I was in the middle of the wormhole port, a place which had luckily been created through ingenuos human engineering and affinities to space element, honestly while thinking about it I was a little bummed out. You know the fact that I hadn't gained access to the system, almost everything in the universe had gained access to it.
From my memories, the most probable estimate was that over 99% of intelligent beings had access to it, while almost 100& of non rational beings had access to it, from what the Alliance could gather there were around 100 quintillion rational system users in the entire galaxy.
Now why galaxy you ask, well the reason for that was simple. For you see, this universe had billions of other galaxies but no single race in the entire universe seemed to be able to reach it.
They were just too far from us, we had no clue if rational beings existed in those though the most probable answer was yes, however the more interesting question would be if those beings had access to the system.
I looked at the time in my phone, 13:56 of the year 2166003. The time was this planet's time as for the year it was something humanity started after we came into contact with the system and the Alliance was formed.
Something which soon had come in handy, as humanity went on to begin a war against the Nexari one of the seven main races to which the human race had soon joined. We had been at war with them ever since, each race occupied one of the arms of the galaxy, to which each race had a different name for though we humans called it Pandora Galaxy.
The reason we had been able to advance so quickly was because both humanity's growth rate and birth rate. There were two other main races who had the same or more capacity for birth but when it came to growth humans were the fastest, most humans would reach their system level cap in less than a fifty years depending on how high it was.
As I was thinking about all of this Minerva's voice interrupted my thoughts.
[Wormhole #13, all participants directed to the 13th district head to wormhole #13.]
I turned to my dad who was just standing there, it had been over a week since my transmigration and I had spent most of it with dad working on whatever pleased us or being alone at house slowly working on the memory chip, which should I say was coming along well.
"Well dad, I guess this is good bye."
"Just for a decade until you finish your apprenticeship and the war years. Though remember you can still come back whenever you want."
"Of course I'll come visit you I can't leave you home alone all the time, right?"
He smiled while ruffling my hair, which was weird that he did so since I was just a few centimeters shorter than him, but I didn't mind it, it felt nice.
So with a final hug, I got my luggage, passed the metal scanner and finally went to the wormhole line.
The reason why they had times for wormholes is because most of these were manmade and having a continuous wormhole cost too much energy to succesfuly maintain. Basically wormholes were like the inverse of black holes, once you fell in you would be spit out at the other contained point, this was also why the official name for wormholes, were actually whiteholes but wormholes just sounded cooler.
I was standing in line when someone suddenly bumped into me making me stumble forward.
"Hey," I started but as i looked up I saw a buff guy with a C on his chest.
"What filthy sheen?"
I was about to rant off on the guy when suddenly I felt a thump in my chest, it felt like my heart was beating in my ears, I began to shake wildly. The more I stared, the more I shook, my entire being felt like it was on edge.
"Got anything to say?"
I quickly shook my head as if by sheer instinct.
"That's what I thought."
I kept on shaking, what was going on? Why was this happening? I hated this, the shaking of my fingers, the blurring of my vision, the sound of my heart in my ears.
"Hah, hah, hah, hah, hah," I began to hyperventilate trying to calm myself, but memories and memories surged forth. All the school beatings, the eyes of everyone as they looked into my own.
These weren't just Lloyd's memories anymore - they were mine now. Every punch, every kick, every slur thrown his way. The weight of years of persecution crashed down on me like a physical force. My legs gave out and I dropped to my knees, the cold metal floor of the wormhole station pressing against my shins.
People started moving around me like water around a rock. Some stepped carefully aside, others just brushed past, but none stopped. None looked. None cared that a teenager was having a breakdown in the middle of the station. Maybe they thought I was just another 'sheen' causing trouble. Maybe they just didn't want to get involved.
My vision narrowed to a tunnel of feet and floor tiles. Business shoes, combat boots, hover-sandals - all just passing by, passing by, passing by. The sounds of conversation and station announcements merged into a distant roar, drowned out by my own desperate gasping.
Breathe. Just breathe. But I couldn't. My lungs felt like they were filling with concrete. Every inhale was a battle, every exhale a surrender. The memories wouldn't stop coming.
"Filthy sheen."
"Half-breed."
"Alien freak."
The words echoed in my head, old wounds ripped fresh. Both sets of memories, both lives worth of pain, all crashing together in a perfect storm of panic. My fingers dug into the floor, searching for something solid to anchor me to reality.
The crowd thinned. Fewer and fewer feet passed by. The roar of voices dimmed to a murmur, then to whispers, then to nothing. I was alone, kneeling in the middle of an empty wormhole station, trying to remember how to exist.
[Warning: Wormhole #13 closing in two minutes. All passengers for the 13th district please proceed immediately.]
Minerva's voice cut through the fog in my brain like a knife. Two minutes. The wormhole was closing in two minutes and I was still here, still shaking, still drowning in memories that belonged to me but didn't.
[Warning: Wormhole #13 closing in one minute.]
No. No, I had to get up.
[Thirty seconds until closure.]
My legs felt like jelly, but I made them work. Stand up. Take a step. Another step. The wormhole entrance hummed with energy, a circle of pure white light that would take me thousands of light years away. Away from Dad. Away from the Academy. Away from everything familiar in this new-old life of mine.
[Ten seconds.]
I stumbled forward, nearly falling into the light. The world twisted, stretched, compressed - all the sensations of having your atoms squeezed through a cosmic shortcut in space-time. For a moment that lasted an eternity and no time at all, I existed everywhere and nowhere.
Then reality snapped back into focus, and I was stumbling out the other side on shaky legs. The new station was smaller, more utilitarian. Military-grade metal panels instead of the gleaming surfaces of the central worlds. And there, standing among the small crowd of arrivals, was a man holding a holographic sign that read "Lloyd Armstrong."
He wasn't what I expected. Tall and lean, with pitch-black hair and eyes that burned like fresh blood. No military uniform, no engineer's coveralls - just simple black clothes that somehow made him look more dangerous than any armor could, though there was something else about him that made him stand out black scales covered the left side of his face and his right hand, there was B+ rank sigil on his hoodie.
Ethan Turner was a half-breed.