Kingdom Keepers IV (9781423152521)

by Pearson, Ridley

  “Tell me! Damn it, man! Show me where they nap!”

  “I’ll get them fired!”

  “NOW!”

  The guard took off. With sirens alarming, down the hallway, up the stairs they ran. Wayne moved like he was thirty years younger.

  Together they reached a plain gray door marked storage. The guard tried his key, but it wouldn’t go in.

  “The lock’s been jimmied. The key’s not going to work.” He leaned his shoulder into it. “It can only be opened from the inside. We’re cooked.”

  Finn checked the clock: 7:05. The shift change had already begun. Too late? Finn wondered. “It’s me,” Finn said. “I can do this.”

  “I’m afraid so,” Wayne said.

  The guard looked totally confused.

  “The guard has a Taser. All you need to do is get the door open,” Wayne said.

  “We hope,” Finn said.

  Wayne nodded.

  “What exactly are you two talking about?” the guard asked.

  Finn closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and pictured the dark train tunnel.

  He walked through the door.

  He heard the guard say something Finn would never repeat.

  * * *

  Finn’s brief all clear passed nearly instantly. He was through the door, but too tired to hold his all clear. He flipped on the light switch. The storage room was a small, L-shaped cinder block. Mattresses were stacked along the far wall. Metal shelving held toilet paper, paper towels, and soap. He saw brooms and buckets, blankets and plastic bowls.

  The guards had fashioned the space into an improvised bunk room to take unauthorized naps. Finn stripped back the blankets. He jumped back as he discovered a bare-chested guard. The man’s hands and feet were taped, his mouth gagged.

  Finn was able to open the door from the inside. The guard outside hurried in.

  Finn said, “Two guards. Two uniforms. The shift change!” He ran down the corridor, Wayne surprisingly close on his heels.

  The lockdown was in full effect. They were blocked from leaving at the first station they encountered. Wayne shouted back and forth with a guard on the other side, making demands that were not accepted.

  “Wayne!” Finn shouted, pointing through the thick glass to a flat-panel display rotating between security views.

  He pointed to the frame showing the facility’s final door—the door to the outside. To freedom.

  “Check out that guard’s neck. The collar.”

  “Green skin…” Wayne muttered. He sounded sad, defeated. Maleficent in a guard’s uniform.

  “Chernabog was too big,” Finn said. “She must have transfigured him into a man. He’s the one at her side.”

  On the video, the door shut, and the two figures were gone.

  * * *

  Attempts were made to stop the two. Radio calls shut down the Park’s Security exits by road. Dog teams searched the Park for scents prior to opening, but perhaps because of the abundance of wild-animal odors, failed at their task. The Park opening was delayed seventy minutes, visitors standing at the gates waiting in the heat. They were told a computer malfunction was to blame.

  At last the Park was opened, and tens of thousands of guests streamed inside.

  Maleficent and Chernabog were not seen again.

  Despite repeated efforts to trap the Overtakers on Tom Sawyer Island, the fort went unused by them. If it had once been a hideout, as Finn and Amanda continued to claim, it was no longer.

  SEVEN DHIs—THE KEEPERS, along with Amanda and Jess—sat along the catwalk surrounding the water tower in Disney’s Hollywood Studios.

  Their DHIs shimmered slightly against the night sky, but even from several feet away they looked perfectly real. The technology improved with every software upgrade.

  “What now?” Charlene asked.

  The mood was not good. Despite the Keepers’ control of the fob and their preventing a takeover of the power plant, the Evil Queen had engineered Maleficent and Chernabog’s escape. Right under their noses.

  “We find them,” Finn said. “And we find wherever they’ve moved their hideout to.”

  “We can help,” Ariel said. “But we need a leader.”

  All eyes shot down the metal railing at Finn. “We want to help,” Finn said to her. “But I can’t see the characters following one of us.”

  Ariel laughed. “One of you? Oh, no!” She covered her laugh. “I’m sorry! I don’t mean it to sound like that. But we have a long and storied history.” She giggled, self-amused. “Our leader. There’s only one leader.”

  Finn thought back to Shan-Yu’s comments about emperors and leadership.

  “Mickey,” he said.

  Ariel’s face sagged. “Yes.”

  “Where is he?” Willa asked.

  “Minnie is so sad. No one knows for sure. He might be in hiding. He might be…We just have no way of knowing. They’ve taken down his house, you know? Minnie’s, too. ‘Updating,’ they call it. Don’t believe it. It’s all because of ‘the Night.’ ”

  None of the Keepers had ever heard of a particular night or event. As a group, they looked at her curiously.

  “We heard noises from his house on that night,” Ariel continued, oblivious to their confusion. “A struggle of some kind. He’s not been seen since. The family will listen to him. Our family. What you call the characters. He can bring us together. We thought…You see, we understood…We believed you were sent here to find him for us.”

  “Us?” Philby said. “But we never knew he was missing!”

  “We’ve guarded the secret. Not even the white-hair knows.” She meant Wayne.

  “But why?”

  “He’s too important. He is the magic. The Green One knows. She understands his power.”

  “Maleficent,” Charlene muttered.

  Amanda squeezed Finn’s hand unseen. He squeezed hers back. For a very long time, no one spoke. The crickets and night animals made a buzz that filled the air. A breeze blew. Somewhere down there was Frollo. The Green Army. There was much to learn, Finn thought.

  “What frosts me,” Philby said, “is that three weeks later and still there’s been no kind of discipline or investigation into Luowski and Hugo.”

  “They stopped wearing the contacts,” Amanda said. “There’s no proof of any of it.”

  “They’re building an army,” Maybeck warned. “Just as we thought. We’d be wise to do the same.”

  “Is this their general, I wonder?” Jess reached into her pocket and passed down the sketch of the uniformed officer. It reached Ariel and stopped. She studied it, looked up, and studied it again.

  “What is it?” Finn asked.

  “This is no general,” she said. “It’s Captain Peter.”

  “WHO?” Philby, Finn, and Maybeck said in near unison.

  “Captain Peter Roseman. The Disney Magic. The cruise ship. I’ve worked with Captain Peter before, several times.”

  “The cruise ship,” Philby said.

  “They want to steal the Magic,” Willa said. “Not the magic—small m. The Magic—capital M.”

  Finn stood up so quickly, his DHI knees went through the chain banister. “That’s the next Keepers installment! The cruise line! We have that opening scheduled for what—?”

  “Two weeks,” Maybeck said. “A Saturday. Grand opening is Port Canaveral.”

  The other Keepers clambered to their feet. Only Ariel was slow in getting up.

  “We’ve got to say good-bye for now,” Finn said to the mermaid.

  “I hope you’ll come back and visit?”

  “Actually, we may need you.”

  “And your other friends,” Charlene said.

  “We’ll see if Wayne can arrange some kind of character spectacular on the cruise,” Finn said.

  Ariel nodded, not knowing exactly what they were talking about. “Sounds lovely.”

  Finn thought of Minnie and Pluto. He pulled the fob out of his pocket and held it before them. “Everyone ready?”<
br />
  Nods all around.

  “How strange that a thing so small possesses so much power,” Finn said.

  “But it does,” Philby said. “That thing is the key to it all.”

  Finn nodded. He held his hand over Ariel’s and said, “Will you hide this for us?”

  “Of course,” she said. “Willa knows how to find me.”

  Finn looked around at the faces of the Kingdom Keepers, thinking: We’re not done here.

  And then he pushed the button.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  The research for the Kingdom Keepers books continues to branch out and expand with each new book in the series. My world is expanding at the same rate as that of the Keepers. It’s a cliché that you can’t do a project without certain people, but it remains a fact. I’m indebted to hours and hours (days and weeks in some cases) from any and all of the following. Each of these people brings with them the knowledge of colleagues and the help of assistants, either too many to name, or those who wish to remain anonymous. But it takes a Kingdom to make these novels. So, in no particular order thank you to those at Disney: Laura Simpson, Chris Ostrander, Megan Fuchs, Alex Wright, Scott Otis, Richard Fleming, Sam Medina, Jerry Coleman, Les Frey, Cindy Johnson, Alisha Huettig, and Jessica Ward.

  And it takes others to turn the research and my stories into actual books and book tours and research travel and a million e-mails and Google searches, and on and on. So, thanks to Amy Berkower and Dan Conaway at Writers House; Matthew Snyder at CAA; Wendy Lefkon, my Disney Books editor and dear friend; Jennifer Levine and Deborah Bass, publicity; Lisa Laird, speaking agent; my office manager of fourteen years, Nancy Litzinger Zastrow St. Louis. To David and Laurel Walters, who have actual day jobs, but who make the time in insanely busy lives to still copyedit repeated drafts. And to Dave Barry, who may not want anything to do with these books for all I know, but affects all of my work nonetheless—he really is the smartest man in the room.

  Special thanks to Genevieve Gagne-Hawes for her thorough story and character editing during the multiple revisions of the book. Gen, you are a real Keeper.

  For those I’ve forgotten, I haven’t actually forgotten you or the help you’ve provided, only your names…No lawsuits please.

  —Ridley Pearson

  2011