The boy was strangely at ease with the whole process, which bothered Dr. Gibson deeply. She watched as the boy ate from his tray of mashed potatoes and vegetables and stared out of the window with a nearly vacant expression. Dr. Gibson followed his gaze. Outside, the skyline of Enclave rose against the mountains. Underneath their shadows lay a modest expanse of farmland that came to the foot of the hill on which the hospital sat. The boy appeared to be looking at the farming drones that hovered over the fields, patrolling for vermin.

The boy appeared normal, and by all metrics was a normal, healthy human child. That was what baffled the rest of the researchers. Enclave had remained entirely underground for two thousand years, and only in the last century did the settlement return to the surface to reclaim the open sky. And yet security had found him near the edge of the documented territory, alone. Humans were supposed to have been unable to survive the irradiated landscape until two hundred years ago. And yet here was this boy, unchanged from how humanity had lived for millennia. The children of Enclave had all undergone genetic modification since the first generation, to acclimate them to life underground.

The boy turned back to her and spoke. The language was strange. But this was not what worried everyone. The boy spoke, and this fact alone meant he was raised with other humans. How many were out there? What sort of world has Enclave emerged into? Dr. Gibson knelt beside the boy and placed her hand on her chest.

“I’m Dr. Gibson.” She pointed at him, “and you?”

He looked blankly at her. He placed his hand on his chest in turn, “Kopp.”

Dr. Gibson smiled. She had sent for some materials on linguistics, but it would be some time before they could properly translate his speech. Hopefully before the true humans found Enclave.