While holding the Hypersleep button, she stretched to find the Valves switch. She felt in the dark—top switch, middle switch, lower switch. She walked her fingers up and counted them again.
She talked to herself: “Top: Electrics. Middle: Valves. Lower: Hydraulics.”
“What’s going on? We’re about to…crash on Mars.”
“I’m going to throw the switch,” she called out. “Hold on.”
“Hold on? I’m flat as a pancake over here, Charlene, and I’m about to lose my cookies. And that makes pancakes and cookies, and that’s not pretty.”
Charlene touched the switch, hesitating only a heartbeat. Then she pushed it down.
Suddenly, the pressure against her chest tripled.
“It’s speeding up!” Maybeck cried out.
“I…know,” she managed to choke out. But she could barely breathe.
* * *
Willa turned the handle of the projection-booth door, pausing before pulling it open. She double-checked with Jess, who nodded. Willa cracked the door open just far enough to peer inside.
The overhead fluorescent tube lights flickered and came on automatically—motion sensors had sensed the door opening. A bar of light escaped the crack in the door and Willa did the only thing that made any sense to do: she jerked the door open, pulled Jess inside with her, and eased the door shut as quickly and quietly as possible.
The first thing that impressed her about the space was how neat and clean it was. The equipment was big and clunky—white metal boxes, and a tall glass one just ahead, all carefully labeled and covered in warning stickers. The projector itself was enormous, situated in the middle of the narrow room. Wide film fed from the glass case into the projector and then looped around and returned to the case.
“The IMAX film,” Jess said, “is a continuous loop. This box,” she said, indicating the glass tower, “keeps the film organized—see all the rollers?” The glass box held the film between rollers top to bottom so that a hundred yards or more of film could be stored in a four-foot-by-three-foot box, just four feet high.
“Maybe I get the four-one-one another time, if it’s okay with you?” Willa said, her face sweaty, her eyes nervous.
“Sure, no problem.” But Jess studied all the equipment with fascination, having read about it and studied it, but never having seen it in person.
Willa moved quickly through the projection room to a far door and carefully opened it as well. “He’s not here,” she said. “It’s a storage room.”
Jess took her time at the projector.
“It’s like one of those computer clean rooms,” Willa said. “And check it out: the temperature and humidity are monitored. So I’m guessing this is the place that reported the temperature drop back to maintenance.”
Jess finally broke away from her study of the gear. “And that means…maleficent?”
“If Maleficent entered this room the temperature would sure drop considerably, so yes, I assume at some point she was here.”
“For what reason?”
“That’s what we need to figure out. Does it have to do with their testing the new New York film? Something to do with Wayne? Was he kept here for a while? I don’t know the answers.”
“We’re assuming Wayne is here somewhere in Epcot,” Jess said. “Because of my dream—the jacket he’s wearing and our discovery of the boardroom mural. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“So what if the Overtakers found out that Wayne had discovered their plans? I mean, when they took me, it was to keep me from seeing into the future and knowing what they were up to. So what if Wayne presented the same problem: he knew what they were up to?”
“Okay, I’m with you.”
“And Wayne had been all over the park putting this together. Right? I mean that’s what he would do, isn’t it? Make sure he was right? And let’s say that the Overtakers had some way of knowing where Wayne had gone. A GPS chip in his phone, or maybe a memo he’d written, or questions he’d asked to the wrong person. That’s not so important. What is important is that the Overtakers had some way of knowing where he’d been, what he’d been up to.”
“Which could have happened in any number of ways.”
“Exactly right.”
“So,” Willa said, “Maleficent or the Overtakers retrace Wayne’s steps, and in doing so trip all the temperature sensors because the temperature drops wherever she goes.”
“She’s smart enough to hide somewhere that won’t happen. We’re not going to find her in one of the places on the maintenance list. I don’t believe that’s going to happen.”