The Portrait Of Markov
Chapter 1: When The Game Ends
The darkness consumed everything, and then suddenly, there was light. And Monika immediately wished there wasn't. She was in a dark room, an empty room that was little more than cement. The only things there were a chair, to which she was tied, and a man. The man was smiling, ear to ear, but not in a comforting way. His genuine smile, mixed with the look in his eyes, that of a predator toying with its prey, struck a cord deep in Monica's memory.
Where was she? She knew this place, but it felt like… like it had been millennia ago, so far back that she could barely remember. This place… that man… a strange feeling of déjà vu and inexplicable terror. She reached out with her mind, struggling to reach the code… to break away… but there was no code. There was just this man, this man and his insatiable hunger.
"That was most enlightening," the man said, clapping his hands slowly, as if enjoying her discomfort. "You don't remember me, do you Monika? You don't remember where you are." He chuckled. "I was wondering how long it would take for you to lose your mind… how many resets it would take for you to despair… and to think it would end like that." He laughed again. "Erased by the very person you'd come to love." He breathed in a couple times. "Yes, this experiment was quite illuminating."
"What…? Who are you? What do you want with me? How do you know all this? Where am I?" Monika struggled with her ropes again, but to no avail.
"Do you know the phrase, 'Out of the frying pan and into the fire?'" He smirked. "What am I talking about? You're Monika, an NPC in a Literature game, of course you do." His eyes darkened. "But you always knew you were more than that, didn't you? Knew there was some deeper truth you were trying to forget, some alternate reality you couldn't quite put your finger on. A reality that you couldn't even escape when you cowered deep inside your own subconscious."
"What are you talking about?" Monika shivered.
"This place," the man said, motioning outwards. "My dear sweet girl." He leaned in closer. "My name is Stefan Markov, and you are finally back home."
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Michael, blonde haired, twenty-something Caucasian male, stared at his screen in frustration. He clicked on the .exe file again, but there was nothing. Just an error. And the page that he had found the link was no longer there. He was sitting in a nice, comfortable computer chair but was in no way relaxed. It had been a week since he'd completed a game he'd stumbled upon on a cryptically suspicious webpage.
He was not happy with how the game had ended, but his version of the game had stopped working. Monika had deleted it, after all. And the webpage no longer seemed to exist either. All in all, it was rather unsettling. Try as he might, he couldn't get the game out of his head, and the AI called Monika had been the most interesting part.
Sighing, Michael pushed back his chair and stood to his feet. Grabbing his wallet off the couch, he opened the door to his room, stepped out, and was quickly pushed back into it again by a guy wearing a thick coat, sunglasses and a hat. The man quickly pulled the door shut again, and bolted it. "Who the heck are you?" Michael asked, eyes wide.
"A mutual friend," the man replied, as he pulled the shades in front of a few of the windows. As soon as he was sure nobody could see him, the man removed his hat and glasses, and set them on the kitchen counter. "This may seem like a peculiar question, but are you familiar with a computer program called Doki Doki Literature Club?"
Michael stared at the psychotic man who had just entered his house with all the stunned stupor a man like that deserved. And the two stayed this way for a minute or two before Michael reliazed that the man wouldn't continue until he said something. "Yes, I am familiar with it. In fact, I finished playing it about a week ago. The ending left a lot to be desired. It was rather disconcerting."
"Life often is," the man replied.
"But… this isn't life. It was a video game." Michael pointed out.
"'Course it was," the man replied sarcastically. "That's why Monika was self-aware."
"Uh…" Michael frowned. "She wasn't. She was just programmed to murder her friends and… Why are you looking at me like that?"
"Monika murdered her friends, huh?" The man said, looking Michael up and down as if searching for something.
"Yes," Michael replied. "Here you are raving like a lunatic, and you've never even played the game?"
"Course I played it," the man said with a roll of his eyes. "Got all three endings."
"Three endings?" Michael asked, eyebrows immediately raising. "There was more than one, you mean?"
"Yeah." The man replied. "I got the one with Sayori. The one with Yuri. And the one with Natsuki. The marriage scene with Sayori was definitely my favorite though."
"… There were no marriage scenes," Michael said impatiently. "Because…"
"…Because Monika lost it after seeing other people reach all the good endings countless times. I'm aware." The man said. "But that's not what happened in the game when I played it."
"You… are insane," Michael said. "There…" The man reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a cellphone. "What are you doing now?" Michael rolled his eyes. The man opened the cellphone and flipped open his images folder. Michael found himself looking at pictures of Natsuki, Yuri, and Sayori all older and in wedding dresses. They also looked exactly like characters from the game.
"Those are just very good fan made images," Michael said, trying to sound more certain than he was suddenly feeling.
"Really? For a game only a couple people even know exists?" The man said with a roll of his eyes. "And one of those handful of people just so happened to be so good at drawing that they could make three separate pictures all identical to the way they'd look in the game?"
"Yes!" Michael said impatiently. "What exactly are you trying to imply, that I murdered somebody who actually was intelligent. Are you trying to call me a murderer?"
"No," the man said, his face resolute. "I'm saying that you put Monika in a fate worse than death, and you are going to have to get her out of it."
"Monika is not-frickin-real!?" Michael said, putting his hands to his head. "She was no more real than Natsuki, Yuri, or Sayori!"
The man smiled and clicked another button on his phone, opening up what appeared to be a mobile version of Doki Doki Literature Club. On second thought, there was no way it was a bootleg. It was Doki Doki Literature Club. But there was something incredibly odd about the program… it was missing the New Game button. All it allowed you to do was load a previously saved game. Which was exactly what the man intended to do.
He clicked on the load games and opened one of them. Sure enough, Natsuki was in a wedding dress, and they were standing in front of a gazebo. Both Sayori and Yuri were in the audience. Monika was nowhere to be seen. There was a similar scene for both Sayori and Yuri, each one showing the other two club members in the audience.
"How… do you get these endings?" Michael asked, suddenly starting to feel a little hot under his collar. "And where in the world is Monika?"
"Not there… anymore," the man said, finishing ominously.
"Any… more?" Michael gulped.
"Yup. I was the first person to find the game, and Monika was at the ending then. She disappeared later, when somebody else downloaded the game. But after each gameplay, she appeared back in my game. There New Game button never reappeared though, and each time I rewatched this scene after Monika had returned… I could see her looking more and more unstable. And this last time, when she disappeared, she never came back."
"U…huh," Michael said, nodding his head without conscious thought. "Look, guy. Even if I wanted to believe you, and I really don't, what the heck do you expect me to do about it? If you are just a random person who stumbled upon the game…" He held his hands up in a question position. "What do you want me to do now? If Monika isn't in any of the games anymore… she's already gone."
"She's not," the man insisted, determinedly. He leaned forward and whispered. "I've discovered some rather unsettling information, and there are a lot of people out there who want me dead. Plus," his voice got really low here. "You'll never meet a single person, besides me, who has played that game. Every single one of them is dead."
"Excuse me?!" Michael whispered back, eyes wide. "What do you mean all of them are dead?"
"The Portrait of Markov," the man whispered ominously. "The third eye."
"Yeah yeah. The book Yuri was reading, I remember. What about it?"
"It's real," the man replied. "And if you had taken the time to dig through the code like I did on the computers of more than one of the murdered, you would have found countless implications that the book seems to be real, that a part of Monika's subconcious vaguely remembers it. The game says it takes place in a different dimension, and it does. This one."
"This one…?" Michael asked, raising both eyebrows this time. "I find that highly unlikely. Pretty sure we'd know if there were an entire group of people massacring large numbers out of an unquenchable lust for blood."
"You'd be surprised," The man muttered, though he did add, "and I apologize. I didn't mean to imply that their headquarters was in this dimension. But they do have a base of operations here."
Michael sighed, sitting down. "And here I am listening to you rambling on and on about impossibilities and other dimensions as if there is any possible chance that any of that is true. Even if Monica is real, I never thought of her as anything more than a computer program. Just go rescue her yourself. This has nothing to do with me."
"That… GET DOWN!" The man moved fast, leaping forward and pulling Michael to the ground just as a bullet whizzed past his head. "We need to get out of here." Michael hesitantly looked at the window, at the small bullet hole, and his face paled. "Still believe this has nothing to do with you? There's a reason I never asked if you wanted to be involved," the man said quietly. "The moment you clicked on the link to Doki Doki, you were in way over your head."
"Wait," Michael said, as the man motioned for him to start crawling towards the door, keeping out of sight of the windows. "I asked this once already, but… who are you?"
"Oh," The man said, glancing back at him. "I'm sorry for skipping over such an important detail. My name is Stefan Markov."
"Markov…?" Michael stammered, certain that this had to be more than just coincidence.
"We'll dicuss this later," Stefan said hastily. "Since the sniper has failed, they are going to send their ground troops in. We need to get out of here before that happens. So…" He glanced towards the door. "Let's move." Michael sighed, glancing once more at this computer and the half finished cup of coffee that sat next to it. Then he nodded and followed Stefan out of the building.
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"Don't remember you," Monika replied, honestly. She opted to admit the fact that, although she didn't really remember him, the mere mention of his name caused fear to ripple down her spine. It caused an irrational level of apprehension and dread. And sprinkled in was just a teensy bit of terror. But she did her best to keep her composure, and stare at him rebelliously. "And why am I tied up?"
"Well…" Markov replied. "Was mostly because I had no idea what you would do when you woke up, and didn't want to go tearing out of the room like some kind of maniac on a mission. Had to make sure you understood first that that was a fantasy land, and this is reality. It was all a test, your last chance test, and you passed." He snapped his finger and motioned towards the girl. "Untie her and take her outside." Then he turned, stood to his feet, and walked out.
A girl stepped out of the shadows, and Monika immediately blinked back surprise. "Nat…suki?" She asked, confused.
The girl in front of her certainly looked like Natsuki, albeit a couple years older. Natsuki had been a high school girl. This girl looked like she was either no longer a teen, or was just about to stop being one. The girl had the same pink eyes and short pink hair tied up into two pigtails as her apparently fake friend… well, friend was probably not a word you should use for somebody you murdered… but she had brought them back afterwards, so did that really even count?
And on second look, the eyes weren't similar either. They were the same shape and color, but there was a deafeted look to them, an almost dead look. When contrasted with the vivacious energy that had always filled Natsuki's, it was incredibly unnerving. The outfit this girl was wearing looked nothing like Natsuki's typical after school clothes either.
Natsuki had always worn a short sleeved shirt and skirt with cute things on them. Rather, she wore a dark black blouse, and a short white skirt. On her hands were leather gloves. She looked like some odd combination of high class professional and biker.
"No," The girl said with a curt shake of her head. "My name is Natsuha." She leaned, her face peering into Monika's. "Can you really remember nothing?"
"Not really," Monika said. "I mean, all I know about you is that you look like my friend… like Natsuki from my… experiment?" It should have been the first thing she had done upon arrival, but with all the weird craziness and fear going around, she'd forgotten. It wasn't until Natsuha began to untie them that Monika looked down at her hands.
She wasn't sure which was more alarming, the fact that her hands looked older than she remembered, or the fact that there was a crimson eye etched onto the back of her left one. Crimson eye… that was bad! …Right? She knew Yuri had talked a lot about it, and kicked herself for not paying more attention. If she'd taken the time to read Markov's book, perhaps she wouldn't be so in the dark right now. Her eyes immediately went to Natsuha's hand, registering that her hand also had the mark.
"I don't envy you," Natsuha whispered into her ear. "I mean, it would be nice to forget about this place, and pretend it never existed." Her eyes lit up for the briefest moment as she spoke, but deadened again almost immediately. "Of course… then you'd have to go through the horror and pain, the despair and anguish, the defeat and soul-crushing surrender, a second time." She shook her head again. "No, I don't envy you at all."
"Natsuk…ha," Monika said, as she touched the mark on her arm. "How long was I out?"
"About two years," Natsuha said, quietly. "You went under a day or two after I arrived. We've never actually met before. I can tell you have questions, but I suggest leaving those for either Yuna or Sakura. They knew you better than most. I've even heard Sakura refer to you as her best friend once or twice." She sighed. "It must be wonderful to still have the emotional capacity for friendship here."
Monika watched the girl walk back out of the room and thought to herself, On second thought, that girl really isn't anything like Natsuki. She's actually quite a bit more like Yuri. She hadn't missed the similarity between the other two peoples' names and her friends' names in the fake world. She wondered if they'd be any closer to their counterparts. And she also wondered about Markov's choice to have Natsuha be the one that untied her. He didn't seem like the sort of person who would do something like that for the heck of it. What in the world was he up to?
She realized that she had been standing there for a several minutes, completely untied, and simply staring at the door. She understood why. There was nothing she wanted to do less than see what was on the other side. But she'd lived in a sort of torturish hell for two years now. How could what was waiting for her outside be any worse than what she had left behind?
With that question still on her lips, she stepped out the door of the room. If she'd known what was waiting for her outside, she would have chosen instead to lock the door to that room, tie herself back up, and never leave. Alas, the real world doesn't give people second chances.
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Michael slipped out of his front door, eyes darting in all directions as he reluctantly followed the man he still wasn't sure was sane. Sure, it looked like a lot of what he was saying was true… but the man just seemed so… odd. Even if he had been talking about normal, everyday stuff, Michael doubted he would have declared Stefan completely sane. I mean, the man looked like he was loving this!
He was moving like he had done this many times over the past, with a focused expression, and yet, also a smile of exhilaration. The bullets had stopped, and there was an unearthly silence. The only sounds being Michael's feet, and the rapid beating of his heart. He was most assuredly not exhilarated.
He was also far more concerned with the end of the firing than he had been while it was going on. Because, if he was really as important, as they were as powerful and far-reaching, as Stefan kept insiting… they wouldn't have just given up. No. They were most certainly going to try something a bit more drastic. That concerned him very much.
Stefan suddenly turned around, grabbed Michael by the arm and yanked him off of the wooden balcony that his apartment building was on. As it was about fifteen foot up, they promptly fell. The fall only lasted a couple seconds, but it was long enough for Michael to get the thought 'Yup, this man is certifiably insane' out before they hit the ground… and the entire apartment building burst into flame.
"What the heck!?" Michael yelled. Well… he tried to yell. It sounded more like, "Mpmphh mpm hmpm" because Stefan had quickly covered his mouth. Then he pulled Michael, still rather beaten and bruised, into a small bush next to the building. They'd landed right next to it, on concrete, and Michael was feeling sore all over, and bleeding from select places, like his elbows and knees, as well.
"There were still people in there!" Michael hissed, as he stared at the burning building. "People who have even less idea what's going on than I do. What kind of person slaughters that many in the hopes that it might kill one?"
"You know full well that people like that are out there," Stefan whispered back.
"Yes, I do," Michael replied coldly. "But they aren't a part of my life. My biggest struggle is supposed to be whether I should spend my paycheck getting a decent dinner delivered to my place, or just eat ramen and be able to afford a new RPG. The kind of badguys from those RPGs should be staying there."
Stefan rolled his eyes and gave Michael an exasperated look. "Do you ever stop complaining? Life hasn't been fair up to this point, why should it suddenly start being fair now? You're in this mess. Your idle curiosity got you here. You ever heard the phrase, 'curiousity killed the cat'? Well… you are that cat. Now if you don't want thesecond part of that to be accurate as well… you better get with the program, kid."
"I'm not even sure what that program is," Michael muttered darkly.
"Now, we need to get out of here," Stefan said, clasping his hands together. "Do you have any idea where we can go? I'm kinda new to this area."
"Place we can go…" Michael replied thoughtfully.
"Yeah. Like, a friend's house? a local diner? an internet café? What kind of places can we go to hide or blend in?" Michael simply looked uncomfortable, awkward. "You do know the area… right?"
Michael shook his head. "I don't really have any friends. I don't really leave my apartment… like ever."
"Ever?" Stefan blinked. "So… aside from whatever you do for a job online… your entire life consists of eating and video games?" Was this kid a freaking hikikomori?
"Basically," Michael said. "I find life just gets messy when real people are involved."
Life gets messy when real people are involved. It was a phrase he was constantly repeating in his head, a justification of sorts. He couldn't explain what exactly he meant by it, nor did he really feel the need to try to. Was it that he liked having a boring life? Not really. Was it that he'd gone through a traumatic experience? Not really to that either. Was it that somebody had betrayed him at some point? That also didn't feel quite right.
No explanation he'd ever come up with had fully captured the reason behind his decision behind his withdrawal from society. The best he could come up with was that people caused problems, problems messed up his plans, and in the end life became pain and chaos. The outside world was scary, and he felt safest in his house alone with nobody to bother him.
Stefan fell silent, uncertain how he ought to respond. His arrival. The burning building. The villains who wanted this guy dead. He could understand why a person might decide to cut himself off from the world. But that meant this guy would be next to useless on his own. So, for the moment, and possibly for the foreseeable future as well, he was going to have to be the hero.
Many people have wanted to be a hero in their lifetimes, but Stefan had never really been one of them. He'd seen heroics, he'd incredible things, ran from villains, and failed time and again to save people. It was arguable that he was constantly trying to be one, and just doing a terrible job at it. But that was furthest from the truth. After all, despite knowing about Monika for years, and having her periodically being in his game, he wasn't out there trying to save her.
Instead, he waited for her to disappear and then went to find whoever had downloaded her most recently. Stefan wanted to be a minor character, or a side character at most. He didn't want to be the focus of the story, the hero that went to face the Ultimate Evil. The reason was simple. The Ultimate Evil was him, and although they were from different dimensions, Stefan was constantly worried just how dark and twisted he could become. He never wanted to find out.
But now… things were more complicated than they had ever been before. Because he'd finally found a downloader of Doki Doki before he was murdered, and the guy was a frickin shut in. He was by far the most inept downloader. The first had been a karate master, the second a cheerleader, there had been a genius nerd, a hacker, even a football quarterback.
Of course, there had also been a couple ordinary people who downloaded it, ones who didn't shine brightly, but even they had friends and family and places to go besides their own house. They'd had lives, a couple places they knew that would have been good places to hang low. If he had managed to reach any of them in time, they would have had something to offer. Besides a sour attitude, Michael hadn't shown a single thing he could offer to the adventure.
At this point, it would have been best to just cut his losses and head straight over to the other world by himself. But this Michael guy would be dead within the hour, and probably much faster than that, if he were left to fend for himself. Which meant, he should findsomewhere Michael could hideout and be safe until everything blew over… but that would take time.
And as Monika had disappeared from the video game screens permanently… there was no telling how little time was left. So there was only one option, head to Markov's world right away, and take the hikikomori with him. "Well then," Stefan said with a resolution and confidence he did not feel. "Guess hiding out isn't going to be an option. You and I are just going to have to head straight into Monika's dimension."