Kingdom Keepers VII Read Free

isn’t her biological sister) have become full-fledged citizens. Amanda and Jess now travel in the same orbit as Finn and his four closest friends, who have all earned full college scholarships by serving as models for Disney hologram hosts in the theme parks.
    The internal Disney technical term for the role Finn and his four friends play in the parks is Disney Host Interactive or Daylight Hologram Image: DHI. What started essentially as a modeling job has grown into something more complex; the kids—they were so young when they all started, Finn thinks—learned that they’d actually been recruited to form a five-person strike force, the Kingdom Keepers. That’s the nickname the Internet community has assigned Finn and the other DHIs. Their real job was to enter the parks at night and battle a dark force attempting to corrupt the park experience. Disney villains who wanted to take over the parks—dubbed Overtakers—were wreaking havoc. The DHIs were meant to put an end to all that.
    It turned out that the OTs’ ambitions went far beyond stealing cars from Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin; they meant to destroy the magic of the parks, the magic of Disney. They were instigating a revolution, and the DHIs turned out to be the only force standing in their way.
    For the past several years, Finn and his co-DHIs, Philby, Charlene, Maybeck, and Willa, have been more Navy SEAL than hologram host. And even though Amanda and Jess are not official DHIs, Philby and the Keepers have secretly installed the girls’ data onto the DHI computer servers, enabling them as holograms. All of the Keepers have, on numerous occasions, risked their lives to keep the magic alive. If they’d known from the start what they were getting into, maybe they wouldn’t have volunteered. But the expansion of their responsibilities just kind of crept up on them. On one level, Finn thinks, their mentor and leader, an original Disney Imagineer, tricked them into accepting their roles: they were told that if they bailed, Disney would never be the same. Thanks for the warning, Finn thinks grimly.
    It has been three years since Finn lost his friend Dillard Cole in the Mexican jungle. Dillard died because of the Overtakers. Since that dark day, the Kingdom Keepers have enjoyed three years of relative quiet. Yet not a single night has passed that Finn hasn’t dreamed of that awful moment. Finn can’t help but feel that he was responsible for Dillard’s death. But according to their fellow DHIs, that is far from the truth.
    After he returned from Mexico, Finn’s parents made him go to counseling. That came to an abrupt halt when Finn showed up one day as a DHI and shocked the psychologist by walking through the office door without opening it. It was the psychologist who needed therapy after that.
    Next, they put Finn on “medication.” That ill-conceived solution lasted all of one week. He slept better and didn’t dream about Dillard, but he didn’t feel like himself. Finn and his parents decided it wasn’t worth it. Weirdly, the ordeal drew him closer to his parents, especially his mom. For a long time he’d felt alone as a Kingdom Keeper. His mom eventually rallied behind him, but then became a victim of the Overtakers herself. Not a good situation. Throughout an entire fifteen-day voyage on a Disney cruise ship, Finn worried he might never get his real mother back. Now their family was reunited, feeling somehow stronger than before. And Finn’s mom knew what it was like to live with the fear of the Overtakers.
    “Can you believe how long we’ve known each other?” Finn asks, and then feels stupid. “Sorry! That came out awkward.”
    “No it didn’t.”
    “I just meant—”
    “I know what you meant—what you mean. I know you, remember? You mean that we’ve been friends—just friends—for a long time now. That both of us…that sometimes it doesn’t feel exactly like friends.” Amanda giggles softly. Nervously.
    For Finn, the sound