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THE

SUPERNATURALIST

Eoin Colfer

CHAPTER 1: Cosmonaut Hill

Northern Hemisphere, soon

SATELLITE City. The City of the Future, proclaimed the billboards. A metropolis completely

controlled by the Myishi 9 Satellite hovering overhead like a floating man-of-war. An entire city

custom-constructed for the third millennium. Everything the body wanted, and nothing the soul

needed. Three hundred square miles of grey steel and automobiles.

Satellite City. A supercity of twenty-five million souls, each one with a story more heartbreaking

than the last. If it's happy ever afters you want, stay away from the city of the future.

Take Cosmo Hill, for example, a nice enough boy who never did anything wrong in his short

existence. Unfortunately this was not enough to guarantee him a happy life, because Cosmo Hill

did not have a sponsor.

And in Satellite City, if you didn't have a sponsor, and they couldn't trace your natural parents

through public record DNA files, then you were sent to an orphanage until you reached

adulthood. And by that time you were either dead or the orphanage had fabricated a criminal

record for you so you could be sold to one of the private labour prisons.

Fourteen years before we take up the thread of this story, baby Cosmo was discovered swaddled

in an insulated Cheery Pizza envelope on Cosmonaut Hill in Moscowtown. The state police

swabbed him for DNA, searched for a match in the Satellite mainframe and came up blank.

Nothing unusual about that, orphans turn up every day in the city. So the newly christened

Cosmo Hill was dipped in a vaccine vat and sent on a tube to the Clarissa Frayne Institute for

Parentally Challenged Boys. Freight class.

Satellite City was not part of any welfare state, so the institutions had to raise funds any way

they could. Clarissa Frayne's speciality was product testing. Whenever a new modified food or

untested pharmaceutical product was being developed, the orphanage volunteered its charges as

guinea pigs. It made perfect financial sense. The orphans got fed and cleaned, and the Frayne

Institute got paid for the privilege.

Cosmo received his schooling from education software, his teeth were whiter than white and his

hair was lustrous and flake-free, but his insides felt like they were being scoured with a

radioactive wire brush. Eventually Cosmo realized that the orphanage was slowly killing him. It

was time to get out.

There were only three ways out of Clarissa Frayne: adoption, death or escape. There was zero

chance that he'd actually be adopted, not at his age. Truculent teenagers were not very popular

with the childless middle classes. For years, he had cherished the dream that someone would

want him; now it was time to face facts.

Death was much easier to achieve. All he had to do was keep on doing what he was told, and

his body would give up in a matter of years. The average life expectancy of an

institutionalized orphan was fifteen years. Cosmo was fourteen. That left him with less than

twelve months before the statistics said his time was up. Twelve months to plan for the final

option. The only way he was getting out of Clarissa Frayne alive: escape.

At the Clarissa Frayne Institute for Parentally Challenged Boys, every day was basically the

same. Toil by day, fitful sleep by night. There were no days off, no juvenile rights. Every day

was a work day. The marshals worked the orphans so hard, that by eight p.m. most of the boys

were asleep standing up, dreaming of their beds.

Cosmo Hill was the exception. He spent every moment of his waking life watching for that one

chance. That split second when his freedom would beckon to him from outside an unlocked

door or an unguarded fence. He must be ready to seize that moment and run with it.

It wasn't likely that his chance would come on this particular day. And even if it did, Cosmo

didn't think he would have the energy to run anywhere.

The no-sponsors had spent the afternoon testing a new series of antiperspirants. Their legs had

been shaved and sectioned with rings of tape. The flesh between the bands was sprayed with

five varieties of antiperspirant, and then the boys were set on treadmills and told to run. Sensors

attached to their legs monitored their sweat glands, determining which spray was most effective.

By the end of the day, Cosmo had run ten kilometres and the pores on his legs were inflamed

and scalding. He was almost glad to be cuffed to a moving partner and begin the long walk back

to the dormitory.

Marshal Redwood ushered the boys into the dorm. Redwood resembled a waxed gorilla, with

the exception of a red quiff which he toyed with constantly.

'Now, boys,' said Redwood, unlocking one pair of cuffs at a time. 'There's a game on tonight

that I am very interested in seeing. As a matter of fact, I bet a few dinars on the outcome. So if

you know what's good for you

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