TDI: Torture Cruise

Chapter Three: Totally Dramatic Complications

"This is all your fault!" Lindsay screamed at her hated nemesis. "Some sort of payback from an enemy spy! Or, or maybe you did it yourself! You always hated Owen for winning the first TDI!"

"Plus, Owen and Izzy got that Discovery Channel TV special, and everyone knows how much you wanted your own TV show!" Bridgette offered her own theory. "Not to mention you did threaten to kill Owen, in front of everybody!"

"She's got you there, toots!" Duncan said as he brandished his switchblade.

"You're all certifiable, you know that?" Heather flatly rejected the baseless claims. "First of all, I don't have any 'enemy spies'! Second of all, I didn't kill anybody!"

"Mm-hmm! And you just happened to be 'searching the ship' when Noah was killed, is that it?" LeShawna accused the Asian-Canadian.

"Oh, like any of you couldn't have faked passing out, using noseplugs to block the gas, then killed Noah, came back and acted like you just woke up!" Heather speculated.

"Maybe we could have. But no one knows more about that type of thing than you, spygirl!" LeShawna retorted.

"If I killed those two, why would I stay here with you helpless victims? Why wouldn't I take off in a speedboat or something?" Heather shot back.

"You tell me, rich girl!"

"Anytime, home girl!"

Heather got in the black girl's face. They would surely have come to blows, but...

Just then, DJ and Harold separated the two frequently combative females.

"Guys, come on!" Gwen begged. "We have to stay together and work this out! Yelling at each other won't solve anything! Besides, Heather wanted to be on the new TDC as much as, if not more than, any of you! It's the only way she has to become more famous! So she wouldn't have ruined the show! This has to be the work of some outside killer. Also, Heather has some useful skills. So if we stop fighting, we can probably get out of this thing in one piece!"

The other TDC teens agreed with Gwen's logic.

Except one.

"Hmph!" Lindsay groused to herself. "She's only saying that because Heather's her lesbo girlfriend!"

Before leaving Noah's office, Harold glanced at the dead teen.

Noah's body was slumped back in his chair. His head lolled backwards. Blood dripped from his chest.

But his right arm.

His right arm pointed downwards.

Right at a set of keys lying on the floor.

Then the geeky boy filed out of the office and joined the others looking for a way off the cursed ship and back to civilization.

At the lifeboats, Cody observed "Well, at least the rescue rafts are okay, in case we have to get off this crazy ship!"

"That's great, Cody!" Beth smiled, relieved that at least something was going right! Then the line holding the lifeboat to the cruise ship, the same line Beth was hanging on...

...Snapped!

"Ahhh! Codyyyy!" Beth screamed as the thick rope yanked the unsuspecting girl over the ship's edge and down to the sea!

Followed immediately by the plummeting raft, which landed right on top of Beth, killing her instantly!

"Beth!!!" Cody impotently bellowed.

Before anyone could react, though, the ship's deck buckled and split in two, sending the group of terrorized teens into the bowels of the cruise ship of horror!

"Ouch!"

"Ooof!"

"Unh!"

The TDC kids uttered as they crash-landed on the dimly-lit floor below deck.

"What the hell just happened?!?" Trent yelled as he rubbed his tender noggin and examined himself for any broken bones, greatly relieved when he didn't find any.

"Remember the tour? Noah said the ship was full of secret compartments and traps built for the show. We must have fallen through one!" Harold conjectured.

Looking around at the thick wood and masonry walls, with no exit in sight, an exasperated Eva roared "Wonderful! Now how do we get out of here?!"

"Our problem's worse than that!" the ever-observant DJ noted. As he glanced around the room they were stuck in, he counted only Duncan, Eva, Harold, LeShawna, Cody, Sadie, Trent , Zeke and himself as occupants. "Where'd everybody else go?"

"Oh my God! Katie!!!" Sadie cried. "Where are you??"

Not that far away as the crow flies, but impossible to reach in their current situation, the other surviving cruisers dusted themselves off and picked themselves up.

"Does anyone know where we are?" Gwen asked.

"In the ship…Duh!" Courtney mocked the Goth teen's take charge attitude. Because everyone knew, or should have known, Courtney was the one who should be in charge! She was once a C.I.T., for crying out loud!

"Never mind!" Gwen sighed. "Let's do a headcount."

But the count was off by nine!

"We're missing at least half our group!" Gwen announced. "Quick, everyone fan out, see if you can find anyone in this mess of a deck!"

"Oh, I'd say everyone's here!" the electronically modified voice boomed out of hidden speakers. "Let's play a game."

Gwen, Heather, Lindsay, Tyler, Bridgette, Geoff, Courtney, Justin and Katie stared in horror as the nearby wall slowly rolled up, revealing a madman's playground of torture devices.

Next:

The games begin, and the first of the deep, dark secrets of the cast are revealed!