Wyatt woke up feeling uncomfortable. After pushing himself up from the bed of pebbles and dirt, he found himself lying face down on the ground; he blearily looked around his surroundings.
"Ugh, what the hell?"
Off to his left and right were several trees while a paved walkway sat before him. Behind him flowed a wide river, the early morning sunlight shining off its surface.
With a grunt, Wyatt rose to his feet. Only to receive a massive headache, he fell back onto the river shore, soaking his halfway dried-out clothes once again with water. Sighing in pain, he looked down to see several slits on his red shirt.
"Not red. Grey." Wyatt muttered as he looked at his sleeves and confirmed that his red shirt was actually grey. "Fuck… is this blood?" He raised his shirt and gave it a tentative sniff. Wyatt could still make out a faint copper smell despite being soaked with river water. "Yep. That's blood."
Wyatt nervously lifted his shirt to examine his stomach. To his relief, his torso was free of any injuries. "That raises the question: how did I get covered in blood? This shirt is full of holes that look like a knife made them, yet there's not a scratch on me. Not that I'm complaining."
Putting aside the mystery of why his clothes were covered in blood and holes, Wyatt stood up and walked over to the walkway. "Okay. Moving on… how the hell did I end up here? And where are my shoes?"
Wyatt rubbed his face and thought back to the last thing he remembered. He had been studying nonstop for a week for his upcoming finals when suddenly, his desk rushed up to meet his face. The sounds of several empty energy drink cans clanging onto his wooden floor rang in his ears.
Inspecting his bloody shirt, pants, and lack of shoes, he vaguely remembered being in his pajamas last night.
"How did I end up here?"
With nothing else to do, Wyatt began walking up the paved walkway. He continued on the path until he came upon a sign.
"What the hell? The Hudson River Waterfront Walkway?! Isn't that in New York?!" Wyatt yelled and began sprinting down the path.
It didn't take long for nearby buildings to come into view before New York City's impressive skyline appeared. Wyatt stood gobsmacked at the sight and ignored the shocked early morning joggers who gasped at his bloodied and wet form.
"Hey, kid. Are you okay?!"
"I'm calling the police!"
Wyatt's mind was suddenly assaulted with a wave of memories not of his own. He saw flashes and moments of the life of a fifteen-year-old boy, also coincidentally named Wyatt, go by him in quick succession.
Starting from the boy's tragic beginnings of being orphaned in a robbery gone wrong, to being moved from an orphanage to a group home. Life was hard, and happiness was a rare occurrence for Wyatt. One day, on a friend's offer, he had joined a low-level gang. But during his initiation ceremony, he had failed to pull the trigger to end a stranger's life.
Despite his harsh life, Wyatt couldn't compromise his morals to end another's life for a chance to make his own slightly easier.
His failure had resulted in the gang's leader stabbing him repeatedly and having his men throw his slowly dying body into the Hudson River.
It was all too much for Wyatt. His hazy mind and tired body couldn't handle the strain.
One of the joggers, a young man in his late twenties, rushed forward and caught Wyatt as he fell unconscious.
••o••o••o••
"…Throw the body in the Hudson. Make sure no one sees you..."
Wyatt slowly blinked awake. His green eyes scanned the white suspended ceiling above him. The rhythmic beeps of hospital equipment echoed to his left as the vital signs monitor showed his heart rate.
"An unfamiliar ceiling… so this is what Shinji felt, " Wyatt muttered, pushing himself up. After taking in his hospital room and seeing that he was now in a hospital gown, he swung his feet off the bed and slid down to the cold hospital floor.
Closing his eyes, Wyatt's mind was still abuzz with the new but still familiar lifetime of memories from the previous owner of his current body and his own. As he tried to differentiate between both lifetimes, he soon found it hard to determine which Wyatt he was.
Whether that be the 15-year-old Wyatt who grew up in New York or the 21-year-old university student Wyatt who grew up in California, who was studying for several days with little sleep, hopped up on energy drinks.
"Now that I think about it, the lack of sleep and all those energy drinks could have caused my heart to give out," Wyatt muttered as he placed a hand over his beating heart. "This situation reminds me a lot of those web stories I used to read when I was younger. Two lives merging into one. Still, why did this happen to me?"
Before Wyatt could think about his crazy situation any deeper, the door to his room opened. Stepping inside, a nurse blinked in surprise at him.
"Oh, good! You're awake," She said with a small relieved smile. "After two days, we were beginning to grow worried. Please, take it slow and sit down. I'll go get your doctor."
Seeing no reason to argue with the nurse, Wyatt nodded and did as he was told. He didn't wait long for his appointed doctor to arrive and conduct a quick examination on him.
"Well, young man, it seems that you're back to full health. We were getting worried after you didn't wake up for two days, but it turns out you just needed some a lot of sleep." Dr. Patel, the doctor, chuckled slightly to ease Wyatt's nervousness. "Tell me, young man… what is the last thing you remember?"
Being stabbed repeatedly. Wyatt thought with a frown, his left hand rubbing his stomach unconsciously.
Seeing this, Dr. Patel looked off behind him at the silent nurse that had encountered Wyatt before. "Ellie, why don't you go grab some food for our patient here. I'm sure he must be famished."
"Of course, Doctor."
"I'd hate to bring this up, but when you arrived to this hospital. You were covered in blood, young man. Oddly enough, you didn't have any injuries on your person. Can you tell me where that blood came from?" Dr. Patel said softly as he looked Wyatt in the eyes. They shared a moment of tense silence, neither of them speaking.
Shit. What do I say? I can't tell them I got stabbed and dumped into the Hudson. Especially since I don't have a wound in sight. If I were him, I'd think I was the one who killed somebody due to how much blood I was covered in. Wyatt thought quickly, his eyes locked on the floor nervously.
"I, uh…"
Thankfully, the nurse, Ellie, returned with a tray of food. Breaking the standoff.
"We'll can talk some more after you get something into your system, young man. I'll be back in a little while, try to think back on what I said." Dr. Patel said before he and Ellie left the room.
"Right…" Wyatt said nervously as he looked down at the rather unappetizing tray of plain-looking hospital food. Despite the plain appearance of the food, his stomach released a loud growl. Reminding him that he had not eaten in two whole days.
Using a spoon, Wyatt scooped up some of the lumpy, grey pile of mush and took a tentative bite. "Ugh… what is this? What I wouldn't do for some tacos."
His eyes grew wide without warning as his vision focused on the food before him. As if his eyes suddenly became Electron microscopes, he could now see the molecular structure of the food.
Every atom and every molecule was clear for him to see.
From the back of his mind, a library of knowledge swung open to him. The knowledge of every atom and molecule in existence flooded into his brain.
Unconsciously, his hand lifted over the tray of food, and a flash of reddish-pink light illuminated the room quickly.
"Whoa!" Wyatt flinched as he watched his once bland and boring tray of hospital food transform into a plate of delicious-looking tacos. "Holy shit."
Carefully, he reached out and lifted one of the tacos. Wyatt inspected the corn tortilla and the expertly cooked Al pastor meat. The greens on top were fresh, and the tantalizing salsa drizzled on top made his mouth water. The mixture of smells made his stomach growl even louder, resembling a lion's roar.
"Ah, what the hell." With caution thrown into the wind, Wyatt took a hungry bite, and a flavor explosion filled his mouth.
Like a starving animal, he finished the taco in his hand and moved on to the rest. After all the food was gone and his hunger satisfied, Wyatt stared at the empty plate with amazement.
"Incredible… did I just transform one thing into another? Like alchemy? And where did all this knowledge of atoms and molecules come from?" Then it hit him. Memories of him reading an old comic and watching the hit television series, Invincible, flashed in his mind. "No way! Do I have Atom Eve's powers?!"
Lifting the empty plate, Wyatt's eyes quickly zoomed into the plate's molecular structure. With a thought, he moved the plates' atoms around until a flash of reddish-pink covered the plate for a split second.
What was once a white plate now rested a limited edition pair of black Nikes. A pair that he had bought after working several hours for a month straight as a broke university student.
"That confirms it. I do have Atom Eve's powers! But… why? Does that have anything to do with why I'm suddenly two different people smushed into one?" Wyatt transformed the pair of shoes back into the original hospital food tray.
Despite having the amazing powers of Atom Eve, Wyatt couldn't help but wonder about how and why he had them. Not to mention how his mind ultimately rested within the body of the younger Wyatt rather than the older one. Standing up, he walked over to the room's bathroom. After turning the light on, he inspected his appearance.
He was familiar with it, but not at the same time. Unlike his older body, the younger one he currently inhabited had messy reddish hair and green eyes. A stark contrast from his older self's black hair and brown eyes. He was also shorter and lacked any real muscle.
"Does this mean that my other body is just lying there? Rotting away?" Wyatt leaned on the bathroom sink, his heartbeat picking up. "This is so messed up."
Leaving the bathroom, Wyatt looked up at the small television in the corner. After looking around momentarily, he found the remote and turned the TV on. He needed a distraction. And what better distraction was there than the brain-rotting effects of television?
After clicking through several channels, Wyatt ended up on what seemed to be a news channel. The words Incident at Stark Industries hung in the top corner of the screen while a familiar man stood behind a podium.
"Robert Downey Jr.? Iron Man then. I remember this scene. Dang, too bad the movie is about to end. I love this movie" Wyatt sat back and continued to watch the movie.
"I know that it's confusing. It is one thing to question the official story, and another thing entirely to make wild accusations, or insinuate that I'm a superhero." Tony Stark said as James Rhodes stood beside him.
"Huh, that's not Terrence Howard. Why is Don Cheadle in this one?" Wyatt said in confusion.
"I never said you were a superhero." A voice said offscreen.
Wyatt frowned as the shot never changed from the single point of view of the camera. After having watched the movie dozens of times growing up, he couldn distinctly remember how this scene played out due to it being one of the MCU's most iconic moments.
"Didn't? Well, good, because that would be outlandish and fantastic. I'm just not the hero type. Clearly. With this laundry list of character defects, all the mistakes I've made, largely public." Tony said, a bit derailed from the reporter's words.
Wyatt watched as James leaned in to whisper into Tony's ear, but the words and shot never changed to show the audience what he said.
"Well, this is new? Did they remake the movie or something?" Wyatt asked in confusion as he leaned in.
"Yeah, okay. Yeah. The truth is... I am Iron Man." Tony said, causing all the gathered reporters and television outlets to go crazy.
At this point, the movie should have began playing ACDC's iconic song Iron Man but it never did. The shot should have also ended with the end credits rolling in. But they didn't. The scene continued on with Tony calming the reporters down and answering a slew of questions with a smug smile.
Wyatt slowly stood up, his eyes wide with the growing realization that he was not watching an old movie but a very real and live news feed.
"It can't be… am I in the MCU?"