by Michael Ford
“I know.”
A young Sol doctor, walking the other way, passed Leon in the corridor. She gave him a startled glance but kept moving. “Everything okay with you guys?” the doctor asked Kobi. He nodded. “Sorry, we still need to check you over. I guess we’ll look at the others later.”
Kobi shook his head. “Not now.” He couldn’t stop thinking about Leon’s words. Maybe there was some truth to them. It had been Kobi’s idea to go on the mission. And if that dart hadn’t hit Rohan, it might have found its way to Kobi. He gazed at Rohan through the window: his face was pale and still as a medic bustled around him. It brought back painful memories of Healhome and seeing Jonathan Hales hooked up to monitors as his weak body tried and failed to battle the poison in his organs.
In a way, they both got hurt because of me. They were both just trying to keep me safe.
His scalp prickled, and he glared at Asha. She didn’t need to be reading his emotions right now. “I just need some time by myself,” he said, and before Asha or the doctor could protest, he hurried away.
He made his way slowly through the base. Sol operatives rushed through the corridors or were clustered in rooms speaking urgently. He heard snippets of conversation:
“PR nightmare.”
“Police collaboration.”
“Retract Horizon.”
“Base could be compromised.”
For once, no one paid him much attention. He caught a glimpse of Spike, but he was deep in conversation with other technicians in front of a bank of holo-computers.
He arrived at the dorms and saw that Leon’s room was empty. Rohan’s too, of course. Kobi collapsed onto his bed. The red light of the camera flickered from the ceiling. He fished under the bed and pulled out the map of Old Seattle. Asha had looked into his memories and helped him to recall Hales’s exact notations, which they’d transcribed onto the new map: L for Labs, M for Medical Supplies, F for Food, as well as shading No-Go areas and marks for blocked roads and unstable buildings.
Kobi wondered what the school looked like now without their daily Waste protocols, sealing doors and windows to keep out contaminated spores. It was probably completely overrun with vegetation, the desks covered in moss, creepers across the ceiling, the gymnasium like a hothouse. It made him sad. Life had seemed so simple then, the days mapped out in a set routine of lessons, training, and following the protocols. Just Kobi and Hales. Son and so-called father.
It had been a lie, of course—all of it. Kobi folded the map away and stared at the bare concrete of his dorm wall. This was real. This was what he had to deal with now. After the disastrous trip outside, he wondered if Mischik would ever let him leave the base again. The dream of returning to the Wastelands and finding a permanent cure to the Waste was gone.
5
DINNER AT THE BASE’S cafeteria was normally a noisy affair, but the mood tonight was unsurprisingly somber. The mess hall had once fed the workers at the hydroelectric facility. It was all clean metal and long tables with benches, lit brightly by beaming lights hanging from the high ceiling. Leon sat alone, staring at his tray. Kobi thought about going over to talk, but he couldn’t face another argument. Across from Kobi, Yaeko was pushing her food around with little interest.
From the sideways glances directed toward Kobi and the others, he guessed they were the main topic of conversation among the adults too. The holo-TV was playing a constantly updating feed of headlines.
It wasn’t good news.
Apparently the clinic where they’d been just a few hours before had been shut down while CLAWS investigated possible connections to Sol. Kobi could hardly watch as the begging crowds were dispersed and the doctors were led away by New Seattle’s security forces. He saw Maria Cahill, the doctor who’d treated him earlier, among them, her hands cuffed as she was shoved into the back of a van. Dozens of Snatchers filled the sky above the slums. Teams of CLAWS anticontamination enforcers were patrolling on the ground.
Mischik, who normally ate with everyone else, was absent, shut away in an incident room with General Okafor, overseeing the damage control effort and organizing diversions to try to lure CLAWS away from the Sol base and also trying to arrange delivery of the Horizon drug to other clinics.
“Who’d want Horizon now?” asked a Sol tech at the neighboring table. “I mean, it’s too risky, right? Might get a Snatcher coming through the roof and a CLAWS interrogation team breathing down your neck.”
Kobi tried not to despair, but now the TV was showing a clip of the mayor of New Seattle. He was urging everyone to stick to CLAWS-only treatments and was even offering rewards to anyone in the slums who could provide information about the “terrorists.”
“He’s in CLAWS’s pocket too,” Asha said, sliding into a seat beside him.
“Do you think they’ll find us?” asked Kobi.
“I don’t know,” she said.
“Don’t worry about that,” said one of the Sol agents at the next table. He was wearing a security uniform. “We’ve got fail-safes. If one of the entrances is compromised, we can flood the tunnels to provide a barrier.”
“Oh, good,” Asha said. “That sounds completely safe.” She lowered her voice so only Kobi and Yaeko could hear her. “I’ve sensed Fionn. He’s close. But I can tell he’s still trying to block me,” she said. “Why would he do that?”
“I have no idea,” said Kobi. “Where do you think he is?”
“Below us, somewhere,” said Asha. “He’s close though.”
Kobi paused. Mischik had been very clear when they first arrived that certain areas were out of bounds, and those included any of the floors beneath F-Level, where their dorms, the game room, and the cafeteria were situated. From the serious look on Asha’s face, he knew she remembered that too.
“Let’s find him,” he said. “We need to check that he’s okay. And he’ll want to know about Rohan.”
Yaeko agreed to cover for them. With the base on high alert and personnel mostly occupying the operations rooms or out in the field, the lower sections were uninhabited. Asha and Kobi made their way past the game room, glancing around to check that they weren’t followed, reaching a set of steel stairs. Kobi knew there were cameras all around the base, but he hoped no one would be bothering to monitor them too much with everything that was going on. Nevertheless, he tried to keep to blind spots where he could.
On the floor directly below were the generators that powered the base, still driven by underground water currents siphoned from the dam. Kobi held up his hand for the others to halt while he sensed for the presence of any Sol staff.
“Clear,” he whispered back.
The air smelled slightly rancid, like something had died down there, and sure enough, they found the remains of a bird rotting on the ground. Kobi let his night vision adjust. Asha closed her eyes every so often. “This way,” she said, and led Kobi along a walkway to what seemed to be some sort of storage area stacked with crates.
He saw a manhole cover in the ground, slightly ajar.
“This must be the manhole Yaeko mentioned,” he said. “Maybe we should fetch Mischik.”
“No,” said Asha fiercely. “He’s got bigger things to deal with tonight, and he’ll just be angry. I don’t want to get Fionn into trouble.”
“Fionn might be in trouble already,” said Kobi. “What if he’s hurt himself?”
Asha shook her head. “That’s not it,” she said. “I sense . . . he just doesn’t want to be found. If Mischik and a bunch of Sol agents come looking, he’ll run. I know it.”
Kobi crouched, gripped the thick metal of the cover, and scraped it aside. A ladder led into darkness. Mischik had told them in the early briefing that some of the ground under the base was unstable, prone to shifting or flash floods.
He went first, climbing down the rusty ladder and dropping into a tunnel where the air was cooler. He could hear dripping somewhere, and there were discolored patches on the bare concrete walls. No doubt the tunnel had once carried water,
though it must have dried up long ago. Asha landed beside him. He couldn’t imagine why Fionn would ever want to come to this place.
“Which way?” Kobi asked. His eyes were fully adjusted now, casting the labyrinth of tunnels in monotones.
“I can’t see well,” said Asha. “Let me try something. Come closer.” Kobi felt her hand curl around his temple, a soft cool touch. Then he felt the familiar sensation as she read his mind. He thought he could almost feel the tingling spread down to the back of his eye sockets.
“You’re not . . . ?”
“Seeing through your eyes?” He stared at her grinning face. Her eyes looked a little unfocused. “You bet. I’ve done it with Fionn before but never anyone else. I’m not going to pretend this isn’t weird. Hey, you could have told me I had flapjack on my cheek.”
Kobi laughed. “What’s it like seeing what I’m seeing? Isn’t it confusing?”
“It’s like . . . You know when you squint your eyes and you see two images at once? That, except they are not replicas but totally different.”
“I’m getting travel sickness just thinking about it.”
She grinned. “Just don’t, you know, look around too fast.”
“I’ll try. I thought those ocular cameras were bad enough.” Kobi blinked, remembering that his lenses still hadn’t been removed. You forgot they were there after a while. Asha touched her temple and pointed off behind him. “I think I can sense Fionn through there.”
They walked in single file, Kobi up front. He couldn’t quite believe that Asha was looking out through his eyes. At the moment though, there wasn’t much to make out. The architecture was almost featureless. Tunnels, running at an almost imperceptible slant, branched off at right angles every few yards, with the occasional flood grate in the wall. Some passages were wider and taller than others, and they passed the odd side-channel that would have been too small to enter, even on hands and knees. Kobi wondered how far the tunnels reached—maybe all the way under New Seattle. Yet despite the air of stillness and the solitary, muffled sounds of his and Asha’s breathing, he sensed they weren’t alone.
Ahead, a shape moved past a junction, accompanied by a flash of light—a flashlight, perhaps.
“There!” Kobi said, speeding up. Asha’s footsteps shuffled after him.
“Wait!” she whispered urgently.
Kobi reached the intersection just in time to see the figure round a corner into a tighter shaft. On the ground was a packet of cookies, like the ones distributed from the Sol cafeteria. “Fionn!” He moved off, crouching down to enter the tunnel.
“Slow down!” called Asha, her voice echoing from several directions at once.
But Kobi didn’t stop. In a hunt, you couldn’t lose sight of the target. “I’ll come back.” He tripped and almost sprawled on his face, but he caught himself against the walls. The ground ahead ramped steeply down, with a channel cut into the floor. He braced himself, hands on the ceiling, and descended. At the bottom, the tunnel widened into a much larger concrete basin almost like a long, shallow swimming pool emptied of water. There were two semicircular openings at the end. The walls were cracked in places, with pieces of crumbling masonry scattered over the ground. He could hear movement close by. It had to be Fionn. Kobi moved back to fetch Asha.
“He’s really close,” she said.
Asha glanced back the way they’d come. “We’ve already taken a few turns,” she said. “What if we get lost down here?”
Kobi shook his head. “Hales made me practice mental mapping all the time. I can find my way back.”
“Are you sure?”
Kobi had to admit he wasn’t: this place was a total maze with no sun or Horizon to use as a guide. All of it looked the same, just concrete and metal. It was amazing Fionn could find his way around. “Orientation is everything. Use markers where you can—things you will remember or won’t miss.” The voice of Hales drifted to him as if whispering through the tunnel, and Kobi heard his younger self reply.
“But, Dad, how do you mark anything in the Wastelands? It’s always . . . growing. Changing.”
“It’s about choosing the right landmarks.”
Kobi looked around at the tunnels. If there aren’t landmarks, he thought, I’ll have to make them.
“Ever read Hansel and Gretel?” he said to Asha.
“You know we didn’t have many books at Healhome.”
“Hales used to tell me loads of stories, beginning with old fairy tales,” said Kobi. “Hansel and Gretel were a brother and sister, and their parents wanted to get rid of them.”
“Sounds like a nice bedtime story,” Asha said dryly.
Kobi couldn’t resist a smile. “Yeah, fairy tales are often pretty dark. So their parents led them into the middle of the forest, then abandoned them. But Hansel overheard the plan, so he left breadcrumbs behind them, to mark the path home.”
Asha frowned. “You don’t actually want to use food as a trail, do you? Because that’s kinda dumb . . .”
Kobi paced slowly down the tunnel until he found a rusted piece of disused pipe hanging from the wall. He reached out and tore the pipe away, twisting it until it snapped free, leaving a jagged point. Using the point, he scraped an arrow into the tunnel wall toward the exit.
“I like your thinking,” said Asha.
They set off toward the semicircular openings, and every twenty steps or so Kobi scratched an arrow into the tunnel wall. He didn’t tell Asha the whole story—not the parts about birds eating Hansel’s crumbs or their getting kidnapped by a cannibal witch. It’s the principle that counts. . . .
They entered another tunnel, barely tall enough to walk through in a crouch and heading down at a steeper angle. There were a few odd gouge marks in the walls, and Kobi kicked at more food wrappers. “He definitely came this way,” Kobi said, scraping the rusted edge of the pipe along the ceiling in an arrow.
Asha pointed at a tunnel to the right. The ceiling had collapsed, leaving a pile of rubble, but it had been partially cleared. Kobi’s stomach squirmed. If it was unstable down here, they could all be in danger. So it’s even more important that we get Fionn out.
They passed the heap of fallen stones and pressed on.
“I can feel him,” said Asha. She suddenly raised her voice and called Fionn’s name, but all her cry did was drift in the darkness.
Kobi was breathing hard, and only when they stopped at the next intersection did he realize he could hear the flow of water. “We have to be out from under the base now,” he said. “Maybe even close to the city.”
Asha suddenly gripped her head as if in pain.
“What’s the matter?” asked Kobi.
She blinked, her eyes watering. “I don’t know. I thought I could just sense Fionn, but it’s bigger than that. Much bigger.”
His heart gave a single tangible thud like a strike to a base drum. A chittering sound came from the openings ahead. At first Kobi thought it sounded like a disrupted comms signal, but as it grew louder he realized it was some sort of animal, or animals.
“I think we should go back up,” said Asha, her face turning to Kobi in the dark. Even in the dimness he could make out the panic in her oval eyes.
He nodded and turned around, only to be blinded by light. Kobi raised a hand, staggering backward. The light dimmed a fraction, and he realized it was a flashlight, now pointing at an angle toward the ground. The figure who held it was just a silhouette, but as Kobi’s eyes recovered, he recognized him.
“Fionn?” Asha gasped.
The younger boy’s hair was wild, and there were black smudges across his cheeks and around his eyes. His clothes were torn. He’d grown taller over the six months since they’d left Healhome, but now he seemed to stand taller still, even though it had been only a week since Kobi last saw him. A single tooth almost as long as his finger hung on a leather thong around his neck. It had once belonged to the mutated wolf he’d befriended in the Wastelands: the creature had fallen in a desperate fight with S
natchers during the escape from Healhome.
“It’s me,” said Fionn, sending his thought telepathically to Asha and Kobi.
The sounds from the shafts behind Kobi and Asha were getting louder by the moment. In his mind, Kobi felt Fionn’s thoughts—dark and hostile, projected using his telepathy. “You shouldn’t be here.”
“Fionn,” said Asha nervously. “What’s that sound?”
Fionn shifted the flashlight again, directing it past them. Wriggling shadows painted the walls of the shaft. Shapes scurried in a mass of claws, squirming tails, and yellow, Waste-infected eyes.
Rats!
6
THE CREATURES CAME IN a wave, spilling over each other in their hunger to get to Kobi and Asha. Kobi was momentarily reminded of the attack by the rats in the transit tunnel beneath Old Seattle. This time though, Fionn stood apart, watching on, motionless.
Kobi had no time to think, but his body automatically braced to fight, hands reaching high to protect his face. His last hope was that if he killed enough of the rats with his bare hands they might retreat. He rushed in front of Asha, who was shouting something. As the rats leaped up toward him, he let out a primal scream.
The river of rodents broke apart at the last moment, streaming in two channels around their feet, before coalescing once more and making for Fionn.
“No!” screamed Asha, reaching out in terror.
The rats sprang onto Fionn’s body, climbing his legs and spreading over his torso. The whole time he stood his ground, arms stretched out, as the creatures covered him completely, up his neck and through his hair, leaving only his face clear. At any moment, Kobi expected him to buckle as they bit into his skin, but Fionn was unperturbed. Serene, even, his eyes fixed on Asha. The rats stilled, perching across his limbs or clinging with their claws to his clothes, snouts twitching.
“Fionn, you’re controlling them,” Asha said, as if convincing herself about what she was seeing. She looked simultaneously horrified and in awe. Kobi shared the feeling: Fionn had never been this powerful before.
