Kingdom Keepers VI (9781423179214) (22 page)

C
HARLENE'S HAND FLICKERED
and disappeared. When she tapped Mattie Weaver on the leg, the girl shrieked, and then faked a sneeze to mollify the surprised taxi driver. What caused Mattie's shriek was the empty backseat; a moment earlier, there had been two other girls sitting with her. With no technology to project their holograms, Charlene and Amanda had disappeared into DHI shadow a mile away from the ship.

Philby had explained it all—high speed modems, security cameras, laptops equipped with video. Charlene's focus was not when or how she and Amanda might be visible, but what came next. She was the appointed leader of this trio; it didn't escape her that this was an all-girl mission, the first in a foreign country. She'd only had one year of Spanish. A boy's life hung in the balance. Success or failure hung on her, fairly or not.

It made her think of Finn and all the times he'd
led the Keepers, all the times he'd carried this kind of pressure so effortlessly. Until Charlene had felt the weight on her shoulders, she'd had no idea how heavy it was. Her admiration of Finn transformed into a jealousy of Amanda, the invisible girl sitting next to her.

The taxi jostled and bumped along the same poorly surfaced roads the bus had traversed earlier in the day.

By now, the
Dream
was out to sea, leaving Mattie landlocked and on her own. They all understood that if the holograms failed completely, Mattie was going solo.

“You all right?” Charlene asked, but no sound came out of her mouth. They'd hoped to be able to use cell phone technology for their voices. Perhaps they were out of cell range as well. Was the mission over before it began: one Fairlie against the foreign Overtaker force that had kidnapped Dillard? What chance did Mattie have without their help?

“Daa—a—ng it!” she said. Her voice! It sounded digital and supremely electronic, but it mirrored closely what she'd actually said.

The driver rattled off something in Spanish, swiveling his head toward the backseat. His eyes went so wide they appeared ready to fall out of their sockets. He had picked up three young ladies. But there was only one girl in his backseat. The taxi swerved toward the littered shoulder of the road. He gained control just in time, fishtailing the vehicle back onto the asphalt. Speaking a blue streak, which no doubt included a good deal of cursing, he aimed the rearview mirror lower. Then he crossed himself, fetched a medallion hanging on his necklace, and kissed it.

Charlene understood why: she could see her hand again. Her arm. Her legs. In all her DHI 2.0 hi-def brilliance. She had Philby to thank, but how had he…?

Her eye was drawn to a small video camera mounted on the inside of the windshield, aimed into the backseat. If someone tried to rob or harm the driver, they would be recorded. Philby had caught the number on their cab, hacked the taxi's security system, and hijacked the camera's bandwidth to project both her and Amanda, who now sat next to her, looking equally real.

The driver—poor man—appeared to be suffering a stroke.

Charlene spoke the first thing that came to mind. “How much longer, please?” She tried again in Spanish. What she actually said was, “Time is long, please.” But the driver got the message. He answered by pointing to the dashboard digital clock and seem to indicate twenty minutes.

Charlene smiled and leaned back. She'd have to remember to thank Philby if she ever got back to the ship.

* * *

The taxi dropped them off well short of Aventura's gate. Charlene did not want to announce their arrival. Mattie, who carried Charlene's iPhone, input the driver's
number, making arrangements to be picked up in this same place if and when she called. All three girls thought the same thing at the same time:
With any luck,
we'll have one more passenger.

Charlene's and Amanda's DHIs had vanished and reappeared several more times in the back of the cab. Their images were fairly strong at the moment, thanks to the security cameras in use by the park. This was confirmed as they ducked behind a rock to discuss strategy, and the two girls went into DHI shadow. Their voices remained.

“We have two possibilities,” Charlene's voice told Mattie. “The lodge here at the bottom of the mountain, and the cabin at the top.” Philby's Google Earth reconnaissance had revealed only the two nearby structures for a very long distance in any direction. If Dillard had been nabbed, he should be found in one of them. If injured, or somehow left behind by the group
and
missed by the staff that had searched for him…well, that possibility didn't seem too likely.

According to Philby, the various cameras in use were not monitored in real time. Instead, they were connected to a VCR that dated back to the 1980s. If anyone broke into the compound, they would be caught on videotape, in grainy black-and-white. Fortunately, the same video system was being used to record televised Costa Rican soccer games, which had given Philby a way to drill into the television's satellite system to determine its status and hijack the cameras.

What it meant for the girls was that no security personnel were sitting at a video monitor in the middle of the Costa Rican hill country awaiting a break-in. The girls were free to approach the compound however they wanted.

Entering proved easy. Charlene's DHI passed through the chicken-wire fence. Finding the front gate chained and padlocked, she located a side door, removed the wooden crossbar used to lock it, and let in Mattie and Amanda.

They faced three structures: two side buildings, small and dark, used for storage; the third, the main lodge where Aventura visitors ate lunch and shopped in the gift store. Big enough to hold several hundred people at picnic tables beneath a thatched roof, its open-air windows currently glowed with the bluish flickering light of a running television, a fact confirmed by the rapid-fire Spanish of a sports announcer.

A crouching Amanda stood cautiously and peeked inside. She held up a single finger as she sank back down, her back to the wall alongside Charlene who then signaled them to the distant storage hut. Her DHI passed through the wall and inside. She unlocked the door and quietly handed out four zip line harnesses and four pair of gloves, taken by Mattie.

“Helmets?” Mattie whispered.

“Please,” Charlene answered.

While this was happening, Amanda went through the wall of the remaining hut. No Dillard.

Charlene panicked at the thought Dillard might have already been sacrificed.

They hurried to the bottom of the trail that climbed the mountain. Normally, park visitors ascended to the top by chairlift. The girls were in for a long, steep hike.

“What's wrong?” Charlene asked Mattie.

“I could have helped back there. If I'd touched that guard…”

“Then he'd have known we'd broken in. Unless we'd clubbed him on the head or something—not me! thank you—he'd have called or radioed or whatever, and we'd maybe never see Dillard again. Have no fear; you may get your chance yet. But first we have to find this other place and see what's up with that. If there's nothing there, then we go back to that security guy and do whatever we've got to do.”

“These guys have done this a lot,” Amanda told Mattie. “They've got a plan.”

“It's just…one touch, and the things I know. The things I can tell you.”

“As in, if a boy likes us?” Charlene asked, looking directly at Amanda while thinking of Finn.

Mattie looked at the two competing girls. “Let's
not forget I spent two years living with Mandy and
Jess.”

The darkness of the trail quieted them. It was
difficult to see, and using a flashlight was out of the question for fear of being spotted. The jungle was filled with unfamiliar sounds—hoots and howls, buzzing and flapping—that terrified all three girls; but no one was going to be the first to admit it.

Soon, Amanda and Charlene passed into DHI shadow, their images first sparkling, then vanishing all together. Their voices changed quality, but they could communicate with Mattie, reassuring her that they were right there with her. Over the hour-long climb, they took two breaks for Mattie's sake. One of the benefits of being a DHI, Amanda explained, was that projections didn't get muscle tired, need water, or get hungry. Sleep fatigue overtook them if their human selves got exceptionally tired—the result of slowed brain functions—but otherwise they were made for marathons.

Nearing the top, Mattie squealed as she walked through a thick spiderweb that stuck to her face and hair. She caught herself mid-cry and stopped, fighting off the sticky thread and feeling it like a net over her skin. She swatted at every itch, fearing there was some giant spider crawling on her.

“Wait here,” Charlene's voice said. “I'm going to scout ahead.”

“That was loud, wasn't it?” Mattie asked in a
whisper.

“It wasn't quiet,” Amanda said, “but there's so much weird stuff out here, I doubt it would be noticed.”

“I'm sorry.”

“I hate spiders. I'm right there with you.”

“It was so much. Oh my gosh, it's disgusting.” Mattie continued to pick at the sticky web glued to her.

“I don't even want to think about what's out here, animal-wise. Did you hear that thing grunting?”

“The snorting thing?”

“Exactly.”

“I about screamed,” Mattie said. “What was that?”

“I don't know, but it sounded big, and wild, and way too close.”

“It can't hurt you, right? None of it can hurt you.”

“No. But sometimes in shadow, you can still touch stuff. Do things. Even Philby hasn't figured that one out yet. Everything changed when they did this upgrade
last year. Technically, we're still in beta. The Imagineers, the people who invented it all, are constantly chang-
ing the software. We call it 2.0, but it's more like
2.6 or something by now. They're getting the bugs out.”

“I hope that includes spiders.”

The girls laughed together.

“I've never thanked you for coming,” Amanda said.

“No big.”

“It will be if you're caught.”

“Not really. Everyone's terrified of me. All the docs and those soldier types. They make me wear the same gloves I wore when you were there.”

“The ones that lock.”

“Yeah. And they cover my face. All my skin. They have too many secrets, right? They know any contact with me, and I'll know it all. It freaks them out. That's the thing we should have figured out back when you and Jess were there. How much they fear us. We had all sorts of power over them that we never used. It's like you guys, the Keepers. By yourselves, maybe not so much—but together? Forget about it. I know that now. If the Fairlies could come together, if we could get past all the stupid jealousies about each other's powers and work together, there's no way those idiots could keep us locked up. We are way too powerful.”

“Well, you won't have to worry about that.”

“Won't I?”

“Mrs. Nash will take you in. She's a control freak, but mostly she's okay.”

“You're not getting it, Mandy. I want to be caught. I'm good with it.”

Silence.

“That freaks you out,” Mattie said.

“Well, yeah.”

“If I'm caught…when I'm caught, I'll be returned to Baltimore. To the facility. I can save those guys. I see that now. Until you, Jess, the Keepers, I didn't understand what we have.”

“You're saying Jess and I should come, too. That we should all allow ourselves to be caught.”

“I'm not. Just because it's right for me doesn't make it right for you.”

“I never want to go back.”

“It's good you know that.”

“But it never occurred to me that we could
break everyone out. They'd catch us. They always
catch us.”

“They haven't caught you.”

“I'm pretty sure they know where we are. Mrs. Nash threatens to send us back all the time.”

“Just because she knows about the facility doesn't mean the facility knows about you. You and Jess proved it's possible, to get out, to be free. And if you think about it, you know why.”

“Because we stuck together.” Amanda understood Mattie's dream then. Her fantasy. But Charlene's arrival silenced any further speech.

“It's a ways up,” Charlene's voice said from the darkness. “And I passed a sign that marks the park's border.”

“It's not part of the park?”

“No. It's just a big house. Stone and wood. Some screened-in porches and screens on the windows. It's huge. And it's, I don't know, kind of fancy in a run-down way. Like it was fancy a long time ago. There were men's voices. Four? Five? More?”

“Were you visible?”

“Oh, yeah. Philby's got us powered up and projected. Security cameras, I think. We start showing up maybe a hundred yards away. Really clear pretty soon after. I didn't press it. All for one, and all of that.”