There was too much uncertainty.
It was unsafe. It was a variable I couldn't control with a fader or a compressor. So I ran. It was what I did. It was how I stayed Zia, the ghost producer, instead of Zia, the Omega statistic.
My computer pinged.
Not a text. A server notification.
I tried to ignore it. I listened to the ferry horns on the Sound. I counted the beats of the rain. Four in, six out.
Ping.
Ping.
Ping.
The rhythm accelerated. A notification cascade. That only happened when something went viral, or when a system failed catastrophically.
I crawled across the mattress and woke my laptop.
Some random social media site was open in a side tab. My mentions, usually a quiet stream of tech queries and V-tuber fans, were scrolling so fast I couldn't read individual names.
@RiotGrrrl99: wait is this about the engineer?? #FoxTailProducer
@BassSlut4Cal: The lyrics. Oh my god the lyrics. "I won't chase / I won't take." I am SOBBING.
@TechNerd88: Someone identify the mix on this track. It’s raw but that vocal chain is clean. Did Z do this?
My stomach dropped through the floorboards.
I opened SoundCloud.
Top of the feed. Released twenty minutes ago.
Riot Theory - For the Engineer Who Ran (Demo)
I stared at the title. The cursor hovered over the play button, trembling.
He wrote a song. In twenty minutes, he wrote a song about me running away. This was it. This was the chase. The public call-out. The weaponization of their massive fanbase to drag meback into the spotlight I’d just escaped.Come back, little Omega, look what you did to our poor Alpha singer.
I grabbed my noise-canceling headphones, my shield, my safety, and slid them over my ears.
I hit play.
The sound was stripped back. No drums, no loops. Just the ambient hum of a room, I recognized the noise floor, the specific dull hiss of the vocal booth on their bus. I’d seen the specs. Small room, dead sound.
Then Alfie’s voice.
It wasn’t the polished, arena-ready roar I was used to mixing. It was rough. Scraped raw. It sounded like rust and gold leaf. It sounded like the color of a bruised plum.
I saw the lightning strike the ground
But you didn't hear the thunder sound.
I saw the color of the noise
You saw three terrified boys.
I won't chase you down the street
