Finn over the DS.
philitup: changed a timer, in 5 minutes the tunnel hatches wil open.
“Five minutes,” Finn said, sounding anxious.
philitup: wil try to knockout any dhis. not sure if possible.
With Charlene’s announcement that the monkeys had arrived in the tiger yards, Philby
noticed that the volume of network traffic increased exponential y. Data flowed along the colorful cables, not in data streams, but in data rivers. Philby worked the cursor to move his avatar along the virtual catwalks that carried the network cables like colorful hoses. Screen by screen he fol owed the increase in color that signaled a rise in data flow. Blue indicated outbound data—
from various servers placed throughout the Park—while red signified data returning, check sums
used to tel the server the data had reached its intended destination. Like data over the Internet, it moved in pulses, or parcels, which when combined added up to a whole message or image. With
the jump in data traffic, the blue lines pulsed sky blue, and the red lines turned fire-engine red. The pulses got faster and the bursts brighter, until al at once a good number of lines turned into a shimmering purple—a combination of the red and blue, the data moving in such quantity and at
such speeds that the two colors became a third.
These were the lines that interested Philby, for as life-size graphic images, holograms consisted of phenomenal amounts of data. His avatar hurried, staying with the same purple data
line through a half dozen screens, making sure he never confused one purple line for another. (By
simply rol ing the cursor over the purple line a corresponding number appeared—like an ID tag.
He fol owed number 518912.) The data was passed from one network hub to another, the largest
and most complicated being a hub marked Discovery Island Hub.
From here, the purple lines traveled southeast across a bridge. Just before the bridge, a network line led to a structure marked Flame Tree Barbecue. Philby’s avatar reached the far side
of the bridge and turned to fol ow the purple cables as Wayne’s white-haired avatar popped up
from below the bridge. Wayne’s avatar held two silver swords cradled in his arms.
[ ]: here, one is for you. i fear we may meet resistance, and remember: although only a virtual world, if your avatar is killed or captured, it’s Game Over, i won’t be able to reconstruct you and reinsert you into VMK for at least an hour or two, and I fear by then it will be too late, if you’re to accomplish your mission you must stay in the game.
philitup: a sword?
[ ]: it’s all i could find on short notice.
philitup: how many of them?
[ ]: no idea, maybe none, but the closer we get to destroying them, the bigger the fight they will put up. they know you were in vmk earlier. I assume they’ve adjusted their defenses accordingly.
Philby took hold of the smal sword—it looked like a silver toothpick—and swung it back and
forth. It took him a moment to get the hang of it. Then Wayne stepped in front of him and the two
sparred, Wayne handling the weapon with surprising aplomb. In fact, the more aggressive Philby
got with the sword, the more effortless Wayne’s motions. They continued to duel, Wayne’s avatar
dancing circles around Philby. Then Philby held his sword to his chest and typed a message.
philitup: you’ve done this before.
[ ]: a little, perhaps.
philitup: more than a little.
[ ]: there was a time…a long time ago…when the overtakers challenged the kingdom, this is why uncle walt left the stonecutter’s quill in the first place. I was a member of the team sent to repel the overtakers.
The Stonecutter’s Quil had been central to the Kingdom Keepers’ first attempt to defeat the
Over-takers. Philby found it interesting, important even, to hear the history. He told himself to remember everything so he could tel the others.
remember everything so he could tel the others.
philitup: sent?
[ ]: disney world was just being built at the time, the real power of the kingdom lay in disneyland, as it does to this day.
philitup: what kind of power?
[ ]: it needn’t concern you now.
philitup: but it does.
[ ]: patience, my young friend, if the battle ever returns home, believe me, the kingdom keepers will be part of it.
philitup: you were a swordsman?
[ ]: we learned many defenses, the sword but one of them, surprising how easily it comes back, you’re doing well enough, just remember: it is double-edged, it cuts just as easily on the backswing. conserve your energy and always swing in both directions.
philitup: I’ll try.
[ ]: it’s all that can be asked, now let’s be off…
Together they continued along the catwalks, up and down staircases, always fol owing the pulsing purple cables. A group of cables ran to the right. Philby stopped to examine them: none
was purple. Others continued straight ahead.
[ ]: we’re in dinoland. those are restaurants to our right the rides are to our left: fossil fun games, primeval whirl, and triceratop spin.
Six cables continued straight ahead—four of them pulsing a rich purple. What had left the Discovery Island hub as hundreds of data cables had been reduced to just a few, the majority of
which were purple, indicating a large amount of data transfer. The cables were nearing the source
of that data— the second server.
Philby was scared. For Finn, the key was to defeat the second server, to eliminate the DHIs
Maleficent was using to increase her army. Who knew how many of the monkeys, birds, or tigers
were real? The only way to absolutely know was to shut down the second server—for good—and
that task now fel to him and an old man with toothpick swords. If they were going to encounter
resistance, it was going to be soon.
He didn’t need to ask Wayne where those cables led. There was only a single attraction at
the bottom of DinoLand USA.
Philby, the boy, not the avatar, briefly released the VMK controls. He turned around, found Maybeck’s face in the crowd, and cal ed out, “The Dino Institute. You and Wil a…as fast as you
can!”
Then he turned back to the screen to see that he was too late: Wayne was under attack.
54
TWO MINUTES…
Finn counted down the seconds on his watch. He heard his mouth speak before he meant to
say anything.
“The first time I saw you I was scared of you,” he told Jez. The two were huddled close together just below the hatch in the upper tiger yard.
“Me?”
“Your long hair. The way you looked at me.”
“I was under Maleficent’s spel ,” she reminded him.
And I was under yours, he thought. “Yeah,” he said. “The thing is, as it turned out, there was nothing to be afraid of.”
“Are you trying to tel me something?” she asked. Their faces were about a foot apart. Only a
tiny bit of light seeped in from around the edges of the hatch, emitting a dul glow. He saw the shape of her head, nothing more.
“Fear is a weird thing. It can total y take over, or you can push it away and suddenly it’s gone.
That’s how I’m able to be a DHI—I remove al thought, al fear, and suddenly I cross over.”
“It’s going to be scary out there,” Jez said, suddenly understanding what it was Finn was trying to say.
“Yeah, I think so.”
“Why can’t boys ever say what they actual y want to say? If you were Amanda, you’d have just
said, ‘Heads up, girl! It’s going to be freaky out there.'”
“Heads up, girl,” Finn said.
“Ha-ha,” she mocked him.
“I wil try to leave the hatch as my DHI. If Charlene’s inside the tiger yard, she wil be near a
wal . Have you ever been to a rodeo?”
“Are you serious?”
“In a rodeo, the clown’s job is to distract the bul . To draw the bul ’s attention away from the
bul rider to give the rider enough time to get over the fence, out of danger. Think of Charlene and me as the clowns. You’re the rider.”
“They’re coming after me,” Jez said.
“They’l come after al of us,” Finn said, “but they can only hurt you. They don’t know that, so
that’s to our advantage.”
“It’s not much.”
“No. But it’s al we’ve got. If Charlene has jumped the wal , then she’l know the way out. You
must fol ow Charlene. No matter what happens to me, no matter what you see, ignore it. Stay with Charlene.”
“I don’t like the sound of this.”
“I’m just saying.”
One minute…
“Finn, if you’re trying to impress me…I already have a boyfriend…”
“Rob,” Finn said. He saw her head cock to the side in curiosity. “‘Change Rob’—it was in your diary. Amanda told us Rob was your boyfriend. It took us forever to realize why you’d written that.”
“And why had I written that?”
“It’s an anagram for Chernabog,” Finn said.
“Like the guy in Fantasia?”
“The same. We think he’s Maleficent’s boss, or king, or whatever you’d cal it.”
“Superior,” she said.
“Whatever. He’s the one in control.”
“I think…oh my gosh.”
“What?”
“I think I had a daydream,” she said. “While I was down here in the dark. King of the Mountain, I cal ed him. Big and ugly, and real y hairy. He was trying to kil me. Me and Amanda.
He had this club in his hand. No! It wasn’t a club. It was—” She gasped. For the first time in the dul light he could see her face clearly: her eyes were squinted closed.
“What?”
“It wasn’t a club in his hand,” she repeated. “It was…you, Finn. He had you by the legs and
was swinging you like a club.”
Finn knew the strength of Jez’s dreams. He found it hard to breathe, his chest tight, his throat
dry.
Fear!
He had to push it away. He had to find a sense of calm. He needed to cross over to his DHI.
Because at that moment, the hatch above their heads began to squeak and groan. Light flooded in and blinded them.
The hatch was coming open.
55
PHILBY RAISED HIS AVATAR’S SWORD and blocked the swipe of silver steel that aimed for his head.
Wayne was fighting two at once, his sword nothing but a blur of shining light.
The things coming at them—there were four altogether—were hunchbacked trol s with
exaggerated noses, long hair, and strong arms. Never mind that they were avatars, they were horrendous-looking creatures, incredibly quick with their swords and determined to eliminate Wayne and Philby from VMK.
Philby blocked a second swipe and then a third. He backed up and moved to his right, noticing that the trol pivoted on its left foot as it turned to stay with Philby. Philby raised his sword as if to strike a blow to the head. The trol crossed its sword to block, but Philby released the sword, al owing it to fal and, as it did, he bent forward and was there to catch it before it hit the ground. He swung at the trol ’s left leg. It sliced in two at the knee. The trol stepped forward and fel over onto its face. It tried to stand but was useless without a left leg.
Philby stepped around it in time to engage the sword of the third trol to attack Wayne, who
was already busy defending himself against two of the attackers. Philby caught this trol ’s sword
as it swung back over its head. The contact spun the trol around and it came at Philby with a series of swift slices to the air, narrowly missing the chest of Philby’s avatar, which was in steady retreat. The trol reared back and lowered its sword with power and speed. Philby sidestepped,
tripped, and his avatar went down.
The sword smacked into one of the purple networking cables, cutting it in two. The purple color immediately switched to gray, and Philby realized that since this was an internal maintenance site, anything done to the mechanism was for real and affected the real world.
Wherever that data feed had been headed, it was now nul and void. He considered cutting al the
cables. Wouldn’t that have the desired effect? Wouldn’t it stop al the data—and more than likely
al the DHIs? He thought it would, but at the same time, without that vivid color, he wouldn’t be able to fol ow the cables to their source—the second server. And that was the ultimate prize.
A trol left the fight with Wayne. It squatted and jumped a phenomenal distance, landing right
in front of Philby. It raised its sword to do Philby in. It was now two against one. Philby spun in a ful circle, his sword outstretched. It was similar to a martial arts move, and it caught the two others by surprise. He hit the first in the arm, severing it. The second took the tip of his sword across its chest. Philby spun again, this time taking a step forward.
The one-armed trol merely switched hands, now holding the sword with its right. It lowered it
at Philby, who danced to the left just as the blade came down like a guil otine. It chopped off the end of Philby’s right foot.
Philby moved and saw his avatar sway, about to fal . He jerked left and maintained his balance: he could stil stand, but his steps had to be shorter.
Wayne had dispatched the remaining trol . He came at the two on Philby from behind, and
soon there was a flash of swords as Philby battled the one-armed trol and Wayne took the wounded one. Philby moved to his right, seeing that Wayne was moving that way as wel . And now
Philby saw Wayne’s scheme. The two trol s were battling in close quarters, too near one another.
They each pivoted on one leg as they turned—a faulty design—and Wayne was working to tie their legs together, to cross their legs.
It worked beautiful y. One more move to his right, and Philby watched as the two trol s tumbled
over. Before Philby could even lift his sword, Wayne had removed these two from the game as
wel . Wayne hurried to the one spinning on the floor and stopped it with a sword thrust.
[ ]: if we don’t hurry, they’ll generate another fifty of these and send them our way. can you find the server?
philitup: I’m sure I can.
[ ]: then do it. and tell your friends up top we may need their help, my guess is these trolls aren’t going to let us anywhere near that server.
56
THEIR EYES ADJUSTING as they climbed up the smal ramp and out of the open hatch, Finn and Jez
beheld an intimidating sight. The upper tiger yard was a large enclosure, an open expanse of sloping green grass surrounded by fifteen-foot-high wal s. The enclosure’s boundaries were broken by bamboo trees, wild grasses, and jungle shrubs. In the shade to their left, and just coming to her feet, was an enormous tigress, six feet from shoulders to tail with a huge head, and paws the size of oven mitts. She glanced back at them with her amber eyes and let out a thunderous growl—they were intruders and she didn’t appreciate being awakened from her nap.
Directly ahead of them, coming over the crest of the smal rise, were two more tigers—
barreling toward Finn and Jez at ful speed and, to the right of the yard, a half dozen monkeys and four large orangutans were also charging. The number of wild animals, as wel as their combined
ferocity, every twitch of muscle aimed directly at Finn and Jez, froze the kids. They stood absolutely stil , which was a good thing.
Then Finn spotted the ivy creeping along the right wal —just behind the gang of monkeys.
Charlene.
“Finn?” a terrified Jez said, her voice breaking.
“No fear,” Finn whispered. He had tried to cross over on his way out of the hatch, but his excitement had prevented it. He didn’t want Jez to know this, so he spoke with authority.
“Move to your right,” he said. “Stay close to the wal .”
“But the monkeys!” she said.
“I know.”
A hol ow growl reverberated from behind them: another tiger, this one coming through the tunnel from the lower yard.
Finn picked up a stick and stepped forward, putting himself between the charging monkeys
and Jez. The two center tigers continued their advance, while the one in the shade to the left had spun ful y around to face the hatch. If he didn’t do something quickly, he and Jez were going to be animal crackers—a late afternoon snack.
“Go!” he said.
Jez took off along the wal at a run.
Finn attacked the line of advancing monkeys and apes, swinging the stick like a basebal bat.
The monkeys skidded to a stop, forming a semicircle around him. He saw a flash in the eyes of
one of the orangutans: the ape had spotted Jez fleeing along the wal . He chose this ape to go
after, chanting under his breath: Nothing can hurt me.
He charged the orangutan, swung the stick, and forced the ape to dance backward, out of the
way of contact. In doing so, the orangutan left a smal gap between him and the ape to his side. It was just big enough for Finn to squeeze through. He ran forward and shot the gap. The ape turned.
This offered Jez the opportunity to run even harder, quickly moving along the wal toward the
slowly advancing Charlene, who, posing as DeVine, was high atop her stilts.
The large cat to the left stepped out of the shadows, her strides calculated and control ed: she
Kingdom Keepers II: Disney at Dawn Page 21