“Bring me my computer, won’t you?” Lavinia says to Linus.
He leaves the room quietly and returns with the two beach chairs and Lavinia’s computer. She props her puck in the middle of the bed and turns off the camp lamp so that we can all see the projected, conical screen as she types on the light keyboard. Now that I’ve been there in person, I’m quick to locate the Main Drag and the Keep of Ages on the map. I can see the waterless moat where the image of Dubbs fell and where I entered the chute that tumbled me down to the underground stream. The vault of dreamers does not appear on this official map, but the full basement level is rendered the same as before.
I tell Lavinia and Burnham everything I know about the deepest layer under Grisly Valley, from the vault full of dreamers, to the incinerator through the twelve o’clock arch and the operating room through the nine o’clock arch. Burnham asks me to jot out a drawing for him, and I try, but it’s hard to guess at the distances and proportions from how I experienced it in the dark. I wonder if the oculus lines up at all with the Bottomless Pit.
“This is totally out of scale,” I say. “The vault is way bigger than the operating room.”
“It still gives us an idea. Where do you think your parents could be?” Burnham asks.
I stare at my sketch and idly add a fish in the river. “I really don’t know,” I say. There could be other rooms I don’t know about. “Whistler said they weren’t in the vault, but Berg said they were.”
“Berg said they were at Grisly. There’s a distinction,” Lavinia says.
“That fits with what Dubbs said. She saw my parents taken out of the truck when they were aboveground, near a row of colorful stores,” I say.
“Why wouldn’t Whistler know about them?” Linus says.
“Maybe Berg doesn’t trust the doctors,” Lavinia says. “He might not have told them.”
“But it’s been six days,” I say. “Who else would look in on them?”
It’s not good.
“Clearly, we need more information,” Lavinia says. “Here’s what the cameras you posted for me show.” She pulls up two live-action views of Grisly Valley.
The first angle, from the Grim Reaper statue, shows the entrance area with the turnstiles and the open area that funnels into the Main Drag. Nothing moves. The second view, from the statue of Scylla aiming toward the Keep of Ages, shows the moat area in front and the steps leading up to the big double doors. The keep itself stands dark and ominous, and the dragon on top is just as motionless as the stone.
“That’s the dragon,” I say. “When it came to life, it looked incredibly real. And then Dubbs was on a plank over the moat. It was terrifying.”
“I saw,” Lavinia says. “Give me a sec and I’ll pull it up.”
My heart starts to constrict even before she locates the right clip and projects it over the bed, a miniature version of the spectacle I saw in person in the park. I tuck my hand to my chest as, once again, the dragon moves on top of the keep, turning with its red eyes. Then the fog rises, and the plank projects out from the roof, bringing Dubbs with it. I squint, angling to see it better.
“Freeze there,” I say.
Lavinia does.
“Back up,” I say. “Play. Okay, freeze again. There.”
I press my thumbnail to the gap in my teeth and stare. It’s a girl on a plank all right, but now I can tell she’s merely a form, a blank dummy, with a lit projection of Dubbs’s face and gown imposed on the surface.
“Can you go ahead in slow motion?” I ask.
I watch as the wind slowly ripples in the projection of the girl’s pale gown, and then the girl’s mouth contorts in a noiseless scream. When she crouches to the plank to hold on tight, the projection shifts to a second blank dummy, a kneeling one that’s back half a pace. In real time, as I saw it, the effect created a seamless, believable motion. But from the angle of the camera, I can see the mechanism behind the effect. Then when Dubbs falls, the projections on the plank go dark, and a hologram of Dubbs whirls down toward the foggy moat, where the dragon, also now a hologram, catches her at the last moment.
“Wow,” Burnham says. “Nicely done. I’m impressed.”
My heart’s pounding again with remembered horror. It’s so strange to me. It felt personal, like someone knew exactly what would terrify me most.
“It seemed completely real,” I say softly. “I knew it couldn’t be, but it seemed so real.”
“And that’s when you went down into the moat yourself,” Lavinia says.
I nod. Then I take a deep breath.
Lavinia switches off the recording, and the map of Grisly comes back into place.
“When I was down in the vault, I overheard Whistler and the others talking about how they lose their security camera feeds sometimes,” I say. “They had no idea I was in the park until I showed up down in the vault.”
“Curious timing,” Linus says.
“The thing is, if they didn’t know I was there, who was controlling the special effects?” I say.
From the edge of my mind, Arself gives a little flicker. I ignore her with a tight mental warning.
“Could the special effects be done remotely?” Linus asks.
Lavinia purses her lips. “Not with the cameras down. It sounds like the special effects were basically interacting with Rosie, and you can’t do that remotely without seeing her.”
“You could see her,” Linus points out.
“Yes,” Lavinia says, and laughs. “And I have every reason to want to terrify her, too, poor girl. That’s why I sent her to Grisly in the first place.”
I glance at Linus to be sure he gets that she’s being sarcastic. He folds his arms, conceding defeat.
“I don’t understand this place,” Burnham says thoughtfully. “How does it get power? How was it built? How do the doctors get supplies? You can’t keep a big facility hidden.”
“It’s not that hard because it’s not really hidden,” Lavinia says. “It’s essentially a cemetery, and the contamination keeps people away. For power, they’re no doubt using the solar cells that were set up for the theme park in the first place, and the doctors order in deliveries of food or whatever. We saw a delivery truck going in a few days ago. That’s how we think Dubbs and Rosie’s parents were brought in.”
“Seriously?” Burnham says.
Lavinia pulls up the screenshot of the truck that she showed me earlier.
“That’s from outside the park?” Linus asks.
“Yes. Along the road that goes to the delivery bays, here,” Lavinia says, pointing.
“That could be a way in for us,” Linus says.
He’s right. Or more exactly, that could be an entrance to the delivery level of the theme park. How to get down to the vault is still a mystery. I contemplate the 3-D map of Grisly Valley again, but though I’ve practically memorized it, it doesn’t show any clues of how to reach the vault of dreamers beneath. The hole in the moat that I dropped through isn’t marked.
“Do we have a map of the plumbing?” I ask.
Lavinia looks through her computer. “No.”