Ridley Pearson - Power Play

“It’s nothing,” Jeannie said. “You dropped your diary, is all.”

Jeannie leaned down to retrieve it. About to hand it to Jess, she hesitated.

“If you don’t mind,” Jess said, “that’s private.”

Jeannie knew it was private-it was her diary-a source of ongoing tension between the two. Jeannie could allow her curiosity to get the better of her.

“I know. I know.” Still, Jeannie was reluctant to hand it over, her attention fixed on the sketch. Finally, she passed the diary back to Jess. “Have you been there?” she asked. “What’s it like?”

“School?” Jess asked.

“What are you talking about?”

“Winter Park. Where Finn and Amanda go.”

“That’s not Winter Park High,” Jeannie said. “That’s the Lake Buena Vista power plant. I just wrote a paper on it for science class.”

“Science class? Lake what?” Jess said.

Jeannie traced the stair-step profile of the structure in the background of the kiss.

“It’s called the Lake Buena Vista Cogeneration Facility. Hang on. I’ll show you.” Jeannie dug through some papers on her desk, including a bunch of printouts from various Web sites. She singled out three of these and passed them to Jess.

“So?”

Jeannie leaned over Jess’s shoulder, selected the second of the three printouts-a photograph taken at a great distance from the power plant-and traced the stair-stepped roofline of the facility. She then pointed to Jess’s diary and traced the same pattern.

Jess went silent, her eyes dancing between the two images. She knew her dreams often combined locations or activities.

“What exactly does it do?” Jess asked.

“Electricity. It powers Disney World and local businesses.”

“Disney World.” Jess felt light-headed. This was not coincidence.

“Water and sewage treatment, too. Natural gas. Everything. I got an A on my paper,” she announced proudly.

“As in electricity for the Parks?”

“Exactly! Yeah. That’s the Disney part. They wanted to own their own electricity and stuff. You know, so it was more reliable and everything.”

Jess traced the two rooflines again-from the Web site and from her drawing. They weren’t simply similar; they were identical.

“Where exactly is this place?”

“It’s way out on Disney property. As in, the boonies.”

“Disney property? You sure about that?”

“Hello? An A? Did you know that at one point Walt Disney had planned for Epcot to be this futuristic city, with homes all around it? How cool would that have been?”

Jess barely heard her. Her brain was stuck back on Disney generating its own power. She’d drawn a Disney power plant in her diary without knowing it. It had to be hugely significant.

She had to contact Philby. Now!

Philby had his hands full. He kept one eye on the clock in his computer’s toolbar. The other eye jumped between the dozen webcam views from the Magic Kingdom’s Security server as he tracked Finn through the Park. His cell phone rested on his lap in vibrate mode, the laptop bridging his thighs. He sat on the toilet-lid closed-of what his mother called the “powder room,” a small, windowless bathroom with a corner sink near the front door of the house. He had the bathroom’s door locked: there would be no unexpected intrusions by Hugo or anyone else tonight. He could not afford to leave the Keepers stranded.

The e-mail from Jess caused him to perspire. He Googled “Lake Buena Vista Cogeneration Facility.” He had a fine memory, so when a photograph of the power plant popped up, he immediately matched the similarities with Jess’s diary sketch. From what he read, the power plant supplied all of Walt Disney World with power. If something happened to the Florida electric grid, Disney’s facility promised an uninterrupted flow of electricity to all of its Parks and hotels.

And computer servers, he thought.

Jess had foreseen its importance in one of her dreams. That the kiss used the power plant as a background did not necessarily connect the two: Jess’s diary pages often mixed images and time lines. But it established its importance-Jess’s track record was well proven.

With the power plant’s direct connection to the Parks, and its location outside the Parks but still on Disney property, the OTs jumping the Disney firewalls suddenly took on tremendous significance.

Control of the power plant meant control of the Parks-the Overtakers’ ultimate goal.

He had no way to reach Finn to update him. But he did have Maybeck and Charlene asleep and on standby to be crossed over.

He brought up his rendering of the router traffic he’d mapped from the DHI server’s log, already chastising himself. There had been several pings to a router out in the middle of nowhere. On Google Maps it just came up as an area of swampland-but now he saw his error: for security reasons, power plant locations were blocked from Internet maps. He’d been looking at the power plant all along, because those pings represented OT DHI traffic.

The OTs had been to the Lake Buena Vista Cogeneration Plant several times in the past week.

At that moment, his DHI traffic alarm sounded and a red message flashed on his screen: +70% BANDWIDTH USAGE.

Philby tried to focus, his breathing rapid, his heartbeat out of rhythm.

They’re there right now!

Pluto was waiting for them.

“This way!” Finn said, gently steering Amanda while trying to move her more quickly.

“Why are we running?” she asked.

“Visitors,” Finn said, glancing back.

Pluto’s hackles had been up for the past several minutes, and he kept looking behind them, his eyes a knot of concern.

Finn had tried to see whatever it was back there that was bothering Pluto, but only caught a shadow crossing the empty Park path in Frontierland.

“You see that?” he asked Amanda.

There it was again: the flash of translucent eyes from the shadows, like a deer on the side of a highway.

Amanda skidded to a stop, for she’d seen them, too, but for the first time.

“Another dog?” Finn asked.

Amanda’s blue hologram line faded as she lost a considerable percentage of her DHI to fear. “Not a dog,” she said. “Did you see how high off the ground that was?”

They were walking backward now, still moving in the direction of the Tom’s Landing raft dock, but refusing to take their eyes off the shadows by Country Bear Jamboree, where they’d both seen the pair of eyes.

An animal’s rapid breathing could be heard drawing closer.

Finn whispered, “That has to be a dog! Listen to it.”

“It’s tall. Very tall. Pluto is a Great Dane,” Amanda reminded him. “And there’s another in the movie The Ugly Dachshund .”

“Never seen it.”

“The dog or the movie?” she asked.

They walked faster now, keeping their eyes on the moving shadows while trying not to fall. They heard a wet slurp from what had to be an extremely large tongue. Another flash of eyes.

“Ehh!” Amanda reached for Finn and clutched his arm tightly. He actually appreciated the contact, though not the reason for it.

A sliver of light from one of the few lighted streetlamps played like a knife’s edge across the path, severing the darkness. Through the shaft of light strode a long, hairy creature, rail thin, malnourished and mangy, only a few inches visible at a time, like it was being painted by a tiny flashlight. It had enormous paws and four stick legs, but it was absurdly oversized, had pointed teeth, and a stream of drool that turned their stomachs.

Finn said harshly, “That’s no dog.”

“A wolf,” Amanda said, her voice quavering. “That’s the Big Bad Wolf.”