Echoes of Tomorrow: Alex Vance

The trip downstairs felt like descending into a stranger's life.

Alex gripped the banister, each step a conscious effort. His limbs moved like they belonged to someone else, heavy with a phantom exhaustion that no amount of sleep could erase. The night had been a whirlwind of silent panic and fractured memories. Now, the dull ache in his lower back wasn't imagined—it was real, insistent, like a ghost injury that had followed him home from another life.

At the kitchen threshold, he stopped.

Sunlight spilled through the bay window, catching the yellow walls in a warm glow. His mom stood at the stove, flipping pancakes like clockwork. The scent of coffee mingled with the buttery hiss of batter on a hot griddle. His dad sat at the table behind a newspaper, the soft rustle of the pages grounding the moment in comforting normalcy.

It was a perfect Saturday morning.

And it felt completely wrong.

Alex didn't belong here. He was a ghost in his own home, peering through invisible glass at a scene he used to be part of. The warmth in the room, the small, familiar rituals of love and routine—it was all happening just a few feet away, and yet it may as well have been lightyears.

"Morning, sleepyhead," his mom said, without turning around. "Long night?"

Her voice, usually a balm, came to him warped—too distant, too slow, like a recording played at the wrong speed. The question itself was simple, harmless. But answering it required a whole performance. He had to pretend to be a boy who hadn't died and come back with someone else's memories.

"Yeah," he rasped. "Guess so."

He slid into his chair. Everything around him—the mug of orange juice, the sound of the fridge humming—was painfully normal. That made it worse.

His dad looked up from the paper, smiling with a knowing crinkle of his eyes. "You look like you wrestled a bear. Did the session go okay?"

The garage. Billie's voice. The phantom harmony. It all felt like a relic now, buried under rubble.

"It was good," Alex said. "We finished it."

The words felt false in his mouth, like stones he had to swallow one by one.

His mom turned, placing a plate in front of him—three pancakes, golden and soft, butter melting in the center like a tiny sun. He stared at them.

"That's great, honey," she said, beaming. "Can't wait to hear it."

He picked up his fork. It felt heavier than it should. The first bite tasted like ash. His stomach recoiled. He chewed mechanically, focusing on the motion, trying not to gag on the silence behind his eyes.

He wasn't their son right now.

He was an imposter playing a part he used to know by heart.

The anxiety hummed under his skin, a low static charge. Any second now, they would see it. See the wrongness in his eyes, the fracture in his voice. But they didn't. They just went on living in the safe, bright version of the world he'd lost.

He needed to get out. He needed music. He needed something that made sense.

"I think I'm gonna head over to Finneas's," he said, pushing the plate away. The pancakes were barely touched. "Work on some stuff."

His parents exchanged that look. The quiet parental concern about how much time he poured into songwriting. But they didn't argue.

"Okay," his dad said. "Be back for dinner."

Alex mumbled a reply, grabbed his jacket, and stepped outside.

The short walk to the O'Connells' house felt longer than usual. The sun was too warm. The sound of a distant lawnmower grated against his ears. The cracks in the sidewalk were familiar, but off—as if drawn by someone who had only seen his neighborhood in a dream.

When he got there, he found Finneas where he always was: slouched in his desk chair, headphones around his neck, lazily scrolling through a blog on his laptop. The room smelled like guitar strings and soldering fumes. Comforting.

"Hey, man. What's up?" Finneas didn't look up.

Alex stood silently in the doorway. The soft buzz of powered gear, the faint whine of a tube amp warming up—it was the only thing that hadn't changed. The only constant between timelines.

Finneas glanced over, sensing the quiet. "You good?" He gestured at the screen. "Did you hear the new Maroon 5 song?"

He shrugged, scrolling again.

"It's okay, I guess. Kinda sounds like everything else on the radio."

The words were casual. A throwaway observation. But they hit Alex like a gut punch.

In his head, something exploded: Adam Levine, towering in a red chair on a giant reality show stage. A string of cultural landmarks—Super Bowl sets, memeable music videos, the earworm hooks that had dominated a generation. That voice. Like sandpaper wrapped in silk.

But in this world, none of that had happened.

Maroon 5 was just… okay. A bland pop-rock band, indistinct in a sea of other forgettable names. No stadium tours. No defining moments. No presence.

Finneas's offhand comment wasn't just an opinion—it was proof. Proof that this world was smaller. Weaker. Hollow. The titans were never born, and the ripple effects were everywhere.

Alex's mouth went dry. The weight of that realization settled deep in his chest. He wasn't mourning a few songs. He was mourning an entire era. An entire artistic ecosystem that had been gutted at the root.

And his best friend—the person he'd written entire EPs with—was sitting right there, completely unaware of the loss.

Finneas waited for a reaction. A head tilt. A shrug. Anything.

Alex opened his mouth, then closed it. The memories behind his eyes roared like a wind tunnel. But nothing came out.

"Mmm," he managed, barely audible.

Finneas blinked, then turned back to his screen. The moment passed.

But for Alex, it carved a scar.

The studio should have been a sanctuary. But now, even here, he was a castaway. A survivor of a timeline no one remembered. Not even Finneas.

He sat down across from him, surrounded by guitars, keyboards, cables—the familiar tools of creation. But the air felt colder now. More fragile.

Because in this room, with his oldest friend beside him, Alex Vance had never felt more alone.