Kingdom Keepers Boxed Set

by Ridley Pearson

  “And that’s you. Okay….”

  “And like right away!” he spit out.

  At that instant, the narrator’s voice instructed the Commander, “Initiate first stage separation…Now! ” The 1st Stage Sep button lit up.

  “Push the button,” Charlene hollered too loudly, “and hold it! Do not let go!”

  “Got it!” Maybeck said, depressing the button. “Hyperspace is next.”

  The Mission Control woman told them they were looking good. Maybeck had a few choice words for her, but kept them to himself. The man’s voice told the pilot to fire the second-stage rockets.

  “Don’t do anything,” she said.

  “But what if—”

  “It’s not part of Wayne’s instructions.”

  “But we’re not even sure—”

  “Do not touch any buttons. Not until I say so.”

  “Who put you in charge?”

  “You did, remember? You wanted me in the capsule. Well, here I am.”

  They might have been able to see each other given the glow of the monitors, but Charlene couldn’t sit forward. She was pasted back in her seat. The capsule slingshot around the moon and the Mission Control man told the engineer to activate Hyperspace.

  “Okay….” Charlene said, reaching out and pressing and holding the Hypersleep button.

  “He said Hyperspace, not Hypersleep.”

  “Yeah? Well, we’re making this up as we go,” she said. She could see Maybeck’s outstretched arm—thankfully, he was still holding the 1st Stage Sep button.

  While holding the Hypersleep button, she stretched to find the Valves switch. She felt in the dark—top switch, middle switch, lower switch. She walked her fingers up and counted them again.

  She talked to herself: “Top: Electrics. Middle: Valves. Lower: Hydraulics.”

  “What’s going on? We’re about to…crash on Mars.”

  “I’m going to throw the switch,” she called out. “Hold on.”

  “Hold on? I’m flat as a pancake over here, Charlene, and I’m about to lose my cookies. And that makes pancakes and cookies, and that’s not pretty.”

  Charlene touched the switch, hesitating only a heartbeat. Then she pushed it down.

  Suddenly, the pressure against her chest tripled.

  “It’s speeding up!” Maybeck cried out.

  “I…know,” she managed to choke out. But she could barely breathe.

  * * *

  Willa turned the handle of the projection-booth door, pausing before pulling it open. She double-checked with Jess, who nodded. Willa cracked the door open just far enough to peer inside.

  The overhead fluorescent tube lights flickered and came on automatically—motion sensors had sensed the door opening. A bar of light escaped the crack in the door and Willa did the only thing that made any sense to do: she jerked the door open, pulled Jess inside with her, and eased the door shut as quickly and quietly as possible.

  The first thing that impressed her about the space was how neat and clean it was. The equipment was big and clunky—white metal boxes, and a tall glass one just ahead, all carefully labeled and covered in warning stickers. The projector itself was enormous, situated in the middle of the narrow room. Wide film fed from the glass case into the projector and then looped around and returned to the case.

  “The IMAX film,” Jess said, “is a continuous loop. This box,” she said, indicating the glass tower, “keeps the film organized—see all the rollers?” The glass box held the film between rollers top to bottom so that a hundred yards or more of film could be stored in a four-foot-by-three-foot box, just four feet high.

  “Maybe I get the four-one-one another time, if it’s okay with you?” Willa said, her face sweaty, her eyes nervous.

  “Sure, no problem.” But Jess studied all the equipment with fascination, having read about it and studied it, but never having seen it in person.

  Willa moved quickly through the projection room to a far door and carefully opened it as well. “He’s not here,” she said. “It’s a storage room.”

  Jess took her time at the projector.

  “It’s like one of those computer clean rooms,” Willa said. “And check it out: the temperature and humidity are monitored. So I’m guessing this is the place that reported the temperature drop back to maintenance.”

  Jess finally broke away from her study of the gear. “And that means…Maleficent?”

  “If Maleficent entered this room the temperature would sure drop considerably, so yes, I assume at some point she was here.”

  “For what reason?”

  “That’s what we need to figure out. Does it have to do with their testing the new New York film? Something to do with Wayne? Was he kept here for a while? I don’t know the answers.”

  “We’re assuming Wayne is here somewhere in Epcot,” Jess said. “Because of my dream—the jacket he’s wearing and our discovery of the boardroom mural. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “So what if the Overtakers found out that Wayne had discovered their plans? I mean, when they took me, it was to keep me from seeing into the future and knowing what they were up to. So what if Wayne presented the same problem: he knew what they were up to?”

  “Okay, I’m with you.”

  “And Wayne had been all over the park putting this together. Right? I mean that’s what he would do, isn’t it? Make sure he was right? And let’s say that the Overtakers had some way of knowing where Wayne had gone. A GPS chip in his phone, or maybe a memo he’d written, or questions he’d asked to the wrong person. That’s not so important. What is important is that the Overtakers had some way of knowing where he’d been, what he’d been up to.”

  “Which could have happened in any number of ways.”

  “Exactly right.”

  “So,” Willa said, “Maleficent or the Overtakers retrace Wayne’s steps, and in doing so trip all the temperature sensors because the temperature drops wherever she goes.”

  “She’s smart enough to hide somewhere that won’t happen. We’re not going to find her in one of the places on the maintenance list. I don’t believe that’s going to happen.”

  “But we’re here because Wayne was once here,” Willa said. “I think this makes a lot of sense.”

  “Me, too. So that means we need to figure out why Wayne came here. Why Soarin’? Why the projection booth? He must have been onto the Overtakers’ plan. They followed him here, just as we have.”

  “So they probably took whatever it was that he was after—if he didn’t take it himself,” Willa said.

  “Possibly.”

  “Probably, is more like it.”

  “But you’re forgetting something: he went missing during all the trouble in the Animal Kingdom when you guys were trying to find me. There’s a time thing here. The maintenance logs are more recent than that, so the Overtakers came here after they already had Wayne. So they were or are looking for something that Wayne didn’t have on him when they got him. You can bet they searched the Firehouse—and they obviously didn’t find it there either.”

  “So it’s still here,” Willa said.

  “I think so. I think there are clues of some sort all over the park. Wayne left them in the attractions that have to do with flying. He’s trying to save the park. You know that’s his main concern. That’s just Wayne. The Blake poem was trying to tell us that he’s willing to die to save the parks, if necessary. So whatever he was worried about is here.”

  “Unless they found it,” Willa clarified.

  “True,” Jess said. “But if they found it, then why did they keep looking? The maintenance log has Maleficent—or at least temperature drops—happening all over the place.”

  “So they never did find it!” Willa said.

  “Or, there’s more than one thing to find. More than one clue, one piece of evidence. Wayne spread it around, knowing that would increase our chances of figuring it out.”

  “There’s something here somewhere,” Willa sai
d, spinning around.

  “I think so,” said Jess.

  “So we conduct a search. A methodical search, just the way Wayne would expect Philby to organize it.”

  “We start at the door and work our way forward,” Jess said.

  “One question,” Willa said. “Could it be in the film? If he spliced a single frame into the film, would it ever be spotted?”

  “At twenty-four frames per second,” Jess said, quoting her research, “I doubt it. It might flicker, but you wouldn’t see it. Good point. What a hiding place! That’s brilliant, Willa!”

  “Thank you.”

  “But we’re going to catch it. Not while the film is moving. Your eye can’t pick it up with the film moving so fast.”

  The film was moving as the test downstairs continued.

  “So?”

  “Wayne would know the film is stored in the glass box. It’s too hard for us to see it all in there. If he left a clue spliced into the film it would have to be right at the start, right where we’d see it when the film was stopped and waiting to load and, I hate to say it, but it would be the California film, not the New York one they’re testing.” She pointed to an enormous aluminum wheel—a case—sitting on the floor. “That’s the California film. It’s basically a crime to open that box. The film is incredibly sensitive to dust and dirt in the air. You handle with special white—”

  She was interrupted by Willa’s pointing to a pair of the very gloves she was describing.

  “Okay,” Jess said. “I’ll check the film while you search the room. But you have to be thorough.”

  “We both have to be thorough.”

  “And fast,” Jess said. “If they have a problem with their test, they may head up here.”

  They got to work. Five minutes passed. Ten. Jess had the case open and was carefully reviewing each frame of the film’s leader by holding the film up to the overhead light.

  Willa was working her way through the room, inch by inch, making note of every piece of equipment and anything that might be unusual about it.

  “Got something!” Jess said, her white-gloved hands carefully holding the film over her head. Willa joined her.

  “See the splice line?” Jess said. “I mean, there are several in the leader, so it’s not anything huge by itself, but see this second splice? It’s a single frame that has been cut into the film. And that is unusual. This is the only one I’ve seen.”

  “But it’s black.”

  “It’s dark, yes. It blends in that way with the rest of the leader. But it’s not actually black, just very, very, dark. We need more light.”

  “Such as?”

  “I’m not sure. The projector’s light is incredibly bright. If we could slide the whole can over there, and I could get close enough to where the light is leaking out, maybe…”

  “So let’s do it,” Willa said.

  The film can was incredibly heavy. Even working together, the two couldn’t budge it.

  “We’ll have to unwind the film far enough to get the leader over there,” Jess said. “And it can’t touch the floor or it’s ruined. Use your socks as gloves.”

  “What?”

  “Take off your socks and use them as gloves. You’re going to have to hold the film.”

  A minute later Jess was uncoiling the film from the can and Willa was supporting it, keeping it from touching the floor. Jess managed to get the splice up to the edge of the projector, from which a brilliant white light seeped out and illuminated the dark rectangle of spliced film.

  What she saw astounded her.

  “It’s a seat belt sign,” she said.

  “A what?”

  “You heard me. Like you’d see on an airplane or something.”

  Jess had turned to look back at Willa. In doing so, she’d lost track of her hands. They wandered into the projector’s beam, interrupting it. She noticed this immediately, but it was too late: she’d broken the image being projected to the screen.

  “Uh-oh,” she said. Glancing out through the projection windowpane she could just make out the two tiny figures well below, at the control console. The bigger of the two—the man—was pointing up toward the booth.

  “The lights!” she said to Willa. “The room lights can be seen from below. They know we’re here!”

  Willa kept her calm, immediately coiling the film back into the can. Jess fed her the extra length.

  “I saw something…I have to check something,” Willa said.

  “Saw what?”

  “In this book over there. It’s a journal. It’s marked A-three, whatever that means. But I think it’s some kind of maintenance log. There was something about seat belts…”

  “No way,” Jess said.

  “Way.”

  The projector stopped.

  “This is not good,” said Willa.

  They’d fed enough film into the can that Jess could take over and finish it up. Willa pulled her hands from her socks, dropping one in the process. She hurried over past the projector. The journal was an oversized notebook with a hardcover. She flipped through the pages as Jess finished putting the film away and closing the canister.

  “He’s got to be on his way up here,” Jess said. “I know he saw the light on.”

  “I knew it!” Willa said. “The last entry lists a seat belt inspection. Some of the seat belts were locking but not opening. And get this! The dates of all the other maintenance work…it ends like two years ago. They must have automated the work or something. But this seat belt thing…it’s dated three weeks ago.”

  “Right when Wayne went missing.”

  “Bingo,” Willa said.

  “It has to mean something.”

  Willa moved to the projection window.

  “Oh, no…” she gasped. “He’s on his way up here.”

  “Well, we can’t go out the door.”

  “And it’s not like we can hide in here.”

  “There!” Jess said. She pointed beyond Willa to a door.

  They hurried and opened the door. It led into the upper-level superstructure of the ride—a catwalk that led out into the dark and the steel girders that supported Soarin’s huge swings below.

  “We’re supposed to go out there?” Willa groaned.

  “Just don’t look down!” Jess said.

  They stepped out into the dark and pulled the door closed. Jess made the mistake of not following her own advice: she glanced down. One misstep, and they would fall sixty feet through steel pipes to a concrete floor.

  “Keep moving,” she said, her voice dry with fright.

  * * *

  As the test car crested the hill, the Dan Patrick voice announced the start of rough road tests and the car turned and dropped back down a ramp, shaking and vibrating its way to the bottom. Finn remembered this as the place his sister would try to talk and her voice would rattle, amusing the family.

  Thought of his sister and his family made him wonder what would happen when he couldn’t be awakened, when his mother discovered him stuck in the Syndrome. An unpleasant thought, he pushed it aside.

  He heard Philby scream, a skin-crawling sound that echoed through the ride and he called back, shouting his name. “Philby?”

  The stupid seat belt wouldn’t let him out of the car no matter how hard he wrestled with it. The more he fought it, the tighter it gripped him; he suddenly saw what an easy target he would make if anyone came after him. He’d given Philby his own means of self-defense; but Finn was a sitting duck. A strapped-in sitting duck, at that.

  The brake test came next—the car racing headlong toward a barrier. Finn held a dozen thoughts in his head at this point, one of which was the notion that if the mannequin had attacked them, then the Overtakers had been expecting them; and if the Overtakers had been expecting them, then would they have sabotaged the test car? And if they had sabotaged the test car, wouldn’t the brakes be the first thing to go?

  The test car flew toward the end of the line. Finn knew where to expect the s
ensation of being slowed by the brakes, and it didn’t come. Instead, the car maintained speed as it swung left, following the track. The left wheels lifted off the concrete, then thumped back down. The car swung right as the narrators both said something but the car was moving too fast for Finn to hear it. Finn reached out and grabbed for the dash as the car entered a second brake test at a speed he’d never felt before. Propelled down a straightaway at an unbelievable speed, it seemed certain to crash. Again Finn fought the seat belt. Again, he did nothing but tighten it a notch across his waist.

  “Braking!” the woman’s voice shouted.

  But the car didn’t brake. It swung left again and, as before, nearly jumped the track—throwing Finn to his right, the left wheels lifting, the car balanced only on its two right wheels, then slamming down as it turned right.

  It rolled to a stop inside the heat chamber, the narrator saying something about “extreme test conditions.” Banks of infrared lights came on and the room quickly warmed. Finn knew the ride, knew the car was supposed to continue right on through to the next chamber. He could see it ahead: the cold room.

  But the car stopped. The hundreds of heat lamps remained on and Finn felt the temperature quickly rising, dangerously rising. For a moment the heat had actually felt good, but now it did not. He guessed it was well over a hundred degrees inside the car and gaining rapidly.

  105….

  110….

  He was beginning to bake. Sweat ran into his eyes, stinging. He struggled against the restraints. His face was burning. The metal of the car was too hot to touch. He pulled his hands in. He thought he smelled his hair burning.

  Plastic began to melt. The disintegration moved toward him from both sides, trying to meet in the middle. If that kind of heat reached him…

  Smoke rose from the vehicle. A label adhered to the side caught fire, flames licking up to his right.

  Finn was crazy now, jumping and bucking and fighting the seat belt restraint, trying to slip up and out. The thing was impossibly tight. If he hadn’t tried so hard to break out earlier he might have made it; but it had cinched so tight that he felt choked around the waist, and he wasn’t coming out of it. If he could calm down he might all-clear his way out, but he was anything but calm.