Kingdom Keepers V (9781423153429) (38 page)

Luowski's knees locked.

Maybeck sat up, reached behind both of the boy's ankles, and pulled at his heels. Luowski went down fast and unexpectedly. He reached out to block his fall, not realizing the water would protect him. Maybeck rolled out of the water trough, scrambled to his feet, and took off at a run down the stairs, leaving the three behind him.

By the time the sun comes up, we
'
ll control the
Base
.

He had to get word to Wayne. He had to find Philby.

He pulled out his phone.

Dead as a doornail.

* * *

Finn whispered, “What has a head, thorax, and abdomen, but stands six feet tall?”

“A snowman?” she said, facing the same creature as he faced.

“If it was a snowman wouldn't it leave wet footprints?” He imagined it was an enchantment. It had a magnified look—its white surface lined with stretch marks like a shriveling balloon.

It was moving toward them in the dark. Three white balls of declining size from the bottom up, stacked one atop the other, but with short, fat legs and strawlike arms.

“Oh, my,” she said. “You're right.”

“It's…a doughboy,” he muttered, trying not to sound afraid of the thing. Three balls of flour dough, stacked.

“What is that in its hand?”

“A cleaver. As in—”

“Butcher's knife.”

“You got it.”

“I hope not.”

“He does not look happy.”

“Are you sure it's a he?”

“I don't want to know,” Finn said.

They turned around in unison. Another faceless doughboy, also coming at them. This one was armed with a grill fork—two sharpened tines on the end of a two-foot length of metal with a wooden handle.

“We need to keep our holograms.”

“Shouldn't be a problem,” Finn said. He tried swiping his hand through the stainless steel cafeteria shelf that ran the length of this part of the kitchen. No problem.

“I realize we can probably walk right through them,” Willa said. “But you first.”

“How 'bout we test it with the baking racks first?” he said, indicating five-foot-high shelving on wheels. They were designed with slots to accept trays, but with no trays they were open and easy to see through. Finn and Willa each took one and turned back-to-back in order to keep the rolling racks between them and the doughboys.

“Charge!” Willa said, pushing the rolling rack in front of her. Finn did the same.

The weirdest thing happened. The racks collided with the doughboys, but did not meet resistance, nor did they bounce off the doughy flesh. Instead, the white gooey paste that composed their thoraxes and abdomens absorbed the metal, first wrapping around it, then parting and accepting it so that their flesh consumed it.

“Ewww!” Willa shouted. “This thing is—”

“Mine, too!” Finn called back as his doughboy reached around and tried to separate his neck from his shoulders. Finn could not just stand there with a cleaver aimed at his neck. He ducked. The cleaver sliced the air above.

“Whoa!”

Willa cried, having been stabbed through the shoulder with the grill fork. It had passed through her hologram, but her brain convinced her she'd been skewered.

The rest of Finn's rolling rack was absorbed by the beast like quicksand. A moment later it reappeared and passed through the creature's back.

“That is…disgusting!”

Finn could picture himself drowning in raw bread dough, suffocated by the bulging belly of the thing and then spit out a minute later. “We need to think of something quick,” he said.

“Olive oil,” she said.

“I don't think this is the time to discuss recipes.”

“Trust me. My mother bakes a lot. You always put oil on dough. It makes it less sticky.”

“I clearly should have taken home ec,” he said.

“The lower shelf to your right.”

“I see it!” One-gallon plastic jugs of olive oil, lined up like soldiers.

“We need a match,” she said.

The two doughboys had never stopped advancing. Finn and Willa bounced against each other, out of space. Nearly out of their minds.

“Now would be a good time to do this!” she said.

Finn grabbed one of the jugs, twisted off its cap, and spilled oil onto the floor. Then he had an idea—a brilliant idea, as it turned out: he stuck the bottle bottom-first into the chest of the doughboy. The oil glugged out, spilling down the thing. Willa saw his technique and did the same, sticking a spilling jug into her opponent. Oil was everywhere.

Finn's doughboy took another swing at him with the cleaver. It whooshed past his ear. He couldn't convince himself it wasn't going to cut him. Too close.

As the doughboy lifted his weird-looking foot and took a final step toward him, the bottom of the foot landed in the puddle of oil. The doughboy raked the cleaver back high overhead, but had so little traction he lost his balance. It teetered. Finn leaned forward, concentrated on his hands, and pushed. The doughboy toppled over backward, now lathered in oil.

He turned and shoved Willa to the side just as the fork aimed for her throat. Finn deflected the fork to the side and kicked at the thing's leg.

But his now-solid foot sank into the dough and stuck there.

Willa reached for his outstretched arms and pulled Finn free as the doughboy readied the fork to skewer Finn. Together they scrambled over the stainless steel waiter line into the kitchen proper. Finn had seen his mother do this trick. He snagged a piece of dry spaghetti from a huge pile by the stove and, lighting the stove, held the dry spaghetti to the flame. It lit like a match.

Willa snatched it from him, crossed to the waiter counter, and dropped the burning match on the other side.

The flame spread slowly, very unflamelike. It spread like a drop of food coloring in a glass of water—randomly, and yet in all directions at once. The oil-covered flour began to blister and bump. It first turned golden, then quickly to a dark brown. The doughboy's legs stiffened with crust and became unmovable. The other one was now three connected partly cooked dinner rolls the size of truck tire inner tubes lying on the floor. The oil quickly burned out, never rising high enough to trigger any fire alarms.

The air smelled deliciously of fresh bread.

“Makes me wish for a stick of butter the size of a tree trunk,” Finn said.

“And an oar to spread it with,” Willa fired back.

“Nice thinking with the oil,” he said. “For a minute there…”

“You saved my life,” she said.

“Ditto,” he said.

“What now?”

“We can't wait for Philby. The longer we're here, the more stuff she's going to throw in our way.”

He didn't have to tell her whom he meant. Willa nodded. “Yeah. I know.”

Finn's hands tingled. Back to their hologram state. He wished he could have
all cleared
, wished he had more control of 2.0. Was sick with envy that Philby had that control and not him.

He led the way as they left the kitchen and walked down a long hall. They arrived at a freight elevator.

“Interesting,” he said.

“If you're thinking we can ride that to the engine room, it's not going to happen.” Like Philby, Willa had the capacity to commit the ship's blueprint to memory. He envied her that. “It terminates on what's shown as Deck One. Crew and Cast Members only.”

“We're Cast Members.”

“True, though we're not allowed in that area. There is a stairway not far from where we'd get out. It's worth a try.”

She checked Finn's watch. “We give Philby five more minutes for the second cross.”

“Agreed.”

He pushed the button. The elevator arrived. They stepped inside, and when the door closed, he didn't push any button. The elevator car stayed put.

He spoke what was on his mind. “You and Philby are the techies…what's the possibility that 2.0 is being developed for a second generation of DHIs?”

“You mean we are the
beta
when they talk of beta 2.0?”

“I think that's what I'm saying. Am I?”

“They run the new software on us because we're accustomed to being DHIs in the first place,” Willa speculated. “They work the bugs out without putting new projections at risk of looking bad with the park guests. When all the bugs are worked out and the code's reassembled, they roll it out with new models—a new look. No way! You think?”

“Who knows?”

“It makes so much sense,” she complained.

“That's what I said.”

“Storey? Did Storey tell you this?”

“It might have come up. A rumor is all.”

“I'm telling you: look out for her. I do not trust her.”

“What if she's one of the people who's going to model for the 2.0 hosts? Why would they go with college-age?”

“She told you that?”

“Hello? This is me you're talking to. If she'd told me, I'd tell you. I'm not like Philby.”

“What's
that
supposed to mean?”

“It means what it means.”

“Philby's keeping stuff from us?”

“Am I the only one to notice?”

She looked away. “No,” she said, almost unheard.

“Who are we supposed to trust?”

Willa didn't answer.

* * *

The narrow companionway glistened with white painted walls and a gray painted floor. It was warmer here than in the rest of the ship, the rooms smaller and crowded together, appropriately silent given the late hour—during the day, conflicting music would mix in the companionway.

Storey Ming hurried toward the bow, constantly checking over her shoulder for the “whites”—the ship's officers. She didn't want to be paranoid, but from the moment she'd left the Radio Studio, she'd sensed she was being watched. They'd been
ahead
of her. Waiting for her at several key intersections. She didn't see how that could be possible, so she chided herself for thinking it. Yet…

She entered the small berth to her left and shook awake the woman on the lower bunk, whispering, “I need your master.”

“What…huh?” The woman cleared her eyes, sitting up.

“Your master key. Please. It's super important.”

“I can't.”

“You've got to.”

“Security knows when doors are opened, and by what cards. If you use mine—”

“I wouldn't ask if it wasn't wickedly important.”

“What kind of important?”

“I can't say.”

“Will you shut up, please!” came her roommate's voice from the top bunk.

Storey made a face imploring her friend to cooperate, though it was so dark she wasn't sure the woman saw it.

When nothing happened, Storey whispered, “Please!”

Her friend crawled out of the bunk. “I have no idea why I'm doing this.”

“Thank you,” Storey said.

She peered out into the companionway. Empty.

Philby, she thought.
Finally!

* * *

By the time Storey Ming typed in the code to cross over Philby, Maybeck's encounter with Luowski's hologram was long past. Maybeck would have conveyed this in a series of texts, including what he considered the most important message: that the Base was to come under a final and decisive attack and that Wayne had to be told. But little good a waterlogged phone would do him when it came to texting. The text would have to be a phone call. He had to reach a house phone, and that meant appearing in a very public area. The only other choice was trying to get to his aunt's stateroom—but wouldn't Luowski and the others be waiting for him there? So a house phone it was, even knowing that security would likely spot him on camera or that one of the many officers roaming the ship would see him and escort him back to his room.

He was thinking all this when he heard a door shut far behind him. It was the second time such a thing had happened. Once might be explainable as random; twice meant he was being followed.

* * *

“Well, that's a little late,” Finn said, sitting on the floor of the elevator car, Willa's full attention on him.

“What?” she asked.

“It says the galleys are a trap,” he said.

“That's news?”

“The OT server has a special cooler,” he read off his phone.

“This is from?”

“You won't like it,” he said.

“Her,” Willa said. “Storey.”

“I know what you're thinking. But you have to admit, we did walk into a trap.”

“That doesn't prove anything. The server having a cooler? That could be totally bogus, and you know it.”

Finn hated to admit it. But he nodded. “Doesn't mean it is. She could have messed us up bad at any time. Why now?”

“It couldn't have anything to do with us discovering Chernabog and stealing the journal,” she said sarcastically.

“We can't just sit here,” he said.

She reiterated the plan. “Maybeck locates an OTK like Luowski and gets him to follow him. Philby traces the hologram's signal over the network back to the OT server. We wait for a text telling us where to attack and we take out the server. Mission accomplished.”

“We didn't wait earlier.”

“There was no Philby. We improvised. We nearly got baked by a pair of doughboys! He's crossed over now. We're good.”

Finn said nothing.

“So what's wrong?” Willa asked.

“Philby's wrong,” Finn said. “Tell me I'm crazy.”

Willa said nothing.

“That's what I'm talking about,” Finn said.

“He's just going through a rough patch.”

Finn shot her a look. “You think?” He glanced down at the Wave Phone in his lap, wondering if he could trust it.

* * *

Philby crossed over forty-five minutes late, an eternity for the plan to work. Phone in hand, he'd received Storey's text that the galleys were a trap and that the OT server had special cooling.