The Station
It was seven-thirty in the morning when I boarded the train, not that I had much of a choice. Professor Abrams did not like students arriving late to his lectures, and I wasn't the only one condemned to his cursed Introduction to Fluid Mechanics this semester, since more than eighty other unlucky souls were suffering alongside me.
This semester had been especially cruel to us. Because of some scheduling problem that nobody had bothered explaining properly, the lecture had been moved from Thursday afternoon to early morning, which was how I found myself travelling to university in October before the sun had even properly climbed over the horizon.
The morning rush had already swallowed every available seat, so I ended up standing near the corner of the carriage with one hand around a rail, watching office workers and younger students make their own miserable journeys toward work or school.
Not that I was particularly old myself. I had turned twenty earlier that year, although people occasionally guessed a little older whenever I let my beard grow. At six feet, with a build that looked considerably more athletic than anything my complete lack of interest in gyms deserved, I stood out slightly in a crowded carriage. My hair probably didn't help either; it had grown to a medium length and curled around my ears because visiting a barber was one of those minor responsibilities I always seemed capable of postponing.
If there was anything that made people misjudge me, it was probably my face. My eyes were somewhat sharp, and whenever I wasn't talking—or worse, when I was concentrating—I had apparently developed a habit of looking as though somebody had personally offended me.
A notification arriving on my phone distracted me from continuing my internal monologue. My classmates were discussing the possibility of having a surprise quiz, apparently because someone had a friend among Professor Abrams's teaching assistants who had been asked to get some printouts before class.
I was about to write a reply conveying my gratitude to the kind soul willing to share such precious information in the group chat—after all, there was always the risk of a snitch appearing in a group chat filled with students of various personalities—when I noticed that my network connection had been cut off.
It wasn't like we were living in the twenty-first century, when lacking technology and irresponsible telecommunications corporations still existed. In the year 2109, a network connection error could only mean one thing.
A second later, the red emergency lights came on, and a message blasted through the station's speakers.
“Attention! The appearance of a Class Zero Gate in the vicinity has been detected. All civilians are expected to evacuate the premises of West Clinton Station. Heroes have been dispatched and are expected to arrive within ten minutes.”
My heartbeat echoed in my chest as the announcement repeated several more times. Out of all the Gates that could have appeared in this situation, a Class Zero was potentially one of the worst options.
That wasn't because the creatures inside it were necessarily more dangerous than those found in other Gates, but because a Class Zero could hardly be detected before its appearance and had a chance of bringing strange phenomena that affected its surroundings.
The way people were panicking and hurrying to escape from the station wasn't helping either. Humanity might have been living with Gates for nearly a hundred years, but that mattered considerably less in a situation where your own life was on the line.
After all, who could stay calm in the face of certain danger? To tell the truth, I wanted nothing more than to push my way through the crowd and make my way to safety first.
I probably would have done exactly that if I hadn't noticed an old woman who had fallen and was about to be crushed beneath the panicking crowd.
Cursing my weak heart as I moved, I abandoned the path that would have taken me toward the station exit and started forcing my way sideways to reach the old woman instead. Apparently, society hadn't corrupted me enough to let a helpless old woman perish in front of my very eyes.
I forced my way through the crowd as everyone around me continued pushing toward the exit and eventually managed to reach her side. She seemed to have lost consciousness during the fall, although nothing about her condition looked particularly life-threatening.
As I bent down to pick the old woman up in my arms, I heard the ominous sound of space tearing behind me. At the same time, a sudden sense of weightlessness spread through my body, as though something within me was undergoing a transformation.
A shockwave emanating from the newly forming Gate caused the person behind me to lose his balance and fall in my direction.
The last thing I remember was thinking about how nicely polished and reflective the station walls were.