Kingdom Keepers III(26)
The guard reached out. His hand swiped right through Finn, accompanied by an electronic buzzing.
“Dang,” the guard said. He ran his hand through Finn again. He reached for his radio. “Hey, Tim…it’s Tanner. Can you check—?”
“We…are experiencing a DHI server malfunction,” said Philby coming up from behind the guard. “Please…stand by.”
“Tanner?” It was a man’s voice over the handheld radio.
“Yeah, I’m here. Ahhh.…For some reason those host things didn’t shut down properly. You’d better ask tech services to look into it. I’ve got three of them out here talking to me.”
“Talking to you?” the radio voice said.
“Offering to show me around the Studios.”
“Okay. I’m on it,” the man’s voice replied over the radio.
Finn searched his memory and said, “I’m sorry you won’t be joining me today. Maybe another time. Advance reservations can be made through the dining hotline. Do you have any more questions?”
“Umm…that would be no,” the guard said.
“Have a star-filled day at Disney Hollywood Studios.” Finn walked mechanically toward the camera shop. He’d studied his real DHI enough to know that while the 3D projections were phenomenally lifelike, movement was not perfect. When walking slowly, the DHIs tended to have stiff knees. When running fast, they blurred.
A few minutes later, all five DHIs collected outside the Kodak shop. The guard had moved on from Finn, eyeing Maybeck and Willa as they arrived late. Finn didn’t feel like pushing his luck. “Split up in groups and meet over at Soundstage B in ten minutes. If you’re stopped by a guard, stick to the scripts we recorded for our DHIs.”
“Is that how you got around him?” Maybeck asked. “Willa and I saw you talking to him—”
“Later,” Finn said. “We can catch up later.” He and Charlene took off up the street, mapping out a route in his head to the soundstages.
“You were amazing back there,” Charlene said, running at his side.
“It’s amazing that he didn’t question the way we’re dressed, that we’re out of costume. He must not know the DHIs very well. He’s probably a night-duty guy.”
“Do you think they’re watching us now?” she asked.
“Could be,” Finn answered. “Philby would know about the security cameras, but we’ve got to assume they’re watching us.”
“Then what’ll we do?”
“It may make some kind of weird sense to them to see us all meet up outside the same soundstage where we were created. That may give us an excuse to get inside.”
“Isn’t that a little risky?” she asked.
“You saw what happened with his hand,” Finn said. “It went right through me.”
“Yeah. So?” she said. “That’s you. Most of the time our DHIs are kind of half and half. You know that. They can catch me. The rest of us. Besides, what if they shut down the projectors like that guy said…”
“The servers are always running,” Finn reminded her. “Philby said so and so did Wayne. They’ll close our programs and assume we’re shut down. If they see us after that they’ll file a maintenance ticket and forget about it.”
“If you say so.”
“Look, this is our chance to scout the soundstage. To see if we can figure a way inside and if Philby can figure out a way to shoot what we need to turn Amanda and Jess into DHIs. It was a hassle getting over here. You want to leave? We can leave. But—”
“I’m not up for leaving,” she said, “but I also don’t like the idea of their checking us out, knowing where we are. The Overtakers have guys in security. We all know that. Getting lucky once doesn’t mean it’s going to happen every time.”
“The cameras aren’t everywhere,” Finn said, as Soundstage B came into view. It was a large, sand-colored building, like a giant box. “The attractions, mostly. Philby will know exactly where. I get what you’re saying: it’s better if we don’t advertise. But at the moment they’re thinking we’re part of a computer glitch. We can use that to our advantage.”
“Behind us,” Charlene said, having glanced over her shoulder.
Finn looked back. Whoever, whatever it was, was tall, clearly an adult, and moved like a woman. She seemed in a hurry to reach them.
“What do we do?” Charlene asked.
His temptation was to run first, answer questions later. But they’d had success fooling the guard. To run was to look guilty of something.