Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

'Who is it that can tell me who I am?'

— William Shakespeare, King Lear (Act 1, Scene 4)

Helena wakes all at once.

No dreamy surfacing into consciousness. Just immediate, wide-eyed awareness. Like being dropped back into herself from a great height.

Dark presses in from every side, dense and velvet black – blue? Her eyes strain to catch faint outlines – a door, vague shapes of furniture, a soft texture on the wall.

And, more pressingly, there is someone beside her. In bed with her.

Helena turns by increments, slow enough to preserve the illusion that she’s still asleep, careful not to rustle the stiff sheets, her breath deliberately even until–

Mark is asleep next to her. The low-light renders his features soft and diffuse. His lips are slightly parted, and his lashes, long and dark, rest like inked commas against his skin. In sleep, his brow is smooth. Relaxed. Absent of his usual furrowed tension.

Peaceful, she thinks. And then, stupidly, achingly: beautiful.

This doesn’t make sense. The last thing she remembers is the elevator. The gleam of metal doors sliding closed, the weight in her stomach pressing inward like a stone. A pang sharp enough to name, if she could bear it.

(Grief.)

The slow descent. The unraveling of self.

The last time.

It was going to be the last time she had to do this. The last time Helly stomped her body through the office. The last time Mark S would look at her with his kind brown eyes.

The last time Mark S would exist.

The end, the curtain, the exit.

(That feeling: grief.)

And yet –

She’s here. In bed with him. And, she realises belatedly, naked.

She spreads her fingers, digging into the material beneath her as though it could ground her. The mattress beneath her is firm in a way that suggests curation, not comfort. The bedding layered: thin sheets and stiff quilts stitched with embroidery that brushes against her fingertips in a familiar pattern.

Helena knows this bedding. She knows this room: the replica of Kier Eagan’s bedroom. Which means –

Which means this is the Severed Floor. Which means something has gone wrong. Catastrophically.

The first time she saw this bed, she had been a child. Nine, maybe ten. Still short enough to dangle when she perched on the edge. Freshly returned from boarding school, her limbs still humming with travel, eyes hot and sore from the strain of holding back tears. They hadn’t let her rest, as usual. Just ushered her directly into itineraries and agendas, down an elevator and staircases and into the wing that would one day be known as Perpetuity.

It had been unfinished then. A work in progress. No signage, no rope barriers or railings. Just rooms assembled to capture an approximation of a memory.

She’d slipped away, quiet as she was already learning to be. The door had been heavy but not locked. Inside: this bed. It felt like a kindness. A gift from Kier himself. She’d climbed up, dress creasing under her knees and let her small body curl inward like a deer at rest in long grass.

She hadn’t meant to sleep. Had just wanted to lie down. But exhaustion carried her into dream and then –

– she’d been pulled from it, abruptly, by a hand tight around her arm. Her father’s voice a waterfall of vitriol into her ear.

Later, when she undressed for her bath, she uncovered the angry band of bruising her father’s hand had left behind. A mottled blue-green that encircled her arm. She’d watched herself in the mirror, silent, tight-lipped, pressing her fingers into the markings. And she did not cry.

Years later, she returned. By then, a small placard had been placed primly on the pillow: DO NOT LIE IN KIER EAGAN’S BED.

The urge to laugh had risen quick and acidic. She had swallowed it and said nothing.

And now – panic scratches at the insides of her ribs and she moves without thinking, sliding out of the bed. The frigid air bites. Her skin goes goose-pricked. The floor is unyielding, wood grained and cold. She pads forward, each step sounding too loud in the silence.

Her thigh collides with something low and sharp-edged – a chair, she thinks. She bites her lip against the stream of profanity that threatens to spill out of her. Gropes the air in front of her to avoid another injury and her fingers brush what feels like clothing. She lifts it – a coat of some kind. The fabric is rough and heavy but she slips it on anyway. It falls far past her knees and she has to loop the belt around her waist twice before it stays shut around her, but it’s the best she can do in the dark.

The hallway is even colder than the bedroom. None of the buzz-hum fluorescent flicker on the edge of hearing she associates with being on the Severed Floor. In its place: lanterns. Electric, but styled to mimic gaslight. The glow is thick and amber, casting shadows that shiver as she moves.

She unhooks one. Carries it forward and surrenders to the instinctual urge to flee the scene.

(Helena has spent most of her life learning the shape of escape, its limitations and to fold herself through them. Because somewhere within her, the impulse to run – to be in motion – predates memory and sense.)

She follows the hallway to a set of stairs. Makes her way down them, wincing at every creak of the wood beneath her feet. Holds her breath as she eases the front door open. Makes her way through the Perpetuity Wing and up and up and up and out onto the Severed Floor proper.

Or so she thinks, anyway. The lights are off. The walls and floors rendered in shadow, tinged green from emergency strips along the linoleum. The corridors stretch and bend like they’ve been rethreaded in her absence, architecture gone rogue in the dark. The Severed Floor is not supposed to be like this. There’s no night here. No time, really.

And yet.

She’s in it.

She’s in it now.

(Accept the reality of your situation…)

She rounds a corner.

Stops.

Shadows drape across her father’s face, swallowing half of it, as he stands motionless – a living chiaroscuro – the hallway behind him stretching into a tunnel of dim light. Helena notices, unease crawling up her spine, that he doesn’t seem surprised to see her.

'Helena,' he states, matter-of-factly.

Her breath catches like a loose thread snagged on a nail. The urge to bolt is strongest in the presence of her father – an almost irrepressible, desperate need to be anywhere but in his eyeline. Or failing that, the urge to freeze: no sudden movements, nothing attract his predator’s gaze. Her fingers tighten around the lantern’s handle.

He steps forward. Lantern light grazes his face, etching it in planes and angles. Familiar. Impassive. But his mouth – there’s something new in the set of it, and it takes all her willpower to keep her feet planted, to stand her ground in the dark.

'What’s happening?' Her voice is hoarse, rough as torn paper.

'Your innie has initiated a coup,’ he says, so evenly he could be talking about the weather. ‘Over one hundred employees. They’ve taken the Severed Floor.’

It takes a moment for the words to settle.

'How long?'

'Three days.'

Her stomach tightens. The lantern shifts in her hand. The shadows dance around them.

'And… And Milchick, Drummond – what are their plans to resolve this?'

'Milchick is being held hostage by the innies,' he says, almost amused. 'Drummond is dead. A waste.'

A hollow opens in her chest, dark and wide. She sways. A sound slips out of her, unformed and quiet. He notes it. Tilts his head like a curious bird.

She wonders what her father would do if she released the scream that has crawled, raw and furious, up her throat and is lodged behind her clenched teeth.

(A waste.)

She presses her lips together. Her pulse hammers in her mouth, her temples, the pads of her fingers – a percussive reverberation, like knocking from beneath ice.

Her jaw shifts. She lets the point of an incisor bite into her tongue. The sting rises like heat through snow. Copper spills across her mouth. She lets it bloom and flood and settle. She lets it hush everything else.

And in the numbness that follows – that sudden, exquisite quiet – her mind goes to the lake. Always the lake. To the blank white winters of her childhood and the long, flat stretch of ice behind the house where she didn’t notice the cameras, where silence didn’t press or accuse, where she could move without being told to be still. The soft blade-glide of her skates, every motion measured, deliberate, building speed through control. She remembers the sound, low and rich and smooth as glass – as much vibration as noise. A steady, scraping rumble that climbed through her boots into her bones, until it felt like her body was echoing the lake itself. Until it sounded like music.

And now – the pain, the panic, the roiling heat of grief in her belly – she wills it cold. Colder. Until it crystallizes inside her, hardening. Until she is once again the burning girl who knew the relief of ice.

'I’ve remained undetected,' her father continues. 'For now. But it won’t last. That’s why you’re here.'

Helena doesn’t respond.

'You will convince them to end this. They trust her. Your innie. They follow her.' His voice is warm with something new, something uncomfortably close to admiration.

‘Father,’ she begins slowly. As levelly as she can manage. ‘The last time I pretended to be her, they tried to kill me.’

He shrugs. 'And yet, here you stand.'

She hates how unperturbed he sounds. How dismissive. She hates how much her hands are shaking. She hates –

'You could trigger the Glasgow Block for everyone,' she says.

His nostrils flare. The mask slips. She has pushed too far.

'Sallow chit!'

The words land like a slap. Helena flinches and steps back. Tastes blood.

(Snow falling on embers. Blades slicing through the ice. Music –)

He inhales noisily through his nose. Pushes out a breath through his lips. Makes a show of smoothing his jacket. Adjusts the edge of his sleeve. His voice returns to its usual breathy serenity:

'They cannot see the Severed Floor like this.’

He pauses. Then: ‘But if those insipid innies surrender – if they are forced to accept that this endeavour will not bear fruit… If they’re broken – they will not attempt this little… rebellion again.’

She doesn’t answer. Doesn’t have it in her to even try.

(If they’re broken…)

And then: Sound. Footsteps.

Jame steps away, ‘I have to go.’

‘Father-’ she says.

‘Do not disappoint me again,’ he says. Then he presses against the wall. It clicks and opens. He disappears.

Helena is left alone in the dark. Again. She tugs at the collar of the coat, the motion setting her lantern light flickering.

The footsteps are closer now. Two sets. Unhurried.

She straightens. Relaxes her face, muscle by muscle.

Be her, she thinks.

Be Helly.

Two figures round the corner—Dylan first, loose-limbed, and beside him: Lorne. From the goat place, Helena thinks. They’re not quite holding hands, but there’s a softness in the way their shoulders sway toward each other, the space between their fingers getting incrementally smaller with every step.

Dylan is half-dressed, a Lumon-blue blanket thrown over his shoulders like some makeshift royal cloak. His slacks are rumpled, a long vest top spilling over strange folds. Lorne is draped in a large branded sweatshirt. She looks less threatening here. Unbothered. Casual in a way Helena has never understood how to be.

They both stop when they see her.

Helena forces her mouth to move. ‘Hey.’

‘Hey,’ Dylan says.

Lorne nods. ‘Hello.’

They stand there. The silence stretches thin.

Helena feels like she’s buzzing out of her skin.

‘I couldn’t sleep,’ she offers, desperate to break the silence, ‘Needed to walk for a bit.’

Dylan nods vigorously. ‘Yeah. Same.’ He gestures at Lorne. ‘Us too.’

Lorne smiles placidly.

Helena nods, slow. ‘Right.’

Dylan stuffs his hands into his pockets and gives her a look that she can’t quite translate. There’s something warmer about him than she remembers. Less tightly wound, somehow.

'I guess I should get back,' she says, angling her body slightly, as if halfway through the motion. 'To bed.'

'Considering you and Mark are the only ones with an actual bed down here… Yeah! You should be using it.'

She hasn’t considered that – where are over a hundred people sleeping down here?

'I mean,' she offers, stumbling a bit, 'we could share it? Take turns? Sleep in shifts or…'

Dylan blinks, slow and deliberate. 'Helly,' he says, his voice soft with mock-seriousness. 'No one wants to sleep in that bed. Everyone knows what you and Mark have been doing in it.'

(Oh. Right.)

Heat surges up her neck. Her ears burn.

He smirks. 'No one wants your baby goat sheets.'

She doesn’t understand he reference. But between the curl in his tone – the lilt of suggestion – and the entirely unsubtle waggle of his eyebrows…

Helly would get it. So Helena just sets her expression into something like a fond exasperation and rolls her eyes.

Lorne frowns, visibly thrown. 'What?'

'It’s code for–'

‘–okay,' Helena cuts in. 'Thanks, Dylan. I’m going back to bed now.'

She turns. Doesn’t wait for their synchronised goodnights – though they offer them anyway at her back.

She doesn’t run.

Helly wouldn’t run from them.

Helly stomps.

Helly prowls.

But Helena walks faster than she needs to. Adrenaline floods her veins, sharp and chemical. Not panic. Not yet. Just a pressure building under the surface, energy without an outlet. Normally, she would swim. Long, unbroken laps until her thoughts settled. Let the water strip the urgency from her limbs, rinse the static from her mind. But she can’t swim because she’s trapped.

Trapped under the building.

Under the earth.

Buried.

Buried alive – for now, at least. And when the innies find out she’s an imposter, again? This building will become her crypt.

And Mark –

If it came to it, would he protect her? Or lead the mob against her? He loves Helly – Helena is sure of that. Would he protect her body, at least, if not her mind?

The thought hits like a sickness. It crests in her chest, rises in her throat, catches behind her ribs, and spreads – a prickling nausea burning under her skin.

She pulls the coat tighter around her body and inhales through her nose. Holds it until the darkness before her fuzzes into a galaxy of flickering stars Lets the air stream out of her mouth.

Fear will only get her caught faster.

The lantern in her hand swings with every step, its light jerking across the walls in uneven arcs. Her shadow staggers ahead of her – long and stilt-legged and stretching away as if even it wants to abandon her.

She closes the front door of the house behind her and pauses, knee-deep in a soft pool of lantern light. The sitting room lies to one side – dim and still. She sees the suggestion of furniture: a couch, the curve of an armchair. She considers curling into one of them – tucking herself into the dark and sleeping there instead.

But Helly wouldn’t fold herself into a corner. Helly would go back to bed. To Mark.

Helena adjusts her grip on the lantern. Forces her body to turn. To move. The stairs groan beneath her weight. The cold follows her up like a hand on her back.

On the landing, she hooks the lantern back into its place. The bedroom door is ajar. Still open from before. Just enough to let the low amber light push through in a narrow stripe, cutting across the floor like an invitation. Or a warning.

She steps through and stills.

The sheets on the bed are disheveled, kicked into peaks and valleys. The space where she’d lain is still visible.

Mark is a quiet shape on the far side – barely more than shadow, but unmistakably awake.

She feels his gaze land on her.

She swallows.

'I couldn’t sleep,' Helena says softly. 'Went for a walk.'

There’s a pause. Then: 'Okay.' His voice is soft, wrapped in the edges of sleep.

She lingers. Doesn’t move yet.

'I saw Dylan,' she adds. 'With Lorne.' A beat. 'They looked… cosy.'

No response. Just that same steady attention. She can’t read his face in the dark. Can’t hear anything in the silence but her own heartbeat.

Be Helly.

She begins to undo the belt of the coat. Her fingers fumble once, then recover. The wool parts, slides off her shoulders and pools at her feet with a susurrus of fabric.

Her skin sparks as his gaze tracks her silhouette. It’s like she can feel it, wherever it lands. The sensation hums beneath her skin, sharp and electric.

He keeps looking.

She crosses the room with careful steps. Pulls back the covers. Slips beneath them.

Be Helly.

She rolls toward him slowly, deliberately. Her palm finds his chest. Her leg hooks over his thigh. Her cheek settles into the hollow of his shoulder.

His arms wrap around her and she sighs into his skin. Lets herself soften. Lets his warmth bleed into her body.

In the dark, he holds her.

Their breathing finds the same rhythm.

And after a long while, in a bed she should not be in, with a man she cannot have, Helena sinks into dreaming.

Chapter Text

‘God hath given you one face, and you make yourselves another.’

— William Shakespeare, Hamlet (Act 3, Scene 1)

The thing is, he honestly thought it was a dream.

Some weird reintegration aftershock, maybe – an echo of something his brain’s trying to sort out, like misfired memories. Wouldn’t be the first time. He’s had flashes before, visions of Helena Eagan – Helena fucking Eagan – in hallways and a weird looking office and, once, absurdly, in his kitchen. Always confusing and overwhelming and over too fast to make sense of.

Never curled against him in bed. Never naked. Never real.

So, when he’d watched her walk into the strange bedroom last night – strip off her clothes and crawl into bed like it was the most natural thing in the world – his half-asleep brain went: Sure. Fine. Whatever.

(Which is…a whole other problem, honestly).

But now it’s the morning and he’s still here. She’s still here.

Her arm is flung across his ribs. Her leg hooked over his thigh, bare skin to bare skin. The crook of her knee presses into him, warm and intimate and kind of indecent. Her hair spills across his chest, curls loose and wild and smelling like soap and something sweet. Like she’s dreaming of peaches. It’s nothing like how he’s ever seen her before.

And it is her. Helena. Except… not?

This version of her is soft in sleep, her face relaxed, her body curved in against his like she trusts him completely. Like she fits there. Like she belongs.

He’d thought it was a dream.

(He’d hoped it was a dream).

But now – his skin is hot under all the layers of tangled bedsheets. His dick is half-hard and flush against her thigh. And there’s nothing dreamy about the way her breath is ghosting against his neck.

This is real.

So horribly, impossibly, hornily real.

He tries to shift, gently, without waking her.

She makes a quiet sound and tucks in closer. He stiffens. Twice.

It’s humiliating. And it’s something else too. Something that he doesn’t want to think about.

So he doesn’t try to move again, doesn’t breathe, doesn’t look at her. Just stares up at the ceiling and tries to organise the thoughts that are tripping over themselves to scream at the forefront of his mind:

Like, what the fuck?

And – where the fuck?

Additionally: WHAT THE FUCK.

Because the last thing he remembers is standing in the elevator. Gemma – oh my god, Gemma – kissing Gemma. They were getting out. He was getting her out. And then –

Then he woke up in bed with Helena fucking Eagan twined around him. Warm. Naked. Peachy.

She stirs. Blinks herself into waking, green-gold eyes dark and drowsy. Stretches around him like a cat.

Mark tries not to move too much, because that would mean she might notice his current situation – specifically, the fact that he’s hard against her soft skin and would really, really like to pretend that he’s not.

And then, the door slams open.

‘If you’re fucking, stop fucking,’ a male voice booms. ‘I don’t want to see something that will irrevocably alter our friendship forever.’

Helena bolts upright with a sharp little gasp. She yanks a sheet up to her chin like a shield. Her hair is wild. Her eyes are wide.

‘Dylan!’ she says, voice high and startled.

Mark blinks. Dylan, sure.

The man in the doorway – Dylan – is tall and broad with dark curly hair and, when he lowers the hand from his eyes dramatically, is wearing glasses.

‘Helly!’ Dylan exclaims in falsetto. ‘I see I could have given you a little more of a warning. Really didn’t need to see so many nipples in one go. But seriously, you guys have slept in like super late. You two are the only ones who don’t get hit with the blinding automatic lights at 6am. Must be nice… Anyways, I’ll be downstairs.’

He retreats, and slams the door behind him.

Mark sits up slowly, the sheets pooling around his waist. He glances at Helena – no, Helly – who is already out of bed and stretching. He stands, wrapping a blanket around his waist like a post-shower towel. Their clothes are scattered all over the floor.

Mark doesn’t remember taking them off.

The entire room looks like it was airlifted out of some museum, all dark rich woods and carved edges. One entire wall is covered with thick blue curtains. It feels absurd to be naked here. Even more absurd to be pulling on underwear while trying not to look at her.

But of course he does.

Of course he looks.

She’s slight – delicate, almost – but not fragile. There’s muscle in her thighs, tone to her arms. Her back curves as she bends to pick up clothes. He watches, transfixed as her hair slips over her back as she pulls a long white dress on. Follows the curve of her spine down to–

Mark spins away, swallowing hard. He shrugs on a long-sleeved top that’s almost like a henley and a pair of pants that feel like they belong in a museum. He pulls on a mid-blue sweatshirt, too, and turns to see Helly in the middle of putting on its twin. On her it’s almost comically oversized, the Lumon logo emblazoned across it interrupted by folds and creases in the fabric. They match. Great.

Wordlessly, they make their way out of the bedroom and down a narrow hallway, which leads to a staircase, the banister polished to a glossy sheen. Everything around them feels… curated. Like walking through a stage set. The walls are hung with oil paintings that could’ve been stolen from a colonial reenactment museum.

Mark follows half a step behind, trying to look like he knows exactly where they’re going. Like this is normal. Like he belongs here.

The kitchen looks, at first glance, like something out of a historical drama. Stone floor, huge farmhouse table, iron pots hanging from wooden beams. The sink is a deep porcelain basin with two mismatched taps, and in the corner, there’s an old-fashioned wood stove that may or may not actually function. The bright white plastic coffee machine plugged into the wall sort of ruins the effect.

‘Finally,’ Dylan says, without looking up. He’s leaning against the wall beside the stove, halfway through a protein bar. ‘Coffee’s hot.’

He jerks a thumb toward the coffee maker. A few mugs are set out nearby – matte dark blue, stamped with the Lumon logo.

Mark picks one up and pauses. The mug has two handles. The observation sticks in his mind, sharper than it should. Some part of him is cataloguing the detail, flagging it for later, like his brain is laying down evidence in case this all turns out to be a dream or a hallucination or an eventual court case.

He slots a finger through one of the loops and tries not to look like he’s hesitating.

‘I grabbed you some breakfast too,’ Dylan says, casually chucking two foil-wrapped protein bars onto the table. One skitters across the surface and comes to rest near Helly’s hip.

Helly snorts, picking up both bars and holding them out to Mark. ‘I’m good, you have both.’

Mark takes them, trying to ignore the light brush of skin against skin as their hands connect for a second. ‘Thanks.’

It hits him as he moves, that soapy sweetness still clinging to his sweatshirt, caught in the weave of his sleeves and collar. It’s her. Her skin. Her hair. Her body. It’s wound up in his own scent now, like they’ve tangled so thoroughly overnight that even their smell has merged.

He takes a small step back, trying to re-centre himself. Tries not to look at her. Tries not to feel her, still folded somewhere into his skin. Her breath on his neck– fuck.

‘You’ll need to eat on the way, though,’ Dylan says, popping the last bit of protein bar into his mouth. ‘Milchick wants to talk to you.’

Mark glances up. ‘What does he want to talk to me about?’

Dylan shrugs, wiping his hands on his pants. ‘Didn’t say. But he did escape for like, ten minutes last night. Real dramatic. Kicked over two chairs, knocked a lamp off a desk. And now he’s saying he’ll only talk to you.Won’t even make eye contact with the rest of us.’

Mark frowns, ‘What?’

‘Yeah,’ Dylan says, brushing crumbs off of his sweatshirt, ‘I think my physical prowess from last night has intimidated him into silence. It makes sense that he’d feel more comfortable with you.’

Helly laughs from behind her mug, then coughs. ‘Hey, Mark is strong.’

‘Mmhmm,’ Dylan raises an eyebrow. ‘Come on, let’s go.’

***

They step outside the house, and for a second Mark has to remind himself not to stop and gawk like a tourist. Because what the fuck.

The house – it’s a whole house – inside a goddamn room. A giant room. Not a courtyard, or anything that would even remotely make sense. Just a cavernous chamber sealed in by high stone walls, the ceiling multiple floors above. Rows of glowing panels cover the ceiling, mimicking the colour and haze of daylight, perfectly diffused.

He stays behind Helena – Helly – and follows.

Tries to keep his gaze trained on her hair (which he is finding absurdly hard not to do, anyway). It’s so different, here. Not perfect. Not polished. Nothing like the sleek bun-and-blazer PR perfection he’s seen on TV and in those glossy Lumon quarterly update docs in the lobby. Nothing like her smooth curls at Zufu…

She looks more real, somehow, like this. Messy. Younger.

It’s infuriating.

He can’t look away.

They move through the strange morning light toward a set of double doors at the end of the cavern. Dylan is far ahead of them now, strolling as if it’s just another work day and not a complete descent into someone’s very weird idea of purgatory.

Mark follows Helly across neatly trimmed grass and pretends he’s not trying to make sense of what the fuck any of this is.

The doors creak open into another room, darker here – still windowless. Lights flicker on as they enter.

He freezes.

Eagans, all in a row. Mechanical, lifeless, and fucking terrifying. One of them twitches slightly.

Mark looks away quickly.

‘I hate these things,’ Helly mutters without turning to look at him, ‘They’re so fucking creepy.’

Mark nods, remembers she can’t see him and mumbles an affirmative at her back.

They head up a long staircase that doubles back on itself, over and over. He doesn’t know how far down they were – how far up they’re climbing – but it’s enough that his calves start to ache by the fourth turn. The stairs finally end and they walk out into a hallway. White. Blank. Familiar.

His stomach flips.

He’s seen this before. Or parts of it. In flashes. In reintegration dreams. Ghost images of hallways just like this, sterile and endless. Disorienting in a way that has nothing to do with the architecture.

They reach the end of the corridor and the space opens up into chaos.

There are people everywhere. All severed, he assumes.

Office furniture has been dragged across the open space to form a series of makeshift barricades. Blankets and cushions and sleeping bags are stashed in rows that line the perimeter of the room. A strange configuration of desks at the centre, piled high with boxes all stamped with the Lumon logo.

And then there are the guards.

He stares. Can’t help it.

They’re patrolling – or at least some odd approximation of it. It’s sort of like watching a group of children play act as adults. They’re all holding instruments, oddly. One has a tuba slung across their back. Another is gripping a trumpet like a pistol.

They look ridiculous. But the look on their faces is anything but funny.

Dylan slows. Turns to face them. ‘Right. We’ll go get inventory started. You go see what Milchick wants and then come find us?’

Mark plays it cool. Or, tries to. ‘Did you move him?’

Dylan pushes up his glasses with his index finger as he nods, ‘Yep. So – door to the other room is busted now. We put him in one of the storage cupboards instead. Keep going down this hall, take the first left, then two rights. You’ll see it – there are guards outside so it’s pretty obvious.’

Mark nods like this isn’t the strangest fucking morning he’s ever had, ‘Right. Thanks.’

‘And we’ve doubled the guard, by the way,’ Dylan adds over his shoulder as he wanders off. ‘So tell Milchick that if he tries to make a break for it again, he won’t get far.’

Helly lingers, standing half-turned, like she’s not sure whether to follow Dylan or to wait.

‘You okay?’ she asks quietly.

He nods quickly. ‘Yeah. Are you?’

‘Yeah.’

They pause.

There’s a flicker of something on her face – hesitation maybe. Or calculation. He can’t tell. She looks like she’s expecting something. For one wild second, he wonders if she thinks he’s acting strangely.

Which, to be fair – he totally is.

He doesn’t know what his own face is doing. Only that his mouth has gone dry and his brain feels like it’s buffering.

God, this is stupid.

‘I’ll come find you,’ he says, just to say something. ‘Once I’ve talked to Milchick. I’ll let you know what he says.’

‘Okay,’ she says.

‘I’m sure it won’t take long.’

‘Okay.’

And now they’re just standing there again. She shifts on her feet. As if she’s waiting for – oh, right. Mark moves, meaning to – he doesn’t even know. A brush of hands, a shoulder squeeze, something.

But she’s leaning in at the same time. And then it’s a kiss – brief, soft, a little clumsy. Her hand ghosts up – fingertips brushing his jaw, there and gone. Her mouth is warm.

And then it’s over.

Not much more than a press of lips. But his whole face is on fire anyway.

She steps back, gives him a quick, tight-lipped smile, and hurries in the direction Dylan had wandered.

He watches her walk away. Watches the long skirt of her dress billow around her legs as she walks. Thinks about how she doesn’t have anything on under that dress –

Jesus Christ.

His mouth is still burning. He presses two fingers to his lips.

That’s when guilt crashes through him like a freight train.

Gemma.

His wife. His wife, who he just got back, who he kissed in an elevator less than thirty minutes ago – at least from his perspective – who he’s hardly thought of because he can’t stop staring at the copper gold of Helena fucking Eagan’s hair.

His stomach churns.

He gets moving.

Left. Right. Right.

No sign of an elevator. Of an escape from… whatever the fuck this is.

He rounds the last turn and finds two workers – guards – standing outside a door. They nod him through.

He doesn’t know what he expects.

Not this.

Milchick is inside. Calm. Unbothered. Sitting on the floor with his arms resting on his knees like this is the kind meditation retreat Ricken is always going on about.

Mark steps in. Closes the door behind him. ‘You wanted to talk.’

Milchick looks up. Smiles. There’s bruising around one of his eyes. Dried flecks of blood on the collar of his shirt, too.

‘I was wondering when you’d get here,’ Milchick says. His voice low and clear. ‘Mark Scout.’

Mark’s blood turns to ice. He doesn’t respond. Tries to school his face into neutrality.

Milchick is still smiling. ‘It’s alright, Mr Scout. You don’t have to play the innie here. I know it’s you and not Mark S.’

‘What,’ Mark says quietly, ‘the fuck is going on?’

Milchick’s eyes flash in the low light – amusement and something else now, something wilder, more urgent. ‘I reinstated your consciousness. And now, you are going to save us all.’