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  Kobi realized she was standing over him. Could she tell the truth through her telepathy, or simply by sight?

  “We need to get out,” said Asha.

  The craft tipped suddenly, and more water began to gush inside. Kobi lost his grip on the body, which slumped into the rising water.

  “I can’t leave him,” he said. He struggled back toward the body, even as the transport was being overwhelmed by the inflow.

  “You have to,” said Asha, tugging him. “Come on!”

  “I think we better leave about now!” shouted Yaeko from the passenger hold. Reluctantly, Kobi followed her to where Leon had managed to prize open an emergency door over the wing. He stood by as the Healhome kids shuffled out. His body felt like lead, and he could barely think. Tears stung his eyes.

  “Focus, Kobi, never lose focus. The minute you lose concentration in a survival situation it kills you.” Hales’s words seemed to float into his head. Kobi felt oddly calm all of a sudden. He could hear cries outside—adult shouts of concern. When he reached the fresh air along with the other Healhome kids, he saw the transport was half-submerged, nose down and listing near one of the pontoons. There were people on shallow-bottomed motorboats cutting through the water toward them. As they closed in, Kobi saw they looked desperate, with drawn features and tattered clothes. But they were helping the others off the stricken aircraft. Beyond the rescue operation, the sheer scale of the shanties left him stunned—they rose high above on the slopes and for what looked like miles in either direction. It was so different from the sleek modern city where Healhome was based. There were no stories-high, flashing holograms here. No sleek steel and glass. The homes of the slums, their roofs broken with makeshift vents and chimneys, appeared to be built almost entirely of scrap and other detritus. He tore his eyes away and climbed onto a boat with Asha and Fionn and two adults, both women.

  “Who are you?” asked Kobi.

  “Friends of Dr. Hales,” said one of the women simply. Kobi nodded. It’s all he could do. Jonathan Hales’s pale, lifeless face haunted his vision. It didn’t seem real.

  The other two boats were already heading for the strange lake’s shore. The two women continued to throw worried glances upward as if afraid what else might come from the sky. As they followed the others, Kobi saw there were several people waiting on motorbikes, their faces concealed behind helmets, and engines running.

  “Speed it up! Speed it up!” one yelled. “We can’t stay out here!”

  The Healhome kids were disembarking, and each was being directed onto the back of a bike. Asha looked as dumbfounded as Kobi felt, and she shrugged to Fionn. “I have no idea. But they seem to be expecting us.”

  Their boat reached the shore too. Asha helped Fionn off, then jumped over herself.

  One of the women frowned over Kobi’s shoulder. “What’s—? Oh no!”

  Kobi turned just as the boat tipped and the spray burst upward in a plume. Kobi’s heart leaped in fright as something rose from the surface. Snatcher! The tiny part of him not consumed by fear told him it must have been the one that crashed with the transport.

  Water spilled from the Snatcher’s dented, scorched carapace as Kobi struggled and failed to keep his balance. He couldn’t do a thing as he fell overboard. Plunged beneath the water into a chaotic maelstrom of bubbles, he saw the rest of the Snatcher’s body. He fought his panic, kicking for the surface, then felt a hand grab his. He was heaved up and managed to get the top half of his body into the pontoon before a viselike grip found his foot. Kobi strained against the Snatcher, but he felt himself slipping back. Asha had one arm. Fionn another, but they would never be strong enough. His fingers began to slide through theirs, and a fear he’d never felt before almost paralyzed him. If it gets me under the water, I’m dead . . .

  “Help us!” roared Asha.

  He heard pounding footsteps, saw his own terror matched in the stares of his friends as they clung on. They knew it too. It was only a matter of time. His ankle screamed in pain as the claw bit deeper into his flesh.

  A hollow whoosh went past his ear, followed by an explosive bang. Suddenly the pressure on his foot vanished and he flopped onto the pontoon, yanked up by his friends. He looked back and saw the Snatcher smoking on the water before it slowly sank beneath the surface in a slick of bubbles and swirling oil. His relief quickly changed to confusion. Had it somehow malfunctioned?

  Then he saw a tall man in a helmet on the jetty, with his visor up to reveal glinting blue eyes. He carried some sort of tubular weapon on his shoulder, like a bazooka but smaller and more lightweight, with dials on the side.

  “Where’s Hales?” he shouted.

  Kobi took a moment before replying. “He didn’t make it.” It sounded cold and emotionless coming out of Kobi’s mouth. He felt leaden with shock. He kept thinking Hales was actually on the jetty, his brain and body confused. It shouldn’t have ended like that.

  He saw the man’s gaze soften as he took a deep breath, but then he regained his composure.

  “Come on,” he said, slamming down the visor of his helmet.

  Kobi, soaked to his skin and limping, followed them along the pontoons to the bikes. His feet left bloody puddles on the pontoon. Asha and Fionn both climbed on behind other riders, and Kobi took the back seat on the tall man’s own bike. The man folded the weapon and slid it into a harness across the handlebars.

  Kobi noticed hundreds of faces looking out from the slopes—men, women, and children—watching the scene. And when he looked back across the lake, where the bow of the transport was still just visible above the water, he saw a swarm in the sky above the city. More Snatchers. Perhaps thirty of them! Kobi could barely comprehend the vision.

  Kobi’s savior twisted the bike’s throttle, and the whole band of riders headed for the slum city.

  They traveled at breakneck speed, plunging into narrow alleyways between shacks large and small, bouncing over the uneven ground. The air in the alleyways was thick with the scent of burning fuels and cooking smells. They dodged dogs and cats and chickens, but most of the people seemed to be keeping well out of the way, crouched in doorways and leaning through hatches. A few cheered as the bike convoy roared past. It was like some sort of peasant village from the Middle Ages, but instead of wooden buildings, everything seemed to be scrap metal or tarpaulins. There were odd signs of tech too—bright screens glimpsed through windows, or tottering droids, parts of harvested engines powering mechanisms Kobi didn’t have time to understand. The people he saw were mostly normal, but from time to time something not quite right caught his attention. A man with a single eye in the middle of his forehead, or odd furred features. He could have sworn he saw a toddler with a pair of diaphanous wings flickering from her back, but perhaps it was just a costume. Could these people be fugitives from the Wastelands too, or sufferers of Waste mutations like the Healhome kids?

  What he didn’t see any of was plant life.

  After they’d been traveling for two or three minutes, around countless twists and turns, through patches of light and dark, the bikes began to slow. Up ahead, the leaders seemed to simply vanish, and when Kobi reached the same spot, he saw a large hatch open in the alley, and a ramp leading downward. His stomach flipped as they descended quickly underground. His mind and body remained in shock, and he could barely take in his surroundings, only to wonder if his dad had ever been here, of what he might say if he was with him now.

  It seemed at first like a network of bare earth tunnels, but there were cables and pipes too lining the walls and ceiling. Dim lights stationed at regular intervals lit the way. Guards too, standing at archway openings, waved the bikers through. They weren’t in the open anymore, but the feeling wasn’t pleasant at all. The walls seemed to press in, and all Kobi could think of was how far from daylight they were traveling. Just as the claustrophobia was getting unbearable, the tunnel opened up into a larger underground chamber, and the bikes drew together and killed their engines. Kobi’s rider climbed off aft
er him, then tugged off the helmet. Beneath, he saw those startling blue eyes were set in a hard, grizzled face, topped with salt-and-pepper hair. And Kobi recognized it at once from the hologram projection from the GrowCycle lab.

  “You’re Mischik,” he said.

  “Correct,” replied the man. He held out a gloved hand. “Nice to meet you again, Kobi.”

  25

  “YOU SAID MEET ME ‘again’?” said Kobi.

  He was lying on a medical bed, with a masked nurse dressing the wound on his lower calf where the Snatcher had grabbed him. All around, the other Healhome escapees were being seen to. The infirmary looked more like a military field tent than a real hospital.

  Mischik nodded. “You didn’t have a name back then. You were just a baby, like the others, but I’ll never forget your label—S374. Dr. Hales was astonished when he realized what you represented. An end to Waste, an end to CLAWS. He named you Kobi. It means ‘supplanter.’”

  The grief welled up again. Kobi had to squeeze his fist to stop the tears. “Did he tell you he was going to kidnap me?” he asked.

  Mischik grinned. “Kidnap is the wrong word. That’s what Melanie called it. But yes, Jon told me. We both realized the threat you posed to the company. The experiments were top secret. You, the rest of them—you had no legal rights because no one knew you existed.”

  “But you still worked there?” said Asha, her tone accusing. “You did the experiments. You might have been looking for a cure, but I lost friends.”

  Mischik swallowed, his eyes downcast. “You don’t understand. We thought you were orphans—if we’d known where you really came from, it would have been a different matter.”

  “Would it?” asked Asha. Kobi could see how angry she was.

  “It was only later that we learned the truth,” said Mischik. “Some people left then, but Jon and I stayed. Finding a cure became even more important.

  “But you changed everything,” Mischik said to Kobi, eyes intense. “We guessed CLAWS wouldn’t want you to exist. Our old friend Melanie—we went to university with her in Seattle—had climbed to the top of corporate leadership at CLAWS, and she became more and more ruthless, more and more . . . inhuman. We knew that she wouldn’t let you survive. We finally saw what we were doing for what it was, who we were working for. I left then and formed Sol.”

  Kobi frowned. “Sol?”

  “It’s Latin for ‘sun,’ a symbol of enlightenment and a new dawn.”

  “Very noble,” said Asha. She stood up and went over to speak with Fionn, who was with one of the medical staff. Despite his injury and the danger of the escape, he looked better than ever.

  The nurse treating Kobi’s injury looked up, removing her face mask. “It looked like you’d need twenty stitches, but I’ve only had to put in five,” she said. “Your healing metabolism is like nothing I’ve ever seen—remarkable!”

  “Yeah,” said Kobi. “That’s what Dr. Hales . . . Dad used to say.”

  The nurse’s eyes softened. “He was a good man.” She finished up and went off to look after the others.

  “Something tells me you’re going to prove interesting in lots of ways,” said Mischik. He took off his glasses, rubbing the lenses absently. “You know, Dr. Hales did care for you like a son. You should never doubt that.”

  Kobi lay back on the bed, thoughts swirling. “I know. I just wish he’d told me the truth.”

  “He was going to,” said Mischik. “When the time was right.”

  “When the experiments were complete, you mean?”

  “Not just that,” said the doctor. “When you were older; when you were ready.”

  Kobi smiled. He remembered how protective Hales had always been. That’s what had started all this—the day Hales had insisted he stay behind at the school. If Kobi had gone too, perhaps none of this would have happened. Maybe he’d be back there now, in a classroom at Bill Gates, eating baked beans and thinking they were on their own.

  “I was ready,” he said quietly.

  Mischik reached across and tapped his shoulder comfortingly. “For what it’s worth, I think you probably were. Question is, are you ready now for what needs to be done?”

  “What do you mean?” asked Kobi, suddenly on edge.

  Mischik replaced his spectacles. “CLAWS is the biggest corporation in the world. They have influence everywhere—police, government, resources. They have the ultimate product”—he reached into a pocket and took out a small plastic pill pot, shaking it—“life.” Mischik’s eyes gleamed, and Kobi thought he saw a tinge of yellow in the whites. “That’s where you come in,” he said.

  “Go on,” Kobi said.

  “Until CLAWS intercepted our communication with Hales, they assumed you were dead,” he said. “They didn’t know about your immunity, and they thought Hales had just grown too attached to you when he stole you. But now they know you’re very much not dead . . .”

  “They’ll come after me.”

  Mischik stared at him. “I won’t lie to you, Kobi—like you said, you’re ready to hear the truth. They won’t stop until you’re eliminated. They’ll hit us with everything they’ve got. We’ve got to be smart, cautious, and probably lucky too. But we’ve got the advantage—the ultimate weapon.”

  Mischik took Kobi’s arm and pointed to a blue vein. “Your blood holds the key to defeating the Waste, and without the Waste, there’s no CLAWS.”

  Kobi swallowed, and whether it was the feverish way Mischik looked at him, or the almost reverent way he spoke, he finally understood the reason Hales had taken the risk he did. But he still had so many questions. He glanced around at the makeshift infirmary, the pieced-together tech.

  “I don’t get it,” said Kobi, recalling too the odd mutations he’d seen on the motorbike ride. “This place—these slums—they’re not like the rest of the city.”

  Mischik nodded. “New Seattle is a capitalist society like any other. The poor—those who can’t afford the best pills—end up on the periphery, living in squalor like this. Waste infiltrates the borders of the city sometimes, and in increasing amounts. We’re losing the war. The slums are cordoned off with quarantine barricades. There’s a black market for medicine here, of course—because people are desperate. But you can change that. We can create our own medicines, flood the market, and undermine CLAWS.”

  “Melanie Garcia won’t like that,” said Kobi, feeling a little afraid. “And if she’s as powerful as you say . . .”

  “We need to spread the word without the whispers drawing attention back to us,” said Mischik. “We’re just a seed at the moment, and it won’t take much to snuff us out. But if we play this right, if we nurture it, we can grow into something unstoppable.”

  Kobi felt it right then, in his chest, exactly where the pain of grief had sat like an indigestible ball. Hope. He saw it too in the eyes of the other fugitives around him, torn from the only existence they had known and thrown into a fight they never asked for. A war Jonathan Hales had given his life for.

  I didn’t ask for this. It was just fate. Genetics. But I can’t walk away from the responsibility. Hales never did. He made mistakes, but he tried to do what was right, and I will too.

  He swung his legs off the bed, flexing his healing leg.

  “Okay. Where do we start?”

  About the Author

  Courtesy Michael Ford

  MICHAEL FORD lives in the north of England with his wife, two obedient dogs, and two less-obedient children. He writes books for childlike adults and adultlike children.

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  Copyright

  FORGOTTEN CITY. Copyright © 2018 by Working Partners, Ltd. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in
or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  www.harpercollinschildrens.com

  Interior Art by Michelle Taormina

  Cover art by Ronan Le Fur

  Cover design by Michelle Taormina

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2018939985

  Digital Edition OCTOBER 2018 ISBN: 978-0-06-269698-4

  Print ISBN: 978-0-06-269696-0 (trade bdg.)

  1819202122CG/LSCH10987654321

  FIRST EDITION

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