The queue crept on, the soft scraping of dozens of little feet against the icy, steel ground.
Thin and dirty children lined up in tattered ranks, shuffling step by step.
Among them stood a boy — Li Heng.
He curled his thin fists together, shivering. His thoughts whirled with fear, bewilderment, and powerlessness.
The metallic walls that enclosed him cast a dim green light, pulsing every second, that was cold and foreign.
He shouldn't have been here.
Not again. Not after finally getting a chance at life.
In his former life, Li Heng had died in his youth — just seventeen years old.
An orphan, nobody. He had lived and died without leaving even a single mark on the world.
But then he had been reborn.
Given a second chance. A family.
A loving family, a peaceful life on a minor planet of the Li Clan's branch families.
He even discovered this world was greater than anything he had ever dreamed of: interstellar civilization, vast empires, mighty fleets, titanic mecha warfare spreading across a hundred planets.
He had been so happy. so hopeful.
A wailing siren awakened him.
In front of him, the queue moved forward.
The green glow above flashed, and a set of heavy gates creaked open.
It was his turn.
Li Heng stumbled forward, past two armored guards who never even glanced his direction.
Heavy doors shut behind him.
Inside, the air was cold and antiseptic.
White-jacketed physicians worked desperately among vats of strange liquids, monitors blinking cryptic readings.
Surgical equipment, test tubes, and machinery lined the walls.
A doctor came out — middle-aged, resigned face — and stood waiting with a syringe full of a diffusely glowing fluid.
Sit down," the man snapped, pointing to a metal chair anchored to the floor.
Li Heng did so silently, shaking legs.
The doctor didn't speak and took his arm, forcing the syringe into his vein.
The liquid ran through his bloodstream.
His veins burst into searing heat the moment he was injected.
Li Heng gasped, his eyes fading.
The burning spread like fire throughout his body, and his mind disintegrated.
He saw flashes — delusions —
His parents smiling at him.
A ruined cityscape.
A battlefield littered with broken mechas.
His body collapsed. Two men entered, carrying a stretcher, and placed his frail body on it.
His consciousness disappeared, consumed by darkness.
⸻
It was in the darkness that memories came out.
He remembered how it all went wrong.
Born to members of a minor Li Clan branch, living peacefully on a backwater planet.
War came.
The Federation fought against a rival empire — Durian, or at least they had called it such.
For three deadly years, the world lay in ruin.
When the Federation finally "triumphed," the cities were laid to waste, the people forgotten.
No rebuilding. No relief.
Only hunger, destruction, and anarchy.
His parents… they had tried to save him. But surviving had destroyed them.
One day, while he was but four years of age, he was sold — a bargaining price for a scrap of food, a scrap of hope.
Sold back and forth between scavengers, criminals, slavers — barely clinging to life, money in a bankrupt world.
He was then sold to soldiers.
Soldiers hunting "specimens" to conduct experiments on with a new trial drug.
The "MMS" project, they spoke low — though even they barely comprehended what it was.
And so, Li Heng ended up here.
Injected.
Alone.
Burning alive inside his own skin.
The darkness closed around him, and his last thought was a plain, broken one:
Why… why did it happen like this again?