Disney at Dawn

[ ]: let’s finish up here, and i’ll take you over there.

Philby spent several minutes following the speaker cables, quickly determining that from where he and the others had heard “Under the Sea” playing over the system, they’d actually been part of the Asia speaker system. He rechecked the soundboard, looking to see if he could explain Jez’s iPod having played over the system. There were so many knobs and dials he didn’t know exactly what he was looking at. He’d used GarageBand on his own computer, but this was far more complex.

philitup: she’s either being kept in the control room or somewhere in asia.

[ ]: asia is big.

philitup: tell me about it. I’m done here, can you show me the security room?

He felt excited as Wayne led him back out to the caged lift. Wayne directed the cage to the SECURITY title, selected the menu, and then navigated to the camera control room. Soon Philby’s avatar had again passed through a window in the wall and was standing in front of an enormous second wall of TV screens. There had to be hundreds of them. There was a control board here as well. It only took him a few minutes to co

Philby wrote to Amanda on D-Gamer, double-checking his work. Amanda located the console and took it over. Thrilled, she wrote back how she now had control of hundreds of cameras. She could view most of the Park now: inside all the attractions, outside walkways, parking lots.

panda: this is incredible, philby. thank u.

She waited for Philby to write back. But no message was returned.

Philby never had a chance to answer her. Once again he’d lost track of himself—so engrossed in the virtual worlds of VMK and D-Gamer that he’d forgotten to keep an eye on his surroundings.

But near the end of their discussion, he had finally looked around.

And found himself face-to-face with a very angry tiger.

31

OF COURSE, AT FIRST PHILBY couldn’t believe it.

A tiger.

He’d never realized how big they were: the tiger stood as high as Philby’s shoulder. Orange, black, and white stripes, like war paint. Its eyes were hypnotic; he couldn’t pry his own away from them. They stared at him like he was…lunch.

The tiger blocked the door to the small hut. There was no getting past it, even if Philby’s legs had worked, and at that moment he had no sensation in his legs whatsoever. He felt nothing but tremendous fear charging his system. It took him over completely. Owned him.

A tiger loose in the Animal Kingdom! Where were the sirens? Where were the animal police?

He opened his mouth to scream, but his throat proved too dry, and he croaked out a pathetic noise that didn’t even sound close to the “Help!” he’d intended.

The tiger cocked his head, looking at him from an angle. Sizing him up. Preparing to attack, it crouched slowly and silently. As gracefully as a dancer, it squatted onto its haunches, its leg muscles flexing as if there were steel cables beneath the colorful hide.

Philby couldn’t take it anymore. He squinted his eyes shut and braced himself for the attack.

When nothing happened, he slowly edged his left eye open slightly, stealing a look.

At that exact moment, the tiger jumped.

Philby’s world went dark.

He felt nothing.

32

FINN ARRIVED TO THE RENDEZVOUS at the specified time. There was a tall guy in a Disney cap and green coveralls hanging out by the gate to backstage, and it took Fi

Speaking under his breath, Fi

“Maybe the brooms mean the Overtakers are trying to clean things up,” Maybeck said, amused by his own joke. Fi

Fi

“Haven’t seen either of them. Amanda’s hanging at the Conservation Station,” Maybeck said. “Philby hooked up a bunch of other cameras somehow. So now she can see basically everything going on: the attractions, the paths, and all the buildings, inside and out. But she’s stuck out there. She can’t leave her AnimalCam console because she doesn’t want anyone to discover what Philby rigged up for her. What about you?”

“The thing about the brooms—” Fi

“Yeah?”

“Doesn’t make any sense.”

“As if any of this makes sense! Hello? Try me, Whitman.”

“Okay. So pretty soon after I arrived at Hollywood Studios, I thought this crow had spotted me. Then the brooms show up. You know? But they didn’t exactly come after me. They just kind of followed me there. At Voyage of the Little Mermaid it was almost like they were there to watch the show. The way I was.”

“I don’t get it,” Maybeck said.

“You see?” Fi

“I still don’t get it,” Maybeck admitted, though somewhat reluctantly. Maybeck prided himself on knowing things before others.

Fi

“Threatened them how?”

“What if the crow was some kind of spy?”

“Like the bat,” Maybeck said.

“Yeah! Exactly! And what if the brooms were sent to follow me? So they did. Until The Great Movie Ride. They didn’t follow me into there. Why?”

“I hope you’re going to answer that.”

“Because by my going in there, they were no longer worried about me. And then when I got to Voyage, they weren’t even looking for me. It was the show that they were interested in.”

“The show,” Maybeck said. “Listen, I’m not getting this. What’s up?”

Fi

“Meaning?”

“Think about it,” Fi

He watched as the mental tumblers clicked into place and unlocked Maybeck’s thought. Maybeck spoke slowly. “They’re following the music clue the same way we are…because…they’re…looking for Jez.”

“She escaped,” Fi

“She’s stuck in the Park,” Maybeck said, “and she can’t get out without our help. So she played the music to send us a clue.”

“We heard it,” Fi