Episode 6: It’s a Small World
Part 9
When Brian opened his eyes and saw his surroundings, he thought he must be dreaming. The bright colors and exaggerated proportions of the décor were certainly out of a dream world. And was it just the dizzy, curving lines of the furniture, or was the whole room spinning?
Realizing he was seeing everything sideways, Brian tried to sit upright to get a better look, slowly realizing that he could only lift his head. Looking down, he saw with horror that the rest of his body was bound in thick ropes, his shoulders, arms, legs, and ankles wrapped like cocoons.
So this wasn’t just a dream. It was a nightmare!
But with the struggle to sit up came a throbbing pain in his head, and he realized that this was neither a dream nor a nightmare. He’d never felt pain in his dreams. Even his nightmares always ended before the pain was scheduled to come. He wasn’t dreaming. He wasn’t asleep. This was real.
Moving just his eyes, he looked around again and realized he was lying on a bed in the center of the room. Wriggling like a worm, he managed to roll over onto his other side. It was then that he spotted Emerald, tied up and wedged into the window seat a few feet from the bed. She sat up with her head bowed, so he couldn’t tell if she was awake or not. He squinted at her through bleary eyes, fighting occasional bouts of double vision. After a few seconds, he realized she was awake, and her hands were free! She was using them to work at loosening the ropes around her ankles.
Brian struggled against his own bindings for a few seconds, but they didn’t give at all. How had she managed to free her hands? “Hey,” he whispered, unsure of where their captors might be.
Emerald looked over. “Hey, you’re finally up,” she said nonchalantly, speaking at her normal volume. “You don’t have to whisper. Ol’ Mickey ran off to help the rest of them and left us here. Not that we’ll be here when he gets back.”
The ropes dropped limply from around her ankles. Brian watched in amazement as she lifted one foot and flexed it, slowly rotating the joint. “How did you untie yourself??”
A smug smirk played on her lips. “I’ve had lots of experience with bondage.” He felt his face redden, and she laughed. “Nah, here’s the real trick. This wouldn’t have worked for you since you were already unconscious when they tied you up, but I was able to pull it off. I surrendered and let them tie me up, so they wouldn’t have to knock me out. When they went to put the ropes around me, I tensed all of my muscles, made them bulge out as far as they go. You do that, and when you relax your muscles, the ropes are already a little looser. Then you can work at them until you get your arms free. Your sweat works to your advantage; it lubricates your skin, makes it easier to slide through the ropes.” She rotated her wrists, doing jazz hands. “Neat, huh?”
“That’s real neat.” Brian was impressed. They could use resourceful agents like her in the CIA, if only she weren’t so trigger-happy.
“Give me a few, and I’ll get you loose too.”
Within ten minutes, she’d made good on her promise, freeing him from his ropes. At Emerald’s insistence, the first thing they did was get out of their duck costumes since their masks were long gone. “So, where exactly are we?” Brian asked as he draped his Donald Duck costume over the wardrobe door.
Emerald scoffed. “Haven’t you guessed by now? I thought you were the cartoon freak.” She gestured inside the wardrobe, where there was a rack of identical black suit jackets and red pants, a drawer of white gloves, and a row of yellow shoes. “We’re in Mickey’s Country House. Mickey and Pluto must have shut it down to tourists ‘cause no one’s been through it since they left us here.”
“Ah.” Brian nodded. He could see that they were beyond the roped-off path through the house designed for park guests taking a tour. He and Emerald climbed over the ropes and followed the path through the house.
“Look around for our guns,” Emerald advised, her green eyes sharp. “They took everything.”
Brian nodded again. He couldn’t help but look around as they poked through the ingeniously decorated kitchen and living room. He hadn’t been to Disney World since his cousin Kevin had worked there. Emerald began tearing through any potential hiding place, tossing items haphazardly aside, but Brian was careful, not wanting to disrupt the work that had gone into decorating the little cottage.
Of course, Emerald’s methods were much more efficient. She found the weapons, along with their communication devices, in Mickey’s garage while Brian was still pouring over the living room. “Here,” she said, tossing him his handgun and pager. “Let’s go.”
Brian stowed the gun in its holster at his waist while Emerald trotted off through the house. He started to follow her, then stopped in the middle of the living room to read the sports pennants perched on the couch.
“Will you come on?” she snapped impatiently, poking her head around the corner. “They’ll be back any minute, and they’re not gonna be too happy when they find out we’re gone. But we better be gone.”
“Sorry, sorry; I’m comin’,” Brian assured her. But as he took one final, sweeping look around the room, something else caught his eye. “Hey, hang on a minute…”
“We don’t have a minute!”
“No, Summer, wait. Look over there.” He pointed to the fireplace. “You see those cords hangin’ out of the chimney?”
“Yeah, so?”
“So, with as much attention to detail as they gave in every nook and cranny of this house, don’t you find it a little strange that they would wire the electricity through the chimney and leave cords hangin’ there for everybody to see?”
“A big fat F in Decorating 101, for sure,” Emerald replied impatiently, tossing her wild, dark hair over her shoulder. “But who cares? Let’s scram!”
“Go on if you want. I wanna see what those cords go to. Somehow, I don’t think they belong to the Disney people.”
Emerald sighed, but she followed him as he approached the fireplace and knelt down, looking up into the chimney. There was a shadow overhead. Something was wedged into the cramped space, but it was too dark to see what. He fished around in his pockets, his fingers closing around the pocket knife that he’d had since he was a boy scout. It contained a small flashlight. His colleagues at the CIA ripped on him for carrying around a boy scout pocket knife, but it came in handy at times like these. The flashlight wasn’t powerful, but it brightened the chimney enough for him to see where exactly the object was stowed.
“Hold this,” he said, handing the flashlight to Emerald. Before she could protest, he started to climb up the chimney, pushing his arms and legs against the brick sides, using the indents of the grout lines for footholds. It was a tough climb, but thankfully, he didn’t have far to go. He got a hold of the object plugging up the chimney, some sort of mechanical, metal box, and yanked. It took a couple of tries, but the object suddenly came loose and Brian with it, both of them tumbling into the fireplace.
“Ugh,” Brian moaned as the metal box crushed his chest. Emerald picked it up, relieving the pressure.
“What is this thing?” she asked, turning it over in her hands. “Some kind of machine…”
Brian climbed painfully to his feet. “It’s gotta be the weather machine.”
Emerald wrinkled her nose, studying the metal box. “You think? It’s so small… how could a little metal box cover Disney World in snow?”
“Hey now… size isn’t everything. Small guys — I mean, things — can pack a lot of power.” He threw her an impish grin.
Emerald looked over at him and suddenly grinned back. “Gotta hand it to you, CIA — you did good.” She tossed the weather machine up and caught it neatly in two hands. “Come on… let’s unplug this thing and take it to Pearl before Mickey’s Country House becomes Mickey’s Snow Fort.”
Brian followed her eyes downward and saw a small drift of snow forming at their feet. Chuckling, he followed the cord to an outlet in the wall and pulled. The weather machine shut off with a low hum. Almost instantly, they watched the fluffy pile of snow cave in as it began to melt. Soon it would only be a puddle on Mickey’s hardwood floor.
They stepped over the snow on their way out of the house, but before they’d reached the threshold, Brian’s pager crackled to life. “Rok, this is Pearl. I need you and Emerald to go after K and Nick. They’re on Big Thunder Mountain. I’m at Cinderella’s castle, and I… I have a man down.”
Blue met green as Brian looked into Emerald’s wide eyes. For once, he could see that she was shaken. He knew neither of them had time to dwell on the last of Pearl’s words. He was concentrating on the first part.
Big Thunder Mountain, Brian knew, loomed on the other side of the park in Frontierland. It would be quite a trek from where they were. The Utilidors beneath the park would provide a shortcut, but it would still take them precious minutes to get to the ride. He hoped they wouldn’t be too late to help his cousin and… yes, even Carter.
“C’mon,” it was his turn to tell Emerald. “You heard her — Kev and Nick need us. Let’s go.”
Emerald, who had been the one urging him to leave all this time, didn’t hesitate. She was right on his heels, still clutching the disabled weather machine, as they hurried from the cottage.
***
The entire set-up had failed within moments.
First Nick thought he had cornered the head of FANS. He thought he had helped K. What he hadn’t expected was more minions coming up like cockroaches feasting on rotten food. They had slowed him down a bit.
He’d then figured the climb up Big Thunder Mountain shouldn’t take that long. If the little man and K could do it in so little time, he could, too, right? Wrong again. He’d almost fallen twice, further slowed by the scattered gunshots aimed at him. So by the time he had gotten his way up the stupid, fake mountain, he’d thought he would take the leader by surprise.
Wrong. For the third time… wrong.
“Game over, Jafar!” he had said so confidently when he reached the upper ledge of the mountain roller coaster.
“Yo, you be wrong again, Carter.” Only one person spoke like that.
Nick turned, moving closer to K as “Jafar” strode confidently towards Drums, who stood on the opposite side of the mountaintop in a bright blue Genie costume, his gun drawn. Nick was suddenly thankful beyond belief that he’d decided to page Pearl on his way up the mountain. Fending off the FANS minions had made him think twice about the lack of backup. Nick only hoped JC would finally do something helpful by showing up soon.
“You may have tried to stop this plan, but I WILL rule the world!” the short, Latino man cried triumphantly. “And my first step will be killing two of the greatest HimTak has! Then…”
Nick tried so hard not to snicker as he saw the man’s eye twitch excitedly, but he failed miserably. He felt like he could step on the short, twitchy, dork in the Jafar costume. Suddenly, he couldn’t stop laughing
Drums scowled. “Yo, somethin’ funny? You bout to have a cap in yo’ ass!”
K stared at Nick in utter amazement. How could the boy laugh at a time like this? Literally, in the face of death! What had he been thinking before? About being surprised at Nick’s depth? What the hell had happened to that Nick? That Nick was who he needed now. And yet, Nick kept laughing.
A vein in the villain’s forehead pulsed with rage. “WHAT THE HELL IS SO FUNNY, 00CARTER!?”
Nick’s laughter paused for only a moment. “Ha, K! Even the bad guys call me 00Carter now!” He began snickering again. “Even ones who…”
“WHO WHAT!?”
“Who are short…” He choked on more laughter. “…and all twitchy… and…”
K shook his head. “Nick, it’s not smart to mock the man about to kill us.”
Nick kept laughing; his face was almost red at that point. K felt like strangling the boy, that or laughing right along with him. Was insanity contagious when it came from Nick?
“With this villain…” That was when he began to sing. “It’s a small world… after all!”
Drums just smirked. “Bad move, yo.”
“I AM NOT SMALL!” the FANS leader shrieked in a furiously intense falsetto, his finger reaching for the trigger of the gun in his hand.
As the gun fired, time seemed to slow for them both. K saw the bullet first. It was a dead-on shot for Nick’s heart. His own heart almost stopped at the thought. No. Not again. He would not let him die. Quickly, he shoved Nick towards the ground as the bullet angrily tore through his own arm.
Nick’s humorous outlook on the situation immediately vanished, a look of amazement replacing his joyful expression.
“K!” a familiar female voice cried. He heard footsteps swiftly approaching them.
Drums was the first to recognize the voice. Emerald. She had one of the best shots in HimTak, and there was no doubt that the CIA officer was right behind her. How had they escaped Mickey’s house so fast? He took a good look around, his mechanical eye analyzing everything around him and sending the data to his brain. The storm clouds had dissipated, revealing clear, blue skies over the park. The snow was finally melting in the ninety-degree heat. That meant they had the weather machine. Feeling his skin perspire in the balmy heat, Drums made a decision. “Dr. Rough, yo, we gots to bounce; they got da machine.”
Drums ducked as a bullet flew over his head, missing him by mere inches. Nick had regained his composure and aimed his gun at the enemy. His mentor gripped his injured arm tightly, showing no signs of pain despite holding his gun with it.
“We’ll meet again, Carter!” Drums smirked as he grabbed his own mentor and leaped off the mountainside.
Gasping in disbelief, Nick rushed to the edge and looked down, expecting to see two battered bodies lying on the rocks below. Instead, he saw Drums and Dr. Rough land in the roller coaster cart that had sped by on the track beneath them at just the right moment. It was a long drop and a rough landing, but it worked. Before Nick knew it, the coaster had whisked them away. At the base of the mountain, the minions were already scattering like cockroaches when the lights came on.
“SHIT!” Emerald yelled as she saw their escape. “Damn it, Brian, if you had just let me shoot, I could have gotten them!”
“Summer, now, ya could’ve hit someone! You can’t predict coasters, and you could’ve caused one to go off course.”
Nick rolled his eyes, not happy to see either of them, especially since they had come too late. And where was Shazam? Damn, he had asked for one thing… He shook his head. Maybe 006 had gotten held up somewhere. Nick helped K up and began the slow climb down the mountain he had come to loathe. He let Brian and Emerald go ahead of them, wanting a moment to speak with K.
“Why did you do that?”
K raised one of his bushy brows. “What do you mean?”
“Why did you put yourself in the line of fire? You could’ve gotten yourself killed, K. I ticked him off; it was my fault…”
“Believe it or not, Nick–” Nick turned his head at not being called a number for once. “I really do care about whether you live or die. Far more than you think.”
“K–”
“Now, let’s go find Pearl and 006 and see what happened.”
“But–”
“008, let’s go.” K smiled then. It was only for a moment, but Nick’s superior agent gave him a genuine smile.
“Right.” And he followed the older man down.
***
Pearl felt so alone, tucked in a small room that only granted access to employees, away from the prying eyes around Cinderella’s castle. She had originally planned on just hiding out inside before realizing people were going to follow. So now she sat in that small room, waiting for answers, alone with a corpse — a corpse that, only a short time ago, had been a living ally. Shazam’s body had already grown cold, and the fact that his eyes remained open unsettled her deeply.
Pearl felt a small drop hit her now bare hands. She blinked with surprise. She was crying. She hated crying. In this job, you had to keep control. She had to keep control. That was why she liked science so much. Science, gadgets, technology — all of that made so much sense to her. In science, the basic rules never changed. Science was reliable; it evolved but never did a complete turnaround on you. People at HimTak who didn’t know her well called her cold, as robotic as her inventions. But she wasn’t; she just liked to be in control.
But now she was crying, and she hated it. She hadn’t even liked JC Chasez! He’d pissed her off to no end. He had hated her just as fiercely. They hadn’t gotten along. Yet, somehow, she cried for him. Cried because he’d died by a friend’s hands. Cried because she felt like she’d sent him to his death. But was she really crying for him? Or the fact that Justin had murdered him? Even after witnessing Global Idol and the Antarctica mission, she had thought Justin could still be out there. But now she knew Justin was dead; Drums had killed him when he’d thrown JC to his demise. They both lay in the shadow of Cinderella’s castle, corpses no amount of belief could bring back.
Pearl sighed and dabbed her wet eyes. She couldn’t break down yet. She needed to stay in control. The others would be there soon. As soon as that thought entered her mind, her phone buzzed against her breasts. She slipped it out and flipped it open. “Hello?” She sounded composed, not like she had almost broken down just now.
“Pearly?” came Nick’s voice. “You okay?” Well, she’d thought she sounded composed. Perhaps not?
“Yeah, Blondie, I’m good. I’m at Cinderella’s castle… in a large storage room. The body is with me, too.”
“So JC is…” He didn’t say it and didn’t have to.
“Yeah. Drums…” She’d never call him Justin again. “He shoved him off the top of Cinderella’s castle. I had just come up, and he…” She didn’t finish.
“We’ll be there in a few.”
When Nick arrived, Pearl was standing silently outside the room where JC’s body lay. She had wanted away from it as soon as she heard her friends were on their way. He hugged her, and she smiled weakly before shrugging him off in a gentle manner. “I’m okay.”
She saw the others behind him. Emerald and Brian went into the storage room while K watched her with careful eyes. Her own gaze shifted to his wound. “K, what happened!? You alright?”
He smirked humorlessly. “Just a scratch. What about you?”
She nodded. “I’m fine, just…” She looked around the supposedly happy place, pervertedly twisted by the people from whom they’d fought to save the world. The young scientist took a deep breath before releasing it slowly. “Just no more missions for a while. I want my lab, my work. Technology doesn’t fall to its death before my eyes.”
K nodded somberly. “Understood.”
“You sure you’re okay, Kit?” Nick asked.
“Yeah, promise… So what happened up there?”
The others exited the storage room as Nick proceeded to fill Pearl in on the events up on Big Thunder Mountain. Tuning him out, Emerald sighed. She hadn’t minded JC; he’d been nice to spar with and to bash Nick when he pissed them both off. More importantly, he had been a comrade, a man fighting alongside her against the evils of the world. And he had died by a former ally’s hands. Tragic wasn’t the world for this. She felt like stealing a car and going off for a massive joyride till she found a crazy thunderstorm to enjoy. Yet she stood there and smiled at Brian as he patted her back in comfort. It was then that she remembered the machine she had tossed aside for K and then picked up again on their way back down the mountain.
“Trekkie girl.” She tossed Pearl the small device. “There’s the weather machine. We found it stashed in Mickey’s house.”
Pearl examined it carefully. “So they had this and a bomb… Their leader may be completely crazy, but if he created these, he’s a genius.”
“No competition for you, though, right?” Nick teased, trying to get her to smile.
“Actually, he might be…”
“Wow, Brainiac may have met her match,” Emerald remarked, a bit surprised herself after seeing the man face to face. Who knew such a mess of a man could be such a problem?
“Brian, I take it you’ll have your men explain this mess…” Kevin started.
“Yes, cuz, I’ll make sure no one knows of this. My superior is going to have a field day as it is, with how public this has gotten.”
After a brief nod, K led his team out of the castle, feeling pensive. The others continued to converse behind him; the peaceful park bustled in front of him. He guessed many would deem the mission a success. The world was saved yet again, unbeknownst to the masses of people who lived in it. Yet Drums had also escaped once again, along with his new leader, Dr. Rough. More importantly, he — and HimTak — had lost a great agent and a good man. It hurt more than he wanted to admit.
Hearing one of the agents clear his throat behind him, K turned around. Nick approached him slowly, almost cautiously. Pain permeated the air between them.
And yet K had saved one agent…
“K, we’re gonna go below and get back in our street clothes — is that alright? We figured we’d rent a room here tonight before going back tomorrow. Brian says the clean-up will take a day or so. Then we can have JC sent back to us…”
K simply nodded. “I’ll find you all later when it’s time to leave.”
Nick watched him slowly walk away and disappear into the crowd. K was really hurting and, this time, not from the past, but from the present. Was all that hardness just an act to get by? K had saved him earlier, had been afraid of letting him die. He smiled to himself. He guessed everyone had another side to them. And Nick couldn’t wait till he finally got to see the full view of K, the man behind the shell.
He felt bad for being a bit happy after all that had happened that day. Happy, even though JC had died. But he knew that he would avenge Shazam’s death. He would make things right. Somehow, some way, because he was responsible. One day, Drums would have to face all he had done. So would Nick.
“Hey, monkey ass, are you coming or not?!” he heard Emerald call out, which shook him from his more somber thoughts.
“Oh, come on, Em, he doesn’t look THAT bad as Abu,” he heard Pearl defend him in a subdued voice.
He chuckled to himself as he walked back to his fellow agents.
“No, you’re right — the monkey look is an improvement.” Emerald grinned.
“Just for that…” Nick smirked as he approached them. “I’m going to sing, just for you guys!”
“Oh, just shoot me now,” Emerald groaned.
Nick snickered as he began to loudly sing to them. “It’s a world of laughter, a world of tears. It’s a world of hopes; it’s a world of fears. There’s so much that we share that it’s time we’re aware it’s a small world after all!”
“Shut up, Nick!” they all shouted at him. But instead of getting mad, he simply laughed.
***