Minnie nodded.
Finn, Amanda, and Pluto headed up the path, turning toward the waterwheel at Harper’s Mill.
“This feels too easy,” Finn said, fearing a trap.
Amanda squeezed his hand, and he looked down to realize he was not pure DHI. But he was not about to let go to fix it.
MAYBECK WOKE UP in an office with gray carpeting, three gray desks, chairs on wheels and trash baskets lined with clear plastic bags. He caught sight of a pair of running shoes with gold-and-silver sparkles thrown into the covering like sequins and knew it could only be one person.
“Charlene?” he whispered dryly.
She crept around to him on hands and knees. For once, she was not wearing her nightgown but instead a black leotard top and black jeans. And those cheerleader shoes.
“Where are we?” She’d dressed and gone to sleep, as Philby had requested. Maybeck, on the other hand, had heard from Philby.
“It’s an electrical power plant on Disney property. We’re about ten miles from the Parks. Philby tracked the OTs’ DHIs here. We’re supposed to observe and report.”
“Observe what?” she asked.
“We’ll know when we see it.”
They came to their feet and approached the office door. Maybeck opened it a crack. The facility emanated a constant low-level hum, a rumbling that came up through the floor. The two were looking down a bland corridor, office doors on either side. At the end of the corridor in both directions were lighted exit signs.
“If you’re wondering which way to go,” Charlene said in a whisper, “check out the wear of the carpet. I’d say, right.”
The hallway carpet was discolored and worn to the right; it grew progressively lighter and less-used to their left.
“Good catch,” he said.
“The thing is,” she said, “if something should go wrong, we don’t want to both get caught, and to be honest, I’d rather you try to rescue me than me try to rescue you. So why don’t you let me go first? You keep watch, but hang back.”
“I don’t know about that.”
“Why? Because you’re a guy? Who’s the more athletic?”
“Who’s the tougher?” he countered.
“I’ll go to the end of the hall and stop to listen. I’ll signal you,” Charlene said.
“Since when are you the leader?” he asked.
“Have you got a better plan?”
“Just be careful,” he said. “If it’s them, if it’s the Evil Queen and Cruella, and who knows who else as DHIs…well…”
“I get it.”
Charlene moved down the hall door by door, pausing to listen, giving him a thumbs-up at each. She displayed the grace of a gymnast, raised on tiptoe, almost dancing. At last she reached the door beneath the exit sign.
Maybeck followed. The droning hum bothered him. It was like a bad sound track to a scary movie. It made it hard to hear anything, harder still to think. Power plants were huge facilities. How were they supposed to find a couple of holograms in a place this size? And what would happen to them if they were found first? More importantly, a power plant ran 24/7, so there had to be employees on the job.
He glanced back down the hall, his toes and fingers tingling as he saw something bolted to the wall near the ceiling. The Lake Buena Vista Cogeneration Facility had security cameras. He and Charlene had likely already been spotted as intruders.
* * *
The fifteen-foot diameter wooden waterwheel spun lazily at the side of Harper’s Mill. When Finn looked back across the water the wolf was gone. It might have made him feel better, but it did not. It made him realize that none of the Parks were magical for him anymore—not at night. They were mysterious, often dangerous, and always surprising. He kept his senses on full alert, worried for Amanda and grateful to have Pluto by his side.
“We need a splinter from the wheel,” Finn said. “Then we hope for some magic.”
“Yes.”
“We’ll have to break a piece off or something. I’m not sure how we’ll do that.”
“I don’t love it here,” she said.
“No. I was just thinking how my opinion of the Parks has changed.”
“No doubt,” she said.
“Pluto!” Finn called, winning the dog’s attention. “Defend!”
Pluto licked Finn’s hand, looking dog-dumb.
“Patrol!” he tried. The dog sat and offered moon eyes.
“Guard!” Amanda said harshly.
Pluto barked once sharply and went rigid.
“Good boy,” Amanda said. She ruffled his ears and Pluto pawed at her.
Pluto put his nose to the ground and headed off.
“You charm all the boys,” he said.
“Shut up.”
Finn led her over to the moving waterwheel. It was fed from the top by a waterspout. Water cascaded down its paddles, turning it.
“If I had a knife, or razor blade, or something…”
“How ’bout a rock?” Amanda said, bending down to pick one up.
He felt like a moron. “Yes. Like a rock. That might work,” he conceded. He smashed the inside edge of the huge wheel but the wood was old and hard, and pressure-treated against the water. It was like hitting rock against rock.
She said, “It should be one of the spindles, one of the spokes, right?”
“Yeah.” Again, she made him feel stupid.
The spokes were constantly moving.
“I can climb on,” Amanda said. “You know, like Johnny Depp and Orlando Bloom in Pirates.”
“I’m pretty sure that was special effects,” Finn said.
“I can do this,” Amanda said, judging the wheel’s rotation. She jumped between the outside slats to inside the moving wheel and ran like a hamster, adjusting her stride to match the wheel’s revolutions. As she got the hang of it, she turned to Finn and said, “No problem! It’s kind of like a treadmill.”
Every few steps, she would have the speed wrong and start climbing with the moving wheel, then have to adjust.
“It’s not like I can stay on here forever,” she said. “Say something.”
“Run your hand on the slats,” Finn said. “Try to catch a splinter.”
“Eww!” Amanda said. “It feels like dog snot. Disgusting!” She yanked her hand away, jogging to keep pace. “Bad idea.”
Finn knew what had to be done, just not how to do it. He studied the moving mechanism, trying to think how Philby would see it.
“I need you off of there,” he told Amanda. “Please. Jump off.”
Amanda timed her dismount, but slipping between the moving slats was harder getting off than on. Stuck between slats, she got carried up and around, and Finn pulled her off before she went around again. The two tumbled to the ground.
“The only way to do this,” Finn said, “is to break it.”
* * *
At the same moment, Philby was comparing himself to a sponge left too long under the kitchen faucet; there came a point where the sponge could absorb no more water. He was currently monitoring a dozen Security webcams inside the Magic Kingdom, the DHI bandwidth, and was attempting to determine the direction of the unexpected data traffic to see if he could pinpoint where the Evil Queen and Cruella were sleeping during their DHI activity. It was too much. His brain was ready to burst.
The closet-sized bathroom was getting warm and the air stale. The laptop’s battery was burning up his thighs. If his parents caught him in here he and the Keepers were doomed.
Juggling all the open windows on his computer and computing hundredths-of-a-second differences in transmission times on the log, his finger stopped on a particular line of data. He reviewed the times again, his finger sliding down the transmission column. Using the router data, he could trace the source of the original transmission to a location, and the location to a Google map. It was like a juggler trying to handle seven items at once.
His finger crossed from the router data to the map, and back again just to make sure.
“Oh,
no,” he said aloud, quickly double-checking his findings.
* * *
“The cotter,” Finn said. “It’s a pin that holds a wheel’s axle in place.”
Amanda was listening to him, but with her back turned. She was focused instead on the change in Pluto’s stance, and a crunching coming from the bushes.
“I think something’s out there,” Amanda whispered.
“Apparently, so does Pluto,” Finn said, equally softly.
“If you have plans for the wheel, I suggest you get to it,” she said.
Finn hurried around the mill house and found the door. The inside was small and dark, the air stale and moldy smelling. His hologram glowed slightly, casting a pale light in front of him. The wheel axle sat in a closed yoke resting atop a shoulder-high post. It did not connect to any kind of millstone; it was all for show. A curved band of steel wrapped over the spinning axle, securing it in the yoke, with a wooden pin bisecting the axle to keep it from slipping out. Finn could feel his fingers and toes, knew his DHI was far from pure given the events of the past several minutes. He used a section of pipe from the floor to pound the wooden cotter from the axle, which began to creep slowly out of the yoke, like a screw unscrewing.
He hurried back outside and, rounding the corner of the mill house, stopped dead in his tracks.
Alligators.
Three of them. The biggest looked a lot like Louis in Princess and the Frog—but a mean Louis. Standing between the alligators and Amanda was a very nervous-looking Pluto, low on his haunches, growling.
“Finn?” Amanda called out, not taking her eyes off the beasts.
“Yeah, I see them.”
“Help?”
“Yeah,” he said.
The waterwheel’s loose axle caused it to spin off-center; the wheel and its external post vibrated and shook. It seemed like the whole mill house might come down.
Finn sped up the process. He raised the pipe high over his head and smashed it full-force down onto the outside post and yoke.
The alligators slithered back, away from the sound. Pluto crept forward, expanding his protection of Amanda.
Finn struck the post again. The wood split. He struck yet again.
It broke.
The waterwheel rocked violently side-to-side, causing the water to spray.
“Get…away!” Finn hollered.
He grabbed Amanda.
“Slowly!” he said.
With each step backward, Louis and the two other alligators ventured forward, forcing Pluto back as well.
“Pluto! Come!” Finn commanded.
But the dog held his ground. He barked once, sharply.
With a thunderous explosion, the waterwheel broke loose of the mill house. It hit the ground spinning, throwing water out in front of it as it rolled straight for the alligators. The closest of the giant lizards lost a section of its tail as all three turned and fled into the woods. The huge wheel smashed into some trees, teetered, and fell, crashing down onto a section of stone wall along the path, wood flying.
“That’s it!” Finn said. He reached for Amanda and took hold of her arm, snagging a large splintered piece from one of the struts.
Amanda turned her head, knowing what had to be done.
Finn stabbed the tip of her index finger, drawing blood.
“Oww!” she cried out, immediately sucking on her bleeding finger. “Nowww whawt?” she asked, her words difficult to understand with a finger in her mouth.
Finn considered this a moment. “I don’t think we’ll know until you Return. Although they might know on the other end—at Mrs. Nash’s.” He glanced around, believing there was at least an hour to go before the manual Return.
Pluto moved to the bushes and was barking.
Finn and Amanda sat down on the stone wall, out of breath.
“So where’d those alligators come from?” she asked.
He looked over at her gravely. “That’s the question, isn’t it?”
“It was my question,” she said.
“And the pirate that Minnie took out, and Stitch, back when Maybeck and I were here last year. I mean: it just doesn’t add up. All that for Tom Sawyer Island? Why?”
Amanda sucked her finger, and shrugged. “That’s what I’m saying.”
“If all this security was for Cinderella Castle or Space Mountain or Splash Mountain, I think we would think that the OTs were protecting something valuable to them. I don’t know what. But this island? Off by itself. Hard to get to. Nothing here once you do get here…”
“Isolated,” she said. “And with a fort on one end.” Her eyes met Finn’s relaying a fierce intensity. “You told me that you guys talked about the OTs needing somewhere to sleep while they’re DHIs—the way we all sleep in our beds. What better place than someplace like this?”
“We have at least an hour to get back to the hub,” Finn said. “We might as well…try.”
“We might want to speed it up,” she said, pointing.
Pluto had pulled back. The alligators had returned.
* * *
“This place is very big,” Maybeck said to Charlene.
They had made their way down the facility’s main floor, passing more offices, conference rooms, and a coffee lounge. They’d also passed a half-dozen security cameras. The underlying roar of the place grew progressively louder.
“You think Security has spotted us by now?” she asked.
“Honestly? I’m wondering why no one’s come after us. In a weird way, I don’t think that’s the best sign.”
“The OTs got them?”
“It might explain why no one has bothered with us.”
“That’s depressing.”
Maybeck stopped at the end of the hall.
“You do realize,” Charlene said, studying her DHI’s somewhat shaky blue outline, “that our best defense is being one-hundred-percent hologram?”
“As if that’s going to happen.”
“So you’re scared, too?”
“I don’t get scared,” he claimed. “I get…aware. But I’m very aware at the moment. Yes.” He paused, his hand on the door. “Here we go.”
He opened the door and waved her through. They stepped out onto a steel catwalk that surrounded a central space. Three stories below two huge turbines whined. From the turbines ran a tangle of pipes and wires. The walls were decorated with signs warning of high voltage! death on contact! Nice calming stuff.
Just barely audible was a woman’s complaining voice.
The Queen? they both wondered.
Maybeck raised his voice just loud enough to be heard. “Check it out!”
A blue uniform hung from the railing. Perched alongside of it was a blue jay frantically flapping its wings. Charlene looked first to the uniform, then to the blue jay, then back to the uniform.
Maybeck said, “I think we know what happened to the security guards.” He indicated the blue jay. “I’d say someone spelled them.”
“The Evil Queen did that?” Charlene said.
“Well, it wasn’t Bambi.”
“Whose side are they on?” she asked.
“If someone did that to me, I know whose side I’d be on. But with a twisted sister like her, who knows?”
“So, what now?” she said.
“We split up, and we head down toward those voices. If one of us is caught, maybe the other can do something about it.”
“And?”
“We listen to whatever’s being said.” He studied their surroundings. “I’m taking the stairs on this side,” he declared.
Charlene took in the interconnected pipes, the railing, and the catwalks on each level.
“I can climb down there,” she said.
“FYI: There are stairs on the other side. Might be easier.”
“And more obvious. They could be watching them. I’m going to climb it,” she declared.
“Whatever,” Maybeck said. “Just don’t make me have to rescue you.”
“Other way aro
und,” she said.
“Not likely.”
“We’ll see.”
The blue jay cawed loudly, startling them both.
The faint voices below paused with the cry of the bird.
Maybeck whispered: “See you down there.” He tiptoed off toward an exit sign.
Charlene stayed well clear of the blue jay and climbed over the metal rail, one foot placed carefully after the other. She possessed a climber’s eye, able to look up at a climbing wall and quickly plot and remember an exact route. Descending was altogether different; it was much more difficult to climb down than up. For her, plotting a descending route was twice the challenge.
She hesitated a moment, seeing a possible route play out in her mind’s eye—each toehold, hand and finger grip she would take. One pipe to the next; one clamp at a time.
She drew in a deep breath and made her first move.
* * *
Philby heard Elvis meowing on the other side of the bathroom door.
“Tssst! ” He tried to discourage him using the family tongue-between-the-teeth sound.
“MEEEEOWWWW!” Elvis wailed, sounding like a police siren.
“Tssssssssst! ”
Bang! Bang!
He was jolted back against the well of the toilet.
“Dell?” His mother.
“Busy,” he said.
“You open this door this minute!”
Philby said, “Be right out,” while looking for somewhere in this shoe box room to hide his gear.
“OPEN THIS DOOR!”
When his mother shouted like that, he lacked resistance. He obeyed, turning the knob.
Seen from his mother’s perspective, her son, fully dressed, was sitting on the closed toilet, his computer open in his lap, a phone, also on, resting on his thigh. Her face burning a new shade of crimson, she said nothing; she simply extended her hands expecting delivery of the goods.
“Mom, I can’t.”
“I don’t want to hear it, young man.”
Her hands, now shaking with rage, remained extended.
“Mom.”
“It’s nearly one o’clock. We’ll discuss it in the morning.”
He glanced at the time. How had the time passed so quickly? One am? Finn would be expecting the Return.
“Mom! Please! Just listen.”
“I’ll listen in the morning.” She added, “Maybe.”
Kingdom Keepers IV (9781423152521) Page 23