Kingdom Keepers IV (9781423152521) Read online

  The following are some of the trademarks, registered marks, and service marks owned by Disney Enterprises, Inc.: Adventureland, Audio-Animatronics, Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, Disney, Disneyland, DisneyQuest, Disney’s Animal Kingdom, Downtown Disney, Epcot, Fantasyland, FASTPASS, Fort Wilderness Lodge, Frontierland, Walt Disney Imagineering, Imagineers, it’s a small world, Magic Kingdom, Main Street, U.S.A., Mickey’s Toontown, Monorail, New Orleans Square, Space Mountain, Splash Mountain, Tomorrowland, Toontown, Walt Disney World

  Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters © Disney Enterprises, Inc./Pixar Animation Studios

  Toy Story characters © Disney Enterprises, Inc./Pixar Animation Studios

  Winnie the Pooh characters based on the “Winnie the Pooh” works by

  A. A. Milne and E. H. Shepard

  Copyright © 2011 Page One, Inc.

  All rights reserved. Published by Disney • Hyperion Books, an imprint of Disney Book Group. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. For information address Disney • Hyperion Books, 114 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10011-5690.

  ISBN 978-1-4231-5252-1

  Visit www.disneyhyperionbooks.com

  www.thekingdomkeepers.com

  www.ridleypearson.com

  Table of Contents

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  Acknowledgments

  ALSO BY RIDLEY PEARSON

  Kingdom Keepers—Disney After Dark

  Kingdom Keepers II—Disney at Dawn

  Kingdom Keepers III—Disney in Shadow

  Steel Trapp—The Challenge

  Steel Trapp—The Academy

  WRITING WITH DAVE BARRY

  Peter and the Starcatchers

  Peter and the Shadow Thieves

  Peter and the Secret of Rundoon

  Peter and the Sword of Mercy

  Escape from the Carnivale

  Cave of the Dark Wind

  Blood Tide

  Science Fair

  For my daughters, Storey and Paige, and my wonderful readers—you make it magical.

  “LET’S GET LOST,” Finn said to the two girls.

  DisneyQuest was a maze, a place where it was difficult to know where you were. An electronic funhouse filled with virtual rides, video games, and interactive attractions, the enormous building in Walt Disney World’s Downtown Disney consisted of five floors subdivided into virtual worlds and activities, all interconnected in a way that seemed designed to disorient. Finn Whitman actually was currently lost—he couldn’t quite figure out where he was or how to get out of there—but his suggestion to “get lost” stemmed from his spotting Greg “Lousy” Luowski at the other end of the gaming room, over near the Guitar Hero consoles. Luowski was the ninth-grade bully. Roughly the size of a kitchen appliance, the zit-faced, fingernail-chewing Luowski had it out for Finn, and Finn knew enough to stay clear of trouble. At least, avoidable trouble.

  Over the past few years, trouble had defined him, had followed him as he and his four friends—now known as the Kingdom Keepers—had gained notoriety for their efforts to save Disney World from the Overtakers, a group of fanatical Disney villain characters within the Parks bent on taking over and “stealing the magic.” Guys like Luowski didn’t appreciate sharing the spotlight with anyone, and at the moment Finn was roughly a million times more popular than Luowski.

  “How about the simulators in CyberSpace Mountain?” Charlene said. Charlene was to beautiful what Mount Everest was to high. A cheerleader and phenomenal athlete, she was the poster child for the Kingdom Keepers. Her Facebook page had more friends than Ashton Kutcher’s—well, not really, but close enough. Boys liked her. Girls liked her. Teachers liked her. Parents liked her. It was enough to make you hate her. But no one could. She was too ridiculously Charlene to ever have an ill thought aimed at her.

  Finn considered the suggestion and glanced over to Amanda to get her read. Amanda was a different kind of pretty: mysterious, her looks often changing from slightly Asian to Polynesian or Caribbean. Amanda was not officially one of the five Kingdom Keepers, but she and her “sister,” Jess, had unique qualities and unusual abilities that made them important to the team.

  Amanda and Jess had once been part of a group of foster kids called the Fairlies—as in “fairly human.” Kids who could bend spoons just by staring at them, or hear clearly at absurd distances, hold their breath underwater for ten minutes at a time, light fires by concentrating, dream the future, see the past. Kids labeled freaks and weirdos; kids once studied by the military but dismissed to a special home in Baltimore when scientists failed to duplicate or explain what was termed their “controlled phenomena.”

  Currently, Amanda and Jess lived in an Orlando foster home for wayward girls run by the iron-handed Mrs. Nash. Despite sharing not only the same address, but also the same bunk room, they now attended different high schools; Jess had qualified for an AP program and went to Edgewater High along with two of the Kingdom Keepers, Willa and Philby.

  Amanda had come to DisneyQuest this evening because the event was a school-sanctioned function. She’d brought Jess as her one allowed guest. To Finn, it seemed like the entire ninth grade of Winter Park High was there.

  Finn liked Amanda, which roughly translated to: he couldn’t stop thinking about her, was often tongue-tied when trying to talk to her, and made a fool out of himself when trying to come off as cool. There was a friction that existed between Amanda and Charlene that he knew had something to do with him, but which he didn’t like to think about. In general, he didn’t like to think about girls all that much, but he couldn’t seem to help himself.

  “Okay,” he said. “I guess.” Finn didn’t like roller coasters—actually was terrified of them—but wasn’t about to admit it.

  The other three Keepers were also in DisneyQuest somewhere, as was Jess. Even though only Finn and Amanda attended Winter Park, it had been months since the whole group had done anything fun together. Their last outing, to Disney’s Hollywood Studios’ Fantasmic!, had led to an encounter with the Overtakers that nearly got Finn killed. The idea tonight had been to meet here and stick together, but they’d separated by ride and interest—Philby and Willa had gone to the ground floor to battle pirate ships, while Maybeck and Jess had gone to the bumper cars. Charlene had taken off to the bathroom a few minutes earlier, and Finn had considered ditching her in favor of being alone with Amanda; but it had only been a passing thought and one he didn’t fully understand. He liked Charlene. A lot. But not in the same incomprehensible way he liked Amanda.

  Luowski spotted Finn and made a face like a football player who’d taken a knee in the wrong place. Finn didn’t want to get drawn into that.

  “Come on, let’s go,” he said, as Charlene returned.

  The three took the stairs to the second floor, and Charlene led them to CyberSpace Mountain.

  The ride was a virtual roller coaster that allowed visitors to pick preexisting twists and turns or to design their own. There were five levels of challenge, from easy to terrifying.

  “I’ll take mine lite,” Finn said.

  “Me, too,” said Amanda. “I get sick on roller coasters.”

  “We should go together,” Finn said, confessing, “because I’m basically a chicken.”

  “Oh, right,” said Charlene. “You a chicken? I don’t think so.”<
br />
  “Seriously! The Barnstormer is about as tough as I can take.”

  Both girls laughed. Then they exchanged looks that had they been Taser shots would have dropped each other to the ground.

  Bill Nye the Science Guy tutored Charlene as she scrolled through selections to create a wildly scary roller coaster for herself. Maybe she was trying to make a point to Amanda, maybe she just loved roller coasters; but it had enough loops and jumps to make an astronaut puke.

  She used her entrance ticket to store it. Then she quickly worked with Bill Nye to make another, very basic, ride. She saved it onto Finn’s ticket.

  “I love it as scary as it gets,” she said looking directly at Amanda. “It’s awesome.”

  They headed for the short line of people that waited for the next simulator. Charlene was bumped into by someone, so hard that had she not possessed the grace of a dancer, she would have fallen to the floor.

  Greg Luowski.

  She dropped the two tickets in the process. In a surprisingly polite gesture, Luowski asked if she was okay and collected the tickets and returned them to her. Finn caught this look in Luowski’s eyes—the jerk liked Charlene; his bumping into her had been no accident.

  “Lay off, Luowski,” Finn said.

  Amanda took Finn by the arm.

  “Lay off what, Whitless? My bad for the knockdown. Can’t I help her up?” He faced Charlene. “I really am sorry.”

  “No problem,” she said. But Finn was still seething. “As in: we don’t want any problems.” She said this slowly, making sure Finn heard every word.

  “I’ll be around, Whitless. If you want me, you can find me.”

  “Try some deodorant, Luowski.”

  Charlene cupped her mouth, hiding her smile.

  Luowski didn’t just smell like a jock, he smelled like an entire team that had been working out in the summer heat for five hours. He smelled like a guy who hadn’t showered since sixth grade.

  “Or maybe I’ll find you,” he growled at Finn.

  “I’m not worried,” Finn said. “I’ll smell you coming.”

  The line moved. Finn and the girls were shown up the stairs. The simulators were designed for a maximum of two people. Charlene lined up in front of door 1, Finn and Amanda, door 3.

  “No holding hands, you two, if you get scared,” Charlene called down to them.

  Finn faked a grin; he was scared already.

  A Cast Member wearing a name tag that said megan accepted Finn’s card from him and chose the only predesigned ride it contained. The door opened and Finn and Amanda were escorted into the simulator chamber. They climbed down into the padded seats of the red metal capsule. The seats faced a large flat-panel screen. Megan directed them to stow anything loose in their pockets. That was when Finn started to worry. She then pointed out the two red stop emergency buttons, one for each rider.

  Finn’s stomach turned. He didn’t like the idea of taking a ride that needed panic buttons. He pulled down the black padded chest brace as directed. Amanda did the same. Megan double-checked everything.

  “You’re good to go,” she said. She hit a button and the simulator’s lid closed slowly, locking in place. The only light came from the flat-panel display where the ride’s parallel tracks stretched out in front of them.

  “This was a stupid idea,” he mumbled.

  “You’re telling me,” Amanda said.

  “But did you see the course Charlene created for herself? No way I would go on that thing in a million years.”

  “She wanted to impress you.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “Trust me. She picked the scariest stuff possible. It would terrify the guy who designed it. But she’s going to come out of there and tell us she loved it.”

  He wanted to disagree, but thought she was probably right.

  The lights dimmed. The ride began.

  “If I scream,” Finn said, “it’s just to make it feel all the more real.”

  She laughed. But not for long. Her amusement was cut short as the roller coaster car began to move forward on the tracks in front of them. A light flashed in their eyes. Sound effects roared from unseen speakers and the car banked sharply left. Finn clutched the safety harness and shut his eyes.

  “I hate this already,” he said.

  The capsule banked left, did a complete flip in that direction, and then lifted into a double loop, dumping them upside down twice in a row. Amanda’s hair fell like a curtain. Finn squinted open his eyes: the track dropped straight down, about a thousand feet. They plummeted down, like on the Tower of Terror.

  Finn screamed a word that would have gotten him grounded for a week if his mother had heard it. It just flew out of him.

  “This…is…not…right!” Amanda cried.

  They reached bottom, leaving Finn’s stomach somewhere at his feet. He re-swallowed his dinner. The car shot up like a NASA rocket launch.

  He screamed the same word again.

  “She…tricked…us!” Amanda hollered. Then she screamed at a pitch so high it should have shattered the flat-panel display.

  “Puke alert,” Finn gagged out as they entered a triple loop.

  “Please, no!” Amanda said. “Try shutting your eyes.”

  “Only makes it worse!” he choked out.

  “Tell me this thing can’t actually crash.” She released another shriek at a volume that might have been heard in Miami.

  “It can’t actually crash,” he said, though he wasn’t so sure. What if the simulator was put through stuff it wasn’t designed to handle? he wondered. What if its bearings froze or its motor overheated? The thing was, even Charlene’s ride, as crazy as she’d made it, hadn’t seemed this bad. Had she tricked them, in order to sabotage Amanda?

  That was the first time he realized that maybe Charlene wasn’t the only one involved. A ride this violent carried the fingerprints of the Overtakers.

  Finn remembered Megan telling them about the panic buttons. He reached down to punch the red emergency stop button. Just as he did, the car lurched left, and he leaned so sharply in that direction that his hand missed the button.

  “Did you see that?” he hollered. “I think it knew I was trying to stop it!”

  “You’re losing more than your cookies,” Amanda said. “So this thing can think?”

  The car dropped again. Rose and fell. Leaned ninety degrees left and stayed there. Jerked totally upside down and did three more upside-down loops.

  Amanda struggled to reach her stop button. But as she did, the track dropped away. She and Finn were thrown forward against their restraints. She punched down and hit the red plastic button.

  “Got it!” she yelled.

  The ride continued.

  She hit it again.

  They were flipped over seven times to their right, like rolling down a steep hill in an oil barrel.

  “I swear I pushed it,” she announced. “But nothing happened.”

  “Impressive,” he managed to mutter to himself despite all the craziness, no longer thinking it was the work of the Overtakers, but knowing it. Wondering how they might have accomplished such a thing, and what, if anything, Charlene’s role had been in it. She had designed the ride, after all. If it was the OTs, how had they organized any kind of attack given that their two leaders, Maleficent and Chernabog, were currently locked up somewhere in a Disney holding facility? The Kingdom Keepers’ mentor and designer, Wayne Kresky, had believed that “With the head cut off the snake, the body cannot survive.” But someone had clearly taken over leadership of the Overtakers. The ride going out of control could not be considered coincidence. The Keepers were under attack.

  Finn reached down, able to press his stop button. Nothing.

  “It’s…them…isn’t it?” Amanda was no dummy. She’d figured it out on her own.

  “Yeah,” he said. “It’s them. By now Megan knows” —he gritted his teeth as the track lifted and fell so hard and so many times in a row that his neck hurt—“som
ething is wrong. She’s working to fix it.”

  “You’re dreaming.”

  “Probably. But at this point, she’s our only hope.”

  * * *

  Outside the simulator bay, Megan was in fact hitting every switch and button possible. The system’s mechanicals included a warning-light display used to alert Cast Members to potential simulator hardware failure: a single light that ran a solid green, amber, or red. It was currently flashing red—a warning level never seen before and one that attracted the concern and attention of three other Cast Members, including the ride manager.

  “It’s going to come off the gyros!” the manager shouted. “Like a wheel coming off a bike. The thing is going to basically explode if we don’t stop it!” He, too, hit every known control trying to stop the ride. “What the heck?” he asked Megan, as if it were her fault.

  “The power!” she said. “Call down and tell them to cut off the power.”

  * * *

  “It’s coming apart!” Finn yelled. On the screen, the parallel tracks rushed toward them at impossible speeds, reflecting the velocity of their virtual roller coaster car. Finn could barely look at it—another five loops coming up, then a series of left corkscrews and what appeared to be the edge of a cliff—another of the thousand-foot drops. It was no longer the pattern of the animated tracks that frightened him, but the sounds of grinding metal and the way the seats in the simulator were no longer level, but leaning heavily left. It was being made to do things it was not designed to do. Its parts were failing—the bushings, the bearings, servos, and gyros; it was like a car going down the side of a mountain with no steering and two of its wheels loose. It was going to crash.

  “How could they know where we are?” Amanda cried out. “How is that possible?”

  Finn didn’t answer. He knew that when it came to the Overtakers, anything was possible.

  “We have to stop it,” he said, looking for options. He shoved his back against the seat and tried to slip out of the chest restraint. It was the same kind of restraint used on real roller coasters—a padded pipe that pulled down over your head. There was some slack in the way it fit. He got about halfway out before getting stuck.