A Crack in the Sky (35 page)

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?

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