“That would be great.”
“Done. You heard about the stowaways?”
“Philby told me. Have they caught them?”
“Not that I’ve heard. There’s a lot of weird stuff going on on this cruise.”
“Tell me about it. It seems to kind of follow us around,” he said.
“Lucky you.”
“Not always.” He made her laugh. “Not even often.” Another chuckle from her. “How do I reach you?”
“I don’t trust the Wave Phones,” she said, “just so you know.”
“I do now.”
“I leave notes at the door because no one pays the slightest bit of attention to them. The crew leaves hundreds of them around each day: invitations, spa confirmations, concierge. The one or two I put up at a door hardly stand out.”
“Just so you know…” he said. “I saw something on the island. Not everyone on the crew can be trusted.”
“Like who are we talking about?”
“I’m not sure.”
“That narrows it down.”
“At least one officer,” he said, thinking of the man following him on the staircase. “In case your sources are crew members or Cast Members.”
“No,” she said sarcastically, “it’s Chip and Dale. I only deal with chipmunks.”
“I’m just saying…it was dark. I didn’t get all that good a look.”
“Guys and girls?”
“Yes.”
“You know you’re freaking me out now?”
“I can see that. Yes. It’s dark, and I don’t know you that well, but you do kind of look freaked.”
“You know me better than a lot of guys. We’ve kissed, after all.”
He said nothing. She didn’t have to remind him of that.
Finally, he managed to say, “I should take off.”
“If you need me, fold your Navigator into a triangle and put it in the note holder outside your door. I’ll find you.”
“Who…are…you?”
“Go on,” she said, giving him a slight but playful push. “Get out of here.”
* * *
In a reversal of roles, Philby turned the controls of the DHI server over to Willa, who ran things from the Radio Studio. He did this in order to have her cross him over so that he might gain access to the security recordings while Charlene, also crossed over, would explore wherever he directed her. It was an ambitious plan, but one that required quick execution in case the Overtakers had a means to erase or replace security footage and hide their tracks.
He couldn’t tell his mother he wanted to go to bed early because it would tip her to their plans, and Mrs. Philby was one of the parents who did not approve of Kingdom Keeper activity. Instead, he told her he wanted to watch TV in Finn’s room. He shut the connecting door, left a note for Finn in the hall, and turned off the lights and lay down. With the activities of a long day behind him, he fell quickly to sleep.
* * *
Finn was a good ways down the endless Deck 8 starboard-side hallway when a voice from behind him stopped him.
“Why would you do this to me?”
Not just any voice.
He didn’t know whether to turn around or to run. But he felt the power she had over him affect him like gravity. He turned.
From this distance, she looked just like the mom he knew her to be. He wanted to run and hug her, but his feet knew better and remained planted on the hallway’s spongy carpet.
“Mom…”
“We were supposed to room together.” She sounded crushed.
Had the green-eye curse only lasted a matter of hours—a day? Was she his real mom again? Again, temptation pulled him toward her. Again, he resisted.
“You’re not…yourself.”
“Don’t you talk to me like that, young man.”
She stepped forward, and he felt himself take a step back. The overhead light had caught her eyes: they were green.
“What is it?” she asked.
“I…ah…I’ve got to get going.”
Another step toward him. The thing was, Finn wanted to hug her. He wanted to help her. This woman who had helped him through so much. He didn’t move, allowing her to slowly close the distance between them.
“I…can…help,” she said.
“The thing is…”
“We’re a team, aren’t we?”
He felt the strings attached inside his chest tighten and winch him toward her. “We are,” he said.
“Always have been.”
He nodded.
“A darn good team,” she said.
His real mother would have never used that word. Her use of it slapped him in the face. An internal battle raged inside him: his head versus his heart. And he’d always been bigger of heart. She would have been the first to tell him that.
The first to take advantage of that.
He felt tears on his cheeks and wondered where they’d come from; they were traitors, these tears, trying to give him over to the enemy.
His mother, the enemy? Was such a thing possible?
“You know how you and Dad take different sides in politics?” he asked. She said nothing. “But you still love each other? That’s what’s going on here. Between us. Different sides.”
“I’ve always been on your side.”
“I know, but—”
“Why would I have anything but your best interests at heart?”
“All I know is…you’re different.”
“Am I? How can you say that?”
“It’s the truth. You and Dad have always told me the truth counts more than anything.”
A couple walked past them in the hall, barely taking any notice. Finn felt invisible. Only this woman and him.
There were tears in his mother’s eyes now.
“‘The truth comes first,’” he quoted.
Her face bunched like the air had been sucked out of it.
“Mom, don’t…”
He couldn’t stand it when she cried.
She knows that! he reminded himself.
She was close now. Too close. But close enough that as he stared into her green eyes he saw them tick quickly over his shoulder, then flare with surprise. He heard a whoosh, as soft as the piped-in air, but distinctly flame, not air. He ducked.
A fireball exploded into his mother’s chest, and she went over backward like a bowling pin. He dove atop her and knocked the flaming ball off her, pounding her clothing to extinguish the fire. The color of her eyes flickered between blue and green. The ball of fire rolled against the wall and went out.
Finn rolled off his mother, not wanting to make her the target.
Maleficent strolled toward him, her black cape lifting behind her. “Give it to me!” she said.
“I don’t have it.” Finn backed up and got to his feet.
The smoldering ball of flame sputtered in her hand. The excited voices of guests at the end of the hallway rose to the occasion.
“Check it out!” a kid hollered.
Maleficent toyed with the ball above his fallen mother.
“How do you think she’ll look with a face burned to a crisp?” she said, juggling the burning ball between both hands and pretending to drop it before catching it at the last second.
Finn lunged forward, then back.
“I don’t have it,” he repeated. “I tried to get it. You bet I did, but it sank and the water was too dark…and I don’t have it.”
He’d never seen real panic on the green fairy’s face, but there was a first time for everything.
He looked down at his mother. She was staring back at him out of the tops of her eyes. Blue eyes, sparking green.
“Run!” she gasped. With that, she kicked out and caught Maleficent in the legs and knocked her down. His mom jumped to her feet.
That was another first. As Maleficent fell, a crow appeared and the fairy was gone.
Finn turned and took off, his fingers reaching back for his mom’s outstretched hand. Their hands c
onnected just as the black crow hovered over his mother’s head.
“Mom!”
Her blue eyes were turning green again. The same color green that occupied the crow’s eyes. Finn swiped out awkwardly at the crow while running backward. It cawed and threw its talons forward and scratched him.
His mother’s eyes held green for longer than they were blue, pulsing between the two colors, tightened in warning. She shook her head, meaning for him to let go of her.
“No…” he cried out.
But now her eyes were solid green and growing darker by the second.
The crow cawed again.
Some kid cheered from down the hall.
Finn’s mother let go of his hand and took hold of his left wrist with a vise grip. It wasn’t just her eyes that had changed, but her entire demeanor. A meaner demeanor. Vicious. Possessive. She owned him.
“Mom…”
But his mother wasn’t in there behind the woman’s eyes. The crow controlled her now; she, a puppet to its whims and instructions.
He broke her grip with a wrestling move, but it felt more like a bone snapping in two. Like an artery tearing. She had never abandoned him. How could he leave her in the grip of this demonic creature beating its black wings above her?
But he did just that: turned his back on them both, fled down the hall, and slid into a just-closing elevator.
He looked up at two guests who seemed a bit horrified at finding a teenage boy on the floor of their elevator car, out of breath and drenched in sweat, tears in his eyes.
* * *
It bothered Charlene that she couldn’t stop thinking about Maybeck. She had crossed over as planned and had headed off to retrieve her Wave Phone where she’d hidden it so she could receive messages from Philby for where to look for the crate.
But why Maybeck? Why was he stuck in her head? From the moment he’d caught up with them on the island and described his fight with Luowski she’d found herself worried about him. Him, of all people. The brash, cocky kid who didn’t even know she existed. And yet…their teaming up at the Base had changed her opinion of him. She pushed him out of her mind and tried to focus on the job at hand.
“Hey.”
And there he was, stepping out to meet her near the lobby elevators.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
“Good to see you, too.”
“The question stands.”
“I thought you might…maybe you could use some backup.”
“Because I’m a girl?”
“No…I mean, yes. But not like that, not like because you can’t handle it, because…I don’t know. Forget it. Maybe it was a mistake.”
“Maybe it was.”
He looked at her, as confused as she’d ever seen him.
“I thought…” he said. He waved his finger between them.
“You thought what?”
“You…never mind.”
“It’s thoughtful of you,” she said, trying to recover. Why did she push away the boys she actually liked? What was with that?
“We were a pretty good team at the Base.”
“We were. Are.”
“That’s all,” he said. “With you crossed over. Me, not. I thought…I don’t know. Forget it.”
That was the other thing: all boys had a breaking point after which they threw some kind of switch and totally lost interest. She had no way of doing that.
He turned his back on her. “See you.”
“I’m glad you’re here,” she spit out.
He stopped. “For real?” Still aimed away from her.
“Totally.”
He turned toward her. If his face had been a lightbulb she’d have needed sunglasses. “It’s your deal, not mine. I’m just here as backup.”
“Agreed,” she said. She pointed upstairs.
Maybeck nodded.
* * *
“Excuse me,” Philby said.
The woman had been reading in bed when Philby’s hologram walked through her wall. Now she yanked up the bedsheet to cover herself, eyes wide, tongue-tied. She was not young. Far from it, he was happy to see. She’d dropped her book in her lap, the bedsheet clutched tightly like a security blanket. Slack-jawed.
“Sorry about this,” he said. He kneeled and poked his head and shoulders through the floor of her stateroom. He stood up, a full boy again. “Maintenance work. Keeping the plumbing working. Sorry to bother you.”
He disappeared through the far wall and into a narrow engineering space. He hoped she would call the front desk and report the incident, but worried she might not—old people, like Philby’s grandparents, had credibility issues and did not want to appear senile. Claiming a boy ghost had spoken to her would only get her odd looks. But he was counting on the fear factor to make her report him. Security would be notified and would respond to her complaint. This in turn would leave security temporarily empty, which served his purpose well.
He ducked his hologram head through the floor. He’d established himself perfectly: he was looking (upside down) at the back of a security officer working at a desk that held a pair of computer screens, the larger of which displayed color security camera views in a quadrant format. The phone rang, and the man answered it.
“He went…where?” the man said. Then—“Oh, come on!” He paused to listen. “Yeah…okay…I’ll speak with her.” Reluctantly, he pulled himself out of his chair in the midst of a deep sigh.
Philby extracted his head from the room to avoid being seen. He counted to ten and peeked through again. The room was empty. Here, then, was a chance to practice the benefits of 2.0: the added control over the physical space. Typically, a floor, attraction, or a sidewalk held a DHI, as the projection was set to do just that. When crossing through walls, technically a Keeper was in DHI shadow. Using 2.0, a DHI could “force” transitions—moving one’s image from projector to projector, like a cell phone tower handing off a signal. Philby did so now. He closed his eyes and reminded himself that, as pure light, he could go wherever he wanted to go, that there were no boundaries. He jumped up a few inches, still squinting, and fell through the floor, landing surprisingly hard—and surprisingly loudly—on the floor of the security office below. He recovered quickly and scrambled under a desk just as the door flung open.
“Hello? Anyone here? Everything all right?”
An officer’s pressed and starched white uniform, from the knees down, appeared. Whoever it was turned and left the office.
Philby was inside.
* * *
Taking directions from Philby over her Wave Phone, Charlene moved deeper into the guts of the ship. She’d left Maybeck outside the Crew Members Only door, near the forward end of the starboard companionway.
“Do you see the corridor to your right?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“That’s where they took the crate. But I can’t see all of it.”
“It’s long. All gray paint. A crew area for sure.”
“Doors?”
“Yes,” she answered. “Three on the left and one at the very end. None on the right.”
“There are numbers by them. Read them back to me.”
Walking the corridor, Charlene read off the three numbers in a whisper.
“Okay. Consulting a floor plan here…” he said. “Did you know they have iPAQs—handhelds—that can control most of the ship’s functions and all of the security devices?”
“You know, I don’t care, Philby. Not only don’t I care, but you’re distracting me and things are just a little tense down here. Not to mention hot. I mean, where’s the air-conditioning for the crew?”
“That’s what I’m talking about: the iPAQs can control the air-cond—”
“Will you shut up?” She spoke too loudly for the narrow corridor, scaring herself with her own voice.
“I’m going to borrow one,” he said against the background sound of a keyboard clicking.
“I really do…not…care…”
“Y
ou will.”
“Oh my gosh! Enough!”
“Try the door at the end of the corridor,” he said. “On the floor plans that door connects backstage to the theater. The doors on the left are emergency doors to the auditorium itself. I’m definitely going with backstage.”
“Actually, it’s me going with it,” Charlene said.
“You’ll have to leave the phone. It won’t go through the wall with your hologram.”
“I could try it.”
“Trust me. I was stopped by a hair.”
“What?”
“I’ll tell you another time. Leave the phone somewhere you can find it later.”
“So when I’m in there, I’m on my own?”
“Afraid so.”
“Are you going to give me some clues?”
“Stand by. Checking the floor plan.”
“You don’t have to sound like a robot.”
“Pardon me for living. Look who’s nervous.”
“I am nervous,” Charlene said. “I don’t particularly love creepy places. So help me out here.”
“The hallway you’ll enter angles left—”
“Left,” she said, checking her hands. Charlene had a little trouble with left and right.
“It looks like there are some storage areas or offices off it. All very small.”
“And?”
“It leads past a stairway, up and down and out into an area that’s off the stage.”
“Stage left,” she said.
“Whatever. The stage is ginormous, but it looks like curtains hide most of it from the audience. No way to tell from here what’s back there.”
“That’s encouraging.”
“There’s another level below, down those stairs you’ll pass. I’ve got some safety cams down there as well as onstage. Maybe I can control the lights if I can figure out the iPAQ.”
Enough with the iPAQ! she wanted to say.
“Okay,” she said.
“You set?”
“I’ll put my phone behind a fire extinguisher.”
“Perfect.”
“So I guess this is it for now.”
“I’ll be watching you at least some of the places. You’re not alone.”
Then why do I feel so alone? she wanted to say. But she’d volunteered for the assignment. She couldn’t complain now.
She tucked the phone behind the fire extinguisher, summoned her courage, and walked through the door. She opened her eyes once through to the other side.
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