They had no choice but to lie there and await their fate.
At last they heard the door shut and the truck rumble off. Finn directed the group behind an outbuilding. Amanda had gotten Wanda’s phone number from the visit she had paid to Mrs. Nash’s house, but she didn’t have it in her phone’s contact list. It turned out not to matter, because Philby had Wanda’s number memorized, though no one knew how he’d gotten it in the first place. That was the thing about Philby: you learned not to ask.
Finn apologized for waking Wanda up and then attempted to explain their situation. She stopped him several times, whenever he mentioned her father—first in the Mission: Space video, then in person at Wonders. She agreed to pick up Maybeck and Jess, saying she could meet them at Epcot. She offered to get Maybeck a Studio Cast Member Security uniform if possible, and said she’d have Jess come dressed as one of the cast of Fantasmic!
With everyone now accounted for, Finn felt better. He led the four others deeper into the backstage area of the Studios. The Fantasmic! technical rehearsal was scheduled to start in less than five minutes. As they walked, Philby caught up to Finn and Amanda.
“Why do you suppose they’d be conducting technical rehearsals on a show that’s been playing for so many years?” Philby asked. “Have you thought about that?”
“I just assumed…” Finn said. But he didn’t finish his thought. “You’re saying it has something to do with the Overtakers?”
“What else? Something is disrupting the show. Tech rehearsals are all about the effects—the timing, the lighting, the music, entrance cues. It could have been what got Wayne going. Right? He hears a rumor about Fantasmic! having problems. The problems came on recently and aren’t going away. The first few attempts to fix them don’t work, so they schedule a whole week of tech rehearsals to strip the show down and build it back up, scene by scene, minute by minute.”
It made sense to Finn. “Okay. But he went missing way before now, way before these rehearsals.”
“But the first time Jess gets one of her telepathic visions was this week. Right now. Because he knew something no one else did: if we were going to stop them with the least risk to the audience, we had to do it now, when the rehearsals are going on. The genius of Maleficent and Chernabog hiding at Fantasmic!—if that’s even what they’re doing—is that the only time anyone’s around that place, there are like five thousand guests hanging out. Who’s going to put them at risk?”
“The genius of them hiding there,” Finn corrected him, “is that they belong there. All they have to do is stash an Auto-Animatronic figure or a Cast Member or two and then take their place. Who’s to know? Who looks that closely at Maleficent? It’s probably dark backstage. From out front she’s pretty far away and not very big. Green skin. Weird chin. Who’s going to pull her aside and ask for a Disney ID anyway?”
“So what you’re saying, Philby,” said Amanda, “is that they aren’t tech rehearsals at all. They’re more like exorcisms. The Disney people are actually searching for Overtakers in hopes of finding them and locking them up, or whatever they do with them?”
“If they know what they’re up against,” Philby said, “then that’s exactly what they’re doing. But—”
“If they don’t know what they’re up against…” Finn said.
“—then everybody involved in those rehearsals is in danger,” Amanda said. “Including us.”
“Most definitely including us,” Philby said.
Finn said, “The Imagineers will want to lock them up and study them. If anyone’s going to take them on, if anyone’s going to try to stop them permanently it’s going to be…us.”
The word died on the tip of his tongue. Amanda could have corrected him; Philby could have corrected him. Finn reached down and touched the grip of the sword.
Why had Wayne put him in charge, anyway? Why couldn’t it be Maybeck with the sword, or Philby with his encyclopedic knowledge of famous Disney sword battles? Why him? The answer came to him indirectly, as it so often did. He had been the first one to cross over; the first one to meet Wayne; he was still the only one who could all-clear nearly at will. He was the one because Wayne had chosen him. There it was, as simple as he could break it down. Asking why Wayne had chosen him would only send him running in circles right back to the fact that Wayne had chosen him. He needed to stop questioning it and start doing something about it. His hand gripped the sword so tightly that, just for a moment, his fingers appeared bloodless, his knuckles white, the sword’s grip welded to his hand. At one with it.