A Crack in the Sky (10 page)

For once, she thought, she’d lucked out.

Across the back of the driver’s seat flashed an advert for a new dream game, a funny one where you flew through a lush cornfield full of fat, machine-gun-toting pigs in flak jackets who jumped out at you every now and then. Tabitha looked away. As she watched downtown roll past, she was almost overcome with grief. This was probably the last time she would ever see the city. She’d never shop on Market Street again, or watch another Cardinals game at InfiniCorp Stadium,
or grab a slice of pizza at Union Station with her friends. Even the music seemed designed to torment her. The song was “Doo Doo Like U, Dee Dee Like Me” by Five Go Splat!—the very tune that had been playing when she and Ben had first kissed.

She couldn’t help thinking how ironic it was for her to be in this position. Only last night Ben had asked if she still carried doubts. “Now isn’t the time to lose faith,” he’d said, quoting what she’d heard Brother Arnold say many times. “The future requires personal sacrifice, and the Friends are counting on each of us.”

Worst of all, Ben had been right that her trust in the Friends wasn’t absolute. While she did sense in her heart that the end was near and that the company was dangerous and irresponsible, she didn’t fully buy into
everything
the Friends taught: their belief in predestination; the prophecy of el Guía; their unwavering faith in the Outsider prophet named Gustavo, a shadowy figure who might or might not even have really existed. How could they be so sure theirs was the only true path? But it was too late to question things now. Doubts or no doubts, she was in this for keeps.

Oh god. She hoped she hadn’t thrown her life away for nothing.

With just moments to go before she reached the gate, her mind scrambled to find another way, a way that would let her stay under the dome. But Inside there was nowhere to hide. If she was going to make it through the gate, she’d need to stay focused. She was grateful, at least now, for the Awareness Training the Friends had provided. Her self-discipline was the only thing that might get her through this alive.

She took a slow, deep breath and tried to calm her thoughts. She told herself she was about to see Ben. At this very moment he was on the other side. He was there. She could visualize him. He was waiting for her.

At the corner of Broadway and Washington, they passed a sign for a one-hour liposuction salon called Skinny Asylum. She’d passed it a hundred times, but today the name triggered something in her consciousness. What was the word the Friend had used—
asylum?
No. But similar. A refuge. A shelter from danger. She pulled out the note again.

Sanctuary
.

At last she remembered. The note itself had been the clue. It should have been obvious, but she’d been thinking too hard. The name of the safe place was
The Water Sanctuary
. Tabitha even remembered now what Sister Krystal had said about it, that before the hurricanes it used to be a hospital emergency room but now it was one of the Outsider gathering places, what almost passed as a restaurant out in the ruins. She felt a gush of relief. If she could find her way there, she would almost certainly find Friends who could help. Perhaps they’d smuggle her to some faraway place where she’d be safe.

If there even was a place that far away.

The pod pulled over with a sudden jerk, and the boy at the wheel interrupted his song long enough to call back, “Here you go, lady. Have a productive day.”

The door swung open. Tabitha quickly thanked the driver and hopped out. Her head low, she strode down the block, staying close to the nearby housing complex. Here at the edge of the city, the dome angled downward, becoming a near-vertical electronic wall that reflected color patterns all across
her face. She took a deep breath and tried to stay calm. The gate was a block away.

Soon the exit station was in sight. She paused to gather her courage. It was Thursday, not even lunchtime, so she was surprised at the long line. Along with a handful of dome engineers and a few others, thirty or forty little kids, fidgety and excited, stood laughing and shoving each other in front of the Arch. A dozen or so education specialists stood among them, many with cameras hanging around their necks. Tabitha recognized right away what this must be. A school field trip, the third-grade Out-visit tour of the dome’s perimeter. She’d been taken on a similar tour Outside at the New Houston dome when she was eight. Every kid did it. It was like a rite of passage.

This was good, she decided. It’d be easier to slip past undetected if she were part of a crowd.

She stepped across the street and joined the line. All the children had environment suits, but some of the education specialists did not. By this time her hands were sweating so much that she had to wipe them on her slacks. But she was
here
, actually at the gate. Suddenly her situation was taking on a whole new reality. Once she stepped through that arch—
if
she made it through—there was no coming back.

Not ever.

She tried not to stare at anyone. The line moved quickly. The Friends had told her that getting Outside through the gate wasn’t a big deal. They’d said the monitors cared more about stopping the wrong people from coming Inside than preventing employees from going Out. At most they’d do a cursory ID check and wave her through. Still, Tabitha’s knees
felt wobbly. Surely the gate monitors would be more careful than the cabdriver had been.

But what the Friends had told her seemed to be true. She watched as, one after another, the people in line touched their fingertips to the identification pad. Each time, the monitor waved them through. This looked like it was going to be a cinch.

There were only two others left ahead of her now. Tabitha could even see the monitor’s face behind the glass. It was a redheaded girl with acne. She looked about the same age as the boy in the cab.

“Fingers on the pad,” the girl said in a bored voice, a massive wad of chewing gum in her mouth.

A heartbeat later she waved the last education specialist, a big-hipped lady in a Rams cap, through the gate. Now only one other person, a dome engineer, stood between Tabitha and the front of the line. Seconds later the monitor girl waved him on, and he stepped through the Arch.

Summoning all her willpower, Tabitha forced herself to stay calm. She shaped her face into what she hoped was a relaxed, everyday expression and stepped in front of the glass.

“Fingers on the pad,” said the girl without even looking at her.

Tabitha placed her fake fingertips on the smooth plastic square.

That’s when the girl’s InfiniTalk howled. It trailed on and on before breaking down into a wheezy cough. Tabitha recognized the sound. It was famous, the trademark howl of a popular late-night comedian. Lots of kids had it programmed into
their InfiniTalks lately. The girl grabbed it just as Tabitha saw her phony information come up in the work sphere.

She could almost feel the blood pulsing through her temples. But she did her best to smile. She watched closely as the girl listened and nodded. Was this it? Was she caught? Should she run?

The girl didn’t look at her, which Tabitha decided was a good sign. But it felt like her heart was about to burst through her chest. Finally the monitor set her InfiniTalk back on the counter, and without even bothering to glance at the information in the sphere, she waved Tabitha through.

At first Tabitha wasn’t sure she’d understood right. What? That was it? But after only a slight hesitation, she pulled herself together and walked through the gate.

Within moments she felt the difference. The atmosphere hit her like a hot, wet blanket. The air was so thick it was like walking through soup. And then the sour smell of the Mississippi filled her nose, and hundreds of tiny insects buzzed in her ears.

It was the most wonderful feeling she could imagine.

She was Outside. She’d made it.

She kept her head down and moved quickly forward, past the crowd of children, who by then had gathered around a short woman who was pointing out the technical features of the dome exterior and describing the history of the area. Far ahead was a series of wooden booths where Outsiders, dirty-looking and haggard in their worn environment suits, had set up a makeshift market for trading between themselves. She slipped behind a crumbled wall and made her way in that
direction. Maybe one of the Outsiders could tell her where she could get her hands on a suit. Maybe they could even help her make her way through the concrete jungle to the Water Sanctuary.

Maybe she really would see Ben again.

But that’s when she felt an iron grip on her shoulder. Before she could turn to see who it was, a sudden, staggering pain nearly paralyzed her. Like a ferocious electrical charge at her back, the sensation was so sharp it knocked the breath from her lungs and buckled her knees. She fell to the ground. Somebody grabbed her by the hair and yanked her head. The last thing she saw before a dark sack was shoved over her face was two white-suited Guardian boys, one of them crouching over her. Then another stabbing pain, this time in her shoulder. She realized it was a needle. Something was being injected into her. She tried to cry out, but it was no use.

Almost as soon as her head hit the mud, her ears started to hum and her thoughts began to lose their shape, stretching like warm taffy until they drifted away from her, formless and without substance.

The last thing she heard was the droning voice of the tour guide and the
swoop, swoop, swoop
of the windmills in the distance.

5
foggers

That night Grandfather appeared on the CloudNet and made a speech. “Don’t worry,” he said as the company logo spun behind him, “InfiniCorp is taking care of everything.”

Grandfather had a deep, calm voice. He had a friendly face too, which was part of why everybody liked him—on top of the fact that he’d saved the world, of course. Eli had read an article once where somebody said he was like everybody’s dear old granddad.

It made Eli proud because he really was
his
granddad.

“Today’s tragic attack on the Providence dome was brutal, senseless, and unprovoked, but it could have been worse. This blast was meant to be part of a coordinated series of malicious actions against our city domes. From New Miami to Atlanta, from Newer York to Phoenix, the plans were in place for the most extreme disruption we’ve ever seen. Fortunately the company was able to thwart the master plot before it was fully carried out.”

Eli stared up into the CloudNet sphere from the floor, his arms wrapped around his knees. On the sofa nearby, Father’s brow was furrowed in a scowl.

Like his sons, Daedalus Papadopoulos had dark eyes and black hair that he wore to his shoulders. He was the head of the Division of Rebuilding and Relocation, but when he’d heard how Eli and Sebastian had been picked up at the perimeter that afternoon, he’d left in the middle of an important meeting and flown straight home from Chicago. Sebastian had done most of the talking and had been able to mollify him a little—Sebastian had a way of calming people—but Eli could tell Father was still furious. And that was without knowing the full story. Eli and Sebastian weren’t about to tell anyone what had happened with the Outsider. At least none of them had been hurt. Besides, Eli had unintentionally broken a strict company rule: Outsiders were so dangerous that InfiniCorp prohibited anyone from communicating with them. So Eli and Sebastian had agreed to keep quiet about it. Why get themselves into more trouble than they were in already?

Sebastian sat beside Father, his jaw tight. On the edge of the rug, Marilyn’s gaze was fixed on Grandfather. She seemed to hang on every word.

“Rest assured, the company is strong and well organized. Already we’ve made great progress in undoing the damage and have confirmation on who was responsible. As is too often the case, today’s dreadful proceedings were indeed devised by the same criminal element we’ve seen so many times before. It was yet another act of vicious mischief carried out by the Fog.”

Eli sat up straighter at the mention of the Fog. He’d always been curious about Foggers. In InfiniBook stories they were
often the villains, mysterious Outsiders with twisted motives and grand plans to destroy the company. They were the worst of the worst. Eli didn’t know much about them, but today the terrors of Outside felt more real to him than ever.

Grandfather went on. “Even now, mere hours after the explosions, we already have the situation under control. At this hour, the Division of Freedom has the masterminds of the attacks in our custody. Especially troubling is that the Outsider Foggers who carried out these cowardly actions had help from
Inside
Fogger agents.”

The image in the sphere changed: now it was the head of a thin, unsmiling girl with hair that jutted out in all directions like an insane person’s.

“Her name is Tabitha Bloomberg. Until this morning she was a trusted employee, a rising star in a branch of the Department of Intern Relations in St. Louis. That goes to show how, even with their compromised, often brain-fevered reasoning, the Foggers can still be cunning.” As Grandfather spoke, the camera slowly closed in on the girl. “She wasn’t high in the criminal organization, and yet hers is the same unfortunate story we’ve seen before: a misguided young lady who allowed herself to be coerced by lies. In doing so, she turned her back on all of us and on everything she once held dear.”