A Crack in the Sky

by Mark Peter Hughes

  God only knew what Spider had done with them.

  This was even worse than Eli had imagined. What was he supposed to do now? He couldn’t just go back to the matching table and start working again as if nothing were different. Tabitha was right. Nobody was ever going to come for him. In his mind he could almost see his cousin’s cruel eyes gazing down from the sphere, laughing. Spider had not only ruined Eli’s life, but Mother’s, Father’s, and Sebastian’s also. He’d done it intentionally, and out of pure spite.

  Eli’s hands were shaking. He gripped the paper so tight that his knuckles went pale.

  The moment he stepped back into the production area he almost slammed into Representative Dowd, who seemed to have been heading in his direction. Her face was pallid.

  “Representative Papadopoulos, empty your pockets!”

  Eli was so surprised, he could only sputter. “Wh-what? Why?”

  A hulking figure slouched up beside her. Greasy hair over drooping eyelids, beefy arms swinging loose from slumped shoulders. Geraldine. She smirked at Eli.

  “It has been brought to my attention,” Representative Dowd said, “that there may have been something hidden in the palm of your hand when you walked to the bathroom. I see it’s not there now, so I want to find out if it’s still with you. Or perhaps you already flushed it away?”

  “I—I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Eli tried to walk on, but the Productivity Facilitator blocked his path. Her hands moved to her hips. “Empty your pockets!”

  He wasn’t sure what to do. He was caught! With no other choice, he pulled out the folded note.

  Representative Dowd stared. “Where did you get that?”

  “I … found it on the floor.” As soon as he said it, he realized how feeble it was.

  Geraldine shook her head. Her voice was quiet and scratchy. “No, it was hidden in his pile. I saw him drop it into his lap.”

  Representative Dowd grabbed it from his hand. Eli stopped even trying to pretend anymore. He backed deeper into the room. “This is why I’m here, isn’t it?” he asked, his voice rising and starting to shake. “Because of some ridiculous story that Mother and Father are Foggers?”

  “You’re here only because you’re a Wayward employee,” Representative Dowd said, unfolding the note. “Your self-absorbed wrong thinking led you off the path of teamwork and company values.”

  Eli was suddenly so filled with emotion that he couldn’t stop himself from letting it show. “That’s a lie!” he shouted. “It’s all a lie! Everything happening here, this whole place—it’s one big deception!”

  His words cut through the silence. A few of the Waywards looked up from their work. Eyes glazed, they peered around as if unsure of where the sound was coming from.

  As it happened, on the production floor that day were Representative Shine and Representative Tinker, the two pretty Guardians from the admissions ward. It wasn’t unusual for one or the other of them to visit Learning Floor 9-B. Sometimes they came with new Waywards, but not always. Like all the other Guardians and Productivity Facilitators, they turned at the sudden commotion.

  The blue-haired one, Representative Tinker, was the first to reach him. “My goodness!” she said, her forehead wrinkled with concern. “How can we help you? What on earth is all the fuss about?”

  But Eli wasn’t fooled by her gentle manner. What was the point of pretending to go along with them anymore? “I’ll tell you what it’s all about! I’m stuck in this tower because of a pack of lies!” He pointed at the document. “It’s all in there!”

  Representative Dowd thrust the page at her. “He was sneaking around with this.”

  With a frown Representative Tinker took the document. By then the other Guardian girl, green-haired Representative Shine, had also reached them, and the two stood together like twin angels. This was the first time Eli had ever seen them standing so close, and for a moment it startled him. He’d known, of course, that they looked alike, but until then he hadn’t realized just how much alike. Apart from their hair color, they were like clones.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” Eli demanded. “You must have known about this from the very beginning—don’t try to deny it! Why didn’t anyone ask for my side of the story?”

  The identical Guardians didn’t study the page for long. By the sudden way their expressions darkened, it was obvious to Eli that he was right—they’d seen it before and already knew exactly what it was and what it meant. They glanced at each other. When Representative Tinker spoke again, her voice was cold.

  “How did you get this document, Representative Papadopoulos? Did you break into the Records Room yourself, or were you working with someone?”

  He stopped breathing. Tabitha wasn’t far. As a matter of fact, at that very moment he could see her over the shoulders of the Guardians’ white uniforms. Like the other Waywards, she had returned to work as if drawn back into her dream, unaware of anything else. But Eli knew better.

  “It doesn’t matter who gave it to me,” he said after a pause. “The point is, I was never involved in any crazy anti-InfiniCorp plot. My cousin Spider made the whole thing up! It’s not true! Now, if you would let me contact my family, I can explain myself to them and we can work this whole thing out.”

  He could see right away he wasn’t getting through. Their expressions grew darker, and their normally friendly eyes narrowed to icy stares. “You’re disappointing us.” Representative Shine sounded deadly calm. “We asked you a question, and we expect an answer. Who gave you this document?”

  Representative Dowd stayed quiet, deferring to the higher authority of the twin Guardians. Other Guardians, the ones who had been standing all along the walls, started to close in around him. There were seven or eight of them, moving in from every direction. All at once Eli realized how serious a mistake he’d made. He should have been more careful. He’d let his emotions compromise his judgment, and now it was too late to go back.

  “No more delaying, Eli. Give us the name!”

  He took a step backward. “I—I don’t know it.”

  Representative Tinker’s face contorted with rage. She stamped her foot. “Wrong answer!” To Eli’s astonishment, she leapt at him, kicking his chest and knocking him clear across the floor. She was surprisingly strong. He started to scramble back to his feet, but now Representative Shine was coming at him, her lip curled in a snarl as her shoes click-clacked across the floor. Before he could stop her, she grabbed him by the hair and slammed him to the ground. Like her double, she was much stronger than she looked. Eli tried to pull himself upright, but he felt an electric jolt at the base of his neck. The pain was excruciating. He buckled forward and dropped back to his knees. What he found most incredible was that none of the nearby Waywards even looked up.

  For the next few seconds, two of the Guardian boys held him while the two girls huddled nearby with the Productivity Facilitators. He didn’t catch much of what they said, just a few whispered phrases here and there:

  “… Resister …”

  “… special case …”

  “… danger to the company …”

  Eli could barely move. When he tried to struggle, another jolt shot across his shoulders. “Stop!” he gasped. “Listen to me! My parents aren’t traitors and neither am I! You—you have to believe me!”

  Finally one of the girls said, “Let him go.” Eli couldn’t see which one it was, but her voice was calm. The boys released their grip and stepped away, and Eli was able to lift his head.

  Representative Shine and Representative Tinker stood a few feet away from him now, their faces serene and pretty once more. “This doesn’t have to be so hard,” Representative Tinker said, casually brushing a few strands of wispy blue hair from her eyes. “We’re reasonable people, and hey, it’s totally understandable that you’re confused. This whole adjustment thing must be especially difficult for you. Just tell us what we need to know and everything will be so much easier. That’s a promise. But
if you refuse …” She shrugged.

  “If you refuse,” Representative Shine continued for her, “then you force us to take drastic action that we don’t want to have to take. Don’t make us do that, not to you, of all people.”

  Eli’s whole body ached. Once again he saw Tabitha watching from where she was lifting crates. Her face was pink and her jaw was tight. He could see in her eyes that she was flustered.

  “Maybe you don’t understand.” Representative Tinker stepped toward him again. “Maybe you think you’ve already experienced the full force of the Special Training room. Believe me, you haven’t. When the sphere is set to maximum strength, the nightmares are … well, let’s just say they’re intense.”

  “Dreams have power, Eli. If they’re strong enough, when they tap into the darkest, most terrifying recesses of the unconscious mind, they can leave people haunted and empty. When it’s all over, people don’t care to resist anymore. They don’t care about anything at all.”

  “They’re like empty shells, walking zombies staggering around in a nightmare that never ends. Sometimes it’s necessary. But such a high price to pay.”

  Eli looked over again at Geraldine, who had drifted back to the matching table and gone back to her work as if nothing else mattered.

  The two Guardians were very close now, and Eli found himself staring up at two copies of the same face. Representative Shine crouched beside him. She took his hand. “But we don’t want that for you, Eli. No matter what you’ve done, you’re still Grandfather’s grandson. All we care about is the productivity and contentment of the Waywards in this tower. They’re everything to us.”

  “If somebody accessed a classified document without authorization,” Representative Tinker said over her shoulder, “then it’s a serious breach of tower security, which is a big problem. As a Papadopoulos, you should appreciate that better than anyone.”

  “Whoever you’re trying to protect, it’s pointless. Now that we know there’s another Resister, we will discover him or her before long. So we’re going to ask you one last time, and we hope you choose the easier path, the way of right thinking.”

  “If you do, then your dreams will be good dreams. You’ll have no reason to be afraid.”

  They smiled. They weren’t angry anymore. They were being reasonable. Representative Shine gave his hand a gentle squeeze. “So, what’s it going to be, Eli? In or out? Are you with us or against us?”

  A bead of sweat trickled down his forehead. Even though he couldn’t see her anymore, he knew Tabitha was still there, nearby, watching. It would be so easy to give her away. But, Fogger or not, she’d tried to help him, which was more than he could say for anybody else here. In an odd sort of way, she was his friend.

  He leveled his eyes at them. “I already told you. I don’t know who gave me the document. I have no idea.”

  Their smiles faded. Rage flashed across their eyes once more, but it didn’t last. Representative Shine let go of his hand. “Disappointing.”

  Behind her Representative Tinker scowled. “Such a shame, Eli. We expected so much more of you.” And then to the other Guardians she called, “Take him upstairs!”

  Seconds later two Guardian boys dragged Eli across the Learning Floor. As he passed between the long tables, he couldn’t help wondering at how, even now, none of the Waywards seemed aware of any of this. They kept working and smiling, lost in their own worlds. The only ones who even looked in his direction were Clarence and Geraldine, and that was only briefly, and only because Eli managed to knock their seats with his foot as he went past. They glanced up and seemed to take in a little of what was going on, at least that Eli seemed to be in some kind of trouble. Instead of appearing concerned, though, Clarence caught Eli’s eye and shook his head in disapproval. Geraldine curled her lip and growled.

  After that they both went right back to their work.

  The rain was pelting harder against the dome, and the door to the stairway was just ahead. The Guardians’ expressions were grim, and their fingers dug painfully into his shoulders and under his armpits. But this was good, Eli decided. It was something real to concentrate on, a way to keep from sinking back into the CloudNet dream for what could be the final conscious moments of his pathetic life. Spider had won. Everything that could ever have been good about Eli’s future was gone now, and who knew where Mother, Father, and Sebastian were? The only thing he had left to cling to was his one small victory: at least he hadn’t given in to Spider’s people.

  Even as they dragged him through the doorway, he was careful not to look in Tabitha’s direction.

  22

  special training

  The Guardians lugged him, kicking and screaming, up many flights of stairs until they reached the fifteenth floor. There was a narrow hallway there, and Eli recognized it as the same corridor the two Outsider savages had carried him through after his terrifying checkers game with Spider. The rain was louder up here, nearer the top of the dome. The Guardians led him through a black door, and all at once the memory of that awful night came flooding back.

  The Special Training room was almost the same as he remembered it: small, gray, and nearly empty. The oversized sphere was still floating near the ceiling, but now there was a metal chair on the floor just below it. That’s where the Guardians dragged him. One of them held him down while the other one strapped him in, forcing his arms and legs into metal clasps. A bracket was clamped around his forehead.

  “Stop!” he screamed. “Where’s Spider? Tell him he can’t do this!”

  He tried to struggle, but they were too strong. The chair tipped back. All at once the sphere hummed to life, and the room swirled with light. Eli felt the power right away, an irresistible force drawing him in as gravity draws a falling body toward the earth. There was nothing he could do about it. He couldn’t turn his head. He couldn’t bring himself to close his eyes. His thoughts became muddled, and soon he no longer felt the chair underneath him. He was floating. The room was gone, and he was drifting up, up, into the ball of pulsing color.

  The next thing he knew, he was in a clearing in the woods. He was running through a field of grass as tall as himself. Only it wasn’t normal, synthetic grass. It was the real thing. It scratched his arms and face as he scrambled through, desperate to make his way forward. The trees ahead were real too, their branches thick with natural green leaves, like the trees of long ago. If he weren’t so terrified, he would have thought it was beautiful here. Except the air was too dry and the sky overhead was darkening with smoke. Behind him, the grass was on fire, and so were the trees. If he didn’t find a way out, he was going to die.

  He tried to remind himself it was just a dream, but it didn’t feel like it. It felt real.

  “Eli!” somebody called. “Eli, over here!”

  Up ahead two shadowy figures stood at the edge of the woods. They weren’t far. Eli made it to the end of the grass, and now he could see their silhouettes waving him over. They called out again:

  “Run, Eli! Don’t stop!”

  He could feel the heat at his back. He pressed on. The figures ran ahead, though, and he was having trouble keeping up. The flames felt closer and closer behind him. With every breath his lungs filled with ash. Already he was exhausted. “Wait!” he called, wheezing and stumbling. “Wait for me!” Then he made a mistake: he turned around. He saw a wall of fire as wide as the woods and taller than the tallest tree. It charged at him, moving faster than he ever would have imagined. He gasped. As he took a step back, his foot caught on something, and he fell. Too late to save himself now, he realized. Not even enough time to get up and run. As the heat intensified around him, as his scream caught in his throat, he tried to sense the chair underneath him. He forced himself to focus on the clamps at his wrists and ankles.

  “It’s working,” said a whispered voice.

  “No,” said another. “He’s still fighting. He’s stronger than we thought. Turn it up higher.”

  Seconds or hours later, Eli opened his
eyes. The flames were gone, and the woods were gone, and he was on his back, staring up at a cloudless sky. The air smelled faintly of salt—and something else. What was it? Not far away he could hear a sound like gentle waves. He lifted his head.

  He was on a beautiful beach lined with palm trees. And here was the ocean—not the foul-smelling sea he could sense from the tower, but a clean expanse of blue that went on and on to a distant, perfect horizon. He sat up. This was how it once was. He knew it without question. He rolled up his trousers and stepped to the edge of the surf. The sand felt cool and rough between his toes. He waded in. The water was so clear, he could see the bottom. When he was up to his knees, a school of tropical fish—curious yellow and blue things—shot between his feet, making him jump. Then he laughed. He’d never experienced anything like this before. Whatever this dream was, it didn’t feel like much of a nightmare.

  And yet … And yet … something was wrong. Other than the sound of the wind and the waves, it was perfectly quiet. The beach seemed to go on forever in both directions, and there was nobody else in sight. Not a soul. There was something spooky about it.

  “Hello?” he called. “Anybody here?”

  Nothing. Only the echo of his voice.

  He realized he was all alone, totally alone, for the first time in his life. He’d lived all his years in domes crammed with activity, and now the isolation felt unnatural. Where were all the people?

  The sun blazed at his back. While he’d been standing in the water, the heat had grown almost unbearable. He looked down. In the water’s reflection, dark clouds were filling the sky behind him. The water itself went hazy too, as if the rising temperature had allowed something foul and sickly red to grow and thrive in there. Within seconds he could no longer see the bottom. And then, just a few feet away, something bubbled under the water. There was a faint pop at the surface, and when Eli looked, he saw a dead fish floating on its side. For a moment he only stared. Another one appeared just a few yards ahead. Pop. And then two more. Pop. Pop. His stomach rose into his throat. It continued to happen faster and faster all around him. In a panic he began to fight his way back to shore, but the water was much heavier now. Soon Eli was knee-deep in a vast, unbroken field of dead fish and bloodred water as far as he could see. Desperate, he thrashed his arms and pushed his weight through the filth until at last he made it back to the beach. The moment he reached dry sand he fell to his knees and threw up.