Disney at Dawn

Fi

okay. got it.

you will see a video link button on the landing page. right click on that button: it will open up a video chat with me. see you in a minute.

The sudden closing of VMK had come as a shock to Fi

* * *

“It’s really you,” Fi

The video signal wasn’t perfect: static overlaid Wayne’s face, and the sound of his voice was crackling and uneven. He looked and sounded older than Fi

“You don’t have much time,” he said, causing gooseflesh to ripple up Fi

“Excuse me?” Fi

Wayne was continually checking over his shoulder, as if afraid of being found out, which Fi

“You were lucky at the Park tonight,” Wayne said.

“You were there?”

“Never mind about me. You were there. That’s all that matters.”

“It was Maleficent.”

“Tell me exactly what happened.”

Fi

“We’d moved her there,” Wayne said. “Third move in as many weeks. We had intelligence that the Overtakers were pla

“What about the weather balloon? The lightning strike?”

“The apartment was locked down like a jail cell. Sealed tight. We had to provide a way out in case of fire, but the closest exit was locked from the inside. Our security guard would have had to open that door for her to escape.”

“The Dapper Dan chasing us…was he one of your guys?”

“You had no way of knowing that.”

But I should have, Fi

“We put on an ankle bracelet that would send an alarm if she moved more than fifty feet from the transmitter,” Wayne explained. “It housed a GPS transmitter, so we could track her down. They used the power of the lightning strike to break open the bars. Nothing short of a small bomb would have accomplished that. The lightning also temporarily knocked out the power, which was crucial for her to escape. They bought her enough time to cut the ankle bracelet off. We found it up there in the Tinker Bell tower.”

That didn’t sound good. “So she’s just…gone?”

“I doubt very far. A green face tends to stick out. It’s control of the Park that she’s after. She’ll stay in the Park, we think. But to accomplish her goal of domination, she’ll have to rebuild, and reorganize the Overtakers. And she’ll need the five of you out of the way. You defeated her last time. She won’t risk that happening again.”

Fi

“She needs cold, don’t forget, or at least the illusion of cold. She loses her powers in the heat. For this and other reasons, we think she’s likely gone to the Animal Kingdom.”

“Because?”

“There are several attractions there that are kept quite chilly. And of course there’s Everest.”

“Is that where Jez is?”

Wayne’s face tightened. “You want to explain that, please?”

Fi

“That’s why I was IMing the others,” he explained. “At midnight we were going to meet and try to figure out how to get Jez back.” He listened to himself say that, and wondered what chance they had against Maleficent. Then he checked the computer clock and, seeing it was well past midnight, wondered why no one else had joined the chat.

“Amanda,” Fi

“She’s not a Cast Member,” Wayne said knowingly. If he knew something about Jez, he hid it well, for although the reception was poor—sparking and sputtering—his expression didn’t change.

“What I’m going to tell you now,” Wayne said, “is done so in the strictest confidence. Do you understand me, Fi

“I promise.” A second chill raced through Fi

Wayne glanced suspiciously over his shoulder for the umpteenth time. “I’m in hiding, as you must be aware by now. The Overtakers are said to have obtained the DHI technology. They are working on projecting me—turning me into a DHI so that they could mislead our efforts to defeat them. And if they managed to contain my DHI when I was sleeping…well…you saw what happened to your friend Maybeck.”

Months earlier, Maybeck’s DHI had been prevented from crossing back over—a process that was triggered by a small black remote control device that Wayne possessed. As a result, the human Maybeck had remained asleep in bed in a kind of induced coma while his DHI had been trapped in a maintenance cage in Space Mountain. Fi

“What you’ve just told me about Jezebel’s disappearance,” Wayne said, “figures into this theory, I’m afraid. It suggests the Overtakers do, in fact, have the DHI technology at their disposal, and that presents us with some difficult choices.”

“Our DHIs went back on line tonight,” Fi

“Precisely! You’re aware of the DHI expansion plan?”

Fi

“Animal Kingdom this year,” Wayne said. “Then they’ll put your DHIs at Disneyland and the cruise ships within two years. You and the other DHIs have become so popular that the Imagineers are ramping up expansion into all the Parks around the world: Paris, Hong Kong, Japan. You have developed an enormous fan base.”

The video briefly sputtered and went dark, but a moment later Wayne’s face grew larger as he leaned toward the camera.

Wayne spoke softly. “Imagineering won’t confirm or deny my team’s accusations that the Animal Kingdom’s DHI server was cloned, but now with what you’ve told me, I’m sure of it. The Overtakers have a second DHI server, Fi