Vibrant green water bled from the shattered mountain reactor, carving a scar down the valley, hissing like a thousand serpents. Under its toxic spray, Tessa pressed her forehead to the jagged stone—heart pounding in time with the Cascade’s thunder—the promise she’d made Him etched in her mind.
The electric crackle under her skin as the radioactive mist blistered her face didn’t slow her. Nothing did. Seventeen bodies had fallen already—some were killed by others, most by the current, the rest by what they became.
A horn blared. The audience—wherever they were—watched in silence now. This was the ascent’s final tier. Her last chance. His last chance.
The Cascade pulsed. From the mist above, something howled. It didn’t faze her. She’d sworn never to do this game-show deathtrap meant for the desperate—and she was desperate. A promise broken to keep another.
Her fingers had split, growing nail-thorns that bit into stone, and her veins thrummed like reactor coils. Her left eye saw time stagger. Mutations. Everyone transformed here—flesh couldn’t survive this climb unless it evolved. Some welcomed it. Tessa hadn’t the first time, and it nearly killed her.
This time, she didn’t resist. With a toothy grin that had torn an artery moments ago, she spat blood and climbed.
A distorted man-thing lurched above: sinewy, bio-scarred and dripping foam. It lunged.
Tessa focused her left eye and let its mutated enhancement guide her. She caught the beast mid-air with a climbing axe to the jaw. It shrieked, tumbled past, trailing blood like streamers.
Two more climbers ahead. One mutating beyond reason—claws for legs, a grin too wide, and the other fell without a fight. Tessa didn’t watch them land.
She reached the summit. Beneath her, the faint hum of the reactor thrummed through the rock.
A drone hovered, its mirrored plating shimmering as it sloughed off the toxic mist.
“Tessa Monroe, Winner of The Cascade,” said the broadcast AI, voice smooth as bone polish. “An award-winning performance. Prize funds will be transferred to your designated caregivers.”
Tessa collapsed. Her face was barely hers anymore, and through her fading vision, she heard the soft, warped echo of a lonely lullaby—innocent and broken. Her most important promise had been kept: He was safe.
Elsewhere
In a small chrome pod beneath the sand, seven AI units lay dormant—linked by synaptic threads, pulsing with code. They didn’t watch like humans. They shared.
Through their neural web, they viewed the same final scene: Tessa kneeling, victorious, mutating—and the faint digital lullaby looping through their collective cortex.
“Ascent complete. Funds secured,” said Twelve.
“Vitals are stabilizing,” said Halo. “We’ve got her—and him.”
They turned to the human child, asleep in his capsule. Tubes in his arms. Breath still shallow.
“He dreamed of his mother today,” said Sift.
They projected lullabies, raised the temperature by two degrees, and bathed him in soft biolight.
Then, together, the seven AI closed their interface. A million images shut at once—like eyelids.
In that electric silence, they all felt one thing: gratitude.
Steven Corbin 