A Crack in the Sky

by Mark Peter Hughes

  And the fact was, he was too tired to care anymore.

  Eventually he stopped worrying about it at all. He worked through his pile of T-shirt parts, feeling content for the first time in what seemed like forever. He didn’t need to feel inadequate anymore. He was productive, life was okay, and each day that passed seemed better and better.

  One morning on the production floor, he was vaguely aware of one of the other Waywards, a Packer, watching him from the other end of the room. A tall, broad-shouldered girl, she had a tangle of frizzy hair that was so long and out of control that she looked deranged, like a wild beast.

  This wasn’t the only time Eli had caught her watching him. A recent transfer to his Learning Floor, Eli had first noticed her about a week earlier. From that initial day, she’d seemed to take a special interest in him. Several times he’d looked up and caught her eyeing him, and she’d looked away, her expression returning to that empty, glassy-eyed stare that all the Waywards had. For this reason Eli had been avoiding her all week. Whenever she moved nearer to him in the cafeteria line, he would pretend to wander in another direction. Before he sat to eat, he would always wait until she’d set her tray down somewhere so he could choose a different table.

  There was something about her expression, and how she seemed to track his every move. It made him nervous.

  He didn’t want any trouble.

  Later that afternoon he had to pee. He raised his hand to alert one of the Productivity Facilitators, who nodded that he had permission to leave the table and go to the bathroom. This was the standard procedure. As he made his way down a short hallway and then around a corner to the bathrooms, his thoughts were on his work, not the frizzy-haired girl.

  Which was why, after he finished with the bathroom, he nearly jumped when he found her in the hallway, standing in his path. Her glassy-eyed expression was gone. It was as if she’d been waiting for him.

  Eli froze.

  “I’ve been watching you,” she whispered. “You’re not like the others. The CloudNet doesn’t have the same hold on you as it has on them. Don’t deny it. You’re like me. You’re stronger.”

  A sudden sick feeling gripped Eli’s insides. Whatever this was, he wanted no part of it. But when he tried to step around the girl, she blocked his path.

  “What are you doing?” he demanded, keeping his voice low. “Are you crazy? Do you want the Productivity Facilitators on us for slacking off? Let me go! I need to get back to my work!”

  But she didn’t budge. Her eyes stayed locked on his. “Listen to me,” she said. “You have the ability to fight the influence of the spheres. I know you already figured out how because I’ve seen you do it.” She stepped even closer, and Eli found himself backed against the wall. “Ignore the dream things,” she whispered. “Look past them. Concentrate on my eyes. Follow my voice. Resist. You can do it. Wake. Up.”

  Eli was sweating, and it wasn’t the heat. He glanced over her shoulder. If he craned his neck he could just see around the corner to the hallway. As far as he could tell, it was clear. For now.

  “Go away,” he said, barely able to get the words out. “Leave me alone or I’ll call the Guardians.”

  The girl narrowed her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she said, “but you leave me no choice but to do this the hard way. Remember, this is for your own good.”

  And with that Eli felt her fist slam hard into his stomach. The pain was sharp and sudden. If he could have screamed, he would have, but nothing would come out. He buckled over. He wasn’t hurt, but the wind had been knocked out of him for a moment. When he straightened up, he looked back at the girl, clenched his fists, and got ready to rush at her.

  But then he stopped himself.

  Because at that instant he realized something had changed. The hallway had lost its glow and had returned to being dreary and gray. For the first time in a long time, his head didn’t feel muddled, and his thoughts and feelings felt like they were really his own.

  Except it didn’t feel like such a great thing, because all at once terror gripped him. In a flash, everything he’d all but forgotten came rushing back: The Friends of Gustavo. The end of the world. Eli was a captive somewhere far, far away from home, a prisoner trapped by Spider in some secret tower for brain-dead InfiniCorp slaves. It all seemed too crazy to be true, and yet here he was. He was having trouble breathing. What was he going to do? He was all alone! He’d lost contact with Marilyn, and Grandfather was sick—or worse. For all Eli knew, he could be dead by now!

  And then he remembered his parents. Somehow he had to contact them! He had to tell them everything! He wanted to run, but this strange, wild-haired girl had him by the shoulders now. He tried to shake her off but she was stronger than he was.

  “Hold on, Eli. Don’t you panic on me. Get a grip on yourself. In just a few seconds the Guardians are going to come looking for us, so if you know what’s good for you you’ll listen to me very carefully.” He stopped struggling, and she went on. “You need to do what I do. Keep focusing on the things that are real. Never stop fighting the spheres. You can do it. But no matter what happens, you also have to keep acting like the others, the drones. Never let your guard down. Never let the Guardians suspect for one second that you’re not under their complete control.”

  Terrified, Eli stared into her gray eyes. “Who are you?”

  “My name is Tabitha. You and I are going to break out of here.”

  18

  another resister

  Tabitha estimated she’d been at the reeducation facility for four or five months by then, and she knew how to stay under the radar. No matter what happened, she worked hard and kept to herself. The trick was to hold her expression blank all the time, with only the slightest hint of fear and submission. She realized early on that if she was ever going to escape, her abnormally high resistance to the spheres had to stay a secret.

  After her stay in the admissions ward, she’d been sent to Learning Floor 1-C, on the tower’s lowest level, where Waywards loaded and unloaded supply transports. It was tough, sweaty work. The heat on the dock was dizzying, and the sour milk stench of the acidified ocean, red from all the algae, made her retch. But as difficult as the conditions were, she’d also grown strong here, stronger than she’d ever been. For the first time in her life she was aware of the muscles in her back and arms, the power in her legs and shoulders. There didn’t seem to be any mirrors in the tower, but she once caught a flash of her own reflection on the surface of a CloudNet sphere and barely recognized herself. Gone was the foolish intern from St. Louis, the failed dissident who’d spent her every moment living in constant fear while trying to appear respectable. Staring back at her was a steely-eyed girl with hair that hadn’t seen a comb in ages, a wild kid who looked like she could handle herself in a fight.

  She looked like a survivor.

  Tabitha fought a smile. A survivor was exactly what she was. As far as she knew, she was the only Wayward still in command of her own thoughts, the only one in control of her own destiny. None of the Guardians or Productivity Facilitators seemed to suspect she was just biding her time, waiting for her chance to break out.

  For weeks she’d kept alert for information, any weakness in the system she could exploit. One thing that struck her was how low-tech the place was. Not only were there no robots and few other modern devices beyond the CloudNet spheres and the electronic locks on the doors, but often she noticed the Guardians walking around with paper documents, like in the Old Days. The records on each of the Waywards were stored in hard copy in a room on the first floor not far from her own work area. Whenever a newbie arrived, Tabitha would see Guardians going in there with paper files labeled with the newbie’s name. She didn’t know why they used this quaint storage system, but perhaps it was to be sure the records were well hidden and off-line. If need be, they could shred them out of existence.

  Tabitha had toyed with the idea of stowing herself in one of the larger supply transports, but it was hard to see how she could p
ull off such a stunt without getting caught. Too many Guardians kept watch over the docking area. All the ships and pods were searched at every departure and arrival. Every crate that entered or left was inspected.

  One night, while the other Waywards on her team were sleeping, she’d climbed through an air vent in her fifth-floor dormitory room. It was a risky move, but she’d gotten away with it. In the cramped darkness and heat she’d crawled through a series of ventilation ducts—at one point forcing herself to squeeze down a narrow vertical section despite her fear of heights. Eventually she’d found herself peering into the room where they kept the files on the Waywards. The walls were lined with metal cabinets, many rusting and dented. There was nobody in there, but she didn’t dare climb down. She kept crawling. Soon she was over the docking area of Learning Floor 1-C, the same place where she worked all day, every day.

  Even at night the place was crawling with Guardians.

  Back in her bunk she lay awake, thinking. What she needed was a diversion. If she could distract the Guardians’ attention, she could sneak into one of the smaller pods and fly it away herself. This seemed more realistic than stowing herself in one of the large, water-bound transport ships and hoping not to be discovered. The trouble was, how could she distract the Guardians without drawing attention to herself? If they grabbed her and realized she wasn’t under the spell of the spheres, any chance of escaping would be gone forever.

  She knew she would only ever get one opportunity to do this right.

  In the days that followed, Tabitha felt her optimism slipping away. Despite her decision to go it alone, there was no avoiding the conclusion that she needed help. But where was she going to find anybody willing to sacrifice themselves for her? In this tower full of InfiniCorp drones and Wayward zombies, it wasn’t going to happen. So every night she curled up in bed with her face in her hands, sure she was doomed to work in the reeducation facility for whatever was left of her short life.

  But then one day they transferred her to Learning Floor 9-B.

  And that’s where everything changed.

  On her very first morning packing T-shirts into crates, she noticed something strange about one of the other Waywards, a stocky, black-haired boy sorting fabric at one of the tables. There was something different about the way he behaved, something subtle but important, and it drew her attention to him right away. His eyelids drooped a little less than the others. He was just a little slower to look up at the spheres when they glowed bright. Some part of his brain appeared to be struggling to remain alert. Few people would have noticed, but Tabitha recognized the signs right away.

  This boy was demonstrating an impressive resistance to the spheres.

  True, he seemed to be losing his battle against them, but he was the only other Wayward she’d ever come across with the strength to even try. The realization that she wasn’t alone, that she’d found another Resister like herself, gave her hope.

  She kept watching. The kid obviously hadn’t been trained to hide his efforts, because he seemed to make no attempt to conceal the subtle struggle in his expression. If he wasn’t more careful, Tabitha worried somebody else would eventually notice too.

  And there was something else that struck her about him. Something familiar about his face. At first she couldn’t figure it out, but then she realized what it was: he looked a lot like someone she remembered seeing in a photograph. It was in a company zine she’d read before she was taken from St. Louis. The article was about Sebastian Papadopoulos, one of Grandfather’s most ubiquitous and tiresome grandspawns, and how he was about to start his career at InfiniCorp, but for some reason Tabitha’s eye had been drawn to the sullen-faced boy reading in the background. According to the image notes, it was Sebastian’s little brother—Ari or Leo or some short name like that. She couldn’t remember.

  Anyway, if she didn’t know better, she would have sworn this was the same kid.

  But of course it couldn’t be. Why would a member of the ruling family end up here, doing grunt work with a bunch of Waywards? It didn’t make sense.

  And yet the more she studied him, the more she wondered. The resemblance was so striking, and the Productivity Facilitators even seemed to talk to the boy with unusual deference.

  On her second day she saw the kid do something stupid. In the middle of the shift he stood up from his work, glanced around the room, droopy-eyed and confused, like a sleepwalker on the point of waking from a dream, and then started shouting.

  “Help!” he called, to nobody in particular, it seemed. “There’s been a mistake! Let me—let me talk with someone! Let me ping home! Please!”

  Right away one of the Productivity Facilitators was on him. “Settle down, Representative Papadopoulos,” she said, her voice calm but commanding. “You need to take your seat or you’ll fall behind on your work.”

  For a few seconds he just stood there squinting at her, as if he were having trouble processing her words. Then he said, “But … I don’t belong here.”

  “I said sit down, Eli!” All at once her expression softened, and she put her hand on his shoulder. “The spheres will be coming on again in a moment. You don’t want to miss that, do you?”

  He hesitated, but then he slumped into his seat again. A moment later he was back to sorting fabric.

  None of the other Waywards seemed to notice any of this. Everybody kept smiling their empty smiles and working as fast as ever, as if nothing had happened. Tabitha pretended not to have noticed either, but her thoughts were swirling. So he was a Papadopoulos! How was this possible? How on earth did he end up here?

  She didn’t have long to wonder. Just after the boy settled back into his work, the Productivity Facilitator stepped over to Tabitha’s end of the room and spoke in low tones with one of the nearby Guardians. Tabitha strained to listen. She didn’t catch it all, but she heard them discussing the boy’s case. He’d been caught leading a group of anti-InfiniCorp criminals. There was no mistaking the name of the group either. She heard the words distinctly.

  It was the Friends of Gustavo.

  When Tabitha heard that, she nearly dropped the box she was carrying. It was almost too much to take in. The idea of a Papadopoulos enslaved in an InfiniCorp labor facility was bizarre enough, but that he’d been accused of being one of the leaders of the Friends? No, it was too incredible. She glanced over at him again and saw only a sweaty, confused kid tangled in a dream, like all the other Waywards. She couldn’t picture him with a secret life as a Fog agent. Even if the company believed it, Tabitha didn’t. In fact, he looked so pitiful that she couldn’t help feeling sorry for him.

  But she reminded herself that he was a Papadopoulos, which meant he didn’t deserve her sympathy. The Papadopouloses were a family of tyrants. This was one point she believed the Friends had right. Grandfather and his oppressive clan of thugs were at the very center of the problem she’d risked so much to struggle against. They were the whole reason she and the rest of the Waywards were stuck in this tower. So why should she feel bad for this boy? If the Guardians decided to drag him away because of the shouting incident, why should she lose any sleep over it?

  The Guardians didn’t drag him away, though. For the rest of the day they let him stay working at his table. Maybe it was because he was a Papadopoulos, or maybe it was because the Guardians decided that he wasn’t a real threat, that he would fall fully under the spell of the spheres soon enough anyway. Tabitha didn’t know. Whatever the reason they’d let it go this time, Tabitha doubted he’d ever get away with causing a second scene like that, which meant he needed help learning to fight the spheres while appearing not to. So over the next few days she kept her eyes on him and struggled with what to do. She’d been thinking about her escape plan again. An idea had come to her, but she wasn’t sure she could bring herself to carry it out.

  In the end she made her decision.

  Which was why she confronted him in the little hallway outside the bathrooms. It wasn’t easy, but she managed to pul
l him out of his half trance just before the Guardians came looking for them. Now she was waiting for her next opportunity to get close to him.

  She wondered if she would regret her decision. If there had been an option that didn’t require the assistance of a Papadopoulos, of all people, she would have gone for it in a second. But she couldn’t think of any other way.

  That evening there was another storm, the worst since Tabitha had been in the tower. All night she lay in her bunk, listening to the howling wind and the thunder that shook the walls. The whole room rocked and swayed. Tabitha tried not to think about the waves out there, but it was hard not to picture them growing higher and stronger as night wore on. She couldn’t help imagining every crash as the beginning of the end, as if the sea itself were reaching out to grab the tower by the neck and drag it into the depths.

  It would happen eventually, she knew.

  She wasn’t sure if there was a God, but maybe if she prayed hard enough she could hold off the inevitable for a while. She closed her eyes and mouthed the words over and over again.

  Not now. Not yet.

  * * *

  By early the next morning, the rumbles of thunder sounded farther away. The worst of it had passed, for now. The air was hotter and heavier, though, and Tabitha’s shirt was caked in sweat. As she filled crates with T-shirts and stacked them in the loading area, she kept glancing over at the Papadopoulos boy. He sat at his table, looking pale and cheerless as he did his work.

  This was worrying. If he wasn’t more careful, the Guardians were going to notice.

  At lunchtime she found him sitting alone in the cafeteria, so she sidled over to him. For once he didn’t wander off the moment she got close.