Kingdom Keepers V(109)

“Mom…”

But his mother wasn’t in there behind the woman’s eyes. The crow controlled her now; she, a puppet to its whims and instructions.

He broke her grip with a wrestling move, but it felt more like a bone snapping in two. Like an artery tearing. She had never abandoned him. How could he leave her in the grip of this demonic creature beating its black wings above her?

But he did just that: turned his back on them both, fled down the hall, and slid into a just-closing elevator.

He looked up at two guests who seemed a bit horrified at finding a teenage boy on the floor of their elevator car, out of breath and drenched in sweat, tears in his eyes.

* * *

It bothered Charlene that she couldn’t stop thinking about Maybeck. She had crossed over as planned and had headed off to retrieve her Wave Phone where she’d hidden it so she could receive messages from Philby for where to look for the crate.

But why Maybeck? Why was he stuck in her head? From the moment he’d caught up with them on the island and described his fight with Luowski she’d found herself worried about him. Him, of all people. The brash, cocky kid who didn’t even know she existed. And yet…their teaming up at the Base had changed her opinion of him. She pushed him out of her mind and tried to focus on the job at hand.

“Hey.”

And there he was, stepping out to meet her near the lobby elevators.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

“Good to see you, too.”

“The question stands.”

“I thought you might…maybe you could use some backup.”

“Because I’m a girl?”

“No…I mean, yes. But not like that, not like because you can’t handle it, because…I don’t know. Forget it. Maybe it was a mistake.”

“Maybe it was.”

He looked at her, as confused as she’d ever seen him.

“I thought…” he said. He waved his finger between them.

“You thought what?”

“You…never mind.”

“It’s thoughtful of you,” she said, trying to recover. Why did she push away the boys she actually liked? What was with that?

“We were a pretty good team at the Base.”

“We were. Are.”

“That’s all,” he said. “With you crossed over. Me, not. I thought…I don’t know. Forget it.”

That was the other thing: all boys had a breaking point after which they threw some kind of switch and totally lost interest. She had no way of doing that.

He turned his back on her. “See you.”

“I’m glad you’re here,” she spit out.

He stopped. “For real?” Still aimed away from her.

“Totally.”

He turned toward her. If his face had been a lightbulb she’d have needed sunglasses. “It’s your deal, not mine. I’m just here as backup.”

“Agreed,” she said. She pointed upstairs.

Maybeck nodded.

* * *

“Excuse me,” Philby said.

The woman had been reading in bed when Philby’s hologram walked through her wall. Now she yanked up the bedsheet to cover herself, eyes wide, tongue-tied. She was not young. Far from it, he was happy to see. She’d dropped her book in her lap, the bedsheet clutched tightly like a security blanket. Slack-jawed.

“Sorry about this,” he said. He kneeled and poked his head and shoulders through the floor of her stateroom. He stood up, a full boy again. “Maintenance work. Keeping the plumbing working. Sorry to bother you.”

He disappeared through the far wall and into a narrow engineering space. He hoped she would call the front desk and report the incident, but worried she might not—old people, like Philby’s grandparents, had credibility issues and did not want to appear senile. Claiming a boy ghost had spoken to her would only get her odd looks. But he was counting on the fear factor to make her report him. Security would be notified and would respond to her complaint. This in turn would leave security temporarily empty, which served his purpose well.

He ducked his hologram head through the floor. He’d established himself perfectly: he was looking (upside down) at the back of a security officer working at a desk that held a pair of computer screens, the larger of which displayed color security camera views in a quadrant format. The phone rang, and the man answered it.

“He went…where?” the man said. Then—“Oh, come on!” He paused to listen. “Yeah…okay…I’ll speak with her.” Reluctantly, he pulled himself out of his chair in the midst of a deep sigh.

Philby extracted his head from the room to avoid being seen. He counted to ten and peeked through again. The room was empty. Here, then, was a chance to practice the benefits of 2.0: the added control over the physical space. Typically, a floor, attraction, or a sidewalk held a DHI, as the projection was set to do just that. When crossing through walls, technically a Keeper was in DHI shadow. Using 2.0, a DHI could “force” transitions—moving one’s image from projector to projector, like a cell phone tower handing off a signal. Philby did so now. He closed his eyes and reminded himself that, as pure light, he could go wherever he wanted to go, that there were no boundaries. He jumped up a few inches, still squinting, and fell through the floor, landing surprisingly hard—and surprisingly loudly—on the floor of the security office below. He recovered quickly and scrambled under a desk just as the door flung open.