Kingdom Keepers: The Syndrome (18 page)

I saw her make a move to leave, but then she caught the eye of another Imagineer and started her speech again. I’d been watching for a while, hoping for a chance to nab her in a less
public setting. Now I groaned. She’d probably be here a while longer.

Ten minutes later, the rain started, a thunderstorm that would have made Noah proud. I ran for cover, turning my back on Weaver for no more than twenty seconds. When I looked again, I confronted
a curtain of gray water so thick, I couldn’t see any of the buildings, much less some puny Freak.

Hurrying through the deluge in search of her, I nearly collided with a palm tree. I slipped, skidded, and fell.

I’d lost her.

AMANDA

The cabin had not been designed to serve as a dormitory for comatose teenagers. Log on the outside, the walls inside were varnished knotty pine. Thick green curtains on
wrought-iron rods adorned the cabin’s four windows—two normal size, on either side of the door; two smaller, one above the kitchen counter, one across from it, above a green couch with
flying duck upholstery. There was a bathroom, a tiny bedroom, and a big closet at the back.

The living space didn’t feel so much like a cabin as a photo gallery. A hundred or more framed photos hung on the walls, both black-and-white and color. They showed Disney World, people of
all kinds, unattributed landscapes.

Standing there, in his space, I wanted more than anything the time to go back into the past and speak to Wayne. But that wasn’t possible, and there was work to do. We wanted to get the
Keepers settled and keep them safe.

While the adults handled the Keepers, Jess and Mattie arrived soaking wet. While they dried off, the rain quit as quickly as it’d started.

Together, we three worked to create a perimeter trip line around the cabin. I was allowed to drive the Pargo to outline our perimeter. Although it was only a few yards, it was the most fun
I’d had in several weeks. We strung Wayne’s fishing line at knee-height (so small animals wouldn’t trigger it) in an awkward circle around the cabin. We rigged it so that it was
one long string, which, at its end, turned back and fed through a very small window in the bathroom. On the back of the toilet, we stacked a tower of kitchen dishes: a metal mixing bowl, a tin
coffee mug, and an old kettle that filled with knives and spoons. We tied the line to a ring on the mixing bowl, and doubled-checked everything.

By the time we finished, Maybeck and Finn were in Wayne’s bed, their mouths refreshed with sponges of water, while Willa rested on an air mattress on the floor. Another window I
hadn’t noticed was the horizontal one in the bedroom, but it didn’t open, so why bother? It was about six feet long and twelve inches high. If you sat in bed you could see the forest
through it, and this made the small room feel bigger.

The good news: no one was coming through that window. It was too small. That left only one way for Luowski or the Overtakers to get to the Keepers—through the front door, and then through
the bedroom door.

Wanda was running a power drill in the bedroom. With nothing to do, I began to roam the living room’s photo gallery. Wayne’s collection overwhelmed and impressed me: Disney World
before, during, and after construction; Disneyland in the days of black and white; dozens of shots of Wayne in the company of Disney Legends; and so many others I couldn’t identify. I
considered asking Wanda, but it wasn’t the right time.

I’d looked at only a small number of photos when one in particular caught my eye.

“Jess, Mattie? Over here.”

The girls joined me. Jess was the first to see it—she and I were so connected.

“Isn’t that—?”

“Yes,” I said, cutting her off.

“The same photo as the one in the blue can,” Mattie said.

“Looks like it to me,” I said.

The photo, shot in black and white a long time ago, showed a celebratory crowd gathered on Main Street, USA. You could tell it was from the past: the guests were dressed in more formal attire
than a similar crowd would have worn today.

“Why?” Jess asked. “And how? Why would Finn give you a photo from Wayne’s cabin wall?”

“It’s different from the others,” Mattie said. “The ones here, I mean. I’m not saying it’s different from the one Finn left. But look at it. It had to have
been shot from Sleeping Beauty Castle. Maybe from a ladder or something?”

“A professional,” Jess said. “You’re right, Mattie. It’s sharper than these others. Everything’s in such good focus, like they used a better
camera.”

“Let’s say we’re right,” I said, “and it is a professional, or at least not a touristy photographer. Wayne likes the photo, so maybe it’s opening day or
something, like we talked about before. He hangs it on his wall. So far, so good. That makes sense, and it isn’t all that unusual. But then you’re right, Jess. Why would Finn bother to
include the same photo, and how did he get a copy of a photo that’s hanging on Wayne’s wall?”

“We need to compare them,” I said. We’d carefully divided up the contents of Finn’s blue can between the four of us for safekeeping. I sought out Wanda and returned with
the black-and-white photo.

“Why’d you take so long?” Mattie said sarcastically. She was clearly feeling more at ease with me and Jess. She wouldn’t have been this sassy back on the Disney
Dream
. It made me smile.

Jess and I had stuck together, solo, for a long time. But while we hadn’t been close to anyone else in Barracks 14, we’d made alliances and partnerships, to trade for important
information and basic necessities. We’d both liked Mattie. She was trustworthy, a quality that couldn’t be underestimated.

I stood on a chair, reached up, and took the photo from the wall. I set the framed photo on the table and took a phone photo of it. Not the best photo, given that the glass reflected back part
of my face.

“Check it out!” I said, laying my phone alongside the photo from Finn’s can. “Especially the reflections.”

“Almost the same,” Mattie said.

“So Finn took a photo of this photo,” I said. “Finn was here.”

“We don’t know that. There could be other copies,” Mattie said.

“Of a photo this old?”

“I’m just saying.”

“I need to get back to the Studios,” Mattie said. “The guy I read loves to get an afternoon Mickey Ears ice cream. I want to read him again.”

Wanda joined us, overhearing and joked, “Remind me to never shake hands with you.”

I told Mattie, “You can catch a bus at the golf clubhouse. I have to say, as much as I’m curious about this video of Finn you saw when you read him, I don’t love the idea of
you going back there.”

“I can handle it.”

Jess said, “I’ll go with you again. If I get up my nerve to see Joe, maybe he can help with the three men in my sketch.”

“I understand your curiosity, Mattie,” Wanda said, “but what if you run into whoever touched you in the emergency room? Or worse, what if they run into you?”

“I’ll be there,” Jess said.

I blurted out what I was thinking before giving it enough thought. “What are you going to do, draw them?” Jess was the least aggressive person I knew.

Her nostrils flared. Her eyes widened. I shrank beneath that glare. “I’ve been studying martial arts. Remember?”

That won a smirk from Wanda, who hid it from Jess.

“Okay, okay! Just stay together, all right? And be careful! And get back here before dark.” I crossed my arms. “In case that alarm we set goes off.”

“Yes, Mother,” Jess said, making me feel about two inches tall.

People in charge of me had been underestimating me and discounting my independence for as long as I could remember. I liked Wanda. I respected her. Admired her, even. But I had
stuff to do; the girls had stuff to do. I wasn’t going to live scared. I’d seen fear chip away at Finn—my Finn!—for far too long.

I wanted Finn and the others out of SBS so badly I could hardly think.

My heart felt broken. I ached, physically ached, for his return.

The Return! The thought hit me like a blow; I stopped, blinking.

I’d been so stupid! There were two ways the Keepers returned. One, the Return itself, was a black key fob Finn carried with him when they crossed over. The other, a manual return, had to
be initiated by Philby from his laptop. Surely I could bring them back if I could figure out how to return them manually, the way Philby had.

Did Luowski know that? Had he connected the dots the way I had?

Knowing Mrs. Philby wouldn’t let me into Philby’s room to steal his laptop, and knowing Luowski wouldn’t strike the Philbys until dark, I laid out a plan to Wanda and she
agreed it had a fair chance of success. I promised I’d be back before dark or call.

I headed to the home of Bishop Graham.

Bishop was a geeky friend of Philby’s who lived in the basement of his parents’ house but acted like a feudal lord, bossing his mother around and calling the shots.
Inside, I found myself sprawled out on a horrible lime-green beanbag chair that smelled of candy and popcorn.

His mother, a gorgeous woman with skin like Beyoncé’s, delivered hot tea and blueberry muffins, approaching her son with a cowering expression of subservience and terror. I looked
away, beginning to wish I’d thought of a different friend of Philby’s to approach. Or maybe they were all like Bishop. What a vile thought.

Making the low-ceilinged basement space—with its exposed floor joists, wiring, and plumbing, and two tubs marked
EMERGENCY SURVIVAL
—even creepier were the
dozens of photos of girls in bridal gowns that covered the walls. Some of the girls were gorgeous, a few downright ug-ly, but most were just overly made up, normal girls.

Bishop saw me eyeing the photos and the tubs. “I was on the school yearbook. Photographer. Dell helped us with our computers. Now I freelance as a wedding photographer.”

“Well, that explains it,” I said, showing him the photo from Finn’s blue can. “I was trying to take my own shot of this photo,” I added, handing him my phone,
“but I couldn’t stop the reflection off the glass from getting in the way. Turns out, I wasn’t the only one. That’s a face, right?”

“There are a lot of faces!” Bishop said. “That’s called a crowd.”

“On top of that. A, though. A face behind what I think is a camera.”

Bishop held the photo under better light, squinting. “Ah! Got it!”

“Can you enhance that? The face? The camera?”

“Why’s it matter?”

His question struck me as odd. “Facebook has face recognition software now, right?”

“Yeah, so what?”

“So maybe it can identify this face.”

“It doesn’t work like that.”

“I thought guys like you and Philby could make stuff work the way you wanted it to.”

“Dell, maybe. For me, I need a little incentive.”

“Money,” I guessed.

“That works,” Bishop said. “I have expenses, you know. Twenty dollars.”

“Ten.”

“Fifteen.”

“Ten.”

“Twelve fifty.”

“Done,” I said.

“Up front,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest.

“Not possible. I have to borrow it.”

“On delivery, then. I’ll keep the photo for now.”

“No way. You can scan it, but I need the original.”

“I’ll need to work with it. You’ll get it back when I’m paid.”

“Then the deal’s off. I have to keep it.” I stood up; the beanbag chair puffed out a cloud of dust as I rose. Bishop sneezed incredibly hard, and I jumped toward him and
snatched the photo back.

Still sneezing, he tried to stifle the sound in the crook of his elbow. Stuck his whole face in there, until only his chin and cropped hair were visible. I was so used to Maybeck’s dreads
that a haircut like Bishop’s made him seem younger than he probably was. When he lifted his face, I saw that something was wrong with his eye.

He blinked rapidly as I pointed to his face. “You…ah…”

The words lodged in my throat. At first I thought that he’d blown nose goo onto his eyeball. Then I realized it wasn’t that at all—he’d dislodged a contact lens. A brown
contact lens that made his eyes the same color as his mother’s.

The iris the contact covered was a different color: a deep, horrible green.

Bishop reached up and touched the contact, realized he’d been exposed. Revealed. He lunged for the photo. “I’ll take that.”

“No!” I jumped backward, tripped over the beanbag.

Bishop sneezed again. “You shouldn’t help them,” he said.

He meant the Keepers. I scrambled to my feet, warned him not to come any closer. He wasn’t obeying. I scooted onto the washing machine, crouched like an ape. “Stay away!”

“Fat chance.”

I warned him again.

“If you join us now, we won’t hurt you.”

“Join who?” I shouted, knowing the answer but wanting to keep his mind busy.

“You know who.”

“Greg Luowski?”

He laughed. “An agent.”

“For who?”

“Yeah, right. Like you don’t know.”

I backed up a step, bumping the washing machine’s control knob. It turned on, thumping beneath me. The sound startled me; I raised my hands defensively, and before I knew it, I’d
pushed.

Bishop lifted off his feet, the shock on his face worth its own photo. The beanbag flew across the floor, and the two met as Bishop slammed into the far wall and slid down to find himself
sitting on it. As he landed, it puffed up more dust. He sneezed loudly.

“Of course I know,” I said.

When he looked up again, I was gone. With my photo.

LUOWSKI

The rain had stopped an hour ago and I had left the Studios to go check on Whitless and the others. Even after spying on her for so long, the annoying Weaver Freak had gotten
away again. I needed to punch something. I felt like a Ping-Pong ball bouncing between two tasks: first to defeat the Keepers and second to stop the Freaks from helping them. I kept trying to reach
both and I was the one getting pounded for it.

Recent visits to Whitless’s house had revealed that his parents were very concerned and stayed home from work. They rarely left the house.

But now, before me, the driveway was vacant. No car.