“Or maybe I’ll find you,” he growled at Finn.
“I’m not worried,” Finn said. “I’ll smell you coming.”
The line moved. Finn and the girls were shown up the stairs. The simulators were designed for a maximum of two people. Charlene lined up in front of door 1, Finn and Amanda, door 3.
“No holding hands, you two, if you get scared,” Charlene called down to them.
Finn faked a grin; he was scared already.
A Cast Member wearing a name tag that said megan accepted Finn’s card from him and chose the only predesigned ride it contained. The door opened and Finn and Amanda were escorted into the simulator chamber. They climbed down into the padded seats of the red metal capsule. The seats faced a large flat-panel screen. Megan directed them to stow anything loose in their pockets. That was when Finn started to worry. She then pointed out the two red stop emergency buttons, one for each rider.
Finn’s stomach turned. He didn’t like the idea of taking a ride that needed panic buttons. He pulled down the black padded chest brace as directed. Amanda did the same. Megan double-checked everything.
“You’re good to go,” she said. She hit a button and the simulator’s lid closed slowly, locking in place. The only light came from the flat-panel display where the ride’s parallel tracks stretched out in front of them.
“This was a stupid idea,” he mumbled.
“You’re telling me,” Amanda said.
“But did you see the course Charlene created for herself? No way I would go on that thing in a million years.”
“She wanted to impress you.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Trust me. She picked the scariest stuff possible. It would terrify the guy who designed it. But she’s going to come out of there and tell us she loved it.”
He wanted to disagree, but thought she was probably right.
The lights dimmed. The ride began.
“If I scream,” Finn said, “it’s just to make it feel all the more real.”
She laughed. But not for long. Her amusement was cut short as the roller coaster car began to move forward on the tracks in front of them. A light flashed in their eyes. Sound effects roared from unseen speakers and the car banked sharply left. Finn clutched the safety harness and shut his eyes.
“I hate this already,” he said.
The capsule banked left, did a complete flip in that direction, and then lifted into a double loop, dumping them upside down twice in a row. Amanda’s hair fell like a curtain. Finn squinted open his eyes: the track dropped straight down, about a thousand feet. They plummeted down, like on the Tower of Terror.
Finn screamed a word that would have gotten him grounded for a week if his mother had heard it. It just flew out of him.
“This…is…not…right!” Amanda cried.
They reached bottom, leaving Finn’s stomach somewhere at his feet. He re-swallowed his dinner. The car shot up like a NASA rocket launch.
He screamed the same word again.
“She…tricked…us!” Amanda hollered. Then she screamed at a pitch so high it should have shattered the flat-panel display.
“Puke alert,” Finn gagged out as they entered a triple loop.
“Please, no!” Amanda said. “Try shutting your eyes.”
“Only makes it worse!” he choked out.
“Tell me this thing can’t actually crash.” She released another shriek at a volume that might have been heard in Miami.
“It can’t actually crash,” he said, though he wasn’t so sure. What if the simulator was put through stuff it wasn’t designed to handle? he wondered. What if its bearings froze or its motor overheated? The thing was, even Charlene’s ride, as crazy as she’d made it, hadn’t seemed this bad. Had she tricked them, in order to sabotage Amanda?
That was the first time he realized that maybe Charlene wasn’t the only one involved. A ride this violent carried the fingerprints of the Overtakers.
Finn remembered Megan telling them about the panic buttons. He reached down to punch the red emergency stop button. Just as he did, the car lurched left, and he leaned so sharply in that direction that his hand missed the button.
“Did you see that?” he hollered. “I think it knew I was trying to stop it!”
“You’re losing more than your cookies,” Amanda said. “So this thing can think?”
The car dropped again. Rose and fell. Leaned ninety degrees left and stayed there. Jerked totally upside down and did three more upside-down loops.
Amanda struggled to reach her stop button. But as she did, the track dropped away. She and Finn were thrown forward against their restraints. She punched down and hit the red plastic button.
“Got it!” she yelled.
The ride continued.
She hit it again.
They were flipped over seven times to their right, like rolling down a steep hill in an oil barrel.
“I swear I pushed it,” she announced. “But nothing happened.”
“Impressive,” he managed to mutter to himself despite all the craziness, no longer thinking it was the work of the Overtakers, but knowing it. Wondering how they might have accomplished such a thing, and what, if anything, Charlene’s role had been in it. She had designed the ride, after all. If it was the OTs, how had they organized any kind of attack given that their two leaders, Maleficent and Chernabog, were currently locked up somewhere in a Disney holding facility? The Kingdom Keepers’ mentor and designer, Wayne Kresky, had believed that “With the head cut off the snake, the body cannot survive.” But someone had clearly taken over leadership of the Overtakers. The ride going out of control could not be considered coincidence. The Keepers were under attack.
Finn reached down, able to press his stop button. Nothing.
“It’s…them…isn’t it?” Amanda was no dummy. She’d figured it out on her own.
“Yeah,” he said. “It’s them. By now Megan knows” —he gritted his teeth as the track lifted and fell so hard and so many times in a row that his neck hurt—“something is wrong. She’s working to fix it.”
“You’re dreaming.”
“Probably. But at this point, she’s our only hope.”
* * *
Outside the simulator bay, Megan was in fact hitting every switch and button possible. The system’s mechanicals included a warning-light display used to alert Cast Members to potential simulator hardware failure: a single light that ran a solid green, amber, or red. It was currently flashing red—a warning level never seen before and one that attracted the concern and attention of three other Cast Members, including the ride manager.
“It’s going to come off the gyros!” the manager shouted. “Like a wheel coming off a bike. The thing is going to basically explode if we don’t stop it!” He, too, hit every known control trying to stop the ride. “What the heck?” he asked Megan, as if it were her fault.
“The power!” she said. “Call down and tell them to cut off the power.”
* * *
“It’s coming apart!” Finn yelled. On the screen, the parallel tracks rushed toward them at impossible speeds, reflecting the velocity of their virtual roller coaster car. Finn could barely look at it—another five loops coming up, then a series of left corkscrews and what appeared to be the edge of a cliff—another of the thousand-foot drops. It was no longer the pattern of the animated tracks that frightened him, but the sounds of grinding metal and the way the seats in the simulator were no longer level, but leaning heavily left. It was being made to do things it was not designed to do. Its parts were failing—the bushings, the bearings, servos, and gyros; it was like a car going down the side of a mountain with no steering and two of its wheels loose. It was going to crash.
“How could they know where we are?” Amanda cried out. “How is that possible?”
Finn didn’t answer. He knew that when it came to the Overtakers, anything was possible.
“We have to stop it,” he said, looking for options. He shoved h
is back against the seat and tried to slip out of the chest restraint. It was the same kind of restraint used on real roller coasters—a padded pipe that pulled down over your head. There was some slack in the way it fit. He got about halfway out before getting stuck.
“You’re going to crush yourself!” she said.
The simulator spun sideways and rotated forward in full circles seven times. Finn felt his dinner coming up again. Each time he took his eyes off the screen he felt sick. He tried to focus on the screen the way his father had told him to focus on the horizon when seasick. The nausea passed. He was okay.
They fell hundreds of feet, facedown.
Finn squeezed back into his seat, unable to free himself.
“We…have…to…do…something!” he said.
“I’m up for suggestions,” she answered. Oddly, Amanda sounded suddenly collected and unaffected by the flips and twirls and drops. She could actually string a sentence together.
Then it struck him: Amanda had a unique power.
“Push…it…open,” Finn shouted over the roar of the simulator’s disintegrating parts. Amanda flashed him a look, her dark hair hanging fully upside down, her cheeks vibrating like Jell-O. Her eyes strained to find the hatch door that Megan had closed electronically. Neither of them knew exactly what was up or down any longer.
“It’s too strong! I heard it lock,” she said.
So had he, but what choice did they have? “You…have…to…try!”
If the seal broke, maybe it would initiate an automatic shutdown.
“Could be dangerous!” she said. For me, Amanda was thinking. How would they explain the damage to the simulator? Damage that would come from the inside? So far in her life her “gift”—as some called it—had only gotten her in trouble or made her the object of teasing. Subjugated at the age of eight to a foster home for freaks in Baltimore—the Fairlies—she’d been studied by scientists, doctors, and soldiers until she’d had no choice but to run away with Jess. She had no urgent desire to make a scene with her gift and bring all that down on herself again.
They jerked violently left, right, front, back, and left again. Finn’s head felt as if it was going to come off his neck. Dangerous? he wanted to say. Really?
Amanda couldn’t risk Finn’s getting hurt. She released her bloodless grip on the chest restraint, reaching toward the screen with outstretched arms. Finn watched her close her eyes, bend her elbows, and flatten her hands, palms facing out like a traffic cop’s. She pushed up over her head—all at once, and with every ounce of strength she possessed.
The metal bulged like it had been hit with a battering ram. Red paint flakes rained down. Sparks flew.
“Again!” he hollered.
“Too strong!” she complained.
“You’re all we’ve got.” The vibrations climbed toward a climax. The push had made the simulator lean even farther to the left; the grinding of metal was now louder than the sound effects.
He smelled electrical smoke. They were going to suffocate.
“EVERYTHING YOU’VE GOT!” he shouted.
The act of pushing drained Amanda. At low levels she could briefly levitate a person or object—cause them to float for a few seconds. Using up more of herself, she could shove a car a few feet in a parking space, or knock a group of people—or Overtakers—off their feet. Or bend a simulator hatch door. Finn needed her to give it her all.
“O…M…G!” she screamed.
On the screen, the track ahead of them rose, fell, and tilted to the right before…disappearing. It looked as if someone had simply erased the track—it broke off in space. Below the break was a rock canyon so deep that Finn couldn’t see the bottom.
The simulator shuddered. The smell of an electrical short—like the air before a storm—continued to flood the cabin. Their screams were lost amid the groan and complaint of the failing mechanics.
The car reached the end of the track and flew off into space.
Amanda thrust her arms toward the overhead door, but this time like she was lifting an incredibly heavy set of gym weights. Going for an Olympic record.
“STEADY!” Finn shouted, as the car tilted down, now plummeting into the depths of the rock canyon.
The hatch door rumbled and bent, bulged and shuddered, the seal cracking open, first a fraction of an inch, then wider.
“MORE!!!!” Finn said, as the ground—a rock bottom, like a dry riverbed—rushed toward them at over three hundred miles per hour.
The cry of the metal hatch now overpowered any other sound. Amanda’s face was scarlet and sweaty, her arm muscles bulging as her bones seemed to bend to breaking.
The sheet metal tore at the location of both pneumatic hook locks that secured the hatch.
Two inches…three…
The lid blew open.
The ride shut down. Smoke coiled from motors and servos.
A group of Cast Members rushed inside, aiming fire extinguishers that belched a yellow foam.
Finn and Amanda hung against the chest restraints as the simulator rotated forward ninety degrees, facing the ground. It made it hard to see what was going on. Some guy was shouting a bunch of orders.
Finn heard Megan say, “Are you okay? We’re getting you out! Hang on, you’re almost out.”
The chest restraints released without notice. Finn and Amanda fell, crashing into the flat-panel display and cracking its safety glass. Finn helped Amanda up, and Megan offered them her hand. They climbed out.
“Wow,” Finn said, “that’s incredibly lifelike.”
Amanda played along. “Must be expensive if they do that every time.”
They exited from the smoke and chaos. Charlene stood there, her full attention on their joined hands. Finn hadn’t even realized that he and Amanda were holding hands. He let go a little abruptly.
Charlene leaned in to examine the twisted wreckage. Smoke and steam and the gas from the fire extinguishers commingled. She fanned it away from her face.
“What happened in there?” she asked.
Amanda said, “I think next time I’ll design my own ride.”
“You don’t think I had something to do with that…that…” Charlene stammered, “…with whatever happened in there, do you?”
“You mean just because you talked us into coming here in the first place and you designed our roller coaster? Now, why would I think that?” Amanda said.
“Finn?” Charlene pleaded.
“You gave us the card, Charlie,” he said, using a nickname for her only he used. “You designed the ride.” And Maleficent’s locked in a jail cell, he felt like adding. Use of her nickname was an attempt at intimacy, to remind her that he still considered her a close friend, despite what had happened. But it backfired. Amanda heard him and clearly resented it.
“Really?” Amanda said to him. “You’re going to sweet-talk her after she almost killed us?” She stormed off down the exit stairs.
“Amanda! Wait!” Finn called after her.
“I promise you,” Charlene said, “I didn’t do anything! I had nothing to do with this. It wasn’t me!”
They’d been close friends for more than two years. Finn said, “Listen, do I want to think you sabotaged the simulator? Come on!” But she’d designed the ride, he reminded himself.
Finn couldn’t let Amanda get away. He hurried out after her. Charlene followed at a run.
The building seemed more crowded. He recognized nearly everyone—even though there were four hundred kids in his grade.
“KK rules!” he called back to Charlene. His team had long since agreed that when in the Parks no one flew solo. The Overtakers took advantage of Keepers off on their own. In pairs or teams their chances for survival increased.
Finn shoved his way through the crowd, catching only fleeting glimpses of the back of Amanda’s head. She was wasting no time trying to get out of there. She disappeared down the staircase—much too far ahead to hear him calling after her.
Charlene closed in from behin
d him.
He glanced over the rail, looking down, hoping to catch a glimpse of Amanda as she reached the bottom of the stairs.
His breath caught.
Not possible.
Snow White’s Evil Queen stood amid a torrent of admirers, all begging for autographs. But the Evil Queen wasn’t looking at her fans; she was locked onto Finn like a laser-guided missile.
He jumped back from the rail, out of the way of her gaze. A shudder of terror flooded him. If it was a legitimate Cast Member, fine. But if it was an Overtaker—if it was the real Evil Queen—then she could throw spells, conjure curses, mix potions to transfigure herself into an ugly old peddler offering a poisoned apple. In short, she was nothing to mess with.
Amanda!
He yanked his phone out of his pocket and sent a group text:
Possible OTs in DQ. Head 2 bus ASAP
Hopefully that would get the others moving. Presently, his job was to get Amanda and Charlene out of there.
The four other Keepers had smart phones just like his—gifts from Wayne and the Imagineers. Amanda and Jess didn’t have phones. Even if they’d had the money to buy them—and they didn’t—Mrs. Nash didn’t allow her girls to have phones.
Charlene caught up to him and he launched himself down the crowded stairwell, fighting through the throng. As he neared the bottom of the stairs, Amanda came into view again.
The Queen turned to look at Finn. He averted his eyes, fearing a spell. She walked toward him, the bubble of her admirers moving with her. He stole one more glance in her direction only to realize she wasn’t looking at him but over his head. He looked behind him…
…at Charlene.
From the step above, Charlene lowered her eyes to Finn and said, “What’s she doing here?”
“You know who that is?” Finn asked, surprised.
“Of course I know who that is!”
“I’ve never seen her before. Not the real one.”
“The real one? Is that the real one?”
“What do you think? You feel like giving her the pinch test?”
“AMANDA!” Charlene cried out loudly. She waved furiously, trying to get Amanda to turn around and join them. But Amanda was too caught up in the reason for her running off in the first place. Even more furious seeing Finn and Charlene on the steps together, she heaved through the crowd, ever closer to the Evil Queen.
Kingdom Keepers Boxed Set Page 79