Kingdom Keepers V (9781423153429) (4 page)

His body buckled as he fell first to his knees and then to the tile. He began twitching uncontrollably.

“A bug,” he choked out. A failure of 2.0—it was all he could come up with. Wayne reached to help, but his hands passed through Finn's hologram.

“Finn?”

Finn fought as his eyes rolled back in his head. “Re…turn,” he gasped. “Phil…by…” His body was out of control, like he was being electrocuted. “Call…Phil—” His throat gurgled, like he was gargling.

“No need!” Wayne pulled a small black fob from his pocket, smaller and more compact than the v1.6 Return.

“Godspeed!” Wayne said. He hit the button.

* * *

Finn opened his eyes.

His bedroom was dark. A shape loomed to his right—someone holding him down. A paramedic? His parents?

Another person moved to his left. In the steady glare of his computer screen Finn caught sight of Greg Luowski, the resident bully of Finn's middle school and now his high school freshman class. A round-faced, wet-lipped, mean-spirited boy, Luowski took pleasure in dishing out pain.

The bedroom window was open, the curtains waving. In recent months, his parents had gotten lazy about activating the home security system that included sensors on his window; he'd been glad they had since it was easier to sneak out. But now someone had sneaked in!

Unless Luowski had four arms, he wasn't holding Finn down. That job belonged to someone else, the person to Finn's right. Finn couldn't see well enough to identify who it was.

Luowski was instead busy trying to keep a hose in Finn's mouth and down his throat. The hose connected to the end of a rubber funnel. Awake now, Finn bucked and threw his legs up. Luowski climbed onto the bed, using his considerable weight—he was a chunk of muscle and bone—to pin Finn's legs as well. The whole time the boy worked to push the tube into Finn's mouth.

“Hold him still!” Luowski whispered to whoever was holding Finn. He got a plastic jug—it looked like apple juice from Costco—up to the funnel and began to pour.

Finn never tasted booze, but he'd smelled it on his parents' breath plenty of times—and this was booze. Bitter and sharper tasting than he'd imagined. Nasty stuff. He spit as much out as possible, but gagged down some of it as Luowski drowned him in it. He quickly understood the plan: they'd wanted him drunk and unconscious while he'd been crossed over in his DHI state. If they'd managed it, he wouldn't have been able to return. He'd have been stuck in Sleeping Beauty Syndrome. SBS. The Syndrome.

The light pulsed again: there were half-dissolved pills dancing at the bottom of the jug. Finn guessed that Luowski had spiked the booze with drugs.

He coughed and spit. Luowski managed to get his sweating, disgusting mitt pressed onto Finn's forehead and held him down. He worked the mouth of the open jug to the funnel and poured. The disgusting concoction flooded through the hose and into Finn's mouth as he sucked for air.

If Finn didn't get out of this, his parents at the very least would find him drunk and drugged and would ground him for the rest of his life. He would lose the last family connection he had left—his mother's support of his being a Keeper.

Finn had an idea. He wrapped his lips around the tube and blew, like into a snorkel. The booze concoction blasted out of the funnel and into Luowski's face. Luowski jerked back, giving Finn an opening to fight back.

Finn sat up, breaking the grip on his shoulders. He smashed his bedside lamp into Luowski's face and threw an elbow into the other person.

Here was the thing: his parents were constantly violating his privacy, coming into his room without knocking despite peace treaties to the contrary. Interrupting him, telling him to do things, bossing him around. So why was it that now, the one time he needed them, they were sleeping soundly down the hall while a pair of lunatics were trying to dispatch him? Didn't they have any kind of parental intuition that something was wrong? Wasn't his mom supposed to pop wide awake terrified something bad was happening? Weren't parents supposed to rescue you when someone was trying to poison you?

Finn drove his heel between Luowski's legs, causing the boy's face to pucker and his eyes to bulge in the strobe light. Finn then did a back somersault, knowing this was the last move the other kid would see coming. Indeed, the other kid's head ended up between Finn's knees. Finn clamped his knees tightly, balled his fist, and was about to punch the kid's lights out when he saw it was a girl. Sally Ringwald! Their faces were nearly touching. He knew he should, but he couldn't bring himself to punch a girl.

Instead, he stuck his fingers up her nose, released her from the headlock, and drove her back with only a small amount of pressure to her nostrils. Spinning, he came off the bed and caught her again, then grabbed her arm and twisted it behind her back like he'd seen done in the movies. It worked surprisingly well.

He drove her forward and bent her over the bed from behind. That was when his mother opened the door.

“Lawrence Finnegan Whitman!” she said, seeing him alone with a girl in the dark. (Luowski was still rolling on the floor on the far side of the bed.)

She switched on the light.

Luowski stood and dove out the window. The coward didn't stay to help his partner.

“Oh!” his mother said. “Is that alcohol I smell? What are the three of you up to?”

“Overtakers, Mom. OTKs, we call them: Overtaker Kids. That was Greg Luowski. This is Sally Ringwald. Sally,” he said, shoving her arm up higher, “say hello to my mother.”

“Hell…o…Mrs.…Whitman,” the girl choked out behind the pain Finn inflicted.

“They were trying to poison me,” Finn said. “Trying to trap me in SBS using a new tactic.”

Finn and his mother often strategized together. Given that his mother was a legitimate rocket scientist (retired), he valued her input. She was the smartest person he knew, and that included Philby.

His mother stepped inside the bedroom and eased the door shut gently so as not to wake Finn's father. If he became aware of all that went on under his roof he'd likely have both his wife and Finn committed to an institution.

“What is the meaning of this?” Mrs. Whitman asked harshly. She was well aware of the “meaning of this,” but obviously couldn't think of what exactly to say given that Finn was leaning against a girl who was splayed across his bed.

“Should I call the police?” she whispered.

“No!” Sally and Finn said in chorus.

“Sally is going to behave,” Finn said. “She's going to explain the meaning of this. Aren't you, Sally?” He wrenched her arm again, enjoying it just a little too much. “Lock the door, Mom. Then lock the window. If she tries to get out, I'll tackle her.”

His mother followed his instructions, which was not a common practice. Finn released Sally's arm and spun her around so that she sat on the bed facing him and his mother.

“Who sent you?” Finn asked.

Sally wanted a way out, but realized her options were limited. She said nothing.

“My mother will call the police,” Finn warned.

“You wouldn't dare. That would mean the news-papers and stuff, and the Disney Hosts Interactive would be canceled.”

So she'd thought it through that far, Finn realized. He tried to pretend she was wrong.

“You think every arrest gets written about? Not by a long shot.”

He won a few points. Sally looked deeply troubled.

“Greg,” she said.

“He didn't dream this up on his own,” Finn said.

“Maybe not. I wouldn't know.”

“I don't believe you.”

“Believe what you want.”

“Whose pills were those?” Finn asked. His mother looked ready to scream.

Sally turned a pasty white. “My mother's. She has trouble sleeping.”

That explained why he felt thickheaded: he'd swallowed some of what Luowski had been trying to force-feed him. But thankfully, not much.

“How does Luowski get his orders?” Finn asked.

“Text? Email? How should I know?” She looked at them both and said, “He texts me. Seriously! That's all I've got!”

“And how did you join up? The green contacts and all that?”

“This YouTube video. Greg sent me the link. I had to Friend him in order to watch it.”

“Show me!” Finn said, pointing to his computer.

Sally hesitated.

“Now!” Finn's mother ordered.

Both Sally and Finn jumped. Sally crossed the room, logged in to YouTube on Finn's laptop, and played the video.

Images of all four Disney World parks played as a slideshow. A pair of teenage voices, sometimes female, sometimes male, spoke passionately.

“Are you tired of the Disney Hosts? Had enough of all the sweet smiles and plastic expressions inside the Kingdom? It's about time the Kingdom moved into the twenty-first century. Wouldn't you say? Darkened up a bit. Became more interesting. Think about it: the same people have been in charge for over fifty years. What's with that? Did you know that some of your favorite characters are rebelling? If you'd like to see things differently, you and your friends can join us. You won't be sorry. Enrollment is free and the benefits instantaneous. You will be trained. Assigned missions, inside and outside the Kingdom. See things you've only dreamed of—if your dreams are anything like mine. Click the link below to submit your application.”

For a moment, Finn and his mother said nothing, staring at the small screen within a screen. The video's final images had been of Cinderella Castle at night as it changed colors. In the final image it was a penetrating green.

“That's lame,” Finn said.

“Unless that comes with a dose of hypnotism,” his mother said, “I doubt its effectiveness.” She spun the desk chair around so that Sally faced her.

“You broke into my home,” she said. “You tried to poison my son. How many pills did you put in there?”

Sally began crying.

Mrs. Whitman turned to Finn. “How much of that did you drink?”

Finn shrugged. “Not much.” His head felt even heavier now. He fought to keep his eyes open. But it was a good kind of fatigue, not a toxic one. “Hardly any,” he said, honestly. “I'm fine.” He said to Sally, “We don't poison people. We don't sabotage rides or kidnap kids. We try to keep that stuff from happening. You know, I love dark stuff. Vampires? Not so much. But I'll take
The Dark Knight
over
Superman Returns
any day. But do I want it to turn into the Tragic Kingdom? No, I don't. I happen to like it the way it is. If Maleficent wants a dark park, then she can go build one. But leave this one the way it is, thank you very much.”

Finn had never articulated exactly how he felt about what he and the Keepers did. It didn't come out exactly right, but it felt incredibly good. He wondered how the other Keepers would put it.

“We have an offer to make you,” Mrs. Whitman said.

Finn looked at his mother curiously. He wanted to say, “We do?”

Sally raised her head. Her face was tear-streaked, her grim expression disturbing. When Finn's mother cried her contacts got messed up. But Sally's hadn't. In fact, being so close, getting such a good look, he wondered if they were contacts at all.

Sally shied away from Finn's stare. “What's with you?”

“Your eyes,” Finn said. “They're contacts, right?” But the weird thing was, they weren't contacts: her pupils were changing size as he stared at her. The color of her eyes had actually changed. How could such a thing be possible? Unless…

She averted her head completely. “Leave me alone.”

“Finn?” his mother said.

“You used to have blue eyes, Sally. So what happened? How's that even possible?”

“Finn, girls do these things,” his mother said.

“Maleficent…” he muttered. Some kind of spell had been placed on her and the other OTKs. The spell had physically changed their eye color so they could identify each other. Maybe they had pigmented contact lenses or something to fool their families, but this OTK stuff was getting serious.

“To heck with her eyes! I will only offer this once,” his mother told Sally.

“Mom…?”

An upset Mrs. Whitman ignored her son. Addressing Sally, she said, “First, you're going to tell Greg Luowski that you escaped right behind him. Do you understand?”

Sally nodded her head.

“You mess this up, young lady, and your parents and the police will hear about what you tried to do here tonight.”

Sally nodded shamefully.

“Next, you will spy for us,” Mrs. Whitman said. “Anything you're asked to do, anything you're told. Any missions. Any rumors. Any
anything
that has to do with the parks or with the Kingdom Keepers is reported to Finn. You will text him the moment you hear about it. The first moment you possibly can. If we hear the same thing from someone else before we hear it from you then I'll make the call to your parents and to the police. Is that understood?”

Finn swelled with pride. Genius! His mother sounded on the verge of slapping Sally across the face. In fact, he knew she couldn't even hurt a spider—not even a super-ugly spider: she trapped them and set them free outside. A real terror, his mother.

Sally nodded. “I don't hear all that much,” she choked out.

“You will now. Don't think you're the only spy we have,” Mrs. Whitman warned. Finn marveled at her ability to lie so effortlessly. He looked at his mother completely differently. “Don't think you can play with me. You'll regret that.”

Sally nodded again. “I understand. I'm sorry, Mrs. Whitman.” She looked up at Finn. “I'm sorry for what I…what we tried to do to you.”

Finn felt his hands tighten. He should have punched her while he'd had the excuse. “Do as we ask,” he said. “My mother means it.”