Upon the destruction of his plane, Bones immediately started cursing in Spanish, which was one of the primary benefits of knowing a second language in movies.

“There are only sixty Mallards operational in all the world!” he screamed. “How am I going to get another?”

“Focus,” Antoine said. “Where do we go from here?”

We were standing out in the open. If gunmen were approaching us, we would be sitting ducks, or mallards, rather.

“There is a path behind the waterfall. This way,” Bones said as he began leading us down toward the river at the place where it spilled over the edge of the cliff.

When we got to the very edge, dangerously close to being swept away by the torrent, he pointed to a small ledge well hidden behind the falling water.

“I think it used to be a staircase,” he said, “but now it’s a slick water slide. Walk on your toes and try not to fall.”

“But how do we get down there?” Roxy asked as she stared at the gap between where we were and the rocky ledge below. The ledge was well covered by the waterfall, which meant jumping would be difficult. It was a tricky angle. If we touched the waterfall, it would push us away from the cliff in a free fall.

The only reason there would be room at all to get down there was that the speed of the river propelled water outward just enough that a person could possibly climb down beneath the arc of the waterfall.

“You do it like this,” Anna said as she lowered herself down the side of the cliff right next to where the waterfall shot out and climbed over to the ledge. There was plenty of room there, and the waterfall was just big enough and thick enough that no one would be able to see us from down below.

“Quickly now,” Bones said.

I was next, followed by each member of our oversized party one at a time. Roxy managed to climb down with little trouble, although she didn’t look happy about it.

Even with the size of the ledge carved into the cliff, it was beginning to be a tight squeeze as everyone found their way down. Bones’s characterization of the structure as being a water slide was terrifyingly accurate. One slip and you, and everyone in your way, would slide down.

The slide would zigzag back and forth down the mountain until you slipped into the pool below. It really did look like an old stairway cut into the rock that had been eroded, but that meant that these ruins were incredibly old, beyond anything I remembered seeing.

“Alright,” Camden said. “I have a plan.”

It was nice he did, because I was having difficulty cutting through all the obvious dead ends to decide which dead end was the best.

“My men and I, we’ll make our way down into the pool below, and then we’ll sneak over toward where they have all those four-by-fours parked.”

He nodded his head to where there had been some Jeep-like vehicles.

“We’ll make some noise, make a real distraction,” he added, “Try to attract some of these mercenaries our way, maybe even start them on a chase. The vegetation is thick here. There’s not a lot of visibility from the ground, so if I could get them off in that direction, the rest of you should be able to go down and release the prisoners and then make it out to that big cargo helicopter.”

I had to whip out my binoculars to see what he was talking about. Somehow, I had not noticed it despite its size, but in my defense, it was camouflage-colored. The chopper was similar to a Chinook, capable of deploying dozens of soldiers or, in this case, rescuing dozens of prisoners.

I met Camden’s eye and nodded. We both knew it wasn’t going to work, but it was a good plan from our characters’ perspective. It was too early and too easy, but it would get us to the next point in the plot, and that was what mattered.

“Can you fly that thing?” Camden asked Bones.

“I can fly anything,” Bones said, “but I will need some time to get things ready. Those birds are not so simple as my Mallard.”

“We’ll try to buy you time,” Camden said.

“I’ll go with you,” Anna said to Camden. “I’ve got a little experience with jungle chases.”

They both knew their role. They were the lowest plot armor characters in the party, not counting the NPCs, who were not long for this world anyway. They had the best chance at drawing a distraction.

I had to assume that Isaac, who was actually the lowest-level player, wasn’t going to counteract anything, given that he was a prisoner already. It was our best bet.

I didn’t yet know specifically how this would fail, but it would split us up so that we could start separate subplots leading into the finale and hopefully create some action scenes. We still hadn’t reached the midpoint twist, but we would very soon, and hopefully, we would learn more about these mercenaries and their actual goals with the Cradle.

“Did you recognize any of those prisoners?” Roxy asked Antoine. “Were they the people who have gone missing?”

“Some of them,” he said. “Not all.”

It was hard to see anything from behind the waterfall unless it was to the far right or left. While I had seen missing posters for all the people Antoine was suspected of helping kidnap, or whatever theory Detective Blackwood was operating under, I had not actively recognized any of them at the time. I was more concerned with looking at Isaac and Kelsey and trying to find Ramona.

So that was how it would break down. Camden, Anna, and the three soldiers we picked up from Camden’s base of operation would go on a car chase through the jungle. Bones Ibarra would try to get their helicopter operational. Roxy and her bodyguard would stay under the waterfall, leaving Antoine and me to go release the prisoners and take out any mercenaries that were left behind from Anna and Camden’s distraction.

This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

Of course, my cameraman and assistant would follow behind me, silently filming everything we did until they inevitably got killed, I had to assume.

We got no Off-Screen time.

“Alright, everybody, good luck,” I said.

Everyone else shared similar sentiments, and then Anna, Camden, and his three employees took their guns and started sliding down the stone water slide as slowly as they could. We could watch their entire progress simply by looking over the edge.

The waterfall was so loud that it made sneaking relatively easy, and when they made it down to the pool below, they simply stayed out of sight as they zigzagged through the growth toward the collection of off-road vehicles.

All that was left for us to do was wait, and as we waited, I observed our destination as best I could from behind the waterfall.

The demeanor of the people in the cages had changed. They weren’t calm anymore. They were anxious, banging on the bars, trying to see what was going on. They must have heard the plane explode.

Many of the mercenaries had disappeared at the same time, probably making their way up to the top of the cliff if they weren’t there already, but still, there were at least eighteen guards remaining.

It took no time at all for Camden’s group to get two of the Jeeps up and running. Their engines echoed throughout the valley, and suddenly the eighteen gunmen below all began migrating in that direction, some quickly, some slowly, as the distraction started picking up steam.

“No time like the present,” Bones said as he made his way down the waterslide, going much faster than Camden and Anna had. He slinked off in the opposite direction toward the helicopter.

“We’ll try to find a way to signal to you when it’s safe,” I said to Roxy, “but you need to come when we signal, regardless of whether it’s safe. You understand?”

“I thought we were here to find out what happened to my husband,” she said. “I didn’t realize we’d be escaping as soon as we showed up.”

“We came here for reconnaissance,” I said, “and I think we’ve done that. Now that we know what we’re up against, I say we come back with some hired guns of our own, and then we can get to the bottom of things.”

I was doing my best to patch up the small flaw in Camden’s plan, in that he had sent us directly toward escape despite the fact that our entire reason for being there was to investigate.

Roxy pursed her lips but didn’t say anything.

“Shall we?” I said to Antoine, gesturing toward the far end of the slippery slide.

“We shall,” he said as he moved that direction and began sliding down the slick, wet stone toward the bottom. I followed, and my people followed me.

The prisoners were straight out from the pool, so all we had to do was sneak forward and run a couple of hundred yards to get to them.

From down on the ground, it was certainly harder to see anything. While it was true that there were no buildings anywhere, there was a pattern to how the plants grew. It almost looked like a sort of hedge maze, but instead of hedges, there were trees, weeds, and vines that grew in columns and walls, almost as if the growth somehow mimicked the buildings and streets that used to be beneath them. Perhaps there was still stone underground that altered their growing patterns, creating this maze.

It didn’t have to make sense. Carousel loved mazes.

Lucky for us, we had radios. They were very big radios because of the time period, but they would get the job done.

“Are we clear?” I asked.

I held the radio to my ear and turned the volume knob down low.

“The closest gunman is a hundred yards to the east,” Roxy replied. I was glad she was playing along rather than acting defiant.

“All right, let’s go,” I said to Antoine, and we turned the corner to the clearing where the cages were and quickly made our way toward the prisoners.

“Mr. Stone, I’ve never been so glad to see you,” a man with mutton chops said from within one of the cages when he caught sight of us.

Lots of the prisoners had lines like that, and they took turns belting them out.

We moved as quickly as we could.

“Hush,” Antoine said as we approached. “Are you trying to get us caught?”

“Oh, pardon me,” the man with mutton chops said, laughing. “I’m overcome with excitement, that’s all.”

Antoine shushed him again.

I went immediately to the cage with Isaac and Kelsey.

I had to assume they knew they were in a storyline now, even if they didn’t before, so they would know to play their characters, but would they know that their characters didn’t know me?

“Oh, thank God,” Kelsey said. “I thought we were goners for sure.” She was wearing a red leather jacket, one of several leather jackets she had in her rotation.

Isaac was still wearing a tie-dye T-shirt and cargo pants.

“Quick, let us out,” he said. “I can’t stand to be in there one more minute.”

I was a Film Buff. I knew better than to think you could just let a prisoner free in a circumstance like this and expect no consequences. Either we would start getting shot at soon, or, given that this was cosmic horror, we would regret unlocking these people for completely different reasons. But I still had to do it. I still had to understand what was going on in the storyline, and I hoped I would learn what it was upon releasing our friends.

They looked like normal players on the red wallpaper, but then again, so had Bobby, and he had disappeared.

“Was Ramona Mercer here?” I asked. “She was taken shortly after you. She should be here.”

“Oh, you mean the freak?” Isaac asked. “Yeah, she was here. She broke out of her cage somehow and ran off when the guards weren’t looking.”

I reached for the latch that would release the door, but before I opened it, I looked Isaac in the eye and then Kelsey.

“Why didn’t she let you guys out?” I asked.

And as soon as I did, for a moment, a fraction of a second, Isaac’s expression changed to something that looked like disgust or anger, but that wasn’t the most significant change. For that moment, he appeared as an enemy on the red wallpaper.

I backed away from the cage.

Beside me, Antoine had no such hesitation and was about to open up the one containing the mutton-chop man.

“No, wait,” I said.

He turned to look at me, but his hand was already on the latch, and it was already pulled.

But the thing was, we realized as he opened it, that the latch didn’t actually attach to anything. There was no loop for the pin to slide into.

He stared at it in disbelief as realization dawned on his face. He looked back at me, and we both knew.

Suddenly, all the prisoners began pressing against the doors to their cages, and all of the doors opened with a tiny click.

“You came for us, Antoine,” one of them said. “We’ve been waiting for you for so long.”

As they poured out of their cages, they began to surround us.

Isaac and Kelsey, as well as all the other prisoners, now read as enemies on the red wallpaper. They weren’t described as anything other than their name, and they seemed to have the same tropes as the other enemies we had dealt with. I wasn’t able to see any of them but the Unseen Hand.

But that wasn’t what concerned me the most. It made sense that Isaac and Kelsey could be infected by whatever eldritch horror pervaded this storyline, but if that was the case, their Infected status would light up; otherwise, they would look like players. They might get an extra enemy trope or something, but they would still look like players on the red wallpaper.

But these two people looked like enemies, and while they had all of Isaac and Kelsey’s tropes and archetypes, their infected statuses weren’t lit at all.

It could be the effect of a trope, sure. Or it could mean something else altogether. These people were not simply overcome by a mind-altering force. They weren’t Isaac or Kelsey at all.

The former prisoners began to scream for the mercenaries.

Antoine and I turned to run. My cameraman joined us, but unfortunately, my assistant was just too slow, not having NPC cameraman tropes to protect her.

The last I heard was her screaming as we made our way into the jungle brush around us.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep