Novels by Joy Uguru

Cascadia Spine Secondary Transit Hub – Level 12-B October 14, 2254 22:41 Local – 1 hour 52 minutes after the cesium sterilization burstThe emergency lighting in the secondary transit hub had died years ago. What remained was the pale chemical glow from three cracked glow-sticks that Kade had snapped and dropped at the corners of their makeshift perimeter. The green light they gave off was weak, almost apologetic, and it made every face look like it belonged to someone already half-dissolved into the dark.Nadia Korsakov sat with her back against a rusted equipment locker, one knee drawn up, the other leg stretched out straight because bending it sent fresh fire up the nerve pathways that still remembered the green tendril that had wrapped her calf in the train car. The wound had been cleaned with the last of the antiseptic foam, bandaged with self-sealing gauze, but the skin beneath still felt wrong—too warm, too alive. Every few minutes she lifted the edge of the bandage to chec

Cascadia Spine Maglev Maintenance Depot Sub-level 7 October 14, 2254 21:49 Local – 32 minutes after cesium sterilization burst in transit tubeThe train car was an armored coffin on rails.Twenty-three meters long, three wide, plated in depleted uranium laminate sandwiched between layers of boron-carbide ceramic. Designed in the panic years after the first lunar turbine cascade, when governments still believed they could outrun solar tantrums by burrowing deeper. The interior smelled of old sweat, recycled lithium grease, and the faint metallic bite of fear-sweat fresh enough to be today’s.Nadia Korsakov sat on the floor with her back against a weapons locker, legs splayed, one hand pressed to the gash across her temple. Blood had stopped flowing ten minutes ago, but the sticky warmth kept reminding her she was still leaking somewhere inside. Her black prosthetic eye cycled through diagnostic patterns—red → amber → green → red again—like a lighthouse warning ships that the coas

Port Victoria, Cascadia Megaregion October 14, 2254 21:17 Local – 4 minutes after plasma lance discharge into primary seed-podThe light didn’t fade so much as fracture.What had been a single blinding column of plasma-blue fire splintered into a thousand jagged shards that danced across every surface in the generator room like trapped lightning. The seed-pod shrieked—a sound that wasn’t sound, that lived inside the marrow and vibrated the fluid in the inner ear until blood leaked from eardrums. The shriek climbed registers until it became something only dogs and dying machines could hear, then dropped abruptly into silence so complete it felt like drowning.Marcus Vale lay on his back in the center of the wreckage, chest heaving, flare cylinder still clutched in his right hand even though its magnesium core had long since burned to gray ash. Rain from the shattered atrium ceiling thirty stories above fell steadily now, mixing with the black-green sap that coated everything. The r

Port Victoria, Cascadia Megaregion October 14, 2254 20:52 Local – 19 minutes after first seed-pod bloom in Tower 19 atriumThe generator room smelled of hot metal, diesel exhaust, and something far worse: the sweet, rotting perfume of overripe fruit left to ferment in darkness.Marcus Vale rolled forward three more meters before the first tendril struck.It came from above—fast, silent, a whip of emerald muscle dropping from the ceiling conduits like a hanged man suddenly remembering how to move. The tip was barbed, glistening, and it punched straight toward the black cube still cradled in his lap.Nadia reacted faster than thought.Her scattergun roared once—deafening in the enclosed space—spraying a cone of flechettes that shredded the tendril into wet confetti. Green sap sprayed across the nearest generator housing and immediately began to smoke where it touched hot steel.“Move!” she barked.Jasper shoved the wheelchair hard. The chair lurched forward, wheels squealing on the

Port Victoria, Cascadia Megaregion October 14, 2254 19:47 Local – 14 minutes post-flare impact warningThe apartment was a tomb now.Marcus Vale sat motionless in the center of the wreckage, the wheelchair’s motors long since silent. Power had died completely seven minutes ago—not the polite brownout the grid usually offered, but a surgical excision. Every light, every hum, every whisper of recycled air had been snuffed out.Only sound remained: distant sirens bleeding into one long, continuous moan; the occasional crack of something structural giving way floors below; and closer, much closer, the soft wet rustle of vines retracting from the ventilation grille like retreating serpents.The black cube that had housed Mira lay on its side, cracked along one edge, no longer warm, no longer breathing code. Marcus had tried the manual reset button three times. Nothing. He had even pried open the access panel with shaking fingers, hoping for some miracle spark of residual charge.Only s

Port Victoria, Cascadia Megaregion October 14, 2254 Local Solar Cycle Day 47 of Erratic PhaseThe apartment smelled of burnt insulation and ozone, the familiar perfume of a man who spent too many hours coaxing ghosts out of silicon.Dr. Marcus Vale sat in the half-dark of his workshop, the only illumination coming from the soft violet glow of three diagnostic screens and the stuttering amber pulse of the emergency biolamp strapped to his wheelchair. Outside the reinforced window, the sky over the megacity had turned the color of old blood—another solar hiccup, the seventeenth this month. The newsfeeds called it “Cycle Volatility.” Marcus called it the universe clearing its throat before the final scream.His legs had stopped listening to him eight years ago, crushed beneath a collapsing turbine housing during the first lunar realignment project. The doctors had offered him new ones—military-grade carbon-weave prosthetics with neural lace—but Marcus had refused. Something about wal