At the moment, she was watching Finn and Maybeck as she was writing to Finn on D-Gamer.
panda: have not seen either willa or philby on camera
Finn: can u c the cast member entrances?
panda: yes. but have not seen them, park is packed, could be here.
Finn: i think the otakers may have heard the change in music same as us. U watch home base for Phily and Wila. also keep eye on us. watch our backs.
panda: can do.
Finn hesitated before writing the next message. But he felt he had to tell her.
Finn: maybeck and i think there’s a chance jez escaped, it might explain some stuff that’s been happening, if so, she’s prob hiding in park.
For a long time the screen flickered, but no message appeared. He couldn’t imagine what Amanda must have been feeling.
Finn: we could be totally wrong, maybeck and i are going 2 track down each of the diary drawings, maybe her escape was part of her dreams. ????? r u ok?
panda: scared 4 jez
Finn: my dad’s crackberry does the internet, i will go onto vmk and try 2 find wayne. maybe he can help us find philby.
panda: i’ll watch 4 them and i’ll watch u and maybeck too…
The cursor hesitated. She wasn’t done typing.
…but if she escaped, why haven’t we heard from her?
Finn didn’t have an answer for that.
Finn: ????? don’t know.
Amanda zoomed the camera back and tried to stay with Finn and Maybeck as they headed off. It took her a minute to figure out how to follow them, one camera to the next—she lost them twice—but not long after, she pulled up their images as they moved from camera to camera. She pieced together the route they were taking to Discovery Island. At the same time, she studied the tiny thumbnail views, hoping beyond hope to catch a glimpse of her missing sister.
* * *
Finn and Maybeck walked the Jungle Trek in a hurry, though not so fast as to stick out. They kept about ten yards apart; if one of them was spotted, maybe the other wouldn’t be. The Trek had an occasional park ranger at an education station—there to give hands-on demonstrations to the curious—any one of whom might be an Overtaker. Finn paid particular attention to each of these rangers as Maybeck passed, glad to see that none seemed to take any particular interest in him.
Soon, they reached the tiger-viewing yards, where they stood among the ruins of an Indian temple—the jungle and buildings so authentic that, although he’d never been there, Finn could imagine himself halfway around the world. The footpath rose here to where it was fifteen or twenty feet off the ground, the walls of the crumbling temple holding in the Park guests, offering views to either side, down into grassy knolls and fields. In the heat of the day, the tigers had taken to the shade at the edge of the wall that contained them. People crowded the temple’s viewing windows to get a decent look at the wild cats. The arching windows held no glass but were divided into small squares as if they did, or once had. And while there was no pushing or shoving to win the best view, there was some seriously competitive leaning going on.
But before Finn ever reached the clot of guests at the windows, Maybeck stopped and pulled him aside.
“Check it out!”
Just Maybeck’s tone of voice told Finn it was something important. Typically, Maybeck was much too cool to get excited about anything. “Son of a ______.” Maybeck said a word that would have once again gotten Finn grounded for a week.
“Oh…man,” he said, while Maybeck was busy unfolding his copy of the page from Jez’s diary.
The temple’s stone wall held a series of stone carvings, four feet by four feet pictographs showing different scenes. The primitive carvings were beautiful. One showed a person with his or her arms in the air, and an eagle flying overhead. Another had a fruit tree at its center, with birds in the branches and deer surrounding it. A monkey sat at the base of the tree holding a piece of the fruit. There were two others, both depicting a weird-looking guy with a mustache dancing around and doing strange things. But it was the image of the monkey that captured and held Finn’s attention.
Maybeck pointed to the monkey. “That’s the monkey she drew,” he said. “It wasn’t a live monkey, it was this one.”
“Agreed.”
panda: finn, check out the diary page.
He quickly texted back to her.
Finn: the monkey? can u c what we c?
panda: check out the window, my angle matches the diary exactly.
“The windows,” Finn told Maybeck, pointing to the knot of visitors straining for a look. He then found the incredibly similar drawing on the photocopy of the diary and pointed this out to Maybeck as well.
He and Maybeck moved toward the crowd.