A Crack in the Sky (36 page)

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.

By then the odor of the ocean was unmistakable. Sour milk. He gasped for breath. When he looked up, he was surprised to see two figures standing over him, the same shadowy people he’d seen before, by the woods, except he recognized them now. He couldn’t believe his eyes.

“Mother? Father?” He was overjoyed to see them. “What’s happening? Do you know? Can you help me?”

They smiled. “Don’t worry, son,” Father said. “It’s going to be all right.”

“Come with us,” Mother said. “We’ll show you what we can do for you.”

They held out their hands for him to take. Behind them the sky was growing even darker, and Eli could see what looked like a giant tornado moving across the water. But everything was going to be okay now. His parents were here. He reached up, took their hands in his, and pulled himself to his feet.

But something wasn’t right. They wouldn’t let go, and their grips—both of them—were unexpectedly powerful. He struggled. They were hurting him. Mother and Father curled their lips and laughed. Their faces were changing. Terrified, Eli found himself in the crushing grasp of two red-faced demons with mottled skin, long, pointed chins, and horns on both
sides of their foreheads. With sudden horror he realized it was all true what the secret document had said. Mother and Father really
were
working against the company. His parents were Foggers.

He screamed.

The demons laughed harder. While Eli kicked and writhed, they dragged him back into the filthy, stinking water. He was among the dead fish again, and the sea was rising all around him. His parents were going to drown him.
“No! Let me go! Let me go! Please!”

The ruined ocean was almost up to his mouth. He started to cough and sputter, but then he got hold of himself. He craned his neck toward the clouds. Two pairs of eyes gazed down at him from the sky. He stopped struggling. He concentrated on the eyes, only on the eyes.

The clouds morphed. Soon he could make out the shapes of two identical faces. They were studying him. Eli pointed his finger and shouted, “It’s you! Don’t think I don’t see you up there! I know none of this is real! I’m still strapped to the chair!”

The cloud face on the left frowned. “He’s still fighting,” it whispered. Eli couldn’t tell if it was Representative Shine or Representative Tinker. But he supposed it didn’t matter.

“It doesn’t go much higher,” the other one said. “Careful. If we push too far, we could totally fry him.”

“Take the chance,” the first one said. “Do it.”

*   *   *

The demons disappeared, and so did the water. Now Eli was hovering in space, floating through a weird purple mist. The cloud faces solidified until the massive heads and bodies of the two Guardian girls were perfectly clear, drifting in circles around him. Only it wasn’t them, exactly. Their stomachs swelled, and their mouths grew bloated and ugly. Their white uniforms morphed into identical striped shirts with caps, and white trousers that stretched over their bulging bellies. Eli recognized them. Somehow they’d transformed into Tweedledum and Tweedledee, the demented, fighting twins from the
Alice
stories. He wondered if the Guardians had chosen this nightmare for him, or if it was just his unconscious mind spilling into his dream.

They were everywhere. Every way Eli turned, he saw their ugly, round faces. It wouldn’t take much for either of them to reach out and crush him. From somewhere deep in the mist he heard music, some insane melody played in the familiar tink-tonk of the funbots. Arm in arm the two Guardians began to dance, and while they danced, they chanted:

They repeated it over and over, the music and voices echoing so loud in Eli’s head, he covered his ears.

After that, everything went even crazier.

In a blaze of fire, the twins disappeared and colors burst and flashed all around him. The music continued while images darted past and melted away—strange, upsetting visions
that made him cower. Many of them spoke to him. “What a disappointment you turned out to be …,” said a voice coming from a swarm of squirming, fat slugs with the faces of his uncles and aunts. A giant caterpillar smoking an enormous cigar floated past. “You’re a disgrace, boy,” it said in Uncle Hector’s voice. “We expected so much more of you.” The mist billowed and swirled. In the distance Eli heard a peal of thunder. He wasn’t sure if it was real or part of the nightmare. A boy in an Outsider mask drifted close and leered into his face, making him squirm. It was the kid from the Bubble tram, except now he had a respirator and a fake arm. Beneath his demonic mask there was something terrible and frightening about his eyes. Eli tried to look away but he wasn’t able.
“Leave me alone,”
he pleaded.
“Go away!”
But the boy’s gaze stayed fixed on him. Without a word he reached up and pulled back the mask. When Eli saw the twisted, sun-scarred face underneath, his heart nearly stopped. He was looking at himself.

Eli’s breaths came in rapid gasps. “No! No!”

The whole world was shaking, and so was he. Surely he was losing his mind. All he wanted was to let go, to somehow shut himself down so it would all go away. In the end he curled himself into a ball and wrapped his arms around his head as the nightmare images continued to swirl and flash around him. In the distance somebody was screaming. It was a long time before he realized it was his own voice.

He woke up, not for the first time. Only he didn’t trust it. Maybe he was awake, but maybe it was just another part of the dream. It had been going on for what felt like days. He seemed
still to be in the Special Training room, except now he was alone. It seemed odd at first that the Guardians would leave him unattended, but then he realized it wasn’t so strange. After all, he was strapped to a chair, and the sphere surely could make the nightmares on its own. Everything was dark around him except for the light from the orb, which glowed dimly now. His clothes were soaked in sweat, and it felt like all his energy was gone.

He wondered how long he’d been there.

He wondered if he was dead.

Suddenly the sphere brightened and the room started to rumble. The walls were closing in around him. Now he knew this really
was
just another part of the long nightmare. Ghost images flew at him, whispering and shrieking as they whipped around his head. “InfiniCorp is taking care of everything! InfiniCorp is taking care of everything!” He reached out to grab them, but his fingers passed right through them cold, leaving him weak. The walls were very close now. They were almost on him. In seconds they were going to crush him to death.

But that was okay. He didn’t care anymore. In a way, he hoped they
would
crush him.

He was too weak to fight.

He closed his eyes and passed out again.

In Eli’s dream he was deep, deep asleep and had been for quite some time. But now he tossed and turned. He sensed something. It felt like a mosquito buzzing around his ears. Something prickling at the back of his mind.

And every now and then he thought he heard a voice.

Eli … Eli, wake up.…

He tried to shut it out. This was just the newest phase of the endless nightmare, another whispering ghost to terrify him into submission. But he was beyond that now,
way
beyond. Already he felt trapped in a shadow world, and his thoughts—the few he could still muster—were foggy with dark visions. Didn’t they realize they’d already worn him down into submission? Even if he wanted to fight, he had so little energy left. They had won. So why did they bother to torment him further?

Come back.… Follow my voice.…

He heard himself groan. He wondered if they would ever stop, or if this was how it would continue on, forever. When the voice spoke again, the words were louder and clearer.
Don’t give up, Eli.… You can do this.… I’m right here.… Come back, darling.… Come to me.…

This time something about the voice itself, low and gravelly in his mind, made him pause in his dream. He wondered. Was it possible?