Kingdom Keepers: The Syndrome (3 page)

The dreams grew more and more powerful. Sometimes I’d get a break for a few days, a week, even a month. I’d start wondering if they were gone for good—but
then they’d come back stronger than ever.

Eight years later, Amanda and I were rooming together in Burbank and working our first internship with Disney. One summer night, I had a dream so forceful it made my head throb. I found it hard
to hear myself think through the barrage of images in my head. It wasn’t a movie of the future playing out in my mind. It was more like a bunch of snapshots being thrown at me and me trying
to catch them before they were gone—without getting hit by them.

Habit guided my hand to the journal, pen, and book light tucked between my mattress and the bed frame. Before I even had the light on, before I was fully awake, I had the pen on paper, racing to
get the image in my mind down before it disappeared.

I sketched quick, feathery strokes. A thin rectangle became a door opposite a small window with lace curtains. Framed in the window was an antique lamp. I added the vague outline of a twin bed
with a train set on the shelf above it, a couch like something out of a grandmother’s house in a movie, and dark, thick lines that became the outlines of three men, menacing in their stance,
blocking the main door. Their clothing was identical, standard army fatigues, except for the number 14 embroidered on their shoulders. A number whose significance Amanda and I knew all too well.
These men weren’t average foot soldiers; they were the “military” from Barracks 14, and I could think of only one reason I would be dreaming about them.

There was light coming through the door on the left, silhouetting the central figure, the object of their pursuit, a girl crouched in the dim light. Her back was turned to me, but I didn’t
need to see her face.

It wasn’t the first time I’d dreamed this scene. The chances of it not coming true were disappointingly slim. My drawing was only a vague sketch, and the girl in it was looking away.
But the girl was Amanda. Even if we weren’t blood relatives, we considered ourselves sisters. If my dreams told me Amanda was in danger, we
both
had a problem.

Still, I couldn’t exactly call her up on a hunch. Amanda was generally accepting of my so-called gift, as she had one of her own, but we both knew I could get it wrong when I was
attempting to come to grips with what the dreams represented. I had no evidence the faceless girl was Amanda, only a gut feeling expanding from a pit in my stomach. Calling her in the middle of the
night, Eastern time, me being all paranoid, would only freak her out. Hardly fair. If she’d been across my room in the bed where she belonged, she would have likely flashed me an eye roll and
mumbled, “Go back to sleep.”

I tried to heed that advice, but the more I thought about my dream—the girl, the uniforms—the more jittery I got. It was like I’d had a triple-shot espresso. And though the
barrage of images—“visions” still sounded too strange—had subsided, I felt like my heart was going to burst. My dreams rarely came with an indication of
when
(or even
if) they were going to take place. For all I knew, what I’d just seen could be happening right now. Or it might never happen at all.

My stomach was knotted and tight. After everything we’d been through in the past eight years, Amanda was the closest thing I had to family. I missed her. I hoped she was safe.

I knew she’d only gone to Orlando for a few days, a week at most, but in light of the dream, it felt like forever.

Sitting in the dark, empty room, I felt alone in a way I hadn’t felt in years. Amanda and I had been together longer than we’d been with anyone else. Amanda-and-Jess,
Jess-and-Amanda. The team. Like twins, one and the same, never without the other. While that connection could feel smothering at times, it was also reassuring to know that she was there for me.

Now she was off in Orlando on an adventure of her own. I felt the panic set in. Every wind was Maleficent’s chill blast; the trees outside seemed bewitched to grab me from my bed. In my
overactive imagination, even the jovial kids downstairs were OTKs plotting evil deeds.

I understood the signs of paranoia. I also knew when I was right.

MATTIE

I wasn’t always this way. Maybe I inherited it, but I don’t know because my parents aren’t around to ask. I can’t exactly say it feels normal. I remember
not having it.

The first time it happened was strange because everything seemed so…normal. My godmother didn’t understand, or she didn’t want to. At the time I truly thought I was being helpful.
We both loved her dog, so why was helping him wrong? Those were the sentiments of a twelve-year-old girl, innocent feelings before things took a turn for the worse. I was running my hands over
Rex’s glossy fur, and strange thoughts trickled in. The mix of emotions was hard to place, but hidden beneath it, I sensed that something was gravely wrong. Rex peered at me with sad brown
eyes, and I realized with a start that they were
his
thoughts. His stomach hurt.

My frantic pleas didn’t seem to sway my godmother; she only seemed concerned for me. She didn’t believe me when I told her that her dog was sick. I begged and begged until she came
to her senses, and sure enough, the vet diagnosed Rex with a benign tumor. It was on his stomach. Until that point, I just assumed I was naturally intuitive. But I could see the way people looked
at me when I touched them. Confused and lost, like there was something they needed to remember but couldn’t. It was even worse for me. Sometimes the thoughts were happy, but more often they
were filled with pain and greed and lust. Very human things. And I couldn’t turn it off. My abilities were only growing, so I made sure to limit all contact. The gloves and long sleeves I
could handle, but it was much harder to keep my distance from people.

Jess and Amanda used to squat in this old building when they first came to Orlando. That’s how I knew it would be safe for me to stay for a while. We had been close at
Barracks 14. I showed up not too long after I discovered my powers on the pretense that I wanted to be with other kids like me. That much was true, but aside from that, the place was a nightmare.
Jess and Amanda helped. They were tightly knit, but they accepted me, and I trusted them.

In the formerly reconstructed attic of the abandoned church, I had tried to arrange what furniture—if you could call it that—there was to make the space comfier. Even so, it was just
a bunch of couch cushions and milk crates. When I returned from some errands, I knew right away that someone had been there. I’d been squatting for months, after a harrowing series of
adventures on my way back into the United States from Mexico. I’d spent time in Los Angeles, Denver, and St. Louis in between. The attic space had grown to be a part of me. There were no
clear signs of disturbance, but something was off.

I scanned the room, and my eyes landed on a small scrap of paper on my makeshift bed. It was in Amanda’s hand-writing, which I knew all too well. She wanted to meet, and soon.

Wasting no time, I ran down the stairs to the back door of the former church. The fewer people who saw me, the better.

AMANDA

The difference between paranoia and remaining alert is how you let your fear affect you.

I worked hard to not to cross the line into Paranoiaville, to play it safe, stay aware, and not see danger in every shadow. The working-hard part came without much effort—nothing had come
easily for me, ever. But I’d struggled enough to know I didn’t want to dwell on it, to celebrate the victories and tolerate the losses. The world was a random place. Abnormality
ruled.

Something happening twice was a flag for me. Walking along the sidewalk at a brisk pace at night, a noise to my right could easily be a lizard darting about in the ground cover. Even so,
I’d learned techniques of personal safety. Most of them had rubbed off from being around my fellow “inmates” at Barracks 14 or spending time with the Kingdom Keepers. I knew how
to use the reflections off vehicles and buildings to see behind me without turning fully around; I could vary my speed in order to distinguish between someone walking at their own pace or copying
mine; I knew how to subtly use my phone to take a photo behind me or in front of me; to cross at a crosswalk, change my mind, and return to the corner I’d just stepped off; to cross at the
very end of the permitted time to see who dared challenge traffic to stay with me. Dozens, maybe hundreds of little tricks of timing and posturing that could help me identify possible surveillance.
I didn’t live this way—that was the definition of paranoia—but I possessed these tools for when they were needed.

Tonight, I was likely being followed. Though I couldn’t say for sure. Being sure was another boundary between precaution and paranoia. I didn’t freak out, just went through my
routine safety checks to find out if I was right or wrong.

I was right. There was someone following me by a block or more—enough distance to make it hard to confirm and harder still to identify. Enough distance to leave the next move up to me. I
also knew ways to “lose a tail” as Philby called it—some were common sense, others a little trickier. Losing a tail while also identifying the spy was far more complex,
though—easier if one worked with a partner.

Mind whirling, I called Wanda without telling her exactly what I needed. I didn’t like the idea of inconveniencing her. Despite what she said to the contrary, I never got around to asking
her for help because I could tell she was working late. I fumbled through some lame discussion of dinner, and hung up.

I was going to have to fly solo. I’d gotten so attached to Jess that I suppose the only time I allowed myself to be more than “half a friendship” was when I was with Finn. Of
course, then I was another half of a friendship. I wanted—no, needed—to prove to myself that I was capable of flying solo, thinking for myself and being by myself. You spend too much
time around others and you begin to depend on them. That didn’t feel so healthy all of a sudden. It made me feel needy. One thing I’d learned growing up was that no matter who claimed
you, you had to first claim yourself.

I walked past my intended bus stop and picked up speed. I didn’t want to look like I was running, but I needed to reach a different bus line. This particular route briefly ran east,
providing me with a shortcut—one stop past the one at which I assumed Mattie would board.

If I hurried, I had a chance.

MATTIE

If Amanda had come to Orlando from Imagineering School, it had to be urgent. My feet carried me quickly, and I made it to the stop just as the bus was pulling up. At the last
minute, I quickly slipped off my gloves. It was a necessary task, but I dreaded it all the same.

As I boarded, I made a point to slip so that I could fall onto the driver. He reached out; we touched. A stream of faces flashed in front of my eyes; each passenger who had boarded ahead of me.
I thought it would be an inconsequential stream of people I didn’t know, but it seemed worth a try. And right as I made a move to pull my hand away, I saw something.

Not a good something.

Panting and out of breath, the Overtaker boy I knew from the cruise ship had boarded the bus.
Louis…no, Luowski! Greg Luowski!

I yanked my hand back, ignoring the dazed look on the driver’s face. I would never forget Luowski’s piercing green eyes, a trademark of Maleficent’s zombified army. She was
responsible for the turmoil in Jess’s and Amanda’s lives, and she wanted to take over the Disney parks. But she was long dead; Finn Whitman and the other Kingdom Keepers had seen to
that.

So why were this boy’s eyes still that alarming shade of green?

I passed the bus driver and peered over the heads of the other passengers, trying to locate Luowski. Just ahead of me, I could see his strong frame and distinctive red hair. Something told me
that I needed to get to him and read him. “Reading” was the term I used for my visions of people’s thoughts.

Dropping my shoulder, I muscled through the crowd of bodies. Time was flying, but I wanted to be subtle, so I pretended to stumble and catch his hand. As my powers had grown, I’d learned
to narrow down what I was able to read. Upon contact, I immediately honed in on thoughts relating to Finn Whitman.

Finn’s face flashed before my eyes, and what I saw wasn’t good. It seemed like Luowski spent a lot of time planning his revenge. When I gripped his hand, he tensed, and I knew that
he sensed me. On the Disney
Dream
cruise ship, I had tried to read him; even then, he was aware that something was amiss. Now he was familiar with my abilities. He started to turn, and I
ducked into one of the rows and sank down into a seat. He scanned the bus, but he couldn’t seem to find me. I knew I would be safe as long as he didn’t link me to the sensation; he
hadn’t seen my face the first time I’d read him, either.

I mulled over what I’d seen for a long time. There was a good chance that this was what Amanda had wanted me to do: to have me spy for her. But why would she be so cryptic? My anger
simmered. Was she testing me? If so, it wasn’t fair. I’d been through plenty on the ship, certainly enough to prove my trustworthiness.

But what else could she want?

AMANDA

I reached South Lakemont and waited for the 313 bus to the Corners. Boarding came down to timing. And as I was the only one waiting at the stop, my plan was compromised from the
start.

“You coming?” the bus driver said.

I’d wanted to wait until the very last moment to board, steal a peek out the window, and catch a glimpse of my pursuer. “Yes, sir.” I tried miserably to contain my defeated
tone as I boarded and used my elevated position next to the driver to look down Summerfield Road.

“You done sightseeing? I got passengers, you know?”

“Sorry.” I still had my Youth ID pass, which lowered my rate.

I was halfway toward the back door when I spotted Mattie Weaver—first in profile, then I made out her face off the glass of the window. Her eyes told me in no uncertain terms that I did
not know her, was not to come anywhere near her. That look of hers rattled me.