Chương 217: Book Five, Chapter 120: The Scholar

🔴 REC SEP 25, 2018 07: 35: 02 [▮▮▮▮▯ 80%] I arrived to a Camp Dyer in chaos. I could hear screaming in the woods, and I set myself on filming it. Of course, not getting caught was important too—I did technically have the lowest plot armor. If Camden was really here, that would mean we were tied. In a way, I liked that because it meant I could protect him. I just had to find him first. That wasn't the hardest thing ever. I could see his handiwork everywhere. Canonically, they had been here for a day or so.

Maybe a bit more, but as I surveyed the traps sprung around the camp, I realized that this could not have all been done in that time. He and Anna must have worked Off-Screen. One Generation Killer hung by the ankle from a rope. Another one was trying to help him down. In the distance, about half a football field away, I saw a Generation Killer crawling out of a hole and cursing someone in the distance.

As I ran toward him, I saw that the hole had been dug into the sand at the volleyball pit next to the forest, right across from Dyer's Lodge. Zooming in, I saw a tarp had been placed over it. As I got closer, I saw him clutching his leg, which had been skewered by a sharpened stick. Suddenly, the red jewel he wore around his neck started to glow, and in an instant, he disappeared.

Moments later, another Generation Killer walked out of the woods with a slight limp, stared down at the hole, and said, "I'm going to have to make you pay for that, there, sport." Suddenly, I realized why they had the trope Headshots Only. Any major damage you did to them would allow them to time travel, recover, and then return. And since they were also immune to any trap they had fallen for or seen someone fall for, they would never be hurt by that trap again. I was far enough away that he didn't see me.

He also didn't see when Antoine ran up behind him and pushed him back into the hole. I ran over in that direction, and as I filmed into the hole, it was clear that this time, he was not going to get back out. A stake had embedded itself in his chest. I stepped down into the hole, carefully avoiding the sharpened sticks, grabbed the jewel from around his neck, and shoved it into my pocket.

My plan had been to grab them off as many of the men as I could, but ideally, I would be grabbing them off living Generation Killers, not dead ones. Still, I saw the shiny thing, and I grabbed it, following my plan. A strange thing happened afterward. The Generation Killer I had just stolen the jewel from disappeared—but not like he had previously when he time traveled.

It almost looked like he was washed away, as if some invisible wave had just pushed him across the ground, dragging the spike that had skewered his heart with him. And as he was dragged, he sank into the ground until I didn't see him anymore. I looked up at Antoine, and he looked down at me.

"What the heck?" he said.

"I have no idea," I said, shaking my head.

"We have to go find the others." Antoine nodded. We started to run into the woods, toward a group of buildings where Anna said Camden would be. In the distance, I saw a small cabin, and through the window, there was a red glow. That would be Anna—the original Anna—disappearing. She had chopped her own fingers off or at least one of them. Not far from this cabin was a larger building, a cantina, where the campers could buy food and other treats. There were four Generation Killers standing at the entrance.

Camden was somewhere inside. They banged on the door and screamed at him, saying something I couldn't quite hear. But it didn't strike the normal tone—it was that off, slightly friendly manner that would creep anyone out if they heard it. There was no response, so one of the men grabbed the door handle and opened the door. That was a mistake. As he opened the door, something up above them fell out of a window. It had a string tied to it. A simple trap. That thing was a giant pot of boiling oil.

It fell directly onto the Generation Killers standing there. They all started to scream in agony, with two of them moving quickly away from the building as they started to glow red and disappeared. The other two just dropped to the ground, grasping their faces as their skin melted off until they passed out—whether from pain, blood loss, or whatever it is that kills you when you have boiling oil dumped on you. Then the strange phenomenon I had noticed before happened again.

One of them—one that looked like he had died first—started to move along the ground, as if being pushed. He slowly fell into the ground, leaving behind a bracelet with a red jewel on it. Not twenty seconds later, the other one—the one that had gotten the worst of the oil—did the same. He scooted along the ground as if being pushed by a gentle wave until he phased below the earth, leaving behind a necklace with a jewel on it. I didn't know what to make of that.

Shortly after, two more Generation Killers ran toward the building, both of them sporting burn scars on their faces. They had traveled to a different time, healed up, and then returned. This time, they entered the building with a vengeance.

"Where are the others?" I asked Antoine.

"I don't know," he said.

"There must be more Killers around here," I said.

"Hopefully everyone is safe."

"Hopefully he's safe," Antoine said, eyeing the building where we knew Camden to be. I could hear him screaming in there, but not a scream of pain—more of rage. Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

"If you come any closer, I'm going to make you wish you had killed me!" Camden yelled. Antoine and I were too far away to get there quickly. We ducked behind a bush when a group of Generation Killers approached the building.

"What do we do?" Antoine asked.

"They're about to kill him." I would have agreed. Except I saw something that all the Generation Killers had not. There was a trampoline set up on the side of the building, right next to the side where the boiling oil had been spilled. The trampoline was right beneath one of the upstairs windows.

"Quick, follow me," I said. Instead of going directly toward the building, we angled around and circled it so that we could run toward the trampoline. Sure enough, moments after we started running toward it, the window opened, and my childhood best friend jumped out. He landed on the trampoline with a pained look on his face, bounced a few times, then rolled off the side. He had blood all over himself. His Hawaiian shirt had been torn in several places. The blood was largely dried. He looked pale and sweaty.

His arm was missing at the elbow, but it had been bandaged up. As soon as he was off the trampoline, he reached into his pocket, withdrew a small silver object, flicked it, and then held it up—a Zippo lighter. He gently tossed it through a first-floor window, right next to the trampoline, then turned and ran. The surprise on his face when he saw me and Antoine was genuine—and a bit out of character, because his character wouldn't know us. Still, he ran to us quickly.

I thought he was going for a hug, but clearly, he was trying to usher us away from the building. And for good reason. We turned and ran with him— —just as the building behind us became engulfed in flames with a loud roar of an explosion. The force was so strong that it pushed us forward, and I fell to the ground, protecting the camera—making sure to turn back and get a good look at the wreckage. Only one burst of red light. From about seven men who were inside. Not a bad ratio.

As we stood up, Camden started to say something, but Antoine interrupted him.

"Your friend Anna came and told us that we had to save you." Camden froze for a moment, then started nodding his head.

"Yeah? You know Anna? Where is she? Is she okay?"

"She was fine last time we saw her," I said.

"Come on. We have to go. We have to meet the others at the rendezvous point." ■ STOP I turned off the camera so that we could have a moment with Camden. Both Antoine and I hugged him, and Camden got emotional.

"You came... I can't believe it worked," he said.

"I can't believe it all worked." He had theoretically died believing rescue tropes were a thing of the past and had clung to the hope that what he read in the Atlas was true. The relief he was feeling was palpable.

"All because of you," I said.

"We got it figured out as best as we could. We couldn't have done any of it without you."

"So... everyone else at Camp Dyer…?" he started to say.

"Everything went according to plan," I said, "and we have a lot of rescuing to do—starting with you." He nodded and stared down at the ground.

"These guys are fucking crazy, Riley," he said.

"Yeah, and you're going to tell us all about it too—but first, we have to get out of here."

"Yeah. Let's go," he said.

"Honestly, I thought that if I asked Anna to bring you guys back here to save me, that Carousel would do something terrible."

"There's still time," I said. 🔴 REC SEP 25, 2018 07: 48: 05 [▮▮▮▮▯ 80%] My camera started recording on its own. As we made our way toward the rendezvous point—the motel where we had watched the video, for lack of a better place—we started to see five or six, then ten to twelve Generation Killers running toward us. But they weren't exactly interested in us.

"Hey ya, fella!" one of them screamed.

"You better start running. You don't want these creeps to get you." What creeps? The Generation Killers just ran past us. They seemed to have lost all interest in us. Right after them, we saw Kimberly, Bobby and his dogs, and Anna running toward us. That was what really gave us pause. We stopped running and waited for them to reach us. Kimberly was holding Antoine's duffel bag, which contained—among other things—all of the tapes we had found behind the wall.

"Camden!" Anna screamed. They embraced, and then we all turned and started running in the same direction.

"What are we running from?" Kimberly looked at me as if contemplating her words.

"KRSL," she said.

"They're hunting us down. They got Logan." They got Logan? How in the world would they have done that? They shouldn't have even been targeting him—if they were enemies. This reeked of a subplot. We started running. And as we did, it turned out that the Generation Killers hadn't completely forgotten us. Three of them jumped out at us from one direction, and then four from another. Antoine instantly and mercilessly pummeled one of them. He may have still had a little wolf in him.

Kimberly and Anna ran toward Bobby, who was already running away from the Generation Killers on our left. His dogs scared the bejeezus out of the Killers and for good reason. Shasta and Doughboy might have been good dogs, but they were giant. Two of the assailants went directly for Camden.

"We are not done talking to you," one of them said. As he spoke, a look of terror moved over Camden's face. They grabbed him and started pulling him away. I did my best, but against two of them, I wasn't able to stop them from taking Camden.

"Riley, come on!" Kimberly screamed at me. Antoine had killed a Generation Killer—snapped his neck—and Anna's jewel had started lighting up. Kimberly only just seemed to notice that Camden was not with them. If they were going one way, I needed to get to Camden. We didn't come this far to lose him. One of the Generation Killers pulled out a knife. I screamed, "No!" But he didn't stab Camden. Another Generation Killer standing next to him said, "Wait, what are you doing? Just do it to the kid."

"Sorry, friend, but we still need this one. And you lost your jewel," the knife-wielding Killer said—then he stabbed his doppelgänger in the chest. That was the Killer I had stolen a jewel from. I was stuck holding the camera. I felt like I was being given a choice. But maybe I was reading too much into it. I had three options. I could stay here and try to rescue Logan—I had a jewel, which meant that I could travel through time. I could go with Kimberly, Anna, Bobby, and Antoine and continue with the main story.

Or I could go with the choice I was obviously going to make. I could follow Camden—wherever that might lead. I ran toward Camden as the Generation Killers' jewels started to light up. I ran and grabbed Camden's leg, holding on as tightly as I could. The red light of the jewels intensified, and once again, I found myself on solid ground as the world around me began to shift. I saw everything at once. And I filmed everything at once. This time, it was easier to see. I was more used to it.

I saw Logan in handcuffs in the back of a nondescript car, surrounded by men in suits. He was quipping. They were KRSL agents—it said so right on the red wallpaper. KRSL had already been name dropped in the story, so I wasn't exactly shocked to see them here. We knew they were studying the meteorite. Logan's friend at the museum had assured us of that. One of the agents held a little machine with a red flashing light on it—I was sure it was used to detect something related to time travel.

I was sorry I wasn't able to get to Logan. I just had to hope that he would find a way to make the best of his circumstances. I could also see, not too far away, Anna, Kimberly, and Antoine—but Bobby was gone. I had to look around to find him. His dogs had pulled him away—right in the middle of a time jump. The others looked terrified that he had left them. I couldn't figure out why his dogs would do that—until I saw where they were headed.

In the kaleidoscope of a million forests and dozens of Generation Killers, there was one that stood out among the others. Because he wasn't surrounded by a glowing red. He was holding the camera. And filming us. It was the old one. The one we had seen in our memories. The one on the other side of time. And as I watched him, I began to see something in all the chaos—something I hadn't noticed before. The way time seemed to move. Like currents in a river. Flowing, ebbing, chasing forward.

We weren't moving through that river. The river was moving around us. The voyeur —the one with the camera—was standing on solid ground. And time didn't seem to affect him at all. Bobby, too, was standing upon that ground made of something I didn't understand. As if a million pieces of universes had been ground into smooth black sand. The shores of time.

The shores that washed the dead Generation Killers away from where they didn't belong and pushed them onto those unknowable sands of blackness where Bobby and his dogs now tread. Dozens of bodies. Dozens upon dozens of those trenchcoat-wearing bodies that had died and been swept onto those black shores. The river of time, with its many currents, streams, and tributaries, moved and tricked my eyes into seeing a kaleidoscope when I wasn't focusing.

A river that took a blender to my mind just for attempting to understand it. I looked backward and saw a bright light. I looked forward and saw a black light. And between the two lights was everything. And suddenly, a story that didn't really make sense started putting puzzle pieces together. And still, I didn't know what I was looking at. Yet. ■ STOP ~-~ Camden Tran is the Scholar No aspect has been chosen.

Current Trope Limit: 7 Camden has a Plot Armor score of 18, Mettle of 2, Moxie of 2, Hustle of 2, Savvy of 8, and Grit of 4.

"Eureka!" helps him find important information within text.

"Right Tool for the Job" buffs Savvy and Mettle when fighting an enemy with their weakness.

"Zippos are Cheap" boosts Savvy for plans that expend a Zippo lighter.

"Hide and Seek" allows him to outsmart an enemy during a chase instead of outrunning them.

"Photographic Memory" allows him to display visual information committed to memory on the red wallpaper.

"The Immobile Genius" allows him to send allies off to enact a plan, giving them a temporary Savvy boost.

"Peer Review" allows him to recognize if documentation has been altered and how.