Kingdom Keepers: The Syndrome (19 page)

What did that mean?

I headed to Crazy Glaze. Only to find that the window sign read
CLOSED
and the pale-blue truck that had been parked in the same spot for the past week was gone. My head
spun. Two of them. Cars missing in the same hour. What in the world?

In fifteen minutes, I entered the Philby neighborhood, holding my breath. But as I came upon the nerd’s house, a car could be seen through the garage window. Some was home: as in Philby
himself.

I didn’t know what was going on, but I had to attack tonight, before this house went dark as well.

MATTIE

Having returned to Disney’s Hollywood Studios, Jess and I sat on a bench with a view of both the Cast Member entrance the Imagineers were most likely to use and the
nearest ice cream cart, nearly in the shadow of Mickey’s Sorcerer’s Cap. The plaza in front of the cap churned with the action of a street musical show and its captivated guests.

We waited. And waited.

Jess was my bodyguard, I thought, looking briefly over at her. I grinned privately. Jess, a bodyguard?

Hopefully it wouldn’t come to that.

JESS

As Mattie and I waited, hoping her gray-haired Imagineer might reappear, a notification lit up on the screen of my phone. A response to my Instagram message! It was from
Charlie’s roommate, Tierra Del Vegro.
The
Tierra Del Vegro! On
my
phone!

I waited anxiously for a reply.

Tierra took a long time to reply to that one, long enough that I began to worry I’d scared her away.

I breathed a sigh of relief.

A superstar actress, one of the biggest movie stars out there, knew who I was. My fingers wouldn’t move. Finally, I typed.

I looked up to tell Mattie—but her place on the bench was now empty.

MATTIE

“Hey! Remember me? We met earlier!” I said with a smile. “Madeline. My petition?”

I stuck out my hand. He lifted his ice cream, offering an excuse for not shaking hands with me.

“Yes, of course I do,” the Imagineer said, nibbling at a melting Mickey Ice Cream Bar. “And since I’m not a big believer in coincidence, I’m assuming you must want
more than my signature?”

He smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes.

“Well, yes, sir. Actually, I’ve always dreamed of working for Disney myself. I was using the petition to meet Imagineers.”

“Well, young lady, I will say one thing: You are imaginative.” He paused. “What was it you did to me earlier? Are you telepathic? Something like that? We shook hands and I saw
things—things I did not want to see. Things I had not seen. I think it best we keep our distance. I will forget this little exchange we’ve had.”

He started to walk away. I panicked, reaching out and grabbing his hand holding the ice cream bar. He yanked away.

“Young lady!” he shouted.

At the moment of contact, I’d named Finn.

Once again I glimpsed Finn and Philby moving, like in a video. A small apartment.

Fear clouded this man’s recollection of the image.

“There are men after you and your friends,” he whispered. “They’ve been in the parks. Probably are still in the parks. They are very well connected. We have no choice but
to stand aside in your case. But we are working behind the scene to help you, and all you’re doing is lying to me. I’ve seen the horror you’ve come through to get here, Madeline.
If you and the white-haired girl don’t leave right now, you may not make it out of here.”

A Reacher for sure: he’d seen Jess’s true hair color. He knew she was here. I panicked, unable to speak.

“You must leave now,” he said.

I had no choice to believe him. I raced to Jess.

“We gotta go. Now,” I said, pulling her to her feet.

“Because?”

“Because he suddenly doesn’t like ice cream.”

“What?”

“Just come!”

I heard her footsteps behind me as Jess raced to catch up.

“Mattie, what’s going on?”

“Stay with me.” I led her around a corner, taking a chance and stealing a look over my shoulder. No one following. Not yet.

Jess and I reached the Transportation and Ticket Center and hurried to the monorail toward Epcot. Getting caught wasn’t an option. I wanted to think of the Imagineers as allies, but Amanda
kept telling me that Finn and the Keepers were always confused about whom they could trust.

Jess and I elbowed our way through the crowd, angering people waiting in line for the next train. Once on, I breathed a sigh of relief. The moving image I’d read felt like information
vital to our cause. But I didn’t know how to process it; didn’t understand what it meant.

We were about to make ourselves comfortable when I spotted two men in suits in the car next to us.

JESS

“Don’t look now,” Mattie whispered, “but those guys in the ties are looking at us. And not in the checking-us-out sense. More like
watching-their-prey.”

By the time we disembarked at Epcot, it felt like an hour had passed. Unable to contain myself, I flew from the train car. Mattie caught up and kept pace with me. The sound of heavy footfalls
clanged like an alarm on the aluminum dock.

No way, I thought.

The same Barracks 14 men from Hollywood Studios were nearly upon us.

For once, the odds were on our side. Miraculously, there was no wait at Epcot’s Magic Band entrance. I had been prepared to run in without scanning and take my chances with Disney
Security, but now I didn’t need to double our chances of being caught.

The Mickey signal turned green. Mattie and I took off running. Again. We passed the United Kingdom on our left. Behind us, the men barreled straight through security, right on our tail. We
continued in an all-out sprint past Canada, into the plaza. Even with adrenaline fueling me, I felt like my heart was about to burst.

Beside me, Mattie was wheezing like a ninety-year-old geezer. Our pursuers showed no sign of slowing. They’d probably trained for this. We weren’t going to outrun them. We needed a
place to hide.

On the other side of the plaza, I took a sharp left across a bridge, toward the Odyssey Center, pulling Mattie along. Inside the Passholder help center, we had just seconds to find a place to
hide. Something directed me behind the first display on my left.

Mattie, on the other hand, hesitated. She took a second too long. The men burst through the door as she dove under the nearest display.

I didn’t see the rest. I heard Mattie crying out.

In spite of myself, I jumped up and charged, but I slipped at the last second, sliding between two of them.

“Run, Jess, run!” Mattie cried.

My vision blurred with tears, but I did just that: out into the park, racing at full speed, choking on my realization that Mattie was the girl in my kidnapping dream.

Mattie, not Amanda.

Out of breath, with no one following, I leaned against a wall.

A father was explaining Walt’s motto to his family. “Dreams really do come true,” he said.

You have no idea, I thought, tears spilling down my cheeks.

AMANDA

Fresh off my encounter with the OTK Bishop, I made my way back to Philby’s neighborhood. By the end of the bus ride, I found myself on the hate side of my love/hate
relationship with the Orlando city bus system. I’d taken three connecting lines, one of which required me to wait forty minutes at the bus stop because of mechanical problems.

Trying to detect a potential spy outside the Philby house was a new and daunting challenge. Deciding where to hide when I suspected others were hiding forced me to consider all angles, the
distances and lighting. I settled on approaching from the rear, through a neighbor’s yard, which meant trying to stay calm while a large dog growled at me from inside the house. I navigated a
backyard with no less than six of those creepy garden gnomes before climbing the fence and dropping into the Philbys’ backyard.

Using the plants along the side fence as my screen, I took my time reaching the front of the house. Once there, I hunkered down between two young banana trees and remained stock-still. I had a
partial view of the back and a better one of the front. My brain told me Luowski—or one of his gang—would attack from the back, as they had at Finn’s. My gut said otherwise,
directing my attention to the street.

As I waited for something to happen, I worked over my options. I’d be outnumbered; I anticipated the Philbys being unprepared, despite our earlier warning. Grown-ups had a bad habit of
always believing they were right.

Since moving the comatose Finn to Wayne’s cabin earlier, his sleeping face had been fresh in my mind and heart. I found it difficult, if not impossible, to suppress my feelings. Whether
the result of hunger or fatigue or both, I gave into my worry and felt the tears running down my cheeks.

Without the Keepers, Finn and I would never have met. Yet a big part of me wished the DHI technology had never been invented, that he and I had found some other way of connecting, something that
would have allowed us to share unusual experiences without any of them being life-threatening.

Weary, emotionally raw, I wanted whatever could be described as a normal life. Without special powers, I might have had a real childhood. Without Overtakers, I might have had a real
boyfriend.

Wiping away my tears, I blinked, taken aback. At the front corner of the house, a garden gnome was facing me. His little Irish green leggings and ginger beard showed clearly in the darkness. I
couldn’t remember seeing him there before.

I glanced toward the back fence. The only gnomes I’d seen had been in the neighbor’s yard. Now four of the ugly little things stood sentry in the garden by the Philbys’ back
fence. Angry at myself for not paying enough attention, trying to blame it on the growing darkness and my concern about staying out of sight, I wheeled around to study the street and the low
bushes—which would provide ample space for Luowski to hide.

The ginger gnome was no longer at the corner of the house. He stood three feet away from me now. Still and solid as a ceramic statue.

I looked left: the gnomes that had been in the back now commanded the bushes along the fence, against which my back was pressed. Same order. Same frozen expressions. But they had moved.

I stole another look: the ginger was gone, neither by the house nor immediately alongside me. I started to shake: the gnomes to the left were now a yard closer. I stretched to the right for
another angle. Ginger stood stoically by a red and green succulent. Left! All four, another yard closer; the lead gnome, with a cherub’s face and bushy mustache, delivered a penetrating stare
from perhaps ten feet away.

Right! Ginger was closer.

Left! The quartet had inched forward.

Something bit my calf and I squealed. When I looked down at my torn jeans, I jumped, crashing into the fence, almost screaming. A small piece of my blue jeans lay at the stubby ceramic feet of
the ginger gnome, who still looked perfectly inanimate. His bite had broken the skin of my leg.

And there was the quartet, now spread in a semicircle in front of me. I had yet to see a single one of them actually move.

I shouldn’t have taken my eyes off Ginger. Again, he bit my ankle. This time, I managed not to scream—and I
pushed
, hard. Ginger flew straight and fast, burrowing down into
the garden’s soft earth as if I’d dug a hole for him. I brushed dirt in over his head and stomped it down.

Two more bites followed, like bee stings, on my left leg. I stood, jumped over the gnomes, and dashed to the house. When I looked back, the four gnomes were facing the house perfectly still.
Ginger’s head protruded from the grave I’d dug for him. All five were still. As long as I looked at them, they did not move. If I so much as blinked, they changed.

My eyes snapped shut of their own accord. Opened again. Ginger was now only waist deep in the dirt. The four had progressed to the edge of the gravel driveway.

At Barracks 14, Jess and I had engaged in staring contests. Sadly, we considered that an exciting form of entertainment—it was all we had. I won more often than I lost. And a good thing,
too, because now the bizarre little gnomes and I were locked into just such a game.

It was, of course, an exercise in futility: a ceramic statue with beady black eyes doesn’t have to work hard to avoid blinking. An eighteen-year-old girl? Not so much. My eyes watered.
They stung. They blinked.

The four gnomes moved closer with eerie speed. Ginger grew from the earth like a well-fertilized plant.

What were they supposed to do, nip me to death? Chew my feet off and then work their way up? That would take what, a week? Two weeks? No, there was something else at play here, and I’d
been a fool to miss it: they’d stolen my time and my attention. They were nothing more than a pesky distraction meant to move me up against the house with no view of either the back or front
yard.