A Crack in the Sky (24 page)

“Hey, Marilyn, look,” he said. “There’s something in his hand.”

Whatever it was, Dr. Friedmann was holding it at an angle, so it wasn’t easy to see, but it looked like a manila binder, one of those old-fashioned things they used for keeping papers together back in the Old Days, when people still recorded things on paper. Eli zoomed in and bent the image to adjust for the angle. Now he found he could make out the words on the front cover:

Marilyn must have seen it too, because Eli heard her reading it just as he saw it. Then she asked,
What do you think it means?

“I have no idea.”

Grandfather was the only one who would be able to shed any light on all this. Eli checked his watch. Ten-fifty-two p.m. The meeting must have ended by now. He wondered if he should try pinging Doug again. In the end he decided against it. If he kept bugging the office, it would only end up annoying Grandfather, and that was something Eli definitely wanted to avoid. He would just have to keep waiting until Grandfather got back to him.

Eleven-twenty-four p.m. Still nothing.

Eli remained slumped on his bed, his eyelids growing heavy. It had been a long, emotional day, and he was exhausted. In the past few minutes, he’d caught himself dozing off twice. Marilyn was no longer in sight. She’d told him the effort of downloading the file into his brain had given her a bad headache—she’d been getting a lot of them lately—and it had left her weak. She’d crawled under the bed and was now either asleep or comatose in a dream game.

Part of him was still marveling at the chip in her head.

Being able to tap into household appliances and link to the CloudNet without a sphere was impressive enough, but she’d managed to send a file into Eli’s brain, which was entirely flesh and blood, not some system of digital processors. What else could the chip do? What startling abilities still lay dormant inside Marilyn’s little cranium, waiting to be discovered?

And yet, at the same time, Eli worried about Marilyn. Ever since she’d started linking into the dream games, she’d been getting headaches that seemed to be growing worse and worse.
The more she used the advanced features of the chip, the more it seemed to leave her lethargic.

What was it doing to her?

He made a mental note to press her about this later. Right now he couldn’t afford to be distracted. He focused his thoughts on the Outsider and on planning what he would say to Grandfather once he finally got in touch with him.

Where
was
Grandfather, anyway? This was getting ridiculous.

Eli checked the time again. Twelve-thirteen a.m.

One thing was obvious: Grandfather wasn’t going to ping him back tonight. He’d probably gone to bed by now. As frustrated as Eli felt, he decided to do the same. He would ping again first thing in the morning. For now, Eli would at least get some rest.

He slumped onto his bed and closed his eyes.

Within moments he was asleep.

Eli woke with a start, his heart pounding. He thought he’d heard something out in the hallway. It sounded like the faint
squeak, squeak, squeak
of floorboards, as if someone were creeping up the stairs to his room.

He checked the time. One-twenty-one a.m.

Marilyn? Was that you?

She didn’t answer. He could hear her breathing under the bed. She was deep asleep.

He raised himself onto his elbow. He held his breath and strained to hear any break in the quiet. In his mind he could picture Foggers coming to get him, crouching on the other
side of the door, waiting. The silence continued for a long time, and finally he let himself relax. He’d only dreamed the sound, he decided. It was understandable. He was still jittery from everything that had happened. But now he breathed a sigh of relief and let his head drop back to his pillow.

Suddenly his door swung open and they were on him.

There were two of them: dark, hulking figures with cloaks and sunglasses. Eli didn’t get a long look, but in the dim glow of a streetlight through his window, he caught a quick flash of mottled, leathery skin. He tried to scream, but they were so fast he didn’t have time. As soon as his mouth was open, he felt a sharp jolt that began at his shoulder and rapidly spread across his entire body. He couldn’t make a sound. Terrified, he tried to struggle but found he was unable to move. He called out to Marilyn, but she didn’t answer.

Everything happened quickly after that.

The Outsiders didn’t say a word. They grabbed his arms and dragged him from bed. Within seconds, and more quietly than Eli would have thought possible, they lugged him down the stairs. As they carried him through the front door, he noticed that the security system was disabled. Inside his useless body he kept struggling, desperate to move his limbs or to scream, but it was no use. What was happening? Where were they taking him?

In the dimly lit street in front of the house, a transport pod was waiting for them. The Outsiders carried him toward it. Long, low, and menacing, it had enormous road tires, red illuminators, and jagged tail fins shaped to look like angel wings. Eli knew this style of pod. Everyone did. It was a Department of Loyalty transport. But obviously this one wasn’t real because
these weren’t Department of Loyalty agents, they were Outsiders. It was a good trick, he realized, a disguise that would enable the Outsiders to travel Inside unchallenged and undetected. He tried again to struggle, but his body was dead to him. If only he could call out for help! If only he could demand that they tell him what was going on!

But somewhere in his heart, he already knew. This was the end. He was being taken away and no one would ever hear from him again.

One last time he wondered how he could have been so foolish. Marilyn had warned him not to get involved with the Foggers, and yet he’d kept on ignoring her. Why had he let his childish curiosity get in the way of his better judgment? Was it that all along he’d believed something like this could never happen to him? Or was it that he’d secretly
wanted
it to happen?

He felt himself lifted into the air, and then, with a gasp, he landed hard on his elbows. Just as he realized he’d been stuffed headfirst into the back of the pod, a cloth bag was shoved over his head. Now he couldn’t even see.

Marilyn! Wake up! Help me! Help me!

But it was too late. The pod was already carrying him away.

PART II
the tower at the end of the world

14
control and disposal

While the black-robed Outsiders dragged Eli from his room and out of the house, Marilyn lay under his bed, unaware. It seemed that in recent weeks every time she did anything more mentally demanding than a simple CloudNet search, it left her feeling as though there were a hot spike in her skull. She had long suspected the brain chip was damaging her each time she used it. At first it hadn’t felt like much, just a sensation like a tiny spark going off. She’d barely noticed it. But the more time that went by, the more intense the feeling had become, as if the chip were frying her brain cells one tiny burst at a time.

It was a real concern, of course, but what could she do?

She’d never mentioned it to Eli. There was no point in worrying him.

Tonight, though, after piggybacking him across the CloudNet to show him the image of Dr. Friedmann, she’d ended up so weak, her whole body trembled. After a while her
thoughts had clouded over and she’d blacked out. Still comatose under the bed, she imagined she could hear Eli’s silent voice calling out to her from somewhere far, far away. It was unsettling, but some part of her realized she was asleep, so this seemed like just another piece of her troubled dream.

But then she heard it again, this time even more desperate:

Marilyn! Can’t you hear me? Help! Help! Please!

Something in the urgency of the voice stirred her to attention this time. At the far edge of her consciousness, she sensed something was wrong and she needed to wake up. She tried to swim to the surface of her dream but it was as if there were a weight dragging her down, and the pain in her head was growing. She ignored it and kept fighting. After a great effort, she became aware again of the cool floor under her belly and the smell of clean sheets over her head. She opened her eyes.

It was dark. The room was quiet. She was curled in a tight ball. The door was open. And there it was once more, Eli’s voice:

Marilyn! Wake up! Help me! Help me!

She pulled herself up. As she did, the throbbing in her skull was so intense that for a moment the walls spun around her. But she could sense Eli wasn’t in the room anymore. So where was he? Following the direction of his signal, she crept into the hallway and down the stairs. The front door was ajar, so she headed that way. There was already a sinking feeling in her stomach.

Eli? Are you there …?

She reached the darkened street just in time to see cloaked figures hop into a black transport pod like the ones used by the Department of Loyalty. She knew in an instant something was
terribly wrong. Eli’s signal was faint and unresponsive, and it was coming from inside that pod. Even more disturbing, before the pod skidded away from the curb, she caught a brief glimpse of a mottled red face.

Outsiders! They were taking Eli away from her!

She tore after the pod, hissing and screaming. She was ready to face down the desert rats, rip them apart and scratch their eyes out.
Darling, I’m here! I’m coming for you!

But the pod was moving fast. When the long black shadow rounded the corner of Angell Street, she lost sight of it. By the time she charged around the corner herself, the red illuminators looked like dots in the distance. She hurtled after it. Soon, though, it disappeared from view. Marilyn dashed ahead to where she thought the pod had turned, but it wasn’t there. She spun the other way. Nothing.

It was gone!

Eli!
she called, desperate now.
Where are you? Tell me so I can follow!

There was no response.

She stretched herself up on her haunches and cast her gaze to the top of the dome. Still panting, she wondered if it had taken flight and she’d missed it. At this time of the cycle, in the wee hours of the morning, the sky was programmed to give off only a dim light and the stars were brilliant and beautiful. The red illuminators could be lost among all the drifting multicolored dots, some of which were probably other pods. But maybe Eli was up there. The black pod could even have flown Outside already, if that was where they were going. There had been enough time, and Marilyn had been concentrating on the street too much to even think about looking up at the sky.

Helpless to know what else to do, she sprinted down Angell and glanced into every cross street. All she saw were shadows and darkened houses and InfiniCorp shops that were closed for the night. She cursed herself and the burning fire in her head. Even now she felt like she’d been hit with a sledgehammer. Something dreadful was happening to Eli, and tonight of all nights she had been too slow-witted to stop it.