A Crack in the Sky (9 page)

Tabitha stepped quickly through the doors and into the elevator. She was sure of one thing: she wasn’t going up.

Less than a minute later she was downstairs in her dorm suite. First, she needed her fake ID. If the Guardians were looking for her, she wouldn’t get very far using her own DNA. They’d pick her up the first time she had to ride a transport or buy anything. But the Friends had given her a set of fake finger pads, and if there was ever a time she needed them, this was it. Second, she needed an environment suit. There was no way around that either. If she was really going Outside, she’d be there awhile and would need protection. Unfortunately she didn’t have a suit of her own. But Sandra had one, and Tabitha knew where she kept it.

Sorry, Sandra. You’ll have to forgive me
.

First, the finger pads.

Balancing herself on a chair, Tabitha lifted the ceiling tile above her poster of Aristotle the Cat, her favorite band. She felt around up there with her hand. A couple of weeks earlier she’d put the pads in a bag and hidden it up there, and yet now her fingers didn’t feel it. It wasn’t where she thought she’d put it. Her heart gave a lurch. Oh god, where was it? What was she going to do if she couldn’t find it?

On the opposite edge of the tile her hand finally felt the textured surface she was looking for. Relieved, she snatched the bag, stuffed the pads into her pocket, and leapt back to the floor. Next she bolted down the hallway for the environment suit. She didn’t know how much time she had, but she knew it wasn’t a lot.

Tabitha tried Sandra’s door. It wasn’t locked. Sandra never bothered to lock it. Hardly slowing at all, she shoved it open and burst inside. The last thing she expected was to find somebody in there.

She nearly jumped out of her skin when she found herself face to face with a pair of green eyes.

She screamed.

“Good afternoon, Representative Bloomberg. This is an unexpected surprise.”

Tabitha struggled to recover her composure. It was only Ophelia, the cleaning robot. Old and worn, she smelled like disinfectant and looked like a mess of tattered plastic tubing, with dusters and scrubbing brushes and appendages that seemed to hang from every part of her chassis. Even though she was just a machine, she looked tired.

Tabitha had forgotten this was cleaning day.

She took a step back and made an effort to act casual. “Ophelia, you scared me!” she said, attempting a laugh. “You shouldn’t sneak around like that!”

But Ophelia didn’t seem to think it was funny. She angled her smooth plastic head to one side like a curious dog. Her mechanical arms paused in the middle of making Sandra’s bed, and her rubber fingers stopped picking up the socks and paperwork scattered across the rug. Her voice was soft and pleasant as always, but gave no hint of a sense of humor.

“Representative Bloomberg, what are you doing in Representative Gates’s quarters in the middle of the school day?”

“I just need to grab something I left in her trunk. No biggie.”

She waited, but Ophelia didn’t move to let her past. Her optical sensors were locked on Tabitha’s face. It gave her the creeps. Finally Tabitha said, “You can go clean up somewhere else now, Ophelia. I’ll just be a second.”

But the robot still didn’t move. It occurred to Tabitha that Ophelia was connected to the CloudNet, which meant she might have been alerted about the situation.

As if reading her thoughts, Ophelia said, “You have a message to report right away to the Senior Director.”

Tabitha fought another wave of panic. She wanted to run, but she had to stay and do this. She needed that suit.

“Yes, Ophelia, I know,” she said calmly. “Like I said, I just have to grab one quick thing. Let me by, please. It’ll only take a second.”

“No, Representative Bloomberg. The message is marked Urgent. You are instructed to go upstairs and report to the
executive office
without delay.”
There was something in her voice that made Tabitha take another step back. Normally she would never have been afraid of a cleaning robot. It was just a piece of equipment, like a toaster. But suddenly Ophelia seemed intimidating. Her glowing green eyes and blank stare sent a prickle across Tabitha’s scalp.

Then the robot started moving toward her.

“Okay, okay,” Tabitha said, taking yet another step back, this time into the hallway. She forced another laugh. Giving up the suit meant exposing herself to toxins and facing the elements unprotected, but what choice did she have? “I didn’t realize it was marked Urgent. I’ll head upstairs right now.”

“I will let the office know you are on your way.”

Under Ophelia’s spooky gaze, Tabitha moved toward the suite door. She tried her best to appear relaxed and cooperative. They’d just had a misunderstanding, that was all, but everything was cleared up now. Once she was out of the suite and in the main corridor, though, she was out of Ophelia’s sight.

She started to run.

They know. They’re coming for you
.

She dashed past the elevator this time and went for the stairway.

If only Ben were here. He would have ideas. Nothing ever seemed to faze Ben. Oh, how she wished she were holding his hand right now on one of their long, slow walks through the park. But the image felt painful now, something she wanted
but couldn’t have, maybe not ever again. And where
was
he? Was he all right? Should she try to contact him? She couldn’t use his com-code, of course. That was another thing the Friends had taught her: handwritten notes only. Anything electronic could be traced. How about if she tried to leave a message at the regular place?

No, there wasn’t time.

Besides, if they knew about her, then maybe they knew about Ben too. And if so, then he was in as much danger as she was.

Ben! The thought tied her stomach in knots.

She reached the stairway and scrambled down the steps. At the window at the bottom of the first landing she came to, she stopped. What was she planning to do, saunter into the lobby? She’d never make it past Reception. Her breath was coming in short gasps now, but she realized what she had to do. She forced the stairwell window open. Despite her terror of heights, she swung herself out onto the fire escape. Trying not to look down, she descended the remaining six flights to the alley below.

Her first impulse on the ground was to run, to get away as fast as she could. But again she stopped herself. Better to move calmly. If she dashed headlong through the streets of St. Louis, somebody would notice her.

A hovercraft passed overhead. She had to get going or they’d spot her here. She walked down the alley and turned left onto Delmar to avoid walking in front of her building. InfiniCorp signs were everywhere—on every billboard, every street pod, every briefcase.

Tabitha kept her head down. The company had eyes everywhere. The closest dome exit was at the Gateway Arch, maybe twenty blocks away. It wouldn’t be smart to hire a private transport, she decided. Even with the finger pads, it was possible a robot driver might make a visual ID on her. Better to go by foot.

She felt a puff of freezing cold from overhead. It seemed like the Department of Cool and Comfortable Air had the blowers cranked higher than ever lately, but the city was getting warmer anyway. She ducked through the swarm of downtown shoppers, careful not to look anybody in the eye. Where was she even going? The note said “beyond the windmills,” but that didn’t help much. Outside the dome there were hundreds of windmills. They formed a complete ring round the city. She tried to think back on what the Friends had told her about safe places. In one of her many whispered conversations, Sister Krystal might have mentioned the name of a place in the wreckage of Old St. Louis. Was that right? There’d been so much to learn, and now she was having trouble remembering. But yes, she was pretty sure that was correct. And if she remembered right, it
was
beyond the windmills, somewhere deep in the eastern ruins.

But what was the name? How could she hope to find it if she couldn’t remember?

She wondered how her life had come to this. It wasn’t how things were supposed to have turned out. Back in New Houston, where she’d lived most of her life, she’d been the smartest kid in her class. When she’d taken the InfiniCorp Middle Management Aptitude Test and was accepted into the Program a whole year early, her parents had been so proud. She’d moved to St. Louis and everything seemed on track.

But then Ben changed everything.

From her first day in the Program, this beautiful, smart boy with droopy eyes and an earnest face had been a distraction from her studies. They’d meet in cafés or wander through the city. Sometimes they’d find a park bench and whisper to each other until late in the evening. Being with him was thrilling and fun. He was the one who had lifted the veil from her eyes. About Outside, about the company, about Grandfather, the so-called Savior of Humanity, and his whole horrific Papadopoulos clan. Ben helped her recognize what was real and what was only a facade. At first she hadn’t wanted to hear him; it was all too hard to accept. But in the end she couldn’t deny what she’d felt deep down all along. Then he’d introduced her to Sister Krystal, Brother Arnold, and all the others, operatives of a shadowy organization. Sister Krystal, with her secret Outside maps marked with the image of a burning sun—the insignia of the Friends—was particularly impressive. The group had their own ways, their own secret ceremonies, and they kept it all hidden from the company.

She’d known the risks of joining, but she’d been drawn in by the idea of making a difference. She wanted to help save the world. And she wanted to be with Ben.

So she’d agreed. She took the Oath of Loyalty.

Now all she wanted was to shrivel up and disappear. All she’d done was throw her life away. Her career, her future, everything. She was the worst kind of failure. She would kick herself later.

But first she had to survive this day.

Trying to blend into the crowd, she made her way down North Twenty-first and turned the corner onto Lucas. Which was where she almost walked right into two heavyset girls in white uniforms. Guardians. They looked about sixteen or seventeen, and
big
. Both were holding their index fingers up to their earpieces and nodding as if receiving instructions. Only a few steps ahead of Tabitha, one of them happened to look in her direction.

As soon as she saw them, Tabitha spun on her heel and held her hand up to her face. She knew she couldn’t dash back the way she’d come without attracting attention, so for a moment she just waited there, pretending to be interested in a shopwindow. It was a Rewards Office, and the giant hologram display was looping through an incentive advert:

The InfiniCorp Department of Productivity Incentives Reminds You What Awaits the Employee of the Month!
The yellow words lit up a glorious blue sky over a swanky hotel. Then two beautiful, smiling people, a man and woman in their twenties, were shown ice-skating, skiing, eating in fancy restaurants, and playing with baby seals. The seals leapt out at Tabitha, and then the couple grinned at her as they tossed a pair of particulate filters into the ocean. Then more words:
Adventure! Rugged Wilderness! Air-Contamination Levels as Low as 50 AQI! The Arctic Circle … Outside Relaxation at Its Way Coolest!

Tabitha felt the advert’s subtle pull, coaxing her attention
away from her immediate danger and toward its beautiful message. She turned her eyes slightly aside and felt the attraction diminish. The Friends had shown her how to do this, but the truth was that she’d always been able to resist the subconscious influence of the CloudNet, even when she was a small child. It was only recently, since she’d met the Friends, that she realized just how rare this ability was.

The two Guardians removed their fingers from their ears and glanced up and down the street as if searching for something. Head down, Tabitha drifted in the opposite direction, careful not to run. Up ahead a crowd of first-year executives talked and laughed as they crossed North Twenty-first. She ducked among them and tried to stop trembling. She had to get out of the open. If word was already out about her, she couldn’t stay on the street.

It was time for a new plan. She decided to risk a private transport after all.

Before long she was hiding in the shadows on Washington Avenue, waiting for a cab. It had to be just right—preferably an old relic. Most of the newer taxi pods were flight-capable, which would be helpful, but they were also more likely to have robot drivers who would recognize her and alert the CloudNet. She waited until a dirty yellow road pod, an ancient jalopy with patches of actual rust, came chugging around the corner. It had old-style rubber tires and no visible flight gear of any kind. Definitely ground-only.

She raised her arm and, thankfully, it pulled over.

With her fake DNA pads in place, she set her fingertips on the InfiniCredit square. Somewhere, some unsuspecting employee’s account was debited. She was sorry about that, but she
didn’t have any other options. The door swung open, and the sound of pounding music blared. Before stepping in, she glanced at the driver.

She was relieved to see that she’d chosen well. He was human.

“What are you waiting for? Get in!” he called over the music. A skinny kid with freckles, no older than twelve at the most. “Where to?”

Good question
, she thought as she slid onto the worn upholstery and yanked the door shut. She quickly decided on a destination close to the gate but not close enough to raise suspicions. “The corner of Market and Fourth.”

The boy leaned on the accelerator and they shot off. Tabitha watched him, searching for any sign that he knew. But he seemed lost in his own world, more interested in the music than anything else. He nodded and tapped the wheel to the rhythm, occasionally slamming on the brakes and tossing her forward in her seat. But he never once looked back at her in the rearview mirror. Tabitha decided he wasn’t likely to have been paying attention to any CloudNet alerts. She felt relatively safe, at least for now.