelids, empty gaze glancing quickly around the room like an alarmed meerkat.
"There it is," the agent huffed, somewhat out of breath, nodding towards the evidence bag as Jack carefully began fumbling with it. "Martin's cell phone. Had a bit of trouble trying to find where the other officers stashed the evidence box."
"Oh." Jack frowned, fingers beginning to tear the seal off the evidence bag. "Thank you." Once opened, he fished a small, off-white object from inside and discarded the bag to the side, right beside where he left the letter and the envelope. He took time to orient the phone correctly, fumbling briefly with the buttons.
The detective blinked in genuine surprise, however, when the eyeless man froze then reached across the table, handing the mobile device over to her instead. "What?"
"You send the text," he said, then tilted his head briefly toward the agent. "I don't trust him to do it."
"Jack—"
"We don't have time." He waved it a little, emphasizing his insistence. "Just take it. I'll guide you through it."
She turned around automatically toward Gilliam, looking for his confirmation. Instead, the agent merely offered her a brief nod and a shrug before he turned around, crossing his arms in front of him as he began to slowly pace towards the next corner of the room in distinct nonchalance. With a heavy sigh, she faced Jack again and reluctantly took the phone from his hold, and tried to turn it on.
It was an iPhone, but no doubt an older model. The screen was cracked and the formerly clear casing was tinted yellow. It took about half a minute after she pressed the power button for the distinct logo to appear on the screen, and she heard Gilliam's soft footsteps stopping when he made the full trek across the width of the room behind her, before the screen finally brightened.
She drew in a sharp breath and held it for a few seconds. Four faces greeted her from the lock-screen, and it didn't take her long to recognize at least three of them. Skye was standing to the farthest left; she looked younger, her posture much more relaxed than the detective had ever seen before. She was smiling brightly, dressed in a light blue plaid shirt, white top and pale jeans. Her head was almost leaning against the shoulder of the tall young man standing next to her—Jack, the detective soon recognized, but not from the man sitting across from her, but rather the picture she saw in his case file. His hair was a little lighter than it was now, cast in the natural glow of sunlight, and against the lighter skin tone. His eyes were a brilliant blue and like Skye, he too was smiling wide, joyful and genuine, full of hope and youth and vigor. He was wearing a blue gown and flat-top cap, with a yellow sash draped around his shoulders—his graduation, Bishop realized, after she noticed a roll of paper clasped in between his hands.
Dear god, she almost whispered under her breath. How long ago was this?
Next down the line was Toby, standing shorter and skinnier than the older boy beside him, with disheveled mousy brown hair and pale, almost sickly skin, not too different than how he was now. His hands were shoved inside the pockets of the large blue hooded jacket that hid his smaller, slouching frame, lips contorted to form a strange mix of a smile and a scowl typical of teenagers of his age in this photo. His dark eyes darted to the right edge, almost glaring exasperatedly at the figure leaning against him. The detective didn't recognize the face standing at the right edge of the photo, but felt it was familiar somehow—oval shape and a slightly pointed jaw, with straight blonde hair tied to a high ponytail in the back of her head and sideswept bangs covering her forehead. Her arm was locked around Toby's and she was grinning wider than the others, a clear, stark difference compared to the other three in their current state, as the detective last saw them.
Lyra Rogers. A kind soul taken too quick, according to what the detective heard of the girl thus far. The first of the four to meet an unfortunate fate, and it was all downhill from there.
"The password is 430422."
She looked up. "Hm?"
"The password," Jack repeated, gaze locked onto an empty space on the table. For a brief second, the image of the younger Jack was almost superimposed on the sight of him now. His face had aged a little, as it should. If it weren't for the inhuman abnormalities, she would've barely noticed the difference between the two versions at all. "It's her grandfather's birthdate," he added quietly, casting his gaze off to the side.
Did he know about the lock-screen? He might have, she thought. He must have. It would make sense why he didn't want Gilliam to do it, and trusted the detective with the task instead.
With a small nod, Bishop quickly unlocked the phone with no difficulty at all. Even the home-screen was depressing, bearing nothing more than the barest of essentials.
"This contact of yours." Bishop quickly cast a glance over her shoulder at Gilliam when he spoke. "It does exist, yes?"
"Her contact," Jack corrected before clearing his throat. "And yes, he does. Uh, go to Messages. Scroll down until you find the conversation labelled 'F'."
"Eff?" Bishop frowned, but did as she was told anyway. "Like the letter?"
"Yeah, the letter. Actually, I don't know if she saved his number. You might have to scroll down a bit. It's been a while since they've talked. Last time she complained about getting too many spam texts. If you can't find it, you might need to find a text from an unknown number or something. The message should be signed with the letter 'F' at the end."
"Wait, F?" Bishop glanced up briefly at Gilliam's tone, but quickly turned his head back down to focus on her task. "Your contact is Firebrand?"
"I figured you knew him, but yeah, that's the one."
"Firebrand? The one associated with Noah Maxwell? That Firebrand?"
"I didn't know there were multiple of them."
Bishop frowned, looking up between the two men after opening the message thread Jack asked her to find. "You sound very alarmed."
"Which he shouldn't be, considering who Firebrand is," Jack quietly retorted back, turning his head between the two investigators. "Remember what I said about the parasite inside Skye's body?"
"Parasite? Wait." Gilliam inhaled sharply, then glared harshly at the cannibal. "You told her about the proxies?"
"She asked," Jack said with a shrug. "It's not like knowing about them makes you his target."
"Knowledge leads to curiosity." Gilliam tensed his jaw, gaze unwavering from the younger man. "Curiosity leads to compulsion, and you know what happens after that."
"All you people are of sane mind and good rationale," Jack sighed, scowling under his breath. "Not a bunch of horny teenagers dumb enough to look up stupid scary urban legend online only because their friends from school dared them to. And besides, even if it happens, it's not like you Foundation people can't do anything about it, right?"
Bishop held her breath. Again, she wasn't sure if this was Jack's attempt at reassurance, but at least he sounded genuine and devoid of ill will, for as far as she could tell.
Jack turned back to the detective, the direction of his gaze only slightly off as usual. "Anyway, as I was saying, Firebrand is one of those parasites—or was, I don't really know."
"You mean." Bishop scoffed, shaking her head. "He's one of the Operator's proxies?"
"Yes, and no," Gilliam muttered, sighing exasperatedly as he continued his slow trek around the room. "We have reason to believe he defected from the Operator. We don't know how or why, but like us, he does not like the Operator, and the Operator doesn't like him. And you know what they say, 'the enemy of my enemy…'"
Bishop slowly nodded, eyes casting downwards at the mobile device in her hand. "So, we're asking him for help? He knows where Skye and Toby are?"
"Depends on if HABIT's telling the truth," Jack replied, then nodded at the phone. "Tell him, uh, tell him that they've been compromised. HABIT is interfering, but I need to confirm their location before I can go after them."
With a small frown on her face, Bishop typed out his exact words, but stopped short from sending the message right away. "He knows who you're talking about?" she asked.
"Oh, yeah," Jack said with a nod. "He should. He and HABIT's crossed paths before. Oh, and sign my name at the bottom of the message. Don't think he'll appreciate a text message coming from Skye's phone under a stranger's name."
Again, she did as she was told, adding the young man's name at the end of the text before hitting 'Send' with a brief moment of hesitation. "So, is that it?" she queried, looking up as she placed the phone back down flat on the table between them. "We sit back and wait until this Firebrand person-entity-thing responds?"
"I do," Jack quickly said, and furrowed his eyebrows as he looked towards her. "Don't you have a case to solve, detective?"
Right. The case. With all this commotion so early in the day, before it was even time for her lunch break, it was hard not to get sidetracked. "We were planning on questioning Toby once we got back," she said, exchanging a quick glance at her partner still marching leisurely behind her. "Seems those plans have to be put on hold."
"Toby?" The eyeless man frowned. "He has an alibi."
"We know."
"So, what do you need Toby for?"
"We needed to ask him a few questions." Gilliam stopped beside the detective and looked across the table at their former suspect. "About Clockwork."
Jack froze at the mention of the name, scrunching his forehead before slowly leaning back against his chair. "Clock?" He crossed his arms. "You think Clock did the murders?"
"Is it possible?" the detective asked.
"She's not the first name I would think of," Jack admitted, bowing his head down, deep in thought. "I mean, from what you've told me so far, your killer seems pretty methodical, trying to copy off me and Jeff like that. Clock's anything but methodical." He scoffed. "Why do you think it's her?"
Gilliam shifted his weight from one foot to another and pushed his hands into the pockets of his trousers. "The last crime scene was similar to Clockwork's. We think she may be framed as you were, but we need to ask her a few questions before jumping to conclusions."
"The last crime scene?" The cannibal deepened his frown. "Wait, there's more?"
A short pause passed between them as the agent and the detective exchanged another glance. "Another murder happened last night," Bishop finally said, breathing out slowly and carefully. "Two bodies. Mother and son. They were reported in this morning."
"Jesus Christ." Jack scoffed again, turning his head to the side. She couldn't tell if it was in surprise or in disbelief, but he certainly did not seem pleased. "I mean, I haven't seen her in a while. Not since Tim died, actually." He shook his head. "Bet she won't be happy if she knows Toby's gone, though. Not that I care what she thinks."
"Do you have any way to contact her?" Gilliam asked. "Aren't the two of you part of the same group?"
The eyeless man didn't hesitate to turn and glare at the agent, lips curling back to form a slight scowl. "That is a very loose term to describe us, and you know that," he said with caution, then turned his gaze away. "I don't think even Toby has her number. I don't even know if she has a phone. I don't even know if they're still in speaking terms, considering what happened—"
He didn't have a chance to finish speaking when the lights suddenly started blinking—once, twice, like the flicker of a firefly, until the bulb gave out without struggle, and the entire room was plunged into darkness.
Everything was still. The room suddenly felt suffocating; the only source of light left in the room was through the small rectangular window on the steel door, but even so, barely any light at all leaked from the hallway outside into the enclosed space they were all now trapped in at this current moment. There was no sound, no voices, no hum of any machinery vibrating through the walls, nothing. The silence didn't last long, however; a mere second into the darkness, noise erupted from somewhere down the hall, likely the squad room, an immediate sign that the interrogation room was not the only one being affected in whatever predicament this was.
"Uh oh." Bishop could almost feel her heart and breath quicken as she looked over her shoulder, at where Gilliam was standing before the lights went out. "You don't think this is—"
"No." His voice was firm, definitive but assuring. "It's usually flickering lights, not a full-on blackout. Must be a power outage."
At the echoing chorus of noise from the other room, Bishop forced herself to nod. "I mean, it sounds like it affected the entire building. The backup generator should kick in at any moment then."
"No." She heard a sharp intake of breath accompanying Jack's murmuring voice coming from across the room. "No, something's wrong."
"What? What do you mean, something's—"
"Hey, hey, wait, you can't be in here—"
Bishop immediately fell silent as soon as she heard the exclamation coming from outside the room, even further down the hall. She immediately stood up from her chair, the metal groaning softly when it scraped against the concrete floor, when the sound was immediately cut off by the loud, unmistakable echo of a gunshot coming from the hallways outside.
The detective drew her gun from her holster on both impulse and instinct, and a similar clicking and shuffling told her Gilliam had done exactly the same.
"Do you know anything about this?" the agent murmured lowly over his shoulder.
"Why would I?"
In the faintest of luminescence coming from outside the door, Bishop could see Gilliam's outline turning briefly towards her. "Stay with him."
"Go."
Gilliam carefully crossed the short distance between where he stood and the door, then placed his hand on the knob and twisted it, making no other sound other than a near-inaudible click that almost sounded deafening in the still room, though still nowhere as loud as the earlier gunshot. He pulled the door open just wide enough for him to slip through and out to the hallway, before quickly but quietly closing the door behind him as he left, returning the room back to its previous darkened state.
"Someone's here."
Bishop drew in a deep, slow breath and tightened the grip on her weapon. "One of your friends?"
"The Operator just took the only friends I have."
Another gunshot echo silenced them. It was slightly louder than the first, and was quickly followed by another soft groan of metal against concrete coming from inside the room.
"Whoever it is," the detective uttered quietly, in between her slowing breaths, "it seems they have a penchant for making an entrance here like you did."
Except the gunshots were audible to those inside the enclosed interrogation room, meaning that unlike the cannibal's theatrics from the day before, whoever this intruder was, was already inside the police station.
"Oh, c'mon. That's hardly—"
Another gunshot, and this time, it was accompanied by a muffled scream.
"Shit."
A soft thump came from somewhere behind her. "Detective, step away from the door."
"What—"
Something else thumped. This time, it came from the door, or more accurately, something thrown against, and then scratched at the door, as faint shadows moved and skittered across the narrow slit underneath the opening. The detective only caught a glimpse of a patch of dark red when another thump came, and a low, feral growl emanated from right outside the door.
She swallowed hard and tried to still her shaking hand. When she took a step back, a sharp, resounding bark vibrated through the door, and she forced her hand to raise the gun, pointing it straight at the doorway.
The growling continued for another two solid seconds before it stopped, and everything was silent again.
She couldn't even hear her own breath, nor her heart pounding against her chest. The next thing she could hear was the doorknob squeaking as it twisted, the click of the locking mechanism when it was undone, and the creaking of the hinges as the door slowly flew open.