Marcus Chen watched the Phoenix footage for the seventh time, alone in his Portland workshop at 2 AM. On screen: Jayson Rodriguez stopping to help a fallen competitor, losing precious seconds, barely holding 39th place. The betting sites called it stupidity. The enhancement companies called it proof that naturals couldn't compete.
Marcus called it exactly what he'd been looking for.
His workshop told the story of a man caught between worlds. State-of-the-art fabrication equipment sat beside his grandfather's manual sewing machine. Prototypes of compression gear lined the walls—each one technically perfect, each one failing to capture something essential. Three years since he'd launched Endure. Three years of bleeding money while Nike and Adidas carved up the enhancement market with gear that promised to make humans into machines.
He'd been hours from calling it quits when the Phoenix feed crossed his screen.
The phone rang. His CFO, despite the hour.
"You watching this?" Janet's voice carried exhaustion. "Natural kid just qualified for the Olympics."
"I saw."
"Marketing opportunity. David versus Goliath. We could—"
"No." Marcus minimized the footage, pulled up Endure's financials. Three months of runway left, maybe four if he laid off half his team. "We're not using him for a marketing stunt."
"Then what? We're hemorrhaging cash. The enhancement brands have locked up every sponsored athlete worth having. Unless you've got a miracle in that workshop—"
"What if we sponsored him?"
Silence. Then: "The natural? Marcus, he placed 39th. Out of 40. His Olympic heat will last exactly as long as it takes the enhanced athletes to lap him."
"He stopped to help someone and still qualified."
"Which proves he's either noble or stupid. Neither sells shoes."
Marcus pulled up the slowdown footage, zoomed on Jayson's feet. "Janet, what's he wearing?"
"Does it matter?"
"Humor me."
He heard keys clicking. "Looks like... Jesus. Are those '44 Olympics? Those have to be twenty-three years old."
"Twenty-three years old and they just survived 50K in Phoenix heat. While our latest prototype fell apart in lab testing at half that distance." Marcus stood, paced between machines. "What if that's what we've been missing? What if the future isn't about adding technology?"
"It's about... what? Nostalgia?"
"It's about endurance. Real endurance. Not battery life or servo duration." He thought about his grandfather, who'd run marathons in canvas shoes, who'd built a company on the idea that humans were enough. "The kid's got no sponsors. No coach. No chance. But he's got something every enhanced athlete has traded away."
"Which is?"
"He's still human."
Janet sighed. "The board will never approve sponsoring a sure loss."
"Then don't tell them. I'll use my discretionary fund."
"That's for R&D."
"This is R&D. Researching whether David can still beat Goliath if we give him the right stone."
Jayson woke in his childhood bed to find three people staring at him: his mother, his sister, and a stranger in an expensive suit.
"Mijo, this man says he wants to sponsor you," Elena said, suspicion thick in her voice. "I told him you were sleeping, but—"
"Marcus Chen." The stranger extended a hand. "Endure Athletics. I drove through the night from Portland."
Jayson sat up, tried to process. He'd been home twelve hours, had slept for ten of them. His body felt like it had been disassembled and rebuilt by someone who'd lost the manual.
"Sponsor?" His voice came out rough. "I placed 39th."
"You stopped to help someone and still qualified. In shoes older than some of my employees." Marcus gestured to the Olympic shoes on the floor, still impossibly intact. "I want to build you gear that honors that. No enhancement tech. No shortcuts. Just the best natural equipment we can design."
Maya appeared in the doorway with her laptop. "Endure Athletics. Founded 2081. Annual revenue..." She whistled. "You're bleeding money."
"Honestly? Yes. We bet on enhancement gear and lost. The big companies do it better." Marcus's smile turned sharp. "But they can't do what your brother represents. They've forgotten how to make gear for humans."
"What's the catch?" Jayson asked.
"No catch. Full sponsorship through the Olympics. Gear, coaching budget, travel, stipend for your family. In exchange, you wear our logo and help us remember what endurance really means."
Elena crossed her arms. "And when he loses? When the enhanced athletes embarrass him? You'll drop him like every corporation drops people who stop being useful."
Marcus met her glare. "My grandfather ran the '44 Olympic marathon. Finished seventh. He started Endure with the belief that human limits were meant to be pushed, not replaced. The company lost its way chasing enhancement money. Your son could help us find it again."
"Or you could use him for publicity and discard him."
"Mom," Jayson said quietly. "Let me handle this."
She left, but her skepticism lingered like smoke. Maya stayed, fingers flying across her keyboard, pulling up contract law and sponsorship precedents.
"The stipend," Jayson asked. "How much?"
"Fifty thousand through the Olympics. Plus bonuses for top-30 finish."
"I need seventy-five. Non-negotiable."
Marcus blinked. "That's... aggressive for someone with no other offers."
"My sister's been turning down $300K jobs to keep our family afloat. My mother works double shifts. My father needs surgery that insurance won't cover because his injury was 'operator error.'" Jayson stood, his legs protesting. "You want my story? It costs what it costs."
"And if I say no?"
"Then I run in my father's shoes and you go back to bleeding money alone."
Maya's typing stopped. Marcus Chen studied Jayson with new interest.
"Seventy-five thousand. But I want exclusive gear rights and first option on your story after the Olympics."
"Deal."
They shook hands. Marcus glanced around the apartment—water stains on the ceiling, mold creeping up walls, everything held together by determination and duct tape.
"One more thing," Marcus said. "You need a coach. Someone who understands natural training. The enhancement coaches won't touch you."
"I'll figure it out."
"I have a suggestion. Sarah Chen. My aunt."
Jayson's heart sank. "The drunk who gets thrown out of high school meets?"
"The woman who coached twelve medals before enhancement killed her career. She drinks because she lost everything." Marcus pulled out his phone, showed video from a recent meet. "Watch her hands when she thinks no one's looking."
On screen, Sarah Chen, clearly intoxicated, was correcting a young runner's form with perfect precision. Her words were slurred but her eye was sharp, catching flaws invisible to most.
"She's still in there," Marcus said. "Under the bourbon and bitterness. She just needs a reason to surface."
"You want me to be that reason?"
"I want her to be yours. Natural athletes are extinct because we stopped believing in them. She never stopped. She just stopped hoping."
Marcus left his card and a check. "First month's stipend. The factory visit can wait until you're walking without wincing. But think about Sarah. The Olympics are in five months. That's no time at all to prepare for the impossible."
After he left, Maya held up the check. "This is real. Holy shit, Jayson, this is real money."
"It's not enough."
"It's more than we've ever—"
"No. I mean for training. Coaching. Five months to go from 39th against continentals to... what? Hoping for 30th against the world?" He slumped back on the bed. "Marcus is right. I need Sarah Chen."
"The drunk?"
"The coach who made champions before champions needed charging ports."
They found her at Sector 7's abandoned track, 11 AM and already three drinks deep. Sarah Chen sat on rusted bleachers, watching ghosts run lanes that existed only in
They found her at Sector 7's abandoned track, 11 AM and already three drinks deep. Sarah Chen sat on rusted bleachers, watching ghosts run lanes that existed only in memory.
"Miguel Rodriguez's boy," she said without turning. "Saw Phoenix. Stupid stop. Cost you five seconds."
"Cost me my humanity if I hadn't."
That made her turn. Sarah Chen looked worse in daylight—face carved by disappointment, hands that shook until they gripped the bottle. But her eyes, bloodshot and suspicious, still tracked Jayson's gait as he climbed the bleachers.
"Humanity." She laughed, bitter as burnt coffee. "That what you think you saved? Kid was enhanced. Would've been fine."
"His temperature was spiking past 41 degrees."
"His systems would have compensated."
"His systems had failed. That's why he was on the ground."
Sarah took another pull from her bottle—bourbon, by the smell. "You always argue with potential coaches?"
"You always drink before noon?"
"Only on days that end in Y." But she set the bottle aside, studied him properly. "Phoenix was ugly. Form fell apart after 30K. Stride shortened by 15 percent. Arm carriage went to shit. How'd you even hold 39th?"
"Everyone else fell apart worse."
"No. You fell apart natural. They fell apart enhanced. Different kind of ugly." She stood, swayed slightly. "Show me your form. 100 meters."
"I can barely walk."
"I didn't ask your legs. I asked you. 100 meters, or get off my bleachers."
Jayson looked at Maya, who shrugged. He limped down to the track, stretched muscles that screamed protest, then ran the straightaway at what might charitably be called a jog.
"Stop." Sarah's voice cracked like a whip. "That's not your form. That's you pretending to have form. Again. This time run like you did at kilometer 45 in Phoenix. When everything hurt and nothing worked but you kept moving anyway."
The second attempt was uglier but truer. Jayson let his body find its rhythm in the pain, the strange grace that came from accepting rather than fighting limitation.
"There," Sarah said quietly. "There it is. Raw endurance. Not pretty, not efficient by enhanced standards. But honest." She climbed down from the bleachers, bourbon forgotten. "Your father had it. That forward lean when the body wants to quit. That arm swing that wastes energy but somehow finds more."
"Will you coach me?"
"I'm a drunk who ruins high school meets."
"You're the coach who put twelve natural athletes on Olympic podiums."
"That was before." She gestured at the abandoned facility, at the world beyond it. "Before they made us obsolete. Before they turned running into software updates. Before..." She trailed off, lost in some specific ghost.
Maya stepped forward. "My brother placed 39th at continentals with no coaching. Just imagine what he could do with—"
"With a bitter old woman who can't let go?" Sarah's laugh could strip paint. "Little girl, I've forgotten more about running than your enhancement algorithms ever learned. But knowing and teaching are different things. Teaching requires hope. I buried that with my last athlete."
"Who was your last athlete?" Jayson asked.
Sarah's face closed. "Someone who trusted me to prepare them for a world that no longer existed. Barcelona 2048. Last Olympics to allow natural entries in open competition. She placed 42nd in the marathon. Would have been top ten in any previous Olympics. But the world had moved on."
"What happened to her?"
"She teaches elementary school. Tells kids about when humans could run. They don't believe her." Sarah picked up her bottle, considered it, set it down again. "That's what I'd be preparing you for. A future of telling stories nobody believes."
"Marcus Chen thinks differently."
Sarah's head snapped up. "My nephew contacted you?"
"He's sponsoring me. Full ride through the Olympics."
"Of course he is." Something shifted in Sarah's expression. "His grandfather and I used to argue about the future. He thought enhancement was evolution. I thought it was erasure. Guess we both lost."
"Or maybe you were both right," Jayson said. "Maybe it's evolution AND erasure. Question is what we do about it."
Sarah studied him for a long moment. Behind them, the city hummed with the business of forgetting what bodies could do without upgrades. The track waited, patient as gravity, for someone to remember.
"Seventy-five thousand," she said finally.
"What?"
"My coaching fee. Through the Olympics. Non-negotiable."
Jayson's heart sank. "The sponsorship is seventy-five total. Family stipend included. I can't—"
"From Marcus. Not you." Sarah pulled out her phone, dialed with surprising steadiness. "Marcus? It's Sarah. Yeah, I'm sober enough. Your natural boy is here... No, I haven't agreed to anything. But if I do, it's seventy-five. My old rate, adjusted for inflation and spite."
She listened, face unreadable. Maya pulled up something on her laptop—probably Endure's financials, calculating whether they could afford both sponsorship and coaching.
"He said yes," Sarah announced, hanging up. "Probably hoping I'll drink myself to death before collecting. Joke's on him—I'm too stubborn to die convenient." She turned to Jayson. "Five months to Olympics. You placed 39th running on talent and stupidity. I can't make you faster than enhancement, but I can make you smarter. Question is whether smart is enough anymore."
"When do we start?"
"Now. First lesson—you're moving wrong. Not running, moving. Standing, walking, existing. Your body learned compensation patterns to deal with shit shoes and no coaching. We need to tear all that down and rebuild." She gestured to the track. "Twenty laps, recovery pace. I want to see every flaw."
"I can barely walk."
"Perfect. Flaws show better when you're broken. Maya, right? You build things?"
Maya nodded, surprised to be addressed.
"Good. I'll need help tracking his biometrics. Can't trust enhancement sensors, but we need data. Heart rate, stride length, ground contact time. Old school metrics for an old school athlete."
As Jayson started his twenty laps—each one agony on Phoenix-shattered legs—Sarah and Maya huddled over the laptop. He caught fragments of their conversation: lactate threshold, biomechanical efficiency, the science of suffering. Two brilliant women figuring out how to make a human compete with machines.
By lap ten, Sarah was walking beside him, not drunk anymore but something sharper. "Shorter steps. You're overstriding to compensate for weak glutes. That's energy bleeding with every contact."
By lap fifteen, she'd identified twelve major form flaws and sixteen minor ones. Each correction felt wrong, fighting against two years of self-taught patterns.
"I'm slower," Jayson gasped.
"You're more efficient. Speed comes later. First we teach you to stop wasting yourself." She glanced at Maya. "What's his heart rate?"
"152. But his pace is almost a minute per kilometer slower than Phoenix."
"Good. He was running Phoenix at 85% effort. Unsustainable. We're going to teach him to run at 70% what feels like 85%." Sarah smiled, the first real smile he'd seen from her. "Enhancement makes athletes into engines. We're going to make you into water—finding the easiest path, using the least energy, lasting longer than any machine."
Twenty laps took forever. When Jayson finally stopped, legs trembling, Sarah had filled a notebook with observations. Maya had built a tracking system from spare parts and determination. The abandoned track felt less abandoned, more like something waiting to wake up.
"Tomorrow," Sarah announced, "we start actual training. 5 AM. Bring three shirts—you'll sweat through them all. Bring real food, not that enhancement gel shit. Bring the shoes you qualified in, but you won't wear them. Those are for "Those are for races. Training, you wear whatever I give you. We're going to break you down to nothing and rebuild you correct."
"And if I can't be rebuilt?"
"Then you'll fail honest instead of failing stupid." Sarah packed up her notebook. "Maya, I need everything you can find on natural athletic performance from the last clean era. Training logs, diet plans, recovery protocols. The enhancement companies buried most of it, but data wants to be free."
"Already started," Maya said, showing a screen full of archived files. "Found a cache from 2039, back when they still studied natural optimization."
"Good. Jayson, eat something real. Sleep nine hours. Tomorrow we start finding out if human is enough, or if we're just arranging a prettier funeral for natural athletics."
She walked away, steadier than when they'd arrived. The bourbon bottle sat forgotten on the bleachers.
"Think she'll stay sober?" Maya asked.
Jayson watched his new coach disappear into Sector 7's maze of abandoned athletic dreams. "She just needs a reason. Same as anyone."
Week Three of Training
"Again," Sarah commanded from the infield.
Jayson reset at the 200m start. His legs felt like they belonged to someone else—someone who'd never learned bad habits, who moved with economy instead of effort. Three weeks of Sarah's rebuilding had stripped away everything he thought he knew about running.
"This time, forget everything except hip drive. The power comes from here"—she jabbed his core—"not your legs. Legs are just levers. Core is the engine."
He ran the curve, focused on driving from his center. It felt alien, like learning to walk again. But the stopwatch didn't lie: 26.8 seconds. A half-second faster than the previous rep, on tired legs.
"Better," Sarah said, which from her was high praise. "Maya, what's his efficiency score?"
Maya looked up from her jury-rigged monitoring station—three laptops, borrowed medical sensors, and code she'd written to integrate it all. "Ground contact time down 12%, vertical oscillation reduced 18%. He's wasting less energy per stride."
"Still not enough." Sarah pulled up video on her tablet, showed Jayson his form in slow motion. "See how your left foot lands? Microseconds behind optimal. That's speed bleeding away. Again."
Marcus Chen arrived as Jayson started his eighth 200m repeat. The sponsor watched from the track entrance, cataloging the changes. Three weeks had transformed more than Jayson's stride. Sarah moved with purpose now, the morning bourbon replaced by coffee strong enough to strip paint. The abandoned facility had become their private laboratory.
"How's my investment?" Marcus asked when Jayson finished the set.
"Stubborn," Sarah replied. "Coachable. Still probably going to embarrass himself in Neo-Singapore, but it'll be a better class of embarrassment."
"I brought the prototypes." Marcus wheeled in a case. "Based on the specs you sent. Minimal tech, maximum function."
He pulled out shoes that looked almost primitive compared to enhancement gear. No power return systems, no gait optimization, no real-time adjustment. Just carefully engineered simplicity—lightweight mesh, carbon-fiber plate designed for natural foot strike, cushioning that protected without interfering.
"Try them," Marcus urged.
Jayson laced them up, took a few experimental strides. They felt... honest. Like his father's shoes but built for the future instead of the past.
"One lap," Sarah instructed. "75% effort. Feel the difference."
The shoes disappeared under him. Not because they added power, but because they removed friction. Every stride translated cleanly to forward motion. No energy lost to poor cushioning or misaligned plates. Just human effort, optimized.
"2:58," Maya announced when he finished. "Same effort as your 3:04 in the old trainers."
"Six seconds per lap," Sarah calculated. "Over 50K, that's..."
"Four minutes," Marcus finished. "Maybe five. Enough to change 39th place to..."
"Still not winning," Jayson said. "The enhancement gap is bigger than five minutes."
"No," Sarah corrected. "But it might be enough to finish in the money. Top 30 gets appearance fees, endorsements, a future. Below that is just a story nobody pays to hear."
Marcus pulled out more gear—shorts with minimal seaming to prevent chafing, shirts that wicked moisture without the weight of enhancement cooling systems, socks engineered to prevent blisters through 50 kilometers of repetitive motion.
"This is what Endure should have been making all along," he said quietly. "Gear for humans who want to stay human. Your story is helping me remember why I started the company."
"My story hasn't been written yet," Jayson reminded him.
"No. But you're holding the pen." Marcus gathered the empty prototype cases. "Sarah, the family check?"
"Cleared yesterday. Seventy-five thousand reasons to keep believing in lost causes." She turned to Jayson. "Your mother can stop the double shifts. Your father can get real surgery instead of charity pills. Your sister can stop turning down fortunes. You bought them breathing room. Question is what you do with yours."
After Marcus left, they continued training. Intervals on the track, form drills that felt like meditation, strength work using equipment Sarah had salvaged from the facility's abandoned gym. Everything designed to build efficiency rather than raw power.
"Enhancement athletes train for peak output," Sarah explained during recovery. "We're training you for optimal duration. They're sprinting a marathon. You're going to marathon a sprint."
"Poetic," Maya said from her station. "Also mathematically questionable."
"Math assumes all variables are equal. They're not." Sarah pulled up race footage from Phoenix, froze it at kilometer 45. "Look at the enhanced athletes. Perfect form, still strong. Now look at Jayson. Ragged, inefficient, barely vertical. But moving. At the point where their systems started failing, his experience with suffering became an advantage."
"So we're banking on everyone else failing?"
"We're banking on you failing less. Or failing better. Or—" Sarah stopped, rubbed her face. "Honestly, kid, I don't know what we're banking on. The sport moved past us. But you qualified fair, you stopped to help someone, and you're still here. That has to mean something."
"Even if it doesn't mean winning?"
"Especially then. Winning's easy to measure. Being human when human isn't enough? That's harder to quantify." She checked her watch. "Cool down. Twenty minutes easy. Tomorrow we start the long runs. Real long runs. The kind enhancement athletes can't do because their batteries die at four hours."
Jayson started his cool down, feeling the honest ache of natural training. No neural dampening to ease the discomfort. No recovery optimization to speed healing. Just the ancient conversation between will and flesh, the negotiation that had carried humans through history before they learned to cheat.
Maya packed up her monitoring station. "Sarah, can I ask you something?"
"You've been asking me things for three weeks."
"Something personal. Your last athlete, Barcelona 2048. What was her name?"
Sarah went still. "Why?"
"Because you've never said it. You'll talk about her performance, her training, her failure. But never her name."
"Anna Park." The name came out soft. "Korean-American. Ran like poetry, believed like religion. I told her she could beat the enhanced athletes if she just believed hard enough. If she trained perfect enough. If she..." Sarah trailed off. "I lied. Not on purpose, but lies don't need intention. Just misplaced faith."
"Where is she now?"
"Teaching third grade in Seattle. Married a software engineer. Has two kids who'll probably get enhanced when they're old enough." Sarah managed a bitter smile. "She sends Christmas cards. Tells me she's happy. Doesn't blame me. Makes it worse somehow."
"You gave her a chance," Maya said gently.
"I gave her false hope. There's a difference." Sarah watched Jayson round the far turn, form holding despite exhaustion. "This time, no lies
"This time, no lies. You want to run against machines? Fine. But we do it honest. No false promises. No pretending the gap isn't what it is." Sarah stood, brushed dust from ancient bleachers. "You'll be the best natural athlete you can be. If that's enough, we'll all be surprised. If it's not, at least you'll know you gave them everything human had left."
Week Eight
The morning runs had become meditation. 30 kilometers through Sector 12's broken streets, past enhancement clinics advertising "Become Your Best Self," through neighborhoods where natural meant poor and poor meant forgotten.
Jayson moved differently now. Sarah had stripped his stride to components and rebuilt it with the patience of someone who remembered when efficiency was everything. His breathing synced to footfalls—three steps in, two out, the rhythm automatic as heartbeat. The Endure shoes had molded to his feet, becoming extensions rather than equipment.
"Looking smooth, Rodriguez!" Someone shouted from a bakery doorway.
He waved without breaking stride. Eight weeks ago, no one knew his name. Now, the neighborhood watched his morning runs like tracking weather. Kids drew chalk outlines of his route. Workers heading to early shifts called out split times. Sector 12 had adopted him as their impossible hope.
Back at the track, Sarah waited with Maya and something new—a pace bike, electric motor humming.
"Today we practice reality," Sarah announced. "Maya's programmed this to run Olympic record pace for 50K. You're going to follow it as long as you can."
"That's 2:07 pace," Jayson said. "Enhanced athletes can't even—"
"I know what it is. But you need to feel it. Need to understand in your bones what you're up against." Sarah's face was stone. "No fantasies. No maybes. Just truth."
The bike started. Jayson followed.
For one kilometer, he kept contact. The pace felt like controlled falling, each stride a small catastrophe avoided. His watch showed 2:33 per kilometer—impossible to maintain, but he maintained it.
By two kilometers, the bike pulled ahead. Not much. Meters. But the gap grew with mechanical certainty.
By five kilometers, Jayson ran alone, the bike a distant dot on the curve. His body screamed warnings—lactate flooding muscles, oxygen debt mounting, form beginning to crack despite Sarah's rebuilding.
"Time!" he gasped, passing the 5K mark.
"12:42," Maya called. "On pace for 2:06."
"Where's the bike?"
"Forty seconds ahead."
Forty seconds. In five kilometers. By 50K, that gap would be... everything.
Jayson slowed to sustainable pace, letting his heart rate drop, processing the brutal math. Sarah approached, no sympathy in her expression.
"Now you know," she said simply. "That's what wins gold. That's what enhancement builds. You can't touch it. Won't ever touch it. Question is what you do with that knowledge."
"Why show me this?"
"Because Marcus is selling hope and you're buying dreams, and someone needs to deal in reality." She softened slightly. "But also because there's more than one race happening in Neo-Singapore. The enhancement companies are racing each other. You're racing history."
"History doesn't pay bills."
"No. But 30th place does. 25th place pays better. Top 20 means appearance fees for a year." Sarah pulled out her tablet, showed projections. "The Olympics will have 200 starters. Maybe 100 finishers—enhancement fails more often when pushed to limits. Of those 100, the top 50 are untouchable. But 51 through 100? That's your race."
"Racing for 51st," Jayson said. "Inspiring."
"Racing to be the first natural finisher in twelve years. Racing to prove human still belongs in the conversation. Racing because your family bet everything on impossible and you're too stubborn to fold."
Maya looked up from her data. "Based on current training metrics, you're on track for 2:39 in optimal conditions. Neo-Singapore won't be optimal—heat, humidity, the psychological weight. But 2:42, maybe 2:43 is realistic."
"Which historically places..."
"Around 40th. Maybe 35th if enhancement failures spike." Maya met his eyes. "But that's assuming you run perfect. No stops to help people. No playing hero. Just racing."
Jayson thought about Thompson in Denver, about the kid in Phoenix. About choosing to lose for the right reasons. "I can't promise that."
"I know," Sarah said. "That's why we're training you to have seconds to spare. Every efficiency gain, every biomechanical improvement, every mental trick I can teach—it's all building a buffer. So when you inevitably do something stupidly human, maybe you'll still have enough left to matter."
They trained through the afternoon heat. Long repeats at threshold pace, form drills until muscle memory overwrote old patterns, core work that left him shaking. Sarah had contacted other coaches from the natural era, gathering wisdom like a doomsday prepper hoarding supplies.
"Kenji Yamamoto says altitude tents," she announced, reading messages. "Simulated elevation to boost red blood cells. Legal for naturals, gives maybe 2% improvement."
"Can we afford—"
"Marcus already ordered one. Should arrive tomorrow." She scrolled further. "Maria Santos suggests barefoot running to strengthen feet. Old Cuban technique. Worth trying."
"My feet are already—"
"Your feet learned compensation patterns from bad shoes. We're unlearning." Sarah set aside the tablet. "Ten minutes barefoot on grass. Feel how your foot wants to land without technology interfering."
The grass was a small patch behind the facility, somehow surviving despite neglect. Jayson's bare feet found rhythm different from any shoe—shorter strides, forefoot landing, springs loading naturally. It hurt in new ways, used muscles that shoes had let atrophy.
"There," Sarah said quietly. "That's how humans ran for millennia. Before cushioning, before support, before enhancement. Just meat and bone and will against the earth."
"It's slower."
"It's honest. Speed built on honesty lasts longer than speed built on lies." She checked her watch. "Enough. Recovery run, then massage, then eat real food. Tomorrow we go long—35K at marathon pace. Time to see if these new patterns hold when you're tired."
That evening, Jayson sat with his family around a table that didn't wobble—they'd finally afforded repairs. His father moved easier, prescription medications replacing generic ones. His mother had quit one job, slept eight hours for the first time in years. Maya worked on enhancement contracts she'd finally accepted, though she still kept their apartment as home base.
"Sarah Chen called," Elena said, passing rice. "Says you're ahead of schedule. Says you might actually..."
"Might actually what?" Jayson asked.
"Finish with dignity. Her words." His mother's smile carried tears. "My son, finishing with dignity at the Olympics. Who would have thought?"
"It's not enough," Miguel said quietly. Everyone turned to him. "Dignity, I mean. He's not there for dignity. He's there to race."
"Against machines," Maya reminded. "Against technology we can't match."
"Against fear," Miguel corrected. "Everyone's afraid to be just human anymore. Afraid it's not enough. Jayson's proving the question still matters."
"Even if the answer is no?"
"Especially then. Someone has to ask. Someone has to try." Miguel reached across, gripped Jayson's shoulder with hands that still trembled but held firm. "When I
"When I ran in '44, I knew I wouldn't win. But I ran anyway. Someone had to carry the flag for what we were before we started cutting ourselves apart and rebuilding with corporate parts." Miguel's eyes found the Olympic shoes by the door, now in rotation with Endure's prototypes. "You're not just racing. You're witnessing."
"Witnessing what?" Jayson asked.
"The end. Or maybe a beginning. Depends on what you do with your seconds."
Later, alone in his room, Jayson stared at the altitude tent Marcus had delivered—a hypoxic chamber that would simulate sleeping at 3,000 meters. Enhancement athletes didn't need such tricks; their blood carried oxygen with mechanical efficiency. But natural athletes took every legal edge, even if it meant sleeping in expensive plastic.
His phone buzzed. A message from an unknown number, with a video attached.
The footage was grainy, handheld. A young girl, maybe ten, running through streets that looked like Sector 12. She wore ratty shoes held together with tape, but her form was pure—the shortened stride Sarah taught, the forward lean, the arm carriage that wasted nothing. At the end, she stopped, looked directly at the camera, and said in accented English: "Running like Jayson Rodriguez. Running human."
The message below read: My daughter in São Paulo. She saw your Phoenix race. Now she runs every morning. Thank you for showing her possible.
Jayson saved the video, added it to a folder that had been growing. Kids from Delhi, Detroit, Dakar—all running. Not fast, not efficient by enhancement standards. But running. The Natural Movement had found its symbol, even if the symbol himself could barely crack the top 40.
Another message appeared, this one from Sarah: Tomorrow we break you. 35K at goal pace, no mercy. Neo-Singapore is 11 weeks away. Time to stop training to finish and start training to race.
He crawled into the altitude tent, sealed himself in thin air. Through the clear plastic, his father's shoes sat beside Endure's prototypes—past and future, sentiment and science, proof that some things endure even when the world insists they can't.
Somewhere in Portland, Marcus Chen was betting his company on a story. Somewhere in Sector 7, Sarah Chen was plotting workouts that would push human limits without breaking them. Somewhere in São Paulo, a girl was setting her alarm to run like someone who chose human over easy.
And in an altitude tent in Sector 12, Jayson Rodriguez breathed thin air and thick responsibility, preparing for a race he couldn't win but had to run anyway.
Because someone had to finish.