Amicia was still on the floor. An unconscious Esteban Romero laid nearby, completely subdued by her after a vicious battle. 'This is so messed up,' Amicia thought to herself. She hadn’t met others who’d known about the variants in a long time. Not only did Esteban know about them, he had them just like her. In truth, he was nothing like her. Esteban Romero was a corrupted version of what Amicia was meant to be. He did this job for all the wrong reasons and his methods were repulsive.

Over the years, Araña had rarely introduced his contemporaries to her. Araña had assured her that he wanted to but it was hard to get people to open up. Many of his friends had just lost too much. The trauma of their lives prevented them from trying to reach out to others. It was a sore point for Araña, to see his closest friends close themselves off to the world. In her head, Amicia knew it had contributed to Araña's single minded efforts to build his network. She’d only ever been introduced to 3 people in total. 2 of them has passed away, just 5 years later. The last person was missing and had been so for at least 3 years now.

Amicia got back no her feet. Gingerly, she made her way back to the ropes she had been tied up with. She took the longest section she could find. She walked over to Esteban and began to bind his hands together behind his back. She did the same with his legs. With a big huff, she dragged the man towards the heavy table in the center of the library. Kneeling down, she attached his arms to the table itself. No flimsy chair to break out of for him.

On the table, the scroll Esteban had shown her sat on the table. It documented the origins of the Court of Diogenes. There was also a silver platter on the table with a glass cup and sandwich on top of it. Amicia picked up the sandwich. She was tempted, really tempted to eat it. No. She shouldn’t risk it. I mean Esteban could’ve put anything in here. Then again, she did drink that glass of water he had given her. A man like Esteban probably preferred to be up close and personal when murdering someone. She opened the sandwich, giving it a sniff. Ugh, baloney. She left it on the tray and kneeled down next to Esteban again. She rifled through his pockets, looking for her things.

After some searching, she retrieved her phone from him. She inserted her real pass-code and opened up the map. “Come on, come on.”

It kept loading and loading until it eventually said it couldn’t figure out where she was.

“Dammit!” Amicia tried to call someone. Jeff was the last person on the line with her. He was also the only person in Walland she knew. As soon as she hit the call button, the phone beeped to indicate the call failed. She almost threw her phone in anger, but she stopped herself. Instead, she flicked her screen until she found the little app with a compass. Araña’s app he left for her. She really needed to find something else to call it besides Araña’s app. A problem for another time. "Please work, please work," she whispered.

She let out a yelp of joy as a map with her location appeared on the screen. Amicia was somewhere south of Walland. Around 4 hours away if she walked. She really hoped there wouldn't be a 4 hour walk in her immediate future. She really didn't know if she could make it that far in her condition. Wait. Amicia rummaged through Esteban’s pockets once more. With a slight jingle, she pulled out a pair of keys from his breast pocket. Yes!

Amicia snatched up the scroll on the table. She'd never heard of the Court of Diogenes before, but maybe this scroll would prove useful. She looked around the library. Was this entire place filled with books about the variants? Did Esteban actually live here? She limped towards one of the books that had fallen in her fight. Picking it up, she read the title of the book. Self-Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson. She scooped up another one. Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau. Another. Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë. If there was a treasure trove of information about the variants here somewhere, it’d take her forever to find it. She didn’t have forever. In fact, Amicia wanted to leave right goddamn now.

She retrieved her knife from where it had fallen on the floor. Amicia made her way to the door leading out. Past the exit, a staircase rose sharply and ended at another door. She pushed against it as she got to the top. It was locked. She got it open on the second try after testing one of the keys.

A garage stretched out before her. She saw a long table with a saw blade attached to the center. The saw itself was clean, but there were traces of blood on the table. Amicia shuddered at the sight of it. Romero said he had killed cultists before he had taken her. If he really did murder them, this was most likely where he processed the bodies before dumping them somewhere.

Past that chilling detail, there was a long bench attached to the back wall. The wall itself had a variety of weapons hanging on little frames. Machetes, axes, climber’s picks. You name it, there was a decent chance of it being on the wall. Below the wall of melee weapons, there was a bench next to a class case. There were a bunch of boxes on the bench. The glass case held a few different guns.

Amicia went over to the wall and the bench. She tapped the glass of the case. Then she pushed on the door of the class case, popping it open. There were several choices available to her. Assault rifles, hunting rifles, shotguns. Amicia opted to take a simple M9 Beretta. Effective and lightweight. A good weapon for her, especially if she might have to traverse through several hours of hills and woods before getting back to any semblance of civilization.

As she inspected her new weapon, she realized there wasn’t any ammunition attached. She looked over to the boxes on the bench. She lifted the top of a box off, revealing dozens of bullets. She picked one up. They were 5.56mm bullets. The wrong size for her M9. She kept searching until she eventually found magazines and matching bullets for her gun.

Amicia saw a button hanging from the ceiling. She pressed it and the shutter doors of the garage slowly pulled themselves up.No light flowed in from outside as the doors went up. It must be night time, or at least late in the evening. She impatiently ducked under the doors rather than wait for them to fully open. She was so ready to be gone from this place.

Outside the garage, Amicia saw a house as she squinted in the darkness. Next to the house was the van Esteban used to push her off the road. She pulled out her phone and used it as a flashlight. Surprisingly, the device still had a good chunk of battery left. She jogged over to the door of the van. She pulled on the handle, only to learn it was locked. She attempted both of the keys she had but it was useless. No matter how she twisted, turned, and jammed with the keys, they refused to fit in the lock.

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Giving up on the van for now, Amicia looked to her left. A looming 2 story house stood before her. It looked old and creaky. There was something daunting about the building. It was just a house. Maybe her recent kidnapping experience had her danger senses turned up to 11. Amicia felt a sudden bout of paranoia. The place looked exactly like murder house. She was gonna have to go in there wasn’t she? Nope, nope, nope.

Instead, Amicia walked back to the garage. She came back to the van with a sharp climbing pick in hand. If she hotwired this piece of crap once, she could do it again. She just needed to get in first. She gripped the handle of the pick with both hands, pulled back for a swing, and went at the glass with all her might. She was expected to hear the window shatter. What she got instead was a small thud and the recoil of her blow stinging her hands. She checked the spot she had hit. She traced over the area with her finger. There was nothing! She couldn’t even feel a scratch. What the hell was this made of?

She tried two more times to pierce through the window. She even tried to jump up and smash down with the pick on the window to no avail. Amicia threw the pick away in disgust. Goddammit. Fine. Into the murder house we go.

Amicia didn’t know what to expect walking through the front door. A room covered in plastic, ready to go for when you needed to get rid of a cultist? Hooks and chains hanging from the ceiling? A pool filled with snakes? She didn’t really know what she expected, but the interior completely blew her expectations away. The place was normal. The curtains on the windows blocked any light inside from escaping. That was why it seemed so dark from outside. On the inside, the decorations seemed so modern. Granite tabletops, aesthetic black and white furniture, and a large flatscreen T.V on the walls. It was drastically different from the exterior of the building which looked like a southern home 80 years past its prime.

She walked past the living room, finding the kitchen. Amicia peeked into Romero’s fridge. She grabbed a can of coke from within. She felt comfortable drinking it since it was fully sealed. She let the fizzy, sweet liquid slide down her throat. A shot of caffeine to keep her awake and active.

For some time, Amicia scoured through the nooks and cranny of the first floor for any hint of keys for the van. It had taken her maybe the better part of an hour to check out everything, only to leave her fruitless. She needed check the second floor. Maybe he had left it in his room?

Amicia climbed up the stairs. There were only 3 rooms on this level. The 1st she checked was clearly a girl’s room. She could tell by the presence of a vanity mirror along with assorted variety of make-up that cluttered the table. This must be Rosa’s room. Multiple pictures of Rosa in different clothes were pinned to the vanity mirror. Every picture consisted of just Rosa by herself. None of them were group photos and none included anybody else with her.

Rosa herself looked very young. She had pale skin and straight black hair. She wore dark mascara and black lipstick in many of the photos. Amicia couldn’t tell how tall the girl was, but she’d guess not more than 5’5. The photos of Rosa depicted a kid with a lot of attitude. Maybe an attitude that didn’t garnish her many friends based on these pictures.

Amicia was about to move on to the next room when she saw something in the corner of her eye. There was the tiniest corner of a slip of paper peeking out of a compact mirror. Amicia held up the mirror and opened it. She retrieved the slip of paper. Simpson’s Hallow. What did it mean? Amicia snapped a picture and put the entire thing back on the table.

The next room she tried was a guest room. Wait, was it a guest room? As she rummaged through the room, she found several suits in the dresser. They were all identical to what Esteban had been wearing before. Was this his room? It seemed so minimalist. Esteban was clearly proud of his family and lineage but none of that was reflected in this room. The library she was kept in felt more personal than this place. Did he keep everything that mattered to him in the library? Amicia shook her head and moved on after making sure there were no keys around.

The final room was her last hope. If the keys weren’t here, she’d have to pack up whatever supplies she could find and trek through the forest. Amicia really hoped she wouldn’t need to do that. She swung the door open, revealing a bathroom. There! The coat that Esteban had been wearing when he’d taken her. She could tell by the dried blood on the arm of the coat. Amicia had cut his arm open while he was dragging her up a hill. She grabbed the coat off the hook it hung on. She reached into the coat’s pocket, feeling a metal object inside. She pulled it out, revealing a single key. Yes! A smile bloomed across her face at the discovery. No 4 or 5 hour long trek for her.

Amicia left the bathroom. As she was walking past Romero’s room, she noticed something. The room had a window, overlooking the front of the house. From the window, you could see the van below and the stand alone garage to the right. There was a light shining into the window from the outside. Amicia dropped down into a crouch. Where was that light coming from? Did Esteban escape?

Wait, there was a noise. Amicia hadn’t heard it before but it was obvious now. The rumbling of a car engine. She stretched her ears and really listened. From the noise coming in, there was a chance it wasn’t just one car. Slowly, she crawled over to the window to look outwards. She peeked out from the corner, hoping that whoever was out there wouldn’t spot her.

There were two new vans down there. When had they gotten here? Amica watched on as almost a dozen hooded and robed figures climbed out from the back of the vehicle. Their robes were colored a faded red with a white stripe down the middle. All of them generally looked the same in their outfits. Whatever features they had as individuals were hidden away by the fabric. Amicia saw one of them walk out in front of the vehicles. The headlights of the vans revealed a figure noticeably shorter than the others. They pulled down their hood and Amicia realized who it was. Rosa Romero.

The teenage girl had a smug smile on her face. Rosa had the same pale skin and black hair as she did in the pictures Amicia had seen earlier. Amicia squinted, getting a closer look at the teenager. She realized Rosa had gained a new feature between those photos and now. Rosa’s eyes had gained an unnatural glow to them.

A figure lurked into view behind the girl. They were at least 7 feet tall. The red robes they wore did nothing to conceal the bulging mass of muscles underneath the fabric. Rosa took the figure’s hand in her own, smiling up at the brute. She said something to them and they pulled down their own hood. Amicia had expected to see the grizzled face of a lumberjack or a strong man. Her expectations were blown out of the water.

What should’ve been a human head was instead a lantern that shone a searing light on the surrounding area. The clearing in front of the house lit up as if there was a spotlight shining down on the area. Amicia jerked her eyes away from the lantern headed man. She blinked rapidly to clear the spots in her vision. When she could see again, she peered back out the window with a hand over her eyes. She looked just in time to see the figures passing out assault rifles to each other. Then Rosa Romero pointed up at the house, right into the window Amicia was looking out from. Crap!

Amicia ducked down and rolled underneath the bed in the room. Just as she crawled into the gap between the bed and the floor, a torrent of bullets burst through the windows. The sound of gunfire was deafening. It was so loud, she couldn't even hear the window shatter. Bullets ripped through the entire room as Amicia curled herself into a ball, praying that a stray bullet didn’t ricochet and manage to hit her somehow. She felt her heart race furiously as the people outside kept firing. It seemed endless until finally, everything stopped.

A girl's voice drifted in from outside. Sugary sweet tones announced to the world, “Daddy! I’m hooooommmeee!”