Kingdom Keepers V

by Ridley Pearson

  Finn felt like shouting “Are you kidding me?” but kept his mouth shut. He wasn’t about to admit defeat to a girl. Three times he tried to hook his leg across the safety rope. Finally, he snagged his knee, extended his leg, caught his ankle, and managed to clumsily pull himself up. A moment later he was crouching, ready to spring for fifty-seven.

  “Sit!” he heard. A female voice from somewhere behind him. Not Maleficent, he thought. Her voice was often low, like a man’s, gravelly and loathsome. Speaking but a single word, this voice, though familiar, was not identifiable. He searched his memory for the voices of the small number of Overtakers it could be: Cruella was the most likely.

  Say something else, he mentally willed.

  But there was Charlene, halfway through a small entrance hole in lifeboat fifty-seven, waving him on.

  Finn jumped. He caught the safety rope, propelled himself around the lifeboat, and slipped inside behind Charlene. They’d made it.

  * * *

  Control! Maybeck thought, as the creature opened its jaw to bite him. He was so used to DHI 1.6 that he felt sure he could be bitten. The hyena’s teeth clapped loudly together as they passed right through his holographic ankle. The animal squealed loudly. It had bitten its own tongue when the bone and flesh had failed to present itself.

  “Dang!” Maybeck said. “That’s insane!”

  Maybeck snared the hyena’s head and neck with the loop of belt. He moved quickly toward the ladder, the surprised hyena held a shuffleboard pole’s distance away.

  Willa used the bait ruse. Holding the disk at arm’s length, as if a snack treat, she lured the one remaining hyena. It cautiously approached her, drool dripping from its black gums as it anticipated food (for one look at it confirmed it was being starved). Before the beast understood what was happening, it found a belt around its neck like a leash. She, too, moved toward the ladder.

  “If we give them some slack…” she said to Maybeck.

  “Yeah. Ladies first,” he said, indicating the ladder.

  “We have to go at the same time. If I release mine, he’ll attack you.” She pulled herself up several rungs. “Come on.”

  “This is going to get cozy,” Maybeck said.

  “Shut up and get over here.”

  The hyenas were wild in captivity, pulling and pushing on the poles. Maybeck found it hard to hold on with just one hand. Willa, now three rungs up, hooked her arm through the ladder so she could use two hands. Maybeck caught a foot on the bottom rung. His hyena was stronger and meaner. It took his full strength to keep it at bay.

  “Higher,” Willa said, climbing another two rungs.

  Maybeck climbed as well, his head against her collarbone, his back to her, the two of them pressed together. If they’d been hugging they couldn’t have been closer. Seeing him struggle to maintain his balance, she hooked her heel around him, pinning him to the ladder.

  “Ready?” she asked.

  “It’s not like they can hurt us.”

  “They don’t know that.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked.

  “And neither do I.”

  “You don’t trust 2.0?”

  “Correct.” She reminded him, “We can’t leave the poles and belts. They’ll give us away.”

  “Agreed,” he said.

  “Then, both at the same time.”

  “Yeah.”

  “One…two…”

  “Three!” he said.

  * * *

  It surprised Finn how little members of the crew spoke to each other. He discerned three voices, all male. The hum of electric motors was followed by a jerking movement, then a queasy sensation in his stomach as the lifeboat was lowered over the side. Charlene grabbed his arm in the dark and slid her hand down to hold his. He hated to admit it to himself, but he found that hand of hers comforting and pleasant. Reassuring.

  The lifeboat splashed into the water, and only minutes later they were under way.

  “Not much talk for a test run,” Charlene said.

  They continued to hold hands, Finn noticed.

  “Thought the same thing.”

  “Two lifeboats.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “We’re here to find out,” Finn said.

  “But we can’t see a thing.”

  It was true. They could see each other’s holograms now, dimly. But with a canvas hatch in place, they could not see into the cockpit to know what was going on out there.

  “I could unzip it and take a look.”

  “Too risky,” she said.

  He was glad she said that, for he’d been thinking the same thing.

  The lifeboat was not zigging or zagging. If it was indeed a test of some kind, it required explanation.

  At once their holograms began to sparkle with digital interference, like a TV signal going bad.

  He hurried to use the Wave Phone before they were too far out of range of the DHI projectors and the phones’ communication antennas. He texted:

  do u c us?

  and sent the text to Philby.

  Only moments later came the reply:

  mvng awy frm ship, arnd islnd

  Finn showed the screen to Charlene.

  Her breath warmed Finn’s ear. “I know this island. There’s nothing in either direction. If we leave the beach area—”

  She fell across and on top of him, pressed against the life preservers as a radical change in course threw them both sideways. They struggled to separate and sit back up.

  “Heading toward the beach,” she whispered.

  “You sure?”

  “Yes. We’re inside the reef. We wouldn’t risk heading out to sea anyway.”

  The lifeboat jerked again as the engine slowed.

  “Anchor!” a voice called out.

  Simultaneously, Charlene and Finn looked over at the anchor mount in the center of the compartment—directly in front of the canvas hatch. Then, at each other.

  They crawled back into the wedge where the curving hull met the gunwale, Finn pulling the life vests from behind them. When not in use, a vest held together as a rectangular block of orange plastic. Finn stacked the vests in front of them as a screen. Charlene helped hold them in place.

  The sound of a zipper running was followed by a hairy, dark-skinned arm reaching inside. Then a shoulder and the top of a bald head appeared. A clanging and two choice swear words rang out as the crewman freed the anchor from its bracket. The rattle of a chain. The clap of a line.

  But not the sound of the zipper closing.

  “He left it open,” Finn whispered, already moving the blocks of life vests out of their way. In a moment they were free of the vests, and Finn moved cautiously toward the hatch, placing his eye to the canvas and peering out.

  The lifeboat lunged. Finn’s head went entirely out through the open space.

  Charlene grabbed him by the knees and hauled him backward. They both froze—stone still. Listening. Waiting…Finn’s face was scrunched into a pucker.

  During the brief moment his head had been out in the cockpit he’d seen a darkened sky faintly blue at the edges; the back of a man’s coveralls; the anchor swinging in the grasp of a hand at the end of a hairy arm; the bow of a second lifeboat.

  The engine cut to an idle, then reversed and accelerated. The lifeboat shuddered.

  Finn and Charlene were thrown on top of one another again as the bow ground into sand and the boat came to a stop.

  “Quickly. We need that Creole freak back aboard before sunrise.”

  Creole freak? Finn wondered. Charlene had heard the same thing, and they exchanged the same quizzical expression. Curiouser and curiouser, he thought.

  The sound of the second lifeboat approached. Its motor roared as it swished to shore.

  More than one man left the lifeboat.

  But was it all three?

  Finn looked outside again. An empty cockpit. He saw clouds in the sky he hadn’t seen a minute earlier. He dared cli
mb out farther, confirming the empty cockpit. He crawled carefully—silently—to the exit hatch, the door to which had been left open. He stole a look toward the beach.

  Six men, all in crew member coveralls. Three in front, three behind.

  Charlene squeezed in alongside Finn, her head blocking his view. When she turned to speak, they were so close they nearly kissed.

  “The bungalows,” she said.

  “Bungalows?”

  “Massage bungalows.”

  “Massage,” he said.

  “If you repeat everything I say, Finn, we’re going to be here a long time.”

  “So it’s not a test,” Finn said.

  “Apparently not.”

  “More like a pickup and delivery.”

  “That’s what it sounded like to me,” she said. “Yes.”

  “So either these crewmen are knowingly working for the Overtakers, or are being used.”

  “I would guess they are just following orders. So maybe one of the officers is with the OTs.”

  He tried to see a way around the idea of the Overtakers being involved. But the existence of the hyenas kept bringing him back to reality. Who else would have hyenas guarding the lifeboats?

  “We have to find out,” Finn said. He pulled his Wave Phone from his shorts and held on to it to keep it dry as he slipped his hologram up to his knees in seawater. “Note to self,” he said to Charlene, “there’s no reception on the Wave Phone. We can’t return until we’re closer to the ship.”

  One of the marvels of being a hologram was moments like this: slipping into water without getting wet. Finn peered around the lifeboat at the one next to it. He ducked under the anchor line and stole a look inside the boat. Empty.

  “Psst! Maybeck!”

  The zipper whirred. Moments later, four holograms moved along the water’s edge toward the Dream, which loomed like a Hollywood backdrop a half mile away. They came upon the cluster of massage cabanas via a small grove of palm trees. The sky was tinged at the edges a rich azure blue. Only a few determined planets still shone through.

  “Which one?” Maybeck whispered.

  “We couldn’t see,” Finn replied. “We’ll split up so we’re not all busted at once.”

  “That’s optimistic of you,” Charlene said. “We’re dressed as crew members, don’t forget. These lifeboat workers are the worker bees. We’re the honeybees. If we encounter them, we demand to know what they’re doing ashore. We take their names. We can’t think like ninth graders.”

  “Tenth graders next September,” Maybeck said.

  “Remember, 2.0,” Finn said. “We’re good.” He stayed with Charlene. They moved slowly through the cluster of cabanas—small wooden cabins on three-foot stilts with wooden shutters across window holes. The eaves were open to allow circulation. The yellow of candlelight glowed through the ten-inch gap and flickered through the slatted gables. With his upgraded hearing on full alert, he noticed the holograms moving silently through the sand. Finn glanced down: his hologram feet did not displace the sand; it was as if he’d never walked here.

  Suddenly, there was a murmur of conversation. Finn crouched and caught sight of Maybeck. He hand-signaled for the four of them to converge on the cabana from both sides. Maybeck nodded and signaled back two thumbs up.

  As they approached the voices became clearer, and the conversation with them.

  “You must come with us now.” A man.

  “You I tell once more,” spoke a woman’s baritone voice in a thick Jamaican accent, “;’tain’t me going nowhere, mon. ’Tain’t leavin’ da island ’til necessary. ’Tis them’s coming here, or ’tain’t at all. Be your instructions as they may, ’tain’t no matter to me.”

  “Orders is orders,” the man said.

  “Them be your orders, not mine. Is you wishing to cross me, mon?”

  “No, ma’am!” The gruff man sounded strangely frightened.

  “Your shoulders,” Charlene whispered to Finn. “Get down on a knee.” Finn glanced overhead at the window hole in the side wall. Charlene wanted up there. He waved his hand at the stilt holding up the cabana. The wood passed through his forearm. He concentrated and tried again. His arm bumped off the post.

  “Okay,” he said.

  Charlene performed the same test. It took her three tries to Finn’s one, but she was solid enough to step onto his shoulder. Finn grabbed her ankle. She crawled up his back and placed her left foot on his left shoulder, and Finn stood. They were a circus act rising more than ten feet tall. Finn awkwardly moved left until Charlene was alongside the window. She placed her eye to the open-air slats in the shutter. Held up the fingers of her right hand: five, then two. Seven people. The six lifeboat crew and one other: the woman.

  “I suggest,” came the sonorous female baritone, “you speak to them’s givin’ de orders. Ain’t got much time, you know. One day is all.”

  Charlene looked down at Finn, her face a mask of alarm, and mouthed something, but it was lost on him. She did not look pleased.

  “We got orders is all I’m saying,” said the man. “You choose not to come with us, that’s on you.”

  “’Tis on me, then.”

  “That’s all I’m saying,” said the man.

  “You say so.”

  “Not making my life any easier.”

  The woman said, “No life easy.”

  “Okay, then. Have it your way.”

  Charlene motioned for Finn to let her down. As he kneeled, the door to the cabana flew open. Finn saw Maybeck and Willa rush to hide under an adjacent cabana, but there was no time for him and Charlene. She crashed down onto the sand. They scrambled and rolled to a position directly beneath the wooden stairs as the six sailors clomped down. They lay flat in the sand facing the water.

  The men muttered. One of them cursed the “old witch.” Too loudly, apparently. He made it only a matter of feet from the stairs before he buckled at the waist in the grips of abdominal pain.

  “Be careful your choice of words,” came the baritone from the cabana. “Respect where respect is due.”

  Two of the other five dragged the man across the sand, glancing back at the cabana. They moved quickly as if attempting to outrun a fire.

  There was little doubt the woman in the cabana had done this to the sailor.

  Magic, Finn thought. Black magic, at that.

  “You know who that is in there?” Charlene whispered hotly. Not waiting for Finn to answer, she added, “Tia Dalma.”

  Finn thought he knew the name, but he couldn’t place it.

  “The voodoo priestess. Pirates?”

  It was as if a connecting piece to a jigsaw puzzle had fallen into place. He began to see the bigger picture, though answers and explanations escaped him. He nodded slightly.

  “They’re taking the boats,” Maybeck said. He and Willa had snuck up on them.

  “But they…can’t!” whispered Charlene.

  “Tell them that,” Maybeck said.

  “We’re part of the program this morning.”

  “We’re supposed to be,” Maybeck said.

  The boats motored on, backed up, and pulled away from the beach.

  Finn glanced toward the ship where, in the headlights of golf carts and forklifts, he saw a dozen workers busy as ants.

  “The dock is out,” he said.

  “We’ll have to swim,” Willa said. They all looked at her like she was crazy.

  “I don’t think holograms can swim,” Maybeck said. “Though I could be wrong.”

  Finn didn’t like being so close to Tia Dalma. He led them away from the cabana and back to the palm trees, where they gathered as a group.

  “Charlene and I hit some interference out in the lifeboat. The island projectors don’t cover very far out off the beach.”

  “We had the same thing happen,” Willa said, looking at Maybeck.

  “I’m not sure we want to try swimming in the open ocean with our holograms failing to project.”

  “Doesn’t so
und like fun to me,” Maybeck said.

  “So we stay close to shore and just beneath the surface,” Charlene said. “If we go all static, we surface.”

  “If we lose 2.0,” Maybeck said, “we drown.”

  The three looked to Finn for answers. Not for the first time. He lived with this weight on his shoulders. Wayne had once told him he would grow to be the leader of the group. He had never asked for that role, but he seemed stuck with it.

  “We don’t know that,” he said. “Besides, we won’t lose 2.0. It’s stable. We might lose projection, and we’ve never done that in 2.0. Water’s not a good place to test it. So we stay close together. Just beneath the surface and close to shore, as Charlene said.” Give credit where credit is due: the first lesson of effective leadership. It wasn’t about leading so much as listening and reacting. “We’ll stay just inside those buoys.” The swimming areas were defined by ropes and floats.

  “I’m the best swimmer,” Willa announced. “And I’m lifeguard-certified.” No one argued, not even Charlene. Willa was known as a bit of a book nerd, but every winter she swam competitively. “If anyone has trouble, I’ll hang with them. The rest will get to the ship.”

  “Yes,” Finn agreed. “We can cover for each other if a couple of us make it.”

  “Our phones?” Maybeck said.

  “We leave them here. We can pick them up later, once we’re back on the island as ourselves.”

  They unloaded their phones. Willa hid them beneath a large leafed plant and took note of its location.

  The sky was a lighter blue, the sun only minutes from rising.

  “We have to hurry,” Finn said. “You see that open door on this side of the ship? We’ll head there.” There was a smaller boat tied up to a small float, but the hatch appeared empty of people.

  They headed for the open water. When they reached knee depth, they slid down to their shoulders. Then their heads popped under and did not resurface.

  * * *

  All went swimmingly. The four stayed close. Their projections broke up occasionally as they swam just below the surface, but it was easy enough to keep track of each other. The latest modeling had included hang gliding, rock wall climbing, skiing, snowboarding, surfing, snorkeling—as well as a dozen new competitive sports, including riflery, fencing, and martial arts. The world of physical movement for the 2.0 holograms was growing exponentially; more modeling was planned for the coming months.