Page 132 of One Adult, Please

All systems nominal.

I put the clipboard back and walk up the stairs. Fourteen steps. Railing on the right.

Grace touches my arm, fingertips on forearm, and the touch says: I know and you don't have to tell me.

"Celestial Bay is clear," I say into the walkie.

"Copy," Beck's voice.

"Copy," Grant's voice.

"Copy!" Grace's voice, into her own walkie, standing directly next to me, the walkie six inches from my ear.

"Grace, I'm right here."

"I know, but the walkie makes it official."

The crayon plan is complete. Every zone. Every building.

The group assembles in the Solar Plaza.

Grace is standing on the fountain rim, holding a flag.

It's a WonderSphere flag. The kind they sell for three dollars, a stick with a triangular pennant, WONDERSPHERE printed on it in the park's font with the cartoon sphere mascot giving a thumbs up.

She found it this morning in the gift shop and she held it up and said "moon flag," Beck said "what?" And she said "for planting. On the moon. The plaza is the moon and we landed and I'm going to plant it." And Beck said "the plaza is concrete." And she said "the concrete is the moon, Beck, use your imagination." Beck used his imagination and now Grace is on a fountain rim holding a three-dollar flag preparing to claim Solar Plaza on behalf of a nation that doesn't exist yet but will have a crayon-based government and a goat-related defense system.

"Fellow survivors," she begins in her commencement-address voice, "we have done a thing."

"A thing," Beck echoes, grinning.

"A considerable thing. A thing involving zones and plans and crayons and friendship paddles and Joel's signs and Beck's kill chute and Grant's bird and Kevin's ongoing contributions. Which are difficult to categorize but impossible to ignore."

Kevin, on the churro cart, offers zero acknowledgment.

"We secured a theme park," Grace continues, then pauses to check the crayon plan. "Wait. Is Gregory accounted for?"

The plaza goes dead quiet.

"Gregory," Grace says. "Tall. Shambles. Cockbl… interrupts. Has a history of interrupting at key moments. Last seen in the vicinity of the fish tube, exhibiting door-thumping behavior."

I scan the plaza. Every exit, every sightline, every pathway that feeds into the hub. Gregory isn't visible on any approach vector. Gregory is, as of this moment, unaccounted for.

"Did anyone..." Grace looks around. "In the clearing. Did anyone see..."

"Didn't come through the adventure part," Beck says.

"Not in the garden section or the rescue center," Grant says.

"We didn't encounter one matching that description," Carl says.

"Nothing fitting that profile at the east perimeter," Diane says.

"So Gregory is just... out there? Still? Wandering? Free-range Gregory?"

"It's a big park," I say. "We may have missed interior spaces. Storage rooms. Maintenance closets. He could be in any enclosed area we didn't directly clear."

"Gregory's hiding? Gregory's developed stealth capabilities?"