“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.
Willa rolled a tool chest in front of the door and then locked the wheels.
Maybeck threw a switch and worked the hydraulic arm, attaching the magnet to the end of it. He found the power switch and tried it: a wrench and three screwdrivers jumped off a workbench and stuck to the magnet. He’d gotten it too close to the workbench, but he’d proven his point.
He flipped off the switch, and the tools dropped to the floor in a cacophony of banging metal.
Now the people on the other side of the door tried all the harder.
Maybeck wrestled with a giant cotter pin that held the magnet to the arm. He got the magnet free, extended the wire connecting it, and was able to stretch it to all the way inside the dark room. The thing was massive. He knew it had to be right on top of the server to corrupt the hard drive. It took most of his strength to lift the magnet and all his strength to hold it under the counter and against the hidden server.
“Throw the switch!” he called out.
“I’m a little busy here,” Willa said, having dragged a leg of a tyrannosaurus to block the door.
“I…can’t…hold…it,” Maybeck gasped. “Throw the freaking switch.” Only he didn’t say “freaking.”
Willa abandoned the door and ran to the controls. She threw the switch.
The magnet leaped out of Maybeck’s hands and glued itself to the server. A small, green LED on the front—meant to indicate hard-drive activity—turned to amber, then flashed red. Next, all the lights on the server failed completely, and there was an electrical smell in the air.
The second server was dead.
Maybeck and Willa hugged, only to realize what they were doing. Then Willa pushed him away and said, “Don’t disgust me!”
Maybeck brushed off his clothes and quickly changed the subject. “I probably should have checked with Philby before doing that. I hope it doesn’t mess things up.”
The workroom door banged open an inch, the tool carrier sliding on the concrete floor.
Two inches.
Then five.
“What now?” she asked, her voice tight.
Maybeck glanced overhead: it was a drop ceiling, maybe a foot or two lower than the one out in the hallway.
“How are you with small spaces?” he asked.
61
THE TWO TIGERS VANISHED IN MIDAIR. As did four of the six monkeys and two of the orangutans.
The big tigress from the shadows remained and so did the massive tiger that had come through the hatch. Finn counted two monkeys and two orangutans.
DHIs, Finn realized. Two of the tigers and several of the monkeys and apes had been holograms. No wonder his blows with the stick hadn’t done much.
Amanda’s climb had distracted the charging animals just long enough for Finn and Jez to get past them. Meanwhile, Philby’s team was about to defeat the second server.
Now it was time to get out of there.
Finn took off running. A caged-in jungle Jeep appeared from over the rise, a flashing light atop its roof.
The orangutans moved to intercept Finn. Jez ran toward Charlene and the wall.
Incredibly fast, and easily as big as he was, the apes came at Finn with wild eyes and drooling snorts of intention. The first of the two bounded toward Finn, made one gigantic leap, and would have torn his head off with its outstretched hand had the tigress not sprung. The cat scared the orangutan. The ape rolled into a ball, came to standing, and saw the cat bearing down on it once again. Forced to choose between pursuing Finn or confronting the cat, the orange ape turned to escape. Now, faced with a Jeep coming at it headlong, the orangutan sprang for the bamboo grove and disappeared, the huge cat following hotly on its tail.
The second ape saw its partner flee and beat a hasty retreat. Thankfully for Finn, that retreat took it into the path of the Jeep, which veered sharply to avoid a collision. The Jeep skidded to a stop near the open hatch, away from Charlene, who remained poised, her stilts pressed at an angle against the wall. Jez was nowhere to be seen. She’d made it over the wall.
“How about a lift?” Finn shouted.
Charlene bent low and offered her cupped hands as a boost.
Finn climbed up, lay flat, and offered Charlene his hand. She took it, stood, and, as rangers hurried from the Jeep, shook her legs violently, managing to kick loose first one, and then both of the stilts. Some of the ivy that connected her costume with the stilts tore loose. She left the rangers with a pair of stilts in their hands as she and Finn both lowered themselves down off the wall.