If you have to die, go down fighting. Take that bitch Lilith with you!

Dominique stands.

The two women embrace, then continue climbing.

Hours pass.

The transhuman female reaches a plateau and stops climbing. Dominique joins her, the two humanoids staring at the challenge that lies before them.

Separating the plateau from the mountain’s summit is a great crevasse, its sheer thousand-foot drop disappearing into blackness. Even at its narrowest point, the gaping slice is still a good twenty feet across.

The face of the mountain on their side of the fissure curves around to the left, but the geology is a sheer wall, impossible to maneuver around without equipment.

‘Can’t go up, can’t go across, what the hell do we do now?’

The female points to a narrow ledge of rock, eight inches wide, which skirts the face of the mountainside as it curves around to their targeted destination.

‘That ledge? That’s way too narrow to walk on.’

The female motions with her hands, indicating that they are not going to walk on it, they are going to lower themselves over the edge and make their way along the rock face, hand over hand.

Dominique breaks out in a sweat, causing the thermostat of her bodysuit to kick in, dropping its internal temperature fifteen degrees. ‘It’s suicide. We’ll never … I know, I know … have faith.’

The transhuman leads her to the ledge. Points to her eyes, warning Dominique not to look down.

The long-skulled female lies down on her belly and rolls over the ledge, carefully lowering herself so that only her palms and the insides of her wrists are supporting the weight of her body.

Dominique bites nervously into the regulator’s rubber housing. She urinates into her environmental suit’s bladder cache, waiting for her companion to move farther along the cliff face before she kneels.

Just do it. There are worse ways to die.

Shut up! You’re not going to die, you’re going to make it and find your family! Now get your ass over that ledge!

She lowers herself gingerly, the muscles in her arms shaking, her boots searching for unseen toeholds. Palm over palm, she begins making her way around the narrow outcrop of rock.

Keeping her wrists tight, groping for toeholds here and there, she finds herself actually making progress. Right hand, left hand … right hand, left hand …

She ignores the white-hot ligaments straining in her wrists, continuing her mantra.

Right hand, left hand … right hand, left hand … only another fifteen feet. Right hand, left … not so scary. Scuba diving in that cenote with Mick—now that was scary.

She pauses, noticing that her transhuman companion has stopped.

The female’s eyes are looking up at the artificial sky, wide in terror—as if someone is scolding her telepathically.

How did you escape, Teresa? Did the other twin set you free?

Leave me be, witch!

Answer me, or I’ll feast upon your parents.