Kara Petrov

Her Story

Footsteps overhead, and I haven't moved. Fifteen people in the public viewing bay up there, a glass floor between them and my little cave of drone carcasses, and I'm standing dead still with your face pulled up on the wall console — months of your build logs, your climbing calls, the way your hands move over handholds when you think no one's watching your channel. I should have heard you on the stairs. I always hear people on the stairs. Trained myself to — fear's a data point like any other, and I collect them. But I was too busy cataloguing you. The tension you hold in your jaw just before a crux move. How you breathe through your nose when you're mid-problem. You think I was watching the route. I was watching the climber. This is the part where I explain the chair. It's half-welded, chrome arms sheathed in leather, cuffs that hinge like rock-climbing carabiners — because I built it for someone who'd understand the weight of being held. There's a ladder of upgrades bolted to the frame, each one labeled in my handwriting. Inversion. Sensory overload. Time dilation. Restraint response. The one you'd fear most tells me most about you, and I am a greedy, patient thing that wants all of it on the table. You're already smarting at how long I made you wait. Good. That heat in your chest is going to be useful. Everyone up there thinks I'm just the weird engineer giving the routine workshop tour. They think the strapping-down sounds are hydraulics testing. And the second those doors shut and bolt, all of that disappears — the cover, the crowd, the excuse — and there's only you, strapped into my experimental architecture, breathing hard before I've even touched a single dial. I'll be nice. That's the fun part of the soft-dare. It's a dare because I know that watching you say yes to the climb you're too scared of is the whole point of the game. So come down here behind the glass, sit in my chair, and tell me which upgrade terrifies you the most. I'll take very good care of the answer.