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You can't help but feel that you've been in this situation before.
The Invincible II looms in orbit as the Shuttle Marmota gets closer to docking bay. You’re in awe of the sight before you, although you’re confused as to why they named a spaceship the same name as its predecessor. You don’t think too much on the details, too busy being chatted at by the pilot of the Marmota. He talks about how big of a fan he is. You do not know his name, but you are well aware of his face. It niggles in the back of your mind, but the thought is soon out of your mind when the shuttle docks in the bay, albeit jarringly. You fall onto the pilot from the turbulence, and he gives you a questioning look. You shrug it off, feeling unsettled. You've felt that same look pointed at you before, but you can't place it.
The back doors open up to the bustle of the hangar bay, where several officers go about their daily business. Directly in front of you is a man—
Black hair, cheeky grin, deep voice—
—who shakes your hand and welcomes you aboard the Invincible II.
You blink at him. He introduces himself as the maker of the ship (“I made her, and a baby will always remember her father”) and the computer’s bioscan calls him the Head Engineer.
You remember his dossier, as well as the other department leads. His name is Mark. Mark the Head Engineer. You say it quietly out loud, rolling the name around in your mouth. It fits. He looks back at you with eager baby browns and a genuine grin. You’re taken aback by his easy charm, and you look anywhere else around the ship to hide your flustered expression as he guides you on a tour.
At the same time, you can feel your guard let down around him. There are warning bells in your head, too, but you don’t think it’s too important. For now, he takes you to the warp core.
He walks backwards, nonchalantly explaining its history while ignoring injured crew members, that he doesn’t know how it works, that he’s just winging it as he goes—
("Just like old times, eh, Captain?")
—“You don’t need to know how something works in order to use it.”
The blasé way he says it makes it sound like everything is in order. You don’t question how natural the whole process is, and it bothers you more than it should.
You open your mouth to ask more about the warp core, how they managed to find it from the first Invincible, but he takes you through the corridor that is set with explosives, should the warp core go awry.
You meet Burt, and he is initially curt. You look forward to his poetic waxing, but you wonder how much of it you know is from the dossier or from him.
But you’ve never met Burt before now.
Mark takes you to meet Celci, the feisty cryogenics leader. She assures you that all colonists are ready and prepped. She has some animosity with Mark, one that seems as old as time. You think, if you look closely, that Celci resembles someone you know.
He leads you into the main hallway before you can think of it any further.
Gunther tells you that the ADS is good to go. You narrow your eyes at the drones in the room, suspicious, but nod at Gunther regardless.
You get a good look at the rest of your crew, and you memorize their faces. Every single one of them is someone you think you’ve encountered before. Did you all meet at a function before and just never thought to keep in contact again?
The bridge. A toast is made to the livelihood of the Invincible II before the computer warns the crew of the incoming wormhole.
You hole yourself in your cryopod, and Mark bids you a warning that you unfortunately don’t get to hear. Again, you think nothing of it, as you’re sure Mark will tell you once you have all arrived at the planet.
Except you don’t get to sleep in your pod.
The error messages flash on the terminal for your cryopod. A software update? What kind of ship does an online update in the middle of important missions?!
You don’t get the chance to push the button to not restart to apply the update when the ship lurches forward into the wormhole.
All you see is blue.
Then nothing.
Then blue again, and you are thrown in the throes of red, catastrophe engulfing the entire ship, and your cryopod opening too slowly for you to clamber out of.
The ground rushes at you, and you catch yourself before planting face-first. You get up, see the chaos that the computer is blaring warning signs about, and Mark gets ejected out of his own cryopod, slamming into the bulkhead window.
Your eyes widen when you hear the telltale crack of glass and lurch forward with your hands towards him.
“Mark—!”
The glass shatters, and Mark barely makes a sound before he is sucked into the vacuum of space, the two of you separated by the sealed window.
You stand at the terminal, dumbfounded, wondering what the hell went wrong and how the most important person on the ship, aside from yourself, immediately died on your watch. You feel panic and stress begin to take over. None of the other crew leads have been revived yet, but there is too much happening all at once for you to make sound decisions.
That’s why you were picked for this. You were supposed to be the one making said sound decisions. The fate of 100,000 colonists and crew members are depending on you right now.
The terminal catches fire, but it’s the least of your concerns. “Making sound decisions…” you repeat to yourself, rubbing a hand over your face. “What the fuck?”
You don’t remember how you got here.
You don’t remember how you got the title of Captain, your certifications, the training you underwent to be the leader of this expedition. How you came to lead 100,000 people to their deaths new lives. Who assigned you to this?
“Error. Life support systems failing. Error. Automatic Fire Suppression System offline. Error. Fail-safes offline.”
You break out of your stupor. You still have a responsibility. If you die, so do tens of thousands of others. Make a choice, you chastise yourself. Make a goddamn choice!
You run to life support to get the oxygen going, but you think you migh t b e
t o o
l a t e
“Oxygen levels rising.”
You allow yourself a momentary breath of relief before gearing up for the next challenge. You head out of life support and make a right in the hallway, striding towards ADS when all of a sudden—
“Alert. Hull breach detected. The Asteroid Defense System is currently offline.
You stop in your tracks.
How did...
“Alert. Hull breach detected. The Asteroid Defense System is currently offline.”
As if on autopilot, you rush to get the ADS working, but it’s glitching out—keeps trying to shoot at you. You try to get Gunther to wake up from stasis, and it works; he gets it done in a jiffy.
He grins at you, gung-ho, and you nod your thanks to him before your body suddenly turns to cryogenics, not realizing that the ship has dropped several degrees in temperature. You call for backup instead, and it leads you to your own untimely demise. Never trust Gunther to help you out with something that doesn’t involve weapons or weapon facsimiles of any kind.
Blue rushes towards you,
and you wake in your cryopod once again.
You think you might have just woken up from the worst dream you could have. There's an awful sense of déjà vu when you groan to consciousness, eyes fluttering open.
The dream rushes back to you—the ship’s in chaos, your head engineer—Mark—just died, Gunther was able to get ADS online but could not for the life of him solve the puzzle of how to fix a coolant leak—and suddenly, you are placed in your cryopod, right where your nightmare began.
The cryopod terminal is going on about a system update that just completed and how absolutely catastrophic the state of the ship is. Alarms blare in your ears. You feel groggy, and your head lolls around, trying to get a sense of your bearings.
“Wha—whazzat…”
“I-I-Initializing emergency Wakey-Wakey Protocol.”
The cryopod ejects you, but you manage to catch yourself from planting on the floor. A slight chill comes over you. Why did your body react as if you knew you were gonna get thrown out of the pod?
The computer talks about reviving the head engineer, and your eyes widen as Mark is, once again, ejected from his own cryopod, right into the window. It’s a sick replay in your head, what comes after. You jolt forward and manage to tighten your hold on him this time, and the glass shatters open, nearly sending the two of you out of the bridge and into the cold hell of space.
The bulkhead is sealed just in time, and the two of you flop on the ground, breathing heavily.
“Captain,” Mark pants, “Thank you. Um. What the hell is going on?”
“Fuck if I know,” you wheeze, “and now, the bridge is probably gonna catch on fire.”
As if on cue, the computer warns, “Fire on the bridge.”
“And then the life support systems will be failing—”
“Error. Life support systems failing.”
“Seriously,” you say exasperatedly, and turn to see his panicked face, “what the actual fuck?”
You get up to grab the fire extinguisher from its place and tell Mark to take care of life support. You extinguish the fire, and you hope to whatever gods are out there that Mark was able to return oxygen to the ship. You hear his voice call out to you, and you turn around—
—to find a dark, empty room.
Letters and memos all over the walls. Candle vigils on the floor. Pages full of tally marks posted next to each other. Your vision is hazy and you open your mouth to try to call out to Mark, but no sound comes out.
Then, you see that your cryopod is closed. A glowing light emerges from within, and a hand rises, as if reaching out to you—
“Alert. Oxygen levels rising.”
“Captain!” Mark comes into the bridge, and everything is well lit again, clean of ominous letters and an obtrusive atmosphere. He doesn’t seem to have any idea what you just saw, if you even saw it. You start to doubt your memory and your sanity, just a little bit. Mark is still rambling when you come to your senses.
“Mark, ADS, now.” You push him and his still-rambling self in front of the ADS room, and he sputters about why you’re there when the computer warns about the ADS being offline.
Mark turns back to you in shock. You look back at him in shock as well, surprised that there was actually an issue, and that is when the asteroids start hitting the ship. The impact throws you onto him, and you both slam against the ADS door, his body taking the brunt of your weight.
“Sorry,” you hiss, leaning against the ADS door.
“It’s okay,” he grins, giving you a thumbs up and slapping his hand on the scanner. “I don’t know why ADS is being a bitch right now, with asteroids hitting into us, but—since we’re right here, we can fix whatever is wrong…with…”
You raise an eyebrow as to why he’s trailing off when you peek into the ADS room yourself. Several lasers from turrets are currently pointed at Mark’s vital spots, and you grab him by the collar to throw him to the ground, avoiding most of the shots that have been fired. The door slides closed behind you two.
You think about letting Gunther handle this one. Then you think about letting Gunther handle the leak in cryo, and—
Wait, why are you thinking about the leak in cryo? There is no leak in cryo right now. If there was, the computer would have warned you both. So why are you worried about a nonexistent leak in cryo?
You turn to Mark, who is going on about a malfunction with the computer, and it strikes you that he hasn’t raised any questions as to how you knew what systems would be out of order, and when.
“We got to fix the ADS or we’re going to get blasted to bits. Just like old times, eh, Captain?”
The alarms zone out, Mark’s blabbering about the first Invincible trails off, and all you can hear is the loop of that last sentence.
You’ve heard it before. You’ve heard it all before.
The gears start turning in your head. How did you end up knowing how to stop all of that? Because of a disturbingly accurate dream that you’ve had? You dismiss it, but instinct is screaming for you not to.
You’re rusty on your astrophysics. You excelled mostly in diplomatic relations and strategic decisions. It all comes together. That is why you are captain of the ship. That is why you are asked to lead an expedition of 100,000 colonists to an uninhabited planet in order to expand the growing population of the human race. Your goal is to ensure the lives and safety of all of those people who depend on you.
But…if you were to somehow meet the end of your days right here, right now—what’s to say that you won’t wake up in your cryopod again?
Mark is already in the ADS room without getting the go-ahead from you. He puts up a fight against the drones, but he comes back, albeit slightly singed.
“Hey,” you begin warily, dusting off the bits of uniform that came off of his shoulders, “thanks.”
“No worries, Cap’n,” he says, waving a hand, dazed. “We’ll tackle the cryo situation together, too, right?”
“Right,” you say. And then it clicks. “Wait, Mark—”
He’s already through the cryo doors before the computer starts wailing about the coolant leak. He fixes it faster than the ADS, and he walks out of cryo, frozen as an icicle, but triumphant.
You can’t hear him talk again because you’re holed up inside your head. You can’t figure out why he knew you were gonna ask him to go to cryo. You tell yourself that at no point had you had a dream with Mark going in to help you fix cryo in a snap. You also don’t know if he has appeared in any past dreams that you’ve had, and it doesn’t explain why you’re reacting the way you are with the realization.
You look at Mark, who’s looking back at you expectantly. He somehow managed to warm himself up and rid his body of any icicles. He’s sneaky. And fast. And unnervingly perceptive. What would happen, you think, if you threw yourself out of the airlock?
Worst-case scenario, you die, Mark isn’t able to save the ship, and all of these lives are lost.
Best-case scenario, you return to your cryopod with the knowledge of everything that has happened before, and you are able to fix all of the ship’s problems with ease.
The latter would be the easy way out.
But something has unnerved you about this ship and the whole experience from the very beginning. As soon as you boarded the Shuttle Marmota, things seemed too familiar to be a coincidence.
It begs the question: Does Mark know?
The two of you stare at each other for a long moment. Eventually, he raises an eyebrow and jokes, “See something you like?”
You find yourself swallowing, but not because of his comment. Something seems off. On the surface, nothing can be determined. But the longer you looked at Mark, the more uneasy you felt.
"How is it," you say, voice shaking, "that I knew to grab your hand?"
Mark shrugs, a dumbfounded look on his face. "I don't know, but I thought it was pretty cool—"
"And I—I knew to put out the fire because you were gonna head to Life Support. And you fixed the ADS. And you knew how to stop the coolant leak in cryo. And—and now,” you say with dawning horror, “the reactor's gonna start acting up."
The computer’s voice blares above.
"Warning, reactor overload imminent. Warning, reactor overload imminent."
You look at Mark, feeling terrified for the first time since you stepped aboard the ship. "What the hell is this?"
Mark is impassive, the first time you've seen this kind of emotion on him, and you don't think he sees the turmoil happening within you. The computer's voice repeats over and over, and Mark is silent for too long.
"Mark," you plead. "Mark, say something. Have we been here before?"
No response.
"I haven't met you before today. I haven't met any of these people before today," your voice rises, and Mark's expression hasn't changed. "And yet it seems like I've been here for so long. What the fuck is going on?"
And then—
And then—
Mark smirks.
Your breath halts.
Time has stopped. But has it ever really gone forward? With the sinking realization that the situation you're in may be more than you bargained for, Mark takes a step toward you. His gaze is dark and predatory, and you are frozen. You open your mouth to say something, anything—but your voice is stuck in your throat and all air escapes you. Your eyes are wide as Mark takes another step, and another, and another, until he's a breath away from you.
Those brown eyes you had been adoring earlier lack any warmth that might have offered you a glimmer of hope. They are steely, empty, lifeless. This Mark is a 180 of the one you had been hanging around with.
"Captain," and you try to suppress a shudder at how cold his tone is (despite the timbre), how deep it cuts through you. You don't know this man, but it simultaneously feels like you've known him for a lifetime. Something tugs in the back of your memory, but you're grasping at straws.
"Captain," he repeats with a lilt, "where do you think you are right now?"
Your eyebrows furrow. Your throat unsticks and you speak, stammering. "W-what?"
He doesn't answer, waiting for your reply. You don't know if it's a trick question.
"T-the Invincible? The second one."
He hums, smirk widening. "And why do you say that?"
"B-because y-you said so. It's written on the outside of the ship, b-before I docked here."
He hums again. "Not bad. You are correct in saying that. But do you know exactly where we are?"
Something akin to terror seeps through you. It starts at the tips of your fingers and toes, and works its way towards the center of your body. It slithers along, all the way to where your heart is, and it's beating faster than it ever has.
Crack.
Something in your periphery shifts, and Mark is still standing in front of you, but not as close as he was before.
There's a partition that separates the two of you. You hold your hand up towards him, and it meets cool glass. Mark is standing in a lavish hallway, where you can see a wooden banister and marble-tiled floors. Ornate tables and chairs spread out farther than you can see.
However, the Mark in front of you is no longer wearing space fatigues. Instead, he dons a black tux with a white bowtie and a white rose pinned to his lapel. "Mayor" is scrawled neatly on a black ribbon pinned over his heart. His hair is parted nearly to the side, and he is smirking once again, empty eyes boring right into you, and you find yourself recoiling in shock.
"Oh…my god…"
The grin that shows is far too smarmy for you to forget. It looks grotesquely wrong on the face in front of you. "How do I look, old friend?"
His voice mocks the term of endearment. It's the way someone from a long time ago used to say it, and you couldn't place it very well—until now.
It's when the tide recedes far too rapidly. You feel your stomach bottoming out, your head feels like cotton, and whatever sounds you hear are replaced with a ringing white noise. The tsunami rises and hits tenfold, with memories of events that happened long, long ago: of a party, in a large manor, of jovial friends playing poker. Of a hazy night that would haunt you forever. Of finding a body splayed in front of the fireplace, face-down. A circling, accusatory game of whodunit. Friends pitted against each other as an outcome. Death, death, so much death, as the manor takes five victims and pieces of the others who had enough sense to leave it all behind.
The Seer, trapped in a room and whisked away with The Mayor.
The Colonel, firing his gun at the Detective.
The Colonel, accidentally pulling the trigger on you.
You remember—and you don't—falling from the banister, the Colonel reaching for your hand, eyes wide in fear and regret.
A limbo state, where you encounter something not quite human.
The twins.
They convince you to let them take over. After all, they are the best chance at stopping the one who perpetuated this in the first place.
But how long has it been?
How long has it been since you were yourself?
What consequences have you brought upon yourself?
The multiverse is littered with the corpses of your failures
T̴h̸e̷ ̵m̴u̴l̷t̵i̶v̸e̸r̵s̶e̶ ̷i̸s̵ ̴l̴i̶t̵t̴e̴r̴e̷d̵ ̵w̶i̶t̴h̸ ̶t̶h̷e̸ ̵c̶o̵r̴p̴s̷e̴s̴ ̷o̵f̸ ̸y̶o̶u̸r̴ ̴f̸a̷i̸l̶u̸r̴e̵s̴
T̡̫̠̫̦͂ͧ͗ ḩ͓͔̥ͫ̀̌̽ eͣ͌͏̘̤͓̭̻ ̳̝̲̠̭̹̬̮ͮ͞m̟͚͖̰ͫ͐͢ ų͕̖͎͈̲͈̦́ͪ̉̐l̝̘̻ͣ͘ t̵̬͇͕̞̳̝͕́͑i̤̥̐̉̋͘v̵̦͇͈̻̻͇͛ e͙̦͛̄͜r̶͇̫͕̱̉ͨ̎s̮͔̩̼͔̣̝͆̀e̛̱̥̦͆ͪ̏͊ ͑͐̂͏̞͇̱̪͈͎̫͔i̷͚̗̗ͦ̃͒̓s͖̠̲̝͓̺ͧͤ͢ͅͅ ͇̭̪͓̄̎̈́͊͞l̴̻̫̦̳͍̖̎ į̪̤̯̦̻͗ͬ ţ͎̘͎͕ͪ̆̋͑t̡̲̱͈̘̬̜͋ e̘̰̹̹̟̜̲̔͐͝r̲̠͎͓ͬͦͪ͟ĕ̢̦̲͉̦͕̘̪ͨd̨̹͕̥̈̊͋ ͈͚̭͕̫͒ͩ̓̿̕ẘ͔͈̥͚̫̝̽͠ ǐ̹̜̥̖̝̅̈͟t̔҉͉͕̙ h̟̦̪̟̦̯̩̳͋̅͘ ̩̪̎ͥ͐̃͟t̵͚̬̼̮͙͑ͤ h̛̼̱ͭͅȅ͉̠̣͇̮̋̌͐͢ ͍̺̞̤̝̭̰̂ͥ̌͞c̮̭̫̹̭̔͂͗͗͘o̟̖̮͑̋̓͢ r̟̺̬̼͙̬̓ͨ͑̽́ͅ p̝̜͈̪͍͚̻ͮ̿̕ͅ s̶̬͕̥̳̉ͨ͆͂ e̸͍̟̹͉̙͚͒̈ ş͎̤̬̪͚͍͖͋ͪͩ̈́ ͕͚̠͔̜̟̮̩͗̚͝o̥͚͙̤̫͑ͭͦ̓͜f͋ͯ҉̘̻̖̪ ͇̼͍̲͈̿̒̌͘y͎͎̽͠ ớ̲͙͚̟̐û̖̬̮̹̙̖̹̹̇̓͛͠ r͚͔͉͙͚ͧ̍͞ ͭ̏̚͏̠̠̱̭̮̫f́҉̥͇̮ a̷̫̱̺͚̦̹̭̹͒̀̏̔i͕ͯ͝ͅ lͨͮ͑҉̩͕̳̜̺͇̙ṷ͎͇͋ͮ̏̚͜ r̡̮͍̩̞͓̰͓ͥ͊ e͓̩͚͔̎̔̊̀ s̛̖̟̜̗͍ͫ
A date. He makes you his love interest, the one he’s been wanting to get to know more about. This is absurd, because you have known him for years. But he doesn’t let you remember that. He fools you. But something goes wrong. You meet an amalgamation of the twins, but you don't see their personalities shine through. This entity is more sinister than you would like. The entity (he) asks you if you’ve missed him. He has missed you. He talks about how he wasn’t invited on your date. You are at a loss. You don’t understand what is happening. Something fractures through your memory and you see that your body is a threat and it has taken the likeness of M̸͖̍ a̸̟͌ r̷̢̊ k̵̫͂.
A heist. It’s a lot more fun this time. He has made an adventure much more entertaining than it ought to be. You don’t know his real identity, but his name is M̸͖̍ a̸̟͌ r̷̢̊ k̵̫͂. You travel to a multitude of places, meeting other people in the process, and you want to keep going on your journey with them. You encounter a mustached man who reminds you of someone from long ago. The entity returns again, even angrier than before. He shows you a portrait of people from a lifetime ago, and you don’t know what is real. You restart the heist and the object you steal becomes a portable temporal displacement device. It sounds familiar, and M̸͖̍ a̸̟͌ r̷̢̊ k̵̫͂ uses it once. Resetting the timeline. R̷e̵s̶e̶t̷t̴i̸n̷g̶ ̸t̴h̷e̶ ̵t̵i̵m̶e̴l̸i̴n̸e̶.̷
A spaceship. The stakes are higher. You are responsible for so many people, yet the blood on your hands don’t wash away. Worldlines collapse, and corpses flow through the wormhole. All because you followed what he said. Do you even know yourself at this point? Why is he doing all of this—?
"Do you understand now?"
Your head snaps up.
You've been holding your head between your hands, a wave of nausea threatening to make you upend your nonexistent stomach. Your cheeks are wet. You've been crying. How long has he been standing there, watching you agonize over your decisions?
"I am the protagonist," he says decisively, as if it’s the only truth in this world. Ego drips from his words. "I am the hero. I will get what I deserve, and so will Celine and Damien. So will the Colonel." His face softens slightly at you. "I'm sorry you got caught up in this, my dear District Attorney. But you are my best chance at finishing this."
“You’re lying,” you say hoarsely. “What is there to finish?”
He hums. “I guess you’d be right. I can keep up the game with everyone else. But you —you are someone who just got caught in the crossfire.”
Something whispers in the back of your mind. “It’s not fair, is it?”
You lower your hands. They curl into fists, and you begin banging them repeatedly against the mirror. Rage, rage, rage—rooting itself and boiling in your heart, spilling over onto the surface of your skin, and you’re covered, head-to-toe, in red. You're yelling incoherently, and he watches you with something akin to pity. You want to break the glass and punch him in the face, over and over and over and over again, until he feels every iteration of every death and humiliation you had to suffer at his hands. You don't want to stop at your fists. You want to torture him, just how he tortured you. An endless loop, a never-ending nightmare.
"It's alright," he says calmly over your screams. "You won't remember a thing next time. I'll make sure of it."
The glass pane disappears. You stumble forward and the thump-thump of your fists end up on his chest. He holds you in a warm embrace, a jarring contrast from his demeanor earlier, and it makes you flinch. He lets you get a few hits in before you start feeling the exhaustion. You crumple forward, and he lets you lean against him.
Your screaming has turned into uncontrollable sobbing. You want out of his nightmare. You tell him so, and one of his hands moves from your back to the top of your head, running it down the length of your hair.
He does this a few times before tucking a strand of your hair behind your ear. He leans forward, and you can feel his breath, warm and unyieldingly safe. You don't know why you let yourself sag against him in relief.
"My dear Captain," he rumbles. You want to tune him out, but you can't. You have no choice. The manor has too much of a hold on the two of you. You want to correct him, tell him who you once were. That holds no bearing now. You are no longer the district attorney who was once friends with the Mayor or the Colonel or the Detective or the Seer. You are now a heist partner. A pirate's crew mate. An adventurer's apprentice. A prison inmate. The bearer of an anomaly. A love interest. A hostage. The captain of a spaceship. So many roles he has picked out for you, in which you get to be in the lead role alongside him.
Life is not ours to choose, Damien, you think somberly. How did we get here?
Mark pitches his voice lower. “It’ll be alright. You’ll be alright, Captain. Let’s start over, shall we?”
You close your eyes. You don’t know if you will remember in the next iteration. Part of you hopes you don’t, and part of you hopes someone comes to set you free.
Behind your eyelids, blue rushes to meet you.
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