“And oh, BTW,” she said, “I’d avoid the front door if I were you.”
* * *
Finn pul ed the gril e off the air conditioning duct. “I hate smal spaces,” he said.
“Get over it.”
“I’ve seen this in movies, but I always thought it was fake.”
“If you’re not going in there, I am,” said Maybeck. He squeezed himself through the smal rectangular vent opening, aiming to the right. “It’s tight,” he said, his voice now muted, “but I can see the other vent up ahead.”
Finn crawled in behind him, wishing his edgy nerves would have al owed him to ful y cross over and not need to seek a human way out of the pavilion. It would have been so much easier to just walk through the second story wal and find a place to jump down.
But the truth was, Maybeck needed him; even if Finn had been able to al -clear, he couldn’t leave Maybeck alone. Finn struggled to pul himself through the horizontal airshaft. The ducting ringed the pavilion’s interior with vents on both sides, providing air conditioning to both the pavilion’s showcase area and the public and private rooms on the second floor that surrounded it.
“I’m going to suffocate,” Finn complained.
“Shut up,” Maybeck cal ed back to him harshly. “I can see those clowns,” he added, meaning the jesters.
“There’s a ladder,” Maybeck said a moment later, his eyes on the vent. “Some kind of work going on. Philby’s right: it might work.”
It had to work, Finn felt like pointing out. Once they popped out of the ventilation system through one of the vents, the jesters and crash-test dummies—and anyone else down there in the showcase—would see them. At that moment the chase would become a footrace. Only their unexpected route might save Maybeck and Finn, and only then if they could real y move fast once they left the safety of the duct.
“We have to wait,” Finn said.
“I’m aware of that.”
“So be patient.”
“You be patient, if you want to. I don’t exactly feel so patient.”
“He’l make it.”
“Yeah. Okay. But if he doesn’t, maybe we’ve wasted our chance of getting out of here. And what if that’s the plan?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Isn’t it a little too convenient that we and Charlene were attacked and Philby wasn’t? He turned off the lights. Why didn’t they go looking to turn them back on?”
“How do we know that they didn’t?”
“I’m just saying.”
“You’re accusing him.”
“Am not.”
“You are too. Listen, Maybeck,” Finn whispered while lying on his stomach. “We can’t do this to each other. We just can’t. Okay?”
Maybeck was silent.
“He’s going to show up. We don’t have to expect the worst in each other.”
“Excuse me. I left my violin at home,” Maybeck said.
Another three minutes passed. Even to Finn it felt more like an hour.
“How long do we just wait here?” Maybeck asked. “At some point they’re going to come looking for us, and that vent gril e we removed is out there sitting on the floor, and it’s not like you’l be turning around and pul ing it back into place. I say we go for it. If Philby makes it, he makes it.”
“Cal him.”
“Are you kidding me? I can’t get my phone out of my pocket. You can’t either! That’s ridiculous.” He waited about two seconds. “We’ve got to go without him.”
“We can’t!”
“There’s no choice. I’l tel you what: it has been too long. I’m going. If you want to stay, then stay.”
“It’s going to take two of us,” Finn said. “He said it was going to take two people. If we don’t wait for him, there’s no one to help him.”
“Like I said: you can wait. But I’m out of here.”
Maybeck popped the gril e free of the vent and pul ed it back inside. “So far, so good,” he whispered back at Finn. “I don’t think anyone saw that.”
Finn desperately wanted to wait for Philby, but the smal confines of the ventilation shaft were making him nauseated. He’d broken out in a sweat. His hands were shaking. He had to get out, Philby or no Philby.
“Go!” Finn said.
Maybeck squeezed out of the open gril e, and onto the maintenance scaffolding Philby had spotted behind Cranium Command. Finn couldn’t move fast enough: he crawled ahead, pul ed himself through the vent, and was helped to his feet by Maybeck.
“Check it out,” Maybeck said softly.
The pavilion, lit only by ambient light coming through the sand-dol ar skylights in the roof, was enormous, forty or fifty yards across, its floor fil ed with colorful marquees announcing attractions, kiosks, red and blue street lamps, and lush green garden beds. At its center was a large carousel.
Finn and Maybeck were level with the carousel’s roof, and this was their destination.
Finn didn’t immediately spot the jesters or crash-test dummies, wondering if Philby had somehow distracted them.
Where is he? Finn wondered, glancing toward the open vent and wishing Philby would arrive in time.
“I’m going for it,” Maybeck said. He bent to pick up one end of a narrow aluminum plank from the scaffolding. Finn pitched in, grabbing the opposite end. Together they fed the long, slender piece of metal out toward the tal stepladder, attempting to build a bridge between them and the carousel. On the third try, they managed to land the end of the plank across a step in the ladder.
Maybeck tested it and it held his weight. It aimed slightly uphil .
“We’l need another from there,” he said, removing a second plank from the scaffolding.
Together they placed this plank atop the first. Maybeck drew a deep breath and walked across, his arms out at his sides for balance. Finn stood on the planks at the near end to steady them and caught himself holding his breath. Maybeck was anything but steady. He wobbled and dipped and leaned, and several times appeared to be going over the side but managed somehow to reach the stepladder. He grabbed hold of it like a drowning man to a raft, and looked back at Finn as if to say, Whoa.
Maybeck fed the second plank out toward the carousel’s canopy, extending the bridge. He crossed to the carousel and waved Finn forward.
Finn had excel ent balance. He crossed easily, being careful to take it slowly, and reached the stepladder without incident.
“Three o’clock!” Maybeck cal ed out.
Finn looked down to see the two jesters running toward him. His eye measured the distance to the carousel as his brain calculated the time required to reach it. Maybeck held the end of the plank.
“Come on!” Maybeck shouted.
Finn stepped out onto the wobbly plank. Two steps toward the carousel the first jester hit the stepladder, trying to tip it over. But the two planks complicated his efforts. The ladder rocked, but did not fal .
Finn, however, did.
He slipped and banged down onto the plank, now halfway between the ladder and carousel.
The second jester arrived and immediately jumped onto the stepladder and climbed with an unnerving confidence: he, too, rocked the ladder side to side, trying to dump Finn.
Maybeck reached out a hand toward Finn, whose knee slid off the plank, dumping him to the right. He stretched out a hand for Maybeck, but their fingers only danced around, unable to touch.
The climbing jester lunged heavily to the left. The stepladder tipped and Finn felt it reach the point of no return: it was going over. He scrambled forward, grabbed Maybeck’s hand, and felt the plank and the whole contraption go down. Maybeck swung Finn strongly like a pendulum. Finn hooked the carousel canopy—metal, not fabric as it appeared—with his knee and, with Maybeck’s help, rol ed up and onto it.
The ladder and bridge col apsed with a crash. The boys watched as the jester jumped away from it at the last second, landing effortlessly on his feet.
And there was Philby on the scaf
folding. He’d come through the air vent but was now stranded by the fal of the bridge.
Finn saw him, looking for some way to get him over to the carousel.
“Go!” Philby shouted.
“No way!” Finn said.
The silent jesters hopped and ran around frantical y. Then one disappeared beneath Finn, who realized with dread that the thing was climbing toward them.
“Go!” Philby repeated.
“We go together,” Maybeck said. “Or it won’t work.”
Finn looked up. Overhead was a large mobile of metal arms and colorful shapes. Above the mobile was a projection room—a booth with lights and projector lenses aimed out of it. Philby’s plan had been to evacuate the pavilion through the smal projection room. But now Philby was stuck on the other side—a world away.
“The arms of the mobile are balanced,” Maybeck said. “We have to do this together or we can’t do it at al .”
* * *
Finn saw he was right. If he tried grabbing onto the end of any one of the sculpture’s arms, the arm would simply tilt down to meet him. But if both boys took hold of opposite arms they could balance the structure, keeping it level. With three of them—including Philby—they could include one boy to hold on at the fulcrum in the center of the arc. But if Philby were left to fol ow, even if he reached the carousel, he wouldn’t be able to climb the mobile alone.
“I’m not going without him,” Finn said.
“Are you kidding me?” Maybeck said. “He’s a freaking genius! He’l think of something.”
“We go together,” Finn said.
“In case you missed it, the joker and his buddy are pretty much planning a different ending.”
Finn strained to figure this out. Philby wasn’t the only one capable of thinking. And there it was, right in front of his eyes.
“The wire!” Finn shouted, across the void.
Connecting the top of the carousel to both sides of the pavilion was a wire that had been strung to hang lights. It looked thick and strong enough to bear a person’s weight.
“You’l have to tightrope!” Finn cal ed to Philby.
“But I can’t tightrope!”
“You’re a DHI,” Finn cal ed back. “You weigh less than half what you normal y do. Maybe less than that. You can do this. Push for al -clear. The lighter you are, the easier it’l be.”
Two crash-test dummies marched into the space. The jester Finn could see picked up the tal stepladder and dragged it toward the carousel. This was not good.
“You’ve got to do this. You’ve got to hurry,” Finn shouted.
“Grab that flag for balance,” Maybeck said, suddenly into the idea.
Philby reached the end of the scaffold, removed a flag from the wal , and climbed up to the wire. He tore the flag off the short pole and held the pole in both hands at waist level. He put one foot onto the wire and shot Finn a look of pure terror.
“No sweat,” Finn said.
“Easy for you to say.”
“Close your eyes. Be as calm as you can be.”
Philby shut his eyes and took a step out onto the wire. He fluttered back and forth, then found his balance and took another step, and another.
“Wish I had a camera,” Maybeck said.
The stepladder was pushed up against the edge of the carousel awning.
“Hold me,” Maybeck said, going down on his knees.
Finn grabbed Maybeck’s ankles as Maybeck lay down and stretched to reach the edge of the canopy and the top of the ladder just beyond.
“Lower!” he cal ed back to Finn.
Finn leaned forward, clutching Maybeck’s ankles. If he let go, Maybeck would fal to the floor.
Maybeck’s outstretched hand reached the top of the ladder just as the jester’s hand appeared. Maybeck made a fist and smashed down onto the jester’s fingers, then took hold of the ladder’s top step and shoved.
The ladder went over, taking the jester with it.
Finn pul ed hard and Maybeck scrambled back up the metal canopy.
They both turned to look at Philby, who was now three-quarters of the way across the wire.
Three more steps and Finn cal ed out. “Open your eyes!”
Philby’s eyes popped open and he jumped off the wire and onto the canopy. “Piece of cake,”
he said.
With Philby in the middle, Maybeck on one end, and Finn on the other, on a count of three, the boys took hold of the lowest arm of the mobile. Finn moved slightly toward the center and the arm leveled out. Maybeck kicked out, and the mobile began spinning.
The next lowest arm swung above them. Finn reached and steadied it. “On three!” he said.
They climbed the mobile as if it were a jungle gym, from one arm to the next, and reached the top. Finn and Maybeck climbed through opposite openings in the projection booth and then joined to pul Philby through yet another. As Philby had discovered, there was a roof-access emergency exit, much like the one they had found in Space Mountain, so long ago now that it felt like a dream.
Out on the roof, in the night air, there was no time for celebration.
Looking down, they saw nothing: the lions and Gigabyte had apparently chased the others across the plaza, or had gone off looking for them. The boys descended the fire escape ladder to the ground and took off through the jungle toward the Living Seas.
“When my eyes were shut,” Philby said, as they ran side by side. “When I was on that wire—”
“Yeah?” Maybeck said.
“I figured it out. Wayne’s message.”
“You’re tel ing me…” Maybeck said breathlessly, “that while you were tightroping you were working things out?”
“It’s not like I’ve had a lot of free time,” Philby complained.
“Figured what out?” Finn said, struggling to keep up with the other two.
“What connects Mission: Space, Test Track, and Soarin’. What connects what each of us found: you and I, Maleficent; the girls, that maintenance journal; you and Charlene,” he said to Maybeck, “Wayne’s video.”
“And?” Finn said, huffing.
“Seat belts.”
“Huh?” Maybeck grunted.
“The Overtakers are targeting rides with seat belts. Maintenance problems on Soarin’. Finn would have been kil ed by being stuck in that Test Track car if he hadn’t been able to go al -clear.”
“Seat belts,” Maybeck said, with obvious cynicism.
“I think their plan is to hold hundreds of guests hostage by locking them into seat belts that won’t come undone. Trapping them on rides. Making the rides do dangerous things they aren’t supposed to—just like what happened to al of us. Maybe they plan to make demands. Maybe they just plan to hurt everyone. But if we don’t stop them at Fantasmic!—if we don’t change things—
bad stuff is going to happen. The seat belts are going to fail—that’s the message. That’s what Wayne found out.”
Finn, aching over the loss of Wayne, suddenly found his legs. He didn’t just catch up with his friends, he ran past them. It wasn’t only Philby’s discovery that put a fire under him, or the near miss at saving Wayne, but something much bigger.
The sky was beginning to soften in the east.
Morning was fast approaching.
38
THE MEETING AT THE rendezvous had gone quickly. Everyone was overtired, irritable, and anxious.
Finn had found himself sitting on a couch in the Nemo lounge next to Amanda and, as the discussion had dragged on, she’d reached down and found his hand and given it a squeeze. It was a smal gesture of confidence, but to Finn he imagined this was what drinking a double-shot espresso latte must be like. His fatigue vaporized; his heart raced out of control.
With his racing heart came racing thoughts. Amanda had opened some creative gate in his brain and a dozen ideas came spil ing out, most of them finding their way to his tongue. For a moment he babbled at the others, having little idea what he was actual y saying. Then a memory
popped into his head and he realized that this was where his mind had been leading him for the past several minutes.
“Five AM,” he blurted out, interrupting Philby who was, for the third time, attempting to explain why he believed the Overtakers planned to take park guests as hostages. But Finn had won the attention of everyone in the room, and went quickly about explaining himself.
“When I got stuck at the Studios I kind of hitched a ride with some Imagineers—at least I think they were Imagineers. One of the guys was the pyrotechnics crew chief, a guy named Pete. He was talking to the driver and mentioned that al this week they were doing run throughs of Fantasmic! at five AM. He was bummed because he had to get up so early to be there.”
“That would make sense,” said Philby, ever the philosopher. “It would have to be dark to conduct a tech rehearsal of Fantasmic! with al the projectors and fireworks and lighting. They wouldn’t need al the Cast Members, but maybe there’d be some. And they certainly couldn’t have anyone in the audience in case something went wrong with whatever they’re testing.”
“It’s our chance,” Finn said. “No audience. Maleficent and Chernabog using it to hide. They act out the parts and the rest of the day no one bothers them.”
“We attack them there,” Maybeck said.
“On their turf,” Philby said. “I don’t love that.”
“It’s where it’s supposed to happen,” Finn said, resigned to the idea. “Wayne told us as much.
The sorcerer’s hat. The symbol I found scratched into the chair. He wants us to chal enge them at Fantasmic!”
“He wants us to defeat them,” Philby said, correcting him. “You to defeat them.”
“Us,” Finn said. “Even if I’m the one carrying the sword, it’s going to take al of us.”
“And how exactly are any of us supposed to get there?” Maybeck asked.
“He’s right,” Philby said. “The monorail and buses don’t start running until two hours before opening. That’s seven in the morning.”
“Yeah,” Finn said, “but Pete has to be there. And so does his buddy, the driver.” He checked his watch: 4:24 AM. “We can stil make it.”
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