Kingdom Keepers VII (24 page)

“Brooke,” she says. “My name. It’s Brooke.”

“Finn.”

“Yeah.” She giggles.

Finn’s embarrassed. “You sure you don’t mind?”

“Think about it,” she says, gesturing toward her shirt. “I mean…really? You can erase the number and everything. I don’t care. Not that I’d ever redial it or anything like that, because I wouldn’t. Can I just ask you something?”

“Please.”

“Are you—
you
? You know? I mean, are you Finn or are you
him
?”

“I think I know what you mean,” Finn says. He waves his hand and it passes through hers.

Brooke lets out a happy-sounding sigh. Something great has just happened for her, Finn realizes.

“Oh!” she says. “That is so-o-o-o-o-o cool. You can kind of feel it, you know?”

“You can?” First Finn has heard of that.

“Or maybe I’m making that up. Maybe I imagined it.”

Finn waves his hand through her arm again.

She looks like she’s either about to fall asleep or shout for joy. Her eyes are glassy, as if she might cry.

“You’re sure you don’t mind?” he says.

“What?” He’s lost her; she’s off somewhere else.

“Your phone?”

“Mind?
Do I mind
?” She does not mind.

Finn gets Philby’s voice mail and asks him to send a text to Brooke’s number.

“I gave Philby your number.”

“No worries.”

“You don’t mind hanging here a minute?”

“Ah, no…I don’t mind.” She takes a deep breath. “So what’s it like? Being you, I mean?”

“Same as you,” Finn says.

She laughs loudly. It’s a great laugh. A big, heartfelt laugh that Finn could listen to for hours. “I don’t think so.”

“Some of it’s cool,” he says, “but some not so cool.”

“I don’t mean to stalk you or anything.”

“Not at all! You’re doing me a favor.”

Her phone buzzes. She avoids looking at it as she passes it to Finn, which impresses him.

a listening system was installed in Club 33 so an unseen host could answer questions or make fun of guests at tables. was never used. small closet with working equip still exists.


Finn reads the message twice, deletes it, and returns the phone to Brooke.

“You know the park pretty well?” Finn asks her.

“I do indeed. I am all about everything Disney. ‘A walking encyclopedia,’ my mother calls me. She means that as a compliment.”

Finn laughs. “Would you happen to know any way a hologram could sneak into Club 33 without being caught?”

“Angels,” she says.

“Excuse me?”

“I just may know a way,” Brooke says.

* * *

Ten minutes pass. An excited Brooke leads Finn into the Court of Angels, a dead-end alley. She points to a wooden staircase leading up to a New Orleans–style balcony. “I’ve seen waiters up there before. It’s definitely Club 33—when the doors open, you can see the gold-and-white wallpaper.”

“Like a service entrance.”

“Maybe. I’ve never actually been up there,” she says.

“You’re just observant.”

“I am.” She pauses. “You can walk through walls, right?”

“I can.”

“I heard you all can go invisible.”

“Not really. It happens sometimes, but it’s nothing we can control.” He adds, “Sadly. How cool would that be?”

“I know, right?”

“It’s more like a shadow thing. It has to do with the location of the projectors.”

“Will there be projectors in Club 33?”

“Good question. Probably. The technology can use security cameras—don’t ask me how!—and there would be security cameras in a place like Club 33.”

“Can you wear an apron?”

“I could, but I tend to stay pretty much all clear, so it would probably fall off.”

“Carry a tray?”

“Yes. Definitely.”

“I’ve seen waiters come and go through that door to the right. You could check there…maybe.”

Finn thanks Brooke. Their parting is awkward. Brooke offers to stay below and signal Finn if someone’s coming up the stairs. He tells her that could be helpful, but he doesn’t want her getting in trouble.

“I’ll sing the Small World song. If you hear the Small World song, that’s the signal.”

“Got it.”

“I’m a good singer,” she says. “And a competitive skater. I’m enrolled at Pepperdine. Freshman year.” She looks befuddled. “Did I just say all that?”

“Philby has your number,” Finn says.

“Yeah, I guess that’s right.”

Finn thanks her again and heads upstairs.

Everything Brooke has told him is accurate: The door to the right appears to access the club. The door straight ahead is open, leading to a vestibule of some kind that contains some furniture but appears to lead farther inside. Disneyland and Disney World are like no other places, built like stage sets, with misleading corridors and false facades. Finn enters the club, head down. There are two main dining rooms separated by a wide L-shaped expanse of old wooden flooring. A sign to Finn’s left reads
MAXIMUM SEATING
: 33. Another identical sign is mounted straight ahead. That totals sixty-six. Finn knows he’s in the right place.

Just ahead Finn sees a tray of dirty dishes on a collapsible waiter’s stand. He picks it up and starts moving.

The dining room that is now straight ahead is the closer of the two to the top of the staircase used by guests as they enter. There’s a maître d’s station with a computer screen. Finn moves toward this dining room, feeling conspicuous. He’s saved by how busy the restaurant is. Waiters are practically flying in all directions, racing from one place to the next. No one has time to study a kid who might be a busboy.

Finn slips past the maître d’s station, grateful that it is unoccupied, and continues past an empty coat check and, in the wall to his left, an oddly shaped cupboard or closet door mounted at waist height.

Timing is everything.
Three…two…one.

Balancing the tray, he tugs open the cupboard door just a crack. The door is wide, and about two feet deep.

“Help you?” It’s a waiter. He sounds genuinely caring, not suspicious.

“I’m good,” Finn says.

The man mugs, nods, and moves on.

Finn sets the tray of dishes down on another folding waiter’s tray stand just nearby. Inside the cupboard are two high shelves that hold some dusty electronic gear, including an ancient pair of headphones, and, below that, open space. Finn checks around him. He waits for a pair of waiters to pass, then climbs in and pulls the door shut.

He’s inside.

A narrow rectangle of yellow light seeps in at eye level from some kind of small aperture in the wall of the cupboard that faces the dining room at the top of the stairs. There’s just enough light for Finn to discover that he’s in DHI shadow—but there’s no way for him to know exactly where the boundaries of that shadow begin. If someone were to open the cupboard door, would they see all of him? Part of him? He hopes it doesn’t come to that.

Remarkably, he fits well into the space, sitting with his back against a sidewall and his knees bent. It’s almost as if the cupboard had been made to hold a person—a thought Finn dismisses, until he begins toying with a small sliding piece of wood he discovers on the wall, which accounts for the rectangle of light.

The sliding cover moves on little tracks. Finn places his digital eye to the slot that the open cover reveals: he’s looking into the restaurant through a peephole. He can imagine, but can’t confirm, an oil painting or decorative mirror concealing the peephole on the dining-room side. None of the diners appears to be the wiser for his having opened the peephole.

Finn looks out on tables with adults eating and drinking, some deep in conversation, some quiet, others more animated. The tables are mostly deuces and four-tops; among them are two groups of eight, and one person dining alone: a white-haired man wearing an Imagineer’s ball cap that must date back twenty years.

Finn knows the cap, and knows the man. He nearly screams with joy.
Wayne!
Seeing him in the flesh has far more impact than having heard his voice over the radio. Voices can be recorded, impersonated. Finn wants to shout through the little hole in the wall, wave a flag, wag a finger.

Finn’s heart is near breaking. To see Wayne—a man whom he respects and, yes, even loves, like a grandfather—after so long, creates a flood of emotion. Few people in his life can arouse such feelings in Finn: his family, Amanda, Dillard.

As Finn watches Wayne, he begins to question his own gullibility, worries he’s being set up. Is Wayne a DHI, like the one at Fantasmic!? Can he trust this man?

Finn is considered the leader of the Keepers, though they’ve never formally chosen him as such. It has always just been the position that best suited him, just as Maybeck is the artist and Philby’s the computer guy.

Wayne is the real leader. Finn considers himself just a representative. Anger mixes with sadness as he wonders if he can trust this Wayne, his mentor since the very beginning. If he can’t even trust Wayne, then who can he trust? One name flashes through his thoughts:
Amanda
.

Cynics would say you can only trust yourself, but for Finn that makes
trust
too lonely a world. Paranoia threatens, but he holds it at bay. He must look for signs: human being or DHI? He will not allow himself to be tricked by the Overtakers again. This thought strengthens his hatred of the villains all the more.

A salient battle cry echoes through his head:
This needs to
end. Soon.
³⁷

Finn hears a squeaking sound.
Not mice!
he prays.
Anything
but mice! Except cockroaches. Not them either! Please!

Finn’s wristwatch ticks over from 8:59 to 9:00. The squeaking continues.

Finn lifts himself up off the floor where he is sitting, fearful that the creature is under him. He’s going to freak out if there’s a mouse or rat in here with him.

Nothing.

More squeaking. It takes him a moment to identify the source of the sound as the beat-up old set of headphones hanging from a hook above one of the shelves. He pulls the set closer and holds an ear cup to his ear. Not a rodent; it’s a human voice coming from one of the headphone set’s two ear cups. A man’s voice, whispering: Wayne.

“The microphone is on your right. Speak to me.” Wayne repeats this, his head canted down toward the table. To look at him, he’s just an old man talking to himself.

Finn finds the microphone, which is like no microphone he’s ever seen before. It’s a metal diaphragm suspended by rusted springs at the center of a wire loop shaped like a lightbulb. If Wayne hadn’t told him it was a microphone, he wouldn’t have known. He takes hold of it, but because of the DHI shadow the microphone appears to float toward him.

Finn speaks tentatively. “Hello?”

“And to you as well.”

“I can’t believe it’s you!”

“And yet you must.”

Finn sets his eye to the peephole again. Wayne flashes a mirthful look his way.

“It’s good to see you,” Finn says.

“It’s good to be seen,” says Wayne. “We have a great deal to cover. Will you take notes?” Wayne adjusts what looks like a hearing aid. Whatever the original intention of the sound equipment Finn has discovered in the closet, Wayne seems to have adjusted the system to allow them a private conversation.

“I’m a DHI. I didn’t exactly come equipped for school.”

“Very well. Shall we begin?”

“No.” Finn
never
says no to Wayne. It sounds wrong coming out of his mouth. “First, I need to ask you about the Archives. The break-in.”

“A tragedy.”

“You were there! The Cryptos said—”

“By ‘Cryptos’ you mean Imagineers manning the—”

“Across from the Morgue.”

“Well, they’re wrong, which doesn’t happen very often. It wasn’t me. I would never do that.”

“That’s what I said!”

“What you and they apparently failed to comprehend was what it means.”

“What
what
means?” Finn asks.

“If it wasn’t me, but it fooled you all,
what does it mean?
”

“They—projected—you.” The words fall out of Finn painfully. His heart twists. Is he speaking to a hologram now?

“I thought one of you might have noticed that I was wearing the same clothes as my hologram in Fantasmic! I realize it was a long time ago, but that’s hardly an excuse.”

“But you were—”

“So lifelike? I didn’t think you all would be fooled by one-point-six.”

“The Overtakers projected you!”

“I’ve seen the footage. They needed me to get the door open and take care of security for them. We can’t dwell on this, Finn. You’re going to have to trust me.”

“Yes. Okay.” Finn has so many questions, so many concerns. He wishes he weren’t stuck in a cupboard wearing a set of crumbling headphones and talking over a tea strainer.

Wayne’s voice lowers further. It sounds like a desert wind.

“Very well, let us begin.”

Finn hears people passing close by the cabinet where he huddles, hidden. On the other side of the wall, waiters in the dining room occasionally obscure his view of Wayne.

Wayne maintains a low, conspiratorial voice, ensuring that diners eating at nearby tables have no chance of overhearing him. Peering through the peephole, Finn feels as though he’s watching a movie in which he is somehow playing a part. It’s a strange, disassociated sensation, one that fills his belly with a tangle of snakes looking for a way out; he feels simultaneously as if he’s about to vomit or needs to run for the bathroom.