The mine shaft angled sharply left. The alligators had recovered quickly, now only a few feet behind Pluto, who trailed Amanda.
“Go! Go! Go!” Finn shouted.
The tunnel straightened out but the floor tipped left, off level.
Amanda tripped. Finn stopped and turned to help her up.
Amanda spun and pushed.
The alligator lifted and flew like it had been caught by a hurricane. It collided with the others. Three white bellies flashed in the dark, rocketing away from the two kids.
With one final turn, they reached the mouth of the mine shaft and popped outside.
“You go uphill,” Finn said. “Hide up there. I’ll meet you.” He turned and ran. Looking back, seeing her hesitate, he said, “Up!”
Amanda turned around and started climbing up a rocky incline.
Finn, with Pluto briefly by his side, hurried along the path, only a matter of yards from Huck’s Landing. Pluto, seeming to understand their role, held back, waiting for the alligators.
Finn reached Minnie and the raft, already pushing her off as he explained, “Head across to the other side and wait for our signal. We need to trick the alligators!”
Minnie nodded and threw a lever forward. The raft began to pull away.
Finn ducked back up the path past Potter’s Mill, looking down in time to see Pluto flying through the air and just catching the raft with his front paws. Minnie lunged and pulled him on board.
The three alligators didn’t hesitate for a second. With the raft motoring away, they slithered into the dark waters and were gone, lost in swirling flashes of green, scaly tails.
The boy in the chair of the power plant control room spun around, and Charlene nearly shrieked with what she saw. This was no Disney villain. It was just a boy. A regular teenage boy, if you discounted the shimmering green outline that contained him. By the look of him, based on Philby’s description, she already knew his name: Hugo Montcliff.
The scope and ramifications of what she saw so overwhelmed her that she intentionally avoided thinking about it. On the one hand, this felt like the end of the world; on the other, Maybeck had been captured and there was no time to contemplate what it all meant for the Keepers.
Hugo was in the control room, throwing switches and spinning dials. He barked out an order, sounding like a grown-up.
“Not yet, sonny! Hold off a minute!” With a sweep of her hand, the Evil Queen, outside the control room, transfigured the three blue jays into gorillas. They stood well over five feet tall and were pure muscle and teeth. They obeyed her command-“Bring him to me!”-springing into action and surrounding Maybeck.
Charlene searched for something-anything-resembling a weapon: a hose; a steam valve? There had to be some way to help Maybeck.
Hugo called out again. The sound generated by the machinery altered pitch, groaning lower. Charlene felt it in her teeth.
The holograms, including her own, sputtered and dimmed. Red lights flashed on the wall like those from a police car.
Charlene moved closer, now near enough to see through the Queen, almost like an X-ray. In the Queen’s translucent right hand, she held the fob-the Return. The device appeared solid, seemingly unaffected by the loss of electric power.
“I said not yet!” The Queen appeared ready to throw a spell at Hugo, if he wasn’t already under the effect of one.
Hugo made adjustments, and the pitch in the room climbed higher. The red lights stopped flashing. The holograms and their outlines returned.
But by the time the DHIs strengthened, two things occurred: first, Maybeck used the moment of his faded image to slip past the gorillas, who no longer had hold of him; second, Charlene stepped out from behind the pipe and picked up a shining stainless steel sheet, part of a metal box connected to the turbines. She held it behind her like a surprise gift and moved bravely toward the Queen, who turned in her direction at the last second.
Maybeck vanished into the machinery. The gorillas appeared dumbfounded; to them it was like he was suddenly invisible.
Just as the Queen raised her hand to throw a spell while saying, “Well, what do we have here?” Charlene pulled the stainless steel panel from behind her back and held it up like a mirror in front of the Queen’s face.
“Oh…my…what a beautiful, beautiful face that is.” The Queen reached out to vainly take the mirror and, as she did, loosened her hold on the fob.
Like a magician or pickpocket, Charlene swept the fob out of the Queen’s hand, replacing it with the edge of the mirror, and pocketed the fob.
Maybeck appeared from behind her, grabbed her arm, dragging her into the control room. He closed and locked the door.
“We can’t allow them to kill the power,” he said. “I just realized what they’re trying to do.”
Just as Finn caught up to Amanda, he lost her: she shimmered, sputtered, and disappeared. As quickly as she’d vanished, she reappeared.
“That was so weird,” she said. “You just kind of broke up and disappeared.”
“You, too,” he said, holding his hands in front of his face. “They look okay now.”
“Very strange.” She reached out and pulled him down hard, behind a rock. “Careful,” she said, pointing. “Another pirate. This side of Superstition Bridge.”
“What was that about?” Finn said. “What just happened?”
“The projectors?” Amanda said.
“I guess. Or maybe Philby tried to Return us, but we’re too far from the hub so it didn’t work.”
“Might be.”
“Never seen anything like it.
“The pirate’s significant,” he said, turning back to the issue at hand. “Too many of these guys, too much going on for it not to mean something.”
“I agree.”
“The fort,” he said.
She nodded.
“You don’t have to go with me.”
“I want to,” Amanda said.
“It could be…it’s probably dangerous.”
“I know that.” She paused. “Two is better than one.”
“Isn’t that a song?”
“Shut up.”
“We don’t know what we’ll find. It could be nothing,” he said.
“You don’t believe that.”
“No.”
“Then don’t say it.”
“Aye, aye,” said Finn.
“It’s just…” She sounded frustrated. “We both know this is it. A fort? How perfect is that? A remote fort at that, and on an island? Give me a break! You guys should have figured this out a long time ago.”
“We were close. We just didn’t know it. We didn’t figure it out.”
“Stitch,” she said, remembering the story.
