Seanan McGuire - 07 Tricks for Free by Seanan McGuire

Author:Seanan McGuire [McGuire, Seanan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: DAW
Published: 2018-03-06T00:00:00+00:00

Sixteen

“One of these days, something is going to go right. But probably not today.”

–Jane Harrington-Price

Lowryland, about to have a very unpleasant afternoon

SAM DIDN’T STOP RUNNING until we were well away from the crowds and standing under the awning of the Midsummer Night’s Scream waiting area. The small, bus stop-like structure was intended for use by families of riders, people whose health wasn’t good enough or height wasn’t great enough to endure the multiple drops and inversions.

He let go of me, stepping away. “Cameras?” he asked, huffing and puffing all the while.

“What?” I blinked at him for a moment before I realized—with horror and dawning dismay—that he hadn’t shifted back to his faux-human form. He was still simian, clearly fūri. “Sam, change back.”

“Are there cameras here?” He leaned forward, putting his hands on his knees. It wasn’t nearly as pronounced a lean as it would have been for a human his height and build. Still struggling to get his breath back, he asked, “Is anyone recording this?”

Something was wrong. I looked frantically around, comparing the angles of the roof to the known locations of the surrounding cameras, before I said, “No. We passed at least six getting here, but there aren’t any cameras focused on this spot.”

“Good.” He straightened up, wheezing a little, and said, “Get me out of here.”

“Can you—”

“No.”

The word was simple, direct, and changed everything. I looked around again, mentally comparing what I knew of the Park layout to what I knew of the camera array. Fern and I had spent a cheerful week learning the location of most of the hidden cameras before we’d started skating in the Park, using that as a guide to where she could and couldn’t play games with density.

Like all major theme parks, Lowryland is incredibly focused on guest safety and security, and figured out long ago that cameras were both cheaper and less distracting than security patrols. If you’re in a public area, or more importantly, on a ride, someone is watching. It keeps graffiti and shoplifting under control, and prevents people from doing things they shouldn’t while the rides are in motion. But there are blind spots. Even the most comprehensive camera array in the world can’t be everywhere.

Most of the rides had cameras on the areas people were able to access easily, preventing kids from slipping under barricades and falling into the artificial deep-sea vents in the Deep-Down, or climbing the conveyor system in Metropolis. But that was as far as they went. Putting cameras on an entire outdoor ride environment didn’t make fiscal sense, and there was no way a guest could get to, say, the back of the Midsummer Night’s Scream without tripping a few of the exterior cameras.

Unless they could go straight up to avoid the ground cameras entirely, that was.

“All right,” I said. “Can you pick me up again?”

Sam didn’t say anything. Only nodded.

“Okay. See that tree?” I pointed. “Look at the fourth branch up. That’s the only camera aimed at the waiting area. It may not even be on, since the zone is closed, but we don’t want to count on that.

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