Kingdom Keepers VI(5)

Maybeck’s effort was commendable if unsuccessful. He tried for the animal’s rear leg. But this model hyena came equipped with the full package, including backup sensors; it spooked as Maybeck dove, avoiding his eager hand. Like a trained seal, it tossed the small object into the air, opened its maw wide, and appeared to swallow the thing.

Charlene lunged to stop the hyena. It veered, heading straight for Jess.

As sisters who weren’t really sisters, the enigmatic Amanda and Jess were known to the Keepers as “Fairlies”—fairly human, but with unique powers. Amanda possessed telekinesis (the “supposed” power to move objects with her mind); Jess, clairvoyance (the “supposed” power to see events in the future). In fact, there wasn’t anything “supposed” about their powers, except that the U.S. military was confounded by them and continued to study kids like Jess and Amanda at a facility in Baltimore, an institution from which the two girls had escaped before meeting the Keepers. Currently, they lived with a number of other “strays,” charges of a foster mother called Mrs. Nash, whom the girls referred to as Mrs. Nasty.

Now the hyena aimed at Jess, who reacted defensively and reached out to block it. She grabbed its hind leg. The animal squealed, rolled over, and bit Jess, whose hologram was solid at that exact instant.

Jess cried out and let go. She balled up in pain, rolling onto the deck.

An injury a Keeper sustained as a DHI ended up as part of their real body when he or she returned. This bite was a bleeder. Jess was in serious trouble.

The hyena scrambled back to its feet and charged up Deck 4’s jogging track toward the bow, the other hyenas trailing close behind.

Maybeck started out in pursuit but quickly lost ground. He snatched up a shuffleboard cue, smacked it on the deck, and broke its U-shaped head from its broomstick-like rod. He hoisted the rod to shoulder height and launched it like a javelin. He would claim later that it had been a protective instinct to defend Jess, a combination of anger, frustration, and the urge to play action hero.

A wild shriek echoed down the deck—the lead hyena was hit, the spear dragging from its flank. The animal slowed but continued toward the bow. The spear wiggled loose and clanged to the deck. The hyenas disappeared into the jogging track’s bow tunnel.

Charlene and Amanda stooped over the fallen Jess.

“What’s happening to her?” a frightened Amanda said.

“She’s…” Charlene studied Jess, trying to understand what they were witnessing.

The girl’s hologram grew translucent, then disappeared altogether. As it reappeared, it sputtered and wouldn’t hold. Each time it faded, Jess squirmed and cried out in pain.

“…form-shifting,” Charlene continued. “Her fear and the pain of the wound are switching her from hologram to mortal. She’s in limbo, flashing between the two.”

The bite was ugly. It was on the top of Jess’s right thigh, two curved lacerations—a frown and a smile. It bled heavily.

Philby arrived from the Radio Studio through the deck’s center doors. He spoke with a slight British accent, having spent some of his childhood in England, and had a crop of red hair and a sparkle to his eyes that signaled his uncanny intelligence.

“What about Finn?” Amanda called out to him.

“Storey’s on it. At the moment, everyone’s on the port side because someone claimed he saw two kids riding dolphins.”

“No way!” Charlene said.

Philby grinned at Amanda. “Storey returned the two of them. So for the moment,” he continued, “we should be alone here, but it won’t stay that way.”

He took in Jess’s injury and her form-shifting.

“The ship’s doctors can’t find her like this! They’ll try to medicate her hologram and who knows how that will affect her real body.”

“Well, she can’t return like this,” Amanda said firmly. “No way we can deal with the wound at Mrs. Nash’s, not to mention that we’d have no way to explain what’s happened.”

“So she can’t stay here and she can’t go back,” Maybeck said. “Someone have a plan?”

Philby caught Charlene’s eye. He said, “We have to—”

“Hide her.”

“Yes.”

“How?” Charlene asked.

“Even if she could walk,” Maybeck said, “which I doubt—it’s not as if anyone’s going to miss that.”

He was pointing at Jess’s bloody leg.

“And we need to find that hyena,” Philby said, “and whatever it stole from Finn.”

“The bee suits,” Jess groaned to Amanda through clenched teeth.