Finn hated to admit it. But he nodded. “Doesn’t mean it is. She could have messed us up bad at any time. Why now?”
“It couldn’t have anything to do with us discovering Chernabog and stealing the journal,” she said sarcastically.
“We can’t just sit here,” he said.
She reiterated the plan. “Maybeck locates an OTK like Luowski and gets him to follow him. Philby traces the hologram’s signal over the network back to the OT server. We wait for a text telling us where to attack and we take out the server. Mission accomplished.”
“We didn’t wait earlier.”
“There was no Philby. We improvised. We nearly got baked by a pair of doughboys! He’s crossed over now. We’re good.”
Finn said nothing.
“So what’s wrong?” Willa asked.
“Philby’s wrong,” Finn said. “Tell me I’m crazy.”
Willa said nothing.
“That’s what I’m talking about,” Finn said.
“He’s just going through a rough patch.”
Finn shot her a look. “You think?” He glanced down at the Wave Phone in his lap, wondering if he could trust it.
* * *
Philby crossed over forty-five minutes late, an eternity for the plan to work. Phone in hand, he’d received Storey’s text that the galleys were a trap and that the OT server had special cooling.
But could he trust it?
He’d made it through the walls and into the ship’s tech center. All he needed now was a high-bandwidth surge on the LAN that didn’t match with a Keeper. With luck, he could trace it back to the OT server and notify Finn and Willa.
His phone rang.
“It’s me!” No names were spoken.
“Go ahead,” Philby told Maybeck.
Maybeck told him about Luowski bragging that the OTs would be controlling the Base by sunrise. That he sensed he was being followed, but that he’d never once seen anybody behind him. He didn’t know who was back there, if anyone, or what to do about it.
“Where are you,” Philby said, “and what route did you take to get there?”
Maybeck explained the episode on the AquaDuck and how he’d come from there to the Disney Vacation Club desk on Deck 3. He retraced his route in detail.
Philby opened the network log and began plotting Maybeck’s movement by network access points. At the same time, he mapped Maybeck’s route to his current location and found it hard to believe Maybeck had been followed on security video. Something wasn’t right.
“Hang on a second,” he said to Maybeck, trying to think. He scanned the racks of computer equipment, routers, ship’s audio and television. Wires. Plugs. Blinking lights. His encyclopedic memory accounted for the function of each and every box. He did not move on to a new piece of equipment until he understood and explained to himself the function of the box he was looking at.
“Still here,” Maybeck said.
“Stand by.”
Box by box, wire by wire, Philby ticked off its purpose. Then he hit a stack of router-size black boxes he couldn’t explain.
“You’re wearing your DHI costume?”
“Yeah,” Maybeck said.
“Take off your shirt,” Philby said.
“Say what?”
“Your shirt. Now!”
“Okay…it’s off. But for the record, this is kinky.”
Philby told him to check the seams of the shirt for a bump, something hard.
Several decks below, Maybeck’s fingers stopped abruptly.
“Got it.”
“Small. Maybe half an inch?”
“Correct,” Maybeck said.
“Strip,” Philby said.
“You need to get out more.”
“Seriously! Lose the costume.”
“Dude…”
“The laundry tags the costumes with radio frequency identification. Most of the hotels use the same technology to track sheets and towels. My guess is security realized they could use it to keep track of the peewees on board—no more lost kids. But it could also be used to follow the movement of anyone wearing a crew costume. Our costumes are assigned. Remember the laundry check-in back in Canaveral? They swiped each piece of clothing. So if you lose the costume, whoever’s tracking you loses you.”
“I’m supposed to bomb around in my underwear?”
“There are towels on the pool decks, if that’ll help. I don’t care what you wear, just don’t wear your Keepers costume.”
“But you guys are!”
“We’re holograms. You’re not. Lose the clothes and get your butt down to the engine deck.”
“The engine deck?”
“There’s a stairway off I-95. I can unlock doors for you as necessary.” Philby began typing into the terminal. “My guess is, our friends are going to need backup.”