Kingdom Keepers V (9781423153429) Read online

  For a moment, Finn and his mother said nothing, staring at the small screen within a screen. The video’s final images had been of Cinderella Castle at night as it changed colors. In the final image it was a penetrating green.

  “That’s lame,” Finn said.

  “Unless that comes with a dose of hypnotism,” his mother said, “I doubt its effectiveness.” She spun the desk chair around so that Sally faced her.

  “You broke into my home,” she said. “You tried to poison my son. How many pills did you put in there?”

  Sally began crying.

  Mrs. Whitman turned to Finn. “How much of that did you drink?”

  Finn shrugged. “Not much.” His head felt even heavier now. He fought to keep his eyes open. But it was a good kind of fatigue, not a toxic one. “Hardly any,” he said, honestly. “I’m fine.” He said to Sally, “We don’t poison people. We don’t sabotage rides or kidnap kids. We try to keep that stuff from happening. You know, I love dark stuff. Vampires? Not so much. But I’ll take The Dark Knight over Superman Returns any day. But do I want it to turn into the Tragic Kingdom? No, I don’t. I happen to like it the way it is. If Maleficent wants a dark park, then she can go build one. But leave this one the way it is, thank you very much.”

  Finn had never articulated exactly how he felt about what he and the Keepers did. It didn’t come out exactly right, but it felt incredibly good. He wondered how the other Keepers would put it.

  “We have an offer to make you,” Mrs. Whitman said.

  Finn looked at his mother curiously. He wanted to say, “We do?”

  Sally raised her head. Her face was tear-streaked, her grim expression disturbing. When Finn’s mother cried her contacts got messed up. But Sally’s hadn’t. In fact, being so close, getting such a good look, he wondered if they were contacts at all.

  Sally shied away from Finn’s stare. “What’s with you?”

  “Your eyes,” Finn said. “They’re contacts, right?” But the weird thing was, they weren’t contacts: her pupils were changing size as he stared at her. The color of her eyes had actually changed. How could such a thing be possible? Unless…

  She averted her head completely. “Leave me alone.”

  “Finn?” his mother said.

  “You used to have blue eyes, Sally. So what happened? How’s that even possible?”

  “Finn, girls do these things,” his mother said.

  “Maleficent…” he muttered. Some kind of spell had been placed on her and the other OTKs. The spell had physically changed their eye color so they could identify each other. Maybe they had pigmented contact lenses or something to fool their families, but this OTK stuff was getting serious.

  “To heck with her eyes! I will only offer this once,” his mother told Sally.

  “Mom…?”

  An upset Mrs. Whitman ignored her son. Addressing Sally, she said, “First, you’re going to tell Greg Luowski that you escaped right behind him. Do you understand?”

  Sally nodded her head.

  “You mess this up, young lady, and your parents and the police will hear about what you tried to do here tonight.”

  Sally nodded shamefully.

  “Next, you will spy for us,” Mrs. Whitman said. “Anything you’re asked to do, anything you’re told. Any missions. Any rumors. Any anything that has to do with the parks or with the Kingdom Keepers is reported to Finn. You will text him the moment you hear about it. The first moment you possibly can. If we hear the same thing from someone else before we hear it from you then I’ll make the call to your parents and to the police. Is that understood?”

  Finn swelled with pride. Genius! His mother sounded on the verge of slapping Sally across the face. In fact, he knew she couldn’t even hurt a spider—not even a super-ugly spider: she trapped them and set them free outside. A real terror, his mother.

  Sally nodded. “I don’t hear all that much,” she choked out.

  “You will now. Don’t think you’re the only spy we have,” Mrs. Whitman warned. Finn marveled at her ability to lie so effortlessly. He looked at his mother completely differently. “Don’t think you can play with me. You’ll regret that.”

  Sally nodded again. “I understand. I’m sorry, Mrs. Whitman.” She looked up at Finn. “I’m sorry for what I…what we tried to do to you.”

  Finn felt his hands tighten. He should have punched her while he’d had the excuse. “Do as we ask,” he said. “My mother means it.”

  Sally looked into his mother’s face and recoiled. There was no mistaking Mrs. Whitman’s intensity.

  “Okay,” she said. “I’ll do it.”

  Technically speaking, a siege is when an attacking army surrounds another, often in a castle or fort. Usually the attacking army surrounds the castle or fortress and waits for the people inside—the besieged—to begin starving. The besieged then surrender. Sometimes a siege backfires: the attacking army runs out of food or disease diminishes its ranks.

  A common tactic used by the attackers is to build an earthen wall to keep supplies from entering the castle. The besieged would often dig trenches to slow down the attackers.

  Technically speaking, the Overtakers’ threat to the Engineering Base located backstage of Disney’s Hollywood Studios was not a siege. During the day, business was conducted as usual: employees came and went; the Disney villains assumed their characters in the various parks in which they lived. No trenches were dug. No one starved.

  But at night things were different. Considerably different. Cast Members inside the Base dared not leave for fear of attack. Anyone outside dared not approach for the same reason. Those inside the Base were isolated and expected an assault. Fireballs were thrown at security guards and Cast Members who dared enter the area. Laser light cages appeared, trapping the innocent. Perfectly healthy people grew dizzy and fainted—the result of spells, no doubt. A young person was made to look old. An old person was transfigured into an animal. Storm clouds formed over the Base, dumping rain on it or lashing it with lightning. Definitely a siege.

  How Disney had managed to keep it out of the press was anybody’s guess. Finn attributed the privacy to both the stringent contracts Cast Members signed and the loyalty of Disney employees.

  Terry “Donnie” Maybeck and Charlene Turner patrolled the area outside the Base and staged sorties into the shadows. Maybeck, a high school freshman like the other Keepers, was easily mistaken for a senior. He didn’t mind that so much. What he did mind was that because he was African American and fit, nearly everyone assumed he was an athlete. He was in fact an artist. Charlene, on the other hand, was dainty and blond and blue-eyed, easily mistaken for a glam girl, yet she was an incredible athlete. As a freshman she had already been asked to try out for the varsity gymnastics team; she was currently on the football cheerleading squad. She was a climber, a runner, an anything-goes girl. Courageous and confident in action, while often quiet and unopinionated in the company of her fellow Keepers, she was a good balance to Maybeck’s arrogance and self-proclaimed superiority. He thought he was God’s gift to everything—especially girls, who indeed threw themselves at him, though Charlene could not understand why. She could see in the mirror why boys liked her, but Maybeck’s popularity with the girls baffled her. Philby had teamed the two as partners. They served Monday and Thursday nights together.

  DHI 2.0 gave them the advantage over the Overtakers, but wouldn’t help much if they faced Overtaker holograms. The ability of the OTs to cross over had made strategizing against them trickier.

  Maybeck and Charlene were currently squatting on the far side of a Pargo—a Disney golf cart used to move Cast Members around backstage. The Pargo was parked next to the bland, boxy building that housed the Base on the second floor. The hour was closing in on 2:30, a time of night both kids, even as holograms, grew overly tired.

  “Quiet tonight,” Charlene said.

  “Yeah. Bothers me.”

  “I know what you mean.

  “It’s like they’re pla
nning something,” Charlene said.

  “Count on it.”

  “Or they’re busy somewhere else.”

  Maybeck shifted uneasily. “That’s a disturbing thought.”

  “I’m just saying.”

  “I kinda wish you wouldn’t,” he said.

  “Going on two weeks,” she reminded. “So what if the plan is to tire us out? What if the purpose of the Siege is not to conquer the Base but to wear us down trying to protect it?”

  “See what I mean? You’re thinking too much.”

  “Or you aren’t thinking enough. What makes more sense, them trying to get control of the mechanical side of the parks, or to defeat us?”

  “Or both, you mean?”

  “That’s exactly what I mean! Yes. Wear us down with this siege. Spring some kind of attack or trap—on us, not the Base. And then, with us out of the way, take the Base, and the parks with it.”

  “You know the problem with you? You get really negative when you’re tired. Thanks for the chill pill, Charlie. Just what the doctor ordered.”

  “I’m just being pragmatic.”

  “Don’t do that. Don’t use words like that. Don’t be like Philby and start showing off how smart you are.”

  “Philby doesn’t do that. Philby is just Philby.”

  “Well, you’re not Philby. Am I right? You’re Charlie. So don’t go doing that.”

  “Okay,” she said. “I’m just being…realistic. How’s that?”

  “Don’t patronize me,” Maybeck said.

  “Don’t use words like that,” she complained, imitating his voice.

  They both laughed.

  The movement came from their right. A pair of blurs, definitely coming toward the building.

  “I counted two,” Maybeck said.

  “Yes,” Charlene said.

  “Could be decoys,” he said.

  “Absolutely.”

  “I’ll take this way. You take that.”

  “Way ahead of you.” Charlene rotated to her left, ready to circle the building counterclockwise.

  “Watch for a counterattack.”

  “You think?” she asked sarcastically. “Meet you on the other side. I’ll be the girl in all black.”

  “Eyes open,” he cautioned.

  “On three,” she said, and began counting.

  * * *

  Charlene appreciated that DHI 2.0 had significantly reduced the glow of her hologram. There had been a time when walking around in the dark was like wearing Day-Glo. But with the upgrade, she could sneak along the building’s exterior wall like a shadow.

  As she came around the opposite side, she saw them: two brooms-and-buckets climbing a drainpipe. There had been a time—years ago now—when such a sight would have stopped her cold. But she did not question what she saw for even a millisecond. Brooms, pirates, witches, fairies—there was nothing unexpected anymore. The Overtakers had recruited from nearly every group of Disney characters. All presented an equal threat, though each with specific skills.

  The brooms could swing their handles like baseball bats. They were agile and quick. Their buckets were known to contain toxic fluids that could chemically burn. They could sweep up a hurricane-force wind in seconds.

  None of which could harm her as long as she maintained her hologram state, as long as she kept fear at bay. But despite her courage under fire, Charlene considered herself the biggest chicken of all the Keepers. True or not, she didn’t look forward to testing her resolve. Not now. Not ever.

  But the two brooms were climbing—their limbs stuck through the buckets’ wire handles—toward the Base’s second-story windows.

  Maybeck rounded the far corner and spotted the brooms. He and Charlene met at the drainpipe.

  “We’ve got to warn them!” Charlene said.

  “We got to get up there and stop them!” Maybeck countered. He bent down and found a pebble and hurled it at the glass. He missed. “You’re the climber!” he said.

  She’d sensed that coming. The problem was…well, there were several problems. First, in nearly any battle the person with the high ground won, and she’d be coming at them from below; second, she wasn’t exactly sure what she was supposed to do. Pull them off the drainpipe? Third, there was the matter of fear and testing the full capabilities of 2.0: she would be climbing, therefore not fully a hologram—would that leave her vulnerable to injury and attack?

  “Go!” Maybeck said.

  Charlene took hold of the pipe and climbed, amazed at how easy 2.0 made everything.

  “I’m going to sound the alarm!” Maybeck called to her—for she was climbing quickly. He took off around to the other side, where a warning device had been installed.

  Charlene was instantly in her element: doing something physical. She wasn’t going to worry about upgrades or fear or strategy. She was going to climb up to the first broom and pull it off the side of the building. Hand over hand, she ascended.

  The broom bristles were divided into two “feet” that pressed to the pipe. Their limbs (they weren’t really arms but more like tree limbs) held the buckets, leaving their twiglike hands free to climb. But possibly because of the weight of the buckets, or just plain inexperience with climbing, they were slow. She gained on them. Reaching the bristles of the lower broom, she grabbed and tugged, hoping to pull the creature free of the drainpipe. Instead, it slipped and sank toward her. One of the buckets beaned her. The broom was a warrior. He—it!—swung a bucket at her awkwardly, but with enough authority to smash her in the face. The next attempt hit her hand and she screamed out and let go, hanging by just her left hand. She blocked the next attempt, hooked the bucket, and leaned her weight on it. The broom tilted to that side. She intentionally allowed herself to slide down a few feet, pulling the bucket and the broom with her. It let go of the pipe and fell, crashing to the ground.

  Both buckets spilled out a foul neon green goo. The broom scampered to get away from it, but too late. Its bristles made contact and melted away immediately. The melting spread like fire up the fuel of the bristles and the wood, dissolving it. A moment later, two wooden buckets sat on the asphalt. The green slime re-collected into two separate globs and oozed back into the tipped buckets.

  She looked up and saw the handle of the broom above her bent down as if looking at her. She felt a chill. Recognizing it as fear, she tried to push it away. Fear could compromise her hologram, making her more “mortal.” Had the upgrade to 2.0 eliminated that effect? The broom climbed quickly. Some of the goo sloshed out of a bucket. Reacting to an impulse of fear, Charlene spun on the drainpipe to avoid being hit—but wondered if that was necessary. Wouldn’t the goo just pass right through her? Was she willing to trust that? Was she able to trust that? It slopped down onto the asphalt.

  Unseen by her, the goo moved like an undulating starfish and then, finding no fuel, affixed itself to the wall and began oozing up the drainpipe, coming at Charlene’s feet like an alien blob. It was trying to return to its bucket.

  Charlene saw none of this. She reached out and took hold of the broom’s bristles only to have it kick her away. The broom scampered higher and tipped a bucket toward her. Charlene let go of the drainpipe and hung from the broom’s bristles. The spilled goo missed her, but the lower blob was now only a few feet away.

  A security alarm sounded inside and out.

  The broom stiffened in panic and then struggled to climb as Charlene now held to its stem. Reaching the window, the broom tipped the bucket toward the wall.

  Charlene could not allow the goo to disintigrate the wood of the windowsill or the broom would be inside. With two hands she made herself perpendicular to the pole, then swung her legs up and kicked the bucket, sending it flying. The goo spilled out, landing on the broom, dissolving it as Charlene completed her backflip, heading toward the ground.

  Maybeck came around the side of the building at that exact moment. He spotted her falling and sprinted to catch her, but wasn’t going to make it. He arrived a step short, his
outstretched arms missing her.

  Charlene stuck the landing, automatically lifting her hands overhead as she did in competitions.

  A stunned Maybeck lay there, his eyes brimming with tears.

  “You’re crying!” she said. “I’m touched.”

  “Am not,” he said, wiping his eyes. “I ran so hard my eyes blurred, is all. I…was almost…how in the world did you do that?”

  “Practice, practice, practice,” she said.

  Maybeck looked up. “When I saw you headed for the asphalt, I thought…”

  “I’m touched. Seriously. I really am.”

  “I…ah…” Maybeck knew there was no use trying to deny it. “Whatever,” he said. Looking down at the buckets, he added, “Nice move.”

  “Thank you.” She moved closer to the nearest bucket. “We need a glass jar to collect some of this stuff. The Imagineers should analyze it. It’s like liquid fire or something. It eats through wood. Maybe flesh, for all I know.”

  “Sweet!” Maybeck said, always excited to see the next great horror in person.

  “I think it uses itself up as it does whatever it does,” she said. “There was definitely less of it after it chewed up each of the brooms.”

  Maybeck produced an empty soda can from a trash bin.

  “No,” she said. “There can’t be any chance of spilling it.”

  “What if we just gave them the buckets?” he asked.

  “Duh! Of course!”

  On inspection, the buckets proved to be plastic looking like wood, possibly explaining why the goo hadn’t destroyed them as well.

  Maybeck carefully picked up two; Charlene, the two others. They carried them around to the front door of the Base, and Maybeck rang the exterior intercom. He explained to the person who answered what they were leaving on the doorstep and advised an extra dose of caution in handling it.

  The intercom’s welcome screen displayed the time as 3:13.

  “There won’t be any more action tonight,” he said. Historically, very little happened after 3:00 a.m.