The desert section announced itself with a wall of heat that made the jungle's humidity feel like mercy.
Fifty kilometers. The trail transitioned from mud-packed earth to sand and hardpan, the temperature jumping ten degrees in as many meters. Singapore's course designers had crafted their masterpiece of suffering here—a manufactured wasteland that compressed the Sahara's brutality into three kilometers of hell.
Jayson's first breath of desert air felt like inhaling fire. His lungs, already pushed beyond reason, recoiled from air that seemed to have forgotten what moisture meant. Around him, enhanced athletes' cooling systems immediately kicked into overdrive, fans whirring, heat exchangers glowing, the sound of technology fighting physics.
But physics, Jayson would learn, didn't negotiate.
"Christ," an athlete ahead gasped. British accent, top-tier enhancements judging by the neural crown complexity. "It's like running in an oven."
It was worse than an oven. Ovens were consistent. This heat came in waves—radiating up from sand, down from sun, sideways from rocks that had been baking since dawn. The course wound through this furnace without shade, without mercy, without any acknowledgment that humans weren't meant to run in such conditions.
But then, these weren't exactly humans anymore. Were they?
Jayson's body did the only thing it knew—it sweated. Primitive cooling, inefficient by enhancement standards, but functional. Sweat poured from every pore, immediately evaporating in the desert air, taking precious heat with it. His shirt—gone to bandage the Korean athlete—left his skin exposed but cooler.
The enhanced athletes were discovering that complexity had a price.
Fifty-point-five kilometers. The first enhanced cooling system failed spectacularly.
The athlete—Russian, built like a tank—simply stopped mid-stride as his neural crown erupted in sparks. The internal cooling that let him run in any condition had overloaded, creating a cascade that shut down everything. He dropped like his strings had been cut, enhanced muscles useless without the systems controlling them.
"Medical!" His support crew was screaming through his earpiece, loud enough for Jayson to hear as he shuffled past. "Thermal cascade! Core temp critical!"
Medical was minutes away at best. The desert didn't offer minutes.
Jayson stopped. Again. The math of helping was becoming familiar—every pause cost places, energy, seconds he couldn't spare. But leaving someone to cook in their own enhancement felt like abandoning humanity itself.
"Hey." He knelt beside the Russian, whose eyes were rolling back, systems trying to reboot in temperatures that prevented rational processing. "We need to cool you down."
The Russian couldn't respond. His enhancement was too busy trying not to melt.
Jayson grabbed his water bottles—precious resources he needed for three more kilometers. Poured one over the Russian's neural crown, watching steam rise as superheated metal met liquid. The second bottle went over the athlete's core, primitive cooling for a very expensive problem.
"Waste..." the Russian managed as his systems found minimal function. "Your water... your race..."
"Your brain's cooking. Race comes second."
Medical arrived as Jayson emptied his last bottle. The Russian gripped his wrist with enhanced strength that spoke of desperation more than gratitude.
"Natural athlete," he whispered. "Saving enhanced. Nobody will believe."
"Doesn't matter what they believe. Don't cook out here."
Fifty-one kilometers. Waterless now, Jayson continued into the furnace. His mouth felt like sand, throat like paper, but he was still moving. The enhanced athletes around him were discovering that their perfect systems had been designed for perfect conditions.
The failures came in waves. Cooling systems overloaded. Neural processors overheated. Servos seized as lubricants broke down. The desert was teaching expensive lessons about the gap between laboratory testing and real-world hell.
He passed a group of Korean athletes huddled around a teammate whose leg servos had locked mid-stride. They were pouring their water over the joints, trying to cool them enough to function. Further ahead, a Japanese athlete sat in the sand, manually fanning her neural crown with her race number.
The heat was democratic in its cruelty, but enhancement seemed to multiply the suffering. Every system added complexity, and complexity meant more points of failure.
"Position update," Jayson croaked to Maya.
"Hundred and fifth," she said softly. "But only ninety-three still running. The desert is... it's catastrophic. Race officials are discussing stopping the event."
Hundred and fifth. He'd lost ten more places helping the Russian, but gained back some as others failed. The math was becoming abstract, positions just numbers that rose and fell like desert heat waves.
A water station appeared through the shimmer—an oasis that was already overwhelmed. Athletes crowded around volunteers who looked shell-shocked by the carnage. Enhanced runners who normally took precise sips were dumping entire bottles over their heads, dignity abandoned in favor of survival.
Jayson waited his turn, watching enhancement's hierarchy dissolve. Million-dollar athletes begged for extra water. Support crews screamed about human rights violations. The desert didn't care about their investments.
When he finally reached the table, a volunteer stared at his blood-stained torso, the mud still caking his legs, the general disaster of his appearance.
"Natural athlete? Still running?"
Always that phrase. Like his continued existence was the miracle.
"Still vertical. Barely."
The volunteer loaded him with bottles, salt tabs, gels—more than regulation allowed. "You helped Dmitri. The Russian. Word's spreading. Natural athlete playing medic."
"Just trying to finish without watching people die."
"Same thing, maybe." The volunteer leaned close. "Summit starts in two kilometers. It's worse than this. Many won't make it. Remember you can DNF with honor."
DNF with honor. The escape clause everyone was thinking but nobody saying. Drop out, blame the conditions, preserve what was left of body and pride.
"Thanks," Jayson said, meaning it. Then he turned back toward the desert that wanted to eat him, carrying fresh water and old stubbornness toward whatever came next.
Fifty-two kilometers. The heat had become a living thing, wrapping around runners like a predator playing with prey. Enhanced athletes moved in stuttering gaits as their systems struggled with thermal management. Some had stripped to minimum clothing, abandoning modesty. Others poured precious water over neural crowns that glowed cherry-red with heat buildup.
Jayson found a rhythm in the suffering. Short strides to minimize effort. Breathing through his nose despite the burn. One bottle for drinking, one for cooling, rationing both against the distance remaining.
He caught up to Ava.
She sat on a rock, her left leg locked straight, right leg twitching with misfires. Her face was a map of system failures and Russian stubbornness. But she was smiling.
"Natural boy. Still running?"
"Still moving. You?"
"Waiting for inspiration. Or death. Desert's choice." She gestured at her frozen servo. "Heat killed the cooling, cooling killed the processor, processor killed the servo. Cascade failure. Very expensive way to sit on rock."
"Can you override?"
"Been overriding for five kilometers. Body finally said no." She studied him with eyes that flickered between enhancement and humanity. "You look terrible."
"Feel worse."
"Good. Means you're doing it right." She pulled out her last gel, offered it to him. "Take it. I'm done moving. You're not."
"Ava—"
"That wasn't a request. Natural athlete stops to help broken enhancement athlete, we both DNF, Wei Chen wins everything. Bad story." She pressed the gel into his hand. "Natural athlete takes gift from enhancement athlete, keeps moving while she finds own way? Better story. Complicated. Human."
He wanted to argue. Wanted to help her up, support her, prove that finishing together meant more than finishing at all. But she was right. The story needed its ending.
"See you after," he said.
"See you after. Now go. Summit's waiting. Show them stubborn beats systems."
He left her there, another story to carry, another reminder that enhancement didn't eliminate human choices—just relocated them. The gel tasted like synthetic fruit and sacrifice.
Fifty-two-point-five kilometers. The desert's final gift was a preview of hell—the trail ramped up, sand giving way to rock, flat giving way to vertical. The summit section began not with fanfare but with grade that made already-destroyed legs weep.
Enhanced athletes who'd survived the desert now faced a new challenge. Climbing required different systems than flat running. Servos designed for propulsion struggled with elevation. Cooling systems already maxed couldn't handle the additional load.
The failures were immediate and spectacular.
An athlete ahead—Jayson couldn't identify nationality through the coating of sand and sweat—simply sat down mid-climb. His legs were still moving, servos cycling through their programming, but going nowhere. Like watching a machine dream of running while its body refused.
Another made it fifty meters up before his neural crown shut down entirely. He stood frozen, enhanced body waiting for instructions that wouldn't come, while his support team screamed through dead comms.
Jayson climbed through the carnage, each step a negotiation with gravity and exhaustion. His natural proprioception, unfiltered by processing delays, let him find footholds by feel. His weight, so much less than enhanced athletes, meant less work against gravity.
For the first time all race, being natural was almost an advantage.
"Holy shit," Maya's voice carried awe. "You just passed five athletes in a hundred meters. You're... you're climbing faster than some enhanced runners."
Not faster, really. Just failing slower. But in a race of attrition, that counted.
Fifty-three kilometers. The summit loomed above—Singapore's monument to human ambition, or human arrogance, depending on perspective. But first, the desert had one final lesson to teach.
The incline leveled briefly into a plateau of superheated rock. Here, the course designers had placed their cruelest joke—a section of black granite that absorbed and radiated heat like a stovetop. Enhanced athletes ahead were literally hopping, their foot sensors screaming warnings about surface temperature.
Jayson's shoes—Endure's prototypes—were simpler. Rubber and foam, designed for abuse. They didn't measure the heat, just insulated against it. He ran through where others danced, gaining precious meters on athletes whose systems were too smart for their own good.
"Natural athlete."
The voice was weak. Wei Chen Jr. sat against a boulder, his perfect features twisted in something between rage and defeat. One leg was extended, servo locked, steam actually rising from the joint.
"My grandmother's factory made your shoes," Wei said. "While my systems, worth more than her building, cook themselves." He laughed, bitter. "There's a lesson there."
Jayson slowed. This was the man who'd called him obsolete, who'd promised to bury natural athletics. Easy to leave him. Justified, even.
"You need help?"
"I need my cooling system to not have cascaded. I need my servos to function above 60 degrees. I need..." Wei's voice cracked. "I need to not fail in front of the world."
"You're not failing. You're discovering limits."
"Same thing in my world." Wei looked up. "Why haven't you left me?"
"Because after this is over, we're all just runners who went too far."
Jayson pulled out one precious water bottle, poured it over Wei's locked servo. The metal hissed, contracted, slowly freed itself. Wei tested the leg, found minimal function.
"This changes nothing," Wei said, struggling to his feet. "Natural athletics is still obsolete. You're still last place pretending to matter."
"Hundred and fifth, actually. And you're welcome."
He left Wei testing his damaged systems, carrying forward the strange satisfaction of helping someone who hated what he represented. The desert didn't care about their divide. Heat was heat, suffering was suffering, and everyone was human when the systems failed.
The plateau ended at a cliff edge—not literally, but functionally. The trail dropped into a ravine, then climbed out the other side toward the summit proper. The desert's final gift: destroy their legs going down before asking them to climb.
Jayson picked his way down, each step jarring already-traumatized muscles. His quads, demolished by fifty-three kilometers of varied hell, screamed with every impact. But screaming meant functioning. He'd take pain over the mechanical failures littering the descent.
At the ravine bottom, a small miracle—a natural spring the course routed through. Not a station, just water bubbling from rock, probably the inspiration for this section of hell. Athletes clustered around it like pilgrims at a shrine.
He waited his turn, watched enhancement and natural unite in the simple need for water. Drank deep when his chance came, refilled bottles, poured spring water over sun-cooked skin. For a moment, just a moment, the desert offered mercy.
Then the climb out began, and mercy ended.
The path up was steeper than the descent, carved into cliff face by designers who apparently hated knees. Jayson climbed using hands when needed, dignity long abandoned. Above, enhanced athletes struggled with the technical nature—their systems optimized for running, not scrambling.
"Natural's passing," someone observed. Not angry now, just noting reality.
He was. Not through speed but through simplicity. Where they recalibrated, he just climbed. Where they processed optimal routes, he just found holds. The mountain didn't care about their advantages. It only cared about up.
Fifty-three-point-five kilometers. The desert section was ending, the trail transitioning from sand and rock to something that might generously be called path. Behind him, the furnace continued claiming victims—enhanced athletes learning that complexity multiplied failure points, that all their advantages meant nothing when the cooling died.
"Update," he gasped to Maya.
"Ninety-seventh. You gained eight places in the desert section. Only eighty-nine still officially running." Her voice carried disbelief. "The heat's caused more DNFs than any other section. Medical's overwhelmed. Race officials are in crisis mode."
Ninety-seventh. Closing on double digits through attrition and stubbornness. The impossible math getting less impossible with every system failure behind him.
He crested the final desert rise to find unexpected company—Thompson, sitting on a rock, both legs locked, systems completely dead.
"Thought you DNF'd," Jayson said.
"Did. Officially. But I can walk, slowly. Figured I'd see how far I could get unofficially." Thompson smiled through obvious pain. "Saw you help Wei. Cameras caught it too. Natural athlete saving the man who called him obsolete."
"Seemed like the thing to do."
"It was. My nephew's probably losing his mind. His hero helping everyone, even enemies." Thompson struggled to his feet, testing locked legs. "Summit's next. It's going to be brutal. But you know what? I think you might actually do this."
"Do what?"
"Finish. Matter. Prove we were wrong about everything." Thompson extended his hand. "I'm done. Really done. But watching you... maybe enhancement isn't evolution. Maybe it's just expensive deviation."
They shook—enhanced and natural, official DNF and still moving, finding common ground in shared suffering.
"Tell your nephew I'm still running," Jayson said.
"Tell him yourself. At the finish."
The desert section officially ended at a timing mat that seemed arbitrary—the mountain started immediately after. But Jayson crossed it anyway, carrying stories of Dmitri the Russian, Wei Chen's locked servos, Thompson's blessing, and Ava's gel that still sat in his pocket like a talisman.
Fifty-three-point-seven kilometers. The real summit waited above, promising new forms of torture. But he'd survived the desert, the section designed to showcase enhancement's superiority in extreme conditions. Survived it by being too simple to fail complex, by helping those who hated him, by carrying forward when everything said stop.
The furnace had tested everyone equally and found enhancement wanting. Now the mountain would render its own judgment.
But that was Chapter 11's problem. For now, this: Jayson Rodriguez, natural athlete, had crossed the desert section in ninety-seventh place. Still running. Still human. Still asking the question with every step.
The summit could wait. First, one more breath of air that didn't burn, one more moment of being vertical against odds, one more second of proving that sometimes, simple survived where complex failed.