KK03 - Disney in Shadow

by Ridley Pearson

  “I’m asking you.”

  “No clue.”

  “But you’re worried about him.”

  “I like the old dude,” he said. “I figure he’s just taken a vacation or something. Maybe he’s on one of the cruise ships trying to set us up, like you said. Maybe that’s all it is. If he was on one of those ships we’d never know about it.”

  “Well then, I helped solve it!” she said in a cheery but creepy voice. She was watching way too much Desperate Housewives; she was beginning to sound like those women.

  “Whatever,” he said.

  “You haven’t brought Amanda by in a long time.”

  He’d brought her by exactly once, and one time she’d come on her own.

  “So?”

  “So, you’re welcome to do so anytime you want. We could have her over for dinner?”

  To eat hardtack? “No, thanks.”

  “Or for a movie or something.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  The pancakes tasted pretty good given that he had to break an outside shell to eat them.

  “How are they?” his mother asked, hovering.

  “Ummm,” he said through a full mouth, avoiding the second outright lie of the morning.

  “I don’t want you worried about Wayne.”

  “I shouldn’t have said anything,” he said.

  “Older people. Well, sometimes they need a visit away from home, or fresh air, or even a day or two in the hospital. But I’m sure he’s fine.”

  “That’s not exactly reassuring. What do you mean: the hospital?”

  “I shouldn’t have said that. I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. I’m sure he’s with friends somewhere.”

  “Enemies is more like it,” he told his pancakes, quietly enough that she couldn’t hear.

  “Your cell phone buzzed.”

  “What? When?”

  “While you were sleeping. Just now. A text I think. A short buzz.”

  He’d left it charging the night before amid the sea of wires and wall warts at the end of the kitchen counter. He extracted it and unlocked the keypad.

  “Hey, where’s the rat?” Finn said.

  “You will not call your sister derogatory names. Not in this house, young man.”

  “Student council,” he said, answering his own question. “Dad dropped her?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  jess crosd ovr lst nite. finishd her dream…cll me-pby

  “Anything important?”

  “Huh?” Finn stuffed the phone into his pocket. “No. Nothing. Just stuff. Boy stuff. You know?”

  “Boy stuff as in boy-and-girl stuff?”

  It was all his mother could think about. He was supposed to be the one thinking about girls, but he could have sworn that she spent ten times more time than he did thinking about all that stuff. He barely thought about girls at all—except Jess and Amanda, and they didn’t count. Not exactly, anyway.

  “Just stuff.”

  “No more of that Kingdom Keepers nonsense. We’re clear on that, young man. Yes?”

  “You’ve made yourself very clear on that,” he said, dodging yet another straight answer. Three in one morning. That was close to a record. He didn’t want to push it. She was the one who always told him to quit while he was ahead.

  “I think I’ll ride my bike, if it’s okay. Maybe I’ll walk Amanda home today, if you wouldn’t mind?”

  As expected, she practically exploded. “Mind? Why would I mind? What a lovely idea, Finn. You could ask her for dinner if you wanted.”

  How could he bring a girl home for dinner with his mother analyzing every word spoken, every gesture? She treated him like a lab rat.

  “Maybe so,” he said, not wanting to hurt her feelings.

  He’d just bought himself at least two hours after school, but he walked calmly to his bike, not wanting to appear too anxious.

  He successfully flew beneath his mother’s radar. He pedaled as fast as his bike would carry him. Jess had crossed over, confirming that Philby had successfully installed her—and presumably Amanda too—onto the DHI server. Their mission at the Studios had been a success. She’d apparently finished her dream of Wayne while crossed over.

  He couldn’t wait to see whatever she’d sketched.

  He one-handed the bike and called Philby, reaching him on the second ring.

  18

  SCHOOL COULD SEEM ENDLESS. Days could stretch out for an eternity, as if someone had put weights on all the hands of every clock, slowing them down. This must be how prisoners look at clocks, Finn thought, the days stretching out impossibly long, compounding their incarceration. He felt like a prisoner himself, knowing what lay ahead when the bell rang and the doors opened.

  Amanda was waiting for him at the bottom of the steps.

  “Jess crossed over last night.”

  “I heard. And you?”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “Oh, you’d know, believe me. But that’s strange. Was it into Epcot?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then Philby got it right.”

  “I suppose.”

  He walked his bike, Amanda alongside him.

  “I could sit on the bar, you know,” she said. “It would be faster.”

  Finn’s throat tightened. If she sat on the bike’s top bar it was going to be cozy—real cozy.

  “What about your bag?” he asked, looking for an excuse to prevent this from happening.

  “I can put it with yours. Unless you don’t want me to….”

  Trapped. “No, that’s okay. Sure. I guess.” He held the bike for her, steadying it.

  She slipped onto the bar, held the handlebars and waited for Finn to mount the saddle. Amanda was tall, and it suddenly felt as if she were sitting in his lap. Her left shoulder was touching his chest, and her long, dark hair tickled his chin.

  “I’ve got a better idea,” he said, their faces nearly touching, his voice sounding like air leaking from a balloon. “Why don’t you take the saddle?”

  “I’m good here,” she said.

  “No…I think it would be safer with you on the seat. I can stand on the pedals.”

  A moment later, rearranged on the bike, they were heading down the sidewalk, shouting at students to get out of their way. Amanda tried to steady herself by gripping the saddle, but gave up after a block and placed her hands on Finn’s hips. He stopped pedaling, allowing the bike to glide, then drew a deep breath and continued riding. Five minutes stretched to ten. She talked to pass the time.

  “When she was crossed over, she walked around the park. It was nighttime, of course, and there wasn’t anyone around for the most part. She saw some movement across the lake, and she hid out of sight. She said it was kind of creepy, being there all alone.”

  “I’ll bet it was. The Magic Kingdom’s the same way.”

  “She felt drawn to certain attractions. But that’s how she is: all sorts of stuff happens to her and a lot of it can’t be explained.”

  “How did she cross back?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “What time was it?”

  “She woke up in bed, just before midnight.”

  “That was us,” Finn said. “That was when Philby and I and the others crossed back. We met up in the apartment. But it doesn’t make sense that she crossed over. We always have to be together for that to happen.”

  “But she was in one of her dreams right then. Maybe that had something to do with it. One minute she was walking past France, the next she was in her bunk. But she had the picture in her head. A perfect picture of Wayne—the same dream she had before, only this time it was all there. At least she thinks it’s everything.”

  Finn glided to a stop in front of The Frozen Marble ice cream shop. Philby was waiting at a table inside with a strawberry concoction in front of him. It occurred to Finn that he’d never seen any of the DHIs’ houses except Maybeck’s, not counting the church Amanda and Jess had squatted in for a few months. He had no idea how o
r even where some of his closest friends lived.

  “Hey,” Philby said.

  “Hey,” said Finn.

  “Hey,” said Amanda.

  She went to the counter and ordered a mocha mini with graham crackers, M&M’s, and chocolate syrup, and returned with two spoons, handing one to Finn. He regarded the spoon carefully. Sharing an ice cream was something he’d never done with a girl. It felt to him like some kind of contract, some kind of commitment, and he was leery of entering into it too quickly.

  “Don’t worry, my spoon won’t touch your side,” she said in an openly mocking tone.

  Philby arched his eyebrows and kept his mouth occupied with his strawberry whatever.

  “I didn’t say anything,” Finn said.

  “Eat,” she said.

  He stabbed into the ice cream recklessly, took a spoonful, and hummed as the combination hit his taste buds.

  “Whoa!” he said.

  “Yeah,” said Amanda. “I thought you’d like it.”

  “Double whoa,” he said, winning a chocolate smile from her.

  “It’s a cryptogram,” Philby said. He pushed a photocopy from the page in Jess’s diary in front of Finn. It showed an old guy that looked surprisingly like Wayne sitting in a chair. On the wall behind him was the image of a horse, a pole, and in the distance, a mountain and some trees. Across it all was written a string of letters and numbers.

  MKPFP IFP TDIEPR VKPFP RMIFR CQW’M JFQV HT 2736/2730

  “What the…?” Finn said. “It’s a kind of code,” Philby explained. “He is always doing this,” Finn complained. “Why is nothing ever simple with him?”

  “He’s secretive,” Philby answered. “It’s like the Stonecutter’s Quill, only different.”

  “Different, how?”

  “That was an anagram. This, clearly, is not.”

  “None of this is exactly clear to me,” Finn admitted.

  “He expects us to break it.”

  “But how?” Amanda said.

  “Are we sure this is right?” Finn said, puzzling over the combination.

  “Jess’s dreams are accurate. You know that, Finn. Remember the Animal Kingdom?”

  “I know, but that was animals. This is…I don’t know what it is! Gibberish?”

  “Not exactly gibberish,” Philby said. “Though it won’t be simple to figure out. He’s left us a few clues.”

  “More than this?” Finn asked.

  “Within this,” Philby answered.

  “Clues within clues?”

  “Exactly.”

  “He’s either way too smart, or way too crazy,” Finn said.

  “A little of both,” Philby said.

  “What clues?” Amanda asked. “I love puzzles.”

  “These numbers at the end are a clue. But the apostrophe’s the biggie.”

  “Huge,” Finn said, mocking him. He didn’t like the way Amanda and Philby were suddenly so buddy-buddy.

  “Break the numbers apart and you get—”

  “Two-seven-three-six—”

  “Twenty-seven and thirty-six,” Philby said, correcting her.

  “And that’s significant because?” she said.

  “How many letters are there in the alphabet?”

  Philby wanted her to think it out for herself.

  “Twenty-six. But oh…my…gosh…” Amanda said ecstatically.

  “That’s big news?” Finn asked. “I know that much.”

  “But if you add in the ten numerals,” Philby said. “One through zero.”

  “Not zero through one?” she inquired.

  “No, I don’t think so. You’ll see why….”

  These two were speaking a foreign language. “Back up!” Finn said.

  “By including the number thirty-six,” Philby explained, “he’s telling us that he extended ten characters—or numbers—past the end of the alphabet. So twenty-seven is—”

  “The numeral one,” she answered.

  “And thirty-six—”

  “Is zero!” Amanda said excitedly. “One followed by a zero—is ten.”

  “Yes. All together it’s a date, I think. Ten-fourteen. October fourteenth.”

  “Whoa!” Finn said, seeing the solution. “But that’s…what…two days from now?”

  “Exactly,” Philby said, agreeing. “And since that date makes at least some sense in terms of the code, it shows us he was using a system—”

  “Where each letter and each numeral represents a number,” Amanda said. “Or in the case of the alphabet, a different letter.”

  “Yes,” said Philby. “That’s it: a cryptogram.”

  “So another clue is the letter M,” she said.

  Finn was lost. “We know this because?”

  “Because it follows the apostrophe,” Philby said.

  “So M either represents an S or a T or a D,” Amanda said, “because those are the only three letters that ever follow an apostrophe by themselves, except for M, and I don’t think M is likely to be M. Also, it’s probably not D, since I bet this message is in the present tense—apostrophe D would be short for had, the past.”

  “She’s fast,” Philby told Finn, who mugged, trying to appear that he was following them.

  “And where does this get us, exactly?” Finn said.

  “Cryptograms are about patterns. Words follow patterns. Vowels are in certain places in most words. Wayne wouldn’t make it ridiculously difficult, just hard enough that the Overtakers couldn’t understand it when they found it.”

  “He’d have had to actually write on the wall,” Amanda explained to Finn. “Otherwise Jess would not have seen it. Her dreams, her visions, are like snapshots of the future. She wrote down each of these letters. She saw this clearly.”

  “But all we have are a couple of numbers and an S or a T,” Finn said. “I don’t see how that helps us.

  Wayne needs us now.”

  “The most common letters are vowels,” Philby said. “I’m pretty sure I can decode this. The P’s repeat. The I’s. Therefore they’re probably vowels. It’s going to come together easier than you think. It’s like Scrabble in a foreign language.”

  “When?”

  “Finn!” Amanda said, complaining. “He just got it today. It’s not that easy.”

  “But I thought we were going after the temperature records. I thought that was the way we decided we might find Malef—” He caught himself. “You know.”

  “Then you want the Engineer Base.” A woman’s voice turned the heads of all three kids.

  Wanda stood there looking down at them.

  “Where’d you come from?” Finn said, his suspicion obvious.

  “You will need to learn to pay more attention to who’s behind you, who’s watching you. I followed you and Amanda from school.”

  “You’re freaking me out,” Finn said.

  “You were so busy with getting her onto the bike, you never looked at what was going on around you.”

  It was true: at the time, Finn hadn’t been thinking about anything else.

  “But the Overtakers don’t go outside the parks,” Philby said.

  “They did at least once,” Finn corrected. “She did. I saw her drop Jess off at the car wash that time.”

  “An air-conditioned car,” Amanda said.

  “You don’t know that was her,” Philby said.

  “Sure I do. Sure as I’m sitting here.”

  “I would err on the side of precaution,” Wanda said, “if I were you.”

  “What’s the Engineer Base?” Philby said.

  “Where you’ll get your answers. Data from the Studios, Epcot, and the Animal Kingdom are fed into a central office that’s housed in the back lot of the Studios. The Imagineers refer to it simply as the Base.”

  “What about the Magic Kingdom?”

  “No. Their equipment is older, and with the Utilidor, that park is basically self-contained and self-sufficient when it comes to engineering. But Epcot, yes. If you get into the Base you’ll hav
e all the temperature data you want.”

  “It’s too risky,” Finn said. “We just barely got out of there the last time.”

  “Yes, but the last time you were you,” Wanda said, “and the Studios still had people inside.”

  “Yeah? So?”

  “What if this time you went back as your DHIs, at night, after it closed?”

  “Same answer: too risky. And complicated. Philby programmed us to cross over into Epcot.”

  Finn looked at Philby, whose face was all in a knot.

  “Didn’t you?” Finn asked.

  “Not exactly. I opened a backdoor on the software so I can control it.”

  “Control it how?” Amanda asked.

  “The projectors,” he answered. “I can control the DHI projectors from any laptop, any computer. I can decide which park a DHI lands in after crossing over.”

  “Wait a second! I didn’t hear about this!” Finn said.

  “It wasn’t like we had a lot of time to talk,” Philby said, reminding him. “I’m pretty sure I can control who crosses over into what park. I turn the projectors off in the parks we don’t want to go, and leave them on in the one where we do. It’s pretty basic.”

  “We can cross over into the Studios?” Finn said curiously.

  “We should be able to cross over into anywhere there are projectors: the two kingdoms, the Studios, and Epcot. And it gets better than that,” Philby said.

  “Meaning?” Amanda asked.

  “I think I should be able to toggle our DHIs on and off.”

  “Same question,” Amanda said.

  “It means I can decide who crosses over and who doesn’t.”

  “Cannot,” said Finn.

  “Didn’t know I could until I was in there debugging, but yeah, I think I can. And there’s only one way to find out.”

  “Why do I not like the sound of that?” said Finn.

  “We just have to make sure that whoever’s on the list to go—one of them has to be able to get to the remote, or there’s no return. And I realize that Jess crossed back over from Epcot when we hit the return in the Studios, but I don’t think we should count on that always working. It would be better to all return together, like we usually do. We don’t want to get someone stuck—as in the Syndrome.”

  “That doesn’t exactly sound reassuring,” Amanda said.