Kingdom Keepers III : Disney in Shadow (9781423151104)

by Pearson, Ridley

  Finn looked over at her, wondering if he could trust this woman with the fob. There was only the one fob, as far as he knew. If they ever lost it, there would be no crossing back—their DHIs would be stuck, their human selves would be caught in the Syndrome. It required an enormous leap of faith—just the kind of thing Wayne would use to test Finn. “The Base,” Wanda said, “is going to have everything you want.”

  19

  FINN OPENED HIS EYES to find himself lying beneath what looked like a giant mouth. He flinched, flailing his arms, still half asleep.

  “You’re all right,” he heard Philby say.

  It wasn’t a mouth about to eat him, Finn realized, but the bottom of Mickey’s giant sorcerer’s hat in the Hollywood Studios plaza.

  Philby sat off to the side, cross-legged.

  “You’re late,” he said.

  “You ever have it where all you want to do is sleep, but it just isn’t happening?” Finn sat up.

  “All the time.”

  “That was me tonight.”

  “We should get out of here,” Philby said. “You’re glowing like a night-light.”

  “As if you aren’t.”

  “Not exactly subtle. Someone could see us.”

  “Did you bring the napkin?”

  Philby fished it out of his pocket for Finn to see. “Remember, she warned us that it’s not different from MK over here: the characters come alive, and some of them are bound to be Overtakers.”

  “So, we stay out of sight,” Finn said. He’d had an encounter once with pirates from Pirates of the Caribbean that had cost him a laser burn. He still had the scar to show for it.

  “Out of sight and no confrontations,” Philby agreed. “We don’t want them to know what we’re up to.”

  “Duh,” Finn said. The sound of an explosion rocked them both. “What was that?”

  Philby checked his watch. “How incredibly stupid,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Fantasmic! Sometimes they do a couple of shows.”

  “But it’s almost ten o’clock!”

  “And they don’t start until it’s dark. What can I tell you?”

  “You can tell me that we did not mess this up!” Finn said. “You want to think about who’s in Fantasmic!?”

  “Ursula, Cruella De Vil, Scar, Jafar—” Philby was being his usual encyclopedic self.

  “Chernabog, Maleficent!” Finn said. “Let’s not forget where that ice cream truck was found. Fantasmic! is like an Overtaker convention. What were we thinking?”

  “You were the one,” Philby reminded, “who got freakin’ about Epcot.”

  “Jess had that dream there,” Finn explained. “It wasn’t me. Don’t lay that on me. I never said Maleficent was there. But if Wayne’s locked up there, Maleficent can’t be far away.” He added, “What are we doing arguing about this, anyway?”

  “The point is,” Philby said, “Maleficent and Chernabog could hide a lot easier in Fantasmic! than anyplace else, and they’d be protected here, too. Not only that, but who knows what they might be planning? Mickey defends all magic in Fantasmic!”

  “So?”

  “So they absolutely could be here in the Studios. The real ones, I mean.”

  “Okay, they could be here. But it’s Wayne we’re worried about. If we’re going to take on those two, we’ve got to have Wayne on our side.”

  “If that’s possible,” Philby said. “Yeah, I agree.”

  “So let’s take advantage of everyone being out at Fantasmic! Right? I think we’re going around in circles.”

  “I’m just saying: if we find Wayne…” Philby said.

  “When we find Wayne,” Finn corrected him. “Look, we’ve got to trust Jess’s dream and that means Wayne is somewhere in Epcot. If they’ve captured him, then Maleficent’s involved.”

  “Up to her elbows.”

  “So if we track temperature changes in Epcot—”

  “Maybe it leads us to Wayne. I get all that.”

  “It will lead us to Wayne,” Finn said. “And once we find Wayne we’ll help him trap Greeny whether that’s here or wherever.”

  “Greeny…I like that.”

  “Thanks. So you’re the one with the map,” Finn said.

  Philby got his bearings. “This way,” he said.

  * * *

  ENGINEERING BASE read the lettering on a door in an orange building that looked like a giant shoe box. It was situated behind Lights, Motors, Action! past a sign that read: CAST MEMBERS ONLY. Finn did not hesitate; he walked his DHI through the door’s glass, turned around and unlocked it for Philby. After relocking the door they climbed some stairs, as sketched out on Wanda’s napkin.

  “Five minutes,” Philby reminded, marking the time on his watch.

  Wanda had warned them that the door coming open might trip a silent alarm to Security. It was only a warning; she didn’t know if it would actually happen.

  “If they receive an alarm like that,” she’d said, “you’ll have at least five minutes, but I wouldn’t take much more than that.”

  They arrived in a room that looked like a miniature NASA control center. There were office cubicles around the small room’s perimeter separated by gray sound baffles and, in the room’s center, an island of computer terminals. Philby circled the island until arriving at a terminal marked HEATING, COOLING.

  “You’re good,” Finn said, awed by the ease with which Philby navigated a variety of screens, drilling deeper and deeper toward the information they sought: PARKS, EPCOT, MAINTENANCE. The screen showed Epcot as a graphic. It took Philby four tries and nearly another minute to start the screen flashing.

  “What’s this?” Finn asked.

  “Anything flashing has recorded temperature swings that exceed acceptable limits—in this case, ten degrees.”

  Philby used the touch screen to navigate into each of the flashing pavilions. He called out times and dates for Finn to write down.

  “Can’t we just print it out?” Finn said.

  “I don’t see how, no. I don’t think so.”

  Finn grabbed a pen and paper and began taking down the dictated data. But Philby could talk faster than Finn could write and he quickly fell behind.

  Now that he had the hang of it, Philby was flying through screen after screen of maintenance reports.

  “You see what’s happening?” Philby said.

  “No,” Finn said sharply. “I can’t keep up, and even if I could, it’s not like I have time to think about what I’m writing down. So, no. Emphatically, no.”

  “The times,” Philby said. “The times!”

  Finn had written down dozens of times. Philby was still spouting off even more times and numbers.

  “I’m sorry,” Finn said.

  “We need more than five minutes,” Philby announced. “This is the—”

  Voices.

  He checked his watch.

  “Not possible!” Philby whispered frantically.

  “What?” Finn whispered back.

  “Seven minutes! We’ve been here seven minutes!”

  “Not possible,” Finn said.

  “I just said that!” Philby complained.

  They both heard the door come open downstairs. The voices grew louder and more easily understood. Security patrols traveled in twos. Judging by the voices this was a man-and-woman team. They thumped their way up the stairs.

  Finn pulled Philby into one of the office cubicles and sat him down on a chair next to him. He hung his arms at his side and indicated for Philby to do the same. He hung his head, so that he looked half-asleep. Philby mirrored Finn’s position.

  “Door was locked,” the woman said. “It’s not like we’ve got anything to worry about. Could be a faulty wire. Coulda been somebody shook the door or something. I’ve seen that throw off a false alarm before.”

  “Check it out!” the man said.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Finn saw the man approach.

  “What’s this?”


  “Well, I’ll be,” the woman said, now standing directly in front of Finn. “These are those things. You know: those new things they installed. What-cha-ma-call-its.”

  “Halo…” the man said, fishing for the word. “Hollow?”

  “Holograms!” the woman shouted, as if she’d won a game show competition.

  “What are they doing here?” the man said.

  “Whaddaya mean whadda they doing here?” she barked. “It’s engineering, you moron. I’ve always wanted to try this.” She waved her hand through Finn. It passed smoothly, with only a brief static buzz as her hand swiped through Finn’s upper body. “Whoa, is that amazing.”

  She lifted her arm, about to do the same thing to Philby. But if she tried to wave her hand through Philby, it would likely not pass through. In all likelihood she’d knock Philby right off the chair.

  Finn lifted his head and moved it robotically. “Welcome to Disney’s Hollywood Studios,” he said.

  The guard jumped back, startled. “Jeez!” she snapped.

  “Welcome to Disney’s Hollywood Studios!” Finn repeated, continuing to move his head in the same, jerky motions.

  “Look what you done!” the male guard said. “Don’t mess with those things. Who knows what kind of trouble you might make?”

  The female guard eyed Finn curiously. “I’d say this fella has a chip loose.”

  The male guard chuckled.

  “You don’t suppose it coulda been them tripped the alarm,” she said.

  “These two? You’re joking, right? You just waved your hand through that one.”

  “Yeah,” she said, “you’re right.” But her tone of voice indicated otherwise.

  “More than likely, Mr. Potato Head again. He loves to mess around.”

  “Or Tigger,” she countered. “I’ve seen him snooping around lately, out of bounds, back in here where it’s CAST MEMBERS ONLY. I caught him following Ursula the other night. It was like he was spying on her. And when I accused him, he got all in a knot, like I had it all wrong.”

  “Knowing you, you probably did.”

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence there, big guy.”

  The two roamed the room for a minute, checking under desks and doing a thorough job of securing the office.

  The man spoke into his radio asking whoever was on the other end to “activate the motion sensors in Base.” Only a few seconds passed before a voice came back confirming that the sensors were now active, and telling the guard he had thirty seconds in which to leave the building.

  As they were heading down the stairs their conversation faded.

  “You didn’t tell the boss about Tigger,” the man said, his concern obvious.

  “We agreed not to say nothing to no one about what goes on here. I, for one, would like to keep my job.”

  “Keeping the job is a good thing,” the man said.

  Then the front door shut and Finn couldn’t hear anything more of them.

  “Okay,” Finn said.

  “You saved my butt,” Philby said.

  “Keep your head down and do not move,” Finn said, his eye on a small wedge-shaped device way up high in one corner of the room. “They activated the motion sensors.”

  “Dang!”

  “You know what this means? It means you’ve got to go all-clear. Tonight. Right now.”

  “I’ve never been able to. You know that,” Philby complained. “You’re the only one—”

  “I’m not the only one. I can’t be the only one.”

  “You’re it, dude. None of the rest of us can completely get ourselves out of our DHIs or cross over in the middle of the day. And don’t think we haven’t tried.”

  “That’s not true: Maybeck pulled it off that time he was trapped in Space Mountain. You’ve got to try harder.”

  “No point. It’s not going to happen.”

  Finn had never been comfortable having more abilities than his friends. Nor had he appreciated Wayne telling him that he was, and would be, the team’s leader.

  “So what do we do now?” Philby asked, his head hanging down. “The moment I move, that alarm is going to trip, and that’s going to bring those two back, and fast.”

  “Not if we can get you to the staircase. You can do this,” Finn repeated. “I talked Maybeck through it. I can do the same thing for you.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “That’s because you’re afraid you can’t do it. But you can. What I want you do—without moving!—is picture a blank wall. There’s nothing on it. There are no images in your head, no thought. Are you with me?”

  “Okay, I guess.”

  “No thought. No fear. Now there’s a light coming toward you—like the light on the front of The Polar Express, you know? One bulb, really bright, out of the darkness. That’s all there is—the darkness and that one light. The closer the light comes, the less darkness. The light takes over everything. There’s no room for fear, or thought, for anything. Can you see that happening?”

  “I can! My arms are…tingling.”

  “No, they aren’t,” Finn said, trying to coach him, “because you don’t have arms. You don’t have legs. The light gets close enough and you become the light. You become the hologram. That’s all we are right now—light. Projected light. You don’t have to think about that, you just have to…I don’t know…know it.”

  Finn stood from his chair, his eye on the sensor in the corner. It didn’t flash; it didn’t sense him.

  There was no easy test to know if Philby had succeeded. Finn couldn’t drop a book through him without the movement of the book setting off the motion alarm.

  Then he remembered back to one of the first times he’d been able to all-clear his DHI, and his surprising discovery.

  “You know,” he said, “when we’re all-clear, when we fully cross over, then even though we can shape ourselves to fit onto a chair, the chair doesn’t actually hold you up.”

  Instantly, Philby fell through the chair and onto the floor, so that the seat of the chair was mostly inside his chest.

  “No way!” he said, realizing what had happened.

  “Don’t do that!” Finn cautioned. “Don’t question it, or challenge it, or even think about it. Just stand up and keep thinking about the train and that light. You’ve got to focus on that light. And get yourself over to the stairs—halfway down the stairs where the sensor can’t see you. I’ll handle the temperature log.”

  Philby stood up. The motion sensor didn’t respond.

  “I’ll memorize what I can,” Finn said. “I can’t use a pen to write anything down without tripping the sensor. I’ll call some numbers out to you. Then we’ll get out of here.”

  Philby made it partway down the stairs. “What if my hands are tingling?”

  “Picture the train.”

  “Okay, but they’re still tingling.”

  Finn stood at the computer monitor; he called out some of the data and memorized what he could. Then he got down the stairs. Philby looked worried, and Finn knew he’d lost his all-clear.

  “I’m going to wait here and lock the door behind you,” Finn said. “But I’m guessing when we open the door they’re going to know about it somewhere and come after us.”

  “There’s that construction shop Wanda told us about. It’s right next door. We should be able to hide somewhere in there for a while. We can take our time getting back to the remote.”

  “’Kay, then that’s the plan.”

  Philby unlocked the door and stepped outside. Finn pictured getting caught, and he could feel his DHI shape shifting; his fingers tingled. He turned the lock. Then he cleared his thought and stepped through the glass door and outside.

  “You want to know what’s weird about that?” Philby said as the two DHIs ran toward the construction warehouse.

  “Everything?” Finn answered.

  “It’s how hard it was to keep from having a negative thought. And that was, what?—one minute? Two, at the most.”

  �
��Tell me about it,” Finn said. “My personal best is five minutes, thirty-three seconds.”

  “How messed up is that?”

  “Messed up,” Finn said. “But you’ve got to admit, it’s majorly random to be all-clear, even if it’s only for two minutes.”

  “I fell through a chair,” Philby said proudly.

  “You fell through a chair,” Finn said.

  They ducked into shadow, their DHIs glowing, as a golf cart zoomed down an opposing lane—the same two Security guards.

  “Close,” Finn whispered.

  “They’ll never figure it out,” said Philby, a smile overtaking his face. “I fell through a chair,” he mumbled.

  20

  ANOTHER TWO SCHOOL days passed uneventfully. Text messaging among the Kingdom Keepers established that no one had crossed over, confirming that Philby had full control over the DHI system. Through the backdoor he’d left in the software, he could determine who crossed over, and into which park or kingdom. They would still need the remote to return.

  The two days felt like an eternity to Finn, his concern over Wayne’s whereabouts and condition deepening with each passing hour. But something bigger was taking place in him as well—not only his confused feelings about his so-called friendship with Amanda, but his bigger understanding of what the Overtakers might be up to. He felt in his gut that he needed to see the goal of the Overtakers in order to know how to stop them, and so far that goal had eluded him. Wayne’s abduction obviously played a part, just as Jess’s abduction in the Animal Kingdom had. They feared Jess and her ability to dream the future because for them it was like playing a chess match where the opponent knew their next move. The question was: did they fear Wayne, and his considerable understanding of everything Disney, or did they need him for something they had planned? To Finn, these were two very different possibilities, each presenting its own challenges. Until they found Wayne they wouldn’t know the answer, but he was beginning to realize that he had to face the possibility that they might not find Wayne. If that proved to be the case, then he had to become Wayne: he had to get out in front of the Overtakers and whatever they had planned, because falling behind was not an option. There would be no catching up if the Overtakers took control. Their powers were too substantial; their reach, too pervasive. If Wayne was testing him, then he was failing. It was time to do something. The trouble was, he didn’t know what he was supposed to do.