Kingdom Keepers III(92)

“Why is he always so…Wayne?”

“Because he is,” Charlene said. “He knows what they’re capable of. He’s careful because of that.”

“Yeah, but I mean, I seriously doubt any Overtaker could have survived what we just went through. He planned it brilliantly: being DHIs we don’t have the same mass, so there isn’t the same gravitational pull as on a normal person. A Cast Member or character would have tossed their cookies and passed out. He could put us through something no one else could make it through. So why not spill the beans once we get through all that?”

“Because that video is on a computer server somewhere. Maybe only a DHI could see it here, but what if it was discovered and viewed another way?”

Maybeck nodded. “I hadn’t thought of that.” A rare moment of humility. The spinning must have gotten to him, she thought.

“We need to tell the others,” she said. She tried the phone. With the pod’s door closed she had no reception.

“Which begs the question,” Maybeck said. “Now that we’re both in here, who is going to open the door?”

The screen spit static.

The door to the pod opened.

* * *

The catwalk led nowhere. Willa and Jess had walked only a few feet when the metal mesh bridge arrived at a dead end. Behind them loomed the closed door to the projection booth.

“There!” Jess said, pointing.

Through the small window that allowed the projector’s beam to reach the screen they could see a man’s head moving around.

Willa said, “Wayne wanted us to find that maintenance diary. We’re done here.” She glanced down. It was such a long way to the floor. “How are you with climbing?”

“As in?”

“There’s a ladder right here. It probably goes down to another catwalk. Maybe we can find our way down.”

“Probably? The best we can do is probably?”

“It’s better than being caught.”

Jess said, “Okay, I’ll go first.”

Jess forced herself not to look down. She placed her feet on each rung, careful to make sure she made contact. The rungs were no more than a thin piece of steel, and slippery with a glossy gray paint.

“He’s coming!” Willa hissed down to Jess. “The door!”

Jess looked up through the mesh of the catwalk and saw the doorknob turning. She hurried down, moving dangerously fast. If she fell…

Willa climbed down quickly, and found that her ankles were suddenly in Jess’s face. Jess leaned back to avoid Willa’s shoes and nearly lost her grip. At last the toes of Jess’s shoes touched the catwalk below. Willa, moving too quickly, lost control. She slipped and fell the remaining few feet, crashing down onto the catwalk.

“Who’s there?” the man called out.

Looking down Willa saw at least four levels of catwalk, each connected to the next by ladders. The catwalks provided access to various levels of machinery, for repair and maintenance, creating a three-dimensional bridge system, a maze of narrow walkways that branched out or terminated in dead ends. Level 3, where the girls now stood, accessed the upper reaches of Soarin’s swings, the bench seating that lifted forty feet off the floor to provide the sensation of hang gliding.

Behind them, the New York flight was replaying, causing the light in the room to shift and change color, now a brilliant blue, now nearly pitch-black. The effect created a strobelike flicker so that one moment Jess couldn’t see Willa, and then a second later she got a clear look. It was a confusing and difficult environment to move around in without losing your balance or going over the rail.

Jess heard the clanking of the man above them running to the end of the Level 4 catwalk, and knew that once there, if he looked down he would see them.

Jess stumbled and lunged to the right.

Her arm disappeared.

She stopped and thrust her left arm forward: it vanished.

Now she hurried forward and tapped Willa on the back, not wanting to speak. Jess showed her how both hands disappeared when she put them beneath the two-foot-thick pipe that was the top hinge of the Soarin’ swings. Thick black rubber hydraulic tubing hung beneath the hinge arm, held there by wire strapping.

Jess motioned up.

They glanced back as they heard a rustling of fabric: the man was coming down the ladder!

Jess jumped up on the railing, grabbed hold of the hydraulic tube, and hung there, her back to the floor, her toes gripping the tube.

She went invisible. Beneath the pipe was a DHI shadow.

Willa jumped up and joined her, farther down the pipe, just as the man banged down onto the catwalk they had been standing on.

Jess slowed her breathing, since she was able to hear it herself and knew it might give her away.