They emerged, one at a time, into ancient oak forest; the kind of woodland that, for several decades now, had only existed in England in the private reserves of a handful of the country's wealthiest landowners. Emily, the last one out, lay on the ground for a few moments getting her breath back. Then she climbed back to her feet and the four people, all naked, streaked with dirt and shivering with the cold, looked around at the world in which they found themselves.

It seemed to be about mid morning. Sunlight was shining down through the canopies of the huge trees that surrounded them. Massive oaks with wrinkled trunks and thick roots that lay across the ground like sleeping serpents. Birds sang somewhere and a terrified squirrel raced up the trunk of the nearest tree. Ripe blackberries were growing from a nearby clump of bramble. Jane raced over and started picking them, stuffing them into her mouth.

Emily stared around herself in wonder. "There's no trace of the building left," she said in amazement. "Everything above ground has just gone. Completely erased! It's like we've been sent back in time a thousand years!"

"More likely Harper had his hibernaculum in the grounds of his own private estate," said Randall. "A place guarded and fenced off where he could be sure no-one would stumble across it by accident. He died, maybe. The place was inherited by his next of kin who didn't know what was hidden in amongst the trees. Years passed, decades..."

"My father isn't dead!" Insisted Jane angrily around a mouthful of blackberries.

"You saw the state of the place down there." Loach pointed back at the hole in the ground with the knife he was still holding. "You saw the size of the roots blocking the stairwell."

"I know a long time's passed," said Jane, glaring at him. "I'm not stupid! My dad could still be alive, though. Maybe he's in prison or something. Maybe something happened and he had to leave the country. Anything could have happened!"

Loach shared a glance with Randall, who gave a small nod back. Best to leave the girl with her delusions until she figured out the truth for herself.

"My phone's working again," said Emily.

Randall tried his own phone. He thought the wake up word and was rewarded with a small row of digits along the top of his visual field. Power 01 percent. Time 00.00 Date jan 1st 2000. No signal. No connection to network. The time and date were flashing, waiting to receive an update from the server. No such update seemed to be coming, though.

No clue to how much time had passed since he'd gone into the hypersleep cubicle, then, which was disappointing, but to his relief all his files and data were right where he'd left them. He'd received some mail since he'd gone to sleep, he saw. The most recent was dated two days after he'd gone into the hypersleep cabinet in Harper's London office. That must be when he'd been moved into a shielded truck for the trip here. Harper wouldn't have wanted his head phone giving away the location of his hibernaculum.

The others were standing around as if in a trance, all glancing quickly at mail they'd received since having been put in hypersleep, looking for clues to what had happened to them. They wouldn't find them, Randall knew. Whatever had happened had happened long after their head phones had run out of power. If they wanted answers, they would have to go looking for them.

"Anyone got a signal?" asked Loach.

"I would imagine the technology's moved on while we've been asleep," Randall replied. "Our phones aren't equipped to interface with whatever system they're using now."

"Yeah, that makes sense," the crime boss nodded. "I was hoping to get word to my boys, get myself picked up. I wonder if our money's still good these days."

"I'm wondering whether the statute of limitations has run out on any crimes any of you might have committed back in the day," said Jane. She was looking at Emily as she said it, not at Loach, but it was the crime boss who glanced back at her with a thoughtful expression on his face. She hasn't figured out who he is yet, thought Randall with amusement. He wondered how she'd react when she found out.

"I suggest we get moving," he said. "Find the way out of this place. This forest'll probably be fenced off, but there'll be gate houses. People who can put us back in touch with civilisation."

"Like this?" cried Jane in dismay, looking down at her bare body.

"Unless you'd rather stay here."

The young woman glared at him, but then shrugged and came back to rejoin them. "So, which way?" she asked.

"Downhill," said Emily. "When you're lost in unfamiliar territory, always go downhill. That'll take you to a river, or the coast, where there'll be people living."

"We're in someone's private estate," repeated Randall. "We'll be looking for guard houses or a gamekeepers cottage."

"Whatever. By the way, did you see that squirrel just now?"

"What about it?"

"It was a red squirrel."

Randall was in no mood for a wildlife lesson. "Fascinating," he said.

"It is," said the eco terrorist, "because red squirrels are extinct."

Randall didn't think the comment worth responding to. So the owner has his own private bio lab and is bringing extinct species back to life, he thought. Who cares? Everyone has a hobby. Randall himself enjoyed landscape painting, although he didn't fool himself into thinking he had any real relent in that direction. Everyone needed a harmless activity to turn to when the stress of daily life got too much. If this guy fancied mucking around with DNA strings, good for him, but Randall didn't care.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

"It made me wonder what else he might have brought back to life," Emily continued. "Wild boar, perhaps. Wolves. He may even have created come custom animals, or plants." She turned to Jane. "Perhaps you shouldn't have been quite so quick to eat those blackberries."

"They're just blackberries," the younger woman replied.

"Probably, but let's just remember that we're wandering the private grounds of a man, probably a man, who likes to tinker with living organisms. Anything might be not quite what it seems."

"We'll bear it in mind," Randall replied.

Before they left the area, Randall turned and looked around for a landmark, just in case they needed to find this place again. There was a tree that looked as though it had been struck by lightning a few years in the past, he saw. He stared at it and told his head phone to take a photo of it. The device saved the image currently being displayed on his retina, and a message popped up in his visual field giving him the location in the phone's memory where the image was being stored.

Loach saw what he was doing and did the same, as did Jane and Emily. We'll probably never want or need to come here again, the businessman thought, but you never knew, and a photo took up such a minuscule portion of his phone's memory that there was no reason not to do it. He intended to take more photos of any other notable landmarks they passed as they went, so he could use them as a series of stepping stones to retrace his steps, just in case. A rare smile creased the corner of his mouth. Mister Just In Case had been his nickname back in his schooldays, and it had been a motto he'd lived by all his life. He wasn't going to stop now.

Then they were all finally ready to leave, and they set off in the direction they decided went very slightly downhill

☆☆☆

They had to stop every few minutes as one of another of them became too exhausted to continue, a disturbing reminder that they were all dying from incurable diseases. At around midday they came to a huge fallen treetrunk and they sat on it while they allowed their wildly pounding hearts to recover and get some strength back into their limbs.

Loach became visibly frustrated by the constant delays. Of the four of them, he was the only one who still had his full, healthy strength and he paced back and forth impatiently while he waited for the others to get their wind back. Several times, Randall saw the look on his face that told him he was thinking about just leaving the others behind. He hated being out here, naked and cold, when the prospect of a return to his normal life waited for him somewhere up ahead. He wanted a bath and some warm clothes. He wanted an Internet connection so he could see what remained of his business empire. He wanted to check in with his contacts or their descendants and see what had happened to his fortunes during however much time had passed. Randall wanted all the same things, of course, but he was forced to take it slowly by his ailing body. Loach could get it much sooner if he wasn't saddled with three dying cripples.

He didn't leave, though. He stayed with them, forcing himself to remain patient while the others gathered their strength for another walk. He doesn't want to be alone, Randall surmised. He's a man who needs the company of others. Underlings preferably. People who would follow his orders, but anyone would do in a pinch. What that meant, of course, was that he would dump the rest of them in a moment if he came across healthier, more capable people better able to serve his need for company.

The afternoon wore on and their hunger grew. Randall found himself wishing he'd helped himself to some of Jane's blackberries. He looked for more, but they were passing through a patch of denser forest in which the overhead canopy only allowed enough light to filter through to allow the growth of clumps of bracken.

"Just how big is this forest anyway?" asked Jane as they stopped for another rest. "We must have gone a good few klicks by now."

"William Maddock has a private forest covering nearly a hundred square kilometres in Gloucestershire," said Randall. "If this one's the same size, all we've got to do is keep going in a straight line for ten miles to get to the edge. That's the maximum distance we'll have to walk if we assume we started near the edge and set off in the wrong direction."

"And how far have we gone? And are we sure we're going in a straight line?"

"The sun says we're going in a straight line," said Emily. "We can't be far off now." She climbed back to her feet with an effort. "Come on! One more march might see us there."

For a moment it seemed as though she might be right. They saw an edge to the forest ahead of them, an open space visible between the few remaining trees, and they surged forward with new hope. There would be a high wall of transparent persteel rising and curving as it rose to form a roof over the whole forest, they knew. A giant greenhouse keeping out the polluted atmosphere of the modern world. They would follow the wall, and it would inevitably lead to one of the biome's exits where there would be friendly people to help them and put them back in touch with civilisation...

Then they emerged from the trees and they froze, staring in astonishment. There was no transparent wall. Instead, the ground fell away into a wide valley framed by low hills on every side. More clumps of trees could be seen, mainly on the hillsides, but for the most part the ground was divided into small fields divided by rows of hedges and dry stone walls. The fields seemed to contain crops, mainly grasses, despite the fact that they were far too small for modern agricultural machinery to operate in. A narrow river wound its way along the centre of the valley, crossed at one point by an arching stone bridge.

"What the hell..." began Loach. "Some kind of holiday resort, perhaps. Nineteenth century life recreated for rich visitors. God, what must it have cost to buy up this much land..."

"So where are all the tourists?" asked Jane. "The place looks deserted."

'"There's someone over there," said Loach. "Near the bridge. Dressed in period clothes. Must be a member of staff role playing a farmer."

"Look up, guys," said Emily. "What do you see?"

They all looked up into the cloudless blue sky. "No persteel roof," said Jane. "Nothing to keep the pollution out."

"We don't know how long we were asleep," pointed out Loach. "A long time, though. Maybe a hundred years. Maybe they cleaned up the planet. Moved all the industry up to the moon like they always said they were going to do."

"Yes!" cried Emily in delight. "You see?" she said to Jane. "I told you the struggle was worthwhile! All the hard work. All the bombs, all the killings! They called us murderers, terrorists, but see what we did! We won! We saved the planet! We saved the biosphere!"

"Probably it would have happened anyway," said Loach. "There's been a strong space industry movement for decades. Your activities actually hindered the movement. Gave it a bad name."

"We brought the issue to the public's attention. Nothing would have happened on its own. The established industries and corporations were too strong."

"You don't know that..."

"Yes I do! I've seen it. I heard all the mealy mouthed promises of the politicians and the businessmen. You criminal bosses are more honest than they were. At least you don't pretend to be anything other than what you are." She swept a hand to indicate the sunlit countryside ahead of them. "We did this! I showed the way and my followers kept up the work when I went into hibernation. We did this!"

She glared triumphantly at Loach, daring him to contradict her, but he just smiled and turned away. Emily then looked at Jane, but the younger woman wouldn't meet her eyes. "You got a problem with this?" Emily demanded.

"Two hundred people died when you blew up the Louisiana sea wall," Jane said, turning to look at her. "How many other people died in all the bombs you planted?"

"There was a cost, yes, but look what we accomplished! Don't you think it was worth it?"

"Mister Loach is right. It would have happened anyway, without the killing."

Emily gave her a look of disgust. "No it wouldn't, and what do you care anyway? You're one of them. One of the elite. Your daddy was one of the rich ones living in a garden of green plants and filtered air while the rest of us had to breathe toxic fumes. What do you care what the rest of the world was like?"

"Leave her alone, Emily," warned Loach, taking a step towards her.

"Or what? You're going to stab me with your knife?"

Loach stared down at the knife in his hand as if he'd forgotten he was carrying it. "Of course not," he said. "I just think we've got better things to do than stand here arguing with each other." He pointed down into the valley. "Like go down there and see if they've got a decent tailor."

"And a bath," added Jane, fingering her hair that had dried into tangles and spikes. "And something warm to eat." She looked at Randall. "What do you say, mister silent and mysterious?"

"Sure," Randall replied. He'd been paying little attention to the conversation, though. He'd been staring down at the small figure in the valley, the man that was now crossing the stone bridge. Why was he dressed like a medieval peasant? he wondered. Could that just be the style of dress that was in fashion now?

Jane followed his gaze and guessed what he was thinking. "Maybe this is a kind of commune," she suggested. "A place for people who prefer a simpler form of life. There might be a huge, super modern city just the other side of those hills."

"Maybe," conceded Randall. He looked up into the sky again, looking for aircraft. Thin white contrails that would tell them that this valley was unusual and that modern life continued elsewhere. They saw nothing, though. Nothing but birds and the thin crescent of the moon.

"Why don't we go see that guy and ask him?" suggested Jane.

"Why not?" replied Randall.

Jane glanced at Loach and Emily, trying to read their faces to see what they thought of the idea, but Randall was already walking forward down the rough, grassy slope. The others stared after him, then began following him.