Ridley Pearson - Power Play

The closet-sized bathroom was getting warm and the air stale. The laptop’s battery was burning up his thighs. If his parents caught him in here he and the Keepers were doomed.

Juggling all the open windows on his computer and computing hundredths-of-a-second differences in transmission times on the log, his finger stopped on a particular line of data. He reviewed the times again, his finger sliding down the transmission column. Using the router data, he could trace the source of the original transmission to a location, and the location to a Google map. It was like a juggler trying to handle seven items at once.

His finger crossed from the router data to the map, and back again just to make sure.

“Oh, no,” he said aloud, quickly double-checking his findings.

“The cotter,” Finn said. “It’s a pin that holds a wheel’s axle in place.”

Amanda was listening to him, but with her back turned. She was focused instead on the change in Pluto’s stance, and a crunching coming from the bushes.

“I think something’s out there,” Amanda whispered.

“Apparently, so does Pluto,” Finn said, equally softly.

“If you have plans for the wheel, I suggest you get to it,” she said.

Finn hurried around the mill house and found the door. The inside was small and dark, the air stale and moldy smelling. His hologram glowed slightly, casting a pale light in front of him. The wheel axle sat in a closed yoke resting atop a shoulder-high post. It did not connect to any kind of millstone; it was all for show. A curved band of steel wrapped over the spinning axle, securing it in the yoke, with a wooden pin bisecting the axle to keep it from slipping out. Finn could feel his fingers and toes, knew his DHI was far from pure given the events of the past several minutes. He used a section of pipe from the floor to pound the wooden cotter from the axle, which began to creep slowly out of the yoke, like a screw unscrewing.

He hurried back outside and, rounding the corner of the mill house, stopped dead in his tracks.

Alligators.

Three of them. The biggest looked a lot like Louis in Princess and the Frog -but a mean Louis. Standing between the alligators and Amanda was a very nervous-looking Pluto, low on his haunches, growling.

“Finn?” Amanda called out, not taking her eyes off the beasts.

“Yeah, I see them.”

“Help?”

“Yeah,” he said.

The waterwheel’s loose axle caused it to spin off-center; the wheel and its external post vibrated and shook. It seemed like the whole mill house might come down.

Finn sped up the process. He raised the pipe high over his head and smashed it full-force down onto the outside post and yoke.

The alligators slithered back, away from the sound. Pluto crept forward, expanding his protection of Amanda.

Finn struck the post again. The wood split. He struck yet again.

It broke.

The waterwheel rocked violently side-to-side, causing the water to spray.

“Get…away!” Finn hollered.

He grabbed Amanda.

“Slowly!” he said.

With each step backward, Louis and the two other alligators ventured forward, forcing Pluto back as well.

“Pluto! Come!” Finn commanded.

But the dog held his ground. He barked once, sharply.

With a thunderous explosion, the waterwheel broke loose of the mill house. It hit the ground spinning, throwing water out in front of it as it rolled straight for the alligators. The closest of the giant lizards lost a section of its tail as all three turned and fled into the woods. The huge wheel smashed into some trees, teetered, and fell, crashing down onto a section of stone wall along the path, wood flying.

“That’s it!” Finn said. He reached for Amanda and took hold of her arm, snagging a large splintered piece from one of the struts.

Amanda turned her head, knowing what had to be done.

Finn stabbed the tip of her index finger, drawing blood.

“Oww!” she cried out, immediately sucking on her bleeding finger. “Nowww whawt?” she asked, her words difficult to understand with a finger in her mouth.

Finn considered this a moment. “I don’t think we’ll know until you Return. Although they might know on the other end-at Mrs. Nash’s.” He glanced around, believing there was at least an hour to go before the manual Return.

Pluto moved to the bushes and was barking.

Finn and Amanda sat down on the stone wall, out of breath.

“So where’d those alligators come from?” she asked.

He looked over at her gravely. “That’s the question, isn’t it?”

“It was my question,” she said.

“And the pirate that Minnie took out, and Stitch, back when Maybeck and I were here last year. I mean: it just doesn’t add up. All that for Tom Sawyer Island? Why?”

Amanda sucked her finger, and shrugged. “That’s what I’m saying.”

“If all this security was for Cinderella Castle or Space Mountain or Splash Mountain, I think we would think that the OTs were protecting something valuable to them. I don’t know what. But this island? Off by itself. Hard to get to. Nothing here once you do get here…”

“Isolated,” she said. “And with a fort on one end.” Her eyes met Finn’s relaying a fierce intensity. “You told me that you guys talked about the OTs needing somewhere to sleep while they’re DHIs-the way we all sleep in our beds. What better place than someplace like this?”

“We have at least an hour to get back to the hub,” Finn said. “We might as well…try.”

“We might want to speed it up,” she said, pointing.

Pluto had pulled back. The alligators had returned.

“This place is very big,” Maybeck said to Charlene.

They had made their way down the facility’s main floor, passing more offices, conference rooms, and a coffee lounge. They’d also passed a half-dozen security cameras. The underlying roar of the place grew progressively louder.

“You think Security has spotted us by now?” she asked.

“Honestly? I’m wondering why no one’s come after us. In a weird way, I don’t think that’s the best sign.”

“The OTs got them?”

“It might explain why no one has bothered with us.”

“That’s depressing.”

Maybeck stopped at the end of the hall.

“You do realize,” Charlene said, studying her DHI’s somewhat shaky blue outline, “that our best defense is being one-hundred-percent hologram?”

“As if that’s going to happen.”

“So you’re scared, too?”

“I don’t get scared,” he claimed. “I get…aware. But I’m very aware at the moment. Yes.” He paused, his hand on the door. “Here we go.”

He opened the door and waved her through. They stepped out onto a steel catwalk that surrounded a central space. Three stories below two huge turbines whined. From the turbines ran a tangle of pipes and wires. The walls were decorated with signs warning of high voltage! death on contact! Nice calming stuff.

Just barely audible was a woman’s complaining voice.

The Queen? they both wondered.

Maybeck raised his voice just loud enough to be heard. “Check it out!”

A blue uniform hung from the railing. Perched alongside of it was a blue jay frantically flapping its wings. Charlene looked first to the uniform, then to the blue jay, then back to the uniform.

Maybeck said, “I think we know what happened to the security guards.” He indicated the blue jay. “I’d say someone spelled them.”

“The Evil Queen did that?” Charlene said.

“Well, it wasn’t Bambi.”

“Whose side are they on?” she asked.

“If someone did that to me, I know whose side I’d be on. But with a twisted sister like her, who knows?”