Edenrise: The Price of Ascension

Cade woke up dead.

The thought was a cold, hard stone in his gut, a grim echo of his grandma's favorite proverb after a long day's work on the farm: If ya wake up one mornin' and ain't in pain, y'all are dead. For the first time in years, his back didn't ache, his knuckles didn't throb, and the usual chorus of old injuries was silent. There was only a strange, floaty lightness, a sense of being disconnected from his own limbs, as if they belonged to someone else.

He was strapped down. Thick restraints held his wrists and ankles to what felt like a stretcher. The metal cuffs had chafed his skin raw. The last thing he remembered was Jake's bachelor party at O'Malley's...

A blinding light came on, stabbing through his eyelids like hot needles.

The movement of the stretcher stopped. The silence that followed was more unnerving than the humming vibration had been. Cade forced his eyes open and reality came crashing in, shaped like a nightmare. The figure looming over him stood seven feet tall, with too-long limbs and skin that looked like polished gray plastic. Where its face should have been, a cluster of blue lights pulsed in what might have been a pattern. The smell hit him then—cloying and sweet, with an undercurrent of something rotting, like fruit left too long in the sun.

"What the hell—" Cade's voice came out as a croak.

The thing didn't respond. It manipulated controls on the stretcher, and the restraints clicked open. Before Cade could process what was happening, the alien grabbed him. Not by the shoulders, but lower down. With a single, brutally efficient motion, it yanked.

Fire, sharp and violating, tore through his insides. He screamed, a raw, guttural sound as the catheter was ripped out. The alien tossed the bloody tube aside with casual indifference and hauled him off the stretcher, dumping him onto the cold floor. He landed hard, naked except for his boxers, the world tilting as nausea and pain crashed over him.

The alien shoved him forward. His bare feet slapped against the floor as he stumbled down a long, sterile white corridor. They stopped at a door that hissed open. Inside was a cell barely large enough for a cot and a waste hole. In the corner, he saw a familiar sight: his own jeans and Alabama jersey, tossed in a dirty pile.

The creature shoved him inside and the door hissed shut. The cell was lit by the same weak, reddish light as the corridor. A moment later, a slot opened and a tray slid through—gray cubes that smelled of nothing, and a container of water.

Cade stared at the meal, his mind still trying to process what was happening. "Hey!" he called out, moving to the door. "Hey, what is this? Where am I?"

No response. The corridor outside was silent except for the low hum of ventilation systems.

He paced. Three steps, turn, three steps back. The rage and confusion boiled over. He spun, slamming his fist into the wall. Pain, sharp and immediate, shot up his arm. "Son of a bitch!" he hissed, cradling his knuckles. They were already swelling, the skin broken. He didn't notice the faint, almost imperceptible buckle in the wall where his fist had landed.

Think, Cade. What's the last thing you remember?

Jake's party. Shots. Hannah texting him again about coming back to Birmingham, about how they could "work things out." Him throwing his phone across the bar and ordering another round. After that... nothing.

Had someone drugged him? Was this some kind of elaborate prank? But the alien thing—no way that was a costume. The movements were too fluid, too inhuman. And the smell... it had smelled like ozone and something sharper, like the air before a thunderstorm.

A sound echoed through the corridor—not mechanical this time, but organic. Voices, maybe. Cade pressed his ear to the door, straining to hear. There were definitely other prisoners here. He could make out at least three distinct voices, though he couldn't understand what they were saying.

"Hello?" he called out. "Is someone there? Can anyone hear me?"

A voice answered from somewhere to his right, sounding like a bear that had learned to speak English. "New meat, eh? Where you from, human?"

"Alabama. Huntsville. What is this place?"

A bitter laugh. "Prison. Entertainment. Same thing to them. You will see soon enough."

Before Cade could ask what that meant, another sound filled the corridor—a deep, resonant tone that seemed to come from the walls themselves. His cell door slid open.

The same alien - or at least Cade thought so; they all looked the same to him - that had brought him here waited outside, along with two others. They gestured for him to come out, and when he hesitated, one of them produced a rod that crackled with blue electricity.

It made a sound like grinding metal and gestured more forcefully with the shock rod. The meaning was clear enough.

Cade moved.

They led him through a maze of corridors, past dozens of other cell doors, up ramps and through chambers filled with equipment he couldn't begin to identify. Other aliens moved through the complex—some like his captors, others with different configurations of limbs and sensors. None of them paid any attention to the small procession.

Finally, they emerged onto a platform that overlooked something impossible.

It was an arena, massive and ancient-looking despite the alien technology that surrounded it. The architecture reminded him of the Roman Colosseum he'd seen in history books, but scaled up to accommodate beings much larger than humans. Tiered seating rose in concentric circles around a central pit filled with what looked like sand. Hundreds of the gray-skinned aliens filled the seats, their clusters of lights pulsing in what might have been excitement.

"What is this?" Cade asked, but he was already starting to understand.

His escorts guided him down a ramp to a gate that led directly onto the arena floor. Through the bars, he could see the sand was stained dark in places. There were other gates around the perimeter, and behind some of them, he caught glimpses of movement.

The alien with the shock rod pointed at the gate, then at Cade, then at the gate again. It made a series of sounds and gestures - some kind of explanation. The meaning became clear when it pointed at dark stains in the sand, then drew a finger across its throat. Fight or die.

"Fight what?" Cade's mouth had gone dry.

Instead of answering, the alien activated something on its wrist. The gate slid open.

Cade stood at the threshold, every instinct screaming at him to run. But there was nowhere to go. Behind him, three aliens with shock weapons. Ahead, whatever waited in that arena.

The crowd's lights pulsed faster now, and he heard what might have been cheering in a language that hurt his ears. Somewhere in the distance, another gate was opening.

"I ain't doin' this," he said, backing away from the entrance. "I ain't some damn animal for y'all's entertainment."

The shock rod caught him between the shoulder blades. Pain exploded through his nervous system, hot and sharp, but instead of dropping him to his knees as it clearly should have, it sent a surge of furious energy racing through his muscles. His vision cleared, his heart rate spiked, and suddenly he felt more awake than he had since... well, since he'd woken up on that stretcher.

What the hell? It felt... familiar. He remembered being a dumb teenager, daring his buddies to take a piss on old man Hemlock's electric fence. His friends who'd tried it had screamed and danced as the current shot up the stream, but when Cade had done it, the shock had just made him mad. He suddenly remembered his dad, grabbing a frayed power cord to a drill, swearing, and throwing the tool across the garage in a fit of temper rather than pain. And his uncle, who thought it was hilarious to get city folk to hold a live wire while he was fencing, a prank that did nothing to him but sent them howling. The pain from the shock rod was there, sharp and real, but it was being drowned by that same old wave of pure, animal anger. He felt energized, his fists clenching, ready for a fight he couldn't explain.

The alien looked surprised. It hit him again, harder this time. The pain was more intense, but so was the rage that followed. It was the same feeling from the farm, magnified a hundred times. Adrenaline, raw and unfiltered, made his hands shake with barely controlled energy.

The alien made a series of clicking sounds that might have been surprise or approval. It gestured to the others, pointing at Cade, then at the arena entrance. Whatever it was communicating, the other aliens seemed impressed.

It shoved him through the gate.

The arena floor was larger than it had looked from above—at least a hundred yards across, with the sand soft beneath his feet. The crowd noise was deafening now, and Cade realized with growing dread that he could see others in the stands. Not aliens, but humans. Dozens of them, watching from behind some kind of energy barrier.

Another gate opened across the arena, and something emerged that made Cade's blood freeze.

It was vaguely humanoid but wrong in every way that mattered. Eight feet tall, with arms that hung nearly to the ground and ended in five claw-like fingers designed for ripping. Its skin was mottled green and black, and when it opened its mouth, Cade saw rows of needle-sharp teeth.

The thing spotted him and let out a roar that echoed off the arena walls.

Cade looked around desperately for a weapon, anything he could use, but the sand was empty except for dark stains and what looked like bone fragments. The creature was already moving toward him with a loping gait that covered ground faster than seemed possible.

This is real. This is actually happening.

Twenty yards. Fifteen. The thing's claws were as long as kitchen knives.

Cade's body moved before his mind caught up. The first step felt wrong—too light, too easy. He'd pushed off expecting Earth-normal resistance and instead found himself moving faster than intended. The gravity here was different. Lighter.

Just like the moon landings, he thought absurdly. Except I'm about to get eaten by an alien.

But thirty years old and he still remembered every lesson from the community center dojo where he'd spent his childhood afternoons. Sensei Williams' voice echoed in his memory: Use their momentum against them. Don't fight force with force.

The creature lunged, claws whistling through the air where Cade's head had been a split second before. He stepped aside—the movement easier, quicker than it should have been—and his hands found the alien's massive forearm.

Sensei Williams at the community center, age twelve, sweating in a gi that never quite fit right: "Don't think about throwing a big guy, Cade. Think about helping him fall in the direction he's already going."

The creature's own momentum carried it forward as Cade pivoted, his hip catching the alien's center of gravity. In Earth gravity, this would have been suicide—the thing outweighed him by two hundred pounds easy. But here, with whatever reduced pull this place had, the throw actually worked. The alien hit the sand hard enough to bounce.

Cade rolled away as claws raked the ground where he'd been standing. The crowd's lights were pulsing in a frenzy now, and he thought he heard human voices shouting encouragement from somewhere.

The creature was back on its feet almost instantly, circling him now with more caution. It had learned that the small human wasn't helpless prey.

Think, Cade. What would work against something like this?

His mind flashed to the kickboxing gym—Coach Martinez yelling at him across the mats: "Brennan! Stop trying to muscle through it! You're not the biggest guy here!"

The creature feinted left, then lunged right. Cade was ready for it this time. He ducked under the swinging claws and drove his elbow into what he hoped was a vulnerable spot—the soft tissue just below its ribcage. The reduced gravity let him put more speed behind the strike, and the impact sent shock waves up his arm. The creature doubled over with a sound like steam escaping from a pipe.

Coach's voice again: "Fast and hard, then get out. Don't stick around to admire your work."

Instead of backing away, Cade jumped—higher than should have been possible—and brought his knee down with the full momentum of his enhanced leap. The impact drove the creature's head into the sand with devastating force. Something crunched, and dark fluid sprayed across the arena floor.

The creature staggered backward, making sounds that might have been pain or rage. But it wasn't done yet. The injury seemed to make it more vicious. It came at him in a wild charge, abandoning all caution.

Now or never.

As the creature charged, Cade didn't leap or dodge. He dropped to his back, one foot planted in the alien's belly as its speed and weight carried it over him. The throw his twelve-year-old self had practiced a thousand times in the community center—the one Sensei Williams called "the beginner's mistake that works anyway."

The alien had never heard of Sensei Williams.

It sailed over his head in a perfect, horrifying arc. The reduced gravity that had been helping Cade now worked against his opponent, sending the creature further than Cade thought possible. It landed with a sickening crunch of bone and armor, its own charging force becoming the instrument of its end.

It slumped to the sand and didn't get up.

The crowd fell silent. Even the alien lights stopped pulsing for a moment, as if they couldn't quite believe what they'd witnessed.

Cade stood over the creature's body, his chest heaving. His knuckles were split and bleeding, his prison clothes torn, but he was alive. More than alive—he felt electric, energized in a way that made no sense after what should have been an exhausting fight.

The shock rod. It did something to me.

A gate opened, and the same aliens that had brought him here emerged onto the arena floor. But instead of shock rods, they carried something that looked like medical equipment. They approached cautiously, as if seeing him in a new light.

One of them made more clicking sounds, and they approached with what seemed like renewed interest. Their lights pulsed in different patterns, and Cade got the distinct impression they were discussing him - though whether that was good or bad remained unclear.

They led him back through the corridors, but this time to a different cell—larger, with an actual bed and what might have been a sink. The waste hole here was slightly more civilized, with raised foot plates on either side.

Moving up in the world, Cade thought grimly.

He sat on the edge of the bed, his body still humming with a strange energy from the shock rod. It wasn't just adrenaline; it was something deeper, something that felt like it had been woken up after a long sleep. He looked at his hands, half-expecting to see them glowing.

Through a window in the new cell, he could see part of the arena complex. But the view beyond made his stomach lurch.

What the hell?

A massive wall curved up and over his head, covered in tiny lights. It took him a moment to understand what he was seeing—the other side of whatever this place was. The lights weren't random. They were windows. Rooms. Other people, maybe.

The stars outside were moving. Slowly, steadily, like a clock hand.

We're spinning.

His knees went weak. The gravity, the weird lightness he'd felt in the arena—it wasn't natural gravity at all. They were on some kind of giant wheel, spinning through space like a carnival ride.

We're in space. We're actually in space. And we're on a damn hamster wheel.

As the reality of his situation began to sink in, Cade heard a voice from the next cell over.

"Not bad for a first-timer," a female voice said. "Though you might want to work on your footwork. That thing almost had you twice." Her accent was... unusual.

He moved to the wall that separated their cells. "Who are you? What's your name?"

"Zara," the voice replied after a moment's hesitation. "And you are?"

"Cade. What's your background, Zara? Military?"

"Something like that. I've had... specialized training." She paused. "You handled yourself well out there for a civilian. What's your story?"

"Mechanic. From Alabama." He paused. "What is this place? What do they want with us?"

A soft laugh. "Entertainment, mostly. We're exotic animals to them—humans who can actually fight back. Most species they capture just curl up and die. We put on a show."

"How long have you been here?"

"Time's hard to measure in this place. But long enough to learn the rules. And the first rule is simple: keep winning, keep breathing. The moment you lose..." She let the implication hang in the air.

Cade pressed his forehead against the cool wall. "This is insane. There has to be a way out."

"Maybe," the voice said. "But that's a conversation for another time. Right now, you need to rest. Tomorrow, they'll probably pit you against something bigger."

As if summoned by her words, a slot opened in his door and the gray cubes appeared again, along with water.

Cade picked up one of the cubes, turning it over in his hands. It looked like compressed nothing. He bit into it.

Cardboard would taste better.

But his stomach stopped grumbling, which was something. The water was worse—metallic, like he was drinking from a rusty pipe. He drank it anyway.

Second meal today. Morning and evening, looks like.

He stared at the empty cup, trying to process everything. Alien food. Alien water. Alien prison.

This is real. This is actually happening.

He was a prisoner on an alien spacecraft, forced to fight for the entertainment of creatures that saw him as nothing more than a performing animal. And somehow, impossibly, he had survived his first encounter.

But as he lay down on the narrow bed, staring at the featureless ceiling, one thought kept echoing in his mind: the woman in the next cell had called this his first fight, not his last. Which meant she expected there to be more.

Many more.

Outside his window, the alien stars wheeled in patterns no human had ever mapped, and Cade Brennan—automotive mechanic from Huntsville, Alabama—closed his eyes and tried to figure out how he was going to survive tomorrow.

The next morning—if morning meant anything in a place without sun—brought answers he hadn't wanted to hear.

"You want to know why they're so excited about us?" the woman asked through the wall. Her voice carried a trace of accent he still couldn't place. "It's because we're almost extinct. The betting odds get better when the species is rare."

Cade's stomach dropped. "What do you mean, almost extinct?"

"Exactly what it sounds like. Earth fell three months ago. Most humans died in the initial attack—some kind of bioweapon that targeted our respiratory system. The survivors were rounded up for... entertainment purposes."

The gray cubes from the morning feeding slot turned to ash in his mouth. "How many?"

"Best estimates? Maybe a few thousand left, scattered across their prison ships. We're exotic animals now, Cade. The last tigers in their traveling circus."

He pressed his forehead against the wall, trying to process the magnitude of what she was telling him. Everyone he'd ever known—his parents, his friends, Hannah, the guys from work—all dead. The entire planet, silent.

"How do you know all this?"

A pause. "I make it my business to understand our captors. Information is survival in a place like this."

Before he could ask what she meant by that, the resonant tone filled the corridor again. Cell doors slid open with mechanical precision.

"Showtime," the woman said. "Try not to die out there."

This time, Cade was ready for the shock rod. When it touched his back, he let the pain wash through him and convert to energy. The alien holding it looked puzzled when he straightened up instead of collapsing.

The alien made a series of grinding sounds that might have been speech, its light cluster pulsing in what seemed like an excited pattern. It gestured to the other guards, pointing at Cade, and the blue lights in their faces flickered in what looked like communication. Whatever they were discussing, Cade's reaction to the shock rod had clearly surprised them.

They led him through different corridors this time, past chambers filled with equipment that hummed with alien purpose. Through transparent walls, he caught glimpses of other prisoners being prepared for fights—some human, others clearly not. All of them looked terrified except for one.

A woman walked calmly between two escort aliens, her movements fluid and controlled. She was smaller than him, maybe five-foot-six, with an athletic build and dark hair pulled back in a practical ponytail. What struck him wasn't her appearance but her demeanor—while everyone else shuffled like condemned prisoners, she moved like she owned the place.

Their eyes met for just a moment as their paths crossed. Her gaze was sharp, analytical, taking his measure in that brief second. Then she was past, disappearing down another corridor with her escorts.

"Who was that?" Cade asked.

His guard didn't answer.

The arena floor felt different this time. The sand had been raked clean, removing the stains from yesterday's fights, but new ones would take their place soon enough. The crowd noise was louder too—apparently word had spread about the human who'd survived his first encounter.

Cade stood at the center of the arena, trying to read the crowd's mood in the pulsing patterns of their lights. He was starting to understand that faster pulses meant excitement, slower ones boredom. Right now, they were practically strobing.

A gate opened across from him, and something emerged that made his previous opponent look friendly by comparison. The creature was massive—easily twice the size of a human, with leathery wings that stretched wide as it entered the arena. Its body was built like an enormous bat, with powerful arms that ended in wicked claws, digitigrade legs built for explosive leaps and ground combat. The wings looked too small for true flight but perfect for gliding and maneuvering during its bounding attacks. The head that swiveled toward him was elongated, with rows of sharp teeth and intelligent, predatory eyes.

Christ. What did I do to deserve the upgrade?

The creature's first attack wasn't a charge—it spread its massive wings and launched itself in a powerful leap, using both the reduced gravity and its wings to achieve an extended glide across the arena. It couldn't truly fly in the thin atmosphere, but it could cover impressive distances in bounding, wing-assisted leaps. Claws raked through the space where Cade had been standing as he rolled desperately to the side.

This wasn't going to be about martial arts technique. This was about survival instinct and raw determination. The creature's wing-assisted mobility gave it a significant advantage in positioning and attack angles, but everything had weak spots. The trick was living long enough to find them. And now he had an advantage he was starting to understand.

The bat-thing landed heavily, its wings folding against its back as it prepared for another bounding assault. This time Cade was ready—when it launched itself in another wing-assisted leap, he didn't try to dodge sideways. Instead, he used the lighter gravity to leap straight up, timing his jump to intercept the creature mid-glide.

His hands caught the thin membrane of its left wing, and his Earth-strength was enough to tear through the delicate tissue. The creature shrieked and crashed to the arena floor, dark fluid seeping from the ragged hole in its wing. Now its mobility was severely limited—angry, hurt, and reduced to ground-based attacks without its gliding advantage.

Cade stayed mobile, circling just outside its reach, waiting for another opening. The crowd's lights were pulsing so fast now they were almost solid, and he could hear what might have been cheering—a handful of human voices from somewhere high above in the prison levels.

During a brief lull as the creature repositioned itself, Cade glanced up toward the cell windows that overlooked the arena. His eyes went straight to the cell he'd identified as hers—one over, to the right. And there, behind the energy bars, was a lone silhouette. It had to be Zara. She was watching, her posture focused and analytical. Even from this distance, it almost felt like she was studying his movements, cataloging his techniques.

It occurred to him that she might be doing more than just watching. She might be learning.

The creature lunged at him again, its damaged wing dragging uselessly as it relied on its powerful arms and legs. But this time Cade didn't just sidestep—he launched himself upward in a gravity-assisted leap, grabbed the creature's elongated head as he passed over it, and used the full momentum of his arc to slam it face-first into the arena wall. The impact was tremendous—his Earth-strength combined with the mechanical advantage of the reduced gravity created a force that left cracks in both the wall and the creature's skull.

It slumped to the sand and didn't move.

The arena fell silent again, that same stunned quiet he'd experienced after his first victory. Then the alien crowd erupted in whatever passed for applause among their species, while a few human voices called out encouragement from their cell windows high above.

When they led him back to his cell, passing through the same intersection as before, she was there again. This time she spoke, her voice pitched just loud enough for him to hear.

"Efficient," she said. "But you're telegraphing your moves. Work on your deception." She paused as their escorts continued walking. "My turn tomorrow. Try to return the favor and watch for weak spots."

Then she was past, leaving him with more questions than answers. How did someone learn to fight like that? And more importantly, why was she giving him advice?

In his cell, staring out at the alien stars, Cade found himself thinking less about his own survival and more about hers. Tomorrow, it would be her turn in the arena. And something told him she was going to surprise everyone.

Including him.