ɪɴ ꜱᴘᴀᴄᴇ ᴡɪᴛʜ ᴍᴀʀᴋɪᴘʟɪᴇʀ (ᴘᴀʀᴛ 1)

ᴏᴘᴇɴ ᴛʜᴇ ᴅᴏᴏʀ

"You two hide behind the control panel..." Alise finally said.

"Wait what?" Mark muttered.

"I'm opening the door, but I don't want you two to be involved, hide behind the control panel!"

"If you say so, Captain... but- be careful..." Mark said and reluctantly did what he'd been ordered to do, but was stopped by the bandit.
"Why is this happening? No really, why are we going along with this?!"

"Uh... the Captain kind of has an effect on people, you'll get used to it-" the head engineer explained, earning a tired sigh from the woman. In the end, they both went to hide, leaving Alise in front of the door by themselves.

They slowly opened it, feeling scared but also pretty ready to face whatever was behind it "Show me something new..." they muttered.

The thing scoffed "As you wish"

"Captain, NO!!"

Something then jumped Alise and everything went black, then, when they opened up their eyes again, they found themselves in a wormhole, but this one was red and it traveled in reverse.
It transported them back onto Wug's ship, their crystal was glowing and they could hear someone panting behind them... "Mark? what are you doing here? I told you to stay hid... den..."

Wug lowered the language extractor on Mark's head, but somehow, this time, they could feel the pain as well, their vision went black again, with flashes of red, resembling faces, the shock, the glitching, it felt like needles poking their brain. Then it stopped, they panted heavily, holding their head as Wug got closer to them.

"You are in danger..." he said "But- it okay, Wug here to help" he added, gently patting the Captain's head, somehow making the pain disappear, then he walked away, leaving Alise alone... where was Mark?

They could hear whispering and when they turned around, they saw... Wug? But he looked scared, terrified, much like that Mark they'd found on the Invincible II!

"That's not Wug! That's not Wug!!" he repeated.

"Seeing things, Captain?"

"Who was that?!" they turned around again, only to see Wug hold out food for them again, although they didn't really have much of an appetite this time around...
"Wug said... 'You hungry?'"

"Uh..." Alise looked to the side, and Mark was there again! They were sure he wasn't a moment ago... what was going on?

"Oh! Wug, hey, this is gonna sound like a weird question but... have you seen the door to our warp core?" as soon as Mark said that, there was an explosion, and they could hear something skittering across the ship's surface, trying to break in, pounding on the metal walls, trying to break them. Alise glanced at Mark for a moment, then Wug took his weapon.
"It... here"

"It? What's it?" the Captain asked, feeling perplexed.

"Quiet" Wug ordered as the creature snarled and kept moving around. Then there was a knock. "Door..." the alien muttered, pointing his gun towards the entrance.

"Hey, it's me again, I know I kind of uh... tricked you there..."

"You didn't" Alise mumbled "I knew fully well it was a trap"

"And yet you opened the door... but this time, I'm being genuine, there's a surprise down here, oh yes, even better than the last one, you know?" the entity spoke with a certain excitement in its voice. "And your uh, favorite guy, wink wink, makes a return... you haven't visited him in a while so... better hurry up and open this door"

A favorite guy? What was it talking about? Was it even being serious this time? The Captain doubted it... but they had to admit, this for once was something completely new, and although Mark was begging them not to listen to the entity... if doing the expected had so far resulted in failure, maybe taking the wrong choices on purpose would've worked, or at least, it would've led them somewhere else. If they still had anything to lose they would've thought about it twice, but since everything in that timeline was broken already... there was no harm in being daring.