Chương 405: Book Eight, Chapter 72: Family Troubles

"He's going to attack us the moment he knows that we're here," Camden said as we huddled, making a plan. His Battlefield Intuition trope allowed him to look into the tactics an enemy would employ.

"I'll try not to take it personally," I said.

"So, to maximize this interaction, we should probably talk to the family first. Maybe they'll scream for him, and there will be a fight. Or they might not."

"Sounds good to me," Camden said. He had his rifle ready to go, and one of his soldiers had a flamethrower primed and ready. I almost asked Roxy to try to be the one to reach out to the family. It was an old habit from the days when we had Kimberly as our NPC charmer. I wasn't sure Roxy would do the same. Her character didn't really seem like someone who would approach this situation with gentleness. So that meant it was up to me.

The next time we went On-Screen, I began walking out of the jungle into the clearing where the tent was with my hands raised.

"Hello," I said.

"Is everything okay here?" The young woman looked at me like I had two heads and ran into the tent. The young man chained to a tree did his best to turn and look at me.

"Quiet," he said through his gag.

"He'll hear you." In the distance, another explosion went off. At the very least, that meant Torsten Dahlberg was unlikely to be sneaking up on us. I waved for the others to follow me as I quickly made my way to the campsite. There were a few squirrels cooking over the fire and a pan of some type of gravy, perhaps with berries in it. When I got to the young man, Vidar, I quickly began attempting to help him escape his bindings, but they were quite tight.

I didn't exactly know how to pick a lock, but I could probably get it to work using Hustle if I needed to.

"Where's the key?" I asked.

"He has it on him," Vidar said.

"That's okay, I'll figure it out," I said.

"What's your name?"

"Vidar," the young man said. I looked over at the tent where the young woman, presumably his sister, was hiding and staring at us.

"Vidar, my name is Riley, and I'm here to help. Can you explain to me what's going on?" Rage rose up into the kid's throat as he started to describe what had happened.

"He dragged us out here into the jungle after Mom got sick, saying it was one last family camping trip, and now he's obsessed with digging a hole. He tried to get me to help him, and when I wouldn't, he chained me up. I've been here for a week. He won't let me out. He's gone mad." Camden, meanwhile, had his soldiers secure the perimeter. Roxy and her bodyguard stayed back, but my crew was filming things. I had to get the kid out of the chains. Unfortunately, I didn't have anything on me to pick the lock with.

But I knew a way.

"Camden," I said, "give me a paper clip from those files." My heart raced. I didn't actually remember any of the files being paper-clipped. Some were stapled, though, but mostly loose-leaf or bound inside notebooks and journals. Still, when Camden made his way to me, he reached into his backpack and pulled out a paper clip from amongst the documentation we had found. It was basic improvisation, and yet I still felt a little afraid to do it. I was going to have to get over that.

I unbent the paper clip and quickly used it to pick the lock, which consisted mostly of just shaking it around in there until something clicked. Dina had been the first of us to figure that out. We were pretty impressed with it. Quickly, I worked to unbind the chains around the kid's legs and torso so that he could get out freely. Carousel really hadn't skimped on the details of what it would be like for someone to be chained to a tree for a week. The first thing the kid did was change clothes.

Camden and I gradually worked our way toward the tent.

"We aren't here to hurt you," I said.

"We can help bring you back to civilization and get you some help, a hospital." The girl, Ylva, gently said, "It's too late for the hospital. Mama has less than a month." She looked at her mother with such hopelessness.

"Dad's gone crazy. If we don't leave here, I think Vidar and I might die too." I didn't know what to make of the situation. Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

"We'll help you," I said. Carousel was getting footage of most of this interaction, which meant it wasn't just an arbitrary, terrifying thing we found in the woods. It was important. Clearly, this guy, Torsten, was trying to get into the tunnel to the Sunken Cradle. Was there some legend about the cradle having healing properties or something? That might explain why Andrew's character wanted it after the lung cancer diagnosis.

I didn't know yet, but I did know that we weren't getting out of there without a confrontation, so I decided to push it forward.

"Camden, we've got to get her out of here. What can you do?" He thought for a moment and said, "We can haul her out of here on that cot. It looks solid enough, but I don't think she's conscious. She may be too far gone already."

"She gets sleepy on her meds," the young woman said.

"She'll be thankful if you can get us out of here." I nodded. Camden and I looked at each other. We knew what was about to happen. He ordered his men to help pack up the campsite, which they did diligently, taking all the medical supplies but leaving the food. That way, Torsten might not starve when he was done blowing a hole in the ground. The troops had her propped up and were carrying her on her cot, with the daughter and son following right behind. That took up four of the six soldiers.

In the distance, screaming could be heard. Torsten had discovered us just as we expected him to.

"Don't you lay a hand on my family," he said.

"I'm trying to save them." He had a pickaxe in his hand, but I was more concerned with the sticks of dynamite he carried on his waist belt.

"Keep moving. We'll hold him off," Camden said to his men.

"Sir, stay back," I yelled.

"We don't want to hurt you. We just want to know what's going on." I had half a mind to tell my cameraman to stop filming because we were inevitably about to shoot a man dead.

"I told you I brought them here to save them. What are you doing?" he screamed and charged at us. The soldiers carrying the cot were already back into the thick of the jungle. The man was crying and angry as he got close. His hair was unkempt, his clothes drenched in sweat and covered in dirt from the explosions.

"Please, you have to understand," he said.

"You have to understand." And while his words sounded like he was pleading with us, he was still swinging a pickaxe at me. I backed away. I didn't know how his stats were distributed, but I was clearly beating him in Hustle. He couldn't beat me, even though he would charge me with the pickaxe and swing wildly, then take a few seconds to pull the pickaxe out of the ground before finding me again.

"Sir, just tell us what's going on," I said. Why I was calling this guy sir, I didn't know.

"I forgot what I was supposed to do," he said.

"It was too late. It was too late. I should have come back earlier. Please, I forgot. I'm trying to save them." He charged at me with the pickaxe again, and I dodged as he sank the tool into the ground and fell right on top of it, piercing himself and falling off with a moan. His wound wasn't lethal. Instead of getting up, he looked at me and then at Camden, both of us with our guns drawn on him. He looked over at the two remaining soldiers and at Roxy's big bodyguard. And then he stared up at the sky.

"By the time I remembered, it was too late," he said.

"I've got the sickness, that's what they say. I only wish I had it worse, just a bit worse. I wish I'd remembered sooner or not at all, but it doesn't matter anymore. A thousand suns and a thousand more, and all I needed was the one." He stared in the direction that his family had gone for a moment and then back at the sky.

"I'll never get to go home now, will I?" he asked. I thought about answering with sarcasm, but there was something so sincere in his question that I didn't. What madness had driven him to do this to his family? Camden tugged at my shirt sleeve and then nodded for us to go. The man had attacked all he was going to attack. So we just left him there. I didn't know who was more confused, me or the man ranting and raving about suns and sickness. We walked into the jungle, and then we went Off-Screen. - And that was it.

That was the whole trek into the jungle. We had learned things about the storyline, but we didn't yet know their significance. There wasn't even a satisfying conclusion to the whole captive family thing because as soon as we went Off-Screen, the mother character got off her cot and started walking. They were all NPCs again, ushering us to the next scene.

"I don't know what Antoine was complaining about. That was a leisurely stroll," Camden said.

"Not counting all the dead bodies," I said.

"Yeah, I forgot about those," he said as we arrived at the airport. Another 5-minute flight, and we were back in the city of Carousel. It was sure nice to get out of Carousel, the town, for a while. I almost thought the plot was done with us once the NPCs had stopped acting like people, but as soon as we departed the private jet onto the runway, Roxy got a call, and we went On-Screen.

"What happened?" she asked.

"Is Cassie okay?" Whatever she was being told, it was quite alarming to her. She hung up the phone and then looked at us urgently.

"What is it?" I asked.

"My brother-in-law," she said.

"He's been kidnapped." I thought for a moment.

"That would be Isaac Hughes, right?" I asked.

"Yes," she said.

"Come with me." If she was going to order me around like that, she better be paying me a lot of fake money.

"Isaac Hughes, world traveler, treasure hunter, and frequent collaborator with Antoine Stone?" I asked as we walked toward her vehicle.

"One and the same," she said. She had a very nice SUV, something analogous to a Cadillac, with a driver and, of course, her bodyguard. Camden and I joined her, though he had lost his troops somewhere along the way. My cameraman and producer-assistant were still with us, though. We were Off-Screen on the ride, but then we arrived at a large house, likely bought with the older brother's money.

The place was cordoned off with police tape, and Cassie Hughes, wearing actual grunge '90s clothes that the real Cassie Hughes would wear, was arguing with the cops on the front lawn. She wasn't arguing well.

"Don't let your people touch things," she screamed.

"You can't find him. Only I can find him." She sounded unhinged, but we had already been told that her character might have been mentally unwell after dealing with her enormous psychic power. The police detective didn't care for her attitude at all and was threatening to have her arrested.

"Don't you lay a hand on her," Roxy said, pulling the police tape apart and walking up onto the lawn. It was a nice gated community. This wasn't the type of place where things like this happened. The home values were probably dropping by the second. As we walked up, it became clear that this crime scene was going to be the next major scene in the movie. The question was, when was the titular hero supposed to show up? Both Camden and Cassie were working on the semi-antagonistic side of the film with Roxy and me.

Who did that leave to help Antoine and his adventure? Anna? We were going to have to figure out what was going on with this storyline before it was too late.