She tied you to a kitchen chair, she broke your throne, she cut your hair

“What are you talking about!?” Nick demanded. “What’s going on!?”

The woman standing in front of him… she was Mary, and yet… she couldn’t be!

“Who are you?” He demanded, clenching his fists. “Where’s Mary!?”

The redhead tilted her head to the side, green eyes bulging out as her lips curled into a malevolent smile. “Now, what sort of thing is that to say?” She rasped. “I told you, I am Mary! Don’t you recognize me? And we used to be so close…”

She cocked her hip to the side and raised a gloved hand to cradle her freckled cheek. “I guess I do look a little different from the woman you married, I’ll admit,” she giggled, a shiver running through her body. “I don’t have tits like a cow… or those hideous, demeaning pigtails… and I’m not dressed like some country hick!”

The way she’s talking, her body language, everything about her reminds me of Mary, but… the Mary I know wouldn’t say those things. Those vulgar words, talking about her life on the farm with such contempt… she isn’t the Mary I know!

Nick grimaced. “I don’t know who you are… but I want you to bring my wife back to me right now!”

The sneering girl narrowed her eyes. “There we go, you’re starting to get it. Not giving me any more of that ‘You aren’t Mary’ crap, now are you?” She clicked her tongue and shook her head. “Tell you what… let’s make a trade? Quid. Pro. Quo.” She punctuated each word with a tap of her gloved finger in the air, and then giggled hysterically.

“What are you talking about, quid pro quo?” Nick demanded.

The short-haired echo flashed a sleezy smile and leaned back, resting her elbows against the dining room table. She looked like she didn’t have a care in the world, as if everything was going exactly as planned, even though Nick managed to see through her disguise.

“You answer a question for me, and in return, I’ll tell you a little something about Mary- your Mary, I should say.” She batted her eyelashes. “Wouldn’t want you to think I’m trying to trick you or anything, since I’m Mary too.”

“…How is that a quid pro quo?” Nick asked, keeping his cool and approaching this rationally. “You ask me anything you want, and I have to answer… but you also get to tell me whatever you want? I don’t have the opportunity to ask anything from you?”

“Aww, can’t play an unbalanced game?” She cooed. “How many rounds of this show have you gone through, again? Seven? Eight? Come on Nick, you know how this works. Or… I just keep my mouth shut and say nothing, and you get nothing. And we let what happens next happen. Are you alright with that bargain?”

Nick locked his jaw and glared at her.

“Oooh… I like that look you’re giving me… makes me all tingly and gives me the shivers!” The trembling woman clenched her exposed thighs together and cradled her flushing cheeks in her hands, licking her lips. “I’m just trying to be nice and a good girl like I used to be… but you’re getting so angry… all on her behalf! It’s so sweet…!”

She leaned forward and pressed her fingers against his chest. “I’m so happy… that you love me so much…”

Nick narrowed his eyes and pushed her away. “I don’t love you,” he snapped. “I love Mary. My wife. Not… whoever or whatever you are.”

Irritated by the rejection, the copy of Mary twisted her expression into a scowl. “So you’re going to be stubborn about this… fine. I already told you, though- I am Mary. So yes, you DO love me. I remember that quite clearly as well.”

Nick didn’t know what to make of this woman’s confusing words. He was pretty sure she was some trick of the producers, some copy of his wife created by that bastard Mr. S to mess with his mind, while the real Mary was somewhere else entirely. When was the switch made, then? It had to be when she used the bathroom. That’s gotta be it. Which means Mary and Dakota are probably in the same place, then. He took them both, and left this copy with me.

“First question!” The woman’s loud voice broke through his thoughts, capturing his attention. He looked up at her, and saw a tender smile on her lips that, for a moment, was identical to his wife’s.

But once their eyes met, it disappeared as quickly as it came.

“How did you know?” She leaned forward, staring up into his eyes and giving him a good look of her modest cleavage. The plunging neckline of her black dress went all the way past her navel, much to Nick’s shock. The Mary he knew never would have worn something like this. “How did you know… I wasn’t your Mary?” She repeated her question with more clarity.

“…I told you already,” he snapped. “Mary and I have kissed so many times I’ve lost count. I know what kissing my wife is like… and kissing you was nothing like that.”

He felt her green eyes drill holes into him as the smile left her face. “Is that really the truth?” She pressed him. “Because I’m pretty sure… you’ve kissed your wife like that at least once before, haven’t you?”

Nick wasn’t sure what she meant by that for a second. But his body was helping him remember. He felt the ghostly sensation of her lips against his once again, and his eyes widened. “Wait… that kiss… was that… your first kiss?” He realized.

The woman’s smirk returned, and she applauded him. “Very good! And you’re right… that was my first kiss. Unlike your wife, I’m not the type of woman to just put out to anybody. Not even the man I… used to love.”

Nick didn’t have time to dwell on that because she was already moving things along. “Thank you for your honesty, my darling!” She crowed, clapping her hands loudly together. “As a reward for answering truthfully, I’ll tell you about your Mary. …Specifically, when I took her place, and why. You see, your wife, sweetheart that she is, was a bit of a fibber. Back during that last challenge, she didn’t just go to the bathroom. No, the little sneak poked her nose somewhere she didn’t belong, and then Dakota, well… Dakota wasn’t happy when she found that out, no she wasn’t. So, the producers gave them both a time-out… and now, here I am.”

She stuck her arms out to the sides and curtsied. “Ta-da!”

Nick frowned. “So since back then… at the challenge… all this time, you’ve been…”

“That’s right!” She pushed out her slender chest with pride and cradled her hand over her breast. “It’s been me, playing the part of your loving, doting wife all the while! …And can you really blame me for being upset? With how you neglected her? For that mangy French girl?”

“That’s how I know you’re not Mary,” Nick snapped at her. “The Mary I know would never say something like that about Rose. No matter how much Rose tried to upset her!”

“I told you for the millionth time, I am Mary,” the woman who called herself Mary stated, rolling her eyes. “I’m just not the meek, pathetic doormat you married, that’s all. …But that’s fine. In fact, it brings us to our second question of the evening!” She held up two fingers in front of her face. But there was nothing peaceful about her sneer.

Nick tensed in anticipation. He had no idea what this woman was planning, but-

“What do you think I really am?”

That wasn’t the question he was expecting from her. “H-huh?” He asked, taken aback. “What… are you? That-”

“Well, you said you know I’m not Mary, and I’ve made it pretty obvious that, at the very least, I’m not YOUR Mary,” she replied, shrugging. “So… what exactly do you think I am? A magical construct? A copy? Mary’s long-lost twin sister, here to fulfill all your salacious and sleezy threesome fantasies?”

She narrowed her eyes, and the smile left her face. “What am I?”

Nick stared at the woman in front of him and struggled to come up with an answer to that question. The ideas she’d thrown out were all things he’d already considered (minus the twin one) but she wouldn’t put those possibilities out there if any of them were close to the truth.

So what did that leave? Nick looked her over, from her slender frame to her dark clothes, to the choppy orange hair tussled in curls atop her head.

As much as I don’t want to accept it, I can’t dismiss the evidence. She’s acting the exact same way Mary would act, physically, anyway. The same body language and the way she carries herself. And the stuff she knew on that date, it’s all stuff that Mary told me way back in college. Sure, the producers could have created a copy of her with all that knowledge, but is it really that simple? I don’t think so.

There was something that had been bugging Nick since the beginning of their conversation. Something right in front of him that he just didn’t understand.

If she was supposed to fool me, then why was she in disguise? If the producers could make a clone of Mary, why didn’t they do exactly that? Just create a duplicate of my wife, looking like she does now? Pigtails, curves, cowgirl clothes… wouldn’t that have been easier than making this copy of the old her and then giving her a disguise?

It had been quite some time since Nick had seen Mary look like this. …Physically, that was. Mary had never looked quite so wicked or menacing before, after all. But in terms of her body and appearance, she had the short hair, modest chest, and slender figure of the girl he had originally been crushing on back in college, and while he couldn’t get a good look since she was directly facing him, he suspected that her butt was just as voluminous as it used to be.

She looks like Mary did before she got any transformations. But why would the producers have chosen to do that?

“…Are you… a version of Mary who never came on this show before?” He guessed. “They found some alternate reality where Mary never joined my harem, and they twisted you somehow, is that what happened?”

The redheaded girl’s eyes widened in genuine surprise. “…Well, for starters, you’re wrong,” she assured him, “but that guess is a lot closer than I expected, wow! You know what? Since you were so clever, I’ll reward you with the truth! You see, I’m not a version of Mary who never came to this island… but I am a version of her from an alternate timeline, that part you got right.”

Nick figured it was something like that. The girl’s insistence that she was Mary was the tipoff for him, after all.

“So who are you, then?” He pressed.

Her lips curled into a sneer. “I told you,” she said for the million and second time. “I’m Mary. Or technically… I’m her echo.”

“Echo?” Nick asked, not sure what she meant by that.

“That’s right. An echo is something like possibility that’s been forgotten. I was born from that very first transformation your Mary received. Or rather, the transformation she was supposed to receive. But Sylvia stepped in and said it was too extreme, and your wife went down a different path, got a different transformation. But that transformation…”

“You got that one,” Nick said, realizing what she was saying. “So you’re the Mary that could have been, if she’d gotten that Corruption transformation way back at the start of the show.” So she really is Mary, then, if that’s the case.

Mary’s lips curled up into a smile and she leaned forward in a bow, lifting the hem of her short skirt with one hand and placing her other hand over her chest. “That’s what an echo is. And this echo is at your service,” she said with a cackle. “Of course… I wouldn’t have become like this right away. The producers made a few adjustments to me here and there. But… I am every bit the same Mary you knew up until that point. All the moments we shared together when we met in college, right up until we reunited on the set of this show… they’re all as much a part of me as they are your wife.”

Nick didn’t know what to think about that. Looking at the woman in front of him, her face twisted with malevolence, it seemed impossible that she could be his wife, and yet… if she was telling the truth, and he could feel in his heart that she was, then that meant those memories were all still there. And that his Mary could have ended up like this.

It was a chilling thing to consider.

“Hey, don’t look so down!” Mary stepped forward, her eyes manic and her smile practically splitting her face in half. “As a reward for your answer, I’m going to tell you something else about your old Mary now, don’t you want to hear?”

Nick nodded, unable to play along or pretend to be subtle in the slightest. This Mary had him completely eating out of the palm of her hand, he was just that desperate to know what happened to his wife.

And judging by the gleeful expression on her face… she knew it.

“Mary… that is to say, your Mary… is watching us as we speak.”

A chill ran down Nick’s spine.

“…What?”

“I set it all up, and it was going to work brilliantly,” Mary sighed in disappointment, shaking her head. She turned her back on him and began pacing around the room, giving Nick a chance to confirm that her backside really was as round as he remembered. “I was going to seduce you into bed, and take my fill of you, really rock your world and have you completely obsessed with me, thinking I was your wife… and all the while, she’d be forced to watch the whole thing from her cell.”

Mary let out an exasperated sigh with more than a hint of exasperation and flopped down onto the bed, kicking out her legs. “But so much for that… you had to go and spoil everything, didn’t you?”

“You-!” Nick felt a surge of anger rush through his body as her words sank in. What she was saying was horrendous! How… how could she be so cruel and callous like that!? How could she say such horrible things?!

Would Mary really do something like that? Strike at her other self in such a cruel, hurtful way?

He couldn’t accept it, and yet everything about her screamed “Mary” at him.

It left him paralyzed, helpless to say anything.

“Aww… what’s the matter, Nick?” Mary sat up in bed and batted her eyelashes. She crooned, “Are you upset… that you won’t be able to be with your wife? I’m sorry… but you know… we could still have some fun. Nothing has to change about my plan for the evening.”

She reached up and cradled her cheek. “I’ve got all sorts of wicked thoughts swirling around in my head now… wouldn’t you like a chance to see just how dirty a girl I can be? I can do things to you that your chaste, prude wife never would…”

Nick just glared at her. “…I love Mary,” he said firmly. “And you… you’re not my wife. You’re just her echo.”

A look of indignation flashed across the woman’s freckled face. “Well, fine then!” She snapped. “If that’s how you’re going to be, then so be it!”

She jumped off the bed and stormed towards him, grabbing him by the collar and pushing him back, towards the couch.

“I can live with being her echo. If you won’t see me as Mary.”

Nick pushed her away, not about to let her just do whatever she wanted.

“Take me to my wife,” he demanded.

Echo leaned back and sighed, fanning her flushed face. “I guess that’s it for the quid pro quo, then,” she sighed, shaking her head. “Too bad… you just had to go and break my heart again, didn’t you, Nick? That is how you are, I suppose.”

Her words hit somewhere personal for Nick. Because he couldn’t deny that he had done wrong by Mary in the past, without meaning to. Even if it was all due to a misunderstanding. It wasn’t a surprise to him that this version of her still had it out to get him. After all, he hadn’t worked things out with her the way he had with his Mary.

And judging by the way she treated him, the odds of that happening were rather slim.

“I’m sure your Mary is shedding tears of joy right now,” Echo said with a contemptuous sneer, a shadow crossing over her face. “Seeing how noble and loyal you are. It makes me so fucking sick! You piece of shit!”

“Nick…” There were indeed tears in the real Mary’s eyes, her echo was right about that. Seeing Nick rebuff her copy’s advances warmed her heart, and brought the smile back to her lips. “He saw that it wasn’t me… all it took was a single kiss…”

“Bully for you,” Dakota sneered, glaring at the other girl in disgust. “Mary, Mary, Mary. The golden girl, the charmed one… so beloved that Nick can tell the real thing from the copy just with a kiss, aren’t you so blessed?”

Mary tore her eyes away from the television screen to look at her cellmate, and the sickened expression on Dakota’s face.

“Dakota…”

“What?” Dakota snapped. Her lips morphed into another sneer. “Gonna console me? Tell me how bad you feel, now that you know the truth? Now that you’ve seen how much Nick loves you, what, it’s YOUR turn to pity someone else now, is that it?”

“That’s not it at all!” Mary said firmly, shaking her head. “I just-”

“Well, I don’t want to hear it!” Dakota interrupted her, glaring fiercely at the other girl. “Whatever you have to say to me, fucking forget it! Because I don’t care!”

She clenched her teeth and shook her head, digging her nails into her palms as she rattled helplessly against her shackles. “Someone like you… would never understand.”

Mary blinked. “Dakota-”

“I said SHUT UP!” Dakota screeched. “Don’t you get it!? I hate you! I fucking hate you!” She’d been keeping her feelings bottled up since they were imprisoned together, figuring there was no merit in saying anything. But now that she could see the difference in their status, it all came pouring out of her with venom.

“Don’t you get it!? The difference between you and I?!” Dakota demanded. “You, the blessed girl who has everything… and me… stuck in this cell with the luckless and miserable.”

Mary had nothing to say in her defense. She couldn’t argue with how Dakota saw the world, at least, not in regard to her own situation.

Having watched what was on that tape and seeing with her own eyes what had happened to Dakota’s mother, it was impossible to deny.

Dakota had never been given a chance. Everything in her life had been set up against her from the start, the poor woman.

But even though Mary felt sorry for her, she wasn’t going to let herself just sit there and take this abuse. She didn’t deserve that.

“You made your own choices, Dakota,” she said firmly. “You had free will. Your mother may not have been able to love you because of a transformation, but nobody put a transformation on you. Everything you’ve done were choices that YOU made, and you need to take accountability for them if you want to be forgiven.”

Dakota slumped back against the wall and looked at Mary with tired, golden eyes.

“…And who says I want something like that?” She muttered.

Mary looked down. There was nothing more that she could say, if that was Dakota’s answer. There wasn’t anything else she could do for her.

I’m sorry, Dakota.

“Shishishishi… well… that works out just perfectly then, mommy… shishishishi…”

A crooked cackled came from the entrance to the dungeon as a lanky figure slank into the room.

“Because I don’t have any intention of forgiving you any time soon… shishishishi!”