“I’ll trade you. You can use mine,” he offered. “You have a data card. I don’t. I need Internet access. I can’t be on the school server. Please!”
“What’s up?”
“Keepers stuff.”
“Such as?”
“Later. I gotta do this now. I’ve got a class. Please.”
Hugo exchanged laptops.
Philby hurried into the boys’ room, locked himself in a stall, and set up Hugo’s computer on his lap while sitting on a toilet seat. He used Hugo’s wireless data card to connect to the Internet, entered the URL for the back door into the DHI server, and typed his log-in password.
He navigated to the page where he could manually cause a Return-the same set of instructions that were used for the fob when inside the Parks-and typed from memory Willa’s twenty-six-character ID string.
The window flashed. He’d lost the handshake.
He double-checked the data card connection-all was good-and reentered the URL, ready to start over. He reached the log-on page and reentered his password.
INCORRECT PASSWORD: ACCESS DENIED
Believing he must have typed too fast, he tried again.
INCORRECT PASSWORD: ACCESS DENIED
Now he had real problems: a third failure in a row would mean he’d be blocked from trying to enter a password for twenty-four hours. Willa didn’t have twenty-four hours. Wondering if it might be a problem with Hugo’s data card, Philby decided that the only thing to do was to get to the DHI server in person and make an attempt at the password from there.
He texted Finn:
major problems. password not workin. call emergency meeting
The rest of the school day dragged on impossibly slowly. Several times Philby debated skipping, but he’d never done that in his life and he had no desire to be caught and grounded for eternity. That would make matters even worse for everyone. Especially him. He traded back computers with Hugo before seventh period, thanking him.
He and Finn, Maybeck, and Charlene met at the Marble Slab ice cream shop. Charlene told them about the confrontation with Sally Ringwald. She’d been too hyper to catch every last word, but she gave them all she could remember. “Amanda will have the full four-one-one,” she said, “but what’s important is that Sally is definitely under some kind of spell, there’s lots more where she came from, and something big is going down on Saturday. For what it’s worth.”
“We’ve got to move on,” an anxious Philby said. “Willa…” It came out as a moan. “The point is, the server password’s not taking,” he explained. “Basically, I’m going to be locked out of the server if I try it remotely again, so I’ve got to make it count.”
“Why wouldn’t your password take?” Maybeck asked.
He was met with three blank faces-one of them with strawberry ice cream on both corners of her lips.
“If it’s the Imagineers’ security kicking in,” Philby said, “it’s not so bad-maybe someone would help us. But somehow I doubt it with everything that’s been happening. I’ve been thinking about it all day. I lost the connection after I first logged on. I thought it was the data card-you know, like a cell phone dropping out. Happens all the time. But it’s possible…maybe not probable, but possible…that my keystrokes were captured. It’s possible that the system was reset right after I’d logged on in order to break my connection. By the time I was back on, my password had been removed, my back door closed.”
“The OTs,” Charlene said.
“Yeah. They could have been waiting for me.”
Finn quoted the Kim Possible mission: “‘Everyone needs a server now and then.’ You think Wayne was trying to tell us the OTs had hacked the server?”
“They didn’t like that you came and got me,” Charlene said. “They aren’t about to allow that to happen again.”
“So they ambushed us,” Maybeck said.
“Without access, without control of the server, we can’t cross over,” Philby said. “The only way we can help Willa is to Return her. We’ve got two choices: we can either hack back into the server, or we can go into the Parks, try to find her, and then use the fob to Return her.”
“Good luck,” Maybeck said. “We don’t know which Park. We don’t know where she is in whatever Park she’s in. That could take years.”
Maybeck’s DHI had been locked up in a maintenance cage inside Space Mountain. He might never have been found there.
“If I hack the server, we’ll know which Park she’s in,” Philby reminded. “The activity log will tell us.”
“But,” Finn said, “in order to see the activity log we-
“Right,” Philby confirmed. “We go in as us. Hopefully, I get us back online. After that we can cross over, if that’s what we have to do.”
Maybeck cursed and pushed away from the table, disgusted. “This rots,” he said. “We’ve got to get her back. What are we waiting for? We can use our employee passes. We get Philbo into the server room and let him do his thing. If the Return doesn’t work from there, we go into whatever Park and we get her back. I’ve been there-in the Syndrome. So have you, Philbo. It sucks. We’ve got to do this.”
Wayne had supplied them with employee cards that allowed them to enter the Parks as Cast Members. They rarely used them, keeping them for this kind of emergency.
“My mother expects me home,” Charlene said. “I have an orthodontist appointment this afternoon. I could sneak out later, but if I miss that appointment she might start calling your parents.”
“Jelly will cover for us,” Maybeck said. “She knows what it’s like to have a kid stuck in the Syndrome. Trust me, she wouldn’t wish that on anyone. You can all tell your ’rents you’re coming to my place to study for an exam.”
“We aren’t in exams,” Philby pointed out.
“Yeah, okay. I got you. But you think your parents know that?” Maybeck said.
Ariel had come and gone, but basically stayed through the night with Willa on the water tower. With the sunrise she moved Willa through water pipes to what she called “the grotto.” As a DHI, Willa was stuck in her pajamas, which was going to make it a problem to blend in. She spent the day in hiding, hatching a plan.
If she were going to Return, she needed the all-important fob. But the fob was currently hidden in Epcot, and she’d been sent into the Studios. Between the two Parks was a sea of DHI shadow-an area that lacked DHI projectors. This would be to her advantage: DHI shadow meant she’d be invisible for most of the path that connected Epcot to the Studios. As long as she could get out of the Studios without being spotted, this was doable. She’d get over to Epcot, find the fob, and Return. The nightmare would be over.
“I can do this,” Willa told herself. She’d leave the Studios at sunset when the light was soft and her DHI qualities more difficult to spot. The occasional sparkle. The blue outline.
Home. Her bed. Her mom. Almost too good to be true. She couldn’t wait.
The Parks experienced a big turnover around dinnertime: kids got tired; adults got hungry. Epcot was an evening favorite-terrific food and a spectacular fireworks display. Entering Epcot would not be easy: she had no pass or ticket, no money, and worse, she was a hologram wearing pajamas.
“I’m leaving,” she told Ariel. “I’m going to try to get out of the gates without being seen.”
