Authors: Ridley Pearson
“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 around,” 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.”
Philby had never seen her in this particular state before—like a teakettle boiling over. Wayne had said that a friend would turn his back and betray them. He hadn’t mentioned mothers.
He closed the laptop and handed it to her, feeling like a traitor. Maybe that was it, he thought: Maybe
I
am the traitor Wayne warned us about.
* * *
“Guard!” Finn hated to put Pluto at risk, but the dog seemed their best chance to get out of this with all their limbs intact.
“Higher ground,” Amanda said. “It’s the best defensive position.”
“Move slowly,” Finn said.
They backed up, taking small steps, never taking their eyes off the alligators. Pluto saw them, but held his ground.
“Good dog!” Finn called out.
They slowly worked up the hill, reaching a path.
Amanda said, “Did you know that alligators can run thirty-five miles per hour?”
“TMI,” Finn said.
“If we turn and run—” Amanda proposed.
“—they’ll have us for breakfast,” Finn said, completing her sentence for her. “I’m thinking: Scratch’s Mine.”
“You can’t be serious!”
“It will force them into single file. They’ll have to switch directions, which slows them down. If we hurry, we get out the other end of the tunnel ahead of them, at which point we head
uphill
, which is not what they’ll instinctively think. By the time they figure it out—
if
they figure it out—we’re gone.”
“What if we just made a run for it? For Minnie? The raft?”
“Yeah, okay. I’ll put you onto the raft. That works,” Finn said.
“Me? What about you?” she said.
“I…The thing is, after everything we’ve figured out…Philby, me, the others. You and Jess. I need to check this place out,” he said. “The pirate, Stitch, the alligators. It just doesn’t add up.”
“Then I’m not going.”
“You should.”
“Well, I’m not.”
“I can do this alone,” he said.
“Keepers work in pairs,” she said.
Technically, she was not a Keeper. But it seemed like the wrong time to remind her. He thought maybe that was her point.
She said, “What if I, you know, used my…What if I pushed?”
“You’re mostly DHI at the moment.”
“Actually, I’m barely DHI. Trust me, I feel much more human than hologram. What if, once we’re inside the mine, I could push the gators, and we could run for Minnie? Being inside the mine will concentrate the push. I wouldn’t need much for it to work. We could tell Minnie to leave without us. The gators might be fooled, and think we’d left.”
“We’d be trapped here,” he reminded.
“So we’d tell her to hang on the other side and wait for our signal.”
It seemed like the best way to get the gators off their trail, but a plan not without risk. If Minnie had to abandon the raft…
He said, “I guess if the push works, we go for it. If not, we’ll rethink.”
“On three?”
“No. Let’s just keep backing up. When they reach the path, we make our move,” he said.
“What about Pluto?” she asked.
“He’s a dog. He’ll figure it out.”
The two backed up slowly. The alligators slithered forward. Pluto retreated. Step by step, they all moved in a choreographed manner.
“Ready…” Finn whispered.
“Set…” she said.
The first alligator—Louis—placed his paw on the path.
Finn and Amanda turned and ran.
* * *
With her arms and legs wrapped around the pipe like a koala bear hugging a tree, Charlene slid down another three feet, finally stopped by a junction clamp. The temperature in the main building was warm, as were some of the pipes she touched. The turbines screamed in a high-pitched whine. Half-deaf, she didn’t hear the sound of flapping wings, didn’t sense the attack until it was upon her: a shadow sweeping across her face.
Charlene ducked, and swung out with her left arm, catching a bird’s wing. It struck a pipe and fell, feathers fluttering.
A second jay dive-bombed and sank its small talons into her scalp, tearing loose two large clumps of hair. Charlene cried out. Her scalp was bleeding. She sought a toehold but missed, catching herself at the last second. Now a third jay, wings tucked, came at her like a missile. She swung her arm like a baseball bat and sent it into the outfield. The bird struck the wall and was knocked unconscious.
It tumbled and landed atop one of the turbines with a
thunk
.
The voices stopped. Only the whine of the turbines persisted. The jay that had torn her hair out cawed and dove once more. Charlene deftly switched pipes, dropped lower, and switched back, using the elbow in the bigger pipe to shield her.
A glowing image appeared on the floor below. Maybeck? she wondered. Fearing it might not be, she adjusted to the far side of the pipe, putting an intersection of steel and PVC between her and the glow.
Charlene was looking down on a head of dark hair surrounded by a crown. The Evil Queen. Charlene reared back as the Queen looked up. A diving blue jay suddenly altered course and flew past Charlene—the Queen had redirected it. It landed on an electrical conduit below. The wounded jay atop the turbine managed to fly off.
The jays cawed furiously.
Over the roar of the turbines, a woman’s low voice shouted, “Hurry up! There’s no time to waste!”
Charlene moved quickly lower, down the pipes, using clamps and valves as toeholds. With speed and agility she descended, desperate to overhear more of what was being said.
How she regretted having separated from Maybeck. They could be working together; worse, Maybeck was something of a wild horse without a bit or bridle when left on his own.
She slid down the final few feet of pipe, arriving onto the facility floor—concrete with a thick layer of gray epoxy paint. She settled herself and dared to look past the pipe she hid behind.
Directly in front of her were more pipes and machinery. Just past these was a walkway designated by wide lines of bright yellow paint, one side of which was a concrete wall with windows looking in on a control room, the door to which was propped open, its center glass pane broken; cubes of safety glass littered the floor. Inside, she saw a bald guy in a chair, who looked either asleep or dead. There was a redheaded woman in a similar condition next to him. Cruella De Vil, the Evil Queen. And a…
kid!
Charlene could only see the back of his head—he was hunched over a computer—but there was no mistaking him for anything but a teenager. She couldn’t see his face.
Charlene was distracted by movement to her right—the jays flying like jets in formation. They banked right and disappeared behind the machinery. Something moved in the shadows, escaping.
Maybeck.
The Evil Queen sensed Maybeck and abruptly turned around. She and Maybeck were on opposite sides of a cinder block wall.
Charlene ducked behind the pipe, her back to its warmth. She had no way to warn Maybeck, no way to monitor what was happening. Then, overhead, a blue flash—the jays diving for Maybeck again.
She heard a series of caws. Maybeck shouting.
Then, the Evil Queen growling, “Bring him to me!”
* * *
It took Philby time to settle down. He’d never seen his mother quite like that. She’d stayed a few feet behind him and had marched him to his room like he was a convict. He’d wanted to ask her for the computer back but thought she’d have probably hit him with it—definitely not worth the risk.
His bedside clock read 12:51.
He couldn’t leave his friends stuck in Epcot and the Cogeneration Facility as DHIs. He needed Web access—and he needed it now. He possessed a dirty secret: a fifth DHI had been added to the Queen’s growing team. He’d spotted the addition in the log—it was still rocking him with aftershocks.
Mind racing, he thought of his father’s desktop Mac in his study. The trouble was, his study was an extra bedroom, and to get to it Philby would have to pass his parents’ bedroom. He doubted his mother would actually kill him, but he knew that to be caught was not an option.
Philby paced his room, frustrated and guilt-ridden. He stopped and looked at the lowered shade and thought about Hugo attacking him. His world was upside down: friends were enemies; family members were enemies. His only friends were asleep in their beds and would never wake up until and unless he Returned them. The success or failure of their attempt to free Amanda fell onto him. Their survival fell onto him.
Was he really supposed to just climb into bed and go to sleep?
As if!
He sneaked down the hall on tiptoe, a shaft of yellow light playing from his parents’ bedroom. His mother would be propped up in bed reading. He knew how difficult it was for her to get back to sleep. If he moved too quickly, she’d spot him. The trick was to slip by incredibly slowly, back to the wall so he could watch
her
. If she moved even a tweak, he’d jump across and she wouldn’t know if she’d seen him or not.