Finn’s doughboy took another swing at him with the cleaver. It whooshed past his ear. He couldn’t convince himself it wasn’t going to cut him. Too close.
As the doughboy lifted his weird-looking foot and took a final step toward him, the bottom of the foot landed in the puddle of oil. The doughboy raked the cleaver back high overhead, but had so little traction he lost his balance. It teetered. Finn leaned forward, concentrated on his hands, and pushed. The doughboy toppled over backward, now lathered in oil.
He turned and shoved Willa to the side just as the fork aimed for her throat. Finn deflected the fork to the side and kicked at the thing’s leg.
But his now-solid foot sank into the dough and stuck there.
Willa reached for his outstretched arms and pulled Finn free as the doughboy readied the fork to skewer Finn. Together they scrambled over the stainless steel waiter line into the kitchen proper. Finn had seen his mother do this trick. He snagged a piece of dry spaghetti from a huge pile by the stove and, lighting the stove, held the dry spaghetti to the flame. It lit like a match.
Willa snatched it from him, crossed to the waiter counter, and dropped the burning match on the other side.
The flame spread slowly, very unflamelike. It spread like a drop of food coloring in a glass of water—randomly, and yet in all directions at once. The oil-covered flour began to blister and bump. It first turned golden, then quickly to a dark brown. The doughboy’s legs stiffened with crust and became unmovable. The other one was now three connected partly cooked dinner rolls the size of truck tire inner tubes lying on the floor. The oil quickly burned out, never rising high enough to trigger any fire alarms.
The air smelled deliciously of fresh bread.
“Makes me wish for a stick of butter the size of a tree trunk,” Finn said.
“And an oar to spread it with,” Willa fired back.
“Nice thinking with the oil,” he said. “For a minute there…”
“You saved my life,” she said.
“Ditto,” he said.
“What now?”
“We can’t wait for Philby. The longer we’re here, the more stuff she’s going to throw in our way.”
He didn’t have to tell her whom he meant. Willa nodded. “Yeah. I know.”
Finn’s hands tingled. Back to their hologram state. He wished he could have all cleared, wished he had more control of 2.0. Was sick with envy that Philby had that control and not him.
He led the way as they left the kitchen and walked down a long hall. They arrived at a freight elevator.
“Interesting,” he said.
“If you’re thinking we can ride that to the engine room, it’s not going to happen.” Like Philby, Willa had the capacity to commit the ship’s blueprint to memory. He envied her that. “It terminates on what’s shown as Deck One. Crew and Cast Members only.”
“We’re Cast Members.”
“True, though we’re not allowed in that area. There is a stairway not far from where we’d get out. It’s worth a try.”
She checked Finn’s watch. “We give Philby five more minutes for the second cross.”
“Agreed.”
He pushed the button. The elevator arrived. They stepped inside, and when the door closed, he didn’t push any button. The elevator car stayed put.
He spoke what was on his mind. “You and Philby are the techies…what’s the possibility that 2.0 is being developed for a second generation of DHIs?”
“You mean we are the beta when they talk of beta 2.0?”
“I think that’s what I’m saying. Am I?”
“They run the new software on us because we’re accustomed to being DHIs in the first place,” Willa speculated. “They work the bugs out without putting new projections at risk of looking bad with the park guests. When all the bugs are worked out and the code’s reassembled, they roll it out with new models—a new look. No way! You think?”
“Who knows?”
“It makes so much sense,” she complained.
“That’s what I said.”
“Storey? Did Storey tell you this?”
“It might have come up. A rumor is all.”
“I’m telling you: look out for her. I do not trust her.”
“What if she’s one of the people who’s going to model for the 2.0 hosts? Why would they go with college-age?”
“She told you that?”
“Hello? This is me you’re talking to. If she’d told me, I’d tell you. I’m not like Philby.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means what it means.”
“Philby’s keeping stuff from us?”
“Am I the only one to notice?”
She looked away. “No,” she said, almost unheard.
“Who are we supposed to trust?”
Willa didn’t answer.
* * *
The narrow companionway glistened with white painted walls and a gray painted floor. It was warmer here than in the rest of the ship, the rooms smaller and crowded together, appropriately silent given the late hour—during the day, conflicting music would mix in the companionway.
Storey Ming hurried toward the bow, constantly checking over her shoulder for the “whites”—the ship’s officers. She didn’t want to be paranoid, but from the moment she’d left the Radio Studio, she’d sensed she was being watched. They’d been ahead of her. Waiting for her at several key intersections. She didn’t see how that could be possible, so she chided herself for thinking it. Yet…
She entered the small berth to her left and shook awake the woman on the lower bunk, whispering, “I need your master.”
“What…huh?” The woman cleared her eyes, sitting up.
“Your master key. Please. It’s super important.”
“I can’t.”
“You’ve got to.”
“Security knows when doors are opened, and by what cards. If you use mine—”
“I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t wickedly important.”
“What kind of important?”
“I can’t say.”
“Will you shut up, please!” came her roommate’s voice from the top bunk.
Storey made a face imploring her friend to cooperate, though it was so dark she wasn’t sure the woman saw it.
When nothing happened, Storey whispered, “Please!”
Her friend crawled out of the bunk. “I have no idea why I’m doing this.”
“Thank you,” Storey said.
She peered out into the companionway. Empty.
Philby, she thought. Finally!
* * *
By the time Storey Ming typed in the code to cross over Philby, Maybeck’s encounter with Luowski’s hologram was long past. Maybeck would have conveyed this in a series of texts, including what he considered the most important message: that the Base was to come under a final and decisive attack and that Wayne had to be told. But little good a waterlogged phone would do him when it came to texting. The text would have to be a phone call. He had to reach a house phone, and that meant appearing in a very public area. The only other choice was trying to get to his aunt’s stateroom—but wouldn’t Luowski and the others be waiting for him there? So a house phone it was, even knowing that security would likely spot him on camera or that one of the many officers roaming the ship would see him and escort him back to his room.
He was thinking all this when he heard a door shut far behind him. It was the second time such a thing had happened. Once might be explainable as random; twice meant he was being followed.
* * *
“Well, that’s a little late,” Finn said, sitting on the floor of the elevator car, Willa’s full attention on him.
“What?” she asked.
“It says the galleys are a trap,” he said.
“That’s news?”
“The OT server has a special cooler,” he read off his phone.
“This is from?”
“You won’t like it,” he said.
“I know what you’re thinking. But you have to admit, we did walk into a trap.”
“That doesn’t prove anything. The server having a cooler? That could be totally bogus, and you know it.”
Finn hated to admit it. But he nodded. “Doesn’t mean it is. She could have messed us up bad at any time. Why now?”
“It couldn’t have anything to do with us discovering Chernabog and stealing the journal,” she said sarcastically.
“We can’t just sit here,” he said.
She reiterated the plan. “Maybeck locates an OTK like Luowski and gets him to follow him. Philby traces the hologram’s signal over the network back to the OT server. We wait for a text telling us where to attack and we take out the server. Mission accomplished.”
“We didn’t wait earlier.”
“There was no Philby. We improvised. We nearly got baked by a pair of doughboys! He’s crossed over now. We’re good.”
Finn said nothing.
“So what’s wrong?” Willa asked.
“Philby’s wrong,” Finn said. “Tell me I’m crazy.”
Willa said nothing.
“That’s what I’m talking about,” Finn said.
“He’s just going through a rough patch.”
Finn shot her a look. “You think?” He glanced down at the Wave Phone in his lap, wondering if he could trust it.
* * *
Philby crossed over forty-five minutes late, an eternity for the plan to work. Phone in hand, he’d received Storey’s text that the galleys were a trap and that the OT server had special cooling.
But could he trust it?
He’d made it through the walls and into the ship’s tech center. All he needed now was a high-bandwidth surge on the LAN that didn’t match with a Keeper. With luck, he could trace it back to the OT server and notify Finn and Willa.
His phone rang.
“It’s me!” No names were spoken.
“Go ahead,” Philby told Maybeck.
Maybeck told him about Luowski bragging that the OTs would be controlling the Base by sunrise. That he sensed he was being followed, but that he’d never once seen anybody behind him. He didn’t know who was back there, if anyone, or what to do about it.
“Where are you,” Philby said, “and what route did you take to get there?”
Maybeck explained the episode on the AquaDuck and how he’d come from there to the Disney Vacation Club desk on Deck 3. He retraced his route in detail.
Philby opened the network log and began plotting Maybeck’s movement by network access points. At the same time, he mapped Maybeck’s route to his current location and found it hard to believe Maybeck had been followed on security video. Something wasn’t right.
“Hang on a second,” he said to Maybeck, trying to think. He scanned the racks of computer equipment, routers, ship’s audio and television. Wires. Plugs. Blinking lights. His encyclopedic memory accounted for the function of each and every box. He did not move on to a new piece of equipment until he understood and explained to himself the function of the box he was looking at.
“Still here,” Maybeck said.
“Stand by.”
Box by box, wire by wire, Philby ticked off its purpose. Then he hit a stack of router-size black boxes he couldn’t explain.
“You’re wearing your DHI costume?”
“Yeah,” Maybeck said.
“Take off your shirt,” Philby said.
“Say what?”
“Your shirt. Now!”
“Okay…it’s off. But for the record, this is kinky.”
Philby told him to check the seams of the shirt for a bump, something hard.
Several decks below, Maybeck’s fingers stopped abruptly.
“Got it.”
“Small. Maybe half an inch?”
“Correct,” Maybeck said.
“Strip,” Philby said.
“You need to get out more.”
“Seriously! Lose the costume.”
“Dude…”
“The laundry tags the costumes with radio frequency identification. Most of the hotels use the same technology to track sheets and towels. My guess is security realized they could use it to keep track of the peewees on board—no more lost kids. But it could also be used to follow the movement of anyone wearing a crew costume. Our costumes are assigned. Remember the laundry check-in back in Canaveral? They swiped each piece of clothing. So if you lose the costume, whoever’s tracking you loses you.”
“I’m supposed to bomb around in my underwear?”
“There are towels on the pool decks, if that’ll help. I don’t care what you wear, just don’t wear your Keepers costume.”
“But you guys are!”
“We’re holograms. You’re not. Lose the clothes and get your butt down to the engine deck.”
“The engine deck?”
“There’s a stairway off I-95. I can unlock doors for you as necessary.” Philby began typing into the terminal. “My guess is, our friends are going to need backup.”
* * *
“He thinks it’s the engine room,” Finn said, reading from his phone.
“Thinks?” Willa inquired.
Finn jumped up and pressed the LL button on the freight elevator. Lower Level.
“We’ll have to take stairs from there,” Willa said, having memorized the ship’s map. “Thinks?” she repeated.
“How should I know?” Finn said. “It’s not the galleys, that’s for sure.”
“The engine room will be hot,” she said. “Tia Dalma.”
“The OT server has a cooler,” Finn said. “It fits.”
Willa led the way out of the elevator to a steep staircase that turned back on itself repeatedly. Down they went.
With each landing, the whirring grew louder.
Willa paused at the door.
“You ready?”
Finn shook his head no, his hologram shoes welded to the floor.
“Finn!”
“I’ve been here,” he said.
“You think too much!”
She heaved open the heavy door. A blast of stuffy heat engulfed them.
The area was spit-shine clean, surprising him, every machine painted and polished. The area was beyond enormous, stretching most of the length of the ship, with bulkheads at regular intervals. There were myriad valves and signs and levers and switches.
Finn checked his Wave Phone. A miracle! He looked up curiously. “How can we possibly have a signal down here?”
Willa pointed above the open hatch in the bulkhead, where a number of small boxes with antennas were mounted. “Wireless access points. So their guys can stay in the loop.”
He texted: where now?
stand by, Philby wrote back.
“It’s like a factory,” Finn said.
“It’s an electric ship. You know that, right?”
He’d never given it any thought.
“They have three massive generators down here, any one of which can create enough electricity to power a small city. Most of it goes to the electric motors that spin the propellers. The rest is used by all of us: lights, air conditioning, the galleys, electronics. Every cruise ship is a floating power plant.”
Finn felt a chill. Excluding the Base, the most recent battle against the Overtakers had been waged at a power generation facility.
“Another power play?” she said.
The Overtakers had long since figured out that with holograms being projections of light, and therefore the product of electricity, she who controls the electricity, including its generation, is the one in control.
“Do you think they mean to take the entire ship hostage?” Willa asked.
“No idea.”
“The server is small. With some kind of cooling device, still no bigger than a trumpet case.”
The two took in the size of the engine deck for a second time. The task ahead seemed daunting, the area to search nearly infinite.
“We could be here weeks,” she said.
“You’re the brainiac. So where do you hide Tia Dalma, if you hide her down here? Where do you locate the server?”
“It’s an amazing place to hide anything,” she said. “Perfect. You could hide a car down here.”
“They’re not hiding a car. A woman. A witch doctor. Who knows why they wanted her on board, but I’ll tell you one thing: she would make a heck of a gatekeeper. With her ability to cast spells, who’s going to get past her to the server?”
“A pair of 2.0 holograms, I’m thinking,” Willa said.
“You got that right.”
“It has to be well ventilated, away from the center aisle, and not easy to find. And you may be right: if we find Tia Dalma, maybe we find the server.”
“I can smell it,” he said.
“Actually,” she said, “I think that’s the machinery.”
* * *
“I’m telling you, I know this place,” Finn said, leaning into Willa so as to be heard.
“Can we discuss this another time? I’m thinking they must have control rooms down here, and emergency exits—sealable doors leading out of this place, and more stairways like the one we came down. It’s huge. Has to be.”
“Then that’s where we’ll start.”
“A control room makes the most sense, but you see those blue wires along the wall there? Ethernet. Any one of those could be spliced and the server put between them. It’s really not rocket science to hang a server off a local area network. So…”
“It could be anywhere.”
“You got it. But not her. If they’re hiding her down here, it’s going to be on the other side of a door. Some kind of door. That’s what we’re looking for.”
“Split up?”
“I don’t want to,” she said. “But I don’t see much choice.”
“No,” Finn said.
They agreed to preset their Wave Phones to text the other with a call for help and to keep their phones in hand so they could fire off the text as quickly as they spotted trouble. Finn held up his phone as if it were a pact between them, a common bond, the thing that linked them.
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