Kingdom Keepers Boxed Set

by Ridley Pearson

  “Finn, dear?”

  Not a twitch. Not a complaint. He didn’t roll over; he didn’t squint or moan or tell her to go away. He didn’t move.

  It was as if…

  “Oh, Lord…” she said aloud. She stepped back away from the bed, her bottom lip trembling, and crossed her arms, tears forming in her eyes. She returned to his bedside and shook him again.

  “Finn? Finn! Finn! This is not funny!”

  She shook him so hard that his lifeless, limp, sleeping body just rocked back and forth like…like…

  She couldn’t bring herself to admit what it was like.

  “Wake up! Wake up!”

  Tears spilled from her blotchy face as droplets on his pillow.

  “You did not do this. Tell me you did not do this! Where are you? Come back! Please, God, come back!”

  Then she fell to her knees and wailed.

  IT TOOK PHILBY THREE TRIES to find the right door, but finally he got himself, Amanda, and Finn into the back of the Mayan Temple and up its long staircase. They reached a glassed-in booth at the top. It was high enough and well disguised enough so that it couldn’t be seen by park guests from within Epcot. Finn used all-clear to enter the control room and unlock the door.

  Inside it looked like a miniature version of something NASA would build. There was a wraparound console with two computers, several dials and switches, and two phones.

  “IllumiNations,” Philby said, studying some of the switches up close. “This is where they run the music and the lasers for the show. Maybe even the fireworks—I can’t tell, but if I had to guess—”

  “So you’re saying don’t touch anything,” Finn said.

  “Amanda,” Philby said in his Professor Philby voice, “the idea is that by being here maybe you can see the Overtakers move around. Tell us what’s going on. You touch any of these buttons, or mess with the computers, and you’ll announce to the whole park that something is way wrong. You’ll also tell them exactly where you are, and they’ll come after you. So whatever you do—”

  “I’ve got it,” she said.

  “You’re sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  Together, the three tested different locations, discovering that there was a projection shadow beneath the main console: if you tucked yourself under the console on hands and knees, you disappeared. Knowing that invisibility could prove critically important to her survival, Amanda took a seat in the center chair behind a console. The boys left her there, Charlene’s cell phone in hand, Amanda’s DHI glowing just enough to allow her to see the console panel clearly.

  In its center there was a single word on a plaque: DANGER.

  * * *

  “They could have tried to make it girl–boy,” Willa said. “You know, like every girl had to have a boy with her to keep her safe? Personally, I’m glad we were teamed up the way we are.”

  “I’ve never done anything like this. Not exactly like this,” Jess said.

  “It’s a lot to get used to, I know. Being crossed over is not exactly what you’d call normal, is it?”

  “Definitely not.”

  “The important thing,” Willa said, “is for you and me to stick together. Safety in numbers and all that.”

  “And if we’re…I don’t know…attacked?”

  “Overtakers? We try to avoid them. If we can’t then we run, and if we have to, we split up and meet at the rendezvous when it’s safe. And when you can, you want to practice going all clear. Finn got it really early. Maybeck managed it once. Philby, too. If you can pull that off you can do things like walk through walls, and if someone tries to grab you, they can’t. Not that I’d know. But with your…powers…or whatever you call what it is you do—”

  “Dreams.”

  “Yeah…your dreams…maybe you can figure it out quicker than the rest of us. Finn says it’s all about relaxation, about not thinking about anything.”

  “Not so easy for me,” Jess said. “I tend to think about the present and the future. I’m not so sure I can just turn that off.”

  “Good point,” Willa said. “For now we just stick close and try to figure out if there’s anything different about Soarin’. Any clue Wayne might be wanting us to get. The first time we did this, we had to solve the Stonecutter’s Quill and the clues were pretty obvious. Last time—”

  “I was the one giving the clues.”

  “Exactly.”

  “So do we know what kind of clue Wayne might leave us?”

  “Something weird. Wayne is definitely weird. And it won’t be obvious. He never makes it easy.”

  “That doesn’t exactly narrow things.”

  “No, it doesn’t.”

  “So it could be anything,” Jess said.

  “Hopefully we’ll know it when—if—we see it. But we should try to remember everything we see and hear. Maybe it won’t make sense until later.”

  “I love Soarin’,” Jess said.

  “Me, too. But if the Overtakers are in control of it, maybe not so much.”

  “Like Small World.”

  “Exactly. You never know what to expect.”

  “I’m kinda scared,” Jess said. They’d been sneaking along the edge of the path and were now only fifty yards from the entrance to Soarin’.

  “Finn says that’s a good thing,” Willa said. “But I think he only says that. I don’t think he actually means it. I think what he actually means is you can’t help but being scared so you’ve just got to learn to live with it.”

  “So you’re scared too?”

  “Definitely. As cool as it is to go on these rides when the parks are closed, more often than not something bad happens. I can’t help but be…apprehensive, I guess you’d say.”

  “You say apprehensive. I say scared.”

  “That’ll work,” Willa said, smiling faintly, her DHI sparking in the dark.

  Creepy was more like it. She and Jess entered the Soarin’ pavilion and went up the waiting-line ramp between huge aerial photographs that gave Willa the chilling sensation she was being watched. As they pushed through the door and into the vast chamber that fronted a curved, white projection screen sixty feet high an automated voice spoke into the cavernous theater: “If you have loose fitting shoes, such as slip-ons or sandals, please remove them once you take your seat and leave them on the floor in front of you. If you have any carry-ons that are too large or fragile to fit inside the under-seat compartments, please leave them on the floor in front of you as well and our flight attendants will be happy to store them for you. Thank you and have a nice flight.”

  “The ride is about to start!” whispered Willa.

  “We’re one minute to go,” said a woman from near the front of the building.

  Jess pulled on Willa, wanting to leave immediately. Willa shook her head, held her finger to her lips, and pointed to the back bench of seats. As far as she was concerned if there was someone in here doing something, then maybe that was what Wayne wanted them to discover. It seemed incredibly late at night to be running tests, although she had no idea when regular maintenance was done on the rides, and she supposed nighttime was the only free time the engineers had. If she and Jess could get into third-row seats, once the mechanism lifted, they would be well back into the dark room. If they held their legs up, and kept them from dangling, they would be basically impossible to spot.

  She pulled Jess with her. They took middle seats—more hidden than the end seats—and pulled their legs up into their chests, wrapping their arms around their shins.

  “We’re go in thirty!” called out the woman.

  “Rachel, let’s watch the sync on the aroma trigger.” It was a man’s voice from off to their left.

  Willa caught a glimpse of stairs rising from the left of the hall, something she’d never seen before.

  At once the room grew even darker. Loud music started. Willa felt a flutter in her chest. She loved this ride—her favorite in all of Disney World—but something told her this wouldn’t be any
ordinary flight. If they were testing the equipment, did that mean there was a problem?

  Jess reached over and laid her hand on Willa’s right arm and squeezed. Willa, in the glow from the screen, indicated that Jess should grip her legs with her arms: they had to keep from being seen at all costs.

  As the mechanism began to lift and rotate, Willa caught a man’s silhouette passing in front of the screen heading in the direction of Rachel, whom she now could see was standing at a console at the screen’s lower right corner.

  The man caught up to Rachel and the two shouted at each other over the roar of the music.

  Willa looked up: New York City, not California as she had expected. She and Jess were flying over the skyscrapers and diving down into the avenues. They banked steeply left, then sharply right, and the air smelled of bagels as they reached a bridge. A seagull squawked and Willa had to clamp her hand over her mouth to keep her squeal from being heard.

  They were changing the location of the flight. Rachel and the man were troubleshooting the timing and the effects. Suddenly the air smelled of hot dogs and mustard. Far in the distance Willa could see a long beach crowded with families in swimsuits. The water was frothing white from thousands more out swimming.

  The girls pitched down, diving toward the beach.

  “No! No! No!” shouted the man.

  The music stopped, the screen went dark. Then a few emergency or work lights came on. Willa and Jess were well hidden, but they were hanging facing down, in the dive position. If Rachel or the man happened to look up, Willa knew she and Jess would be spotted. Making things more difficult, it felt as if she was going to fall out of the seat.

  “We need the smell of hot dogs on the Coney Island flyover,” the man said. He called on a walkie-talkie. “Mr. Devlin? We need to move aroma effect number two twenty-one-point-five seconds forward. Something’s wrong with the time code.”

  A nasal voice replied. “Roger that, John. I see that here, too. I’ll sync aroma effect two with the flyover and we’ll go again.”

  “Will wait for your say-so.”

  Willa glanced over at Jess to see how she was doing. Her eyes went wide.

  Jess might have been doing fine, but her hair had cascaded over her head and a barrette on the side was slowly creeping down her hair, drawn by gravity.

  If Willa called out to Jess, she might be heard. If she reached over and touched her Jess might jerk, and if she did the barrette was going to fall. It slipped another inch, and judging by her expression, this time Jess felt it, and knew she didn’t dare move.

  Willa stretched to try to reach the barrette, but came up several inches short. Letting go of her leg to do so, she allowed it briefly to hang down. She strained against the safety belt, trying to buy herself the precious few inches needed. As she did Jess moved, however slightly, and the barrette slid down the remainder of her hair and went airborne like a small black moth—with rhinestones.

  Willa swiped the air and missed the barrette. Instinctively, her leg kicked out to stop it. It was a soccer move, like trapping and balancing a ball on top of your foot. The barrette now lay atop Willa’s Converse sneaker, perched there. If she moved her leg in the slightest, it was going to slip off.

  More walkie-talkie chatter. Willa was too consumed with the balancing act to pay attention. But when the words rang out, “Good to go in thirty seconds,” she knew she had trouble. She bent and lifted her knee, trying to bring the barrette high enough that either she or Jess could grab it. But in the process, it slipped from her shoe and her reflex was to kick straight out. It was a perfect kick, connecting with the barrette. She sent it flying toward the screen. It careened off a piece of the steel superstructure and into the set of seats suspended a row in front of them.

  It disappeared. Though loose, it had not fallen to the floor.

  The theater went dark and the flight started again. This time the ride might have been even more exciting since she knew at least some of what to expect, but Willa’s full concentration was on the row of seats ahead of them and the unseen hair clip.

  As they dove down toward Coney Island, the smell of hot dogs filled the air.

  “Yes!” she heard the man shout. “That’s better.”

  They buzzed a windsurfer and water sprayed in their faces. There was no music now, just the light sound of wind.

  Clack! An abrupt, brittle sound.

  “Full stop!” the man shouted.

  The music and film stopped and the cars descended. As Willa approached the poured-concrete floor she spotted Jess’s barrette on the floor, up near the front of the three rows of seats.

  She tried her seat belt.

  Locked!

  Tried it again.

  Locked!

  The row of seats hit bottom and came to a full stop.

  The seat belt released.

  She tapped Jess on the forearm and Jess released her seat belt as well.

  They had to get away from that hair clip. They couldn’t make for the entrance as they’d step right into view of the man and Rachel. Willa took Jess by the hand, crouched, and made a mad dash for the far wall and the staircase she’d spotted. Reaching the end of the line of machinery, she paused, holding Jess back. It had to be timed exactly right.

  The man walked past the first row, no doubt searching for the source of the unfamiliar sound. His eyes would be trained on the floor.

  Three, two…

  She raced across the open space, Jess right behind her, and reached the staircase. She pulled them flat against the wall, wishing now, more than ever, that she’d perfected the art of all-clear.

  “It’s a hair thing-a-ma-bobby,” the man called out. “Someone lost it and it chooses now to fall off. Can you believe that dumb luck? Stopped the whole test for a freaking hair clip. Okay! Let’s run it again.”

  Willa pointed up the stairs to a red-and-white exit sign. She turned an imaginary crank by the side of her head, signaling Jess they would make their move when the film ran again.

  “Thirty seconds!” Rachel called out.

  Jess nodded back at Willa, looking terrified, and sick to death with guilt.

  “You okay?” Willa asked.

  Jess squinted and put her hand to head. “No,” she said in a forced whisper. “I keep seeing something.”

  “As in—?”

  “Yes. Like my dreams. Like that. And the thing is: I’ve seen it before in other dreams. Recently. Like in the past couple of days. Rectangles. Buttons, maybe. A TV, I think. And I’ve seen it twice tonight: the same pattern. It’s always the same pattern.”

  “Buttons? Like the kind you sew on?”

  “The kind you push.”

  “Mission Space.”

  “What?”

  “Buttons. Monitors. That’s Mission Space.” Willa glanced up at the exit sign. “I think you’re on the wrong ride…” she said.

  * * *

  At nearly the same moment Jess and Willa had entered Soarin’, Finn and Philby had been poised outside the Test Track pavilion.

  “What do you think?” Finn asked quietly. Tucked behind a FASTPASS kiosk to the right of the entrance, the boys were keeping an eye out for trouble.

  “I’m thinking about those crash-test dummies.”

  “Yeah, me too.”

  “And how this is where they live.”

  “I’m with you.”

  “And that we’re basically asking for it.”

  “I hear you.”

  “But we’re going in there, aren’t we?”

  “We are,” Finn said.

  “I suppose if we can all-clear, we’re okay.”

  “It’s hard to do when everything’s coming at you at once.”

  “It’s hard to do, period. You’re the all-clear expert. I’m a newbie.”

  “I don’t know that I could do it with a pair of crash-test dummies coming at me.”

  “But it’s because of the crash-test dummies that we have to go in there,” Philby said. “Or am I missing something
?”

  “That, and the flying thing.” Finn looked down at the sword in his hand. “I feel totally stupid carrying this around with me.”

  “Live with it. I think Wayne wants us to have it.”

  “Besides which, it’s heavy. Have you ever lugged a sword around? It’s like carrying a tuba.”

  “You play tuba?”

  “I did for two weeks in fifth grade. Then I got wise and switched to trumpet.”

  “I’m clarinet,” Philby said. It sounded like a confession. “And I sing in our church’s youth choir, but if you tell anyone I’ll have to kill you.”

  “If the crash-test dummies don’t do it for you.”

  “Don’t kid around like that.”

  “Like what?” Finn asked. “You think I’m kidding? If those things get hold of us.…It’s not like they have brains or something…. They’re obviously being controlled by someone or something else, and we both know who that is.”

  “Programmed is more like it,” Professor Philby said, correcting him. “My guess is that at some point the Imagineers toyed with the idea of Audio-Animatronic crash-test dummies. There were probably a couple of those things lying around in a room somewhere, and the Overtakers got hold of them and ‘enlisted’ them by updating their software. That’s the thing about this place: the Imagineers are like human wizards. They think up all this stuff, half of which none of us ever sees. But someone knows it exists. Right? And in the wrong hands…well, the thing is, there’s probably a lot more stuff like the dummies, stuff we’ve never even thought of before that can be used against us.”

  “Are you trying to give me a pep talk?” Finn asked. “Because it isn’t working.”

  “I’m just saying, we—all of us—should keep our eyes open. And we shouldn’t trust anything we see. And we should be looking for stuff we don’t see. We know Maleficent can transfigure herself into various animals. Who knows what Chernabog can do? Who knows what the two of them can do together? All I’m saying is: if crash-test dummies are out patrolling on Segways, and trolls are coming alive in Maelstrom, and jesters are attacking the girls in France, then this place is lit up by Overtakers. You know what I mean? They are like: volume on ten. They are working it. And we need to be ready for them because we’re who they’re after. In their world, we’re the bad guys. And we know what happens to the bad guys.”