They were awoken the next morning to a shrill scream coming from the girls' bathroom. Duncan clamped his hands over his ears, "What now?!"

Despite the early hour, Noah's wit was on full-blast. He pulled the sleep mask up off his eyes. "I'd think someone like you would be used to high-pitched noises like police sirens."

"Who is that?" Cody sat up in alarm. He slid out of bed and hurried out the door right behind Trent and DJ.

Many of the girls were huddled around outside the facilities. "What's going on? Is everyone okay?" the guitar-enthusiastic asked.

"Just stay out!" came a distraught voice from inside the restroom. "No one can see me like this!"

"She… she can't find any of her make-up supplies," Gwen explained to the confused boys. Cody and Tyler scratched their heads.

"I don't see what the big deal is. It's not like make-up is a necessity," Bridgette shrugged her shoulders, but it was clear the rest of the girls did not share her viewpoint from the way they all looked at her askance the moment the words left her mouth.

"No, I get it," DJ nodded. "We may be out camping, but we're on TV. And it makes sense to always want to look your best. It's why I got a mani/pedi before I came." Lashawna and Owen stooped in to admire his emaculate cuticles with a collective 'oooh'.

Bridgette half-rolled her eyes. "I'm gonna go talk to her."

A few minutes later, the bathroom door opened. Bridgette stepped out, holding onto Sadie's elbow; the girl had her face covered with both hands, lightly sobbing. "It's alright," the surfer chick reassured. "You look fine. Just… think of today as your 'au naturale' look. If I can pull it off, then you definitely can!" Sadie gave one last sniffle, but then she removed her hands. Geoff gave a frightened shriek and instantly fainted. Owen's eyes bugged out. The poor girl's face was blotchy and swollen around the tear ducts, eyes bloodshot from a full night of crying. Many of the other male campers averted their gaze in a hurry.

Noah gave a polite little cough into his hand. "That girl should not go 'au naturale'," he muttered to Cody.

"Do you have something to share?" Courtney put her hands on her hips, eyes narrowing at him, as she'd obviously overheard him.

"I didn't say a thing," Noah backed down with his hands up. He hadn't meant it as a snub at the girl's attractiveness, but save for Cody and Gwen, no one was aware he was the campsite's resident gay.

"Oh! Why gooooood morning, campers!" Chris arrived on-scene. "I see you're all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, heh heh heh…" He looked directly at Sadie. "Say, who invited the Creature from the Black Lagoon?" He put a finger up to his earpiece as though speaking into it, "I thought there were some licensing agreements that were keeping us from that." Sadie whimpered and slapped her hands back over her face. "I see you've also discovered today's challenge!" McLean went on.

Cody glanced left and right. "Uh…"

"And just what would that be?" Heather queried hotly, echoing everyone's thoughts.

Chris' eyes narrowed down, a scheming smile widening across his features. "Today's the day you all face your greatest fears. I like to call it… Phobia Factor!"

"Phobia Factor…?" Bridgette sounded dubious.

"That's right," McLean nodded, a viciousness gleaming in his small black eyes. "For you that means taking a hike in the woods. A nice, looong hike. Twelve hours, to be precise." The last condition fell from his mouth with particular enjoyment, "All alone."

The surfer chick swallowed roughly. Her blue eyes darted from side to side. "B-but… but how did you know?"

~~kkkssshhhttt…!~~

"The campfire." Gwen slapped her forehead. "He left but he left the cameras on. Chris knows all of our fears."

~~kkkssshhhttt…!~~

"Nevermind how I knew," McLean continued brutally. "Off you go!" Bridgette set her jaw and began walking.

~~kkkssshhhttt…!~~

Geoff shook his head with incredulty and admiration. "I tell you. That girl… so brave." He thudded his bare chest twice in show of support.

~~kkkssshhhttt…!~~

"Now let's see… who's next…" Chris spoke thoughtfully, but his eyes had already zoomed in on Geoff. He withdrew a baseball bat from behind his back and began towards him, brandishing it. All of the campers gave a gasp as they recalled the fear the blond dude had revealed to them. Geoff began to scramble backwards, screaming and yelling, only to trip over the object that Chef Hachet had wheeled in from off-screen. His ass landed in a wheelchair, and swiftly the large black co-host strapped him into it, duct taping his legs such that they would be immobile. He struggled anxiously against his bonds, but the rest of the campers breathed a sigh of intense relief.

"What?" Chris asked as he tossed the baseball bat away, "Did you really think we'd be so cruel as to actually break his legs? This isn't that kind of show." He snickered silently to the camera, "Yet anyway."

"Wait. What are we getting for doing all this?" Heather interrupted then, and the others agreed with her.

"I suppose it's worth it to explain," Chris indulged her. "All of you will be expected to complete your own personal challenges. Those who succeed earn a point for their team. The team with the most points earns invincibility. The team with the least will be sending someone home. If I had to make a guess, someone who failed to complete their own challenge. So, consider that motivation." His grin couldn't be wider. Geoff already looked extremely uncomfortable about his forced immobilization. "Now Noah," Chris selected another Gopher, "You'll be expected to remain illiterate, for all intents and purposes, for the next twenty-four hours. We catch you reading a single word, off anything, even a t-shirt, and you'll lose your challenge."

The dark-haired teen stiffened. But Chris quickly continued on. "Duncan, Courtney, if you'll follow me, you've both got some hugging to do." Both of their eyebrows lifted, somewhat intrigued. "I'll have you know, shipping in an American Alligator overnight was not cheap, but Chef found the hornet's nest growing out behind the bathroom confessional…" The punk and junior C.I.T. flinched and moved to follow. "Be back in a tic!" McLean sing-songed; the other campers eyed one another nervously, knowing it was only a matter of time before their challenges were revealed to them.

Noah wasn't moving a muscle, except for a slight twitch growing in intensity under his right eye. Under normal circumstances, he could go without reading anything for probably several hours at a time, as long as he didn't think too hard about it. Like he had on their last challenge. But knowing that he couldn't, that he was going to barred from doing so until this time tomorrow… already it was making him crave just a single paragraph of his latest novel. His eyes scanned left and right over the pine needles under foot, as if desperate they'd spell something out for him to read.

"Noah, you okay?" His boyfriend's voice brought him out of his thoughts. The boy slipped his hand into his.

He didn't care to admit it to the rest of him team, so he spoke back in a whisper. "This isn't going to be easy."

"Don't worry," Cody assured him. "I'll keep you distracted. All day, I promise. It'll be over before you know it." His gap-toothed grin actually made Noah feel more confident, up until–

Off in the distance, Courtney gave a blood-curdling scream.

—

A bead of sweat rolled out of his hairline and paused on his temple. Cody felt it tickle there on his skin, but he barely dared look away from the device in front of him, let alone move to wipe the sweat away. The green digital display steadily incremented downward with each passing second, a constant pressure reminding him he had limited time to get this right.

"O-o… okay," he called out to his boyfriend sitting some distance away. "I've just about got the outer casing removed." Chris had been explicit that Cody was to receive no assistance disarming the bomb with the tools provided to him, however, he had failed to specify that he not get instructions on how to do so from someone else (when Noah had stepped in to ask, Chris had checked the guidelines only to frustratedly slap the book shut and permit it, and the host had stalked off, muttering to himself about how that loophole was going to be fixed in "season 2"). Cody carefully turned the remaining screw until it came out, then peeled off the casing that housed the bomb. Instantly, his eyes bulged. "Oh… oh God– N-Noah!" he got out in alarm. Inside was a tangle of colored wires and circuitry. He'd dabbled with constructing his own PC at home for gaming, but by comparision, this was far more complicated and intricate.

"Relax," Noah said. "Describe it to me. What do you see?" Honestly, guiding his boyfriend through disarming a bomb was sort of calming; it kept his mind off his own challenge.

Cody swallowed a lump in his throat that was too big to swallow. "It's… well… I… I see three different colored wires. No… no, wait, it's four," he hastily corrected, spying another strand that ran mostly underneath the rest. "Green, red, blue, and black."

Noah hummed. "Alright, that's an important distinction."

"It is?" Cody asked, feeling all the more worried for the information. How many different kinds of bombs were there anyway?

~~kkkssshhhttt…!~~

"Not gonna lie, I am scared shitless," Cody said, a seriousness in his voice that made it clear he wasn't punning around, despite his surroundings in the bathroom stall. "It's not that I don't trust Noah– I do. If anyone on this island knows how to actually disarm a bomb, it's gonna be him cuz he's probably read like ten books on the subject–" he managed only the smallest, most nervous of chuckles; he thumbed back– "but at least he's out of the blast radius."

~~kkkssshhhttt…!~~

"You're sure there's not five?" Noah asked. "No white wire?"

Cody bit his lip and moved his head to study the device from several angles. "I– I don't see one."

"Hm. No Neutral to balance the current," Noah said more to himself than the other boy. "The red and the blue, where do they originate from and where do they lead to?" Noah continued aloof.

"Um…" Cody tried to slow the pulse of his heart as he tried to visually check, rather than go poking around in the inner workings. "The red one goes from… I– I think this is the power source?" Oh God, what if he was wrong, what if it wasn't the power source? It wasn't like it had AA batteries. "To the timer."

"Alright, leave that one alone," Noah murmured, closing his eyes to start diagramming Cody's words into a picture in his head. "That one is just powering the display. If you cut it, the bomb will still be active, you just won't know how much longer you have left."

Cody nodded furiously. That made sense. Nice to know it wasn't dangerous. "Okay. Well, the green one looks like it goes from the timer to this little… rod-shaped… thing?"

"Really?" Noah's interest sounded piqued.

The blue-eyed body felt his heart clench at that. "What do you mean, 'really?'" he got out.

"Oh no, it's nothing," Noah waved dismissively. "I wouldn't have expected that one to be green. But Chris probably got some half-wit intern who didn't know what they were doing to whip this bomb up. Don't cut it," he added and Cody felt his eye twitch, "If it stops receiving input from the timer it will explode instantly instead."

"I can't do this," Cody exhaled, dropping his pliers into the sand, ready to stand and make a run for it.

"Hey hey hey," Noah encouraged from afar, "You're fine, skamp; how much time is left?"

His body calmed considerably at the pet name. "Eight minutes. A-a-and thirty two seconds."

"I promise we'll be done in five," Noah said. "The rod you mentioned, that should be the detonator, does it have any other wires coming out of it?"

Cody nodded, back on task. "Yeah, both the blue and the black."

"And they go to?"

He traced them back, "The power source. They both go the same place. Is that normal?"

Noah nodded. "It's an electrically-initiated detonator. Pretty common. If it had a mechanical or chemically initiated detonator, this might've been more difficult."

~~kkkssshhhttt…!~~

"Not that I'm not interested in learning all there is to know about bomb designs from my over-knowledgeable boyfriend, but could he just get to the part where I don't get blown up?!" Cody fumed, his blue eyes bulging with panic.

~~kkkssshhhttt…!~~

The dark-haired teen hummed thoughtfully. "Green is typically the grounding color; the black one is the one that will supply the stimulus for explosion."

"So… I want to cut it? The black one?" Cody clarified, pliers trembling in his hands.

"Normally I'd say yes," Noah said, "but since whoever built this used green for that other wire… oh nevermind, I'm sure it's the black one, anyone with any basic circuitry training can't have gotten that wrong."

"NOAH!" Cody shouted.

~~kkkssshhhttt…!~~

"On second thought, I probably shouldn't have said that last part out loud." Noah gave a sheepish cough into his hand. "But seriously," his face metamorphized into a criticism of the electrical engineering work, "White is neutral in Canada and the United States and everywhere else it's blue. Or black. But the point is, the only place blue is 'hot' is in Australia because everything in Australia is upside-down. Mixing the two up would just be idiotic, even for this show."

~~kkkssshhhttt…!~~

"Cut the black one."

"You're sure?"

"I'm sure."

"Because if it's not the right one–"

"It's the right one," Noah insisted.

Cody hissed air through the gap in his teeth. Carefully he slipped the cutters over the black wire, trying to steady his right hand with his left to keep it from shaking. This was insane. This whole show was insane. How was it okay for this to be his challenge? All Noah had to do was not read. This was life and death. Cody squeezed his eyes shut. It was okay, it was fine, all he had to do was make one little motion and it would all be over and it would be fine–

"Have you cut it yet?" Noah inquired, unable to see due to his distance.

"I'm getting to it!" Cody yelped back.

"Well you don't have all day–" Noah began.

"I'M GETTING TO IT!" Cody repeated. He glanced one last time at the display. More than four minutes left. That felt like eternity honestly, with the way his heart was hammering in his chest. He took another steadying breath, shut his eyes, and squeezed his hand around the wire cutters.

The black wire nipped neatly in half.

And nothing happened.

"Oh thank God…" Cody breathed out, dropping the tool and flopping into the sand onto his back. "I did it. We did it."

Noah walked over. "Great job, jellybean. That's a point for the Gophers."

Cody's eyes blinked open into an immediate grin. "Soon to be two points," he said, rising up to wrap his arms around Noah in an appreciative embrace.

~~kkkssshhhttt…!~~

"Just when I'd almost forgotten my challenge…" Noah flinched. His eyes darted over to the side of the confessional, spying some graffiti that had been written there by some delinquent camper. Quickly he ripped his eyes away and threw up a hand against the side of his face to act as a blinder.

~~kkkssshhhttt…!~~

The warmth of the other teen and his survival of a near-death experience was making Cody a little light-headed. "Y'know…" he drew out in a what approximated a sultry tone, "Everyone else is pretty tied up in their own challenges right now. The cabin should be empty."

Noah felt his eyebrow lift of its own volition. "Yeah."

Cody's eyebrows waggled in unison. "It's my turn to help you with your challenge; let's go take your mind off it."

A little smirk pulled at Noah's mouth. "Alright."