Chương 220: Book Five, Chapter 123: A Mid-Torture Lesson

"I'm going to explain this one more time," Camden said to the room full of Generation Killers. They were all paying attention—at least that could be said of them. But unfortunately, the bottom forty percent of Generation Killers were just not getting it. The only thing these guys had in common with each other was DNA and psychopathy. The smart ones figured it out as soon as Camden enlightened them. The dumb ones didn't figure it out, but they were too proud and egotistical to ever admit it.

They just stared at you with those blank eyes. We had been Off-Screen for at least an hour, and I was still nailed to the chair while Camden tried to explain things. In horror movies, the less you see of the bad guys, the scarier they are. And in this horror movie, that went double—because while these men were individually terrifying due to lacking a sense of right and wrong, listening to the dumb ones trip over basic logic for hours ruined the mystique they'd had at the beginning of the movie.

Carousel wasn't going to use footage that showed that part of them.

"All right," Camden said.

"In order to travel in time, you need what? Anybody? Does anybody know the two things you need to time travel?" Some of the smart ones were in the back of the room, smirking as Camden struggled to get the big, beefier ones to understand.

"You need a piece of the meteorite, and you need a physical record of past tragic events, right? You guys use that book, but you could use a newspaper or something like that, right?" Camden asked. They seemed to understand that really well. They had to, or else they wouldn't have been there.

"And the physical record of past events—it changes every timeline you go to, right? It changes to match the historical events of that timeline, right? It becomes the version of itself from that timeline. You've seen that happen, haven't you?" They nodded.

"So when you were in your home timelines, you traveled back to a common event. An event that happened in both your timeline and ours. Something that happened before the meteor strike, right? You went to see the witches burn. But when you left that event, you didn't go back to your home timeline—you came to ours for some reason." He was getting close. I was wondering if he could land it. The ten or twelve Generation Killers who still weren't understanding sat in the room, their full attention on him.

"But in our timeline, we don't know anything about the witches burning because the meteor strike wiped out all traces of the past. Because in this group of timelines, the meteor hit dead center at the original Carousel settlement, right?

"And because we don't have any historical evidence of the past before the meteor strike, all of your books got rid of those references when they came here. And now, you can't travel back to the common event, because we don't have records of it here." Our timeline was a roach motel for time travelers. They traveled back before their Event A and could never return. Silence spread among the crowd. In the back of the room, one of the smart Generation Killers cackled with laughter.

If I hadn't been nailed to the chair, I probably would have laughed too—but not out of sadistic pleasure. I would have laughed out of the pure absurdity of watching Camden struggle to teach our captors time travel.

"So, you can't go back to that common event because we have no record of it happening. And you need a record. So, you need to find a piece of paper or a history book with a description of a disaster that happened before the meteor wiped everything out. The Carousel settlement existed for years before it was destroyed. Surely, there is some record of what happened there. You just have to find it." That's where he was wrong. In our timeline, we famously had no idea what happened before the meteor strike.

Still, we needed to get them out of the room so we could escape. This was a great trial run for when we were On-Screen. Finally, the last remnants of Camden's eager students claimed they understood what happened and left the room. Camden didn't quite understand why there were so many dim Generation Killers. Since we were Off-Screen, I thought I would spare him the frustration.

"This is how Carousel handles hordes," I said. Grit made my arm injuries less painful... but I still wanted to puke when I thought about them.

"What?" Camden asked once his students had waddled out into the hallway.

"From a gameplay perspective, Carousel only needs a few smart Generation Killers—because they can give orders and make plans. Putting points into Savvy on the others is a waste. That's just how the game works out. Normally, in hordes, you're dealing with things like zombies, so it's not as obvious. So when Carousel filled out the ranks of its horde, it mostly picked versions of Grant Leitner that were physically strong rather than witty."

There were still Generation Killers in the room who could hear me, but they didn't acknowledge my meta-speak. I was using Method to the Madness, which allowed us to speak to the enemies in character Off-Screen. This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it. Camden needed practice for later. He was improving, I thought. When Carousel wasn't scripting them, they didn't come across as mysterious and all-knowing—not most of them, at least.

Instead, they came across as cruel and arrogant and devoid of any emotion other than anger. Still, Camden did a great job at teaching. Because Lila had the And That's Lunch trope equipped, we had an extended break where no one was On-Screen. And that would have been great—if I wasn't literally nailed to the chair and unable to become unnailed, because the torture scene wasn't technically over. My whole left arm was numb. I hated this storyline. Why did Anna and Camden have to get trapped with these goons?

Camden came over to me once we were finally alone again.

"Is there anything I can do?" he asked. I shook my head.

"Not until we're On-Screen," I said. He nodded.

"I find the dumb ones creepier than the smart ones," he said.

"Yeah. You like to think that serial killers are smart —that they won't take unnecessary risks because they don't want to get caught. Once you meet a dumb killer, that's terrifyi—" I stopped talking because I saw something out of the corner of my eye. Well, technically, I didn't see it. I remembered it.

"What is it?" Camden asked.

"Bobby's here," I said. I explained to him how he could teach himself to see the other side of time by checking his own memories. Once he finally figured it out, he said, "That is super freaky."

"Yeah, it is," I said.

"That probably would have been a lot better of a mechanic in a smaller story. Why the hell did we have to try and travel around through time? Ohh, I could be sleeping inside the jailhouse right now." I closed my eyes and tried to remember what was in the corner of the room. And I remembered Bobby being there with his two dogs. He was holding up a thumbs-up. It looked like everything was going good elsewhere.

"Bobby," I asked, "how is Dina?" I waited a moment and then tried to remember. Another thumbs-up. He was nodding his head. He was also saying something—but I couldn't tell what, no matter how many times I tried to focus on lip-reading or hearing. We sat and talked for a while, with Bobby basically observing, because communication was so hard between the planes. Eventually, I found out what Bobby had been trying to tell me. Someone was coming.

And I didn't know who —until she opened the door and scooted in past the guards. It was Lila. She was walking casually.

"They just ignore you?" I asked as she made her way toward us.

"They won't even make eye contact," she said.

"It's pretty great."

"They probably feel guilty for killing you," I said. She shook her head.

"I don't think these guys feel guilty about anything," she said.

"Oh, yeah. I was just making a… never mind," I said.

"Anyway, Bobby's here in the corner if you need to talk to him." She looked over her shoulder, and for a moment, I could see her focusing on the memory. They must have had run-ins already.

"So Dina is going to show up in the finale?" I asked. Lila nodded.

"She wants to get stuck on the other side of time with her son. As a bitter-sweet ending, or something." I thought for a moment and said, "I'm not sure that'll work out. But we'll see. We have to chase a lead. Do you know where Logan is? Did the others go find him?" Lila nodded.

"That's where they're going now." I looked over at Camden.

"Maybe we should join them. You know, after the torture."

"Don't want to miss the torture," Camden said, trying to make a joke, but his voice cracked. Suddenly, I felt like I should stop being so casual about it. He had less Grit than me. Less Grit and less experience. After a long time, I realized that Bobby was trying to get our attention. Thus commenced the longest and most annoying game of charades ever.

"Just go get my camera and we can play back what he's saying," I said.

"I think he's telling us about the chem plant," Camden said.

"What chem plant?" I asked.

"The chemical plant," he said.

"You know, the one that almost melted down?"

"Oh," I said.

"I thought that was a nuclear plant." Camden looked back at me.

"A nuclear plant? Do you not know what a nuclear plant looks like?" I shrugged my shoulders.

"It looked enough like a nuclear plant," I said.

"There were no cooling towers or anything similar to a nuclear plant," he said. It looked like a generic industrial plant of some kind. How was I supposed to know what they were doing there? Of course, Camden would know.

"Maybe that's the reason that it melted down," I said.

"Because they forgot the cooling towers." Camden laughed—or at least smiled like he was going to. Laughing hurt his arm and he was still emotionally drained. Meanwhile, in the corner, Bobby was pointing to Camden enthusiastically in our memories, saying yes, yes, the chemical plant. Eventually, I got Lila to go get my camera off of the shelf where I had hidden it. We did the old trick of recording what invisible Bobby was saying and then replaying it, trying to decipher it from the static.

All I heard was gibberish, but Lila had a better ear for it than I did.

"Logan's at the chemical plant," she said. That wasn't all of what Bobby had said, but that was what she could decipher. That was a bingo. Bobby seemed to indicate as much.

"No," I said.

"Logan is in custody with KRSL. I was just listening to him earlier." Bobby just nodded his head enthusiastically, as if what I said wasn't a contradiction. He even held up a thumbs-up.

"Oh," I said, suddenly realizing what it was Bobby was saying.

"That's why the chemical plant has to melt down," I said. I looked at Camden to see if he had figured it out yet. I couldn't quite tell.

"The time travel secret society version of KRSL's facility is built in the same spot as the plant. Logan is in 2010. We're in 2002. Right?" I asked, looking at Bobby. He nodded his head.

"So that's why the chemical plant had to melt down. Whatever Event B was, it was related to the facility where Logan was being held—a facility that was in the same physical location as the chemical plant. And if the plant didn't melt down, the secret facility would have been built somewhere else, and Event B would never have happened. Somehow." It was basic time-travel movie logic.

"So KRSL is behind Event B," Camden said.

"And they seemed like such nice people last time we met them," I said.

"I could go try to scout it out," Lila said.

"But it might not work if they have too many cameras. I'm supposed to be dead, after all."

"You've done great," I said.

"Besides, we have a security guard on the other side of time who can help us out." I looked at the corner where Bobby was. We talked casually again, just running through some plans and old info. I thought for a while as the conversation drifted back to our plan.

"Are the Finale and Second Blood plans still on?" Lila asked. I nodded.

"Can't deviate now," I said. The wheels were in motion. I sat and thought about what we were going to do next. One obvious play was to go help rescue Logan—and use it as an opportunity to see what exactly KRSL was up to. We were at the point where we had all the puzzle pieces—except for those. At the end of the day, this was a Survive the Night story. And unlike other stories, we had very good control over which night we had to survive. Not everything had gone according to our original plans.

But I still had a strong feeling that, by the end of the story, we were going to do something the audience would remember forever. Lila ran off and left when the break was over. Soon afterward, the three shades of Generation Killer reentered—to continue the torture. I was ready. Camden and I had a plan to get out of there. Things were about to start coming together.