Chapter Text
Carry with you your hopelessness and your broken heart. They’re getting louder now.
Mark doesn’t wake up in their normal elevator. He hadn’t really expected to wake up at all, but he certainly didn’t expect this. Was he even at Lumon? He looked down at himself and in the dim red light he can see his normal work clothes, including his Lumon lanyard. So he is at work. His outie must’ve been told to use a different entrance.
He hears a low ding and doors open in front of him, somehow the hallway in front of him is even darker. He pushes forward, despite fear prickling at the back of his neck. Each step he takes echos in the eerie silence. He reaches the first door, trying to read the laminated tag neatly slotted into the sign holder. Despite the low light he can make out ‘Irving B.’ printed on the card.
“Irv.” He mutters to himself in contemplation. He tries the handle but it’s locked. To be expected. He knocks twice, then speaks, “Irv are you in there?”, then he presses his ear to the door. Silence.
He glances further down the corridor. Three more doors. He steps cautiously to the next one, ‘Dylan G.’ He rattles the door handle, a little more urgently this time. “Dylan! Dylan, you there?” a companied by three flat-palmed bangs on the door. He smushes the side of his face to the door again but there is still no reply.
The next door has his own name plastered on it. And he’s entirely uninterested in opening that door. He moves quickly to the last door, and he doesn’t need to check to know that Helly’s name sits at eye level. He tries the handle frantically. “Helly!” He calls, but he doesn’t wait for a reply. He bangs the side of his fist on the door until he can feel pain shooting through his arm. “Helly, it’s me! It’s Mark!” His shoulder connects with the door, but it doesn’t budge.
“Mark S.” A disappointed voice chides from the end of the corridor. Even backlit by the looming red glow of the elevator, Mark was able to recognise that silhouette. Mr Milchick.
“Sorry. I’m sorry.” Mark says instinctively. “Can I see her- them. Can I see them?”
“No, Mark.” Milchick replies, and starts his casual stroll towards Mark.
“Am I going to the break room?” Mark asks, swallowing nervously.
“No, Mark.” Milchick gets steadily closer, Marks hands start to sweat.
“Geez I wish you’d elaborate.” Mark says exasperatedly, shuffling backwards subconsciously, but Milchick thankfully stops twelve feet from Mark. He presses his keycard to the handle of Mark’s door and the lock makes a loud clunk. The handle moves with ease and the door swings open. “What’s in there?” Mark asks, although he knows he won’t get an answer. Milchick stays silent. And Mark walks through the door. It’s dark. The red light from the elevator doesn’t reach past the doorway. It only takes 2 steps for Mark’s knees to knock into a chair in front of him, and he braces his hands against the backrest to steady himself. “What now?” He asks, trying to keep the rising panic out his voice.
“Now… you work.” That’s all Mark hears from Milchick as the door behind him closes and the lock clunks back into place, the room plunged into complete darkness.
“No, no, no wait.” Mark yells as he throws himself at the door, to no avail. All he can hear in the room is his laboured breathing, and the blood rushing past his ears. For the longest 60 seconds of his life, nothing happens. He’d spent all of his short life in an office, he’d never realised how silent silence could be. No gentle electric hum, no whirring of fans, no tapping on keyboards, not even the maddening ticking of a clock. He began to wonder if the rest of his life would be like this. Just nothingness.
And then there’s a click. So quiet he wouldn’t have heard it if it wasn’t the only sound around. With the click come flickering light, he turns to look at the source and sees a single computer, just behind the chair he’d bumped into. One solitary computer at a lonely desk. The standard Lumon log in page stares back at him. Mark breaks eye contact first. He moves around the barely illuminated desk, finding that he barely has enough space to shuffle between the desk and the wall. Once he reaches the other side, he feels around the wall, looking for… well, anything. He tries to turn the monitor around to light the other side of the room, but it’s bolted to the desk. He lays his palms flat on the wall and drags them up and down, but doesn't find anything, not even a single socket on the wall, the cable from the computer simply disappearing down a hole in the floor. Eventually he sits down.
And he works.
He doesn’t know how long for, but the dull rumble in his stomach indicates that it’s well past lunch time, though a break never comes. By the time Milchick opens the door, his eyes sting from staring at the screen, and it feels like he’s been in the room for days.
He scrambles to turn around in his chair, looking up at Milchick’s silhouette in the doorway. “W-what time is it?” He asks, stumbling over his words as they scratch at his throat. He realises it’s been hours since he’d spoke, or had anything to drink.
“It’s 5:05pm Mark S. Time to go home.” Milchick says casually, then steps aside, gesturing to the hallway. Mark stands and shuffles out the room. Where the corridor was eerie before, Mark is now just grateful for a change in scenery, and a chance to give his bleary eyes a break from the screen. He steps into the red light of the elevator, and says a silent prayer to God, to Keir, to his fucking outie, that he doesn’t wake back up in the dark of this floor again.
The elevator rises. He fades out, then back in again. And his prayers go unanswered.
-
Helly jolts to the side as she wakes, the memory of being tackled off the stage only seconds ago for her. She grips at the metallic walls and tries to catch her breath in the brief time between waking and having arrived at her floor. The doors open and Milchick is already waiting for her, smiling in the scarlet light. Helly doesn’t hesitate, she braces her hands against either side of the doorway for leverage and plants her foot firmly in his stomach. He wasn’t expecting the blow, so he goes down easy, hitting the floor with a thud.
“Fuck!” Is all she can manage as she realises she has no idea where she is. Nowhere to run. Just that long black corridor. Milchick groans and tries to stand, and in her panic all Helly can do is send the elevator back up.
When it comes back down her wrists are bound with electrical tape.
She winces and tries to break free but the doors are opening again before she can so much as stretch the tape. Milchick is waiting for her again, and a decent chunk of time must’ve passed, because he doesn’t even look winded. He stomps towards her and Helly backs up until she reaches the wall.
“Where the fuck am I?” She asks as he grabs her elbow and tries to encourage her to leave the lift. Milchick doesn’t respond, just keeps applying more pressure until Helly’s feet start following him. “Let go of me.” She tries, but still no response. They’re halfway down the corridor now, and Helly notices the names on the doors they’re passing. “You can’t do this, I’m basically your fucking boss.” She mutters under her breath.
Milchick stops dead in his tracks, his grip on her elbow tightening as he turns to look at her. “You are not Helena Eagan in here.” He says in the same calm tone as he always does. “You are Helly R. and you are here to work.” He swipes his keycard against the handle and the door to Helly’s room swings open. Milchick drops Helly’s elbow and cuts the tape around her wrists, but Helly doesn’t run this time, just takes a tentative step into the doorway. She turns to face Milchick, mouth half open to speak, but the door just closes in her face.
She takes a few steadying breaths, clenching her fists at her sides. It doesn’t work. She slams her palm against the closed door in frustration, and then rubs at the stinging skin on her hand as a light flickers on behind her. Turning to face the source, she finally notices the monitor and desk behind her. The Lumon logo lights up the screen in the familiar way it does, but it doesn’t bring her to her loading screen. Instead her own face appears, glaring back at her.
“We’re rolling.” A disembodied voice says on the recording.
“Good.” Helena states, eyes never leaving the camera. Helly takes a seat at the desk, unconsciously trying not to blink first, locked in a staring contest with herself, like feral animals on each other’s territory. “Helly. I thought we’d reached an understanding: that you don’t make the decisions. You cannot comprehend the damage you’ve done.” Frustration leaks into her voice and Helena has to pause and straighten herself up the in the chair. “I told you I’d put you through hell if you messed with me again. So welcome to hell.” The recording clicks off.
The corners of Helly’s eyes sting as tears threaten to form, and she presses her clenched fists against her closed eyelids.
“Fuck!” She screams, the sound coming out in a choke as her throat tightens, still trying to fight off the urge to cry. She opens her eyes to see the refiner log in screen. The typing bar blinks at her insistently. She stands, grabs the chair by the backrest, and promptly smashes the screen in with the chair wheels in one swift strike. Glass flies across the room and the light goes out, but Helly doesn’t stop, spinning around to batter the door with her weapon. The leg snaps off the chair first, but it doesn’t stop her, not until the backrest breaks away from the seat, only then is the chair discarded.
She lands a punch on the door and she cries out as the pain flies up her arm. The first tears fall from her eyes, and she hits the door again, this time sure she broke the skin on her knuckles. She lands 7 more uncoordinated blows, 4 with her left hand, 3 with her right, before the door is wrenched open and Helly is restrained. She hadn’t heard any alarm go off, but breaking the computer probably triggered one. That, or they were watching her destroy her hands against the door. One of the guards waves his keycard against a spot on the wall and a bright florescent light turns on overhead, illuminating the destruction she caused. She gets a glimpse of the shoebox room and her bruised, blood stained hands before she’s dragged back towards the elevator by Milchick. She’s wordlessly thrown in and it starts it’s ascent.
She comes to on the descent, eyes dry and hands bandaged but no longer throbbing. Milchick isn’t alone when the doors slide open this time, flanked by two other security guards.
“Let’s try that again, shall we?” He asks rhetorically, taking a step back to indicate that she should start walking forward. She does. There isn’t really an option not to at this point. When they get to her room, it’s been restored mostly to how it had been before, though in the dim red light she can just barely make out that the chair has changed; the wheels replaced by 4 legs bolted to the floor. “Sit.” He instructs. She does. Again, what other choice does she have. The second she’s seated in the chair, the other security guards get to work, cuffing her ankles to the chair legs. She briefly considers making a joke about gnawing her own leg off, but then thinks about how they’d probably muzzle her next. So she stays silent, and the security team leave her like that. She clicks her mouse a few times but the monitor doesn’t turn on. She gives it a minute, or what feels like a minute, because there are no clocks, and tries again.
“Hello.” She calls into the darkness. “My computer won’t turn on.”
Nothing.
“I’m ready to work.” She huffs loudly.
More silence.
“I’ll work. Okay?” She feebly tries one last time, and when it reaches no one she leans back in the chair and closes her eyes. Maybe she could sleep, she’s heard good things about sleep. But the backrest digs into her shoulders and her arms keep sliding off her lap and keeping her awake. She tries to slump forward onto the desk, but finds its just slightly too far away. Even if she could get comfortable, she knows sleep would evade her, something too unsettling about the room to relax fully. The hours pass torturously slow, and by the time Milchick appears to get her, she’d nearly forgotten anyone was coming back for her at all.
They walk the hallway wordlessly, Helly only daring to talk once she’s seconds from leaving. Not that she really gets to leave.
“I’ll work tomorrow.” She agrees, as if she has any say in the matter.
“Yes. Yes you will.” Milchick confirms.
-
Three weeks in isolation. Or at least Mark thinks it’s been three weeks. He’s been trying to keep track, but his confinement has lead to each day bleeding into the next. At the very least, last week Milchick turned the light on in his room. It’s a small relief, but he clings onto it. He tries to focus on how he feels each morning as much as possible, to try to differentiate. He’s noticed he shakes a lot less, and feels clearer most days, so he’s thinks Dylan could’ve been right and his outie was an alcoholic. He feels a little more exhausted than he used to, so possibly his outie isn’t sleeping. Maybe his outie is focused on getting them out like he’d hoped would happen. He’s probably trying to find Ms Casey… his late wife.
Or maybe Mark’s just exhausted all the time, because he’s trapped in solitary confinement all day. Hope waxes and wanes in Mark.
This morning Mark’s feeling flushed, and a little out of breath. Had his outie been running? He checks his wrist out of habit, but no watch. They still aren’t letting his outie bring it in.
When the elevator dings and the doors open as usual, Milchick looks concerned.
“There you are.” He says, his voice betraying a worry that lies under the surface. He gestures for Mark to follow him as he makes his way to Mark’s room. He walks quicker than usual.
“Sorry, am I late or something?” Mark asks. As much as he dislikes Milchick, he’s literally the only person he’s seen in weeks, so he’s gotten into a habit of making as much conversation as he can in their short walk.
“That is no concern of yours.” Milchick replies hurriedly, in a sterner tone than usual. Mark makes his way to his door at his usual pace, not in any rush to give up what could be considered his only break. “Off to work.” He instructs, but makes the mistake of glancing over Mark’s shoulder.
The next two seconds play out to Mark in slow motion. He turns to where Milchick’s looking just as the elevator dings. Milchick grabs one of his arms. The elevator doors open. Mark sees Helly.
“Mark!” She calls out to him, as Milchick gives him a hard shove into the room.
“Helly!” Mark yells just a fraction too late. The door has closed behind him. He reaches for the handle even though he knows it to be locked. He sinks to the floor on his knees. “Please, please say she heard me.” He begs in a whisper to nobody in particular.
He stands and turns to his already lit monitor. She’s okay. Well, alive at least. And that might just get him through another three weeks.
-
She saw him, she tells herself. And she tries to convince herself that he saw her too, before Milchick shoved him in that room. It’s all she thinks about as Milchick is cuffing her ankles to the chair.
“Is he okay?” She asks when Milchick finally stands. “Please.” She adds when she realises he’s not going to answer.
“Please refrain from asking about other Lumon employees.” He states. “I’ve noticed you’re 15% through your current file. Why don’t we get that light on!” He says excitedly, waving his keycard next to the spot on the wall from before. Helly blinks against the bright lights. “Once you’ve hit that 25% milestone we’ll see about you having a 15 minute management break.”
He doesn’t leave room for further questions, not that she’s expect any more answers. He leaves the room and Helly sits in contemplation for a while. It could just be a trick to get her to work faster. So maybe she should stop working at all for a bit. Then again it could not be a trick at all, and she’d just be wasting time, increasing the duration of her solitude.
In the end, she decides to work. It’s better than not working, after all.
-
Irv wakes with his mouth still forming the shape of Burt’s name. He’s so caught up in the sudden loss, after being so close to reaching him, that he doesn’t even notice the unusual hue of the light in the elevator at first. It isn’t until the doors slide open and he sees Milchick waiting, that he realises he’s not on their usual floor.
“Irving. Would you follow me?” Milchick offers. Irving does, only once glancing back at the elevator. It looks not too dissimilar to the one in his outie’s paintings.
“Where are we?” Irv asks, keeping his voice as level as possible.
Milchick doesn’t respond at first, just gestures to one of the open doorways. Irv steps in and squints as the fluorescent lights hit him in contrast to the dark hallway. He takes a look back at Milchick, who nods to the farthest of two chairs in the room, the one that faces the monitor screen. It’s a squeeze to get round the desk in the cramped room, but he manages it with some level of grace, taking a seat at the desk. Milchick closes the door behind himself and also takes a seat opposite Irv.
“Good news, Irving. You are getting a promotion.” Milchick speaks with a smile like he’s expecting Irv to smile back. “You are the Macrodata Refinement Department Chief.”
“Oh… goodie. What about Mark?” Irv tries to sound at least a bit excited, but it still comes out sounding forced. Something about this whole situation putting him on edge.
“Mark is here. Working. We decided he wasn’t a good fit for management. We’re hoping you’ll get this team back on track.”
“Oh absolutely I will! Would I be able to talk to the team? About the management changes of course.” Irv asks, and the way Milchick’s eyelid twitches makes him think he’s played his hand too fast.
“All in good time.” Milchick says, providing zero clarity. “For now, just focus on working hard. And congratulations Irving B.”
And with that, Milchick turns and leaves.
It doesn’t feel like a situation worth congratulating to Irv. In fact, as he sits all by himself at his desk facing a locked door, he cries. He keeps working as silent tears trace tracks down his face, thinking about Burt, worrying about his friends, wondering if this is what his life will look like from now on.
He spends the first two days obsessively tabbing over to the managers screen, brows furrowed, concerned that Helly’s progress percentage isn’t going up at all. On the third day, when her number starts inclining, he almost cries again. Those progress bars become his life line. He tallies up days, making a note of then the numbers don’t move, seeing that Mark’s outie has already taken 5 days off in the three weeks they’ve been confined to their new floor.
So it’s no surprise to him when Dylan is the first to hit the quarter milestone. Dylan should be getting a perk now, Irv thinks, and as much as they didn’t use to see eye to eye on the perks, it fills him with a certain warmth to think of his friend happy. His friend. He’d not thought of them as friends before, but his absence was making Irv regret that now. He thought so much about the situation, that when the door opened to Dylan standing in the hallway in front of him, Irv thought for a split second he was dreaming again.
“Dylan!” Irv beams, actually standing up from his desk as Milchick ushers Dylan into the room.
“Irv?” Dylan asks, sounding somewhere between disbelief and relief. “It’s good to see you. Where’s Mark? What happ-”
“Mark is no longer in a management position. Irving is now. Please, no talk of other employees.” Milchick interjects. “You have 15 minutes to discuss what perk you’d like to receive Dylan, although management has the final say.” He gives them a short nod, closing the door and just leaving the two of them. The “perks” were a choice between a 20 minute lunch break, or two 10 minute snack breaks, so god know why Milchick thought they needed 15 minutes to discuss it.
“What the fuck is going on?” Dylan asks as he sits down. “Did you guys get a message out? Are Mark and Helly…” he trails off in a whisper.
“I tried. My outie doesn’t live with anyone. I tried to find Burt-“
“Burt? Irv, come on-“
“I needed to find someone I could trust, someone that would have experience with Lumon.” It’s a half truth, and it might just fly as long as Irv doesn’t look Dylan in the eye while he says it. “My outie is already onto something with Lumon. He had records of other employees, addresses, documents.”
Dylan cracks a smile for the first time. “That’s… something. Okay, yeah, that’s something.” He gets closer to the desk. “And the others?”
“I haven’t spoken to them yet, but they’re okay. I can see their file progress.” Irv tries to spin the monitor to show Dylan and only then notices that it’s attached to the desk. “Well, Mark’s on 22% completion. And Helly’s on- ha, Helly’s only on 17%, despite her having three more days than Mark.” He says with a slight chuckle, the first time he’s laughed since their isolation.
Dylan huffs out a little laugh too, “I actually expected her to have completed less.” There’s a brief silence, and then their eyes meet and they both dissolve into laughter. For the longest time Irv had believed that the work had brought value to his life, and that that was enough. It was important. It wasn’t until he was without his coworkers that he realised how much meaning they gave him. It was so human to need other people.
“Let’s see about these perks then.” Irv says with a smile, revelling in the way Dylan smiles back at him.
-
Mark is the next in to see Irv, just over two weeks after Dylan had. As with Dylan, Irv uses some of their limited time together to reassure Mark that the others are safe and okay. He also tells Mark about what his outie saw. When he asks Mark about what he saw when he was overtimed, Mark hesitates.
“I, uh have a sister.” He says. “And a niece.”
“That’s wonderful.” Irv says with a smile, though there’s a little part of him that wished he’d met his outie’s family. He just hoped his outie had any family.
“And get this, Ricken is my brother-in-law.” Mark brags.
“The author? That explains the note in the book.”
“And Cobel was there. She was going by a different name. And she was being nice. I’ve been trying to wrap my head around it, why she’s spying on my outie.” Mark speaks quietly when he says Cobel’s name, just out of habit.
“Strange.” Irv agrees. “Did you manage to talk to anyone about our situation?”
“Yeah, my sister, she’s going to-“ Mark stops talking as the door behind him beeps unlocked. “I’ll take the 20 minute break.” He says loudly as Milchick walks into the room.
As Milchick escorts Mark back to his room, he realises he’d completely forgotten to mention Ms Casey. At least that’s what he told himself. Not that he simply didn’t want to think about it. He felt a little guilty about it, but pushed the feeling aside. He’d done what he could, telling Devon she was alive. There wasn’t anything he could do from isolation. It was in his outie’s hands now. So maybe he could keep this quiet, for now.
-
It’s cutting it close, but Helly does manage to hit quota before the end of the quarter. She was elated when Milchick told her she was having 15 minute meeting with a manager, thinking it was going to be Mark, and she had to control the disappointment on her face when she saw Irv, trying not to be rude.
“Not who you expected?” Irv says, seeing right through her.
“No.” She says sheepishly as she takes a seat. “But I’m happy to see you Irv. I’m glad you’re okay.”
Irv smiles. “I’m glad you are too.”
“15 minutes.” Milchick says, leaving the two of them.
“What did you see?” Irv asks.
“Is- um. Nothing. It doesn’t matter. Is Mark okay?” She asks.
“Sorry, yes. Mark and Dylan are fine. I’ve already spoken to them.” Irv reassures her, and she breathes a sigh of relief. “You didn’t learn anything about your outie?”
Helly is quiet for a minute. She’d been so focused on just getting back to the group that she hadn’t fully considered what telling them she’s an Eagan would mean for her.
“Not really.” She evades. “I think I managed to get a message out though.” She adds, hoping that will be enough.
They chat for the rest of the time they have, but a voice chants in the back of Helly’s head the whole time.
Eagan. Eagan. Eagan.
-
“So.” Mark prompts Milchick as he unlocks his room. “End of the quarter.”
“Yes.” Mr Milchick agrees.
“Just wondering… next quarter, you know…” Mark insinuates.
“Step into the room please.” Milchick insists.
Mark’s shoulders slump and he steps into the room, door shutting behind him.
“Hello Mark.” Cobel says to him from his chair.”
“Jesus!” Mark exclaims, jumping at the unexpected sight.
“I thought we better have a little chat.” She says, voice level.
“Sure.” Mark agrees cautiously.
She stands and flicks her hair over her shoulder. She’s silent for a moment, just staring him down. The quiet eats away at Mark, and after a minute he can’t stand it any more. “So you know my outie?”
“You don’t talk!” She yells, and he finds himself cowering back. She pauses to collect herself and then speaks again. “I told you once that a department like yours can go so good or so bad. I didn’t want to have to elaborate further, but… you pushed me Mark. You pushed me to do this to you.”
Mark swallows and doesn’t dare say anything, just nods.
“Don’t push me again.” She knocks twice on the door and the lock beeps. “Have a productive end of quarter. Maybe we’ll see about making this department good again.”