Lost Horizon

by Michael Ford

  The ground to his left stirred as a pale tendril broke the surface and snaked toward him. Kobi rolled away, then managed to get to his feet.

  We don’t want you here. . . . We will consume you!

  He dodged quickly as more roots tried to claim him. The mist thickened. He wasn’t sure of distance at all. One of his feet slipped on a patch of fungus, and a cloud of spores burst around his body. He flailed his arms to clear a path, staggering. He felt unmoored from his own limbs, dizzy to the point he could barely walk at all, and his conscious mind told him this had been a terrible mistake. A creeping, insidious fear clenched at his heart like an icy fist. He should have listened to Asha and the others. If he had, they could all be flying to safety this very minute.

  He stared around in increasing panic, blinking, searching for the bomb. How would he even spot it?

  Something snagged his foot and quickly dragged him to his knees. Pressure tightened around his calf, and he was tugged violently facedown through the muck. Rancid swamp water filled his mouth. He spat it out. I have to get free! He turned over, grabbed the vine between his hands, and twisted hard. It loosened enough for him to get away. Kobi jumped to his feet and ran, splashing between the fungi. How far had he come? Half a mile? How long did he have left to go?

  Then he saw it. Red lights flashing through the gray. He dashed toward it. The bomb was the size of his entire bed back in the Sol base but sleek, like a black lozenge of metal. He ran his hands across the surface, looking for any hatch, a sign of wiring. He’d helped Hales wire up mines connected to trip wires to use as base defenses—there was always a safety wire to defuse the explosives. But there was nothing on this device. He didn’t dare move it. He guessed Asha must be right: there probably was a movement sensor that would set it off if Kobi tried to move it. If he even could. Above, he was aware of the CLAWS news drone filming him as he crouched over the bomb, assembling second by second of incriminating footage that would paint him as a villain as bad as Apana.

  How long did he have? There was no timer on the bomb, not like in the old movies he’d watched with his dad, and with Rohan and Leon at the Sol base, wiling away time; the old action movies where all you had to do was pull out one of the wires and the bomb would deactivate. If only it was that easy. Kobi knew the bomb could go off any second.

  Please, just a little longer. Give me a little longer.

  He took out the vial. The green liquid inside the glass tube swilled in the container. The extract of pure concentrated GAIA 2.0 that he’d run and taken from Apana’s loft.

  What now? Smash it over the ground, then simply wait? What if the blast incinerated the GAIA compound before it could take effect?

  “This way, Kobi. . . .”

  Kobi looked up, reeling and nauseous, because that wasn’t the voice of the clonal organism but a different, familiar tone. And when he saw Jonathan Hales standing just a few yards away, it made no sense at all. It couldn’t be him because Hales was dead, and this version of Hales was young, healthy, wearing his gym tracksuit from back at Bill Gates. A whistle hung on a chain around his neck.

  “You’re doing well, Kobi,” he said. “Just a little bit farther.”

  “Dad?” said Kobi.

  Hales smiled and wagged a finger. “No slacking, now. Stick with it.”

  Kobi moved toward him, but Hales turned and drifted deeper into the mist between twisted trees, their branches coated in bulbous fungal growths. Somewhere beneath the heady confusion suffocating his brain, Kobi knew this must be a hallucination. But it seemed so real.

  “Dad! Wait!” said Kobi. He could barely see, barely even breathe. The air seemed thick as tar. He was beginning to panic when he saw Hales waiting by a massive knotted trunk of barkless wood. Its branches rose almost out of sight above, where they spread and drooped like arachnid legs that reached back into the earth, rooting themselves there. He knew instinctively he was looking at the heart of the clonal organism, the center of this massive amalgamation of Waste-infected life.

  “This is where it ends, Kobi,” said Hales.

  The ground trembled, and more vines broke through, their tips rising like bony fingers, defying gravity. One looped around his chest and another across his shoulders. He managed to rip the first away, but others had already latched on. They squeezed Kobi slowly and forcefully and unstoppably, like a vise, pulling him toward the trunk of the tree, pressing his back into the wood. A root tickled his neck, skidding gently across his skin. He fought, jerking this way and that, but they weren’t giving up their hold. Each of his limbs was snared by what felt like bands of steel, cutting into his muscles and keeping his arms trapped against the trunk.

  Hales, untethered, walked in front on him. He looked calm.

  “Dad! Help me!”

  “Almost done now, son. It’s almost over. You know what to do. Time to end this.”

  And in that moment, Kobi understood. With the vial still in his hand and only able to move a fraction, he crushed the glass against the trunk, feeling the shards cut into his hand. His blood and the GAIA liquid mingled and trickled to the ground, disappearing into the black earth.

  What now? The roots against his neck were cutting off his air flow.

  “Dad . . . ,” he wheezed. Hales was looking down.

  By Kobi’s feet, a hint of green. Kobi’s gaze fell on a tiny shoot rising delicately, exploring the air. Not the clonal organism but something pure. Life emerging, just as his own was about to end.

  Jonathan Hales reached out a hand and stroked his cheek.

  “You did it, son. You—”

  A deafening boom ripped the world to pieces.

  Epilogue

  AT BIG EARL’S DINER in New York City, Johanna pushed away an uneaten plate of pancakes. She was wearing glasses, and the putty on her face was uncomfortable. Her escape from the Sol base with a few others had been lucky. Spike had used his drone bug to disable Snatchers as he, Johanna, Mischik, and a few others had fled through the sewers out into the slums. Mischik’s contacts had gotten them out of New Seattle, smuggled them onto a train headed east. Now, across from Johanna at the table, Mischik—wearing a wig—was checking the internet for more stories questioning CLAWS. “The Revolution has begun,” he’d said.

  Too bad it was too late for Kobi and the others, Johanna thought as she glanced down at the large photo of Kobi in the newspaper. It was a feature piece from the New York Times running through Kobi’s story. And fortunately, the staff at the paper did not buy official statements from CLAWS.

  Almost two weeks had passed since the pirate broadcast from Old Seattle: Kobi and the man the world thought was dead standing in a lush garden with their story of the truth behind the Waste disaster, the accusations against Melanie Garcia. The evil with which CLAWS had deceived the world, experimented on children, held back a way to prevent the suffering of millions. The story had caused quite a stir in the slums and some riots that CLAWS quickly quashed.

  The denials had been quick and featured on every channel. The CLAWS spokespeople vehemently denied what they called baseless claims, calling the pirate broadcast “terrorist propaganda” and a last-ditch effort by Sol to destabilize the government after the successful assault on their hideout. Apana, they stated, was the true terrorist ringleader and always had been, operating a cell from his base in the old city itself and plotting to overwhelm New Seattle with the same deadly contagion as twenty years before.

  The bomb, according to their story, was proof that Apana was a terrorist—detonated as brave CLAWS security personnel had closed in on his island fortress and center of operations. Drone footage showed Kobi near the bomb before it activated, and the aftermath: a great black cloud hanging over the familiar skyline of the old city, and on the ground, a huge crater in the middle of the black expanse of Mercer Island. The boy called Kobi Hales, Alan Apana, and the rest of the child fugitives had all been killed in the suicide attack.

  In the days afterward all of New Seattle was on edge. There was no doubt,
scientists warned, that the explosion would have sent Waste spores high into the atmosphere. It was a matter of time and chance where they would spread, but CLAWS had vowed to be vigilant and ready to react with emergency medical care when it was needed. New Seattle was evacuated, but not everyone could get out in time. Melanie Garcia herself had come onto the nightly news shows, her face pale, eyes dark from lack of sleep. “We’re working around the clock,” she said. “There will be casualties, that much is certain, but we ask the people of New Seattle and around the world to trust us. Together we’re stronger than these heartless monsters. We beat the Waste before. We can do it again.”

  Johanna’s blood had boiled with rage.

  Over the coming days, though, the anger changed to determination. The world had settled back into normal life. Johanna heard snatches of conversation that raised her spirits. People spoke about the truth of Kobi and Apana’s claim: why would Apana appear after all this time just to lie? Why would children be used to plant the bomb? Where had Niki, the poster girl of CLAWS drugs, gone? Were her mutations part of the same experiments Kobi had talked about? There was word of Horizon, a one-hundred-percent-effective cleanser—now lost, thanks to CLAWS. News articles appeared that called GAIA 2.0 a myth that appealed only to the gullible. But in other forums online and across social media, people were questioning CLAWS. The president had ordered the launch of an investigation.

  Johanna had started volunteering at a Waste clinic in Queens for those showing signs of contamination spreading from the Wastelands in agricultural parts of New York State. She was staying with the family of the head doctor there. Only if her colleagues and patients looked very closely would they see she wasn’t one of them, that her fingertips were slightly elongated, her nails tinged faintly green. As long as she didn’t use her powers ostentatiously, staying hidden wasn’t all that hard.

  She grieved for her friends. She missed them terribly, and guilt plagued her waking thoughts and her dreams, robbing her of her appetite, bringing her at sudden moments to tears. Perhaps if she had gone with the other Wastelings, things might have turned out different.

  Johanna left her seat and went to the counter to pay. She was due at the clinic in ten minutes for another shift. So far there were no indications of increased Waste infections, but everyone was on tenterhooks. She was handing over her credits when the door slammed open. All the customers looked up. It was a man in construction clothes.

  “Hey, what’s up, Ed?” said the server. “I know the coffee’s good here, but—”

  “Turn on the news!” shouted the man, pointing at the holo-display above the counter. “Haven’t you seen?”

  The server scrambled for the remote and brought up a news channel. The display above the anchor read, “Breaking News,” and across the bottom of the screen a headline flashed.

  THE END OF THE WASTE?

  A feed beneath rolled past with a series of subheads.

  “. . . story is still developing,” said the anchor, “but initial indications are that we have an unexpected environmental incident in Old Seattle.” She touched her earpiece. “Okay, we have live images of the scene coming from our news drone over the old city. . . .” She disappeared, replaced with footage filmed from several hundred feet above the Seattle Wastelands. Johanna saw the towering wall separating the old city. But something had changed. For instead of the black expanse of fire-scoured earth outside, the landscape was vibrant green. The camera panned out, showing the spread of the new vegetation. It reached for miles: trees—not mutated but regular-size oaks, birches, larches, ferns, hollies—and meadows of flowers and grassland; lush, delicate plants unlike the towering thick roots and billowing giant waxy petals that designated Waste-mutated life.

  “I’m not sure what we’re seeing,” said the anchor’s voice-over. “How is that even possible? All we know from drone testing is that the new growth is not caused by Waste.”

  “It’s GAIA,” Johanna whispered. “They did it. How?”

  Mischik was staring at the screen, standing up, a look of utter amazement on his face. “The spores that were blown out of the city . . . they weren’t carrying Waste. They carried GAIA.” Thoughts flickered across his twitching features, and he was muttering fervently to himself. “They somehow administered the real, working GAIA to the plant life before it was decimated. It’s the only way. Kobi, you genius!”

  A few people turned to look at him before focusing on the holo-display again.

  “There was life beneath the scorched lands ready to be awoken,” said Johanna. “Forest fires rejuvenate ecologies; they don’t destroy them. The Scorchers left plenty of seeds and plants alive beneath the sand, fertile and waiting to be given a spurt of life.”

  The drone descended, swooping low over the new growth. The diner watched in silence.

  “. . . we go now to CLAWS headquarters and an interview with Director Melanie Garcia.”

  Melanie appeared on the display in front of the skyscraper that housed Healhome, with several microphones aimed in her direction.

  “Melanie, has CLAWS had knowledge of the existence of GAIA for years? Are you responsible for the continuing threat of Waste? Do you have on your hands the blood of millions of lives that could have been saved?”

  Melanie’s face was taut and anxious. She spoke weakly, reciting prepared words. “It’s far too early to say what we’re seeing—this could be a new mutation of the Waste, and we must take every precaution to ensure that it doesn’t reach New Seattle. I’ll be convening with our crisis team in the next hour, and we plan to mobilize our incinerator drones to tackle the threat.”

  “Perhaps you haven’t heard,” said a reporter. “Several cities to the south are reporting enhanced crop growth of healthy Waste-free plants. It looks like whatever escaped Old Seattle is actually beneficial. People are saying GAIA 2.0 is real. Government scientists have corroborated it.”

  “I’d urge people to be cautious in their suppositions,” said Melanie Garcia. “More tests will need to be—”

  The footage switched back to the news anchor. “I’m sorry to interrupt the interview, but I’m hearing we have more breaking news. We are receiving a transmission from within Old Seattle itself.”

  The image that came up on-screen made Johanna gasp, and her heart soared. It was Kobi. He was standing on what looked like an indoor basketball court, though the walls and the rim and backboard were each covered in a layer of vines and leaves. “Is it working?” he said to someone out of frame. “Are we transmitting?”

  “Yes, you are!” whispered Johanna.

  Kobi nodded and smiled. “I hope you can see me,” he said. “It took a while to put this together. My name is Kobi Hales, and whatever CLAWS tells you, I’m alive. We’re alive.” He beckoned with his hand. “Come on, guys, show them.” Tears sprang into Johanna’s eyes as others walked into view—Asha, Fionn, Yaeko, and—was that?—Niki! They were all grinning as they crowded in next to Kobi, who continued speaking in a serious voice. “CLAWS tried to silence us with their bomb,” he said, “but we survived. And right now GAIA 2.0 is spreading across Old Seattle—neutralizing the Waste in the mutated wildlife. It may even have reached you too, wherever you’re watching this. My friends here used to have to take cleansers, but we’ve been living clean for days. The air is healthy again.” He paused. “I know this will be hard for you to believe, because for years CLAWS has fed you lies, but soon you won’t need them anymore. Their tyranny is over.” He raised his fist. “Long live GAIA! Okay, that should do it.” He approached the camera, reached across in front of it, and the footage ended abruptly.

  The news anchor returned, touching her earpiece and looking confused. “We’re still digesting this with you, folks, so bear with us. I think we need to return to CLAWS HQ and see what they make of the latest developments.”

  Melanie was talking to a colleague, then turned abruptly and marched up the steps into the CLAWS building, followed by a barrage of shouted questions. The CLAWS representative she’
d left behind bent toward the microphones. “We have no comment at this time.” Then he too scurried inside.

  “Long live GAIA!” said Johanna, laughing.

  “You think that was okay?” asked Kobi.

  “It was perfect!” Niki replied.

  “You’re a natural,” said Asha, grinning.

  The decommissioned Snatcher sat on the gym floor, trailing wires where they’d opened up its recording hardware to send their message.

  “So what now?” said Yaeko.

  “I think we just wait,” said Kobi. “Once GAIA spreads, the world will come to us.”

  “How long will that take?” asked Niki.

  Kobi shrugged. “I’ve no idea.”

  Asha grabbed a baseball mitt and ball from the side of the room. “Let’s have a game to celebrate. Been a while since Team Wasteling practiced.”

  Kobi smiled. “I wish Rohan was here to see this. But there’s something I have to do before playing.”

  “Mysterious,” said Asha, cocking her eyebrow. “We’ll be outside.”

  Leaving the Snatcher dormant on the basketball court, Kobi walked through the overgrown corridors of Bill Gates High School. It already seemed smaller than the last time he’d been here, classrooms and hallways completely overrun with plant life. In their dorm, Kobi had found his old bed, their camping stove, their shelves of books, all buried under shrubs. They’d spent a day just cutting back the growth, hacking trails through the thickets.

  He still couldn’t believe he’d made it back to the school at all. Ten days earlier, he’d woken half submerged in mud and lay there for what could have been hours, trying to piece together what had happened. He couldn’t hear anything but a dull ringing. Slowly, the fragments of his memory locked together, and he remembered the bomb. His injuries were severe. As well as what he guessed were perforated eardrums, he’d had burns across his face and chest. Where his clothes had burned away, his skin was scabbed and bruised in shades of purple and angry red. His left arm wouldn’t move at all, and both his legs screamed in pain with even the smallest shift of his body. For at least a day and a night he’d drifted in and out of consciousness, hungry and thirsty, but every time he woke, he felt stronger.