Kingdom Keepers V

by Ridley Pearson

  Bart huffed. “It’s the only way I roll,” he said.

  “Yeah? Well, roll a different direction. We’re on orders here. You get it? Orders.”

  “Yeah, I know. We mess this up, and they’ll replace us.”

  “No. We mess this up,” Kenny said, “and they’ll be replacing a Keeper.”

  Finn’s last conscious thought involved a train’s headlight heading at him. Thankfully, he wasn’t flattened. Instead, he fell deeply asleep, the relaxation technique having quelled his anxieties. First he pictured absolute darkness; then a pinprick of light; finally, as the circle of light spread outward, it consumed him.

  He opened his eyes. No matter how often he crossed over he always found his heart racing as he contemplated, dream or reality? For his dreams could feel so real, and reality could prove so dreamlike.

  He was in a room with white, shiny walls and a gray, shiny floor. He turned…a table bolted to the floor. Six plastic chairs. He relaxed and waved his arm at the leg of the table: it passed through. He’d crossed over.

  Sitting up, he recognized the room from a few hours earlier: it was the break room used by Cast Members—two refrigerators, a sink, and a coffee machine, all glistening new like the rest of the ship. While Philby could control when the Keepers crossed over, he could not control where they “landed”: the software’s most recent default settings were impossible to hack. At the Magic Kingdom it was in front of Cinderella Castle; in Animal Kingdom, the Tree of Life; in Epcot, the fountains.

  Interesting, he thought, that in the parks it was a public space, while on the ship, a Cast Member area. He explained this to himself by the fact that the parks closed to the public at night, whereas a ship never did. They couldn’t very well cross over into the lobby atrium without risking being seen. Wayne and the Imagineers, it would seem, had carefully thought this through. No surprise there.

  He waited, playing a game with himself. Willa, he thought. Five minutes later, Willa was indeed the first to appear. He expected Maybeck and Charlene next, both of whom had a harder time getting to sleep. He wasn’t disappointed. Seven minutes after the arrival of Willa’s hologram came the remaining two Keepers. All four of them had gone to sleep wearing Cast Member uniforms supplied by Laundry at Wayne’s direction: a blue golf shirt, khaki shorts, white canvas deck shoes. They too took a few moments to comprehend their situation—testing their transparency. It was better to leave them alone for this process. Finn and Willa sat back. Charlene appeared jarred by the realization of crossing over, suggesting she had fallen more deeply asleep than Maybeck. Soon, all four were sitting up in a circle on the floor of the break room.

  “New assignment,” Finn said. “Searching for the server needs to wait because Philby doesn’t have confirmation it’s on board yet. There’s an unexpected test of some lifeboats. That’s our assignment.” He talked them through what he’d learned from Storey Ming without revealing her identity—only that a crew member was being used as a go-between by Wayne and the Imagineers. A brief discussion ensued. The Keepers were a democracy, not a dictatorship, and while Finn accepted his role as leader, he interpreted the role as that of a filter; he was first a listener. Decisions came later.

  “Do we trust her?” Maybeck asked.

  “I do,” Finn answered.

  “Because?”

  Finn shrugged. Because she can really kiss.

  “First,” Willa said, “because she’s right about testing the lifeboats. Tests are typically conducted in major ports. Sometimes at night, yes. But rarely. And Castaway Cay is not the place for it. There’s very little protected water. Lots of hazards. No shore patrols to assist if something goes wrong. Second, if the OTs are after us, which we can only assume they are, it makes almost no sense for them to come after us as DHIs where we present the biggest threat to them.”

  “Unless,” Charlene interjected, “they are attempting to trap us in the Syndrome.”

  “Yes, agreed,” Willa said. “But how complicated is that? They either have to trap and hold our holograms—not likely given how advanced 2.0 is—or get into all our locked staterooms, undetected, and poison or drug us while we sleep.”

  “That would take phenomenal planning and coordination,” Finn said.

  “Okay. Good enough for me,” Maybeck said.

  “And me,” Willa said.

  That was what Finn liked about the Keepers. They’d learned (most of them) to keep their egos in check and work as a group, willing to change their opinions based on information and research. They weren’t perfect at it, and it had taken a couple years to come together. But like a sports team, or a rock band, they’d learned how to work together and use each person’s strengths. The only one he worried about was Philby, who was setting himself apart from the others because of his success with controlling 2.0.

  Finn tugged on the lanyard around his neck, noticing the same identifications on the three others. That really was an advantage of 2.0—the increased probability of physical objects crossing over with their DHIs. If they ever came to fully trust it, Finn thought, they could begin carrying the Return with them instead of having to hide it for use later or leaving Philby behind to execute a manual return as they were doing tonight.

  “Remember, we belong here. Our IDs are legit. The uniforms—costumes—are legit. No fear,” he said, reminding the Keepers of their shared motto. “If a crew member or fellow Cast Member stops us, we ask for help. If things get crazy, then once we’re all together, we give Philby a call on a Wave Phone and return to our staterooms.”

  “Also remember to practice 2.0,” Willa added, “in the next couple minutes. I know we’ve all gotten pretty used to it, but this is a new server, so who knows how it responds?”

  “Done,” Maybeck said.

  “Charlene and I will take boat fifty-seven. You two, twelve,” Finn said.

  “The plan being?” Maybeck asked.

  “We stow away. Philby said there’s space in the lifeboat’s bow where they keep a small anchor and food supplies. We listen, we observe, we get back together, add it all up, and see if any of it means anything.”

  “That makes it sound too easy,” Charlene said.

  “Yeah,” Finn said.

  * * *

  The first indication of Charlene’s unintentional prophecy were the paw prints. Unfortunately, neither Finn nor Charlene spotted them. Finn led the way. They were actually negative prints—the deck being misted from sea spray, the paw prints being dry spaces amid the wet—the deck lighting throwing a glare that concealed, rather than revealed, them.

  Maybeck saw them. Not much escaped his artist’s eye. He and Willa, on the opposite—port—side of Deck 4, from his friends, pushed his teammate back against the wall and pointed them out to her. He made a motion with his thumbs. Willa pulled out her Wave Phone and sent Charlene a text.

  animal tracks

  Charlene received the text, but a moment too late.

  She and Finn had had their attention on the stenciled numbers overhead on the hull of each fiberglass lifeboat. To their mutual consternation, the lifeboats appeared to be in no particular order but installed randomly, the numbers mixed up like Ping-Pong balls in a lottery basket.

  Twenty-seven…thirty-four…seventeen…

  “This could take all night,” Finn whispered.

  “Or maybe not,” Charlene said, grabbing hold of his arm to stop him.

  Up ahead, patrolling in a well-defined circle, were two…

  “Hyenas?” Finn said, pulling back flat against the wall.

  Mangy, starved beasts, with gray matted hair, the telltale hump of shoulder and long neck. Their pink tongues hung out, drool cascading down.

  “The Lion King,” Charlene muttered. “You remember how they—”

  “I remember,” Finn said. They liked to tear their living prey apart, piece by piece, as they snacked.

  Charlene checked her phone as it purred.

  “Willa and Maybeck. Warning us of animal prints.” She texted back i
mmediately.

  hyenas. b careful

  “They look hungry,” Finn said.

  But there was something else, something he didn’t tell her. He’d encountered hyenas before, shortly after the library. The jump. He and Willa—or so he’d thought. Pursued through that factory. Being a DHI and Keeper, Finn had his reality toyed with enough to not appreciate such unknowns. Having two separate lives was plenty, thank you very much. He didn’t need to try to sort out authentic dreams from those where he crossed over and became a hologram.

  “I may have been here before,” he muttered.

  “That’s random,” Charlene said.

  “But I don’t have the fob.” He was talking to himself. Staring into his own projected palm. “I had the Return before.”

  “Last I checked, we don’t live in the future. Only Jess. Even then, she doesn’t live it, she dreams it.”

  Finn snapped his head in her direction. Was that what was happening to him? he wondered. Had he really begun to dream the future the way Jess did?

  “It was Willa, not you,” he said.

  Charlene wasn’t paying attention, staring down the long deck at the circling hyenas.

  “Maybe we could put a pin in this and come back to it later, huh? My kingdom for a dog bone,” she said.

  Finn patted the pocket of his shorts, an astonished look on his face. “It crossed over!” He reached into the pocket. “You gotta love 2.0.” He withdrew a Snickers bar.

  “Okay,” she said, staring at it. “Here’s the plan.”

  * * *

  The steel beneath her feet shuddered as the sound of water rushing against the hull filled Willa’s ears.

  “Hyenas,” she said, having read Charlene’s text.

  “I like mine barbecued,” said Maybeck.

  “I’d prefer visible,” she said. “I’d rather know where they are.”

  “Wish granted,” he said.

  Two hyenas, one toward the bow, coming at them; the other at the stern, also closing in.

  “I think we walked into their trap,” she said. “They’re hunters, you know. They work in packs.”

  “So do we,” Maybeck said. “The pack thing. Any ideas?”

  “Have you ever seen shows on Animal Planet? They capture snakes and alligators with those wire things? Like a noose.”

  “Yeah. So?” He paused and said, “I am not wrestling a hyena. Forget it.”

  “Get real, macho man. Take off your belt.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  She unfastened her belt and withdrew it from the loops. Her shorts hung loosely on her hips. “Now, slowpoke.” She passed him, staying close to the wall.

  The hyenas, loudly sniffing the air, closed in on them like the jaws of a vise. Drool splattered the deck.

  “They’ve got our scent,” Maybeck declared.

  “Your belt!” she repeated.

  Maybeck slipped off his belt. “You are one weird girl.”

  “Ugh,” she grunted, grabbing a shuffleboard cue from the wall rack where the disks and cues were stored. The game’s two opposing triangles were painted onto the ship’s deck. The cues and disks were secured in a rack on the wall. She passed Maybeck a cue and one disk, keeping one of each for herself.

  “Awkward time for a game, don’t you think?” he said. “Rain check?”

  The cue’s pole ended in a semicircular Y that fit around the disk. As if she knew what she was doing—and maybe she did—Willa popped the plastic ends off the two pushers at the end of the Y and forced her woven belt over them, securing the belt to the end of the cue.

  “What are you doing?” Maybeck asked.

  “Hold this!” she said, repeating the procedure with his belt. She extended the cue, and Maybeck saw that she’d pulled the belt through its own hasp, leaving a loop dangling from the end of the shuffleboard cue.

  “A croc catcher,” Maybeck said.

  The belt loop formed a noose.

  She said, “The disk is to lure them. They’ll think it’s food. Hold the disk in your weak hand, pole in your strong hand. When they stick their heads through the loop—”

  “Bam!” Maybeck said. “I got it!” He moved judiciously toward the slinking hyena that lumbered toward him with a pronounced sway, as if drunk or maybe very, very confident. The hyena showed no sign of backing off. If anything, it seemed poised to strike. Maybeck took two steps toward it, then, as it lunged for him, a step back.

  A costly mistake.

  * * *

  It was exactly the same, only different, Finn thought. The hyenas…the factory—only it wasn’t a factory, it was a ship. And he was on the ship. And so were the hyenas. He was a hologram, not himself. It wasn’t a dream, but it wasn’t reality.

  “Why was I running,” he asked Charlene, “if I’d crossed over?”

  “Fear,” she answered. “You weren’t fully crossed over, I’m thinking.”

  A logical explanation, but Finn could control his hologram better than any of the other Keepers. He wouldn’t have let fear corrupt him.

  “Maybe it was for Willa,” Charlene said. “Maybe you were afraid for Willa. You had the Return, right? So in order to hold on to the Return you couldn’t have been pure DHI.”

  “This is 2.0. There is no almost pure.”

  “But maybe you were thinking more like 1.6. Maybe it was something like that? Why does it matter, anyway? Especially right now? We’re in a bit of a situation here.”

  “Are we?” Finn asked. “We’re crossed over. We’re 2.0 holograms. There’s nothing for them to bite.”

  “And you’re going to test that, are you?”

  “Maybe not,” he said.

  “Yeah, I thought so.” Charlene shook her head. “So we go with my plan, right?”

  “Right.”

  They slipped along the wall toward a painted box that covered the lower section of a ladder. The purpose of the box was to discourage passengers from trying to climb the lifeboat access ladders, but the boxes couldn’t be locked for safety reasons—there had to be ladder access to the overhead lifeboats at all times.

  The larger of the two hyenas headed for them.

  “Ready?” Finn asked. “Nothing to fear, remember?”

  “Yeah, right. Working on that.”

  He broke off a piece of the Snickers bar.

  The hyena charged.

  Finn tossed the piece of candy bar. The hyena skidded to a stop, turned, and snapped it up. Finn could see the surprise cross its face—Snickers were just about the best thing on earth. Then it swung its ratty head back toward Finn, its eyes flashing yellow as they caught light from the windows.

  More, the eyes said.

  Finn broke off another chunk and threw it. As the hyena turned, Finn and Charlene inched closer to the ladder, now only a few feet away. The plan backfired: Finn had thrown the piece of candy bar well behind the hyena, trying to draw it away from them. For a fraction of a second, the hyena considered pursuing it. But, as the other hyena got into the act, scrambling for the snack, the bigger beast turned back toward the source: Finn.

  “Uh-oh,” Charlene gasped, diving for the ladder. Finn was right on her heels.

  He pulled the pin from the hasp and swung the box open. Charlene climbed it like a spider.

  Finn fumbled with the Snickers bar, nearly dropping it. He tried to toe the wooden door as he pulled himself up a rung, but the hyena nosed the door open and snapped at Finn’s feet. The animal got a bite of a steel ladder bar and yipped. He knocked loose another piece of Snickers, distracting the lead hyena. A battle ensued between the two creatures, both wanting the treat. As they fought, Finn scrambled up the ladder to a small platform that provided access to the two closest lifeboats. An extremely narrow catwalk led between the suspended lifeboat and the ship’s wall in either direction. Charlene had already reached the forward lifeboat.

  “Fifty-seven’s up there!” she said, pointing.

  Finn arrived, out of breath. “How…you…possibly…so fast?”
<
br />   “We can’t go down there,” she said in a perfectly normal voice.

  Indeed, the hyenas were directly below them, tracking them like radar, wanting more Snickers.

  “Not only is it not a good idea to go down there and beta test,” Finn said, “but unless we can get ourselves into the lifeboat, those two are going to end up giving us away.”

  “OMG!” Charlene said. “I should have thought of that.”

  They were at the end of the catwalk. There was still another lifeboat between them and boat fifty-seven.

  “If we’re not going to use the next ladder—” he said.

  “Follow me.” She pulled her hologram up and stood balanced on the rail. Then she leaned forward, clutching a safety rope that ran along the perimeter. The boat was divided into two pieces like a plastic Easter egg. Inside, the bottom half held all the passengers. But the top was a curving fiberglass shell as well, meaning that in a horrific storm the lifeboat could flip entirely upside down—and stay that way—and still protect its inhabitants. It also meant it was as slippery as a piece of Tupperware. There were several grips as well as the thick safety rope running fully around it. Charlene dangled from the rope, moving hand over hand, her legs bent at the knees to keep from hanging down, for just as she’d jumped, the sound of an automatic door opening rippled up the deck.

  Finn climbed, fell forward, and clutched the rope. She’d made it look deceptively easy. It was like ropes course in gym—and he fell off the ropes course more often than he made it to the next level. Like her, he was driven by the thought of who or what had come through the automatic door. He’d heard no comments about seeing two wild hyenas drooling on the deck. It was as if whoever—or whatever—had come out, he, she, or it expected to see the creatures.

  So it wasn’t a passenger, Cast Member, or crew.

  That left only Overtakers.

  Keeping his knees tucked, Finn followed Charlene around the curve of the lifeboat’s gunwale to the bow. Here, she pulled herself up, hooked a leg on the rope, and managed a gymnastic move Finn was not sure he could execute. Knees bent, she sprang like a cat and reached the safety rope of the next lifeboat—number fifty-seven. The coursing of the ocean waves across the Dream’s hull drowned out any noises. Again, she began the process of moving hand over hand around lifeboat fifty-seven.