Right. Let's continue! Thank you for reviewing, Ali6132 and Madison Wooten.

We were woken up in the middle of the night for the next challenge. An air horn sounded. "RUN! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!"

Yeah, it was just Chris' sick plan to get us out of bed to do the next challenge.

"Thanks, intern." Chris said to Dakota, who had been the one with the air horn.

"Huh?" she exclaimed, obviously not hearing right. She didn't hear properly when Sam said hi to her, either.

"Challenge time!" Chris announced.

"What? Now? In the middle of the night?" Brick's eyes flickered around. "When it's all...y'know, dark?" Jo shot a glare at him, but I gave him a sympathetic smile.

Wow. Army cadet Brick was scared of the dark. I should've seen that one coming.

It got worse. The challenge was a scavenger hunt for three souvenirs – one in the haunted forest, one in a pet cemetery, and one in a cave. The first team to each location also got a clue. But we also had to watch out for booby-traps.

"So be careful, and stick together." Chris warned. "You'll be penalized for each player you lose."

Oh, and only then did Chris tell us that there was a giant mutant spider loose on the island. No, seriously.
"What's on the loose?" Dakota shouted, still having problems with her hearing.

"A gigantic mutated spider!" Sam yelled so she could hear.

"Where? Where?" Cameron asked, looking terrified.

I was scared of giant spiders myself, but I reached out to put a hand on Cameron's shoulder. "Cam, listen." I said. "As long as our team sticks together, we can fight the spider, OK? You don't have to be scared."

Cameron seemed to calm down a little, and smiled at me wanly. "Thanks, Shannon." he managed, although he still looked scared.

The Rats got to the location first, but Jo already had a plan. All we had to do was follow the other team to get to our first souvenir.

I could hear Dawn's clear voice reading out the clue. "Inside a knot is a nest, your souvenir lives with a pest. Find Polaris to travel northwest. Polaris is the north star!"

We were hiding in a nearby bush as we listened, and we tried to get out of it quickly. But seven people in the same bush kind of slowed us down when we tried to get out.

Once we were all free, we ran the way the Rats had gone, and found Sam and Scott standing by a tree. "Gee," Sam began, "Maybe we should search for the object way over there with the rest of our teammates, cause it's not just the two of us!" A very convincing cover-up. I wondered what had happened to Dawn and Lightning.

Cameron saw the hollow – the nest in the clue Dawn had read out? "Could be a trap." Jo said. "We should send in our most expendable player."

"No one's expendable!" Brick argued.

"Do you wanna play nice, or do you wanna win?" Jo eyed both Cameron and I.

"Don't. Even. Think. About. It." I warned. "You touch me or Cameron, and I'll – if you don't put me down, I'll -aah!" Before I'd finished, Jo had already picked me up like I weighed nothing and thrown me into the knot. I found the key, at least.

"Nice work, Shannon!" Mike complimented.

I climbed out of the hollow, seething. "Jo, you are SO dead!"

"Save it, strawberry shortcake." Jo said, rolling her eyes. "It's not like losing you would've hurt our team."

I fumed silently.

That was when Zoey disappeared, just as Mike started asking her a question. "Zoey? Whoa, where's Zoey? Zoey! ZOEY!"

"And we call off the search and forge ahead." was Jo's response.

"That's against the cadet code!" Brick protested. "Never leave a soldier behind!"

"I agree!" I said. "We get a penalty for every lost player. Which means, we get a penalty if we don't have Zoey with us!"

"We're not leaving her, she left us!" Jo pointed out. "That means she's AWOL. Now move it, strawberry shortcake. You too, GI Joke."

We did run ahead, and pass the Rats after Sam got hurt by a bunch of minefields. Mike still kept calling for Zoey.

I ran next to him. "Mike, I don't think we're going to find her." I said gently. "I'm sure we'll find her at the end of the challenge. For now, we need to focus. Zoey would want us to win."

The pet cemetery was as creepy as Chris had said. This time, Jo pushed Cameron around. "String bean, go get the clue!"

Cameron held up a piece of paper with three sixes and an 18 highlighted in red. "Aren't three sixes supposed to be evil?"

We'd have to look for the numbers around the cemetery. "You mean by ourselves?" Brick asked nervously.

I looked up at him. "Brick, you'll be fine." I whispered so Jo wouldn't hear. "Look for the moon."

As it was, he fell into an open grave and freaked out until Jo pulled him out, and then slapped him across the face.

At that moment, we all noticed the same thing. A dark patch on a certain part of Brick's pants. "It was wet down there and I landed on my crotch!" he said defensively. "I gotta dry off." He ran off. I think we all remembered his embarrassing secret and knew what had really happened, but none of us said anything.

We also heard him scream, but by the time we got to where he was, he was gone.

"Oh well." Jo said calmly. "Two words: Dead. Weight."

Anne Maria, surprisingly, was the one who spoke up. "Hey, Brick may not be attractive in any way, but he is still a person!"

"Yeah, your cutthroat attitude sucks!" added Mike.

"It's called a winning attitude." Jo replied coolly. "Get used to it, or get out of the way."

Mike continued looking for Zoey. In fact, he fell out of a tree, his shirt was pulled off by a twig and he landed on his back, over a grave.

"Omigosh, Mike, I think I found the clue!" Anne Maria said, pointing at the grave he was on. "Look, Shannon!" she said. Sure enough, it had the numbers that were highlighted in the clue.

Mike gave a gasp, and then started speaking in a weird accent. His spiky hair had flattened, too. "Where's the freakin' sun? How am I supposed to get a freakin' tan over here?"

Anne Maria gave a squeal. "Vito!"

So this was the famous Vito. I nudged the guy. "Uh, Vito, right? Nice to meet you, but would you mind turning back into Mike right now? We're kind of busy."

Vito took a step away from me. "Look, kid, don't take this the wrong way, but you gotta be older to get with the Vito, and that means you can't touch me."

I scowled. "I'm sixteen, thank you very much! And I don't want to 'get with' you, as you put it; all I did was nudge you!" Clearly, just asking Mike to come back wasn't working.

We found the key, and several flashlights were in the grave. Vito put the grave back on Jo's orders, and we headed for the cave.

Jo grabbed one of the flashlights from Cameron and I. "Follow my lead, pencil neck and shortcake."

"Where are Anne Maria and Mike?" Cameron suddenly asked.

"Who cares?" Jo said, already in the cave, but we ran back for them.

They were making out.

"Ew!" Cameron exclaimed. "Come on! That is not what Chris meant when he said to stick together!"

I looked at Cameron. "Is it gross that they're making out, or gross that they're doing it here, where anyone could see them?"

Cameron shrugged. "More that they're doing it in front of the world while we're supposed to be doing a challenge."

At least we managed to get them to follow us to the cave, but by that time, Jo was gone, too.

"Would you stop! We need to focus!" Cameron yelled. Finally, Anne Maria and Mike – sorry, Vito – pulled apart and followed us.

"See any clues, Vito, baby?" Anne Maria asked.

"Hey, what's a clue?"

I rolled my eyes. If this was one of Mike's personalities, I was glad the real Mike wasn't an arrogant idiot.

The clue led us to a bunch of hooks.

"Cameron, Shannon, look out!" Anne Maria suddenly screamed.

Before either of us could look around, we were both wrapped in a web-like string, tied together, and then thrown into a web by a giant spider. THE spider.

"Who's landed in the web now?" Jo asked, who was also there, but had the web over her eyes. "Tan job? Couch potato? Freckle face? Come on, don't leave me hanging!"

"It's just me, string bean." Cameron said.

I laughed at him using Jo's name for him. "And strawberry shortcake." I added, following his lead.

"Wow. Both of you lasted longer than I expected."

By this time, Sam and Scott had arrived. But both of them got tied up by the spider, though not thrown into the web.

"Go get the hook, and we'll win!" Anne Maria said to Vito. He ignored her. She gave a sigh. "Go get the hook, and you'll get more of this..." she started making out with him again, this time with Zoey watching.

"Keep your lips off him!" she cried, but it worked.

"Sorry, Red." Anne Maria smirked. "Looks like Vito's only interested in classy girls."

"But...I thought Mike was interested in me!" cried Zoey.

"It's one of his perso – I mean characters." I told her. "Vito's apparently interested in Anne Maria. Trust me, Mike is the real thing, and he's the one who likes you. Anne Maria only loves a shadow."

"Um, Shannon? Zoey?" Cameron said. "SPIDER!" It was coming towards us, and Zoey screamed.

"Zoey?" Mike was suddenly back to his normal self. "Don't move! I"m coming!"

"No, get the hook!" Anne Maria yelled, but Mike wasn't listening.

But suddenly, Cameron broke free of the ropes, also freeing me, and started beating up the spider with all his might. I got to work on trying to free my teammates, planning to free Dawn and Lightning after that. Hey, we had to win. I was going to free them anyhow, so why not do them last?

Mike was having no trouble getting to the web, since he'd turned into Svetlana, and his entrance also cut Brick down.

"Hang on!" Brick called up to the rest of us, but Jo told him to get the hook and win first.

"I need to rescue my teammates!" Brick called up to her.

"No, you need to win! Someone has to!"

"But my code! I can't just leave you behind!"

"Cut and run, soldier! That's an order!" Jo yelled. For some reason, Brick couldn't refuse a direct order, and he did win for us. However, Jo's orders made him lose the game. The rest of us were left in the cave, meaning Brick lost all six of us, while the Rats only lost Dawn and Lightning.

Cameron had beaten up the spider while everyone else was being freed. Now it was revealed to be...a costume. I looked at it. A strangely familiar redhead was lying there. "Boo!" she suddenly exclaimed, and started giggling manically.

"She's one of the old contestants!" I whispered. "Did you ever see her?"

Cameron shook his head.

"Her name's Izzy." I explained. "She's the psycho...at least, until Sierra arrived, but I get why they made her do this. It's a perfect role for her!"

Cameron was never scared of spiders again after that encounter, but he confided to me later that he was terrified of Izzy.

We were at elimination for the first time. Zoey was looking hurt because of the thing with Anne Maria. I kept an arm around her in comfort.

"This tension is so delish, I could kiss someone!" Chris exclaimed. "Not you, Mike, we all know where those lips have been. But hey, maybe Brick and Jo wanna kiss and make up?" They were both looking away from each other, arms crossed. "Didn't think so."

Chef was occupied with Izzy and couldn't deliver the last marshmallow – basically, the loser got the Toxic Marshmallow of Loserdom, and then got put into a catapult and took the Hurl of Shame, this season.

"Permission to speak?" Brick stood. "I volunteer for elimination. I don't deserve to stay. I did not follow my own code."

"No kidding, Sir Leaks-A-Lot." Jo teased.

But Chris wasn't hurling Brick. Instead, he was being switched to the Toxic Rats.

"Lame." muttered Anne Maria.

"Thanks again, sir." Brick saluted. "I won't ignore the code again, sir!"

"Whatever." Chris said. Then he hurled Dakota, welcoming her to come back, unlike the contestants.

That's the fourth episode done! Please review!