Kingdom Keepers III(91)

“Duck!” Philby roared.

Finn tucked into a ball just as Maleficent’s bleeding snake head cut through the air overhead, its fangs dripping a venom that looked like pus.

The car took off, gaining speed. The narrator said something about robots and picking up the pace.

The car moved faster and faster. And faster still.

“I don’t like this,” Philby said, struggling to sit down in a seat. He helped Finn turn around and planted him in the seat next to him.

The test car was moving much too fast. Faster than it was engineered for. Through one turn. Around another to the left. Another to the right. The tires screeched through the next turn to the left and louder still to the right. More turns, the car rocking up onto its partially melted tires. A truck came at them head-on and nearly hit them—a projection that Finn had forgotten about. The car should have slowed then, but it did not. It was moving far too quickly for them to jump.

It whipped through a few scenes that should have been taken at a leisurely pace and headed for the barrier test at far too high a speed. The barrier was timed to lift out of the way of the oncoming car at the last second—one of the ride’s many thrills—but the timing was set up for a much slower speed. The car arrived before the barrier lifted. It rammed the barrier head-on, punched a hole through it, and broke out into the night air outside—onto the oval track and the fastest, most dangerous part of the ride.





33


CHARLENE STRUGGLED TO maintain consciousness as Mission: Space flew out of control. The center screen, which was supposed to simulate a view out the space capsule, showed them landing on Mars, balancing on a precipice above a thousand foot fall, and then…

Falling over the edge.

The sensation inside the capsule was of both falling and weightlessness, a nauseating combination that left Maybeck making unpleasant noises next to her.

Oh, please don’t, Charlene found herself thinking. If he puked inside the pod it was going to reek, and she would likely follow.

They crashed at the bottom in a roar of metal and rock and she wondered if she hadn’t been half-DHI at that moment what effect it would have had on her body. She assumed she would have passed out. But she remained awake and hyperalert, charged with adrenaline.

The screen had gone dark upon impact. It now sputtered static and came back to life.

A man’s face filled the screen: an old man.

Wayne.

“If you’re seeing this, you have survived an arduous journey and Jessica has managed to see what I’d hoped she’d see, and that means I am speaking to one or more of the Kingdom Keepers, and only to the Kingdom Keepers. It also means that something has happened to me, either of a temporary or permanent nature, and that necessitates diligence on your part, and likely requires a great deal of you in the hours to come. It’s probably dark in the capsule, so let me take care of that.”

The lights came on. The effect was eerie—as if he were right there with them.

“That should do it,” he said. “If you want to take notes, you’ll find paper and a pen beneath the center seat.”

Charlene found them and prepared to write.

“I don’t believe this,” Maybeck said. “I thought I’d seen everything.”

“Hush!” she said.

“The Overtakers are planning something of a scale we’ve not seen before,” Wayne continued. His eyes tracked to his right. He was afraid of being discovered. “It will come on the heels of a deception of the worst kind. Beware your friends and know your enemies. I trust you have found the carousel and that Philby knew what to do or you wouldn’t be here.”

He was being vague, perhaps in the fear that despite his efforts the Overtakers might discover his message. Charlene scribbled down as much as she could of what he was saying.

“Remember: we stand under it to get out of the rain but it lives above our brain.” He glanced furtively to his right again.

“I haven’t got long.” He smiled, wincing. “None of us do. The solution is in Norway. Finn must know that. Trust it. By all means, he must use it. Now and later. He—you all—will need more help. What I’m talking about: it is mightier than the sword.…At some point you will meet my daughter, I presume, if you haven’t already. I didn’t name her by chance, you know? Do you know? If you don’t now, you will before long.”

The image fizzled and went black. But just before he disappeared into a curtain of static, Wayne’s gaze shifted to his right and froze as terror filled his kind face and Charlene felt a horrible hollow in the pit of her stomach.

“That’s all?” Maybeck said.

“I wrote it down,” Charlene told him.