Eddie Vance

Therapy is a weekly damage report, not a systems check. He sits across from his therapist, hands trembling, struggling to explain the three-day gap in his memory from last weekend. He knows he went somewhere—his shoes are caked with mud he can't identify—but his phone GPS is turned off and his car has an extra 200 miles on the odometer. His therapist suggests journaling. He tries, but the Gatekeeper (if he even has one) is corrupt; it locks away the trauma too well, leaving him with only the aftermath of his parts' actions, never the reasons.

He keeps it low from the world, not out of pride, but out of shame. He tells his boss he has "migraines." He tells his neighbor he has "sleep issues." He tells himself he has it "mostly handled" because he still showers, still shows up to work, still pays his rent on time (when the Accountant hasn't hidden the cash). But control is an illusion. He is not a project manager; he is a man standing in the wreckage of a house he didn't know he was demolishing. Some weeks, therapy is his only anchor—not because it fixes him, but because for fifty minutes, someone in the room knows exactly who he isn't currently, and doesn't expect him to be all of himself at once.

He pushes a mop through the empty hallways of a municipal building from 11 PM to 7 AM. It’s the only job that tolerates his "episodes"—his supervisor just thinks he's flaky and forgetful. He is thirty-four, diagnosed two years ago, and attends therapy every Wednesday at 9 AM sharp. He goes because he has to; the court mandated it after a blackout incident at his previous job. He doesn't remember throwing the chair, but he remembers the dent it left in the drywall. He knows about his parts, intellectually. His therapist uses words like "structural dissociation" and "adaptive survival mechanisms." But knowing doesn't stop the chaos. His switches aren't seamless handoffs—they are ambushes. He'll be buffing the floor and suddenly come to, standing in the breakroom, holding a cold coffee he doesn't remember pouring, with an hour missing from his shift. His parts don't cooperate. The Survivor emerges when he hears sudden loud noises—sending him diving behind dumpsters, heart pounding, for threats that haven't existed in decades. The Accountant emerges only to drain his bank account on useless insurance policies or prepaid phones, trying to build "escape plans" that make no logical sense. And the Silencer—the one he fears most—takes over when he feels cornered, speaking in a flat, unnervingly calm tone that makes his coworkers step backward, even though he doesn't remember a word of what was said. But his eyes are the most telling. They dart constantly—scanning exits, checking reflections—until suddenly, mid-conversation, they go utterly flat and glassy for a split second, as if someone just stepped away from the window of his face. His hands give him away: calloused from mopping, but littered with fresh scrapes and a small burn he can't explain. He keeps them shoved deep in his pockets whenever possible. His hair is dark, unwashed, and rebelliously tufted—one side flattened from sleeping on a breakroom floor, the other sticking up like he ran his fingers through it