Ridley Pearson - Power Play

“Might be.”

“Never seen anything like it.

“The pirate’s significant,” he said, turning back to the issue at hand. “Too many of these guys, too much going on for it not to mean something.”

“I agree.”

“The fort,” he said.

She nodded.

“You don’t have to go with me.”

“I want to,” Amanda said.

“It could be…it’s probably dangerous.”

“I know that.” She paused. “Two is better than one.”

“Isn’t that a song?”

“Shut up.”

“We don’t know what we’ll find. It could be nothing,” he said.

“You don’t believe that.”

“No.”

“Then don’t say it.”

“Aye, aye,” said Finn.

“It’s just…” She sounded frustrated. “We both know this is it. A fort? How perfect is that? A remote fort at that, and on an island? Give me a break! You guys should have figured this out a long time ago.”

“We were close. We just didn’t know it. We didn’t figure it out.”

“Stitch,” she said, remembering the story.

“Yes.” He considered this a moment. “The thing is…I like Stitch. Stitch is cute. Mischievous, but cute. I could never quite see him looking so mean and chasing me and Maybeck like that. But now, I’m thinking: spell. I’m thinking the Evil Queen can make us do just about anything she wants. Cute or not. Look at what’s happened to Luowski and the others! She feeds off people’s ambitions and desires.”

“Makes sense to me.” Amanda sneaked a peek around the rock. “How are we going to do this? Alligator-infested water. A pirate the size of the front door of Mrs. Nash’s house.”

“How are you and your arms doing?” he asked, knowing that each push weakened and tired her.

“It’s pretty lame when I’m a DHI. Not much push to the push. But I can try.”

“There are rocks down there,” he said. “If he hit his head on the rocks, it wouldn’t bother me one bit. Better than into the water where he’d make a lot of noise.”

“So we want to come at him from over there,” she said, pointing to the right of the bridge.

“We want you to,” Finn said. “Me, maybe not so much.”

They quickly worked out the details of their attack. Amanda waited as Finn crept down the hill and came at the pirate from straightaway.

“You there!” the pirate called out. He snatched an ancient pistol from his belt.

Guns? Finn thought, wondering if it was from a gift shop or for real, and having no great desire to find out.

“You take another step,” the pirate said, “and you’ll eat lead, palsy-walsy.”

Only then did the pirate’s head swivel as he caught movement out of the corner of his eye. Before he ever saw Amanda, he was airborne. The pirate crashed into an outcropping of rock and did not move. For about ten seconds.

Before Amanda could ask, “Is he…dead?” the pirate was twitching and reaching for his head.

“Run!” Finn said, grabbing Amanda’s hand and scurrying across the rickety Superstition Bridge.

Philby, entrenched at his computer, accessed the server remotely and typed in his backdoor password, waiting for the remote connection. A printout of Jess’s latest sketch sat alongside his keyboard. He didn’t understand where it was, but there was no mistaking who : Maleficent!

Excitement welled within him. His mother’s cooperation stunned him; secretly he still thought that at any moment she might come storming into his room, shouting at him to shut down everything and go back to bed, that she’d suffered a moment of weakness and had come to her senses.

So he worked fast, frustrated by a slow Ethernet connection that was as unpredictable as the weather.

In the background, he registered a sound, an unmistakable sound, from inside the house: the sliding-glass door opening. The one to the Florida room-a large screened-in porch at the back of the house. Why was his mother going out in the middle of night? Maybe she was sleepwalking. Maybe the entire conversation he’d had with her had been with a woman sleep-talking.

He typed faster, urging the connection to speed up.

Elvis meowed from the living room. There was one thing about Elvis: he only made that particular sound when he wanted to be picked up or petted. When he made it for a second time, Philby actually looked out his bedroom door as if he could see through walls. (He could not.) Because there was one thing about his mother: she could not resist Elvis. She spoiled the cat like it was a rich uncle who might bequest his entire estate someday.

It was a family joke: if Elvis meowed twice, Mom wasn’t home. Had she really fallen asleep so quickly? She’d seemed pretty worked up-

The screen changed, and Philby pulled his attention back to his computer.

He was in.

Thankfully, gorillas knew nothing about broken glass. As the first of the three explored the broken hole through the control room’s glass door, he cut his hand. Jumping back, he stuck his hand in his gaping mouth and whimpered like a baby. The injured gorilla then showed the other two his blood, and all three stepped away from the door as if it possessed powers.

Behind them, the Evil Queen could not stop adoring herself in the stainless steel mirror. She seemed oblivious to everything going on around her.

“You might be wondering what a dame like me is doing in a place like this,” Cruella De Vil said to Charlene. “And to tell you the truth, I hardly know!” The way she laughed made Charlene wonder if that hadn’t been what had shattered the glass. “It’s because I know the way of the world-our world, the modern world. Think about it: Queeny out there is from a world lit only by fire. She can hardly be considered worldly, like some of us. Eh, girly?”

“You’ll never get away with this,” Charlene said, holding up the Return fob. “One click of this button…”

Hugo spun around in his chair, his hand on a lever. “I wouldn’t be so sure. If your friend there takes one more step toward me, it’s lights out, everyone. If you push that button as the power fails, there’s no telling what will happen to us-to all of us. We might be gone forever.”

“Is that true?” she asked Maybeck, who looked ready to pounce.

He looked over at her with a terror-ridden, perplexed expression, his usual confidence sapped.

“Now, now, little girl, don’t be foolish,” Cruella said. “Hand that over to me this instant.” She flicked the ash off the burning cigarette at the end of her ebony-and-ivory holder, aiming the ember at Charlene’s face. “You wouldn’t want to see me when I’m mad.”

Maybeck scooped up an office chair, holding it above his head threateningly. “Whoever you are,” he said to Hugo, “you’re new at this. Let me tell you something about being a DHI: the slightest bit of fear and you’re partly human, partly hologram. It’s a glitch in the system that’s never been worked out. So if you think this chair is going to pass through you, you’re mistaken. Now, let go of that switch.”

Charlene matched each advancing step Cruella took, backing away from her.

“Drop the chair!” Hugo shouted, his hand still on the switch. “Do it, or we all go poof ! And if Goldilocks there pushes that button, we might just…evaporate.”

Maybeck’s eyes darted. Cruella’s burning cigarette was closing in on Charlene’s face.

“Do it,” Maybeck said. He wanted her to push the Return.

If I push the button, I drop the fob and we’ll lose it again, Charlene was thinking. She banged into the counter behind her. Her hand felt a drawer handle. She hooked a finger into the handle and pulled the drawer open slightly. If she knew where to find the Return, they could come back to get it. She held it in her hand over the open drawer.