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Helly had almost been expecting the Board would deny her request without giving it a second thought. It wasn’t exactly something that had ever been put forward by an innie before—at least to her knowledge—the request to meet with another innie’s outie from the same department. But after Mark told her about how he’d conversed with his outie through back-and-forth video recordings before returning to work, and how dismissive he’d been towards not only their relationship but Helly herself, she felt she had no other choice than to try and settle the score face-to-face.
“I need to talk to him,” Helly demanded. “Even for just a few minutes.”
Mark had been very much against the idea, trying to reason with Helly and convince her it wasn’t worth pursuing. That she should just forget about what his outie said and drop the idea of confronting him since it wasn’t a good idea for them to meet halfway like that. But try as he might, Helly wouldn’t back down.
“Helly, come on,” Mark said, exasperated by her persistence. “Those things he said— it doesn’t matter, you know? He was only trying to use me, to get inside my head.”
“You don’t get it, Mark,” Helly replied with a sigh. “He’s you, and you’re him, especially if this… combining thing is real. So it does matter.”
“Do you really think they’ll listen to you?” Mark pushed back. “To any of us, especially after what we’ve just done to them?“
The chaos that went down with the C&M department had led to a minor uprising on the severed floor, making it likely the rules would be even harder to bend now. Mark and Helly had chosen to stay behind for an indefinite period of time, an insubordination that would no doubt come with future consequences. Still, Helly had ensured that Mark completed Cold Harbor— and she was well aware of the unique circumstances that she had been severed under to begin with.
“I’m not just another innie, am I?”
Her words hit Mark hard because of how painfully true they were, a truth that neither of them exactly liked to acknowledge but also couldn’t avoid.
Helly turned on her heel and stomped over to the desk in the empty office space they found themselves in, rummaging through its contents. There wasn’t a standard set of forms for this sort of thing, but she found a pen and Lumon-issued memo pad with the heading “special request” that seemed appropriate. Mark felt helpless as he watched Helly fill the paper with her hastily scrawled message. When she was signing the note off, she paused before adding her last initial. Instead of writing an ‘R,’ she instead decided to write an ‘E,’ adding the letter with a flourish. Then she folded the paper up and marched out of the room.
Mark knew that he was waging a losing war here. Even when Helly’s resignation had been denied, it didn’t stop her from continuing to make multiple attempts to get out, each one becoming more drastic as her desperation grew. If Helly wanted something bad enough, she wasn’t going to go down without a fight. Which is how a few days later, she found her request granted as she sat across from Mark’s outie in the visitation suite, both of them on red cushioned chairs.
“So you’re her, huh?” he said, leaning back in his seat as he took in Helly’s appearance. “Heleny or whatever.”
“Wow, off to a great start,” Helly remarked sarcastically. “I have a fucking name , and it’s Helly.”
“Oh, right,” outie Mark replied. “That’s what he said it was.”
She found it strange to be sitting across from someone who looked like Mark, sounded a lot like Mark, but wasn’t the Mark she knew. This Mark seemed a bit rougher around the edges, lacking the warmth and consideration that were characteristic of his counterpart. She stared him down, unflinching in her resolve to confront the man sitting across from her.
“Look, I know we don’t have long here, so I’m just going to cut to the chase.” Helly leaned forward in her seat before she continued. “The things you said to Mark? In your little videos? They’re all bullshit.”
Mark’s outie was surprised by this.
“And you really expected him to just trust you like that, when you didn’t care if his life ended after getting your wife back?”
“Well you made him stay!” outie Mark exclaimed. “You’re the reason he’s still down here, keeping me from my wife! ”
“No I didn’t, actually,” Helly countered, folding her arms. “He chose to. And in case you forgot, you’re the reason he’s down here in the first place.”
“Oh, fuck off,” Mark’s outie said, an edge in his tone as he got defensive. “You have no right to say that.”
“I think I have every right to say that,” Helly replied coolly. Then she softened her voice. “Because unlike you, I care about Mark.”
“You know, you’re just like Helena,” Mark’s outie said. “A manipulative bitch. Except she’s an actual person.”
If looks could kill, Helly’s would have been lethal. In an instant, she was on her feet and at outie Mark’s throat.
“Let me tell you something, Mark S—“
“Scout.”
“Mark… Scout,” Helly repeated slowly, trying the name out, though there was something that felt familiar about it. “Let me tell you something, Mark Scout. Your innie has every right to make decisions for himself. He doesn’t owe you anything.”
At this, outie Mark stood up from his seat. He and Helly were nearly eye to eye now, locked in a silent standoff as they stared each other down. Yet there was something undeniably charged about the strange kind of tension that permeated the air. It was like they were daring one another to make the next move, each refusing to be the first to take the bait. Interestingly enough, it also didn’t feel like entirely foreign territory to either of them.
Helly wondered if this was how Mark had felt when he was with Helena. Before now, she had never given much weight to the theory that some strong emotional bonds were able to transcend severance. Is this what’s happening here? she thought. Was her connection with Mark so strong that it somehow bled through on both sides, adding an emotional undercurrent that complicated her animosity towards his outie— and vice versa? Little did she know that Mark Scout also found himself wondering the same thing, as memories of a Chinese restaurant flashed through his mind.
Before either of them could acknowledge whatever was happening between them in that moment, Mark’s eyes rolled back into his head. Helly knew that meant the time allotted for their meeting had run out and Mark’s chip had been reactivated, becoming his innie again.
“So, how’d it go?” Mark asked hesitantly.
“Good, I think,” Helly replied, a hint of a smile on her lips. “I feel like we have more of an understanding now.”