A Crack in the Sky

by Mark Peter Hughes

  But when Dr. Friedmann took his work to the other InfiniCorp leaders, they weren’t willing to accept his conclusions. They felt the measures he recommended were unnecessary and extreme. They didn’t believe the situation was as urgent as he was warning.

  “And that was when, according to the company, Dr. Friedmann lost his mind and killed himself.” Tabitha was keeping her voice steady and low. “But if you believe the Friends, that’s not what really happened. They say that before Dr. Friedmann was out of the picture, he went to the other leaders again and again, trying to get them to listen to him. They were making a terrible mistake, he said. It was an error that could end up in the destruction of everything that mattered, including humanity itself. What’s more, he told them that if they didn’t agree to address the problem right away, he would bring his findings directly to the people so they could decide for themselves.” Tabitha paused, giving Eli a chance to let the words sink in. “After that, according to the Friends, some of the company leaders decided he was dangerous. They sent a secret order to have him arrested. Some even say they were going to kill him. But Dr. Friedmann supposedly found out they were coming for him, and he disappeared. That was less than a year before the Great Sickness.”

  “Do you think any of it could be true?” Eli asked.

  She shrugged. “What do I know?”

  He tried to keep his face blank. A Guardian against the far wall was looking in their direction. “Let’s say your people were right, and Gustavo really did end up living in the desert. If so, then how can you be sure the Outsider I saw wasn’t him?”

  She gave him a sideways glance. “God, you’re stubborn. I told you, I’m not a Friend anymore, okay? They’re not my people. And in any case, it doesn’t matter which story is right. My point is that it was a long time ago, and whichever way you look at it, Gustavo is dead.”

  Eli wondered who she was trying to convince—him or herself? It was almost as if she were more troubled by his story about the old man than he was. “Well, okay.… But whoever the Outsider in the sky was, he told me there might still be hope. He was crazy, but at least that part I want to believe. Don’t you?”

  “This was the same guy who said he thinks you’re el Guía, right? You. A Papadopoulos. So what does that tell you?” Her lip curled. “No, Eli, I don’t believe in fantasies. No one can stop what’s unavoidable. Not some crazy old man. Not some fictitious desert warrior. Nobody. However long we have before we’re all dead—whether it’s days, weeks, or years—the only thing left to hope for is one last gasp at self-preservation in the desert before the time runs out. So to hell with your old Outsider. To hell with your grandfather, and everyone else. I’ve learned the hard way that nobody’s looking out for anyone but themselves, no matter what they tell you. I’m a survivor. Right now that means figuring a way out of here, not putting my faith in some dead man’s hallucination of a hopeful future. I don’t have time for pipe dreams.”

  “So, if you don’t believe in InfiniCorp or the Friends, then what side are you on? What about the other kids trapped in this tower? Don’t you care what happens to them?”

  “It’s not that I don’t care, Eli. It’s that I’m just one person and there’s only so much I can do. If I don’t put myself ahead of everything else, then no one will. I’m on nobody’s side but my own.”

  Eli wondered if it was true. It couldn’t have been long ago that she’d given up an awful lot to join the Foggers. As misguided as that decision may have been, it meant that back then she’d at least believed in something, an idea she felt was greater than herself. Eli looked down at his tray. He’d hardly touched his food and the lunch break was almost over. He would be starving by the end of the workday and he didn’t care.

  “My cousin Spider seems to think he could still be alive.”

  “Who?”

  “Gustavo. When I told him the old man called himself Dr. Friedmann, he said the Department of Loyalty would go after him. He said something about that old traitor being a thorn in the company’s heel for long enough, and how he was finally going to get him now.”

  She stared at him. “That’s not true. You’re making it up.”

  “Now who’s being stubborn? But it doesn’t matter. You still have no idea who he really was, and neither do I. In any case, whatever happened to the real Gustavo makes no difference to me, because nothing justifies what the Foggers do. After the attack on the Providence dome, I saw the wreckage. Dead bodies on the ground. Blood and debris everywhere. I don’t understand you people at all. And, yeah, maybe you’re no longer with them, but you were. How could you defend what you did? How did you sleep at night, knowing you were part of a group that works with Outsiders and tries to blow up innocent people?”

  Tabitha’s fists were clenched, but her voice stayed low. “Don’t blame the Friends for the damage to the domes. Whatever else they are, the Friends are against using violence as the way forward. That I can promise you. Defiance, yes. But carnage and destruction? It isn’t their way. All they want is to identify those willing to see the truth so they can recruit them to join the great quest. Apart from anything else, setting off bombs to attack the company would only turn the employees further against them. The Friends are smarter than that.”

  Eli blinked at her. “So … if the Foggers aren’t the ones messing up the domes, then who is?”

  She shook her head in amazement. “You’ve flown over the wasteland, right? You must have looked out at some of the ruins down there? Destroyed cities? Entire towns, washed away? Did you think the domes were immune to the hurricanes, the floods? Lightning strikes are doing real damage. There have been fires, explosions. People have been getting killed. Wake up, Eli. You’re not in a trance like the others.” She leveled her gaze at him. “Don’t you get it? Every time there’s obvious damage to a dome, the company puts out word that the Foggers are up to their old tricks again. The name of the game is denial. Keep everyone from worrying about the worsening climate and how long the domes can last. Because as soon as they open their eyes, the illusion starts to unravel.”

  “I—I don’t believe you.”

  “Yeah, I guess I’m not surprised anymore. I thought you were different, but I see they have you all wrapped up in their little fantasy just like everybody else.” She grabbed her tray and stood. “Keep dreaming, Eli. Maybe Mommy and Daddy will show up tonight to take you home.”

  Tabitha lay in the darkness, listening to the gentle snoring of the other Wayward girls, asleep in their bunks. She’d been wide-awake for hours, stewing about Eli.

  Over the past few days she’d watched him struggle with the spheres and with his own peculiar position in this strange place. He could have given her away, but he hadn’t. Instead he’d worked hard and kept his head. His will was strong, even stronger than she’d guessed at first. She respected him for that. And as misguided as his belief in Grandfather was, she admired that too, in a way. She wished she could still feel that kind of faith in someone.

  Sooner or later, though, he would have to face the reality that his entire family had abandoned him. After that, he would have to trust her, and she would probably end up disappointing him too. Because the way she saw it, somebody had to make a sacrifice. Escape from the tower was impossible without a diversion, but whoever created the diversion was unlikely to escape before falling back into the hands of the Guardians. Even if he made it out of the tower alive, she wasn’t sure how long she could stick with him in the desert. In a fight-or-die world, she couldn’t be expected to babysit a pampered Papadopoulos. She would do what she could, but as soon as he became a burden, she would have to think of her own survival.

  One way or another, there was a good chance she would have to abandon Eli, like everyone else had. The thought made her uneasy. But she needed him now. It frustrated her that she was second-guessing herself. Why should she feel bad for him? Didn’t the Papadopouloses use her and all the other employees for their own purposes all the time?

  Still, no matter how s
he looked at it, there was something peculiar going on. That any member of the ruling family would be accused of conspiring with the Fog was curious enough, but this kid especially.… He seemed to know so little about the true nature of the company and the world around him. What made the Papadopouloses so sure he was part of the resistance? Was talking with Foggers really so bad that it justified sentencing a member of their own family to slavery in a work tower?

  Maybe.

  And yet something about it didn’t feel right. Tabitha wondered if there was something else, some other part of the story Eli wasn’t telling or, more likely, didn’t know. For a long time she’d been wondering whether it was time she took another trip to the room with the file cabinets. If anything could shed light on this mystery, Tabitha guessed it would be in there.

  She made up her mind. Careful to move without making a sound, she twisted her body to the other end of her bed and dug her fingers around the vent cover.

  Ever so gently she pried it open.

  Seconds later she was crawling through the darkness on her hands and knees. It was cramped inside the vent, and so hot she felt like she would melt. Keeping her balance was hard too, because the tower was rocking back and forth with another approaching storm. She couldn’t let herself slip. Any sound she made could give her away.

  Soon she came to the narrow, vertical section. This was the part she was dreading most. Just peering down at the long drop made her dizzy. She took a deep breath and climbed in, feetfirst. Trying not to think about the distance she had to descend, she inched downward little by little, applying outward pressure to the shaft wall with her palms and feet so she wouldn’t slide too fast. Sweat dribbled into her eyes. After what felt like forever, her feet at last touched the bottom.

  But she couldn’t afford to relax.

  The vent split off in several horizontal directions, and she struggled to remember which one led to the Records Room. She chose one, and a moment later she was crawling on her hands and knees again. After a couple of turns, she saw the grate she was looking for. A dim light shone up through the metal grid, and just as her face inched close enough to look down at the filing cabinets, she heard a sound that froze her in her tracks.

  Whistling.

  There was somebody in there.

  She held her breath and tried not to make a sound. Through the mesh she saw it was a Cleaner, a boy with droopy eyes and hair that fell like a wet rag around his head. He was shuffling between the metal cabinets, pulling his cart behind him as he wiped the floor with a mop. It was lucky she hadn’t attracted his attention already. All he had to do was look up and he would see her peering down at him. But if she tried to back up now, it was possible her shifting weight might cause the vent to creak. She kept as still as she could, hoping her sweat wouldn’t drip through the mesh and down to the floor.

  She watched the Cleaner work. His movements were slow and methodical, and his eyes held a glassy expression. Another Wayward sleepwalker. At one point his gaze turned toward a high shelf not far from where Tabitha waited, and for a moment she felt sure he saw her. She choked back a gasp but held still. After a few seconds he went back to pushing his mop.

  It seemed like ages before he packed up and left the room, shutting the door behind him. Tabitha continued to hold still in case he was nearby. There was even a chance he might return. She counted out the seconds, letting about ten minutes pass. Then she waited a little more.

  At last she decided it was time to make her move. As quietly as she could, she unclipped the grate and dropped herself to the floor. While the boy was working, she’d noticed that each cabinet was marked with a letter of the alphabet, and along the far wall was one with the letter P. She rifled through its drawers, starting at the top. In the second drawer from the bottom she found what she was searching for, a manila folder labeled with evenly spaced block letters: ELI PAPADOPOULOS.

  She pulled it from the cabinet and looked inside.

  21

  one small victory

  Eli was in a foul mood as he drifted with the rest of the sleepy-eyed Matchers down to the production area. He didn’t like to admit it, even to himself, but he was secretly beginning to wonder if Tabitha was right.

  Just as he was making his way to the matching table, somebody bumped into him, almost knocking him over. He turned. Tabitha was staggering past, along with the other Packers. Part of him wanted to shout back at her, to demand to know what her problem was. But he let it go. What would be the point of attracting the attention of the Guardians?

  He dropped into his seat and everyone got right to work. The day had only just begun and already the heat was stifling. The blowers were useless. The ancient metal fans seemed to do little except push the hot air around. Even the Productivity Facilitators were moving slower than usual. Overhead, a growing patter of rain echoed against the tower’s small dome, and every now and then the wind rose in pitch and the whole room rocked to one side. Eli could tell another big storm was on the way. By the sound of the rising wind, it could be the roughest one yet. None of the other Waywards appeared to notice.

  His mind wandered while his hands sifted through the fabric. He’d been doing it long enough that his fingers seemed to know what to do on their own. After a while he shifted in his chair, and as he did so he felt something in his pocket, something he was sure hadn’t been there earlier. Curious, he pulled it out. It was a piece of paper folded into a small triangle. How strange. He looked closer and noticed that somebody had penciled three short words in two lines:

  ELi

  READ ME

  He dropped the paper triangle onto his lap and went right back to the T-shirts. He glanced around the table to see if anyone had noticed, but the other Matchers looked as zonked as ever, too caught up in their work and their dream thoughts to pay much attention to anything else. He knew at once who had slipped him the message. He shot a quick glance at the Packers and wasn’t surprised to catch Tabitha looking right back at him. She must have been waiting for him to discover the piece of paper, whatever it was.

  He looked away. Why couldn’t she just leave him alone? Why did she have to put him at risk yet again for what was sure to be another of her crazy ideas? Whatever message this paper contained, he didn’t want to know.

  Except that he did. He couldn’t help feeling intrigued. And as the minutes wore on, it only got worse.

  Eventually he raised his hand to go to the bathroom and the fountain-haired Productivity Facilitator, Representative Dowd, gave him the okay. Head down, he stepped between the long tables and then out to the bathroom. Once he’d closed himself inside a stall, he unfolded the paper.

  Right away it puzzled him.

  It appeared to be some kind of official document from the Department of Loyalty. There was the InfiniCorp logo, along with Spider’s name and signature. At the top, in thick red letters, was the word CONFIDENTIAL, and below that somebody had scribbled, File with Rep. Eli Papadopoulos’s records. This page seemed to be from some secret file the company was keeping on him. But how was that possible? How could Tabitha have gotten her hands on anything like that?

  And yet here it was.

  Eli read the subject line: Daedalus and Paloma Papadopoulos: Fogger Traitors.

  That took a moment to sink in.

  Father and Mother? Foggers? It was a crazy idea.

  He jumped down to the main body of the memo, which was several paragraphs long. At first he only skimmed it, unable to take it all in fast enough. Certain phrases popped out at him: … caught working in secret with the enemy … a foiled plot against InfiniCorp’s most senior leadership … documented evidence …

  He reached the end and started at the top again, only this time he went through it more slowly. The sound of the wind and rain rose once more. The tower tilted a little to one side, so Eli shifted his balance, leaning against the stall wall. But his eyes never left the page. He couldn’t believe what he was reading. According to this memo, the same night Eli was taken from his bedroo
m in the Providence dome, his parents had been arrested. They’d been trying to stage an executive takeover within the Leadership Council, but at the last moment their plan had been discovered. After years of conspiring against the company, it said, Grandfather’s own son and daughter-in-law had been identified as Fogger agents and enemies of InfiniCorp.

  The words echoed in his mind. Enemies of InfiniCorp.

  His own parents!

  It wasn’t true, of course. How could it be? But now at least he knew what Spider meant when he’d accused Eli of being part of a conspiracy. If his cousin had somehow got it in his head that Mother and Father were agitators, that explained why he might think that Eli, their son, could be one too. And Eli hadn’t exactly helped to dissuade him of this idea when he’d climbed the sky. But then again, Spider hadn’t just made a mistake, had he? He’d known all along that Mother and Father weren’t Foggers—he’d made it all up. He deliberately framed them, and Eli too.

  At last he understood why Mother and Father had never come for him. Not Sebastian either. If Spider had been willing to lock Eli up just for being the son of Daedalus and Paloma Papadopoulos, then why should it have been any different for Sebastian?