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“Oh please, please pick up the phone!”
Click.
“H-hello?” Bim held the phone up to his ear, breathing fast. “Mark, can you hear me?”
“Wuh?” Mark’s voice came over the line, crackly, sleepy. “Bim, what’s up?”
Bim crouched in his closet, lights off, back to the wall. He forced himself to breathe– in, then out. In, then out.
“Bim?” Mark could hear him hyperventilating, and his voice carried a tinge of alarm. “Are- are you okay?”
Footsteps sounded outside. Bim held his breath, covering the phone’s lit screen with one hand. He could hear Mark’s static on the other end, and mentally begged him to stay silent. The footsteps receded, and Bim held the phone up to his ear again.
“Bim?”
“Mark, M-Mark, I–”
“Is something wrong?”
Bim took a deep breath. “I d-don’t have time to explain. J-Just stay a-away from the office.”
“Bim, you don’t sound okay. I’m on my way over, okay?”
“N-NO!” Bim almost shouted the words, and clapped a hand over his mouth. Too loud, too obvious. Footsteps started back towards the closet door.
“I’ll be there soon, just–”
“Stay away, ple–”
The door to the closet was ripped open, light flooding in, illuminating Bim’s crouched figure. A silhouette in the doorway.
“Bim?” Mark paused, rolling out of bed, phone still cupped to his ear. Nothing but a dial tone on the other end.
There was a loud knock on the door. Tyler grumbled, pushing himself out of bed, tossing the covers away. Blearily, he stumbled to the door, flicking on the light above. He checked his watch before opening the door, squinting in sudden brightness. The door swung open.
“Mark, it’s 3am–”
“There’s no time for that, do you have any weapons?”
“Wh- weapons?”
Mark pushed past him into the apartment, shouldering his backpack. Tyler followed as Mark flicked on the rest of the switches, flooding the rooms with light.
“Did the fucking zombie apocalypse start, or something?” Tyler leaned against the wall, brain slowly waking up. He registered Mark’s worried expression, the tension in his shoulders, and blinked himself awake. “Mark?”
“Something’s up at the office,” Mark said, finding and shoving a baseball bat into his bag. His voice was tinged with urgency, if not panic, and Tyler rubbed his eyes a final time before straightening up.
“Something?”
“Bim called.” Mark’s voice was tight, strained, and he strode over to Tyler as he spoke. “Here.” He thrust a sledgehammer into Tyler’s hands, surveying his face.
Tyler took the sledgehammer, quickly working out Mark’s plan. “We’re going to the office?”
Mark gave him a curt nod. “We should hurry.” He looked him over with vague amusement. “You should, uh, probably get dressed.”
“’Yes, of course I’ll go to the office with you, Mark. Thanks for asking,’” Tyler mocked, pulling on jeans and a proper shirt.
Already dressed and holding the bat, his backpack, and handing Tyler his sledgehammer, Mark stepped out into the breezeway. The two of them started for Mark’s car.
“What did Bim say to get you up at this hour?” Tyler said, quickening his pace to match Mark’s.
“He said, ‘Stay away.’“
“Wait, what?”
Mark stopped, turning to face Tyler. “He said, ‘Stay away from the office.’” He kept his eyes low, face furrowed in worry.
“He told you to stay away, and your immediate response was to go to the office?” Tyler shook his head disbelievingly, surveying Mark’s tense form.
“You don’t have to come,” Mark mumbled, suddenly guilty. “I shouldn’t have woken you up– I’ll go alone.” He moved to walk away, but Tyler stopped him.
“You’re an idiot, Mark.”
“I–”
“Come on, Bim must really need our help.”
Mark watched for a moment as Tyler walked ahead of him to the car, straightening his shoulders. He smiled to himself before following; some things never changed.
As they pulled out of the apartment complex, Mark’s phone lit up with a text. Tyler reached for it, reading the message out loud.
“’From Amy: Where are you?’“ Tyler raised an eyebrow at Mark, eyes on the road. “You didn’t tell her?”
“Of course not.” Mark frowned, scanning the road ahead. “This is stupid. This is borderline insanity. I’m not involving her in this.”
“Well, do you want to respond to her?”
Mark sighed, turning down the road towards the office. “I guess…” He ran a hand through his hair tiredly. “Tell her I went to the office. Not that any of this shit’s happening– just that I needed a late night.”
Tyler looked at him skeptically, but obliged.
A moment later, Tyler’s phone dinged. He pulled it out, frowning.
“Ethan?” Mark guessed, turning into the parking lot.
“Yeah.” Tyler typed out a reply, stowing his phone in his pocket before jumping out of the car.
“What’d you tell him?”
Tyler shrugged, lifting his sledgehammer. “That I went for a run. I do it a lot.”
Mark forced a chuckle, shouldering his bag and locking the car with a beep. “Some run this is.”
Together, they looked towards the office building. It was a normal looking building, even in daylight. The extra rooms that they’d added for the Egos were concealed by some of Wilford and Dark’s trickery, and the building was a lot bigger on the inside. The front windows, covered in blinds, were dark.
Standing next to Mark, Tyler felt him shiver, looking at the empty building. “We don’t have to go in,” he suggested weakly, eyeing Mark.
Mark shook his head, determined. “Bim sounded like he was in trouble. He said to stay away. What else could this possibly mean?”
“Maybe that you should sleep soundly until morning before trying to raid your own office?” Tyler said. He meant to be teasing, but his tone fell flat.
They stood in silence for a minute longer before Mark took a breath, lifting his bat. “Well. Let’s go.”
The door’s lock seemed to click open louder than usual, Tyler and Mark creeping into the office space that they’d spent so many innocent hours in. Even now, the night casting shadows over every surface, it seemed familiar, comforting. They stepped further in before Tyler realized what was wrong.
“M-Mark,” he whispered, grabbing Mar’s shirt.
But Mark froze too, hearing the telltale ringing of Dark’s aura. I am not afraid of my own shadow, he thought, gripping the bat. When he spoke, the loudness and harshness of his voice made even Tyler jump, his words echoing around the vacant room.
“Come out, fucker.”
There was a low, sinister chuckle, and Tyler felt as though a presence swept across the room. He clutched his weapon, moving closer to Mark.
Mark stood in the center of the main office, forcing himself to straighten up, even as he heard Tyler move closer to him. “We’re not afraid of you, Dark,” he said, stiffening at his own bravado. “What do you want?”
Tyler saw it, this time– a moving shadow, the shape of a man, but not a man. Tyler moved closer to Mark, backing up until they stood facing opposite directions: Mark stock-still, Tyler crouched, gazing into the shadows.
Another low chuckle echoed around the room, and Mark drew his bat across his shoulder, as though preparing for a swing.
Tyler didn’t see it happen, but felt it: a breeze, a tap, against his legs, and suddenly his feet flew out from under him. Before he could even shout, trying to warn Mark, the darkness had swallowed him whole.
Mark turned, feeling Tyler’s presence behind him disappear. The sledgehammer sounded with a clunk as it fell to the floor, Tyler gone.
“Tyler?!”
The room seemed to reverberate with a laugh, the echoes of a scream. Mark felt a shiver pass over him. A moment passed, and the office was once again silent. Empty. He was alone, facing a dark room.
The door to the Egos’ hallway stood ajar, and Mark took a step towards it, shaking. I am not afraid. He pushed the door open with a tentative foot, bat at the ready.
It creaked open. At the sound, every light in the building flickered on. Suddenly, Mark stood in the bright main hallway, aluminium bat in had, blinking hard.
The office looked the same as it always did– carpeted floors, doors leading to each of the Egos’ rooms, the glass door at the end of the hall opening into the conference room. In the middle of the night, now, it was empty. Too empty. Mark looked around, shoes sinking into muffled steps.
On a normal day, the hallway wasn’t exactly bustling with activity. Dark and the Host stayed in their rooms, usually. The Googles kept to themselves, emerging from their lab when they needed parts, working for weeks at a time. Dr. Iplier was most frequently seen pacing the hallway, muttering to himself on the way to the kitchen for coffee. Bim and Wilford, by far the most social of the Egos, popped into each of the rooms to bother the others, when they weren’t recording something or the other. This hall was normally somewhere that the Egos passed by peacefully.
Mark eyed the knife marks in the wall, some flecked with pink paint, others trailing a black, dripping stain.
Well, sometimes they were peaceful. Other times…
Mark gripped his bat in both hands, trying not to make noise as he crept towards the end of the hall. Even so, his muffled footscuffs were the only sound in the building, magnified by the unnatural stillness.
He strained his ears to hear something, anything other than his own pounding heart and low, panicky breathing. With every step, he flicked his eyes around the hall. Every door seemed like it could burst open, holding darkness and nightmares within. The glass door ahead reflected his own figure back at him, a distorted, dark version of the unnaturally bright hallway. His own outline, crouched, a bat raised over his shoulder; behind him, another, darker figure raising a bat of its own–
Thunk.
Mark had a moment to be surprised, then feel the blinding pain in his head, as the world swam before his eyes and went black.
“Oh, Maaaark.”
Mark woke up slowly, feeling stabbing pains behind his eyes. He took a moment to register, remember. Where was he? What’d happened?
He was sitting upright in a chair, hands uncomfortably pinned behind him. There was someone hovering over him; he remembered, in a sickening flash, the shadow in the hallway.
He forced his eyes open, desperately trying to focus as the world once again whirled around him. Bright lights, pink backgrounds, the smell of cotton candy, a black-suited figure–
“Our contestant is finally awake!” With a rush of clarity, Mark blinked the world into focus.
He was in Wilford’s recording studio, bound to a chair in the shadows facing the stage. Wilford stood in the center, illuminated in a spotlight, twiddling his mustache. On the stage with him was–
“Tyler?” Mark’s voice cracked in concern, seeing Tyler standing stiff at his own podium, eyes wide.
Tyler jumped at the sound of his name, turning to look out into the shadows.
Mark opened his mouth to all again, but before he could speak, there was a hand on his shoulder, a silver knife at his throat.
“Now, Mark,” a voice said behind him, smoothly. “We don’t want to cheat, do we?”
Dark moved forward into Mark’s field of view, slowly withdrawing the knife. Mark’s heart beat hard in his chest. Not. Afraid.
“What–”
“Nuh-uh-uh.” Dark pressed a cool finger to Mark’s lips, shocking him into silence. “Watch the show, Markimoo.” He stepped back swiftly, into the dark, and Mark craned his neck to see him. Dark had effectively vanished, but his presence hovered behind Mark, raising his hair into goosebumps.
Before Mark could look around more, music blasted from the stage, and he whipped around to see. Bringing Tyler here was stupid, he’d only endangered him–
“Welcome, Markiplier, to your private showing of Disc. Of. Riches!” Wilford stretched his suspenders, letting them go with a snap. From some hidden pocket, he’d whipped out his butterfly knife, and Mark flinched. Tyler, on stage, seemingly trapped in place, had gone pale.
“Now,” Wilford said, flipping the knife open with a single click, “welcome to a game that I like to call: Sudden Death!” He smiled, broadly, and Tyler began to struggle against the force that held him in place.
“Now, now,” Wilford said, snapping his fingers. “That’s not very sportsman-like, is it?” In the spotlight, Tyler went still, Wilford’s powers freezing him at the podium. Tyler looked out at the shadows where he knew Mark was, eyes searching desperately.
“The audience can’t help you here,” Wilford wiggled his blade at Mark, scolding, winking. A laugh track played over the festive music, loud, piercing. Behind him, Mark heard Dark chuckle, humoring Wilford with a few lazy, echoing claps. Somehow, this was scarier than being threatened outright. This was a sick game, and Wilford and Dark were having their way with him.
And Tyler.
Wilford gestured widely, and a sheet dropped. Tyler’s eyes went wide. He couldn’t move, even straining every muscle. He couldn’t even speak, only stand and accept what was coming. Mark was somewhere out there, in the shadows of Wilford’s theater, and something was happening to him, too. Tyler was scared– he could admit that to himself. More scared for Mark than himself, but scared. He had to do something, anything, to stop this.
The wheel in front of him was divided into a dozen sections, alternating pink and black. Each pink section–
“How d’you like that?” Wilford bounced up to Tyler, mockingly holding out a hand for him to shake. “You’ve won the chance for a date– with either me, or the ever-present Darkiplier!”
Mark, in the shadows, heard Dark mutter grimly to himself. Mark inwardly smirked: Dark hadn’t planned all this, and he, too, was susceptible to Wilford’s quirks.
This, however, didn’t change the fact that Tyler was about to be in danger, no matter which color the wheel landed on.
Wilford walked away from Tyler, still smirking. “Well, our contestant seems to be a little shy, everybody. I suppose little ol’ me will just have to spin the wheel for them!” Stowing the knife with a laugh, Wilford snapped his fingers, and the wheel began to spin.
Mark watched the colors blur together, shoulders tensing. He didn’t know which would be worse, Will or Dark, but had the foreboding feeling that either way, it would be bad for both him and Tyler.
The wheel slowly clicked to a stop, and Dark sighed behind him.