Every twenty steps or so I’d pass the radio. As I ascended the stone stairs it would provide light from its little tuning window. I peered at the numbers within: I didn’t recognize the symbols. The warm yellow light was nice, though.

The vines would thrash out of my way as I carefully navigated the rough steps. If I ever felt I was losing my balance, I grabbed them on the wall to keep from falling into the dark.

“So tell me about yourself,” I said.

“Owen had heard the announcement and knew he was now Steward of the Observatory, and therefore had the aid of the Green Radio.”

I passed the Radio, which was now playing a familiar military-sounding tune. All jaunty whistling. As I went up, it would tear itself from the wall ahead of me and then, presumably, fade away as I passed, then do it all over again.

“Announcement? I didn’t hear that. Wait, there was a lot of stuff in other languages. Was that you?”

“The Green Radio was unaffiliated with any beings who make such statements. However it could confirm that the Radio was here to help, even if Owen Walsh himself was perhaps not the best choice.”

“Uh huh. What do you do?”

“Entertainment and enlightenment. And now, Arte Shaw and his Orchestra, performing Frenesi.” A breezy, playful song echoed through the cavern.

“I have questions. Why am I no longer weak from dehydration?”

The Announcer spoke over the music. “Owen was more now than he’d been. He had survived the Forlorn Encystment, which is a feat highly regarded in this Slice. He had joined a very select group, one with only three members.”

“Me. Mandy, and Jeff Harrigan, correct?”

“Correct. The Undine and the First Human. Owen had gifts comparable to theirs.”

“I don’t appreciate being told I’m a Chosen One. I hate when the movie has a Chosen One. It’s dumb. Maybe it’ll be okay because I’m not the only Chosen One here, but I hate that crap.” I walked past the radio, yet again. It was playing something almost hilariously dramatic and serious: a huge string section and a clashing piano. “Can you change the station please?” I asked.

The numbers in the little window spun. The announcer spoke again. “Dr. Jeff Harrigan sat pensively in his meager laboratory, complaining about his son.” A swell of background music: a full orchestra, a melancholy tune.

“Always so slow,” said the voice of Dr. Jeff Harrigan. “BLEEP kid, alway so BLEEP slow, no initiative.” A sigh. The Radio had censored his swear.

“Doctor Harrigan poked miserably at his cracked tablet,” the announcer narrated. “From the available evidence, a deduction could have been made: Harrigan had sent Sean to fetch Owen Walsh some time ago, and hadn’t heard from him all afternoon.”

“Are you spying on him?” I asked. “Are you a sort of…crystal ball?”

Dramatic sting of violins. The announcer spoke quickly. “Harrigan’s head jerked upright! He scanned the room, eyes narrow.”

“Who the BLEEP is that,” Harrigan’s voice came through the speaker. He was nervy, angry. “Who said that just now?”

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“Change the station,” I said.

“Are you worried about hand sharpness? Friend, may we offer you Vingey’s Hand Sharpener? Remember: Sharp hands are happy hands!” A woman’s voice spoke; she sounded old-timey herself, just like the announcer. “My broodlets just love having sharp hands for the Night of Screams, and as their mother it’s my job to make them their lethal best!”

It was a commercial, a sort of alien advertisement. Sharp hands are happy hands.

A song began. I think it was a song; it was a series of noises that could have been someone wrecking electronics in a metal dumpster. There were words, I think, but I wasn’t sure.

I asked, “Can you look at me? Can you see the stairs, can you see if any trouble is up ahead?”

“Owen Walsh, the resentful and whiny Steward, stomped up the rough-hewn stone stairs carved thousands of years before by the Ari Maspai. He looked stronger than he had before coming down here. He still possessed an indefinable quality of low intelligence and lack of ambition, however, and inarguably low moral character. Occasionally he would pass his good friend the Green Radio, a presence of true magnificence and wisdom. Owen knew he should be inspired by such an ally.”

“That’s good,” I said. “How’s Sean? Can you look at him?”

“Sean Harrigan was calmer. He’d ceased his weeping and was currently trying to reach the key to his cage before his headlamp burned out.”

I stopped.

I turned and faced the long stairs down into the dark.

This was wrong. I wasn’t anywhere near as angry as I’d been and this was wrong.

But I had plans. The femur in my hand was cold. My femur. I couldn’t take the risk of getting Sean involved. I couldn’t. I’d end up like this, like … bones, and another Owen would come after me and another and another…

“But he doesn’t deserve this,” I said. “Nobody deserves this.”

“Owen Walsh not only survived it but gained a soul.”

I faced the speaker and the glowing yellow tuning window. “Explain please. In terms a dumb guy like me can understand.”

“Owen was now the Observatory Steward. Only a being with a soul can take that office.”

“A soul?” I’d never really been into the idea of souls, religion, afterlives. Everyone is meat. “I have a soul? I didn’t before?”

“No Human had ever had a soul before the arrival of Doctor Jeff Harrigan, the First Human. Then Mandy Nakahara, the Undine, through her ordeal, gained a soul and terrible power. Now Owen Walsh, the Steward of the Observatory Sapientiae, is the third Human to ever be granted a soul.”

“Uh huh. This feels sketchy. Is this a game, after all?”

The music stopped. “No.” The Radio’s voice was suddenly cold, ringing, firm. “Not a game. Not a game. The goal of the Radio was to get Owen to his Observatory. Then the real work would begin. Continue, Owen Walsh.”

I didn’t move. I listened; I couldn’t hear Sean’s cries any longer. But the Radio had said he’d stopped that anyway.

“Will his dad come get him out?”

“The Green Radio has few limitations, but seeing the future is among them. Dr. Harrigan had been down here many times. It was likely he would return if he knew his son was here.”

“His son whose bones help fill a mass grave.”

I thought. While I did, the Radio played one of the most maudlin, scratchy old-timey songs I have ever heard:

Friends may forsake me

Let them all forsake me

I still have you, Sonny boy

“Oh god, stop that. All right. I’ll make sure Dad Harrigan knows. If I get Sean out myself he’ll try to beat me up or throw me off this cliff.” I began ascending again. “Look ahead, if you can.”

“Far up the stairs, past the waterfall formed in the Molecular Conflagration of the Celestial Sisters, the cavern’s exit opened into a lush nighttime jungle. A party was in force nearby, the doomed, miserable campers of Harrigan’s Island dancing to decades-old music supplied by their captor.”

The sounds of a desultory gathering. An oldish song played: a male vocalist. “It cuts like a knife! But it feels so right…” The announcer continued. “The suspicious women were dancing mostly with one another, and the males were egging each other on.”

Ugh. Parties are the worst. “How long till we get there?”