Chapter 23: Dissipation.
Shawn may have been preparing for the wrong type of apocalypse. There weren't any zombies here, but it seemed something must have happened within the warehouse, because all I could see around me was chaos. Rocks were pumping up and down, the weather was changing constantly, and stuff would shoot out of the trees every couple of minutes. We weren't going to be killed by an army of zombies, but probably by an army of Scuba Bears, which was arguably worse.
McLean started running toward the others, and left us to sit by the cannon like sitting ducks. Given not much of any other choices, we opted to follow him. Otherwise, we could have been jumped by a falling tree or something. When we got to the others, they were just as panicked as we were. "Why is there an earthquake here?" Max demanded as McLean got to them, "answer!"
As soon as he stopped talking, the weather shifted again. The winds picked up, and we were blown back a couple of steps. "This is a typhoon!" Scarlett shouted, trying to make sure her voice reached us.
"No, it's a volcano!" Shawn shouted, pointing over to our left, where a volcano had emerged from the ground, and it looked dangerous too. We didn't even have a second to breathe before it erupted, sending...pink stuff into the sky. "A...Hawaiian donut volcano?"
Sugar's eyes lit up. "Dreams can come true!" she shouted, slurping some stuff off of Shawn's hand. Yuck, that'd take a while for me to forget. What a terrible day to not have been eliminated.
"What's going on?" Samey pleaded desperately to McLean, "tell us, please!"
McLean responded with mumbling and punching a remote he had on him. Whatever was going on down there was not planned, which meant we were in a lot of danger. How annoying. McLean's mumbles still amounted to nothing, so I spoke up. "You've got ten seconds to answer her question. Now!" My voice pierced right into his eyes. I could feel it, and it felt good.
"No idea what you're talking about," McLean answered slowly. Just then, the set of trees behind him opened up in the ground, and began retracting back to the warehouse. "...You don't have vanishing trees where you're from?"
"Of course not!" I yelled. "Answer!"
Once the trees finished retracting, a new set of trees emerged from the ground, this time, covered in Christmas decorations. "How...about Christmas?" Everyone's eyes were on the host, and it was clear to him now that he wasn't getting away without telling them that secret. He let out a sigh. "Fine. The island's mostly artificial." Four people gasped, the ones who didn't being me and Scarlett, since we already knew. "Yes, gasp, and were having some technical difficulties, it's nothing to worry about!"
As soon as he said that, the floor opened up under him, causing McLean to jump back. Once he did, the voice on the screen that popped up began speaking. Self-Destruct Sequence Activated. Well, that was terrifying. The island wasn't really going to blow up, right? I knew there was some dangerous stuff down there, but this was officially out of hand. Island will explode in one hour. The timer popped up. We now had an hour to live.
This naturally put everyone into a panic. I couldn't blame them. I was nervous too. Even though I knew a little more about this place then they did, I was still terrified. But somehow, I knew we'd be okay, mainly because I was assuming it'd be safe underground. If it wasn't...uh oh. Eventually, McLean used the air horn to stop the commotion. "Zip it! For...your next challenge, one of you has to shut down the self-destruct...which is located in this underground control room." He quickly pulled a tablet out and showed us a picture of what the room looked like. It looked pretty similar to the warehouse, but there were no robots in this room, only a bunch of buttons.
"There are three ways to get there," he explained, showing us another picture. One was at the top of the mountain, and the other two were on the edges. Those would be the easier ones to get to, probably. "So, you'll split into three teams of two. The team that stops the countdown wins immunity."
Scarlett's eyes lit up after watching those entrances. "Um, can I see that?" she asked eccentrically. I really hoped she wasn't planning on nerding out while we were saving her life. That would be pretty unforgivable. McLean shrugged and handed the tablet over to her.
"So..." McLean said slowly, "if there's no questions...ready, set-"
"Hey, I've got a question!" I shouted at him, "where are you going to be in all this?"
Shawn also raised his hand. "What do we do when we find the control room?"
"Why do puppets have legs?" Sugar asked, "we all know they can't walk." I was going to kill her.
Samey raised her hand. "T-this is just a challenge, right? Our lives aren't really in danger?"
McLean laughed, as a helicopter landed to extract him from the danger zone. "Silly Samey, you're lives have always been in danger, just never so seriously. But," he continued, walking near the helicopter, "don't worry, I'll be right here to help you. From a safe distance. In this helicopter!"
Shawn began yelling at McLean, and McLean was yelling back, but with all the helicopter noises, the only thing I could make out was the air horn, starting our 'challenge'.
T- Minus fifty-five minutes, and counting, the scary monitor said to us. It was clear that McLean was not coming back, and that we were on our own.
"We doin' this or what?" Sugar asked.
"Topher!" I shouted, looking around for the wannabe, until I realized that he wasn't here anymore. That was annoying. I'd have to get used to that.
By the time I came to that realization, I saw Shawn and Sugar run off to the left, while Max and Scarlett ran off to the right. That meant Samey was my partner. "I guess it's us," she said nervously.
I didn't know what happened there, but something between the island about to explode, and everyone else ditching me instantly made me want to keep her safe. After all, if the island eliminated her, then I couldn't. Yeah, that was it. "Let's go," I said, pointing upward, "we need to find the cave from the episode you came back."
"What?" she asked, "that's not where the-"
"There's a way in there," I told her. "Trust me. The wizard found it too." Samey didn't give me a chance to keep arguing. She instantly started following me, and we bolted toward the the cave, where we would put ourselves in the warehouse. It wasn't an entrance that McLean told us about, but it was a faster way underground. I just hoped we'd actually be able to get to the control room from there. It was a shame we never got more time to explore when we were in the warehouse the first time.
I did my best to retrace my steps from the meeting area, but it wasn't easy. The meeting area was just as chaotic as everything else, and there were literal landmasses pumping up and down around us. "Watch out!" I heard Samey yell. We both jumped back at the same time, and watched as a giant crevice opened up beneath us.
I began looking down at the giant hole. "Wait a minute," I muttered, "this is the way we went into that challenge!" I said proudly. "Down here!"
"That doesn't look safe," Samey pleaded with me, "we should stick to the actual entrance."
"And risk dying? We're already doing that." I began climbing down, but saw she was still hesitating. "Please. Trust me." Samey hesitated again, but this time followed me down. We climbed as fast as we could down to the bottom of the cave, hopefully before it crashed in on us and literally crushed us. It took some doing, but we eventually hit the bottom, and just in time too. Right as we got there, the crevice decided it was bored with us and slammed back together. "See? Perfectly safe."
"Do you remember which tunnel it was?" Samey asked me nervously, as I was again presented with the giant tunnel selection. The place hadn't been cleaned up from the challenge, so it was still caved in like crazy down here, but that meant it had to be one of the tunnels that got closed off.
I began clearing away rocks from the tunnel on the end. "This one!" I shouted, seeing the set of spikes that Leonard collapsed with his 'magic'. We made our way through, with all of the traps completely ruined at this point. McLean really had no effort when it came to actually getting this place cleaned up, but that was lucky for us, since we got to go through here without much danger. When we got to the entrance to the warehouse, we saw a wire that was hanging from the place we went in.
Unfortunately, it was blocked off now. Climbing the rope would be both useless and painful, since there was no clear way in. Of course he remembered that part. "Are you kidding me?" I shouted in agony, dreading the fact that I had totally sabotaged our chances of getting in. "Why would he block that part off and nothing else?"
"Maybe there's another way?" Samey asked, beginning to look around for another entrance.
"No!" I shouted at her, "that was the only way from here, and now we're stuck! Don't suggest such dumb things!"
To my surprise, Samey's response wasn't one of fright, but anger. "That wasn't a dumb suggestion!" she shouted back at me. "I appreciate you giving me immunity, but you have to look out for yourself too! That begins with dropping your ridiculous grudge."
"It's not ridiculous!" I shouted back. "You admitted it yourself, you made a mistake! Good for you, except that mistake cost me three years of pain!"
Samey shot back at me. "What do you think it's been like to be worried about you for those three years? Nothing I've said until a few hours ago had even gotten a chance to be heard, so please, listen now!" Her tone went from angry to pleading. "We're in a crisis situation here. We can't afford to let one incident dictate the rest of our lives."
She was right. When I saw that sealed off entrance, I prepared for death, and I was ready to die with hatred in my head. She admitted her mistakes. She gave me reasons, and I had none.
It wasn't wrong to want to win, but it was wrong to do it at her expense. "I'm sorry for setting up your pain," Samey continued, "but if you really want to be able to move on from that, you need to forgive, not forget."
"Fine," I said, still bitter, but more at myself now than her. "Samey, I forgive you for ruining..." her annoyed expression lead me to believe that wasn't the right word, "...making that error." She nodded at me. To be honest, it felt a bit better. "There. I did it, can we move on?"
"Not yet," Samey told me. "You've tried to get revenge on the wrong person, but you know that now." It was true. I didn't want to ruin Samey anymore. I wanted to ruin McLean, and Melissa. Ruining McLean would be easy, I just needed to win, but Melissa would be tougher. I never even bother to figure out where she was. "You need to stop constantly reminding yourself of her," Samey said, almost as she read my mind.
"How am I doing that, Samey?" I asked her.
She looked at me carefully. "The nickname. Who said it first?" Melissa said it first. She was the first to use 'Samey', and it was directed at me. That's why it contorted me so much. It was like every time I said it, I was given a hint of what happened.
"Okay," I said slowly, "S- Sa...mmy," I said slowly. I could see my sister's eyes light up up when she heard hear real name come out of my mouth. "Do you have a way out of here?" I asked more bluntly.
Samey, I mean Sammy, nodded, banging on the wall nearby. To my surprise, this actually worked, and the elevator opened up. "I figured the cave would be too unstable to keep it shut," she told me, getting in. "Anyway, this should get us in there."
"How long have you known that?" I asked, getting in after her.
Sammy laughed. "Oh, the whole time. I just thought what we did was a little bit more important." She looked at me. "Don't you agree." I nodded. It felt good to not want to inflict pain on my own family for once. Now I just needed to make sure we wouldn't have the island inflict pain on us, which meant we needed to get to that control room.
The elevator stopped at the warehouse, and we got out, where we saw a monitor with McLean waiting for us. "Well, well, well," he taunted as we stepped out into the warehouse. "Look who finally decided to join us!"
"You sealed off that entrance!" I yelled at him. "I mean, it was good you did that, but still a giant pain!"
McLean seemed confused by my words, which meant he probably didn't get footage of what just happened. That was awesome. I'm glad we made up, but I didn't need the world knowing I was all...sappy about it. "Not sure what you mean, but here's a heads-up: Sugar, being Sugar was unable to get through the security and set it off. So, now the island's crawling with killer robot animals!"
"Like it wasn't already," I muttered.
"Killer robot animals?" Sammy asked slowly.
McLean nodded. "Yeah, we had real animals, but the animal rights people were all 'blah, blah, blah', so we switched to robot animals. Some were crazy violent, though. So, we caged them down here." That made sense, except that we were now down here with all of them. "Anyway, the halls are dangerous, you'd be way safer sneaking through the gear chamber."
"I don't trust you," Sammy argued, "that doesn't seem safe at all!"
"Oh, it's way safer than that," McLean said, gesturing toward the door. As he said that, the doors opened up, and a small cat jumped out.
"I don't trust that thing," I shouted, "Sammy, let's go!"
Sammy seemed a bit caught off guard at her real name being used, but quickly started running with me. We had a bit of a head start on the cat, but I could tell that it was probably the thing shooting lasers at us from behind.
Despite its appearance, the gear chamber wasn't as dangerous as it looked. We were able to navigate it pretty well, until we hit the end. There, we were presented with two giant tubes. "Which one do you think it is?" Sammy asked.
"No time for thinking about it!" I shouted, jumping into the one on the right. I heard Sammy follow me from behind. The tube hurt, but not as much as the landing. I slammed onto the ground, with Sammy landing right next to me.
When I picked my head up, I saw Shawn and Sugar standing in front of us. "Ugh...not you guys," I muttered. "Sugar, what did you do?" I then asked, remembering what she did to the security.
"We've seen some crazy stuff too," Sugar told us. "It's a long story, but you gotta hear it!" She began talking before she was paused by the control room's voice, saying Ten minutes to self destruct. Sugar paused for a second before continuing. "I guess that's enough time. So first we-"
Sugar was stopped again by a monitor dropping from above us. Instead of McLean, only a voice monitor showed up, and Scarlett's voice came out. "Guys," she told us, "I'm so glad I found you! I'm in the control room, but you can't shut down the self-destruct from here. Chris was lying."
"That's annoying," Sugar muttered.
"But not out of character," Sammy added.
The monitor switched to a map, with a red line shooting to down the hall. "You can only shut it down here," she said, with a red 'x' appearing where she wanted us to go.
"That's just down the hall," Shawn said, getting ready to run toward it. Something about it was off though. Sammy and I just came from that direction. The tubes sort of jumbled our sense of direction, but I knew what the warehouse looked like, and that was it.
I stopped everyone from moving. "Hold on a second," I shouted, "that's the warehouse, and Chris just sent us out of there! He would have said something to us!"
Scarlett's voice monitor didn't respond for a few seconds. "Fine," she said angrily, her voice instantly turning more hostile. "It doesn't matter, I'll send them to you!" I didn't know what that meant but it was not good.
What I saw next was something I wished I could forget. An army of red-eyed McLean's began marching down toward us, all of them screaming...something. It was hard to figure out. But Scarlett had no intention of keeping us safe. She had gone rogue, and there was no way for us to stop it. Right?
Well, that didn't matter, there was no way we'd kill all these robots in ten minutes. Maybe the explosion would kill us faster.
Sugar stepped forward in front of us. "I know what y'all are thinking," she told us, pounding her first into her other hand, "but we're gonna fight our way out of this, just the four of us." That then was interrupted by a scream, and Max flying at us, landing a few feet in front of me. "Alright, just the five of us." It was a bad speech, but I guess there wasn't any reason not to.
McLean, I was about to use your likeness to rid the stress of the past three years.
