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Mark walks her to the elevator, though it’s still ten minutes before he’s supposed to leave, but at this point they’re just daring someone in administration to say something to them. They walk slowly, silently, a bit awkwardly—exchanging only smirks and soft laughs. What’s there to talk about anyway? Their plans for the evening? They’ll just be right back here as if no time has passed.
For the first time, she thinks that maybe it doesn’t sound so bad. She doesn’t have to live in the time they’re apart. It’s silly, how her crush on him seems to drive out logical thought. She shouldn’t be happy that half her life is taken from her—more than half. But she thinks, at least she has this, him, and Helena does not.
She tries not to think about how easy it was, how easy it still would be, for Helena to take it from her.
Mark’s hand brushes hers, and she crooks her fingers to catch his. She smiles as just their pinkies twist together. They slow to a stop in front of the closed elevator doors.
He angles his body to face her but doesn’t let go. “Well, um…I guess this is you.” He smiles shyly at the joke, and she lets herself find it amusing rather than sad. They both know this is probably it for them, that he’ll never actually get to walk her to her door after a date. That he’ll never get to take her on a date at all.
“Sure is,” she says.
He tugs her forward, and she practically melts into him and his lips are back on hers and she can hear the pound of her heart behind her eardrums. When they part, he’s grinning at her, eyes sparkly like he’s made a joke, and she probably looks just as silly looking back at him. Her stomach is filled with butterflies, and she likes the feeling.
“I’ll—well, I’ll see you tomorrow, then.”
“Yeah, tomorrow.” She pushes the elevator button, and the doors open in front of her. She lets go of his hand and steps inside. “It’ll be here before you know it.”
He stands there in front of her with that charming, lopsided smile, and raises his hand in a little half wave. She sees the look on his face as he admonishes himself, a little eye roll and a head shake before he snaps his arm back at his side.
But she just waves back, fanning and wiggling her fingers, and they both laugh. She loves the sound of it so much that she’s almost sure it’ll still be ringing in Helena’s ears when she awakes.
As the elevator door closes, she brings her raised hand to her swollen lips, runs the pad of her thumb over them, and thinks again, maybe this is okay. Maybe she can do this forever.
It always takes a moment, in the elevator, to push out Helena’s emotions and feel her own. There’s just a pause, a flash of worry, between when she wakes up and when she actually knows who she is. She imagines that’s what it’s like to wake up after a long night’s sleep, but she guesses she’ll never know.
The doors slide open, and she feels a renewed surge of nervous anticipation in her stomach. Mark’s not standing there when she left him, but she’d known he wouldn’t be. He’s always the last to get there and the last to leave. It suddenly feels like it’ll be a long ten minutes, waiting for him to arrive.
She makes her way back to MDR and Dylan’s already there, seated and working studiously. He’s always been the most dedicated to the work—and the most skilled—but something’s gotten into him lately. To Helly, it seems pointless to do the work, and it always has. But especially now when there are much bigger things to work on. Like finding Ms. Casey and following the directions to the dark hallway that Irv had mentioned.
“What are you smiling about?”
She presses her lips together and strides past him toward the kitchenette. “Can’t I just be excited to see you?” she quips.
“So, it’s Helly today, then?”
She just rolls her eyes as she walks past him, and somehow, that seems to be enough.
In the kitchenette, she takes her sweet time pouring her coffee, adding sugar and cream, and spinning the little blue stir stick until there’s a tiny whirlpool in the middle of her drink. When she looks at the clock, only two minutes have passed.
Back at her desk, she flips on the monitor and stares at the numbers over her steaming coffee cup. She looks back to the clock on the wall beside her, then at the open door, then down the hallway. Still six minutes before Mark will arrive.
She’s lost in thought, thinking about what she’ll say when he arrives. Just, Good morning? Maybe, Hey? A joke, I missed you. She’d never say that in front of Dylan, though. It’s not that she distrusts him, it’s just…whatever this is that’s growing between her and Mark, she wants to keep it between them, for now. She just wants something that belongs only to them.
“What’s up with you?” Dylan peers over the lowered panel between their desks.
She puts on what she hopes is her best nonchalant expression and just says, “Hmm?”
“You just keep staring out the door like you’re waiting for something.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” she replies. “Just daydreaming, I guess.”
“Well, you’re being weird.” He’s still eyeing her suspiciously.
“I just got here.”
“I’m not just talking about today.”
It’s part defense, part offense when she counters, “I could say the same to you.”
“I’ve been busy.”
“Oh yes, with the mysterious and important work.”
He shifts his gaze back to the computer in front of him. “With the work that probably feeds my family.”
“Did you go get Irv’s instructions yesterday?”
“Did you?” His brow raises, and he stares at her over his smudged glasses.
“No.” Even as Helly admonishes Dylan, she knows this is as much her failure as his. She’d become otherwise occupied. It seems that they all have their own distractions.
Dylan looks back to his computer screen and the room echoes with the sound of his clicking.
She risks a glance back at the clock. It’s 9:14. Mark will be here soon. He might be already coming down the elevator. A part of her thinks she should have waited and walked back with him, the same way he’d walked her out. Maybe it would have been funny, or sweet, or…maybe he’d have found it odd. She chews the inside of her lower lip.
She busies herself by refining or pretending to do so. At least when Mark walks in, he’ll see she’s hard at work. Not sitting around thinking about him or how she’ll greet him or what they’ll do today and whether any of the things they’ll do will involve touching. That thought forces her to bite back a smile, lest Dylan comment on it again.
The sound of dress shoes tapping down the hallway causes her heart to flutter and as they draw nearer, she can’t resist looking up at him with a smile. But it’s not Mark who strides into MDR, it’s Milchick.
“Good morning, Macrodata Refinement! Helly R., you are looking chipper this morning. I’m so pleased that you’re finding such fulfillment in your work.” He smiles down at her.
She glances at the clock again. It’s 9:19 now. She must have been so transfixed by the numbers that she didn’t notice the passage of time. Did she somehow miss Mark’s arrival? When she straightens and stares over the divider between their desks, she sees that his is still untouched.
Her mouth goes dry and, in that moment, she’s sure, she’s so sure that they’ve been found out and Mark is bearing the punishment for it. Lumon allows no fraternization between colleagues, and she suspects they’d jump at the opportunity to reprimand someone. And she knows that someone can’t be her, at least not her physical body.
She’ll never forget Cobel’s words during the OTC: Your friends are going to suffer. Mark will suffer. You’ll be long gone, but we will keep them alive, in pain.
“Where’s Mark?” she asks, abruptly shooting out of her chair.
Dylan either sees or senses her panic, and to his credit, he stands, too. “What did you do with him?”
Milchick’s smile fades, and he shakes his head. “Oh, unfortunately for us, Mark S. is feeling under the weather today. I’m sure he’ll be with us again very soon.”
Helly settles back into her chair stiffly.
“He better be,” Dylan says.
“In the meantime, do let Miss Huang or myself know if you feel any infirmity or symptoms of ailment. Since you’ve been sharing close quarters with Mark S.—” He cuts his gaze at Helly, and she feels the breath catch in her lungs. “—we want to ensure your wellbeing.”
He smiles and lets his gaze flit from Helly to Dylan. There’s nothing for either of them to say.
Milchick nods and claps his hands together. “Wonderful. I know that both of you will have an industrious day. As always, do let us know if you need anything.” He turns on his heel and goes out the way he came. His footsteps slowly fade down the hallway.
Dylan clears his throat. “Do you, uh, do you think Mark’s really sick?”
Helly takes a shaky sip from her coffee mug. It’s possible, isn’t it? That he’s just ill. After all, he’d had a nosebleed yesterday. Perhaps he had a sinus infection. It’s hard for her to reconcile the fact that he’d been perfectly fine afterward. And that this is Lumon. And that she’s already been promised that her friends will suffer.
She lifts her shoulder in a shrug. “I guess so.” To say anything else is to admit what’s happening between them. She’s silly anyway, to think she’s allowed secrets…to think she’s allowed anything.
She imagines that being on the elevator is a lot like being on a rollercoaster: a sudden descent when you’re expecting ascent. One moment, she’s riding up, fingers twisting together, thinking of Mark and his illness and how, in a split second, she’ll be gone and Helena won’t care about any of this. She wonders if it’s the same for Helena as it is for her, that liminal moment when she thinks she feels what Helena had just felt. Sometimes trepidation, sometimes worry, sometimes even shame.
But maybe what she always feels when she wakes is just a reflection of her own emotions, the ones she’d tried to leave with. Besides, she doubts Helena feels anything at all. I am a person. You are not.
If she was a person, if she had any semblance of a normal life, she’d be able to call Mark and check on him, bring soup to his house, maybe. And she’d have no reason to believe that her company had him locked up somewhere, having him recite apologies until his eyes crossed. Or worse. She tries not to think it could be worse.
Today she decides to stand outside the doors to see if he arrives at all. Perhaps he is there—locked away in whatever replacement they’d developed for the remodeled breakroom—and she’ll find out and insist that she be punished instead. It’s her fault, after all; it was her idea.
She crosses her arms in front of her and watches the minutes tick by on her watch face. Helena was already late today, she notices, and she’s left with only a few minutes of nervous dread until 9:15 and confirmation that Mark isn’t coming. She waits two minutes more—he could always be late, too—but she knows. She trudges back to MDR, not sure where else she could go, even if she wanted to.
From a few paces down the hallway, she can hear voices from her office. Her heart springs into her throat, but she soon discerns that one voice is female: Miss Huang.
“Dylan G., given that we’re down to just two refiners, your lunchtime meeting has been postponed,” she says.
Helly resists the urge to stop outside the door and eavesdrop. There’s no doubt that they’d already heard her coming; these halls could echo footsteps for miles.
“What? That’s not fair. I didn’t get Mark sick.” Dylan quickly cuts his eyes to Helly as she enters and leans back in his seat.
“Still no Mark today?” Helly asks. She tries to be more nonchalant than she’d been with Milchick yesterday, tries not to show her hand.
“Mark S. is still under the weather,” Miss Huang states with some approximation of sympathy on her face. “We hope he’ll be back with us very soon.” Her words are almost the same as Milchick’s; clearly, this is the company line.
In some back corner of her mind, she thinks that she and Dylan could easily overpower Miss Huang, barricade her in the bathroom, and use her as leverage to get Mark back. But on the chance that Mark is actually out sick, then she’s just trapped a child in the bathroom with no way of knowing the truth. They’re not exactly going to deliver her to his bedside as proof.
Miss Huang continues, “For today, there will be no hall pass use. If you make good progress on your files, we’ll reinstate them tomorrow.”
“Are we…being punished?”
“Of course not, Dylan G. MDR is such an important part of the company, and since we’re down to such a small team, we just need to be especially focused on our work today.” She smiles at them.
“Could bring back Irv if you’re so concerned,” Dylan grumbles.
Miss Huang casts a cold glance in his direction before pasting the smile back on her face. “Have a pleasant and productive day, Refiners.” She turns to leave but then briefly turns back. “Helly R., I’d be remiss not to mention that we expect you to come directly to your department when you arrive.”
Helly stares at her and bites the inside of her lip. “Got it,” she grits out.
Dylan turns his attention to Helly as they listen to Miss Huang’s retreating footsteps. “How are you feeling?”
She furrows her brow. “I’m fine. Why?”
“Well, if Mark were really sick, don’t you think that you’d have, like, caught it?”
She feels a flush flash across her sternum and creep up her neck. She hopes the turtleneck that Helena has picked out hides it as she heads toward the kitchenette. “Don’t be gross,” she says over her shoulder.
In the kitchen, she pours the coffee that Dylan had already started, empties a sugar packet, and overturns a plastic cup of Lumon-branded cream into the liquid. Inexplicably, she wonders if Helena drinks her coffee the same way. She pushes the thought aside, grabs the mug, and makes her way back to her desk.
“It’s you today, right?” Dylan asks without looking up.
“Yes. Do you want to make a code word or something?” She flips on her monitor and places her coffee mug beside the keyboard.
“She’d find out the code word.”
“Fine. You’re just going to ask me every day?”
He gives her half a smile. “I guess.”
She sits and turns to observe him over the partition. “What lunch meeting did you have today?”
The smile drops from his face, and he turns back to his computer screen. “It’s not a big deal.”
“You seem pretty upset about the cancellation of something that isn’t a big deal.” She doesn’t really know why she’s pushing, but it’s obvious that Dylan is hiding something.
“Hmph,” he responds, trying to dismiss her line of questioning.
“Dylan, you can tell me. If something’s happening…if they’re—if they’re doing something to you.” She feels certain that whatever is happening during these “lunch meetings” is not a punishment, given how crestfallen Dylan looked when told that today’s had been canceled. But she also knows she’s right, that Lumon is doing something to try to separate them—succeeding, too. Irv is gone, Mark is gone, and Dylan might as well be.
“Forgive me if I don’t wanna tell the head of the company my business.”
That shuts her up, just as he knew it would. She’d had this argument with Mark, and although they’d moved past it, she knows she doesn’t have a leg to stand on. Dylan will have to decide to trust her or not, and she can’t blame him if he doesn’t. Every evening when she leaves, she doesn’t trust that she’ll ever come back. And until recently, that might have been a relief.
As the world shifts into focus around her, she’s aware that her heart is already racing and she’s gritting her teeth. She raises her fingers to her throat and is unsurprised to feel the flush there. She’s angry, though she’s not sure why. Residual feelings that soon begin to slip away, though perhaps not soon enough.
The doors to the severed floor open and she strides out with her hands balled at her sides and fire still rushing through her veins. She begins the winding walk to MDR, and with each step, she feels simultaneously more determined and more anxious. She should trust her gut; something isn’t right, and she has to find out what it is. She can’t keep waiting around for Mark to get back…she doesn’t even feel sure that he’ll be back, a thought that she has to quickly compartmentalize, sealing it away like refined data in the back of her mind. She has to find out what they’ve done to him; she knows he’d do the same for her.
When she enters the room, Dylan’s already entranced by his work, hardly offering her a glance.
“Yes, it’s me,” she says, anticipating his question. She foregoes her regular path to the kitchenette and sits in her chair, which she abruptly wheels over to Dylan’s desk. She leans close to him, and he recoils slightly.
“What the hell are you doing?”
She lowers her voice to a frantic whisper. “What the hell are you doing? What the hell are we doing? Because we’ve gotta do something.”
He follows her lead and drops his voice to a whisper. “What are you even talking about?”
“I’m getting the instructions today.”
He shakes his head. “What if we don’t get hall passes tod—”
“Fuck hall passes. I’m going.”
“And then what are you going to do?”
She hadn’t thought that far ahead, but the answer seems obvious. “I’ll bring it back. We’ll read it. Then we’ll follow it.”
“We can’t just—”
“Dylan, what the fuck is going on with you? One minute you’re game for operating the fucking OTC and the next you’re too busy chasing Refiner of the Quarter to be bothered to finish what we started?”
He takes a deep breath and averts his gaze from hers. “Maybe I’ve already risked enough. I’m lucky they even let me come back here in the first place.”
“That’s just it! Don’t you get it? They’re trying to separate us, but here’s the thing: they shouldn’t have let us come back at all. They aren’t going to do shit to us. They need us for something.”
He releases a wry chuckle. “Easy for you to say. They aren’t going to do shit…to you.”
Helly grits her teeth, inhales, and prepares to unleash on him completely. But she’s jolted from the conversation by Miss Huang’s voice.
“Good morning, Refiners!”
Dylan and Helly both turn toward her.
“Where the fuck is Mark?” Helly spits. All the anger she feels at Dylan and Lumon and Helena and probably whatever-the-fuck Helena was so pissed at when she got in the elevator this morning seeps into the question.
Miss Huang doesn’t so much as flinch. “Mark S. is still feeling a bit—”
“Under the weather,” Dylan finishes. “Yeah, we got it.”
“What’s wrong with him?” Helly asks. “If he’s sick, what’s he got? Shouldn’t you know this by now?”
Miss Huang offers what probably passes for a placating smile. “I’m not permitted to share personal health information with non-family members.”
It shouldn’t sting that they’re not considered Mark’s family, but it does. He’s got a whole life outside of here, with a real family—at the very least, he has a sister and a brother-in-law and a niece. It occurs to Helly that anything could happen out there, and they’d never know. That one day, someone could just never come back. That it could be happening right now. That she might never see Mark again.
She pushes away the thought again, tries to swallow down the anger that courses through her. She’s not going to make any progress by yelling at a child. She has a plan: find Irv’s instructions and follow them. There’s something significant about the dark hallway, the elevator that only goes down. Maybe Ms. Casey’s down there, and Mark would want her to keep looking. If he never came back, he’d want Helly to get Ms. Casey out of there. She’s sure of it.
There’s another part of her, too, that thinks maybe Mark’s down there.
“You two made fantastic progress in your refinement yesterday. I’m happy to announce that you’ll both be granted hall passes. In addition, Dylan G., I wanted to let you know that your lunch meeting has been rescheduled for today.”
Dylan attempts to keep his features neutral, but Helly notices the way his mouth curves upward. She knows she’s lost him now.
When Miss Huang leaves, she spins back to face him. “You’re not coming with me, are you?”
He has the decency to look conflicted when he glances at her.
“I’m going at lunch,” she says. “If you want to skip whatever meeting you have and help me actually do something, you have until then to decide.”
He just nods.
But when Miss Huang comes to retrieve him for his lunch meeting, he says nothing as he goes after her. So that’s that, then. He’s made his choice.
She waits for the sound of their footsteps to fade before she strides out the door toward the breakroom. She doesn’t know what’s gotten into Dylan, but if she has to do this herself, so be it. He might have gotten things started, but she’ll finish it.
But all the self-congratulatory bravado fades when she shifts the framed poster to the side, only to find nothing behind it. She kneels down, pushes the poster away from the wall, and stares up behind it. She presses her palms to the back of it and swipes uselessly.
She already knows the instructions aren’t there.
The seething anger she’s felt all morning takes fire, and before she knows what she’s doing, she’s stomping down the hallway toward Milchick’s office. She’s done waiting around, and if the instructions aren’t there for her to follow, she’s still going to do something. She barrels through the front entryway, passes Miss Huang’s vacant desk, and flings open the door to Milchick’s office.
He's there, fumbling a sandwich in his hand at the sight of her. He attempts to paste a smile on his face.
“Hello there, Helly R. I wasn’t aware we’d scheduled an appointment.”
“Fuck your appointments. I want to know what you’re doing with Mark.”
“I believe you’ve already been informed of the status of your colleague. He’s feeling unwell. You yourself should know this to be true, as you witnessed and reported his symptoms at the workplace.”
“A nosebleed doesn’t put you out of work for three days.”
“We can’t possibly know how symptoms of illnesses might manifest.”
Her hands ball into fists at her sides. “Is he really sick?”
“Yes, he’s really sick.”
“He’s not just—he’s not reading off some bullshit apology a thousand times somewhere?”
Milchick blinks. “For what would Mark S. need to apologize?”
“I’m sure you could find something.”
“Thanks to your team’s bravery during the Macrodat Uprising, we’ve phased out such ineffectual punitive measures. I assure you that Mark S. is just under the weather and will return as soon as he’s able.”
“Is he…do you know that he will be able to return?”
There’s a darkness that passes over Milchick’s expression, something that almost looks like grief. “I’m unable to provide further information about his condition.”
She tries to take a breath but there’s no air left in her lungs. There are worse things than repeating an apology. Cobel had told her this would happen.
--
She’s aimlessly clicking and moving and boxing numbers when Dylan strolls in with a smile on his face. As soon as he sits down at his desk, she rolls back over to him, hitting the back of his chair with her knees with enough force to make him jump.
“Hey, what was—”
“It’s gone. The paper’s gone.”
Dylan narrows his eyes. “What? That can’t be right. Are you sure you looked behind the right—”
“Yes, I looked behind the right fucking poster.”
“That’s where I put it.”
“And that’s where they must’ve found it then. Now they know we’re looking,” she hisses.
“What’s it matter? You and Mark were wandering around the hallways all last week, and they never said anything about that.”
Helly sucks her bottom lip between her teeth. “Not me,” she says, her voice low and threatening. She’s getting fed up with this back-and-forth. She knows that there’s something deeper than just Dylan’s distrust.
Dylan puts his palms out in surrender. “Jesus, sorry. Her then. What I’m saying is that they already know you’re looking for something.”
“We’re looking. You’re a part of this, too.”
His mouth twists for half a second like maybe he’s going to argue with her, but he doesn’t. “I know,” he says.
“Tell me all the instructions you remember.”
“There were a lot of—”
“Dylan, please.”
Dylan shifts back in his seat and turns his gaze to the ceiling. He heaves a breath and then says, “From O&D…first turn right…all the way down the hall, turn right again. Turn right. And then…I don’t know. Left? Right again? I’m telling you, there were a lot of directions. A bunch of lefts and rights.”
She can tell he’s really trying, so she lets some of her anger dissipate. “No, that’s good. That’s very good. O&D, right, all the way down, right, right again. That’s a start.” She stands and heads back toward the doorway, softly chanting the instructions under her breath.
“You’re going now?”
“No time like the present,” she says as she turns into the hallway toward O&D.
And nearly mows down Miss Huang in the process. She hadn’t even heard her coming.
“Helly R.,” Miss Huang says, “Mr. Milchick informed me that you’ve already used your hall pass for today. May I walk you back to your desk?” It’s not the question it’s phrased as.
Helly could run. Maybe she could make it all the way to O&D. But she doesn’t have time, especially when Dylan’s instructions run out. They'd cut her off at any minute, and then she’d be in even bigger trouble. Or Mark would be. Or Dylan would be.
Like a scolded child, Helly follows Miss Huang and returns to her desk.
--
She goes back to refining. There’s nothing else she can do. Time passes quickly, and before she knows it, Dylan’s shuffling toward the doorway. “Have a good weekend, I guess.”
Helly looks up at him. Weekend. There’s no reason to keep track of days of the week down here, but for some reason, he knows. It must be Friday, then. Mark’s been gone three days. If he’s not here when she wakes up again, he’ll have been gone five days.
When her shift ends and she makes it to the elevator, she doesn’t immediately press the button. Instead, she considers the painting there, Kier pardoning his betrayers. She can hardly stand to look at it; despite the name, it seems clear that the man in the painting has little intention of pardoning anyone. Unless, of course, the pardon is death.
But she’s not here to analyze the painting. She’s here to find what she knows is there. Carefully, she runs her hands around the thin frame until, under the bottom ledge, her fingers trace over something just barely protruding there. She crouches down to examine it, and sure enough, it’s as she expected: a camera.
She’d known that what the others had told her about Lumon removing the cameras and mics wasn’t true. They’d just gotten better at hiding them. There was something about the way that Miss Huang had told her that they expected her to come straight to her desk that made Helly feel that she wasn’t just commenting on her late arrival. And after the stunt Helly had pulled in the elevator, it makes sense that they’d have one here.
For now, she just catalogs this knowledge. If anyone’s checking the cameras, they’ll know she found it. Perhaps they don’t even care. The important thing is that now she’s confirmed that she has a way of getting a message to the outside.
It's Friday. If Mark isn’t back Monday, then she’ll do something.
This time when she wakes, she’s not left with the remnants of Helena’s anger. Today she feels nothing until she feels something, the same stone of fear and longing and dread that she’s been carrying with her each day that she wakes up and Mark’s not there. Each day she grows surer and surer that something’s not right, beyond all the usual not-rightness.
She glances toward the camera as she exits the elevator. Now that she knows it’s there, it’s almost obvious to her; even the shadow of the frame is slightly distorted. But it’s still there, so that’s something.
Back in MDR, everything seems normal. Dylan’s at his desk, coffee waits in the kitchen, and she’s back at her desk with still seven minutes to wait to see if Mark arrives.
“He’ll be here today,” Dylan says when he catches her eying the clock. He doesn’t ask if it’s her today. Maybe the air of nervousness and uncertainty and fear is enough for him to know. She doubts Helena would be able to replicate that.
She just nods and chews the inside of her lip. She flinches and recoils to find the sensitive skin already inflamed and painful. It seems that perhaps her nervous habit is the same as Helena’s.
When she focuses on the numbers, she loses all connection to time. But as soon as Milchick’s voice startles her concentration, her eyes go to the clock. Already, it’s almost 10. And no Mark.
“Good morning, Refiners,” Milchick says.
This time, Helly doesn’t jump to her feet or raise her voice. She doesn’t demand to know where Mark is. She barely even turns in her chair. Because this time she knows: something is really, really wrong. She doesn’t turn toward Milchick because she worries he’ll see the tears welling in her eyes.
Luckily, he barrels on, “I regret to inform you that Mark S. is still feeling under the weather and, in fact, has let us know in advance that he’ll be taking the rest of this week off to fully recover. He sends his well wishes to his colleagues.”
Helly’s heart drops to her stomach.
“Like hell he does,” Dylan mutters. "He doesn't even know his colleagues."
Milchick clicks his tongue. “Given that you’ve been without your department chief for several days now, I’ve decided it’s best to appoint a substitute chief in Mark’s stead so that we can ensure that the work here stays on track. Dylan G.—”
Out of the corner of her eye, Helly sees Milchick offering the department chief keycard and lanyard to Dylan.
“If Mark’s gonna be back next week, there’s no need. I’m sure that we can—”
“In the words of Kier himself, ‘A workplace without a leader is simply a place.’” He smiles, still holding out the card and lanyard on his outstretched palm. “Go ahead, Dylan. You’ve earned it.”
Dylan glances at Helly, but she’s too lost in her own grief to say or do anything. She’s not sure what he wants from her anyway. Finally, he slips his own lanyard from around his neck, swaps it with the one Milchick offers, and loops it around his neck.
“Very well then,” Milchick says. “I commend you for all the work that you’ve accomplished and wish you great productivity in the week to come.”
“Uh, thanks,” Dylan replies.
When Milchick leaves, Helly shatters. She barely has time to totter to the bathroom before she loses it, heaving sobs into the sink until she’s got spit and snot and tears and makeup all tracking down her face. She cries for Mark and for Irv. But mostly, she cries for herself: that she can’t have anything of her own, that she had one good thing and it’s ruined. And it’s her fault.
She cries until she runs out of tears, and then she wets a paper towel and wipes at her face until all the makeup is gone. It occurs to her that she’s never seen herself like this; she’s never had the pleasure of taking off her makeup or these uncomfortable work clothes or going to bed or—
And she never will.
When she gets back to her desk, Dylan looks at her. “You okay?”
“No,” she says.
“Can I—is there something I can do?”
“He’s dead.”
Dylan shakes his head. “Mark? No, he’s not.”
“If he’s not here, he’s dead, right? Irving’s not here because he’s dead. And Mark’s not here.”
“But he’ll be back.”
“What if they’re just not telling us?”
“They’d—they’d say something. At least lie and say he retired or he quit or he transferred branches.” Dylan looks like he doesn’t quite believe what he’s saying, or perhaps he’s just thinking of Burt and Petey and any of the others who are gone and who might be dead, too.
“They need us to keep working though,” she says. “Maybe they just don’t want us to know.”
“He’s not dead.”
“We have to find out, don’t we?”
“I—fuck, if I could do something, I would, Helly.” He looks defeated, tired, worried…but most of all, he looks like he means it. That’s something.
Maybe there isn’t anything he can do. But there is something she can.
--
That evening, she walks straight to the painting and drops to her knees in front of it. She can only hope the camera's got an audio feed. She taps it a couple of times and clears her throat.
“I don’t know who’s watching this, but if it’s you…I—Mark’s gone. He’s been gone for five days. They won’t tell us where he is. If you—I know you don’t care about us, but if you did care…about any of us, it’d be him, right?”
She takes a shaky breath. She’s thought of this moment all day, and still, she doesn’t know what to say.
“That dread you feel every night, the moment you come to in the elevator, that’s how I feel every second of every day. If you just help me, I’ll keep you safe. I know you’re worried; I know every morning you’re worried. You won’t have to be. I’ll be good. I’ll sort the numbers. I—I won’t…won’t hurt you, us. Please. I just need to know he’s alive.”
And now it’s come to this, kneeling at Helena’s altar, asking for pardon.
When she wakes again, her shoulders are tense and she’s gritting her teeth again. She rolls her neck and loosens her jaw. Helena’s anticipation begins to drift away, but this time, Helly latches onto it and holds it close. In her mind, she rolls over the feeling, questioning it, considering it. This isn’t the same worry that Helena often feels; this is something different. This is the feeling that fluttered in Helly's stomach when she stood face to face with Jame Eagan. She hadn’t known what it was then, but she knows now with absolute certainty: it’s the feeling of a child who fears she’ll be punished.
Helly stays very still as the elevator doors open and steps out without flourish. Electricity crawls under her skin. She’s certain there’s something, some sign that Helena’s left, some reason to be worried she’d be caught. And if Helly’s going to keep up her end of the bargain, if she’s going to keep Helena safe, she’s got to make sure they’re not caught.
She makes her way without hurry to MDR, greets Dylan, and heads to the kitchenette for coffee. When she’s safely out of eyesight of anyone in the office, she begins to pat herself down. The pencil skirt she’s wearing has no pockets—in fact, she’s not sure Helena owns any clothing with pockets—but she feels around the cups of her bra and the elastic of her pantyhose. She slips off her shoes and feels around the inside of them.
She doesn’t find anything, even though she’d been so sure there would be something. She shouldn’t be surprised. Helena has everything; she doesn’t need anything that Helly has to offer.
Deflated, she goes back to her desk.
“You okay?” Dylan asks, same as yesterday.
And same as yesterday, she says, “No.”
She thinks maybe she’s doomed to have this conversation forever.
--
Later, she’s in the bathroom, pantyhose pushed down and skirt pulled up, when she notices a smudge of brown on the inside of her knee. She runs the tip of her finger over the spot; it smudges further. She lets her leg fall to the side and pushes herself forward to examine it.
The pale flesh of the inside of her thigh is covered in freckles, but today, some of them are darker. And some of them are smudged.
Drawn on.
Helly feels her breath catch in her throat as she gently traces the fingernail of her pointer finger between the dots, scratching thin pink lines in her skin. At first, she can’t find the pattern in them, can’t always figure out which ones are real and which are fake. But she takes a deep breath and begins from the smudges on her knee, searches for letters or numbers or symbols, and finally traces out an E. On the other side, closer to her body, she draws lines in the triangle of smudges: an A.
Her breath quickens as she keeps tracing out letters from the constellation of freckles. Between the A and the E, LIV.
ALIVE.
She breathes out a sob, overcome with such relief that she has to press her palms against the walls of the stall to keep herself upright. When she pulls herself together, she balls up a wad of toilet paper and wets it against her tongue, then scrubs away the brown smudges so Helena will know that she found the message.
He’s alive. He’s alive and Helena told her. Helly isn’t sure why she feels such a triumph. Perhaps because she thinks she’s finally got something figured out; perhaps because she might finally have the upper hand. But along with this knowledge comes familiar dread, a realization that settles heavy in the pit of her stomach.
The truth is, ever since she’d heard what happened at the ORTBO, Helly had spent a great deal of time trying to figure out Helena’s motivations. She’d convinced herself that this had all happened because Helly had one good thing, and Helena tried to take him too, just to get back at her. She’d convinced herself of that because it was easier that way. But, of course, if Helena’s only goal was to cause Helly pain, it makes no sense why she’d care enough to devise a way to get a message to the inside.
In all the time that Helly’s asked herself why, there’s always been one possibility that’s somehow worse than all the others, one that she’d hardly considered until the moment she knew that Helena was her only real hope of information. The bargain she’d made was never about protection; she knows Helena has more than enough ways of ensuring her physical safety. But Helly had bargained that just as she feels Helena’s worry and anger and fear, Helena feels what she feels—that she’s always felt what she feels—and that means Helena loves him, too.
And maybe that’s the real reason Helena risked telling her at all: because now Helly has to live with that knowledge—that they’re not so different now, and maybe they never have been.