Текст книги "Disney at Dawn"

Автор книги: Ridley Pearson

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Текущая страница: 15 (всего у книги 17 страниц)

55

PHILBY RAISED HIS AVATAR’S SWORD and blocked the swipe of silver steel that aimed for his head. Wayne was fighting two at once, his sword nothing but a blur of shining light.

The things coming at them—there were four altogether—were hunchbacked trolls with exaggerated noses, long hair, and strong arms. Never mind that they were avatars, they were horrendous-looking creatures, incredibly quick with their swords and determined to eliminate Wayne and Philby from VMK.

Philby blocked a second swipe and then a third. He backed up and moved to his right, noticing that the troll pivoted on its left foot as it turned to stay with Philby. Philby raised his sword as if to strike a blow to the head. The troll crossed its sword to block, but Philby released the sword, allowing it to fall and, as it did, he bent forward and was there to catch it before it hit the ground. He swung at the troll’s left leg. It sliced in two at the knee. The troll stepped forward and fell over onto its face. It tried to stand but was useless without a left leg.

Philby stepped around it in time to engage the sword of the third troll to attack Wayne, who was already busy defending himself against two of the attackers. Philby caught this troll’s sword as it swung back over its head. The contact spun the troll around and it came at Philby with a series of swift slices to the air, narrowly missing the chest of Philby’s avatar, which was in steady retreat. The troll reared back and lowered its sword with power and speed. Philby sidestepped, tripped, and his avatar went down.

The sword smacked into one of the purple networking cables, cutting it in two. The purple color immediately switched to gray, and Philby realized that since this was an internal maintenance site, anything done to the mechanism was for real and affected the real world. Wherever that data feed had been headed, it was now null and void. He considered cutting all the cables. Wouldn’t that have the desired effect? Wouldn’t it stop all the data—and more than likely all the DHIs? He thought it would, but at the same time, without that vivid color, he wouldn’t be able to follow the cables to their source—the second server. And that was the ultimate prize.

A troll left the fight with Wayne. It squatted and jumped a phenomenal distance, landing right in front of Philby. It raised its sword to do Philby in. It was now two against one. Philby spun in a full circle, his sword outstretched. It was similar to a martial arts move, and it caught the two others by surprise. He hit the first in the arm, severing it. The second took the tip of his sword across its chest. Philby spun again, this time taking a step forward.

The one-armed troll merely switched hands, now holding the sword with its right. It lowered it at Philby, who danced to the left just as the blade came down like a guillotine. It chopped off the end of Philby’s right foot.

Philby moved and saw his avatar sway, about to fall. He jerked left and maintained his balance: he could still stand, but his steps had to be shorter.

Wayne had dispatched the remaining troll. He came at the two on Philby from behind, and soon there was a flash of swords as Philby battled the one-armed troll and Wayne took the wounded one. Philby moved to his right, seeing that Wayne was moving that way as well. And now Philby saw Wayne’s scheme. The two trolls were battling in close quarters, too near one another. They each pivoted on one leg as they turned—a faulty design—and Wayne was working to tie their legs together, to cross their legs.

It worked beautifully. One more move to his right, and Philby watched as the two trolls tumbled over. Before Philby could even lift his sword, Wayne had removed these two from the game as well. Wayne hurried to the one spinning on the floor and stopped it with a sword thrust.

[ ]: if we don’t hurry, they’ll generate another fifty of these and send them our way. can you find the server?

philitup: I’m sure I can.

[ ]: then do it. and tell your friends up top we may need their help, my guess is these trolls aren’t going to let us anywhere near that server.

56

THEIR EYES ADJUSTING as they climbed up the small ramp and out of the open hatch, Finn and Jez beheld an intimidating sight. The upper tiger yard was a large enclosure, an open expanse of sloping green grass surrounded by fifteen-foot-high walls. The enclosure’s boundaries were broken by bamboo trees, wild grasses, and jungle shrubs. In the shade to their left, and just coming to her feet, was an enormous tigress, six feet from shoulders to tail with a huge head, and paws the size of oven mitts. She glanced back at them with her amber eyes and let out a thunderous growl—they were intruders and she didn’t appreciate being awakened from her nap.

Directly ahead of them, coming over the crest of the small rise, were two more tigers—barreling toward Finn and Jez at full speed and, to the right of the yard, a half dozen monkeys and four large orangutans were also charging. The number of wild animals, as well as their combined ferocity, every twitch of muscle aimed directly at Finn and Jez, froze the kids. They stood absolutely still, which was a good thing.

Then Finn spotted the ivy creeping along the right wall—just behind the gang of monkeys. Charlene.

“Finn?” a terrified Jez said, her voice breaking.

“No fear,” Finn whispered. He had tried to cross over on his way out of the hatch, but his excitement had prevented it. He didn’t want Jez to know this, so he spoke with authority.

“Move to your right,” he said. “Stay close to the wall.”

“But the monkeys!” she said.

“I know.”

A hollow growl reverberated from behind them: another tiger, this one coming through the tunnel from the lower yard.

Finn picked up a stick and stepped forward, putting himself between the charging monkeys and Jez. The two center tigers continued their advance, while the one in the shade to the left had spun fully around to face the hatch. If he didn’t do something quickly, he and Jez were going to be animal crackers—a late afternoon snack.

“Go!” he said.

Jez took off along the wall at a run.

Finn attacked the line of advancing monkeys and apes, swinging the stick like a baseball bat. The monkeys skidded to a stop, forming a semicircle around him. He saw a flash in the eyes of one of the orangutans: the ape had spotted Jez fleeing along the wall. He chose this ape to go after, chanting under his breath: Nothing can hurt me.

He charged the orangutan, swung the stick, and forced the ape to dance backward, out of the way of contact. In doing so, the orangutan left a small gap between him and the ape to his side. It was just big enough for Finn to squeeze through. He ran forward and shot the gap. The ape turned.

This offered Jez the opportunity to run even harder, quickly moving along the wall toward the slowly advancing Charlene, who, posing as DeVine, was high atop her stilts.

The large cat to the left stepped out of the shadows, her strides calculated and controlled: she was hunting. If not Finn, any one of the monkeys would make a worthwhile snack.

The monkeys saw the cat as well, their hackles raised in alarm.

Finn was facing the wall of monkeys as the second cat climbed up and out of the tunnel. He glanced over his shoulder: the other two cats would arrive at any moment.

He’d done a fine job of pulling attention away from Jez, but his own situation was far more tentative. If he didn’t think of something quickly, his lone stick was not going to be enough to defend himself.

He held the stick high overhead and cried out loudly in a war cry.

“Go ahead, try it!” he shouted, watching Jez continue her progress. But the monkeys grew daring, tightening the circle around Finn.

Preparing to strike.

57

PHILBY’S AND WAYNE’S AVATARS ran along a catwalk of steel mesh, following the few remaining cables like train tracks toward an unconfirmed destination. But everything pointed toward the Dino Institute. Finally, the first wall of the institute appeared, and then the identification on the schematics.

The trick for Philby was to juggle back and forth between the DS and the computer terminal. It wasn’t easy.

philitup: it’s definitely dino-institute.

mybest: we’re almost there.

He studied the wires ahead of him. The purple wires turned right just inside the doors of the institute.

The virtual blueprint spread out before him and Wayne. As they neared the entrance, the plan shifted from two to three dimensions. He and Wayne moved inside the guest entrance. Philby stayed alert for any other ways to get in.

Wayne’s avatar stopped at the edge of the doorway.

Philby typed a message to Wayne.

philitup: what’s wrong?

[ ]: i sense a trap.

philitup: why?

[ ]: we should have met more resistance, i am familiar with their tactics, this is unlike them.

philitup: maybe they’ve changed.

[ ]: not likely, the overtakers never rest, they are cunning and clever and they possess many spells.

i would suggest we look for another access point.

philitup: there’s no time, besides, the cables are right here.

[ ]: have you considered the cables themselves may be part of a trap?

Philby had not given it any thought. The data flow had convinced him he was following the right cables. If it was a trap, then Maybeck and Willa were also walking right into it.

[ ]: please…another door, it’s safer for all of us.

Philby hesitated, incredibly tempted to follow the cables. But Wayne had gotten him this far. He had to trust him. He backed his avatar out of the entrance, took his hands off the controls, and texted a message to Maybeck’s DS

philitup: if u can get backstage @ dino institute, u r looking 4 a rack of servers, there will b thick blue or gray ethernet cables clipped into the back of each server, there may be a hub—a box with flashing lights.

As his avatar stepped out of the structure, the schematics returned to two dimensions. He studied the full schematics. The biggest backstage areas were to the right.

philitup: workshops are @ end of ride, must destroy server.

He waited to make sure Maybeck had received the messages.

mybest: got it. . i hope.

58

THE APES AND MONKEYS ENCIRCLED FINN, closing around him like a net. How simple to cross over briefly into his DHI and just walk right through that hairy line, but it was not to be: he was terrified. He wasn’t going to cross over on his own.

He spun, looking for the weak link in the circle. He considered charging some of the smaller monkeys, breaking the line there and running for it. But they all were ferociously fast on their feet and, at the moment, baring their teeth in a display of aggression and anger.

He caught sight of Jez as she reached Charlene. Excitedly, the two girls worked it out to where Charlene was leaning her back against the wall, and the nimble Jez now climbed up the stilts—using them as a ladder—toward Charlene’s waiting hand. Finn looked away as the fingers of the two met, confident that Charlene would get Jez up and over to the other side.

“Over here!” a high-pitched voice called out.

Finn heard guests shout: “Check it out!” “Look at this!” “There are kids in with the tigers!”

Where had she come from? Finn wondered. It was Amanda. She was inside the tiger yard, the huge, prowling cat to her left, the circle of monkeys directly in front of her.

Disney Security would be on them in minutes. They had to get Jez—and themselves—out before they were either eaten by the tigers or caught by Security.

The other two cats arrived at the same time. They, too, began to circle, along with the tiger that escaped the hatch—a wider circle than the monkeys, one that included Amanda.

The escaped tiger still confused Finn: how had it gotten into the tunnel in the first place? Was the lower yard hatch open? If so, who had opened it?

Only the prowling tigress that had emerged from the shadows remained on her own, majestically moving with long, confident strides, restlessly back and forth. She seemed to be agitated, studying the commotion in her yard, calculating a strike.

Several of the monkeys spun around, distracted by Amanda, and broke their chain. Finn took advantage of the distraction and shot for the opening.

The two charging tigers turned at the last minute, now aiming for Amanda.

Finn took two steps toward her, intending to defend her, but then witnessed her leaving the ground. She levitated, floating higher and higher. The monkeys, carried by their own momentum, ran right through the space she had occupied. The two charging tigers leaped into the air, reaching their claws toward her. One caught the leg of her jeans, but there was no sound of tearing fabric. No scream.

The leaping tiger flew through the air and landed with a roll.

The slinking tigress sat back on her haunches and sprang for the charging tiger. It looked as if the tigress were trying to defend Amanda. The two tigers growled at the tigress and the three cats began to circle each other.

Ignored, Amanda lowered herself to the grass.

“The wall!” Finn called out to Amanda as he raised his stick toward the remaining two monkeys.

Amanda sprinted toward Charlene.

Finn turned his back in their direction, battling most of the monkeys, who darted about him trying to sink their teeth into his legs. He knocked them back with his stick, but apparently they barely felt it.

Looking over the heads of the monkeys, Finn saw the tigress swiping her huge claws at the other two grand cats. It looked as if the cats made contact, but none of them reeled with pain—they held their ground.

Charlene let out a squeal as Amanda climbed up her stilts; her hand had become caught between a stilt and the wall.

With that squeal, all three cats turned. One minute fighting each other; the next, acting like curious cats. They clearly saw the monkeys, then Finn, and finally the girl in the distance clambering up a wall.

They charged.

Finn had his hands full with the monkeys. He had not an ounce of strength nor a second of time to deal with three enormous cats barreling down toward him.

This is it, he thought. It was too late to turn and run. Too late to escape.

The cats were lightning fast. They seemed to pull the earth, and Finn with it, dragging him toward them. Without looking, the monkeys knew. They darted to their left, removing themselves from the tigers’ line of sight.

Finn readied his pathetic stick; it was all the defense he had. He was going to be eaten alive.

The two smaller tigers leaped into the air when just five yards away, perfectly calculating the distance. They would land on Finn, crushing him, then snap his neck with their powerful jaws and start the feast.

Finn braced for the end.

59

PHILBY’S AND WAYNE’S AVATARS HAD, only five minutes earlier, moved around the right wall of the Dino Institute, as it appeared on the virtual schematics.

philitup: if you helped create the place, how about a little hint of how to reach that room?

Near the south wall of the institute, the purple cables terminated. The blueprint showed a series of walls around them, but no door. So was the server in a closet? A workspace? The ceiling? The hiding place in the floor?

[ ]: computers came way after my time. I have no idea where that is.

philitup: none? are you sure? they don’t need much space, but it has to be a cool room, and they require a lot of cabling, so they would be over a tunnel or sewer, or—

[ ]: storm sewers.

Wayne’s avatar lifted its arm to point.

[ ]: I remember a meeting, years ago, where routing data lines over the storm sewer pipes was discussed, storm sewers carry the rainwater out of the park, the sewer lines are in maintenance conduits throughout the park.

philitup: but this is a server they want to hide, that they don’t want anyone to find.

[ ]: the employee bathroom in the Dino Institute is way too cold, and every bathroom has drains, right? some drains feed the storm sewers.

Philby grabbed hold of the DS. It was worth a try.

philitup: dhi server is in an employee bathroom close 2 the south wall.

mybest: on our way.

philitup: wayne and i will try 2 cut the cables, u try 2 find server.

Philby looked back at the VMK screen and, as he did, the screen popped and sparkled. It occurred to him that someone could be monitoring them. The Overtakers could know that he and Wayne were online. Could they trace their locations? If so, both he and Wayne were at great risk.

philitup: hurry up! we have to cut the cables.

Wayne’s avatar rushed to keep up with Philby. It forced Wayne to keep his hands on the mouse and off the keyboard: he couldn’t type a message as long as Philby kept him moving.

They traveled around the corner of the institute and back to the catwalk that carried the data cables. Philby struck the purple cables with his sword. Once…twice…three times. All the cables were cut. They immediately turned gray—the data stream was dead.

Why wasn’t Wayne helping? Philby turned his avatar to look.

Wayne’s avatar wasn’t moving.

philitup: come on! hurry!

The white-haired avatar just stood there not doing anything.

Philby wished he could scream at Wayne, instead of just typing. Why wasn’t the old guy following him?

Then the impossible happened: Wayne’s avatar dissolved.

60

MAYBECK AND WILLA occupied the backseat of one of the exploration vehicles inside the Dino Institute. The front seat stood empty, and given the size of the crowd lined up for the ride, this should have told them something; but they’d been too preoccupied with Philby’s instructions to pay much attention to anything beyond looking for doors offering employees backstage access.

The ride was dark and very cold, with stunningly real dinosaurs appearing at every turn. Asteroids fell to Earth in a shower of fiber optics. The vehicle rounded a long turn. The prehistoric creatures looked up and turned toward the truck.

“How are we going to do this?” Willa asked Maybeck in a whisper. “We can’t jump from the car without setting off the alarms.”

“We’ll find a way backstage,” Maybeck promised. “The trick is to know where we’re going.” He indicated the part of the ride to their right. “This section is all interior to the track. Philby said a workshop or bathroom. Those rooms are going to be in spaces between the ride and the exterior walls—or currently to our left.”

“Are you sure about that?” she asked.

“I’m not sure about anything,” he conceded.

The next scene showed a tyrannosaurus eating a lizard.

“It’s creepy the way their eyes move,” Willa hissed. “It feels like they’re looking right at—”

But her words were cut off as the dinosaur’s giant tail swiped over the engine of the open-topped vehicle. Maybeck reached out and pulled Willa down onto him a fraction of a second before the massive tail nearly beheaded her. The tail broke some equipment off the vehicle, and it tumbled to the track.

Maybeck dared to sneak a look and pushed Willa back up.

“Was that…supposed to happen?” she gasped.

Maybeck pulled at a lap belt at his waist; then he tried Willa’s. The belts wouldn’t release—they were locked shut. The kids couldn’t jump out of the vehicle even if they’d wanted to.

“I don’t think so. No,” Maybeck answered. “I think that was intended for us. Heads up!”

He glanced back. No vehicles in sight in either direction.

The ride was designed so that no car ever saw another. There was no use calling out for help.

“You remember Small World?” he asked her.

“I was on Winnie the Pooh with Charlene,” Willa answered. “We nearly drowned, don’t forget.”

“I haven’t forgotten. My point is: I think this is like that.”

“I think you’re right.”

If they could have jumped from the car, the sensors would have stopped the ride, but the locked seat belts prevented their escape.

Suddenly, a pterodactyl shot down at them from out of the pitch-black ceiling. It was dark and angular, with a wingspan of over six feet. With its sharp talons extended, it descended too quickly for Maybeck to react, catching him by the wrist as he shielded his face from the attack. At the moment the talon grabbed hold of him, his seat belt released, the timing too perfect to be coincidental. The bird locked on to his forearm and dragged him up and out of the vehicle.

Willa screamed, spun, and grabbed him by the boots. Maybeck was now stretched between the overhead bird and Willa, still locked in her seat. Neither was willing to let go. He groaned in agony—it felt like every joint was separating simultaneously.

He twisted his forearm to the left then quickly to the right, breaking the bird’s grip on him. The pterdoactyl’s long beak bent back to peck at Maybeck, but too late. Maybeck reached out and snapped the bird’s leg at the knee. The creature cried out, flapped its wings, and was absorbed into the darkness of the ceiling.

Was it alive?

Willa pulled him down into the backseat, but he avoided the seat belt.

The pterodcactyl’s broken leg in hand, Maybeck studied it. An electrical wire extended from the broken knee.

“You’re bleeding,” she said.

He studied the three holes in his skin. “It doesn’t hurt much. I’m fine.”

“It got you.”

“Dang right it did.” Only Maybeck didn’t say ‘dang.’

“This ride is trying to hurt us!”

“You think?” he snapped sarcastically. “You’re not surprised by that, are you? There are sensors on every ride. Probably cameras, too. Throw in a little artificial intelligence, and how hard can it be to program a server to defend itself?”

“You think the server is doing this?”

“I think it knows we mean business. It has every right to be scared. I’m going to fry its innards if—no, when!—we find it.”

“But how—?” Willa began. She cut herself off as Maybeck stood up in the seat, grabbed a light, and turned it to show them something of the track in front of them.

Back behind the jungle plants, he illuminated a black door and a disguised device protruding from beside it.

“Ten-to-one that’s a card reader,” Maybeck said. “That’s our way in.”

“But I’m stuck,” Willa reminded him, indicating the locked seat belt. She pulled and squirmed, but there wasn’t any way she was going to slip out of its grip.

Maybeck glanced around sharply. The car had already moved them past the black door. They were rounding a turn toward the end of the ride. They would be caught and—at a minimum—thrown out of the Park. If the Overtakers got hold of them, then things were about to get a lot worse.

“There has to be an emergency release,” Maybeck said, trying to think like Philby. What would Philby do?

“If a car stops,” she said. “Like a fire or something…”

“The belts would release!” Maybeck nearly shouted, agreeing with her.

“We’re going to have to move fast,” he said. A rhinoceroslike dinosaur stepped out of the scene up ahead and lowered its head. It was going to head-butt them.

Maybeck jumped from the vehicle.

Nothing happened.

He’d expected flashing lights and sirens and for the vehicle to stop. But the car continued forward, aimed directly at the armor-clad beast with its head lowered.

Maybeck tore loose a branch from a tree. He hurried to the front of the research vehicle and swung the branch repeatedly at the vehicle’s bumper and grille.

“Terry!” Willa shouted, calling Maybeck by his first name.

“There has to be…” Maybeck muttered to himself as he continued to bash the vehicle while he backed up toward the waiting dinosaur. His pants belt snagged on something on the front grille. If the beast charged now, it would crush him against the car.

Again, he smacked the front of the car.

It stopped.

He’d knocked out a front sensor.

Struggling to free his hooked belt, he turned and glanced over his shoulder. The dinosaur broke loose from his scene—the thing was definitely alive!—and charged.

With the stopping of the vehicle, an alarm now sounded throughout the building.

Willa’s seat belt released, freeing her.

She leaped from the backseat. “The black door!” Maybeck called out calmly. Again he wrestled with his belt. Now he fiddled to unstrap it: he was stuck.

The dinosaur snorted and charged down the track at him. Only at the last second did Maybeck spot a small pool of oil along the track—one of the vehicles ahead of him was leaking oil. As he noticed it, he elected to stay perfectly still.

“MAYBECK!” Willa cried out.

His belt still caught, Maybeck turned around and faced the charging animal.

His belt buckle came loose and slipped out of the loops on his pants.

He dropped to the floor.

The dinosaur slipped in the oil and crashed into the front of the vehicle, demolishing the rover into a twisted V of bent metal.

Maybeck was lying directly between the dinosaur’s legs.

He scrambled to his feet.

Willa held the black door open.

Maybeck ran like he’d never run. The dinosaur turned and followed, not slowed by the crushing impact with the vehicle.

Maybeck literally dove through the black door. Willa swung it shut. The wall shook as the dinosaur impacted the metal door and concrete fire wall. Willa took Maybeck by the hand and pulled him to his feet.

“You could have been killed.”

“I saw that his legs were like stumps. As long as I stayed between them…”

“That was too big a risk to take.”

“It’s not like I had forever to think about it,” he replied.

He looked around. They were in a long, curving hallway. There were no markings on the gray walls. Overhead, hundreds of wires were carried in a kind of metal ladder that hung from the ceiling; it ran in both directions and out of sight. Among the wires were dozens of blue ones.

“We follow the wires,” Maybeck said.

“But in which direction?”

“This way,” Maybeck said.

“But how do you know?” Willa asked.

“I don’t,” he said. “Some things we’ve just got to take on faith.”

“Faith? This is you speaking? What have you done with the real Maybeck?”

“Give it a rest.”

They were hurrying now, the alarm still sounding. Perhaps employees all rushed to assigned stations in emergencies—or to unload guests. Whatever the case, the hallway was empty.

Maybeck moved not with his eye down the hall, but in the tangle of wires overhead. Willa did much the same.

“There!” she said, pointing out a massive group of blue wires running from the wire carrier through a hole above a door to their right.

Maybeck swung open the door.

Workbenches ran along the far wall, covered with spare parts, soldering guns, tools, and hydraulics. In the middle of the space to their left was a metal rack, floor-to-ceiling shelving holding dozens of computer servers, network hubs, and surge suppressors.

“We’ve got it!” Willa proclaimed.

“No!” Maybeck countered. “It can’t be this easy. Philby said we should look for a closet or a bathroom.”

“But these are computer servers. It could easily be—”

“No, it couldn’t be here. This ride uses all these computers. The nerds that work on them would notice a server that didn’t belong. Philby’s got to be right.”

“Then where?”

“The wires,” Maybeck said, hurrying around the back side of the rack of computers. There had to be several hundred wires—both blue and black—the blue wires interconnecting the servers and the hubs. The black wires ran to power supplies. Some of the groups of wires were well-organized and held together by plastic ties; others had been added hastily and were in a tangled clump of spaghetti.

Maybeck looked this all over and said, “We’re not going to find it here.”

“How can you tell that?” Willa asked.

“Because the same guys that work the computers know the wires. They could spot wires that didn’t belong.”

“In this mess? I don’t think so.” Willa stepped forward and dragged her fingernail along one wire, then another.

“What are you doing?”

“Every girl knows that makeup can hide anything,” she said. “The way you fool the nerds is you paint the blue wires black. Then they don’t notice—” She cut herself off as her thumbnail flaked away some black paint, revealing the blue wire below. “Voilà!”

“If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes,” Maybeck said.

Footsteps… coming fast down the hall.

“The door!” Maybeck whispered.

Willa raced to the door and quietly spun the lock.

The people in the hall ran past. She looked at Maybeck and rolled her eyes: that had been too close.

As she rejoined Maybeck, he followed the painted network line to where it had been run along the underside of the bottom shelf. Together they traced it and three others to the interior wall, and along this wall and another set of shelves to where a small hole had been drilled through some plasterboard. A door stood immediately to Maybeck’s right where a wall jutted out. He tried the doorknob.

Locked.

Willa pointed to a small sign that identified the door: JANITOR.

“That’s perfect!” Maybeck said. “It’s certain to have a drain—which is how Philby says they run the wires around the Park.”

“I need something the size of a credit card,” Willa said.

Maybeck looked at her curiously.

“I have brothers who are constantly trying to lock me out of the bathroom. They think it’s funny.”

She found a metal plate on a workbench. She slid it into the crack next to the doorjamb, and the dark room popped open.

“Sometimes I hate being an only child,” Maybeck quipped.

The room was a pile of junk—a neglected storeroom. It took him a minute, but Maybeck located the server mounted beneath a photo-developing bench—a blue-and-silver Dell that looked a lot like a piece of a home stereo.

If they were right, this small box controlled all the holograms of the animals they’d battled, and it possessed the power to erase them all.

“What now?” she asked.

“We don’t just pull the plug. I know that much.”

“A magnet,” she said. “We need a magnet!”

Together, the two returned to the workshop and began searching for anything magnetic. Willa found a couple of small magnets, but they both agreed they wouldn’t be powerful enough to do any real damage. They needed to rearrange all the magnetic information on the hard disk. It was going to take something…

“There!” Maybeck said too loudly.

At that very moment, another line of footfalls had been coming down the hallway. The noise stopped just outside the door. A fist banged on the door.

“Block it!” he hissed, instructing Willa.

For what he’d spotted was currently up near the ceiling. It was a very large device with two metal plates connected by wires; it hung from the end of a hydraulic arm and was clearly meant to raise and lower heavy pieces of the dinosaurs that were under construction or repair.