Kingdom Keepers III(2)

“I had a pet monkey when I was a child,” Wayne said. “My mother gave it to me for my thirteenth birthday.”

“Fascinating.”

“A terrific pet, a monkey. A real friend. Except the more freedom I gave him, the more freedom he wanted. The more freedom he took. I eventually had to give him back to the store that had sold him to us because he would no longer get back into his cage at night. He couldn’t give up his newly found freedom.

“Well, the same thing has happened to the characters,” he continued. “Turns out some of them like having the park all to themselves. Mostly the villains, as it so happens. They enjoy bossing around the likeable characters, sabotaging the more popular rides, and generally making trouble. We think a group of them—we’re not exactly sure who all of them are—have decided to drive the good characters out, to take over the park and make it a dark, evil place. The plan seems to be a simple one—if they can scare away the good guys, only the villains will be left. Eventually only people attracted by evil will come. That’s why we call them the Overtakers. Their mission is to change the park forever.”

Wayne had studied Finn’s face to see how much, if any of this, Finn believed. He couldn’t read him.

“We had it wrong for the longest time,” Wayne said. “We thought it was about them turning it into a ‘dark park’—a place where, instead of being magical and happy, it would be villainous and dark. We’re no longer certain that’s the case. We now think instead they want the parks—maybe all the Disney properties—for themselves. The more playgrounds, the better.”

Finn remembered the day clearly, remembered how he’d felt about the idea of losing Disney World, Animal Kingdom, Epcot, Hollywood Studios. As DHIs—nonhuman holograms—he and the four others could infiltrate the park at night, making efforts to spy on and bring down the Overtakers. This had been Wayne’s grand scheme, his big plan in making the kids DHIs in the first place. Their most recent effort had been in the Animal Kingdom. They’d managed to save a friend from the Overtakers. But only Wayne saw the bigger picture. Only Wayne fully understood any of it.

They had to find him.

This was their fifth night searching the Magic Kingdom; their last now that they’d been spotted by the pirates and Stitch, now that all the Overtakers under Maleficent would be looking to…eliminate them. Or at least to trap their DHIs, a situation that left their sleeping bodies back in their parents’ homes unable to wake up. They called the condition the Syndrome—short for Sleeping Beauty Syndrome. Maybeck had experienced it once. So had Willa and Philby, briefly, in the Animal Kingdom. The Syndrome was nothing to mess with.

“Note to self,” Finn said, intending it for Maybeck, “we are glowing bodies of light running through the dark jungle. You really think my face is going to give us away?”

Of the five DHIs, Finn had the most control over his crossed-over state as a hologram. The four others existed in a kind of suspended state when crossed over: half DHI, half human kid, susceptible to getting hurt by accident or at the hands of others.

Finn had learned with Wayne’s guidance to separate himself from fear, from all sensation—touch, sound, taste, smell, sight—and in doing so to make himself pure light, a stream of energy, a hologram just like his DHI that Disney used as the park guide. He couldn’t maintain this pure state for long—a minute or two at most. But he liked to rub his skill in Maybeck’s face.

Finn ran right through three palm trees, not bothering to get out of their way. Maybeck weaved and bobbed, avoiding collision.

“Show-off!” Maybeck said.

“Elitist!” Finn fired back. His body passed transparently through a huge rock that Maybeck had to scramble over.

“Know-it-all!” Maybeck said.

“Eye candy!” Finn said. Maybeck was popular with the girls at school.

They both heard the footfalls at once: the pirates had closed the distance and were only a matter of yards behind them now.

“We should continue this later,” Maybeck said.

“Agreed.”

“Right now we need something resembling a plan.”

“I have one,” Finn said. “Do you?”

They continued running, Finn out of breath, Maybeck not winded at all.

“That would be no,” Maybeck said.

“All right then.”

“All right then, what? ”

“We’ll go with my plan,” Finn said proudly.

“Only if you have a plan in the next five seconds,” Maybeck countered.

At that instant, Finn felt a burning sensation on his arm. He didn’t really have much of a plan, and Maybeck’s reliance on him had taken him out of his pure holographic state. He wasn’t glowing as brightly. He was part human again.