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.