On the far horizon, where before I only saw the shimmer of rising desert heat, I see a smudge of green.

I take a step toward it. Another.

Then I’m running, not away from something for the first time in forever, but toward something. Some spark, some nerve hidden deep within me hopes—no, knows—what it is. But my conscious mind doesn’t get that far. I only know I have to get to it.

I hear indistinct shouting behind me. The two surviving Greenshirts are coming after me, moving swiftly now that the sand is solid, the heat gone, the land still, and the air gentle. I don’t care. I have to get to the horizon. Something primitive and atavistic in me has taken over.

The very sand beneath my feet changes. It’s no longer thick, rolling dunes of desert, but a sprinkling of sand over something else. I kick at the sand as I run. Earth! Black, rich dirt, of the kind no one in Eden has ever seen. Wild dirt. Laughing as I run, I want to roll in it, rub it on my arms, taste it.

But ahead of me the green smudge is resolving itself into something wonderful.

How long do I run? A mile, two miles, over land that until recently was desert. But I see now it was a fake desert, false like so many things in Eden. Where the breeze blows sand away I see the grates of what can only be heaters, now cool and dead. They must have been elevating the temperature, creating a desert environment where none existed.

To keep humans from venturing out into the dead, barren land, I would have guessed once. To keep us safe from the poisons we put into our own world.

That was before I saw the forest.

It makes a mockery of the fake beanstalk woods. When I first saw them, I thought they were glorious, because I had no grounds for comparison. Even the camphor, huge and lovely and unbelievable as it may be, is sad compared to what I’m looking at right now. The camphor is a tree out of place, trapped as I was trapped my whole life. They’ve done wonders keeping it alive, thriving even, but how can a tree be a proper tree imprisoned underground?

I’m standing in grass, as high as my knees, shot through with flowers and scratchy seed heads. There’s a low buzzing sound, and I think another tremor is starting, but no, it is only a bee flying sleepily from flower to flower.

Beyond the little field of grass the forest springs up abruptly, thick and dark. Birds flit through the boughs. There’s a movement to one side. An animal, as tall as I am, slenderly made and elegant, steps carefully on small sharp hooves, testing the air with its black nose. Antlers branch from its brow. It smells me, but doesn’t seem to see me. I’m perfectly still, and it can’t have ever seen my kind in all its lifetime.

Everything I’ve read about, seen illustrated in datablocks, animated in vids . . . it exists, right before my eyes. This isn’t another vision. It’s not a trick.

The trick was keeping it from us.

Has the world been healed all this time? Why didn’t they tell us? Do they even know?

I want Lachlan to see this, and Lark. And oh, my mother! What I wouldn’t give to have her standing beside me gazing at what we all thought was lost. How many times Ash went to the temple to repent, on behalf of mankind, for the terrible things we did to the planet, the animals, the very dirt itself. How guilty we all felt that we’d destroyed our home, killed almost every living thing but us. I want the people I love to be here with me, knowing they can let that guilt blow away in the tender breeze.

Maybe we hurt the world. Maybe we even killed it.

But it’s back to life now.

I sigh, and at the sound the deer tosses its magnificent rack, stares at me a long moment with one prancing hoof raised, then turns and, with a bunching of muscles, springs away. I feel a pang of regret when it is gone. But it doesn’t matter. The world is here, and it’s not dead!

I smile, and the smile turns into a laugh. Giddy, I turn to look for the Greenshirts. They’re still far behind me, but they must see it. I wave, laughing like a maniac. Wait until they’re close! Wait until they see! Nothing else will matter to them. Wait until the citizens of Eden see. Rich and poor alike. Politics, poverty, second children—it will fade into nothing once people know that the world has been reborn.

“Look!” I cry joyfully to the Greenshirts. “Can you believe it? Look at it!” I run toward them. I want to embrace them, to dance with them. They are sharing this incredible discovery, enemies no more.

I move lightly over the grass, then the sand, back into the artificial desert. “Come see!” I call to them.

Then the air around me smacks me from all angles with a whoosh, and I’m enveloped by killing heat, blinded by white light. I can see the heat rising from the almost-hidden grates. Whatever the earthquake broke, it’s been reactivated.

It doesn’t matter. The Greenshirts will join me out here. We’ll manage to get back somehow, to tell everyone the miraculous news. The Center officials will shut down this burning hot wall-without-walls that has kept us clueless about the outside world for so long. We’ll start anew in the world.

In this beautiful green world of birds and deer and trees and rich fertile Earth behind me.

I turn . . . and the forest is gone.

All I see is the shimmering silvery wave of heat rising from the desert sand.

The cry that escapes my lips has no words, only raw, wrenching pain.

Gone.

Was it there?

Yes. Yes! I know it. I saw it, smelled it, felt it beneath my feet. It was real.

It is real.

I try to run to the place where it was, but I’m hit by a wall of heat so intense I can’t cross it. When I try to put my hand through, my fingertips come back blistered.

The Greenshirts know. They’ve seen it. We can go back to the Center and . . .

They tackle me from behind, putting their combined weight on me, pressing my face into the burning sand so that I can’t breathe, can’t see. I try to shout at them, beg them for help, tell them that the wonderful wooded living world we found is more important than punishing a second child. But my words are choked in the sand.

One of them hits me in the back of the head, and a second later everything goes black.

But in that second I realize the truth. The Center knows about this. They’ve been deliberately keeping everyone in Eden from knowing that the Earth healed itself long ago. Maybe it was never even really destroyed in the first place. Now, for reasons unknown, they are keeping every human left on Earth trapped in a giant cage.

* * *