Like the redwood canopy where I had rescued Oscar, the limb supported a vast ecosystem. That was important because I needed water and food, the Superman protocol having drained me beyond exhaustion. Staying low, I crawled along a patch of blue moss, making my way to the dense jungle foliage.

Or so I thought.

A quick jog through seven-foot ferns brought me to the entrance of an organically grown, genetically engineered greenhouse. Sealed in aero gel, the porous structure rose more than a hundred feet, its interior spanning no less than half a mile.

The entrance must have been rigged to a motion detector because the twenty-foot-high redwood bark gates parted as I approached.

Inside was a garden like none I could have imagined.

There were human edibles—groves of fruit trees, mostly hybrids, grown twice the size of their original feeder DNA. There was beauty—reservoirs that overflowed into rock-strewn waterfalls, the sun dancing rainbows above the mist, their waters feeding trickling creeks that seeped into gullies nourishing the garden. There were butterflies and flowers and ponds stocked with amphibious creatures, and lizards that bounced off the aero gel walls in an attempt to escape.

And there was a dark side. Eight stories above the tranquil surroundings, hanging upside down from the porous acrylic ceiling, were hundreds of winged transhuman creatures. From their bare flesh and faces they appeared to be juveniles—all adolescent females; some genetically more human than others.

The “others” were ghoulish creations—hairless, white-eyed versions of my Andria, only they were endowed with bat ears and bat mouths and furry brown, tick-infested wings. Their hands were clawed, as were their feet, and these brutes clearly didn’t like the more human members of their flock.

I had a sinking feeling I had ventured inside a boarding school for wayward creations.

As I watched, a three-foot lizard leapt from a seventy-foot mango tree, gliding in swooping circles as it descended in its own leatherlike parachute. The movement caused one of the transhuman bats—a stunning raven-haired teen version of my fiancée—to swoop down upon the lizard like an eagle hunting a snake. Snatching the lizard in her clawed feet, the girl landed on a rock and proceed to gut her catch, using her sharp talons as a knife. As she tore into the oozing raw meat, a rival creature—one of the “Nosferatu”—dove down from its perch and attacked. Seconds later, two more of its clan joined in on the cannibalistic feast, the trio tearing the limbs from the dark-haired beauty in a brutal act of territoriality.

“Does this displease you?”

The voice, female and familiar, caught me off guard. I turned, but saw no one.

“Over here, silly.”

ABE pinpointed the direction and then I saw her, standing amid a cluster of ferns, the leaves obscuring her naked body. “Bella, is it really you?”