2: Nick had been a squad leader in a PLA logistics division.
He wasn’t a shadowy special forces operative, but he was a seasoned soldier who knew how to haul hot rations to the front line under artillery fire, maneuver through brutal mud, and occasionally haul back an enemy prisoner when a supply run went sideways.
After his discharge, his life settled into a quiet, orderly routine: punching the clock, politely fending off blind-date setups organized by well-meaning older colleagues, and spending his evenings with tactical shooter games, web novels, and vintage cinema.
Then came the dry summer wildfire.
Restless and seeking purpose, he volunteered for the emergency rescue team.
A sudden rockslide near a cliff face cut his second chance short.
When he opened his eyes again, his soul resided in the body of a six-year-old boy named Nick Burkhardt, lying in a hospital bed in Portland, Oregon, recovering from the horrific car crash that had taken his parents’ lives.
Twenty years had passed in the blink of an eye.
His previous life had faded into a soft, distant dream—a fleeting memory that only surfaced late at night, leaving him staring at the ceiling in quiet contemplation.
This world closely mirrored his old one.
Aside from subtle historical deviations and a few different corporate logos, the geopolitical landscape remained largely the same.
Following the accident, he was raised by his maternal aunt, Marie Kessler—a reserved, vigilant woman who traveled frequently for her work as a book restorer.
After graduating from high school, Nick attended Portland State University, majoring in criminology with a minor in forensic psychology, before entering the Portland Police Bureau (PPB).
His high school friend, Hank Griffin, had taken a different route.
Hank grew up in a stable, middle-class home in North Portland.
Though not built for academic research, Hank possessed a sharp street intuition.
He attended a local community college, joined the PPB as a patrol officer two years before Nick, and proved to be an exceptional natural street cop.
While Nick joined the Bureau later, the two were paired up on patrol shortly after Nick completed his probationary period.
Hank’s field awareness paid off, and he recently passed his detective promotional board, transferring up to the Homicide Division on the second floor of the Central Precinct.
Nick hadn’t lagged behind.
Having passed his own promotional exam, today marked his final shift in a patrol uniform.
Tomorrow, he would officially join Hank upstairs in Homicide.
Hank had insisted on driving him to the precinct this morning, largely due to the department gathering planned at a local precinct bar near Old Town that evening.
Nick’s clean-cut appearance and imposing frame had led to him being featured on the Bureau’s recruitment materials for three consecutive years—earning him the sarcastic moniker “Mr.
July” among the night-shift shifts.
Hank, ever the opportunist, knew that any gathering centered around Nick would draw off-duty staff from across the precinct, leaving plenty of room for Hank to work his own charm.
Nick saw right through his partner’s intentions, but since Hank had gifted him a pristine Safariland 6360 ALS duty holster for his service weapon, he willingly played along.
The morning traffic along the I-5 corridor was crawling.
Sitting in the passenger seat of Hank’s Mercury, Nick stared out the window, casually flipping a thin, metallic golden card between his knuckles.
The card glided across his fingers in seamless motion, vanishing into his palm and reappearing in a flash.
“Your sleight-of-hand is getting way too smooth, Burkhardt,” Hank chuckled, keeping his eyes on the brake lights ahead.
“Reminds me of high school when you used to pull those card tricks to impress the track team.” Hank assumed it was a trick deck or a magician’s prop.
In reality, the card was something far stranger—a lingering anomaly from Nick’s transition into this world.
Nick called it the Cinema Pass.
It was neither physical metal nor paper; it bonded directly with his consciousness, capable of materializing into reality or dissolving at will.
When the intricate geometric engravings on its surface fully charged with a soft, golden radiance, Nick could tear the pass in half to open a temporary transit into an isolated cinematic realm.
Inside those worlds, time, physics, and people were entirely real.
Surviving until the narrative concluded yielded basic attributes and passive traits.
Fulfilling specific hidden objectives yielded far greater rewards.
The downside was its agonizingly slow charge rate.
Over twenty years, the card had only fully illuminated twice, and Nick had yet to discover what accelerated its energy accumulation.
His first attempt had occurred ten years ago, when he turned sixteen.
The card had drawn him into the cold vacuum of the year 2122, aboard the commercial towing vessel Nostromo from Alien (1979).
The pass had seamlessly integrated him into the ship’s manifest as an apprentice technician, even manifesting an additional hypersleep pod in the bay.
His primary objective had been simple: Eliminate the Xenomorph threat and ensure the survival of the crew.
Having rewatched the film shortly before his death in his previous life, sixteen-year-old Nick felt immensely confident.
He viewed himself like the protagonist of a web novel, certain that his meta-knowledge would carry him through.
Reality proved far more ruthless than fiction.
Before the crew even made ground contact on LV-426, Nick volunteered to assist with exterior maintenance during atmospheric entry.
An operational mistake caused by unfamiliarity with late-22nd-century pressure suits resulted in a seal failure.
Within seconds, extreme cold and hypoxia knocked him unconscious.
His first cinematic venture ended in absolute failure before he even saw the creature.
Because completed or failed worlds could not be re-entered, Nick received only a basic survival consolation reward: a passive trait titled [Suspended Animation & Cellular Recovery].
The trait allowed his body to enter a deep, low-metabolic state following severe trauma, rapidly accelerating natural healing and purging physical ailments.
The morning after his failure, sixteen-year-old Nick woke up in his bed to find his athletic injuries healed and his minor skin ailments completely gone—a sudden physical transformation that had left Aunt Marie eyeing him with silent, intense scrutiny for a week.