The light above buzzed once, then dimmed and stilled.

Sleep hovered at the edge of me, low and tempting. But I wasn't soft enough to take the bait. Not here. Not now. Not with the shaft ahead, waiting behind the old elevator doors, silent and open. I could feel it even without looking. The depth. The absence. The vertical hush. A spine of rust and shadow, stretching straight up into whatever passed for morning.

That's where I was going.

Twelve stories. No cables. No lift. No external stairs; they'd been sheared off years ago. Just the inside rails. Half rusted. Sections missing. Others holding on out of habit. I'd mapped it yesterday. It was dangerous.

And it was climbable.

I shifted against the cold concrete and my joints clicked, stiff and unforgiving. My thighs trembled with exhaustion that had taken its time arriving. Wrists raw under the wraps. Blisters, small but deep. My jaw still ached from clenching when I slipped earlier. That noise, the skid of boot on concrete, still echoed in me.

I almost fell. But I didn't.

You stop romanticizing survival after a while. But you can still respect it. Survival is decision layered on decision. Breath by breath. Bruise by bruise.

I closed my eyes. Not to sleep, never sleep, not here, but to return to myself. To feel my weight. My limits. I ran through the climb in my head. Anchor. Step. Reach. Twist. Brace. Again. Anchor. Step. Reach. Twist. Brace. I practiced it until my breath found its rhythm, until the climb wasn't a thought but a memory I hadn't made yet.

I thought of the rooftop. Of what waited there.

The signal antenna. Old tech. But active. A manual uplink. The kind they couldn't intercept. A thread we could use to speak again, across blocks, across districts.

Someone had to climb. Reset the uplink. Send the message.

That someone was me.

Because we're still here. Still moving. We press against the edges until something gives. We find the cracks. We widen them.

And in that widening, we live.

The floor was cold against me, the air sharp with rust and old exhaust. But the stillness wasn't empty. It watched me. I watched it back.

I stretched my fingers, flexed the ache from my palms. Tightened the wraps.

My body would hold.

My grip would carry the rest.

Tomorrow, I would climb.

But tonight, I faced the dark.

And made sure it knew I wasn't afraid.

Character: Aurora

Released on February 28, 2026 (26_1)

License: CC-BY-NC-ND / UDL