“It’s here. Right here,” she said. “Amanda figured it out, once I realized what I’d dreamed. And check it out,” she added, pointing between the two sheets.
“No way!” Maybeck said.
“Shh!”
He compared the two pages and turned her drawing until the positioning of the structures undeniably matched.
“It’s tonight,” she said. “Look at these numbers.” Awaking from her dream, she’d written down three numbers: 417. Together they made no sense. But separated, they could be a month, 4, April, and a date, 17.
“Tomorrow,” Maybeck said. But then, realizing it would soon be after midnight: “Or late tonight.”
“Tonight.”
“And these?” he asked, indicating the Xs.
“I thought you might know. I don’t have any idea.”
Maybeck oriented himself to the Google Earth sheet and then to her drawing. He turned away from her and looked up.
“It’s them,” Maybeck said.
“The OTs?”
“Yeah! Has to be. Their positions. This is…incredible. This gives us the chance to attack instead of waiting to be attacked. Have you studied siege strategies? The best, really the only, way for the besieged to win is to wait for disease to kill the enemy, or pull off an ambush. And we don’t have time for disease.”
“But what if I’m wrong?”
“You? You’re never wrong.”
“I’m wrong all the time. You just don’t see all the times I’m wrong.”
“Listen,” Maybeck said, “no way a handful of us are going to hold off a full-scale attack. I can take the volunteers around the outside and come back to these locations and hope to surprise the OTs. This is a gift.”
He reached out, arms wide, but passed right through the hologram.
“That was a hug,” he said, “in case you didn’t get the idea.”
“Noted.”
The first sign of something wrong was the sound of machinery. Initially, it was just pops and clunks. But when that was followed by the sound of water—a lot of water—Finn’s insides turned to Jell-O. He lay on the surfboard atop the calm water, chilled and feeling both vulnerable and alone. Lingering at the back of his mind was a question that echoed every few minutes: why had Wayne sent him into a park that didn’t offer DHI projection? Prior to the upgrade he’d possessed the ability to picture a pinprick of light at the end of a tunnel and, presto chango, his arms and legs would tingle and he’d be nothing but pure light. All clear. The condition hadn’t lasted long, but it had gotten him out of some serious situations. Since the DHI 2.0 upgrade, he’d been unable to go all clear. Floating like a cork in the middle of a huge pool, wooden walls rising thirty feet on three sides of him, a spillway beach behind him, he was wishing for the chance to go all clear.
He’d seen the Surf Pool in action before. When the dam that was now in front of him belched, out came waves anywhere from three to ten feet high. Alone and slightly afraid of the sounds building up on the far side of the dam, it felt to him more like it should be called Tsunami Canyon rather than Surf Pool.
Mixed into the gurgle of water were the distant sounds of voices saying “Good night.” The last Cast Member passed out of the gate. A car started up and drove off. He hoped his mother was paying attention.
Dread flooded him, followed by the realization that a shadow was stretched across the water’s surface. He glanced up toward the guard shack to see a figure there. Silhouetted. Indistinguishable. It stepped back and out of sight, taking its shadow with it.
The wall unleashed a flood tide. It wasn’t a single wave, as he’d seen before, but a divided wave, phenomenally high on either side, nonexistent in the center. The waves, fifteen feet up the side walls, crawled forward. A leading ripple lifted Finn’s board several feet. Then the side waves rose even higher and rushed to join in the center, forming a white-capped plume of surging water that foamed and raced directly for Finn.
The front of his board jerked straight up. He clung to the sides as it rose like a rocket, crested, and slid down the opposite side. The rush of water nearly stripped off his suit. It hit his face so hard it forced his mouth open and he thought he might drown. He couldn’t see. He fought to hold on; the surfboard’s leash remained around his right ankle. The pool churning water, foam, and spray. Behind him, the huge wave crashed to shore.
Slowly the water calmed and, as it did, the gurgling began again. He didn’t dare paddle for land—he wouldn’t make it in time, and the next wave would carry him and throw him into the pool furniture on the beach. His only hope, as Melanie had coached, was to face forward and ride over the waves. So he turned the surfboard around and paddled furiously for the center of the pool. Just as he arrived, he heard a second ferocious belch and knew that this wave would be even bigger than the first. He pivoted the board in time to see it coming.