"Wait, you got the seizure after the 24 hours?" Her cybernetic eyes narrowed, which was way creepier than regular eye-narrowing. "Now that is weird. Turn your head, I'm going to see how your brain ticks."
"I need an adult?"
She turned to me again, a metal tool in her hand. "I am an adult."
She placed the tool in my ear, and holy crap - a light shot straight through my head like some kind of high-tech lobotomy. A hologram of my brain appeared, floating there like the world's most expensive anatomy lesson.
But something was off. Those weren't normal brain lumps - trust me, I'd seen enough normal brain scans in my past life to know the difference.
That's when another memory hit me like a freight train.
I was standing alone at the school doors, my hair dripping despite the sun blazing overhead. Three boys towered over me, empty buckets in hand and smug grins plastered across their faces. Real original, guys.
"That's what you get half-breed."
"Yeah no aliens allowed in human territory."
Real winners, these guys. The memory faded, but it left behind a revelation that made my head spin even more than before. This body - my body now, I guess - was mixed race.
Dad had never told Lloyd what his mother was, and despite being some kind of teenage genius, he hadn't figured it out either. Still everyone could tell at a glance he wasn't fully human, that single white ring in otherwise black pupils, and a brain that looked like someone had played mix-and-match with the anatomy textbook.
"It's weird," Tess's voice yanked me back to reality. "Your implants are working perfectly."
I glanced at the hologram again. Sure enough, there were two tiny chips nestled in my brain like high-tech parasites.
"Maybe we have to open your skull, just to be sure nothing is actually wrong."
The casual way she suggested brain surgery nearly gave me whiplash. Right - in this world, cracking open someone's skull was about as routine as getting a flu shot back home.
"No thank you, I'm fine really." I tried not to sound as panicked as I felt. "I don't know why I had a seizure but I am sure it isn't because of the implants."
"Well if you say so."
I hopped off the examination table, wincing and rubbing my ass. Seriously, why did they make these things so cold? I could feel it through my clothes like I was sitting on an ice block.
Tess started absently playing with her hair. "Seriously though your brain physiology is so interesting. I wonder what minor race your mother was, because the clusters of neurons you have is just off the charts."
"Your guess is as good as mine," I muttered, making a break for the door. Dad was still there, arms crossed, fingers drumming away like he was trying to morse code his worry into existence.
"So any problems with the implants?" he asked, still doing his best anxious drummer impression.
"Not any that I could spot, though you can do a review once you get home just to make sure. You have antiseizure medications already, right?"
Dad nodded.
"Then my prescription would just be for him to take one a day for the next two weeks just in case his implants do go haywire."
Another nod.
"Also please don't use the emergency wormholes unless you're called in for a surgery you know how much those things cost, each time you use one."
Yet another nod. You might be wondering why my father, the almighty Chief of Surgery, was bobbing his head like a dashboard ornament at everything she said.
Simple answer: Tess wasn't just any doctor - she was the chairman of the entire hospital. Even genius surgeons who could turn their fingers into medical Swiss Army knives had to play nice with the boss.
"Well then I'll be going back to my office, see you later Lloyd." She stuffed her hands in her coat pockets and strolled off like she hadn't just been poking around in my brain.
"Okay let's go Lloyd."
"Wait are we using the wormhole back home?"
Dad shook his head so hard I thought it might fall off. "No otherwise I'll get assigned clinic hours."
I swear I saw him physically shudder at the word "clinic." Note to self, apparently even in super-advanced sci-fi worlds, nobody likes clinic duty.
We walked through the hospital like we were on some kind of medical victory lap. Every few steps someone would wave or stop to chat - doctors, nurses, even these cute little helper robots that looked like they had been taken straight out of an anime.
The entrance doors whooshed open (okay, fine, it wasn't exactly a whoosh, but come on - work with me here). The city that greeted us was straight out of every sci-fi movie I'd ever seen, cranked up to eleven.
Transportation lines crisscrossed the sky like some giant's game of pick-up sticks, with supercooled trains zipping along them. Skyscrapers stretched so high they would've blocked out the sun - if we weren't fancy enough to have artificial sunlight covering the whole city. Perks of being a Type 2 civilization, I guess.
"Well then let's go." Dad's voice snapped me out of my architectural fanboying.
"Y-yeah," I managed to stutter out.
He pulled two small disks from his pockets and tossed them onto the ground. They expanded like mechanical flowers blooming in fast-forward, transforming into honest-to-god hoverboards floating inches above the pavement.
Dad hopped onto his like he'd been born on it. I followed suit, trying not to look like someone who'd only seen hoverboards in movies or now in memories of this body. Two lines of light wrapped around my legs, creating some kind of artificial gravity lock to keep me from becoming a very surprised projectile.
Then we were off.
I started rough - which probably should've been suspicious since apparently the old Lloyd had been some kind of hoverboard prodigy. Kid had built his own at age six, though Dad hadn't grabbed it earlier since, you know, he thought I was dying and all.
We soared higher and higher, picking up speed as energy domes formed around us to keep the wind from turning our faces inside out. The city became a blur of protective fields and gleaming buildings, each one surrounded by its own safety bubble to prevent any unfortunate accidents involving face-meets-window scenarios.
Minutes later, we touched down at our house on the city's edge. The place was massive by my old standards, though here it was just slightly above average - grey walls shooting up fifty meters, divided into multiple stories like some kind of residential layer cake.
We dismounted, the artificial gravity releasing us with a tingle. Dad pressed his eye to a scanner panel, and the doors slid open. We dropped the hoverboard disks on the entrance desk like they were car keys.
"Hey Lloyd?" Dad's voice had that careful tone parents use when they're about to bring up something uncomfortable.
"Yeah?"
"Are you sure you're okay?"
"Yes dad I already told you I'm sure it wasn't the implant-"
"Not that," he cut me off. "You already passed your 16th birthday and the system still hasn't appeared linked to you, meaning that you won't have access to it."
His words triggered another memory dump.
The System - some kind of galactic hologram entity that even the brightest minds couldn't figure out. It gave races, intelligent or otherwise, the ability to grow beyond their biological limits. Humans could do something similar with cybernetic implants, but even the best human tech could only push someone to A-rank, and those implants were rarer than honest politicians.
"I don't mind dad," I said automatically. "I already told you I wanted to be an engineer, besides I already got into the Alexandria Academy engineering class."
Wait. What had I just said?
Everything suddenly clicked into place like the world's most obvious puzzle - The System, the Human Alliance, aliens, and now this. My brain felt like it was going to short circuit as realization hit me.
Oh shit. I wasn't just in another world.
I was in a novel.