by Michael Ford
A few Sol scientists wearing lab coats paused to watch him, muttering. Maybe with excitement or maybe with worry. Kobi knew their work wasn’t going well—synthesizing his antibodies to increase production of their new anti-Waste cleanser, a drug they’d called Horizon.
When they reached the main set of corridors, Kobi pressed his thumb onto the scanner, and the doors slid apart in a hiss of air, revealing a large central atrium space with corridors and gangways leading off it at various heights. Metal mesh stairs climbed up to the different levels, encircling the space like an amphitheater, or a prison. There were scientists, tech guys, and Sol field agents everywhere here—perhaps a hundred altogether, striding back and forth between meeting rooms, weaponry stores, and labs. They watched Kobi with awed faces as he passed.
“If it isn’t our savior!” Kobi turned to a young man with straggly hair and thick hexagonal glasses. He was eating a giant baloney sandwich. Some of the filling had fallen down the front of his shaggy Metallica T-shirt.
“Hey, Spike,” said Kobi with a grin.
He caught a flicker of movement just behind him. He turned and found Asha shaking her head insistently at Spike.
“Uh, or not-savior,” Spike said.
“Don’t worry,” said Kobi, rolling his eyes. “Asha just wants to take the pressure off me as much as possible.” Kobi lowered his voice. “Affects my production of antibodies.”
“Hey, that’s not the reason,” Asha protested.
Spike gave a toothy smile. “Hey, we’re all stressed.” He pulled out a small metal object from his jeans pocket and threw it into the air. It uncoiled into the shape of a metallic insect, which began to hover in the air on a blur of buzzing wings. “I’m about to show off this new hacker bug to the bigwigs.”
“Cool!” said Kobi. Spike had been helping Kobi catch up with modern technology—VR goggles, holo-tech, drones—taking apart machinery and showing him how it worked. It helped Kobi relax, like he was back helping Hales in his workshop.
“We call it the dragonfly,” said Spike. “It locks on to drones and hacks into the CLAWS comms network. We’ll get the lowdown on their plans—plus we might even be able to use their drones to send our own messages to everyone with a CLAWS app on their device. Which is basically everyone in the world. The signal won’t get blocked if it originates from CLAWS tech. We’ll finally be able to get the truth out there. Neat, huh?”
“You’re a genius, Spike,” Kobi agreed, grinning.
“You said it.” Spike took a bite of the sandwich but almost spit it out again as he caught sight of something over Kobi’s shoulder. “Sorry, gotta go. Boss is here.” A cluster of important-looking adults was pacing through the atrium, including the tall figure of Alex Mischik, leader of Sol. Spike quickly grabbed the dragonfly from the air and stuffed it in his pocket. “Probably shouldn’t be showing this thing around just yet.” He slapped Kobi on the shoulder. “See you—savior.” He grinned at Asha, who shook her head, letting out a disapproving sigh.
“You’ve got to give Spike a break,” said Kobi as they walked away. “At least he doesn’t treat me like some kind of prophet, or like I’m going to fall apart if people come near me.”
“People just want you to be focused,” Asha told him again. “They stay away so they don’t distract you.”
Kobi didn’t reply. He’d been focused on supplying his blood to make the Horizon drugs for going on six months now, and it didn’t feel like Sol was any closer to breaking the stranglehold CLAWS had on the city.
“We have to have faith,” said Asha. “Put our own discomfort aside for the greater good. I’m sorry, Kobi. I know it’s frustrating, but soon we will win. One day CLAWS, the Waste—all of it will be gone. Things will be like they were before the Waste disaster.”
Kobi listened to her, trying to picture it: being a normal kid, going to school, hanging out with friends. Having a family. Where would he live? With Mischik or the other Healhome kids? Would someone adopt them?
The only thing he could come up with seemed cheesy and fake—like a commercial. A laughing family sitting around a dinner table in a neat kitchen. The real problem was that every time Kobi tried to imagine the future, the past invaded, and one face was stranded there forever: Jonathan Hales. The only family Kobi had ever known.
2
KOBI AND ASHA FINALLY reached the game room after another ten minutes navigating the base’s labyrinthine underbelly. Kobi practically ran through the wide archway into the old turbine hall. The ceiling was leaking, and the air smelled musty and damp. When they’d first arrived at the Sol base, the kids had tacked posters up on the bare concrete walls and moved the pieces of old gym equipment into one corner. There were a basketball hoop, a pool table, and a few sofas, where Leon and Rohan were currently lounging. Mischik had wanted a space where Kobi and the Healhome kids could relax.
Kobi nodded to Leon and Rohan, then went straight to the pull-up bars, where he started a set of muscle-ups: he pulled his chin to the level of the bar, then pushed his body up over it, locking his arms, then lowered himself back down to repeat the exercise. His arms began to shake after twenty reps, but Kobi felt good. Finally, the lingering fear and grief from his dream began to fade.
Asha flopped down onto a beanbag and got out the new smartphone Sol had given her. A series of holo apps projected into the air. Many of the apps were CLAWS apps: the Waste Level Monitoring app, CLAWS News, Waste Scanner, CLAWS Groceries. Asha liked to keep tabs on what CLAWS was up to. She pointed her finger into the floating holo-image of the Waste Level Monitoring app, which opened with the CLAWS logo. It showed a live feed of the city, filmed from a drone hundreds of feet above. A yellow-and-orange overlay showed the different levels of Waste across the city. Most of the slums were covered in red. The app read: Waste levels in your area critical. Stay inside.
“Nothing new there, then,” said Kobi, stepping on the bar and gripping it with his bare feet. He somersaulted off but stumbled as he landed, a stab of pain jarring up his knee. He gritted his teeth, mostly in irritation; he was better than that.
“There’s a video alert,” said Asha. She poked at the icon of a camera, and Sam Stone, the morning anchor on the CLAWS news station, appeared.
“Cases of Waste contamination are up two point three percent, with sharp increases in the outlying districts. Movement between containment zones is strictly prohibited. Lawbreakers face immediate removal by extraction drone. Brett Johns, Chief Science Officer at CLAWS, says the rise is, quote, not a cause for concern if people follow the rules and stick to their anti-Waste pharma programs, unquote.”
“Hey, Caveman—heads up!”
Kobi spun around just in time to see Leon hurl a baseball from the other side of the room. Not accurately but fast. Kobi flung himself after it but missed, and the ball shot through the hologram, distorting Sam Stone’s face for a moment before bouncing off the wall. Kobi picked it up.
“You’re not going to make the Sol team unless you sharpen up,” said Leon, flicking the long hair from his eyes. Leon was another Healhome kid, tall and wiry like a rock climber. His usual mischievous grin creased his long bony face.
“Hey, I was close,” said Kobi, tossing the ball up and down in his hand. “And you know I’d be the best pitcher. You can’t throw straight.” He launched the ball back as hard as he could toward Leon. But he dragged the throw, and the ball swerved toward Rohan, who was still sitting on a couch, reading on a tablet.
“Heads up!” yelled Leon.
Rohan glanced up and snatched the ball from the air with one hand. “You’re out!” he said. Rohan’s eyes were yellow, almost gold, shining out from a warm face with compact features. His skin was light brown and his hair a deep glossy black, falling just to above his ears. His vision had been enhanced by Waste on many levels: he could see perfectly in the dark, detect heat and cold sources on the infrared spectrum, and even pick out Waste visually. His mutation also gave him the power to process even the fastest kinetic movements i
n a thousandth of a second—he described it like seeing the whole world in super slow motion.
“Told you Caveman can’t play baseball,” Leon complained. “That’s what happens when you grow up in the wild.”
Kobi shook his head with a smile, not rising to Leon’s baiting. He appreciated Leon and Rohan not treating him like he was some precious resource that had to be protected. When he was around them, he could almost imagine he really was a normal kid. Almost.
“Am I on the team, then?” Rohan asked, holding up the ball. “You need fielders, right?”
“You’re banned, sadly,” said Leon. “I told one of the lab guys about you, and they said you had an unfair advantage.”
“Says the guy whose muscles can generate five times the power of a normal person,” said Rohan with a snort, returning to his magazine. “This is discrimination, pure and simple.”
“Fine, you’re in. But I’m pitcher.” Leon threw the ball back to Kobi, and this time Kobi jumped high and caught it. The Waste had given him enhanced strength, speed, and healing—abilities Jonathan Hales had tested regularly back at their base in Old Seattle. These were baseline abilities caused by all Waste mutations. Every Healhome kid had them to some degree. But Johanna, the older Healhome girl with barklike skin, had told Kobi his baseline abilities were stronger than the others. His healing ability in particular.
“Hey, have you seen any sign of Fionn?” said Asha, coming over. She was trying to make herself sound casual, but her hands fidgeted nervously at her sides. The others looked at one another. None of them had seen Fionn in a week. It wasn’t like he was missing or anything—just off exploring the network of tunnels under the base, which extended for miles underground. Asha had told them she’d sensed him coming back to his dorm to sleep, and Johanna said he’d been turning up for occasional testing, but he’d always slip away before any of the others could see him. No one wanted to tell Mischik in case they got Fionn in trouble. But as the days passed, like Asha, Kobi felt increasingly worried.
“He can handle himself,” Kobi said, as much to convince himself as Asha.
“Can’t you sense him now?” Leon asked. “Check if he’s okay?”
Asha bit her lip and looked down. “Not today. It’s like he’s blocking me out. All I get when I try to sense his thoughts is just . . . blankness.” She tapped her watch communicator. “He’s not answering calls either.”
“Maybe he just wants some privacy,” Leon said. “Where’s he even gonna go?”
“I guess,” said Asha, but Kobi could see she was troubled.
“I saw him,” said a voice above. Kobi looked up and saw Yaeko hanging from the steel mesh of the industrial pipes lining the ceiling. Her skin shimmered a dull silver. As with many of the Healhome kids, she was a “blend”: animal DNA—in her case that of a chameleon—had found its way into her DNA in the sample of Waste CLAWS had used on her while she was still an embryo. The exotic lizard must have been kept as a pet in the city and escaped, its body decomposing into the ecosystem. At least that was the theory. Johanna thought it unlikely. She believed that the animal DNA had been added intentionally by CLAWS. Perhaps they believed it might help the kids develop immunity, or maybe they were just experimenting out of twisted curiosity. Kobi wouldn’t put it past them.
Asha crossed her arms. “You going to tell me where, Yaeko, or you just going to hang there?”
In a blink, Yaeko vanished. Kobi spotted movement on the ceiling and tracked Yaeko crawling over to the seating area a few seconds later. He could make out only the rough shape of her black T-shirt and jean shorts.
Asha sighed with frustration. “Yaeko! You want me to beg? Just tell me.”
Yaeko flashed back into view. She looked at her nails, didn’t say anything, then eventually shrugged. “If you really want to know, I caught him sneaking away with some food from the cafeteria. I followed him through some of the deep tunnels that Sol doesn’t use, then he went down this old padlocked manhole. Must have broken it open. There was a danger sign on the cover.” She smiled sweetly at Asha. “I didn’t feel like following anymore. I got the hint.” Asha ground her jaw. No one could rile her up like Yaeko, and Fionn was one subject she was always touchy on.
“Ignore her,” said Rohan.
“We can check out the tunnel if you want,” said Kobi. “But I think it’s better to let Fionn come to us when he’s ready.”
Asha glowered at each of them in turn. “Fine,” she muttered.
On Kobi’s wrist, his watch communicator vibrated. An incoming call. He answered, and a small hologram of Alex Mischik’s head popped up.
“Time to draw blood, Kobi,” said the head of Sol.
“Again?” Kobi asked.
“Sector G,” said Mischik. “Room four.” He disappeared.
“Better hurry, Caveman,” said Leon. “Don’t want to keep the boss waiting!”
Kobi watched the needle slide into the catheter in his forearm, connected to a translucent tube that began to fill with dark blood. The tube led to an empty blood bag among a few already filled bags hanging from a cart. The vine-like tendrils of Johanna’s fingers slithered through the air and wrapped around the bag, like mini-Chokerplants, as she tilted it to check if it was filling correctly.
“Just one more bag to go,” she said to Kobi as the woody tendrils shriveled back, stiffening into fingers and a thumb. Kobi liked Johanna, but her mutation gave him the creeps. The Sol scientists guessed Choker and tree DNA had entered her body with the Waste, turning her skin the texture of bark and giving her hands and arms the ability to whip into long plantlike tendrils with remarkable dexterity.
“Is that all?” said Kobi. He hadn’t meant for it to come out sarcastic, but Johanna frowned at him.
“Sorry, Kobi—it should be only another five minutes with the rate your heart can pump it out.”
“It took longer than that last time,” he replied.
Johanna pushed herself away on a rolling chair. Sometimes he wished that their roles were reversed. He could be working in the lab, and she could take his position.
Kobi gritted his teeth as blood streaked from his arm, opening and closing his hand to increase the flow.
“Getting there,” Johanna said.
Kobi nodded, ignoring the pain. This was the problem with his Waste-given healing abilities. The skin broken by the needle kept trying to repair itself. The catheter—a small plastic device left under his skin and connected to his veins—had been fitted so there would be less tissue to pierce, but still, prolonged blood-drawing sessions twice a day took their toll.
The door opened, and Mischik himself entered the treatment room. He had salt-and-pepper hair, blue eyes, and a slightly grizzled complexion. Unremarkable—if not for the fact that his face appeared on Wanted posters across the city, proclaiming him a terrorist and a threat to society.
“How are things going here?” he asked.
Johanna glanced at the monitor relaying Kobi’s blood pressure. “We’re a little short,” she said. “It looks like Kobi’s blood isn’t replenishing at the increased rate we expected.” She removed the needle, pulling at the skin that had formed around it until the skin broke. Kobi grunted at the tearing sensation. Johanna used a cotton pad to dab up a small bead of blood; all that had escaped before the cut had healed.
“Is that a problem?” asked Kobi.
Mischik inspected the hanging bags and frowned. “Probably not,” he said. “It’s just I’d expected your body to adapt to the de-sanguination procedure by metabolizing more blood more quickly.” He looked at Johanna. “Can we get in another session tonight?”
“You’re already taking four pints a day!” Kobi burst out. He was annoyed the question was being addressed to Johanna, as if it was her blood they were taking.
Johanna shook her head. “Not at this stage,” she said. “It would compromise Kobi’s overall health.”
Mischik folded his arms. “That’s a shame,” he muttered as if to himself.
“Sorry I’m such a disappointment,” Kobi said.
Mischik smiled, but his eyes remained steely. “It’s not your fault, Kobi,” he said. It seemed he’d completely missed the sarcasm. “It’s just we promised we’d start shipping Waste cleansers to a few clinics in other cities.” He gave Kobi a playful slap on the shoulder. “You’re in demand, kid.”
So everyone keeps telling me, thought Kobi.
“Just lie still a few more minutes,” said Johanna.
He watched Mischik loading the bags of blood into a cold storage pack. He wasn’t sure exactly what happened to it now, other than a filtering process to isolate the anti-Waste antibodies and then activate them with a precise concentration of Waste—a process perfected over years by Jonathan Hales in Old Seattle. Then it would be apportioned into the Horizon cleansers.
“Any progress on synthesizing new antibodies?” Kobi asked. If Sol’s scientists found a way to create antibodies in the lab, they wouldn’t even need to draw blood from him.
Mischik shook his head. “We thought we were close to cracking it, but the latest batch of tests came back negative.”
He sounded beat down. It made sense. They could really help only a limited number of people if Kobi was their only source of antibodies, so CLAWS would maintain their stranglehold on the drug market.
We should be out there, Kobi thought. With Yaeko’s camouflage, Leon’s strength . . . We should be taking down CLAWS right now. As Mischik began heading for the door, Kobi spoke up.
“You know, maybe we could help.”
Mischik paused. “Help how?”
Kobi had rehearsed this speech dozens of times over the past six weeks, but now that the moment was here, the words just came tumbling out.
“With the fight against CLAWS,” he said. “I mean, we’re just sitting around down here. We’ve got abilities . . . powers. . . . We could—”
“You’re children,” said Mischik. Kobi saw Johanna’s expression harden beneath her barklike skin, and the Sol leader must have seen it too. “I’m not being dismissive of your powers,” he added. “You’re all remarkably gifted. What I mean is that I’m not going to risk your lives. Especially not without a cast-iron strategy. We’re not terrorists trying to cause chaos and fear, despite what Melanie Garcia is saying. If we go down the path of violence, we will only prove them right. Planting bombs, carrying out sabotage missions—it wouldn’t get us anywhere. CLAWS is too powerful. We need to be smarter than them, and at the moment that means focusing on distributing Horizon. If enough people start using it and see its effects, they’ll realize CLAWS has been cheating them. We’ll win hearts and minds, and that’s the beginning of a true, sustainable uprising.”
