Kingdom Keepers VII (13 page)

The ancient Leota glides forward. “We always have room for two more.”

“Get some original material,” Maybeck says.

Charlene is apoplectic, unable to move. She stares at Maybeck in awe. Grunts, but cannot speak.

Seeing this, Leota turns toward the girl.

“No you don’t, sweetheart.” Maybeck swings the sword down. It swipes right through the ghost’s arm and clangs onto the stone floor.

Leota reaches out for Maybeck while stepping toward the paralyzed Charlene. The ghost’s arm passes through Maybeck’s DHI. Leota looks at him, puzzled.

“You ain’t the only ghost in the kingdom, gorgeous,” Maybeck says.

Leota’s jaw disconnects as her chin drops to her collarbone. She shrieks and directs herself at Charlene, only inches from the girl’s face.

After several seconds, Charlene’s hair begins to blow back; Maybeck realizes she’s lost her DHI.

“Dance with me?” he says, closing his eyes and running his entire DHI body through Leota’s ghost. Leota spins twice before Maybeck steps out of her. It takes her only a fraction of a second to reorient herself.

In that time, Maybeck reaches for Charlene, who’s gone ashen white—Leota has scared the life out of her. Her DHI fades to gray, pixelating and beginning to lose form. Charlene is melting before his eyes.

“All clear, Charlie.” Maybeck says the words as warmly as he’s ever spoken two words in his life.

Leota is in his face, wailing her tortured cry. He feels himself slipping. He feels cold but to accept the cold is to welcome death.

He has no idea where it comes from—abject fear, a lack of doubt—but he returns Leota’s cry with an agonized howl of his own that blends in an eerie harmony with hers. But as his shriek bends downward at the end and begins to clash with her sound, Maybeck sees Leota tremble. So he slides his pitch down further into a dark, grating dissonance, making her shudder.
No fear!
he chides himself.

He moves himself to feel no ill will, to push away his desire for vengeance and a sense of disgust. In all the noise, he finds quiet. The pixelated particles pushed by the ghost’s bellowing draw back into his projected form and he feels stronger. Louder.

Leota backs up a step.

“Duck!” shouts Charlene, and he obeys, having forgotten about her. For a few moments, until he forced himself to wake up, Leota owned him.

Maybeck drops to the floor and looks up to see Charlene holding the vanity’s oval mirror up to Leota’s face.

The screeching stops in that instant. The ghost’s eyes narrow and flare. She swoons at the sight of the horrid face looking back at her. Emitting a series of pitiful groans and complaints, Leota sheds black tears and slowly backs up, returning to the shadows. Maybeck has never heard a sound so miserable and heartbroken, so full of grief and loathing at the same time.

“She hates herself,” Charlene says before Maybeck can ask. “Hates what she did to Gracey. Hates what she’s become.”

“But how could you poss—”

“I’m a woman, Terry! That’s something you’re going to figure out one of these days.”

He stares at her, dumbstruck.

Charlene grabs his hand and pulls him toward the beckoning light.

* * *

“I thought that was you!” Storey Ming says to Finn. She seems to ignore Willa entirely.

The Keepers met Storey aboard the Disney
Dream
cruise ship during the Panama passage. An elusive girl the Keepers believe is allied with Wayne, she came to their aid on multiple occasions. Finn has come to rely upon her. Charlene, Willa, and Amanda are less generous; they claim that there’s something “off” about Storey and believe she’s after Finn. He thinks back to their kiss on the
Dream
, but immediately pushes the thought away.

“What are you doing here?” he gasps instead, looking down at the writhing Jetsam.

“Me? I headed here the minute we docked. This is it. The ultimate destination. Disneyland. Where it all started. Where it all ends…if
they
have their way.”

“How did you find us?” Willa asks.

It seems to take Storey a great deal of effort to turn toward Willa. “You found me,” she says.

Storey squats to address Jetsam. “We’ve had our run-ins before, haven’t we, you ugly green leech?” She wiggles the bent trident, choking down on the eel. “Now, get back into your scene and stay away from this area, or I’ll skewer you and roast you for supper.” She pulls a fragment of a sandwich from her pocket and throws it far into the dark, then lifts the trident. With one shake of its tail, the eel vanishes into the dark. A moment later they can hear it feeding.

“I’ve been hiding in here the past few days—since that newspaper story about the earthquake down in Mexico.” Storey motions them deeper into the dark. There’s a mattress on the floor, a bowl of water, and a wrinkled face towel. “Staying out of the park because of the security cameras. Luckily, there’s a Dumpster backstage and plenty of perfectly good food is thrown away with all the ugly stuff. I remembered what you said about how dangerous the parks could be at night. I’ve been hoping to see you all. And here you are!”

“Here we are,” says Willa. “Oh, joy.”

“You saved us,” Finn says.

“I think of those two as rats with very long tails,” Storey says. “All they’re after is food. So I carry some around.” She empties another pocket to reveal a chicken wrap. “Pretty harmless once they eat, as long as Ursula isn’t here to order them to do stuff.”

“Speaking of which: have you seen any OTs?” Willa asks.

“Have you seen Wayne?” Finn says, adding enough emphasis to make it sound like the more important question.

“Two sides of the same coin,” Storey says. “Wayne and the Overtakers. No, on both accounts. That is, I don’t know exactly which characters qualify as the bad guys. I haven’t seen anyone from the ship, if that’s what you’re asking.” She hesitates deliberately and lowers her voice in a conspiratorial manner. “There was this guy. Older. Could have been a Cast Member. Like cleanup crew or something.”

“Go on.” Finn’s eyes tick to Willa. On a balcony deck aboard the
Dream
, there had been an older Cast Member working near the Keepers who turned out to be—

“I saw him…just a silhouette, a shadow on the wall
inside
the opera house.”

“Main Street,” Willa says, easily slipping into Philby’s professorial role.

Storey nods, her first real acknowledgment of Willa. “I can’t say for sure, but it felt…mysterious. I don’t know how else to put it. And whoever it was didn’t come out. I stuck around to make sure.”

“That’s Wayne!” Finn says. “I’ve had that same feeling about him. Mysterious, like you said.”

“Wayne’s here?” Storey sounds intrigued. “Here, in Disneyland? Where?”

“It’s possible,” Willa says. “But we don’t know where.”

Storey swipes her hand through Finn’s DHI. “That is so cool.” She jokes, “I couldn’t hold on to you if I wanted to.”

“That would be Amanda’s deal, anyway,” Willa says.

Finn can practically hear the cats hissing.

Storey says, “Glad you’re here. I haven’t had anyone to talk to.”

“We’re on a mission here,” Willa says testily.

“Well, pardon me! Sorry if I inconvenienced you
by saving
your lives
!”

“We’re holograms. We weren’t in any danger.”

“Didn’t look that way to me.”

Finn intervenes. “We’ve got to go. But it’s good to know where to find you.”

“I’m around,” Storey says, making sure to direct her words at Willa. “Don’t go stepping on any eels.”

Finn and Willa both jerk their heads down to look at their feet.

“Gotcha,” Storey says. And they all laugh, releasing pent-up tension.

* * *

“Well, if we’d hoped to spot the wraiths,” Maybeck says, “then you can consider our mission a success.” He looks at Charlene sympathetically. “But we didn’t exactly follow them to Wayne, if you know what I mean.…”

“And we didn’t find Ariel,” Finn says, “but Storey Ming was there and basically—”

“Saved us.” Willa purses her lips and nods. “Seriously.”

“The OTs are certainly active,” Finn whispers. He and the three others are hunkered down in shrubbery on an island of landscaping between the Astro Orbiter and the castle. Technically they’re on Central Plaza and believe they will therefore be returned when Philby’s server stops whatever process he described. Waiting for the return is unnerving compared with having the fob in hand and controlling the process themselves.

“We could spend a long time in here and never find Wayne,” Maybeck says. “Talk about a needle in a haystack.”

“Better idea?” Finn asks.

“You know the skywriting they do at Disney World?” Maybeck suggests, to the others’ amusement. “‘Wayne, please call—’”

“Shh!” Willa reminds them as they all laugh more loudly. “Let’s remember we’re trying to hide.”

“So, we return, and then what?” Charlene asks.

The resulting silence brings all their attention to Finn, whose stony face is caught in mottled light.

“Philby works to improve our DHIs. We try to figure out why the Cryptos want us out here, yet seem so desperate not to allow us to do anything. We keep trying to find Wayne, because he’ll tell us what’s really going on.”

“Maybe we should ask to go home,” Charlene suggests. “Maybe then the Cryptos will include us more.”

“I wouldn’t count on it,” Maybeck says. “I think that could backfire.”

“I hate just sitting around,” Willa says.

Everyone nods in agreement.

“We got stuff done tonight,” Finn reminds them. “Storey’s here. She can help us.”

“We’ve also confirmed that the wraiths came from the Haunted Mansion,” says Charlene.

“So the attack on the Archives was organized here in Disneyland,” Willa says. “That’s got to be important.”

“Wayne’s here somewhere,” Finn says softly. “I can feel—”

But before he completes his sentence, their holograms dissolve and vanish.

Y
OU UNDERSTAND THE RISKS?
Charlene remembers Philby asking after she volunteered to be his guinea pig. She remembers it again as she opens her eyes beneath the Legends statue—it’s just like the night of the wraith attack. She was alone then and she’s alone now, despite Finn’s vehement attempts to pair her with another Keeper.

Philby’s counterargument was simple enough: “If I get it wrong, it’s better to limit the damage.”

“Then let me be the one,” Finn had replied nobly.

“Charlie’s our jock. She’s the best to test it because she can move at speeds and in ways that will put the tweaks I’ve made in the source code to the test. We need better modeling than you guys had inside the park. There’s a bunch of stuff to accomplish, Finn, and if it messes up and we trap Charlie in SBS for a day or so, we’ll find ways around that. If we trap you,
oh fearless leader
, then we’re in trouble. Besides,” Philby said with added emphasis, “if you get hurt, everyone will think I did it on purpose so I could take over. And believe me, that is
not
my intention, my wish, or my desire.”

“So what happened to all the paranoia over the Cryptos watching us so carefully?”

“Technology,” Willa said. “Philby and I hacked the hallway camera feeds and replaced them with iPhone videos of empty corridors. That’s all the Cryptos or Security will see.”

Maybeck couldn’t hide that he was impressed.

The mission objective was for Charlene to cross over—which she has now accomplished—and to meet Philby on Stage 6, where he’ll put her through her paces in an attempt to improve their DHI effectiveness. If and when her v1.6 DHI fails to execute correctly, Philby will make real-time fixes to the software, like a doctor operating on a patient who is awake while parts of her body are anaesthetized.

The always-protective Finn plans to be on the soundstage with them. Maybeck and Willa will remain outside as scouts. The Keepers are under curfew and are not allowed on the studio back lot after midnight—an hour at which Stage 6 is almost certain to be unoccupied.

Charlene went to bed at 11:00
P.M
. She checks her phone, which reads 12:02
A.M
. Philby isn’t wasting time.

Stage 6 is located directly behind the Frank G. Wells Building, a straight shot: Charlene can see the southwest corner of the hangarlike structure down a long alley past a courtyard. She takes off in that direction, moving among the Legends Plaza towers for cover.

At the end of the terrace, she crosses the sidewalk and bounds down the stairs into the sunken courtyard. White lights suddenly sweep across the wall of the Wells building—lights connected to a golf cart operated by studio Security. She sees the two guards in the cart before they see her, allowing her time to duck behind a large concrete tub holding a tree. But she’s trapped; one of the guards climbs out of the cart and heads for the steps behind Ink and Paint. He’s briefly screened from her, and Charlene reacts instinctively, ducking low and cutting across the patio toward the entrance to the Wells building. At this point the only place to hide is inside.

The door is locked. She can hear the guard approaching.

Charlene reaches out. Her open palm makes contact with the door’s cool glass. She closes her eyes, exhales a deep breath, and calms herself, quieting her thoughts.
No fear!
It feels as if she pushes the door open, but she knows that is not the case. With her eyes still closed, she steps forward, her DHI following her arm through the locked door and into the lobby. She dives and rolls behind a chair set out for visitors just as the beam from the guard’s flashlight washes across the wall behind her.

When she’s certain he has passed, she takes off down the hall in the direction of Stage 6.

“Sorry I’m late. I know how important this kid stuff is,” a man’s voice says from above her. His last words are muffled as a door shuts behind him, but her ears pick up “kid stuff” nonetheless.

Charlene only gets a few steps farther before deciding the voice is Brad’s. What “kid stuff”? she wonders. Which kids? Us? And important?
How important.
To whom?

She stops, tempted to stay with the plan to meet Philby at Stage 6. But her curiosity wins out. In other circumstances, she might not give such a banal comment any weight, but it’s Brad doing the apologizing. Which means it’s her and her friends he’s talking about, and it’s insanely late at night to be having a meeting.

She has to have a look, can’t tear herself away. How can a one- or two-minute detour hurt anyone? Philby can wait.

Climbing the set of stairs is awkward in Philby’s hacked version of 1.6: her idea of how quickly her feet arrive at the next tread is not matched by the projected image, and she falls forward onto her face more than once as she stumbles uphill.

Finally, she arrives at the balcony overlooking the lobby. She didn’t get a good look at Brad, but his voice sounded clear enough to suggest this general area. She proceeds cautiously, step by careful step. She catches sight of her reflection in the glass of an office wall: her face is that of a younger girl, a freshman well before the Panama Canal cruise, a figure she remembers but doesn’t recognize. Her sight line shifts, and she sees that her right arm and hand are half their proper size, shrunken and deformed.
Philby!

She flexes her hand repeatedly as if it has fallen asleep; her arm thickens, extends, grows back to normal. It’s one of the most discomforting effects she’s suffered as a DHI. She takes another careful step forward, not wanting to pass in front of a conference room and be spotted. The horizon shifts, angling lower to her left. She tilts and falls over.

Her left leg is half size. It looks more like an arm than a leg. It’s Philby again, messing with her DHI software, probably believing she hasn’t crossed over yet. She wiggles her ankle as she did her wrist a moment before; again, her entire limb swells and returns to its original proportions. She doesn’t dare stand still for fear he’ll capsize her again—she can’t stay lying down in the middle of the concourse, so she hurries forward on hands and knees, her attention on her own limbs as much as her surroundings.

Philby has sabotaged Charlene, throwing up distractions and injecting fear into her, rendering her as much human as DHI. As she closes in on the only glowing windows, she reads a plaque identifying it as a conference room. Pulling up short, she leans her ear against the glass panel fronting the office closest to her and makes out the low murmur of voices, male and female. She’s in the right place, but the fidelity of her DHI hearing isn’t good enough to overhear the conversation. She strains to listen, chafes at her limitations—in v2.0, sight and sound are hi-def—thinks again how far the software has evolved.

Blinds are lowered inside the conference room, but there’s an edge of exposed glass that could reveal her if she tries to press her ear against it. She’s so close to being able to eavesdrop. It drives her crazy.

I can’t just stand here
. For one thing, she’s out in plain sight in the hall. Anyone could arrive at any moment. It’s a risky place. She considers alternatives. None are promising.

As a skilled climber, Charlene looks overhead for a way into the conference room from above, but there are no options. The high vaulted ceiling over the lobby atrium offers nothing. She follows the slanting ceiling to its intersection with the office wall. She knows what to do. She moves her DHI through the wall and into the office that’s adjacent to the conference room.

Inside, Charlene moves to the far corner and stands facing the wall shared with the conference room. She settles herself, knowing this is where the real risk taking begins. Looking down, it registers just how pathetic her DHI is—granulated, spotty, with poor color, its refresh rate lagging badly. When she moves her leg, her sneaker looks more like a blob that grows and then refocuses than a shoe.

The degradation of v1.6 reminds her of her time with the Keepers in Walt Disney World and Orlando. She wonders for the first time in a while about the trade-off she’s made for her television career. Involved again as a Keeper, she realizes how much she has missed her friends. How will she feel when they go back to Florida without her?

Thinking clearly and without fear, she leans partially into the wall, head first. It’s not entirely dark inside—light trickles in from the tiny gaps around the electrical boxes and wall switches. The walls are hollow, about five inches thick, constructed of metal studs and drywall. Wires of various thicknesses and colors snake through. Her head is now half in, half out of the wall; she inches her feet forward and sees her DHI toes enter the narrow space. The front of her thighs pass inside the wall, though her bottom and her heels are still in the office behind her.

She remembers that a single black hair adhering inside his DHI’s pants’ pocket once prevented Philby from crossing through a stateroom wall—the two worlds of material and projection don’t always behave according to theory. She hopes she doesn’t encounter any surprises. There are inherent dangers in what she’s attempting; it’s one thing to step through a wall quickly, but quite another to do as she’s doing now—to expect the two states to exist separately and together in one moment. If Philby should mess with the code now, anything could happen.

Her focus must remain on purity, on maintaining a lack of fear or concern. She has no idea what might happen if she slips, and she doesn’t want to find out.

What she thought was poor lighting inside the wall turns out to be some kind of barrier on the back of the office-side drywall. Charlene tests it by slowly pushing her finger through the drywall up to the barrier layer, and through it.

Her finger disappears on the inside of the wall.

She tries again. Same result.

It’s a layer of mesh—copper maybe. Willa or Philby could probably explain its purpose—some kind of security screen to prevent wireless transmission and bugging devices—but it visibly eliminates her projection, delivering her finger into DHI shadow. Invisibility! She pushes further, more fingers, her hand up to her wrist. Invisible. She tries the other hand and arm. Nothing of her DHI will be visible in the conference room, on the other side of the mesh.

Inching forward, Charlene puts her forehead and chin through the vertical plane. She daringly angles her head and places her right eye to the back side of the drywall that lines the conference room. A portion of her invisible head and face pops through, and she finds that she can see and hear—not perfectly, but pretty well—everything that’s happening inside the room.

Charlene flashes back to the moment when she first went into DHI shadow: she and the other Keepers had been hiding in a teepee in the Indian Encampment, overlooking the Magic Kingdom’s Tom Sawyer Island. She laughs silently at the memory, at how young and naive they all were. None of the original five Keepers could have imagined back then how much they would have to go through to arrive at this moment—three thousand miles away, the stakes impossibly high.
²²

Three of the attendees around the conference table have their backs to her. Of the other four, she recognizes only Joe, who showed the Keepers around when they first arrived. He sits at the head of the table; Charlene assumes that this means he’s in charge. He looks tired and older than he did a few days ago. His left eye twitches uncontrollably behind his glasses, while his lips form a knot of impatience.

Two women flank him, both of whom are Charlene’s mother’s age. Two chairs at the table are empty. The backs of the heads are all men: one balding, one gray-haired, and one with well-groomed dark hair.

Before she hears another word spoken, she can tell the mood is solemn and glum.

“It’s an insidious suggestion,” Joe says.

“It requires consideration,” says the balding man. He has a high, feminine voice and a habit of rocking wildly in his office chair. “We would be doing everyone a favor, the children included, if we prove ourselves right.”

“An enemy within their ranks?” It’s the voice she heard speaking earlier from the hallway.
Brad?
she wonders, but she can’t be sure. The combination of v1.6 and DHI shadow is badly affecting both her hearing and her eyesight. She doesn’t dare stay long given how unstable it all feels—she’s experiencing a sensation that most closely relates to extreme fatigue, but isn’t. It’s more like when the sun goes behind a cloud or when Terry offers a rare compliment—then falls silent and becomes uncommunicative.