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There isn’t any sign it’s going to happen. There never is. You’re just walking home, along streets you’ve known your whole life, and then—
echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo echo ECHO—
You stand shaking in New York—no, you’re sitting slumped over—no, you’re underwater—there’s too many of you everywhere, ping ponging around your head in echo upon echo upon echo, and it’s too much for all of you. Too much, too much— get out of my head! Who said that? You’re not sure—who ARE you? Wyatt Mason, Wyatt Mason—the static is too loud in all of your heads at once.
Your phone buzzes. Someone drags you to your feet and someone asks you a question and 20 different things are happening at once, but your phone . Your phone buzzes and you—you, specifically—take it out. A reminder. “practice w/ fynn??”
You squint at the screen, which seems to be slightly glitchy. But oh, yes, you remember—you never marked that reminder as complete, did you? You didn’t. You, you, you .
You are Wyatt Mason, pitcher for the New York Millennials. You declare this loudly inside your head, and the echoes ping off of it in confusion. ( Pitcher for the Tacos) (no, Beams) (Georgias) (That’s not right, I’m a batter)
That’s wrong , you insist to yoursel...ves? You insist to the echoes. That’s wrong. You’re going to the apartment right now, and you’re going to ask the others what’s going on. You’ll figure it out.
By the time you reach the apartment, you have not figured anything out. In fact, the echoes are louder then ever, although they also seem to be gaining a certain distinctness. Seems like most of them are already with their teams.
(Yeah, the Flowers are really nice!)
(It's kind of)--there's a sharp buzzing noise--(odd for everyone, but they're being pretty chill.) (I'm sure your team will warm up to you eventually!)
They already know me, you insist, although with how fuzzy you is right now, you're....feeling increasingly less sure.
But the apartment still lets you in, so it's fine, right? It's fine.
"Hi," you say, walking into the kitchen. Your voice echoes strangely in your ears, and you pause, blinking. Are you just more self-aware now, or--?
"Oh, hey, NaN," Winnie says, glancing up from her phone. "How..."
She stops talking and just. Stares at you. It's sincerely unnerving, actually.
"Uh, are you okay?" you say.
No response, just some frantic key clicking noises and then a really awkward silence. It's made slightly less awkward only by the echoes still pinging back and forth in your head. They appear to have been sorting themselves out during your walk over--already the bright and sharp thoughts have fuzzed into feelings that you can more easily identify as not yours. Some of them have names attached to the feelings now too--"Max" and "Ivy" and "Vi" and even just "Thirteen".
You don't--you will not need a nickname. You already have one, anyway! Wyatt Mixson, your DJ name, which is very cool actually . (Cough cough. Bendie.) (Echoed doubt from the others. Rude.)
Oh. Speak of the devil. They're here now, in the kitchen, with the other Millennials, and you tear yourself out of your selves to look at them.
"Okay, so....hi," Patty says.
"Hi?" you said. "Did...did something happen while I was gone?" You scan the people gathered in the kitchen, and your throat clenches. "Where's Dom?"
Everyone else tenses.
(Oh, like we needed any more panic right now.) (Hush!)
"Okay, so, clearly there's a lot to [ ] here," Fynn says. "[ ]"
"How do you know who Dom is?" Andrew says, eyeing you suspiciously.
You take a step back, feeling stung. "What do you mean--why wouldn't I?"
"We don't know who you are," Fynn says.
"What do you MEAN?" you shout, frustration boiling over. "It's ME! Wyatt!"
" Wyatt ?" several people say at once.
"Wait, that's why-- oh ," Winnie says. "Oh. Guys. Guys. The PsychoAcoustics, they--"
Everyone begins talking at once, too fast for you to catch anything other than snippets of "Wyatt Mason" and "PsychoAcoustics" (what are those, anyway?) and "frequencies" and "feedback" and its all so much and none of it is right, they shouldn't be, they can't just be ignoring you!
“Guys, it's me, ” you say, louder then you mean to, fist clenching around the strings of your hoodie. It’s me, it’s me, it’s me, it’s me, the echoes in your head echo (echo echo echo echo), but you shake them off.
The conversation cuts off. No one responds. They just stand there, staring at you with a mixture of...concern? Confusion? Not fear. Gods, let it be anything but fear.
"You--you came to my graduation," you say. "Remember? It was," you half-smile, " so embarrassing, and you all took pictures, and..." You take out your phone and go to your photos, swiping frantically back and back and back, but they're not loading. None of them are loading, why aren't they loading ?
A tear lands on your phone screen and you swipe it away with your hoodie sleeve. Fuck.
The talk starts up again, except this time very pointedly quiet, and you don't have the energy to try and listen in. You tug your hoodie up over your head and try and focus on the emotions and occasional scattered thoughts pinging up and down what is now apparently being called the Wyattlink. Better other people's thoughts then your own, you guess.
"[ ]," Fynn says suddenly, and you startle back to the kitchen. Fynn gestures to Patty and back to you. "Can you [ ] room?"
Patty nods. "Come on, uh, Wyatt." She gestures for you to follow her, and you do.
You catch a snippet of what the others are saying as you pass by, something about "Los Angeli". You decide to disregard it, as you have a headache anyway.
The halls of the apartment twist and turn like always, and it feels so much like home that for a second you think maybe it is, and maybe things are okay.
And then Patty says "Okay, this is...um, just see what you think of this, okay?"
And she opens the door.
It's your room, but it's not your room. You take a few hesitant steps into it, feeling the static buzz louder in your ears with each step. You don't want to look too closely at any of it for fear of--what? You don't know, but you don't test it, but it all looks so familiar, so much like home , except there is something wrong with it and you don't know what it is.
“It’s gonna be okay, alright?” Patty says, standing in your doorframe. “We had—well, we had someone else with...feedback problems, who had this room, and they stuck around for a good season and a bit.”
(That’s me,) an echo says. They’re both louder and more staticy then the others, buzzing at the corners of your mind. ( She’s talking about me.)
“So we’ve got experience,” Patty says. “You’re going to be fine.”
If she wasn’t trying so hard to convince you, you’d believe her.