The first days blurred.

  Morning light crept around the curtains. Sammy’s knock, the same question—always the same.

  “You alive?”

  “Still here,” Cal would say. Sometimes he added, “Mostly,” if the binder had pinched wrong that morning.

  The binder was a constant: a white, elastic, aether-threaded strip cinched tight around his ribs, forcing his lungs to take smaller, more obedient sips of air. Each breath brought awareness. Each shift reminded him that his chest was not a single structure now, but a set of agreements—bone, lattice, binder, and the quiet luck that the emergency pull came before the next hit.

  Sammy brought water, pills, and easy food: toast, broth, rice with an egg on good days. He hovered as Cal swallowed, watching like the tablets might jump back out if he blinked.

  “You actually took them?” he’d ask.

  “I’m very invested in my continued ability to inhale,” Cal would reply.

  Sometimes Cal’s humor eased the tension. Other times, it only sharpened the uneasy edge in the room, pushing both him and Sammy closer to panic.

  Their mother moved carefully from couch to chair, infusion lines tucked away when she could, the home monitor chiming green. On worse days, it flashed yellow too long, silenced by her practiced hand before either son could arrive.

  Traffic buzzed beyond thin walls. Someone’s game leaked faint sound through the ceiling: synthetic gunfire and shouted victories. Outside, the world ignored them. Cal’s chest felt like a cracked plate bound with tape.

  Jordan stayed.

  He wasn’t there every hour or minute. Jordan had his own shifts and obligations, but he showed up early, late, and in between. Knock at the door, boots by the couch, grocery bags dropped on the counter, his voice from the kitchen: "Hey, don’t let him sit up too fast," like he’d been the third adult since Cal was thirteen.

  He didn’t hover like Sammy or circle Cal’s bed like a worried animal. Jordan was steadier—harder to ignore. He sat in the chair with a slate on his knee, never looking at Cal, but always catching every change in his breathing.

  Cal noticed it because he noticed patterns. He saw how Jordan’s jokes came quickly when the room was manageable, then vanished when pain changed Cal’s face.

  The first night, Cal woke, drowning.

  Not in air—there was air, technically—but in that sudden, violent certainty that his lungs weren’t going to cooperate, that the binder was tightening, that the lattice under his skin was pulsing wrong, that he had missed a step and now the consequences were finishing the job.

  His hands went for a shield that wasn’t there. His throat made a sound that didn’t count as a word.

  The binder cut the inhale short.

  Panic surged. His heart hammered. It was trying to break free of his ribs on principle.

  “Cal.”

  Jordan’s voice. Low. Close. Not alarmed.

  Cal blinked hard. The ceiling stared back: cracked paint, old water stains, familiar shapes.

  Jordan sat on the edge of the couch, forearms on his knees. He hadn’t moved fast enough for Cal to see, so he’d already been awake.

  “Nightmare,” Cal rasped.

  “I know,” Jordan said.

  Jordan didn’t ask what Cal saw; he didn’t need to. It was in Cal’s shaking fingers and eyes tracking the room, expecting the canyon behind the dresser.

  Jordan stood, slow and deliberate, and crossed to the bed. He didn’t touch the binder or fuss. He placed a hand on the mattress near Cal’s knee—close enough for contact, not restraint.

  “In through your nose,” Jordan said. “Out longer than in. You’re not running. You’re not climbing. You’re in your brother’s bed, and you’re going to breathe like it.”

  Cal tried.

  The pain didn’t leave. The fear didn’t disappear. But something inside him stopped chasing the panic in circles. The world narrowed—from catastrophe back into a room.

  Sammy appeared in the doorway a moment later, hair sticking up, handheld light still glowing on his face.

  “Again?” Sammy whispered.

  “Yeah,” Cal said.

  Sammy’s eyes went to Jordan’s hand on the mattress. He didn’t say anything. He just climbed into the chair and hugged his handheld close, as if it were armor.

  Sometimes Sammy talked about nothing for ten minutes—school gossip, a new game, a dumb meme he’d seen—until Cal’s pulse slowed.

  Sometimes Jordan did, and the difference was subtle but real. Sammy’s talking distracted. Jordan’s structured.

  “You remember when you tried to microwave ramen without water?” Jordan said one night, voice light enough to be a joke.

  Cal’s mouth twitched. “That is slander. I was experimenting.”

  “You were attempting arson,” Jordan said. “Your mom threatened to ban you from the kitchen for life.”

  Sammy snorted into his sleeve.

  Cal’s laugh broke off as pain shot through his side, surprise flickering across his face. Instantly, Jordan’s lightness vanished, concern snapping into focus.

  “Okay,” Jordan said, all business. “No laughs. No heroics. Drink.”

  He held the water out, and Cal took it with hands that still trembled.

  That was Jordan. Talkative until it mattered. Then steel.

  By day two, the apartment had a rhythm.

  Sammy woke up first, because Sammy couldn’t sleep properly if Cal might stop breathing in the night. He’d pretend it was about school. He’d pretend it was about breakfast. Cal saw the truth in the way Sammy’s eyes checked Cal’s chest before anything else.

  Their mother sat at the table, student essays spread like a battlefield. She graded when she had energy, rested when she didn’t. She moved carefully, as if the air itself might bruise her.

  Jordan came and went like a quiet tide. Mornings brought supplies. Afternoons, news. Evenings, a presence that kept the apartment less a sickroom and more a battered, resilient home.

  Cal lay in Sammy’s narrow bed and replayed Floor Five.

  The golem hit him again in his sleep.

  Sometimes the memory stayed true: fist filling his vision, shield crunching, ribs cracking in a sharp, hot line.

  Sometimes his mind made it worse: the ledge gone, the Anchor charm dead in his hand, the impact following him all the way down instead of tearing sideways into white.

  In some dreams, the emergency prompt never arrived.

  In others, he saw it and didn’t say confirm.

  He’d wake with sweat cooling on his spine and the binder biting down like punishment for daring to inhale too quickly.

  Awake, the fight replayed slower.

  He broke it into pieces because that was how his brain worked when it wanted to understand something rather than just flinch.

  The first approach along the canyon floor. Hugging the left wall because it felt like cover, even though the Tower had given him clean lanes in the open.

  He built an overbuilt ramp instead of smaller, cheaper steps. His channels had protested at the mass he’d thrown up at once. His own disgusted voice in his head: stone is for control, not heroics.

  He watched himself refuse to retreat. Once. Twice. Three times.

  He mapped each choice against the golem’s patterns. He saw the points where a retreat would have cost him pride instead of ribs.

  He saw the points at which pride had convinced him it was the same as necessity.

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  “Idiot,” he muttered at the ceiling.

  “Yeah,” Jordan said from the couch, half-asleep but present. “Heard you the first time.”

  Cal turned his head carefully. “You weren’t even awake.”

  “I’m awake enough to tell you the obvious,” Jordan said, voice thick with sleep. “Stop trying to punish yourself into being smarter. That never works.”

  “It worked on you,” Cal muttered.

  Jordan’s laugh was soft. “No, it didn’t. I just ran out of skin to lose.”

  The line landed strangely, half-joke, half-truth. Cal didn’t have the energy to chase it.

  By day four, the bruises along his ribs faded from black-purple to sick yellow and faint green. The pain shifted from knife stabs to a constant throb below everything, like bad bass.

  The binder kept him from forgetting his limits. Every time he twisted too far, it bit down and reminded him his bones were more agreement than fact.

  He hated the binder as much as he hated the emergency prompt.

  Not because either was wrong.

  Because both existed for the same reason.

  People like him broke.

  On day five, Sammy taped a schedule to the wall.

  "Nurse Sam has rounds," he announced, standing on the mattress to tape the schedule just right. Crayon boxes: breakfast, meds, breathing checks, stretch time. A doodled skull and crossbones marked NO TOWER.

  “You can’t write ‘approved visitors’ when we only know three people,” Cal rasped.

  “Jordan counts as five,” Sammy said promptly. “Mom’s at least ten. I’m off the chart.”

  He drew a crown next to his own name.

  Jordan leaned over the schedule as if it were a contract. “I want it on record that I’m an excellent five.”

  “You’re more like… three and a half,” Cal said.

  Jordan put a hand to his chest in mock injury. “Betrayal.”

  Cal snorted, then immediately regretted it as pain flared through his side.

  “Pain scale?” Sammy asked, pen poised.

  “Seven if you make me laugh,” Cal said. “Five if you don’t.”

  “No jokes before lunch,” Sammy wrote, tongue poking out in concentration.

  Jordan held up two fingers. “Cross my heart.”

  Sammy’s hovering was not subtle. Every door click snapped his head up. Every hiss of pain tightened his hands around whatever he held.

  Jordan’s hovering was worse because it didn’t look like hovering.

  He’d be in the kitchen, washing dishes, and his head would tilt at the exact moment Cal’s breath hitched. He’d be reading on his slate, and his eyes would flick up when Cal shifted wrong.

  Cal tried to convince himself not to take comfort in it, telling himself he didn’t need the attention. He wanted to believe his independence was still real.

  He failed.

  On day six, Cal managed to sit up without the room tilting.

  It wasn’t a victory. It was a small, stubborn fact.

  He’d pushed himself too hard the first time, trying to prove something. Now he forced himself to treat recovery like a climb: controlled, incremental, no improvising courage.

  He did his breathing exercises even when they hurt.

  He stood long enough to shuffle to the bathroom and back, one hand on the wall like it was a cliff face.

  Sammy hovered in the doorway like a guard.

  “Do you need—”

  “No,” Cal said. “I just need you to stop looking like I’m going to explode.”

  Sammy scowled, then softened. “I can’t.”

  That honesty landed heavier than any scolding.

  That night, Cal woke to find Sammy asleep on the floor, fingers touching the mattress like he could keep Cal anchored by contact alone.

  Jordan was on the couch, head tipped back, one arm hanging over the edge.

  Cal stared at his brother’s faint freckles and thought about the moment he’d almost saved the emergency teleport for later.

  One more hit.

  One more chance.

  One more gamble.

  He’d nearly made Sammy an only child because he didn’t want to admit he was at his limit.

  Shame settled in his throat, thick and hot.

  He let it sit.

  He didn’t deserve to swallow it down and pretend it wasn’t there.

  On the seventh day, Jordan brought the sim.

  He knocked once, then shouldered the door open like he belonged there, because he did. He had a bag slung over one shoulder and the particular expression Cal had come to recognize as Jordan’s version of serious.

  He took in the binder, the pillows, the way Cal’s breath came shallow, and grimaced.

  “You look like crap,” Jordan said.

  “You should see the other guy,” Cal said automatically.

  “The other guy is a rock monster,” Jordan said. “Pretty sure it didn’t need a trauma team and four chips.”

  He dropped into the chair backward and pulled out his slate.

  “If you’re going to stew about nearly dying, you might as well have data.”

  A low-res canyon sprang up above the slate: Floor Five’s layout in stylized lines—walls, ledges, pillars. Icons marked golem paths and weak points. A faint cone marked its sweeping arms.

  Cal felt his stomach tighten.

  “You got a sim?” Cal asked.

  “Tower fans are freaks,” Jordan said. “Guy in York Tower stitched it from run recordings. Crowd-sourced. Suggested routes. Rockfall triggers, aggro cones, comments, arguments. Flame wars, the works.”

  He pinched the view out, zooming to show the entire basin.

  “Recommended: two to four climbers,” he read. “Roles: anchor, ranged, optional controller, support. Solo not advised without appropriate gear and element matchup.”

  Jordan flicked to a different tab.

  “And here—‘if you’re Earth and you don’t have at least one ranged and one support, don’t even think about it.’”

  Shame flared, sharp as a bruise pressed too hard.

  “I saw the group icon,” Cal muttered.

  “You’re Tier Zero with one active, a salvaged shield, and no potions,” Jordan said. His tone was blunt, but there was no cruelty in it. “That’s not ‘advised’ either. You didn’t need a sim for that part.”

  Cal watched the sim golem move.

  Icons marked positions: ANCHOR in the lane, RANGED on a mid-height ledge, CONTROL on the side shelves. Those shelves had looked like scenery when Cal was there. Tiny arrows traced optimal kiting paths.

  Now he saw it.

  Perfect spots for someone like Elias to rake joints with water-lances.

  Pockets for wind or lightning to blast from safety.

  Rockfalls staggered from above while an anchor held the threat below.

  He’d tried to be all three.

  “I was fighting four fights,” Cal said quietly. “The golem, the canyon, my aether, the clock.”

  “And you lost,” Jordan said, not unkind.

  Cal flinched anyway. The word lost felt like a stain.

  “You also pulled the cord before it killed you,” Jordan added. “That matters. Dead guys don’t get to do better next time.”

  Cal stared at the projection.

  “It wasn’t supposed to be Plan A,” he said.

  “You made it Plan C,” Jordan said. “Say it out loud.”

  Cal’s throat tightened.

  He pictured the last swing, his vision tunneling, the small voice saying you really can’t take one more hit.

  “I stayed too long,” Cal said. The words scraped coming out. “I treated a group floor like a solo challenge and thought wanting it enough would change the math.”

  Jordan’s shoulders eased, like something inside him had been waiting for that admission.

  He flicked the sim off, letting the canyon dissolve.

  “You know what sponsored climbers do on this floor?” Jordan asked. “They bring three people and gear that costs more than our rent. They still bail sometimes. The Tower doesn’t care how motivated you are. It cares whether the numbers line up.”

  Cal let his head fall back against the pillow, binder tugging across his chest.

  “So I get stronger,” he said.

  “You get smarter,” Jordan corrected. “Stronger’s good. Smarter keeps you around long enough to use it.”

  Cal hated how much that sounded like something he already knew.

  Jordan slid the slate toward him. “Here. Look at the comments.”

  Cal hesitated, then took it.

  The forum thread was a mess of opinions and ego, but the useful parts were clear.

  People arguing about the best anchor position.

  People listing the minimum gear thresholds.

  People describing the tells in the Guardian’s arm reset.

  A highlighted warning that made Cal’s stomach drop.

  If your controller is down, bail.

  If your anchor takes a second rib hit, bail.

  If you can’t keep the Guardian from resetting its pattern, bail.

  It wasn’t cowardice.

  It was operating within the Tower’s math.

  Cal’s eyes flicked back to Jordan.

  “You wrote those?”

  Jordan snorted. “No. That’s from someone with a sponsor logo on their cloak. But it’s right.”

  Cal swallowed, feeling the binder bite as if it wanted to underline the point.

  Jordan leaned forward, voice quieter.

  “I burned Beacon harder than I should have,” he said.

  Cal’s fingers tightened on the slate.

  Jordan’s face didn’t change, but Cal heard the strain in the admission.

  “It held for a few seconds,” Jordan continued. “It pulled the Guardian’s attention just enough to buy you the prompt window. But I could feel it slipping. Like trying to keep sunlight pinned to a wall.”

  Cal remembered—half memory, half sensation—the flare at the edge of his vision, the way the Guardian’s focus had stuttered, as if something bright had tried to grab its gaze.

  “And then it started to ignore it,” Jordan said. “Not fully. Just… adapt. Like it recognized the trick.”

  Cal’s mouth went dry.

  “Beacon redirects attention,” Jordan said, like he was reciting something he’d learned the hard way. “Not damage. Not physics. It buys seconds. If I spam it, it turns into nothing but pain and a bigger target on my back.”

  He looked at Cal. “So if you ever count on it as a solution, we’re both dead.”

  Cal nodded once.

  “Good,” Jordan said. His tone softened a fraction. “I’m not telling you that to scare you. I’m telling you so we plan like grown-ups.”

  Sammy had been pretending not to listen from the floor.

  “Grown-ups,” Sammy echoed skeptically.

  Jordan glanced down at him. “Do you have a better term?”

  “I prefer ‘competent professionals,’” Sammy said.

  Cal huffed a laugh that he managed not to turn into a cough.

  Jordan’s mouth twitched. “Fine. We plan like competent professionals.”

  After Jordan left that day, the sim stayed behind Cal’s eyes.

  Not just the canyon.

  The roles.

  The way the Tower laid out lanes and kill zones was like a puzzle.

  Places that invited you to stand.

  Places that screamed do not.

  Floor Five had been the first time the Tower said, clearly, this isn’t for one person.

  Cal had walked in anyway.

  He thought of his mother in the doorway, earlier in the week, voice quiet and sharp.

  You don’t have to keep doing this.

  He thought of Sammy asleep on the floor.

  He thought of Jordan’s hand on his shoulder in the canyon, steady while Cal’s world tried to collapse into white.

  He opened the Tower listings on his flex-screen.

  Floor 1: solo baseline.

  Floor 2: solo/duo.

  Floor 3: group.

  Floor 4: solo, labor required.

  Floor 5: group required.

  Higher up, the group icons multiplied like warning lights.

  Some floors were marked multi-party only, with a red symbol flashing if he hovered too long.

  He could imagine a future version of himself using those icons as bragging rights.

  Full clears.

  Only runs where the forums debated whether they were fake.

  He wasn’t that climber.

  Not with one active, fragile channels, hand-me-down gear, and a family that needed him alive more than impressive.

  His gaze snagged on Floor Two’s entry.

  Swamp. Predation. Amphibious threats. Environmental hazards: low visibility, unstable footing.

  Under community tags, one name kept showing up.

  If you see the water guy, follow his lead.

  Water controller on the rock is scary good.

  Don’t get between him and the Mirepack unless you like being yelled at.

  Cal heard Elias’s dry voice in his head.

  Use stone to control the field, not to win the fight for you.

  Stop pouring mass into the top layers.

  Your plates are going to shatter.

  He’d listened on the plains.

  His shaping had gotten cleaner.

  His stamina had stretched.

  His walls had gotten lower and smarter instead of big and dumb.

  On Floor Five, he’d thrown that away and gone back to slabs.

  Of course you almost died, he told himself. You learned the lesson and ignored it.

  He knew the shape of the climber he needed beside him.

  Someone who understood control like Elias.

  Someone who could pin joints from above while Cal anchored the lane.

  Someone who saw patterns in messy terrain and treated them as equations rather than chaos.

  Someone who’d tell him when he was about to be stupid—and make him listen.

  He could post for a partner on the boards and wade through replies from people who liked his chip count more than his survival odds.

  Or he could start with the one person who was already proving, daily, that he didn’t see Cal as a resource.

  Jordan.

  But Jordan wasn’t a controller. Jordan was survival, positioning, and decision-making. Jordan was the reason Cal had been able to pull the cord at all.

  If Cal wanted to climb Floor Five again someday, he needed more than loyalty.

  He needed a third.

  Maybe a fourth.

  He needed a team that matched the Tower’s math.

  And right now, he couldn’t walk to the Tower without getting winded.