Project Assembly Line 5: Wyatt Reed

Riley sent me another download. 

It's called "pal5.pdf" and is a file over Wyatt. Like Nashiko's, there's a weird shadow thing over it. It's slightly different than the last one, though.

This one's even longer, at 7 pages and a little bit. There's the cover page, and the rest is text. Here's what it said:

PROJECT ASSEMBLY LINE

SUBJECT #5: WYATT REED

Marionettes recreation of his last staff photo circa March 26th, 2006.

"NAME: WYATT REED

STATION: #85

POSITION: SCRIPT WRITER

In January of 1975, Kellen Reed married Cassidy Marion. The two had a wonderful wedding day, and nine months later, their first son was born. They named him Wyatt.

The first four years of Wyatt's life were as close to perfect as one could hope for. Kellen was an attorney, which earned him a fair amount of money, giving Cassidy the opportunity to stay at home with Wyatt. He was raised exactly as his parents wanted, and was showing some promising signs of being a rather bright kid. He was talking and walking earlier than most, and had a natural curiosity about the world around him. However, in March of 1979, disaster struck.

Kellen got in a car accident. It was nobody's fault; it was late at night, and black ice coated the road, so nobody could control where they were going. Someone's car slid at an intersection as he was driving past, crashing into the driver's side. He died almost instantly. Cassidy was in shambles--she had just lost the love of her life, and wasn't able to take care of her son and work a job at the same time. He had some money stashed away, just in case, so they would be able to survive until she got a job, but she needed someone to help take care of him.

She had always been close to her brother. The two supported each other at their lowest moments, and he visited frequently, even helping take care of baby Wyatt when he could. Although she didn't want to burden him, he was more than willing to help them out. He didn't make nearly as much money as Kellen, but he could act as Wyatt's father figure as he grew up, offering him support and taking care of him when Cassidy wasn't able to. Kellen was buried in April, and Edward Marion started taking care of his nephew. 

Over the next ten years, the two grew close. Wyatt grew to see Edward as a father, and Edward loved Wyatt like his own son. Cassidy did her best to be in her child's life, but she was often out at work, having been hired as a nurse at a hospital, while Edward had a lot more free time. He worked at a local news station during the day, when Wyatt was at school, so by night he was able to cook him food, play games with him, and make sure he wasn't alone. He even showed his nephew around the station he worked at a couple times, showing him the ins and outs of the broadcasting world. Edward's coworkers weren't always thrilled, but Wyatt loved it, finding it fascinating. He was especially enthralled by the chaotic, loose nature of the research and writing, finding it incredible that people could figure out how to fairly and accurately represent something that had happened just hours prior, in some situations. 

Despite the hardship and difficulty inherent to the family's situation, the household was staying afloat until October 3rd, 1989. It was a Tuesday. Wyatt, 14 years old, was sent off to school by Edward, as his mother had to work a double shift at the hospital she worked at; he promised that he'd take the three of them out for dinner that night, despite the fact that it was a school night. Wyatt was excited.

When he returned from school, Edward wasn't there. Figuring that he was kept late at his job for some reason, he waited, watching television. When he turned it on, there was an issue--all he saw was a colorful distortion, with broken, uncomfortable music slithering through the speakers. While he was watching, he could've sworn he saw a symbol in the noise. A strange, tree-looking thing, which entrapped his vision. It almost felt as if the television was talking--or, rather, like something in the television was reaching out to him, desperately trying to make him understand. He only looked up when the broadcast was cut, leaving only static. It had been several hours, and his mom had finally woken up from her nap, which she was taking when he got home. 

Edward still wasn't home. 

A day passed. Then a week. Then more. Months passed, and Edward was nowhere to be found. His house had been sold the week after his disappearance in a private sale, his car was nowhere to be found, and his coworkers said that he never showed up to work that Tuesday; however, someone had broken into the station and trashed it, destroying thousands upon thousands of dollars of important equipment, alongside stealing the central database server for the station. Whoever it was could never be identified, as the entire security apparatus was destroyed. They suspected that he finally had enough from the stress, broke down, went on a vengeful rampage, and ran. He was gone. 

Cassidy mourned and fell into a deep depression, believing that her brother had abandoned her and her son. Wyatt, however, refused to believe it. He knew his uncle; he wouldn't leave unless it was for a reason. If it really was true that he trashed the station and stole the central server, then he must've done it for a reason. It was a weird coincidence that, on the same day, Wyatt saw the strange broadcast on the television. He couldn't shake the feeling that the two were connected. 

Believing that Edward was still out there, he went searching far and wide. He tried to look at all nearby businesses, tried to track down who he sold his house to, and when he had access to the internet, attempted to search for any mention of Edward Marion in the news. It was no use. It was as if he had completely vanished. 

That was, until September 17th, 1999. Wyatt had just graduated from university that spring, having gotten a bachelor's degree in journalism, so that he could work as a writer at a local news station. As he looked for places that would hire him, however, he found that a larger news station was searching for freshly minted graduates: Upstaged Communications. 

Intrigued by why it would be looking for recent graduates when it was such a large and prestigious company, he investigated it a little, trying to see what was going on. He found nothing shady or peculiar about the company, outside of two facts: one, it was founded on October 17th, 1989. Two, the founder was Edward Marion. His uncle. He immediately applied, and was accepted as a script writer in Station 48. 

While he worked there, he tried to find a way to reach Edward. However, he couldn't. Edward had stationed himself in Station 85, as the head of HR. Wyatt knew that Edward saw his application and approved it, but he didn't know if Edward intentionally let his nephew work at his company, or if he had simply forgotten. Wyatt hoped that he was let in.

In the meantime, he worked hard at his job, diligently investigating stories for the station. His work was most frequently used during the nighttime programming, with Joshua O'Dell and him forming a part of the skeleton crew that ran the station at night. Whenever he had extra time, however, he went diving through the Marionettes archives, in an attempt to find any mention of Edward, or of the strange broadcast he saw the day his uncle disappeared. 

There were only a few files that mentioned Edward by name, and they were all locked, leaving him unable to access them. He was, however, able to learn more of the broadcast he saw. He saw a recording of the same symbol on a distorted rainbow background. The file name was coded, but it translated to SIGNAL. It was then that he knew his search wasn't in vain, and that he was going to learn why Edward did what he did. Learn why Edward abandoned him, and his mother. During his tenure at Upstaged, he chose not to tell his mother about Edward, just in case. 

Several years later, on September 19th, 2006, he was able to convince his higher-ups to transfer him to Station 85. His first day there officially began on October 13th, 2006. He did his job diligently on his first day, but when it was closing time, he decided against spending time or talking with the other employees, leaving him a relatively unknown face in the station. Other employees, such as Riley Donnelly, never had a clue that he had transferred in the first place. Instead, he immediately went to the office of Edward Marion.

He was not in the office that day. Nor the 14th, or 15th. He was only able to reach Edward on the 16th at nearly 11:53 PM, hours after he was supposed to leave. 

When Wyatt finally saw Edward again, he wasn't sure what he expected. He would be aged, certainly, and might take a moment to recognize Wyatt, but maybe when he saw his nephew, he'd be happy. However, when Wyatt saw his uncle for the first time in 17 years, he recoiled, left horrified at his decayed body. It looked as if he were a walking corpse, barely held together by the last vestiges of life dripping through his veins. Edward saw Wyatt, with little more than an empty smile on his face, and motioned for him to enter his office. The two had a lot to discuss.

Edward apologized for abandoning Wyatt and his mom, saying that he knew what he did hurt the family, and that it hurt him more than Wyatt could ever imagine. However, there was something more important to tend to. Wyatt screamed at him, demanded to know what could possibly be more important than his family, when someone knocked on the door. It was midnight of the 17th. 

Riley entered, panicking, saying that something had happened. The three of them rushed out, and immediately recognized that everything had begun to fall apart. Edward looked at the two of them, and told them that the Signal had escaped, and was starting to spread from person to person; he told them that he would explain more later, but he needed their utmost cooperation and trust, no matter what, or else they risked every single person within these stations dying. They agreed. It was then that the stations started to fluctuate in unison, melding together, as Wyatt fell through the floor. There were no exits.

He went searching for Edward again, avoiding all receivers that had been created. he knew better than to approach them, as he remembered the day his uncle disappeared, where he was entranced by the television. He suspected that it could do worse than that now. Eventually, he found Joshua, and the two of them found Edward, who told them of a plan to save them all from the horrible fate the company had wrought upon all of its employees. He was one of the eight that survived the events that began October 17th, 2006.

Just like Thomas, Joshua, Lily, and Nashiko, he was free once the Signal was trapped. His memory had suffered a moderate amount of damage, similar to Joshua; he forgot the specifics of the Signal, and forgot of his relation to Edward Marion, along with his uncle's entire existence. He could not remember the terrible acts he committed at Edward's command. When the Signal started back up in 2016, he was called back. He was sent a package on October 1st, 2018, and received it October 3rd, 2018. He received it the same day as Thomas, Joshua, Lily, and Nashiko.

He has not been captured yet. He is no longer protected, but he can still be saved. One chance. One solution."

That's the end of the file.

I didn't realize that Edward and Wyatt were related. I guess it makes sense, though. They look somewhat similar.

In 1989, Edward saw the Signal for the first time. I'm positive of that. That's probably was the weird broadcast that Wyatt received at his home. What happened that day, though? How did Edward know that was going to happen, and how did he know to stop it? I'm also wondering what's with the packages sent to everyone. I'm assuming Edward sent them, right? Why did he call everyone back? And what is it exactly that Wyatt and the others did that Edward ordered them to do?

Him looking like a corpse... well, it fits what I've seen of him. I wonder what made him like that.