Book Five, Chapter 121: A Barrel of Monkeys

🔴 REC    SEP 25, 2018 08:08:25    [▮▮▮▮▯ 80%]

 

When we landed, we were standing in a large industrial complex, right in front of something that could have been a cement factory or a nuclear silo. I had no idea—all I could see were giant metal structures jutting into the sky. It had that generic quality—it could have been anything.

Immediately, Generation Killer let go of Camden and started running along the a path into the structure.

“Come on,” Camden said, grabbing my shirt.

So I followed him.

“You want us to follow him?” I asked. “We need to run.”

“There’s no use,” Camden said. “You need to see this.”

So I continued to run as a strange smoke started to rise from the top of the industrial building next to us.

“Camden, what’s going on?” I asked.

“That building’s about to melt down,” he said, trying his best to keep pace with the Generation Killer in front of us.

The killer was on a beeline toward a smaller building that kind of looked like a payphone vestibule. He rushed in through the door, and by the time we caught up, all I could see was him smacking a button on the wall—constantly.

Suddenly, alarms started to blare around the building.

“I told you there was no stopping him,” Camden said.

Generation Killer came back out to us.

“That was a close one, wasn’t it, bucko? You almost tripped me up,” he said.

Suddenly, the doors around the building started to open, and workers began to evacuate en masse.

Steam was rising up in the place where the smoke had been, and the workers who were coming out were gawking at it.

One said, “Oh, thank God.”

Guess again.

“Wait a second,” I said. “Did he just save all those people?”

That wasn’t really his MO.

“Yes,” Camden said. “But they weren’t supposed to be saved.”

I looked at him funny—but that, of course, didn’t show up on film.

Then something possibly even stranger than time travel started to happen.

I realized that I could suddenly see the stars. The blue sky was gone. It didn’t get dark—the light was still shining on things, and everything even had shadows—but instead of a blue sky, it was space. With no light pollution at all.

“What in the world…” I muttered as I filmed the sky above.

Red streaks—cracks—started to spread around the sky.

And suddenly, we were not just dealing with one Generation Killer.

Multiple showed up.

“What did you bring them here for?” one of them yelled out.

I started filming from my pocket, trying to hide the camera, so I didn’t get the best shots. Still, it was better than losing the camera. If they saw it, they didn’t care.

“Interrogation. Just followin’ orders, fella,” the Generation Killer that had brought us said. “Could use a hand, if you’re handy.”

The other killers laughed.

“Did you hear that? He said he could sure use a hand! You see that—one is missing a hand!” another Generation Killer said.

Some of them laughed. Others rolled their eyes.

I looked at Camden, and he looked very annoyed.

“They have the worst sense of humor.”

No wonder Carousel only showed glimpses of them On-Screen.

“Shouldn’t we run?” I whispered.

“There wouldn’t be any point,” he said.

I really wanted Camden to start explaining what was happening, but he looked numb. Tired. Still, I needed an explanation.

“What is going on?” I asked.

“That factory—or plant—was supposed to explode, have a meltdown. But it didn’t,” he said.

“Okay, but shouldn’t that just put us on a different timeline? One where the plant never exploded?”

“Normally,” Camden said. “But this isn’t normal.”

I didn’t want to press him. Instead, I just turned off the camera.

 

■ STOP

 

🔴 REC    SEP 25, 2018 08:24:25    [▮▮▮▮▯ 80%]

 

The Generation Killers led us to their hangout in this broken world—it just happened to be the Carousel Casino.

As we were shoved through the entrance, I saw that there were dozens of Generation Killers gambling on slot machines, just passing the time.

It was a large casino, and despite the Generation Killers being there, there were also NPCs—who weren’t completely oblivious but still didn’t seem to care about what was going on around them.

So, normal degenerate gamblers.

We were led to the elevators and then brought up to the 13th floor of the hotel.

They took us to one of the rooms, shoved us inside, and closed the door, where two of the Generation Killers guarding the door.

I ran to the window, just to see if there was some way to open it—but there clearly wasn’t. That was fairly realistic; in the real world, casino hotels often don’t have windows that open.

“Back in room 1304,” Camden said.

He was legitimately upset. He was scared.

I couldn’t blame him, and I didn’t want to seem too jaded, but I knew our best way out was to stay proactive.

He needed a pep talk.

■ STOP

 

We were silent at first. I had trouble reading what was going through his mind, so I didn’t want to say anything.

I didn’t want to assume that he had trauma he didn’t have, and I didn’t want to ignore him if he needed to talk.

Finally, he spoke.

“Plot Armor 36, huh?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “Suddenly, I’m a hard worker.”

We made our way to the couch in the room and sat down.

“How long has it been?”

I could tell that he was afraid of my answer.

“A year, plus or minus a few time skips,” I said. Then, after thinking for a moment, I asked, “How about for you? What do you remember?”

He looked up at me and said, “Everything.”

For a moment, he didn’t say anything more, but then he elaborated, leaning back on the couch and setting what remained of his arm across his chest as if to relax it.

“I had to do it all twice,” he said. “They cut off my arm. I fought like hell. I learned everything there was to know about what was going on. I had a whole battle plan—we were going to get the Atlas and send it to you guys. I managed to escape and meet up with Anna, and it worked. We found the Atlas. Then she escaped as they caught up with me. I took out a few, and then they killed me.”

“That’s what Anna said,” I said.

“And then I woke back up. Right back here. With both my arms again. But this time, everything was different. This time I was in a suite and not a basement. This time, the rules were all switched around, and there were dozens—maybe even hundreds—of Generation Killers instead of the twelve I originally had. I thought that this was what death was going to be like—that we were just going to repeat over and over again until rescued. It all happened over again. They cut off my arm again. And this time, I researched—and everything had changed. They were filming things, and the rules are bigger, grander. And this time, you showed up before they killed me. It hurts my head to even think about. Like the memories are raw and touchy.”

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I had not considered that Carousel might go that route. Anna had a trope that allowed her to perform in her own rescue. Camden didn’t, and though the mechanics of time travel allowed him to, there would have to be a price.

“Well, I don’t think we were originally supposed to rescue you,” I said.

“Probably not,” Camden agreed. He drew inward when he was upset.

“You’re a scholar, and you were set up to have a lot of knowledge, but then all of the facts changed,” I said.

“So I had to do it again. That was my punishment. You know, as soon as I said to Anna that you should try to rescue me before the storyline was done, I knew it was going to be trouble. I really hate these guys, Riley. It’s like they intentionally try to creep you out with their weird sense of humor.”

I nodded. “They have a trope for that,” I said. I must have had an awkward manner or something.

He took a deep breath.

“You know, for me, it’s only been a couple of weeks. Maybe a little more. You don’t have to talk to me like we’re at a funeral. You’re the one that’s been missing me.”

He didn’t like pity. He was the first of our group to die. He hadn’t handled that well and he hated when people tried to comfort him.

“And you’re the one who’s been on vacation,” I said.

He smiled. “Exactly. So I don’t need any more pity, all right?”

“I didn’t mean to pity you,” I said. “It’s just… rescuing you has been on my mind every waking hour in recent memory. It can be a little hard to remember that you have been taking the ‘nap’ part of ‘dirt nap’ seriously.”

He was being tough.

“Oh yeah, sure,” he said. “It’s all fun and games. They even let me gamble. No one wins or loses, but they still do it because they’re insane, and ninety percent of them are idiots.”

No wonder they had such limited dialogue.

“So what’s their story?” I asked.

“Discovered time travel. Somehow, they got trapped in our group of timelines, and they don’t like it. They’re really mad about it, and they want to destroy things just because.”