He and Finn, Maybeck, and Charlene met at the Marble Slab ice cream shop. Charlene told them about the confrontation with Sally Ringwald. She’d been too hyper to catch every last word, but she gave them all she could remember. “Amanda will have the full four-one-one,” she said, “but what’s important is that Sally is definitely under some kind of spell, there’s lots more where she came from, and something big is going down on Saturday. For what it’s worth.”
“We’ve got to move on,” an anxious Philby said. “Willa…” It came out as a moan. “The point is, the server password’s not taking,” he explained. “Basically, I’m going to be locked out of the server if I try it remotely again, so I’ve got to make it count.”
“Why wouldn’t your password take?” Maybeck asked.
He was met with three blank faces—one of them with strawberry ice cream on both corners of her lips.
“If it’s the Imagineers’ security kicking in,” Philby said, “it’s not so bad—maybe someone would help us. But somehow I doubt it with everything that’s been happening. I’ve been thinking about it all day. I lost the connection after I first logged on. I thought it was the data card—you know, like a cell phone dropping out. Happens all the time. But it’s possible…maybe not probable, but possible…that my keystrokes were captured. It’s possible that the system was reset right after I’d logged on in order to break my connection. By the time I was back on, my password had been removed, my back door closed.”
“The OTs,” Charlene said.
“Yeah. They could have been waiting for me.”
Finn quoted the Kim Possible mission: “‘Everyone needs a server now and then.’ You think Wayne was trying to tell us the OTs had hacked the server?”
“They didn’t like that you came and got me,” Charlene said. “They aren’t about to allow that to happen again.”
“So they ambushed us,” Maybeck said.
“Without access, without control of the server, we can’t cross over,” Philby said. “The only way we can help Willa is to Return her. We’ve got two choices: we can either hack back into the server, or we can go into the Parks, try to find her, and then use the fob to Return her.”
“Good luck,” Maybeck said. “We don’t know which Park. We don’t know where she is in whatever Park she’s in. That could take years.”
Maybeck’s DHI had been locked up in a maintenance cage inside Space Mountain. He might never have been found there.
“If I hack the server, we’ll know which Park she’s in,” Philby reminded. “The activity log will tell us.”
“But,” Finn said, “in order to see the activity log we—you—have to hack the server. So we have to get to the server as us. Not DHIs. Right? I mean, we can’t cross over because we’ve lost access to the server, which is the whole point.”
“Right,” Philby confirmed. “We go in as us. Hopefully, I get us back online. After that we can cross over, if that’s what we have to do.”
Maybeck cursed and pushed away from the table, disgusted. “This rots,” he said. “We’ve got to get her back. What are we waiting for? We can use our employee passes. We get Philbo into the server room and let him do his thing. If the Return doesn’t work from there, we go into whatever Park and we get her back. I’ve been there—in the Syndrome. So have you, Philbo. It sucks. We’ve got to do this.”
Wayne had supplied them with employee cards that allowed them to enter the Parks as Cast Members. They rarely used them, keeping them for this kind of emergency.
“My mother expects me home,” Charlene said. “I have an orthodontist appointment this afternoon. I could sneak out later, but if I miss that appointment she might start calling your parents.”
“Jelly will cover for us,” Maybeck said. “She knows what it’s like to have a kid stuck in the Syndrome. Trust me, she wouldn’t wish that on anyone. You can all tell your ’rents you’re coming to my place to study for an exam.”
“We aren’t in exams,” Philby pointed out.
“Yeah, okay. I got you. But you think your parents know that?” Maybeck said.
* * *
Ariel had come and gone, but basically stayed through the night with Willa on the water tower. With the sunrise she moved Willa through water pipes to what she called “the grotto.” As a DHI, Willa was stuck in her pajamas, which was going to make it a problem to blend in. She spent the day in hiding, hatching a plan.