“You okay with this?” Philby asked nervously, his foot on the first step of Escher’s Keep. It was a route that had to be memorized, and neither boy had attempted to climb it in several months.
“Let’s do it,” said Finn.
Philby stepped aside, allowing Finn to lead the way. It was no picnic. Sometimes stairs led nowhere. A single misstep would mean falling down a slide to the ground floor or into the moat. The route up to an elevator that accessed the penthouse apartment included invisible bridges, upside-down staircases, and trapdoors. The illusions were the result of mirrors, projections, and trick lighting, their combined effect overpowering.
“Do you remember the way?” Finn asked. He faced four doors, all in different colors. They formed a semicircle on a small platform of polished floor tiles. He and Philby were fifteen feet above the ground floor, having ascended the first staircase correctly—skipping every other tread.
“I want to say second from the right: blue. But it’s your call,” Philby said.
Turning the wrong door handle caused a trapdoor to open.
Philby stayed off the platform in case Finn chose incorrectly. The plan was to take turns until they got it right.
Finn tried the blue door, and the floor fell out from under him. Down, down, he raced, the slick slide spinning him in tight coils before throwing him out onto the floor. He headed to the slanted stairs and began climbing again.
Philby tried the yellow door. The trapdoor opened beneath him.
Green—for “go”—seemed too simple a choice, so on Finn’s next attempt he tried the purple door, and it opened.
“Purple,” Finn called down to Philby, who was gingerly skipping steps as he made his way up the slanted staircase.
Once through the purple door, Finn started across an invisible bridge—an effect so convincing he would have sworn there was nothing beneath his feet. He moved across it in tiny steps, just barely sliding each running shoe forward, making sure something solid was beneath it. Philby, behind him, took the novel approach of getting down on hands and knees and breathing low onto what turned out to be glass, and then following the orbs of fog.
“It’s a mirror,” said Philby, sneaking up behind the slower Finn. The trick was compounded by the fact that a false destination—a second purple door—was projected at the other end of the invisible bridge, making Finn want to head in that direction. In fact, at its midpoint, the bridge veered right, arriving at what looked like a solid wall, which wasn’t solid at all. The two boys ended up on a second small platform.
“I remember this part,” Philby said. “This is where we go down the stairs in order to go back up.”
“Are you sure?” Finn tested the “up” staircase: it was real. He thought Philby had it wrong.
But Philby waved his hand across the step four steps above this first step, and then punched his hand right through the illusion—the stairs stopped midflight, nothing but a projected image. He led the way down a staircase and then back up a longer staircase, which would make it appear to anyone standing below as though the boys were walking upside down.
“You two!” a low voice called out loudly. “Come down from there!”
Finn caught sight of an upside-down Cast Member. He was dressed as a barbershop singer, in white pants, a red-and-white-striped shirt, and a straw hat: a Dapper Dan Cast Member.
“Security,” Finn whispered to Philby. “I faced Dapper Dans just like him that time Amanda and I were here taking pictures of everyone’s DHIs. They were trying to catch me.”
“You are not permitted in this area!” the man hollered. “Come down at once.”
“I don’t think we should trust him.”
They reached a third platform and ducked behind a false wall with two windows. “You think he’ll come after us?” Philby asked.
Thunder cracked high above them.
“I think there’s something going on here,” Finn answered. “The weather balloon, the monkeys, Amanda and Jez showing up for the first time in forever. And personally, I don’t trust anyone dressed up like he’s selling fried chicken. He could be anybody. That’s an easy costume to fake.”
“So we ignore him?”
Another crack of thunder. It was getting close.
“Outrun him,” Finn said, “is probably more like it.”
“And if we’re caught?” Philby said. “You ever read those contracts we signed? They’ll remove our DHIs from the server. They’ll replace us with other kids. We’ll no longer be Disney Hosts, no longer have the Gold Fastpasses. We’ll lose it all.” He hesitated. “All that for some weird balloon? You sure it’s worth it?”