I made myself scrambled eggs for breakfast and took them back to my room. It was barely seven in the morning and I was the only one awake. I also wrote an entry in the journal that I forgot to write yesterday. It was a relatively calm morning.

Afterwards, instead of continuing my investigation, I stayed in my room and did nothing. It’s early, I should just wait for everyone else to wake up, it’s not like I have the energy to immediately go investigate either. Yeah, I should just let myself rest.

I waited until I heard Lucia’s clock making that frustrating sound that it made every morning. Already nine, huh?

I waited a couple more minutes and went towards the dining room, expecting everyone to be there, but to my surprise, I only encountered Naomi.

“Good morning!”

“Petra!” Naomi was louder than usual.

“Yeah? Is everything alright?”

“Where is Maya? I lost her.”

“Lost her? Why are you talking about her like she’s your dog?”

“Shut up.”

Wait, if Naomi doesn’t know where Maya is, that means that she’s not in her room. I never heard her leave… Did she leave her room to go somewhere before I woke up? That can’t be good, not after what I heard last evening. I need to find her!

Without saying another word, I ran out of the dining room to look for Maya, but right when I entered the main hall, I ran into Alex, accidentally making him fall.

“I’m so sorry! Are you okay?” I reached my hand out to help him get up.

“I’m fine, don’t worry, but I need your help, it’s really important.”

“What is it?”

“Maya, she’s gone. I have no clue where she went. I checked her room, the dining room, literally every other corner of this floor. Please help out, I’m really worried!”

“I was on my way to look for her, don’t worry! Let’s hurry up!”

“You’re right, let’s go.”

“I’ll go search the second floor, you continue where you left off, deal?”

Alex nodded and we parted ways. Where could she be? What is she trying to do? Goddamnit, I knew I should’ve gone into her room last evening, I’m so dumb!

I checked the storage room first, it seemed like the most multi-purpose room in the entire mansion. Unfortunately, Maya wasn’t inside and nothing in the room was out of place, meaning that she was never in there or at least never took any large object. Are there any other important rooms on this floor? I never took the time to explore this floor at all. I’ll find Dante or Blake, one of them definitely knows!

I rushed towards the bedrooms and went inside of Blake’s room, since I also wanted to check up on him.

“Good morning! Are you feeling better today?”

“Actually yeah, I’m good. I’ll probably go out and investigate a bit today, bit of an asshole move to just leave the work to everyone else, ain’t it?”

“I actually do need some help right now, but you don’t need to get out of bed, it’s just a question.”

“Shoot.”

“Apart from the storage room, are there any other rooms on this floor that are important? Nobody can find Maya, so I’m looking around here, but I never spent any time checking this floor, so I’m a bit lost.”

“Makes sense, the layout is confusing as fuck. You can’t enter any other rooms in this wing of the mansion through the hallway, there’s a back door in the storage room that leads to everything else. Pretty dumb if you ask me, it makes most of the hallway irrelevant and makes you walk more for no reason.”

“Weird. Thanks for the help though, I appreciate it.”

“My pleasure. I’ve been dead weight ever since I came here. I’m glad that I’m finally in the shape to help, or at least not causing anymore trouble.”

I left his room and quickly backtracked to the storage room.

Let’s see… Where’s the back door?

I walked past a couple of shelves and noticed a giant pile of full boxes. I took a couple from the top and moved them down to the floor which revealed the door I was looking for. I hastily moved more boxes and pushed some out of the way until I could open the door. The room that was in front of me looked like a playroom. Colorful floor and walls, a pile of toys, even a small play structure with a maze, slide, ball pit and two over the top doors, one on the left and one on the right, leading to God knows where. All of this behind a storage room makes it creepy. Who designed this mansion?

I took the time to search the room, although it was obvious that Maya wasn’t in it. The longer I stayed, the more uncomfortable I was. The lack of noise and the feeling of soullessness in such a colorful place was unsettling to say the least. I spent a couple of minutes in the playroom, but before I could finish searching, I heard someone’s voice.

“Petra! Where are you?” It’s Alex.

I quickly ran out of the playroom and storage room to see what he wanted, I assumed that it was important since he must have been occupied with Maya’s disappearance.

“Oh, there you are! I got worried that you might’ve disappeared too.”

“I’m sorry, I was just looking into something. Did you find Maya?”

“No, but Naomi and I found a hidden room on the third floor!”

“Another hidden room? It must be important, I’m coming. Where is it?”

“At the very end of the hallway, just follow me.”

“Alright.”

I followed Alex with some semblance of hope that the room would actually prove to be useful. While we were running through the hallway on the third floor, I noticed the entrance to the hidden room. It opened like a door, but it had no door knob and it was the same material, color and design as the walls. Next to it were Naomi and Leon.

“Haha, are we having a party here?” Leon asked. “I just wanna explore, I’m not here for an entire gathering.”

“Silence.” They’re arguing again. Well, it’s more like Leon’s arguing with a wall.

“Alright guys, I brought Petra.” Alex said. “I think we should just leave everyone else alone and see what’s inside.”

“Indeed.” Naomi said and proceeded to enter the room, all of us following her inside. The room looked like an average bedroom with just a bed, nightstand, chair, desk and closet. Who does this room belong to? Maybe Lucia lives here.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

I looked around the room and what immediately caught my attention was a small cardboard box on the nightstand.

“Guys, look over here!” I pointed to the box.

Without saying a word, Naomi walked towards the box and opened it. Everyone got close and looked inside. No way! Our phones!

Without any hesitation I grabbed my phone and unlocked it. Can I call for help? Come on, come on! Shit, no signal. What did I expect?

We looked at each other in silence, even Leon stayed quiet. I see two possibilities here. Either Lucia put our phones here to give us false hope so that she could mess with us further, or there’s some secret lying in here, waiting to be uncovered.

“Petra, look through the remaining phones and figure out who they belong to.” Naomi was ordering me around, it was obvious that she had an idea.

I took the first phone at random and unlocked it. The background was a detailed drawing of a corpse. What the fuck? I opened the gallery because it probably had pictures of the person that this phone belonged to. It was filled with gory pictures, some real, some drawn. Nobody in this mansion seems this sick in the head apart from Leon, but he’s here, the phone can’t be his. I continued scrolling, trying not to look at all the blood and organs until I finally found the picture of the person to whom the phone belonged to.

No, this can’t be it. Was that…No! This phone is Amy’s! This can’t be for real! I knew it, I knew that she was hiding something with her love for “detective related stuff”, but why does it have to be this horrid. This isn’t sadism, this isn’t even curiosity for gore, this is a goddamn fetish! That bitch!

“What did you find?” Naomi turned to me.

“I-I, I mean, I’m sorry. Just, it’s this… I mean…”

“Speak clearly.”

“The phone I checked, it’s Amy’s. She told me how she liked detective stuff, probably including true crime, and you know, things like that, but no! The phone is just filled with gory pictures, some of it is even extreme fetish porn!”

Naomi stared at me wide-eyed and reached out her hand and I instinctively handed her the phone. With some hesitation I took the next phone, which had a pitch black background.

Shit, it needs a password. I paused to think for a moment. I don’t know who this belongs to, the background doesn’t give me any clues. Is there a possibility that this phone was put here by Lucia as some sort of clue? I clicked on the bar where the password is supposed to be and the keyboard popped up. M-e-n-d-i-v-i.

The phone unlocked, the password was correct. It worked! This was set up by Lucia!

I hastily searched through the phone, checking every app that seemed significant. Wait, there are only apps that come with the phone, there isn’t anything installed on here… Nevermind that, let’s see. Gallery completely empty… No contacts, calls or messages. What the hell? I angrily put the phone down.

“Who’s phone was that?” Naomi asked me.

“I don’t know, I think it was put there by Lucia.”

“What?”

“There’s nothing there, no pictures, contacts or anything, but it’s password protected. I thought about the possibility of it being a clue left by Lucia and put ‘mendivi’ as the password, that word we saw under the backyard. It worked, that was the password, but like I said, there’s nothing on the phone!”

“Shame. Leave the phones though, I’ll call the rest later. Let’s search the rest of the room.”

“Yeah, good idea.” I couldn’t get the thoughts about Amy’s phone out of my head, but I needed to go along with the search.

“Leon, open the closet.”

“For fuck’s sake, you bossy bitch! Are you bound to the ground or something? Just open the fucking door yourself.”

Naomi gave him a look of disappointment and opened the closet door.

We were greeted with a cold fear that crawled across our bodies, a brutal reminder that we weren't safe, and that what we were doing was not something we could afford to do without great caution.

In the closet was Maya, her body motionless and full of wounds, with cuts across her arms and legs, her face barely recognizable after God knows what had happened to her. Her hands were tied with rope, there was blood coming out of her mouth, one of her pinky fingers was cut off. Her hair had parts of it ripped out and some of it was soaked from the blood that ended up on the floor and her clothes had giant holes. Her whole body looked like it was falling apart.

What kind of monster would do this? I put my hand on my mouth because I thought I was going to throw up. I couldn’t bring myself to say anything and neither could anyone else, we merely stared at the body, frozen in shock.

I could’ve prevented this, what’s wrong with me? This is my fault! I could’ve saved someone, but I decided to go to bed without any worries. This is it. I clenched my fist. This is the last time I’ll allow this to happen. I’m finding the traitor.

“What a tragedy, I actually feel a bit sad,” Lucia appeared out of nowhere like usual, standing behind us, just outside the room.

“You,” Naomi stared daggers at her, “why are you here?”

“How rude, I merely came here to do my job. I really wish there were more of you, so that I could punish such disrespect, yet with only twelve of you in total, now only seven, the fun would be over too soon. Anyway, what was I talking about? Oh yes, I came here to say that the traitor didn’t kill your dear little drug abuser, so I’ll call you down after a bit, you rascals go investigate.”

“Haha, now this is becoming interesting!” Leon said excitedly.

If the traitor isn’t responsible, then we can’t narrow it down to only four suspects, we’re back to square one. Why? Why would someone kill for no reason, someone who’s supposed to be our ally? Did they kill her out of paranoia, repeating Adam’s mistake? Was there some other motive? Either way, it’s not right.

“I volunteer to stay here and investigate this room!” I can do this.

“Stop right there, buckaroo!” Leon put his hand in front of me. “You’re a bit too enthusiastic, don’t ya think? We can’t leave you alone with some gosh darn important evidence!”

I angrily pulled Leon by his shirt, bringing him closer to me.

“Sit on the bed, stay silent and just watch. Understood?” I usually hated when I came off as intimidating, but with Leon I found it to be a necessity.

“I don’t have to do any work? You’re so nice, Miss buff lady!” I ignored his comment and began investigating.

Alright, I can do it, I can do it, I have to do it.

I slowly approached Maya’s lifeless body. Where do I start? I think I should first conclude that she was definitely tortured before being killed, there’s no doubt about it. What exactly did the culprit do to her though? I see cuts, but that could’ve been done with multiple objects. Knife, razor, practically anything sharp. I need to find something that was done with one specific thing so that I can tie it to the case. Come on Petra, do it!

I kept looking, but there was no trace of the killer’s identity left at the scene.

Nothing’s adding up here. I can’t trace anything here to anyone and I don’t think anyone had a motive to do something this horrible either. Could this be one of Lucia’s tricks? I don’t know, she usually has a meaning behind her doings.

I got the idea to check the rest of the closet, although it was almost empty. On the top were just some plain clothes, there couldn't have been more than fifteen pieces of clothing. I looked through them, but there was nothing hidden inside. What did I expect? Of course the piece of shit who did this was smart enough to get rid of evidence instead of shoving it into random clothing.

Maybe I should try moving the body, there could be something under it. Maybe the killer hasn’t considered that anyone would be brave enough to touch the body. I gathered courage that I desperately needed and grabbed Maya’s lifeless body, slightly moving it deeper into the closet.

I looked at the bottom of the closet. I was disappointed for a second, not seeing anything, but that disappointment was quickly changed into hope when I noticed that one piece of the hardwood floor was slightly moved under where the body used to be. I quickly grabbed and moved it, finding a small hole under the floor and inside, a rope. Wait, this is exactly what happened to Rose and Alex once, finding rope under the floor. What does this mean? Is this the same piece of rope? I mean, it could be, I did forget where we last left it, but this could be a different piece of rope hidden in the same way. It might not have anything to do with the case. It seems to be different from the one used to tie Maya’s hands up.

I took my eyes off the rope. I need to get back to investigating the body. It’s disgusting, but that’s where I’ll find the biggest clue, I just know it!

Suddenly, I heard a loud noise coming from downstairs. That’s the clock! It’s already over, I barely got time to check out anything, that bitch!

“Thank God, I was getting bored.” Leon yawned and walked out of the room.

I guess it’s time. It’s time to get this out of the way. It all happened so quickly, I still can’t believe it, but I can’t erase it out of my head either, it’s agonizing. I have to go to that fucking dining room and uncover the monster who did this. It’ll soon be over, I just know it! This also could lead us all to the traitor in some way, I have to trust that things will be fine in the end. Even if everything goes to shit, I have to believe that it’s okay so that I don’t go completely insane.