“As if you aren’t.”
“Not exactly subtle. Someone could see us.”
“Did you bring the napkin?”
Philby fished it out of his pocket for Finn to see. “Remember, she warned us that it’s not different from MK over here: the characters come alive, and some of them are bound to be Overtakers.”
“So, we stay out of sight,” Finn said. He’d had an encounter once with pirates from Pirates of the Caribbean that had cost him a laser burn. He still had the scar to show for it.
“Out of sight and no confrontations,” Philby agreed. “We don’t want them to know what we’re up to.”
“Duh,” Finn said. The sound of an explosion rocked them both. “What was that?”
Philby checked his watch. “How incredibly stupid,” he said.
“What?”
“Fantasmic! Sometimes they do a couple of shows.”
“But it’s almost ten o’clock!”
“And they don’t start until it’s dark. What can I tell you?”
“You can tell me that we did not mess this up!” Finn said. “You want to think about who’s in Fantasmic!?”
“Ursula, Cruella De Vil, Scar, Jafar—” Philby was being his usual encyclopedic self.
“Chernabog, Maleficent!” Finn said. “Let’s not forget where that ice cream truck was found. Fantasmic! is like an Overtaker convention. What were we thinking?”
“You were the one,” Philby reminded, “who got freakin’ about Epcot.”
“Jess had that dream there,” Finn explained. “It wasn’t me. Don’t lay that on me. I never said Maleficent was there. But if Wayne’s locked up there, Maleficent can’t be far away.” He added, “What are we doing arguing about this, anyway?”
“The point is,” Philby said, “Maleficent and Chernabog could hide a lot easier in Fantasmic! than anyplace else, and they’d be protected here, too. Not only that, but who knows what they might be planning? Mickey defends all magic in Fantasmic!”
“So?”
“So they absolutely could be here in the Studios. The real ones, I mean.”
“Okay, they could be here. But it’s Wayne we’re worried about. If we’re going to take on those two, we’ve got to have Wayne on our side.”
“If that’s possible,” Philby said. “Yeah, I agree.”
“So let’s take advantage of everyone being out at Fantasmic! Right? I think we’re going around in circles.”
“I’m just saying: if we find Wayne…” Philby said.
“When we find Wayne,” Finn corrected him. “Look, we’ve got to trust Jess’s dream and that means Wayne is somewhere in Epcot. If they’ve captured him, then Maleficent’s involved.”
“Up to her elbows.”
“So if we track temperature changes in Epcot—”
“Maybe it leads us to Wayne. I get all that.”
“It will lead us to Wayne,” Finn said. “And once we find Wayne we’ll help him trap Greeny whether that’s here or wherever.”
“Greeny…I like that.”
“Thanks. So you’re the one with the map,” Finn said.
Philby got his bearings. “This way,” he said.
* * *
ENGINEERING BASE read the lettering on a door in an orange building that looked like a giant shoe box. It was situated behind Lights, Motors, Action! past a sign that read: CAST MEMBERS ONLY. Finn did not hesitate; he walked his DHI through the door’s glass, turned around and unlocked it for Philby. After relocking the door they climbed some stairs, as sketched out on Wanda’s napkin.
“Five minutes,” Philby reminded, marking the time on his watch.
Wanda had warned them that the door coming open might trip a silent alarm to Security. It was only a warning; she didn’t know if it would actually happen.
“If they receive an alarm like that,” she’d said, “you’ll have at least five minutes, but I wouldn’t take much more than that.”
They arrived in a room that looked like a miniature NASA control center. There were office cubicles around the small room’s perimeter separated by gray sound baffles and, in the room’s center, an island of computer terminals. Philby circled the island until arriving at a terminal marked HEATING, COOLING.
“You’re good,” Finn said, awed by the ease with which Philby navigated a variety of screens, drilling deeper and deeper toward the information they sought: PARKS, EPCOT, MAINTENANCE. The screen showed Epcot as a graphic. It took Philby four tries and nearly another minute to start the screen flashing.