Disney at Dawn by Ridley Pearson Read Free Book Online Page A

Disney circles, his name often appeared on blogs.
    He was responsible for Finn and his friends’ becoming DHIs in the first place. He had created the concept and had overseen the development of the software. More important, as far as Finn could tell, he controlled a secret group of Cast Members that opposed the Overtakers’ attempt to gain control of the Magic Kingdom.
    we’re not safe here. do you have video abilities?
    yes.
    then go onto the web site: www.dgamer.com/vmk . it’s a secure link. but before you do that, you’ll need to write something something down.
    Finn wondered if Wayne had been in a coma or something. He typed: vmk was shut down months ago .
    to the public, yes. the site had to be closed for security reasons. write this down. at the sign-on, use the username: imagineer1. your password is our uncle’s full name spelled backward with no dashes or spaces.
    Finn quickly scribbled down yensidtlaw. walt-disney spelled backward.
    okay. got it.
    you will see a video link button on the landing page. right click on that button: it will open up a video chat with me. see you in a minute.
    The sudden closing of VMK had come as a shock to Finn and his friends. News that the Web site remained accessible surprised him. But he didn’t doubt Wayne for a moment. Wayne lived and worked in a secret world. He was full of surprises.
    * * *
    “It’s really you,” Finn gasped, seeing the man’s weathered face on his computer screen. There was no telling how old Wayne was, but he wasn’t young.
    The video signal wasn’t perfect: static overlaid Wayne’s face, and the sound of his voice was crackling and uneven. He looked and sounded older than Finn remembered him.
    “You don’t have much time,” he said, causing gooseflesh to ripple up Finn’s arms.
    “Excuse me?” Finn replied.
    Wayne was continually checking over his shoulder, as if afraid of being found out, which Finn found disturbing.
    “You were lucky at the Park tonight,” Wayne said.
    “You were there?”
    “Never mind about me. You were there. That’s all that matters.”
    “It was Maleficent.”
    “Tell me exactly what happened.”
    Finn kept his summary of the evening’s events as short and succinct as possible. He described spotting Amanda and Jez during the start of the parade; of later seeing a pair of monkeys in the bushes near the crowd. Wayne quizzed him about the monkeys. Then Finn described his being chased up Escher’s Keep, and finished with Maleficent’s daring escape out the window and down Tinker Bell’s zip line.
    “We’d moved her there,” Wayne said. “Third move in as many weeks. We had intelligence that the Overtakers were planning for her escape. We thought by moving her around frequently…But it obviously wasn’t enough.”
    “What about the weather balloon? The lightning strike?”
    “The apartment was locked down like a jail cell. Sealed tight. We had to provide a way out in case of fire, but the closest exit was locked from the inside. Our security guard would have had to open that door for her to escape.”
    “The Dapper Dan chasing us…was he one of your guys?”
    “You had no way of knowing that.”
    But I should have, Finn thought. The Dapper Dan had known the way up the Keep. Only Wayne could have taught him the route.
    “We put on an ankle bracelet that would send an alarm if she moved more than fifty feet from the transmitter,” Wayne explained. “It housed a GPS transmitter, so we could track her down. They used the power of the lightning strike to break open the bars. Nothing short of a small bomb would have accomplished that. The lightning also temporarily knocked out the power, which was crucial for her to escape. They bought her enough time to cut the ankle bracelet off. We found it up there in the Tinker Bell tower.”
    That didn’t sound good. “So she’s just…gone?”
    “I doubt very far. A green face tends to stick out. It’s control of the Park that she’s after. She’ll stay in