Kingdom Keepers VII (9 page)

“Our data?” Philby is not pleased.

Brad responds to Philby’s accusatory tone. “You want the truth? Have it your way! Twice we have data-screened for Wayne, preventing his DHI from being projected. Twice he has reappeared within days, the second time last night.”

“That’s impossible,” Philby fires back.

“Why? What?” Maybeck asks Philby.

Willa answers. “With screens in place to block existing data, the subject’s data would need to be replaced with new information. That means they would need to green-screen Wayne for a second—”

“And a third—” Brad adds.

“Time,” Willa finishes. “Meaning he would have to cooperate.”

“Impossible,” Finn says.

“I thought you were just telling me nothing’s impossible,” Brad says.

It stings. Finn settles back in his chair, wishing they’d never agreed to come out here.

“Wait!” Charlene is the least technology-minded among them. “You’re saying that for Wayne to be projected after you screened him out, he would have had to do all the green-screen stuff we did to become DHIs?”

“Twice,” Philby says, disappointment heavy in his voice.

“So even if he was a DHI last night—which we don’t know for sure,” Charlene says, “he’d have had to be a traitor anyway? We’re talking about Wayne!”

Silence. Finn hears a copier running out in the Crypt. “Well, I don’t believe it.”

“None of us believes it,” Brad says. “But if it isn’t true, then there’s an explanation, and we need it.”

“Torture,” Maybeck says. “He could have been threatened or drugged or whatever into doing the green-screen work.”

“Or it was never done at all,” Philby says.

Brad directs his attention to Philby. “Go on.”

“The OTs have found themselves a programmer who can take existing data and codify it. He or she reworks all the ones and zeros into a new set of ones and zeros, creating images so similar to the first that it’s impossible for the naked eye to detect the difference: a change in skin tone and color, a slightly shorter limb, a body that’s thinner, fatter, wider.”

“Very good,” says Brad. “That’s what our people arrived at as well: a single set of data revised just enough to make a new set of data.”

“An algorithm,” Willa says. “Billions of pixels. That kind of thing would need to be automated.”

“So it’s possible,” Finn says more brightly, “even probable, that Wayne had no part in this.”

“Voilà!” Brad says again. “But we need proof, and we need Wayne back. And…well, there’s more, but that’s nearly enough for now.”

“Nearly?” Charlene says. She likes things neat and clean.

“How many of you are up on your history?” Brad asks.

Willa raises her hand sheepishly. Philby, proudly.

“For the benefit of the rest of you, history is filled with examples of technologies developed for good that go bad. Fireworks in China’s night sky three thousand years ago eventually become missiles destroying London in World War II. A search for nuclear power becomes the atomic bomb.”

“This is our problem because?” Maybeck says.

“DHI 2.0,” Brad says. “Seemed like a terrific advancement at the time. Now, come to find out, it’s a projected hologram that can’t be hurt by bullets or Tasers or fire. It’s an indestructible soldier.”

“Being used to combat evil!” Finn says emphatically.

“One man’s evil…” Brad says. “We have unconfirmed intelligence that there are parties seeking 2.0 in order to amass an indestructible army—an army that can suffer no casualties.”

Finn wonders if he should mention that he and the others have discussed this before but decides not to. Brad might believe they gave someone the idea, that one of the Keepers leaked or sold the idea. That there was a traitor among them! There’s been too much discussion of impossibility tonight, Finn thinks. “Wayne is not involved in this!” he says instead.

Brad ignores him. “The result of this intelligence is that a decision has been reached—and this comes from the top, so don’t shoot the messenger—to permanently shut down the 2.0 servers and return to a slight upgrade of version 1.6 we’re calling v1.6-plus. To this end, you will all need to green-screen again. That studio work commences at oh-eight-hundred. Report to studio six.”

“You’re downgrading us?” Philby says. “How do you expect—?”

“I expect, we expect, you to be team players. To do the best with what you’re given. And what you’re being given is a chance to set things right. To clear Wayne’s name. To stop whatever’s going on—which apparently includes Chernabog, the Evil Queen, and Tia Dalma.”

“What we’re being given is weakness,” Maybeck says.

“Vulnerability,” Willa adds. “In v1.6, our fear makes us solid, makes us suffer if we’re injured. It isn’t close to 2.0.”

“Deal with it,” Brad says, getting to his feet. “We know it’s a game changer, and we know you’re good at adapting. So we expect you to adapt.”

T
HE BLACK HELICOPTER
from the Air Mobile Unit of the U.S. Border Patrol Special Operations Group rakes noisily across the night sky above the Calexico East border crossing. If the pilot hadn’t flown this route every night, the line of semi-trucks on the Mexico side might have surprised her. Five parallel lines of vehicles stretch back a third of a mile from the secure inspectors’ booths. Another twenty or so are grouped in a pullout area to the right, a large, well-lit parking lot where trucks have been randomly flagged for closer inspection.

Among these eighteen-wheelers is one from southwestern Mexico bound for Long Beach, California. The manifest lists its cargo as “Live Chickens.”

As the helicopter flies over, the three men arguing about who’s going to inspect this one are forced to pause. The aircraft flies east, the rattle of its rotors softening to a cicada’s buzz, then a mosquito’s whine, and finally a gnat’s whisper before its white flashing belly light vanishes.

The three Mexican Customs officers continue to bicker bitterly in Spanish.

“I am allergic to the chicken.”

“You are not going to eat it! Get in there!”

“It stinks.”

“You stink! Besides, the poo falls through the cages and the grate
in the truck bed and down onto the highway. It’s not that bad.”

“Then you do it.”

“I am the senior officer.”

“I would do it,”
says the third officer,
“but I am afraid of
chickens. Deathly afraid. When I was a child, my grandmother…
Well, we were out at her farm and she wanted to cook us all
tinga de pollo
. We kids didn’t know that meant she was going to—you
know, with a hatchet? I think I cried for a week.”

“You’re twenty-eight years old.”

“A moment like that does not ever leave you.”

“You two are pathetic,”
says the senior officer.
“I will do the
chickens, but then I will take an extra break and both of you will
work two extra trucks.”

“Fine.”

“Fine.”

Having come to an agreement, the two younger officers leave quickly before their chief changes his mind.

The short, pot bellied immigration officer lifts the dirty, rusted, oddly cold metal handles on the back of the eighteen-wheeler’s door.
¹¹
The officer shines his flashlight into the darkness and startles as he sees chicken feathers wafting down. He has never seen snow, but he imagines that this is what it must look like. He sets his flashlight on the truck bed and pulls himself up into the confined area. As he bends to retrieve his light, something rumbles in the bowels of the darkness.
¹²
He has been well trained. He knows almost all the telltale signs of smuggling. He has seen blood spills, torn clothing; he is well familiar with the stench of unwashed bodies. But the massive hoof marks on the metal grate confuse him. Baffled, he creeps deeper into the trailer, peeking into every sliver of space among the cages of chickens. The cages can be arranged to create hiding places.
¹³

What he sees next: where the hoof marks tighten, he spots jagged lines scratched into the metal grate. How heavy must an animal be to damage steel? Looking closer, he spots what appears to be animal hair snagged on a hook. Chickens don’t have hair. It’s his job to keep things like this from happening. His pulse quickens—it’s been a while since he’s seen any real action; his two subordinates will be jealous when they realize they passed up some excitement.
¹⁴

Then, through the cages, the officer glimpses what can only be described as a crown. As light from the parking lot’s lamps penetrates the unnatural black of the trailer, rainbow prisms of color sparkle off the crown’s jewels. The officer is taken aback by a sudden rush of foul-smelling air—an eerie wind from inside the cages.
¹⁵

His eyes adjust. The officer rubs a sweaty hand across his mouth and shuts his eyes tightly, hoping to un-see and un-hear what he’s just witnessed. He takes a quick, one-eyed peek and then whips his flashlight’s beam toward where he saw the crown. A scream lodges in his throat. He staggers backward.
¹⁶

He hears a voice but is unsure if it’s a man’s or woman’s. It sounds vaguely French. It sounds…inviting. He knows he should fear it, should pull his gun or radio for help, but he wants to get closer.

His legs feel as if they’re moving on their own, though he’s in such a fog he can’t be sure. Why can’t he think clearly? Do the chickens carry some kind of virus? Should the whole truckload be quarantined? And why won’t his legs stop moving? He’s suddenly afraid, more afraid than he can ever remember being—petrified, although he’s not frozen in fear but marching like a stiff-legged soldier into the heart of danger.

He looks up. There, through the fluttering wings of nervous fowl, he catches repeated glimpses of…a pair of yellow bowling balls, each in its own cage. What the heck? No…it’s behind the chickens, behind the cages. And not bowling balls, not unless bowling balls can somehow move in unison as a synchronized pair.

It’s two large yellow eyes he sees staring at him through the stir of chicken feathers. Yellow eyes like melons cleaved in half. The involuntary movement of his legs suddenly grinds to a halt. Moments before his world goes black, the terrified officer notices two other figures lurking in the farthest corners of the truck, and if he didn’t know any better, he would swear one is wearing a jeweled crown. It wasn’t his imagination.
¹⁷

In that instant he feels his body no longer his own—it’s as if he’s under a spell—and the chickens begin screeching; the wall of cages begins to shift, then suddenly splits open, sending cages full of panicked, squawking chickens tumbling to the floor. The guard can’t breathe; his body has shut down; he’s going to faint.

Those eyes belong to a monster! The thing steps forward, causing another blizzard of feathers. A giant open mouth appears, a black tongue as long as a human arm lolling out. The guard’s head is engulfed. His world goes black.…

Tia Dalma steps forward from behind the cages, observing the headless corpse lying on the grate. She looks up at Chernabog, back at the guard’s body. She shakes her head.

“Now, that’s a problem,” she says.