She held up hers, and Finn thought of swords and knights and epic battles and how in their own way, now as holograms and with Wave Phones, they weren’t so very different.
“Be safe,” he said.
She nodded. She looked sad and close to tears.
A few minutes later, having stepped through the emergency door into the next section of the engine deck, his head began to clear. Or maybe it was that his memory took hold. Or it was even possible that something visual triggered the clarity. But whatever the case, the haze slowly lifted. And he remembered.
It wasn’t that he knew this place, was simply familiar with it, but that he’d been here. Right here. Right where he was standing.
Which was impossible, but nonetheless, somehow true.
He felt a tingle sweep through him. Reached out to touch a nearby pipe, and his hand made contact. Tried his hand again. This time, he swiped through the pipe. He still had full control of 2.0.
His eyes staying with the telltale blue Ethernet cables neatly strung to his right, he moved toward the stern, the sounds of machinery growing so loud that he felt it in his ankles, shins, and even his jawbone.
His Wave Phone buzzed. A text from Philby.
75’ from stern, starboard side
There was yet another bulkhead thirty feet in front of him. Yet another safety door. He estimated Philby’s location point just beyond that door.
Confident that Philby had texted them both, Finn nonetheless resent it to Willa along with the words:
going in
He stepped through to the final section. Up ahead, an eighteen-inch-diameter steel driveshaft spun on bushings. It looked to be fifty feet long, mounted into a monstrous motor the size of a small house.
Finn saw the spot now, along the starboard hull: a narrow steel box like the electrical transformer outside his house, but much bigger. A steel room with a single door and a hundred fat wires running into it—including blue Ethernet cables. Its location fit Philby’s description.
Making it even more likely as a hiding place for Tia Dalma was how difficult it was to reach. Finn followed a catwalk to his right, then squeezed between two warm humming blocks of metal, ducked under a pipe with gauges, under a second pipe, and back onto a section of catwalk, now facing the door. He spun around once, quickly, like a practiced ballerina.
He’d been sure he would have faced crash-test dummies or rescue dummies or hyenas or OTKs.
Nothing. No one.
He inched toward the door.
Arriving, heart thumping wildly in his chest, he paused to collect himself. “Let the DHI lead the way,” he reminded himself. “You are nothing but light, so nothing can harm you. If nothing can harm you, nothing should frighten you.” A lot of nothing, but it had worked in the past.
Gone was concern about Amanda, or Storey. Gone was thought of his mother’s curse. Gone was the anxiety over needing to solve the cryptic puzzles in the journal. Gone was worry about leadership and whether he was doing a good job. Gone was the thought of failure or that anything or anyone could contaminate him. He was light, the product of pure power; he had no equal.
He turned the handle.
Tia Dalma sat on a makeshift throne. The power center—for it was some kind of humming collection of all things electric—was insanely hot and dimly lit. It smelled of incense, and birds, and of things earthy and dark and nasty.
Her rich brown skin shimmered with sweat, her eye sockets charcoal pools. She had two gold teeth, a nose ring, myriad loops in her ears. She held a black wooden staff, its carving reminding him of Jafar’s, and he warned himself not to let whatever happened next frighten him in any way. It was just another Disney attraction, this experience. It all came down to perspective.
She clapped lifelessly. “Well done!” She exhaled slowly. “Quite surprised. Quite surprised, indeed.”
Behind her, encased in a Plexiglas box with a cooling compressor on top, were four rack-mounted Sun computers and a like number of Cisco boxes, lights flashing. The OT server.
“You’ll excuse me, please.” Finn walked straight toward where she sat in a chair high atop a bank of large batteries that formed an elevated platform. He saw her astonishment at his brazenness as he reached her. He passed through her. She turned in her chair, climbed half out of it in order to observe him.
“You come back here, boy!”
Finn studied the four interconnected servers. An oversize USB thumb drive was plugged into the bottom Sun console. “Nice gear,” he said, opening the box’s door.
He heard her chanting something at once rhythmic and hypnotic, but didn’t focus on it, didn’t give it weight to where the spell might take hold.
The spell didn’t stick.
He pulled out the thumb drive.
She cried out at him. It was a nasty, evil-laced harangue. Just as he reached for the top server, Finn felt his joints freeze. The spell had taken hold. She uncoiled off her improvised throne and came alongside the statue of Finn’s sparkling, but corrupted, hologram.
“What should I do with you for all the trouble you’ve caused me? Hmm? Little boys shouldn’t play with fire…” She waved her hand; it lit on fire as it passed Finn’s face, then extinguished. “Sometimes it’s best to step back and get out of the way. A lesson you never learned, poor boy. A lesson now to be learned the hard way.”
She reached out and plucked the thumb drive from Finn’s frozen grasp. “We can’t have you having that, I’m sorry to say. And let me make something perfectly clear: I don’t go in for all this techno mumbo jumbo. Give me a good old incantation. A conjure. Why, there’s more power in the spirits of the bayou than in all the generators in this ship combined. But…I can adapt. I can play along. Hmm?” She stared at the thumb drive in the palm of her hand as if it were an insect she was considering crushing. Spiders crept out from her burlap shirt, squeezing through the dozen beaded necklaces she wore, and hurried down the length of her arm, surrounding the small drive. First three or four. Then more like twenty. The skin on her face moved fluidly, like hot lava.
Finn thought he might be sick.
Professor Philby had educated him on how to crash the servers. Water or any fluid was the preferred method. But equally incapacitating was to run electrical current through the Ethernet port—a port rarely considered when it came to surge suppression. Because the servers were daisy-chained one to the next, a single Ethernet cable would do. Movement returned to his eyes and mouth. He could feel his tongue. Whatever she’d conjured was wearing off—or, and he hoped this was more likely the case, 2.0 was giving him power. In any event, he was coming back, and Tia Dalma was none the wiser.
“A time and place fer everyting,” she growled. Such a low voice for a woman. “Wouldn’t you agree? We all have our roles to play. Some small.” She looked at him. “Some large.” She swept a hand out in a partial curtsy to indicate herself. “You have had your time. Now we goin’ have ours. You see, boy, knowledge is overrated. ’Tis shaped by history. Da two are one. So, of course, dat is where one must start: at da seat of knowledge.”
The library, Finn was thinking. His toes tingled. He could feel his hands.
“You know dem Louisiana cicadas—da bug, da insect—only present demselves once every thirteen years? We are like that. We have patience. We await our moment to return. Your world…yours, boy…has lost its way. Time for some Order. Capital O.” She sucked in a lungful of air through whistling nostrils. “Our time has come.”
He worked 2.0 like the clutch of a car: engine engaged, engine not engaged. Hologram on. Hologram off. Pivoted and clapped his hand down onto her open palm, crushing the spiders and snatching the thumb drive. Reached through her chest, his hand out her back, and then turned his hand solid––a move that was incredibly painful for them both.
He swung her to the side and switched back to hologram, letting her go. Tia Dalma flew against the wall and sank to the floor, clutching her heart where Finn’s arm had been inside her.
He tore
loose an Ethernet cable, stuck its plastic clip into his mouth, and bit down hard. Drew the cable of loose wires from his lips and spit out the clip. There were five or six tiny wires. He twisted them into two pigtails a half inch apart.
A semiconscious Tia Dalma lifted her arm, and Finn saw her lips move—another curse coming.
From behind Finn, Willa flew across the room and shoved an oily rag in the witch doctor’s mouth. She grabbed hold of Tia Dalma’s many necklaces, twisted, and hauled the weakened witch to her feet, then hooked the necklaces on a pipe valve. She took off the witch’s waist sash and was tying her hands behind her back as Finn shoved the bare wires into an electrical outlet, throwing up a shower of sparks. Smoke wafted from all four servers.
Then the lights went out—he’d tripped a breaker.
His own hologram sparkled. He was half solid, half light.
Willa lost hold of the witch’s arms. She felt a withered hand at her throat.
“Finn!” she gasped.
Go full hologram! she was thinking, not understanding how 2.0 had failed her.
From outside the partially open door, emergency floodlights came on. In the sliver of light, an electricity-stunned Finn could see the semi-hologram of Willa off her feet in the clutches of a wild woman. The veins in Tia Dalma’s neck bulged, and her face went several shades darker as she choked on the necklaces. Willa danced herself backward, tightening the chokehold.
The electrical shock had done something strange to Finn. He’d flickered between 2.0 and human sixty times in less than a second. It was like trying to restart an Xbox too quickly. The effect was nauseating, phenomenally painful, and dreamlike—ripe with hallucination. He felt something primal, something deep within him, change with this altered state. At first he thought he might die. Then he realized, no, he would live. But it was like he inhabited someone else’s body. Like he wasn’t himself. He felt bigger, stronger. He felt more in control than he’d ever felt in his life. He felt…
Dangerous.
He marched over to Tia Dalma, picked her up—breaking the woman’s hold on Willa—and cast her aside like an empty bag of luggage.
Philby.
“Finn?” Willa gasped. She obviously either saw or sensed something different in him as well. He didn’t have time to reflect on such nonsense.
“We must go,” he said, wondering who’d said it. It didn’t sound like his voice. “No,” he corrected, turning toward the fallen witch. He stomped over to her without the slightest tremor of fear or concern—who was he?—and took hold of her as she had held Willa, lifting her off her feet.
“Release my mother,” he said. He tightened his grip.
“Finn!”
“Release her, or I swear by all things holy I’ll snap your neck like a twig.” He eased Tia Dalma to the deck. “Right…now!” he said.
The sound of quick-moving feet on the steel-grate catwalks.
“Finn…”
Tia Dalma and Finn were locked in a staring contest. “Release her now…or I’ll kill you.” Was this him saying this? He’d never considered killing anything beyond a mosquito before. And yet…he knew he meant what he said.
And so, apparently, did Tia Dalma. She nodded. Her lips began moving silently.
“Any tricks, and they will be your last. You cannot harm me. You cannot reach me.” Again, he wondered who was speaking. Such confidence! Wayne had lectured him for years about leadership, about strength and courage and their differences. This new feeling he recognized as strength, unbending and willful.
Dangerous, he reminded himself.
He tightened his chokehold.
“Finn…” Willa’s voice. “They’re coming.”
“Do it!” he said, shaking Tia Dalma by her neck. She fought to nod.
“It’s…done…” she gasped. “Undone.”
He dropped her like a stone. “You have had your time,” he said, quoting her. “And just FYI: cicadas are commonly eaten by birds or wasps. They don’t last more than three to four weeks.” He showed Willa the thumb drive in his hand. “Let’s go,” he said.
Out they went, into the roar of the motors and generators, out into the harsh emergency lighting that cast shadows as they ran. They turned toward the ship’s bow, hearing the scurrying scratching of paws on metal behind them, like a dog that missed its turn on a hardwood floor. Sliding. Colliding.
It must have been the change in lighting, Finn thought. That or the sound of the paws. Or maybe it was this steroidlike, super-size, pumped-up pressurization that created this sense of invincibility within him. But he knew now why he’d earlier sensed a familiarity to it all.
The jump. Or future sight. Or whatever had happened to him after he and Willa had witnessed the theft of the journal. He’d been here: right here. The hyenas after them in the factory. But it wasn’t a factory—it was the engine deck of the Dream, and they were reliving it now.
Reliving it for real this time.
The hyenas struggled with the ladderway, leaping and slipping, buying Willa and Finn a precious lead they did not squander.
“My mother’s safe!” Finn shouted.
“The server’s dead, and the OTKs down—at least for the moment,” she hollered back.
They reached I-95—the crew hallway—and headed for the doors to the ship stairs. So early in the morning, the hallway was empty—that is, until four drooling hyenas appeared behind them.
“Run!” Willa said, switching on the afterburners and leading Finn by five strides. Finn too dialed up a higher gear, catching her effortlessly and pulling ahead. He reached and held the door for her.
“What was that?” Willa panted, fleeing past him.
Finn smiled, ducked through the doors.
“Here!” she said, indicating a piece of furniture along the wall. “We can block…” She grunted as Finn reached the other side of it. “Darn it!” she said. “It’s bolted to…”
Finn tore it from the wall effortlessly. The bolts pulled through the wood, leaving torn holes. He paused and looked down at his own two arms, not believing he’d done this.
Willa looked gray—ready to pass out. “Who are you?”
“Quickly!” he said.
They dragged the cabinet to the doors and blocked it just as the hyenas collided. The cabinet bounced away an inch.
“It won’t hold,” Finn said.
“I’ve got it.” It was Maybeck, wearing a towel around his waist. “Don’t ask,” he said, leaning into the door. “If they bust through, I’ll hide behind the door. I’ll be fine. Just go.”
Finn nodded. “Thanks.” He led the way up the stairs.
Leading, he thought.
By the time they reached the landing to Deck 3, the hyenas could be heard panting close behind, their paws digging at the carpeting as they climbed.
Out onto the jogging track of Deck 4, the memory of his “dream” becoming all the more real.
The Dream, he realized.
“This is not good,” he called to her. “I know how this ends.”
“How can you possibly—”
They ran hard toward the stern, but here came the hyenas like four bolts of lightning. The gap was closing. Unlike Finn’s dream, it seemed obvious the hyenas were going to win this one. They would be eaten.
An ear-piercing whistle.
The sound of the hyenas’ claws skidding.
Finn glanced over his shoulder.
There, not twenty yards back, stood three girls, shoulder to shoulder. Amanda…Jess…and the girl with the red-dyed hair. He wanted to call out a warning—the girl was an OTK! But his eyes stuck on Amanda. His throat was tight. This girl…what she meant to him…just like at Typhoon Lagoon, she always seemed to appear at the just the right moment.
Then the hyenas were at it again. The whistle had bought Willa and Finn just enough of a lead. He looked down into his own hand—the thumb drive he held looked just like the Return, but it wasn’t the Return as he’d once imagined.
Whatever the driv
e contained, he couldn’t allow it to be lost at sea with him and Willa.
“Get…us…out…of…here!” she cried.
The railing arced to the right up ahead. Behind it, Finn saw only black and the twinkling of stars. We’re on the roof of some building, he thought.
“We’re going to jump!” he announced.
He reached out and took her hand with his free hand, the thumb drive gripped firmly in his left.
“Please…no!” she shouted.
“Hang on to me. One…two…” They ran full speed toward the rail. On “three!” they left their feet in a dive, flying through the air into nothingness.
He threw the thumb drive back and saw it land on the deck.
He and Willa screamed as they sank into the darkness, the churning sea awaiting below.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Special thanks to Chris Ostrander and Laura Simpson of Disney Synergy for connecting me with the wonderful people of the Disney Cruise Line including, in no special order, Karl Holz, Christian, Akim, Kevin, Angeline, Ray, James, Justine, Lisa, Michel, David, Mark, Aki, Sal, Tisa, Sarah (on Castaway Cay), Wilson, Zachary Alexander Wilson, “Uncle Bob,” and Mark.
Thanks also to everyone at Disney Books, including Wendy Lefkon, Jessica Ward, Jeanne Mosure, Deborah Bass, and Jennifer Levine. And to John Horton at Disney’s Youth Education Services for helping me create the Kingdom Keepers Quest in the Magic Kingdom.
I’m indebted to my office staff: Nancy Zastrow, Jenn Wood, Phoebejane McVey, and, for their copyediting skills, David and Laurel Walters and Judi Smith. My secret weapon is continuity reader Brooke Muschott, a walking, breathing Kingdom Keepers encyclopedia.
But in the end, the real acknowledgment is to you, the Kingdom Keepers readers, who keep this series alive and make it so much fun to write.
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