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Chapter 4: Bailey and the Clover

With the swarm gone in another direction, they were relatively safe on the streets. Nothing jumped out at them, at least; it seemed that the transformed tended to stick together rather than leave different people behind to deal with stragglers or anyone else. Or maybe they were all just fooled into thinking that the five of them were somewhere further ahead, just out of sight.

David didn't know, and he was pretty sure that nobody else in the group did either. But whatever the reason, he was thankful for the chance to take it easy on the way to the first clover mark; fleeing the transformed had been exhausting, no matter how short the run itself had been.

Without the transformed chasing them, though, it was remarkably quiet. Adam had mentioned that the transformed were out of range of the scanner, so it made sense that it wasn't very loud anymore. But David still thought of the place as a theme park, still associated noise, screaming, machinery sounds with it, and without all of that, the silence seemed all the more ominous.

He dragged a hand across his forehead as he walked along, trailing at the edge of the group. The air was getting hot, he realized, and looked up at the metal dome that surrounded them. Either it wasn't ventilated very well, or the park owner had a reason to keep all the heat that the metal was soaking up inside of the park. What that reason was, or could be, he had no idea, but he knew that it was making things a little less than comfortable for him, and he doubted that the others were enjoying it much either.

They rounded a corner, moving more to the northwest than they had before, and David grunted a bit to himself as he picked up his pace a little bit. "Adam, any idea how much further we have to go?" he called up the line.

"What, getting tired already?" he asked.

"I swim, I don't run, and I don't have the new legs you got that seem to be able to run forever," David pointed out. "Seriously, how much longer?"

"Eh...couple thousand feet, from what I see; should get there in ten minutes or so at this rate."

"Great..." David muttered under his breath. His legs were not feeling the best as it was, and much more walking would definitely make them unhappy. "Better be some benches or something when we get there."

"Do you really want to risk sitting on anything in the park?" Ashley asked, looking back at him pointedly. She held up a wing. "Rule one, remember?"

"...Right." Rule one was going to be a pain to remember, considering that the phrase 'property of the park' could extend to rides, food stuffs, and even the benches that might be around the place. Just sitting down on anything other than the ground could technically be putting them in danger of being transformed.

Heck, the ground itself could possibly be involved in that rule, considering how cuckoo the park owner - Rannoi, as Cari had called him - was. David didn't think that was the case, considering that they'd been walking for a while and there hadn't been any further transformation, but he just didn't know for sure. It could be that Rannoi was just waiting to make them transform, or it could be that they were not going to be bothered from walking around.

Too much that they didn't know, just too much.

The longer that they walked, the more drenched that David felt. With the heat from outside getting soaked into the metal and held inside of the dome, it was only going to get hotter before it got colder, and his shirt was getting wet with sweat. So were parts of his pants, for that matter, and he could tell that he would be walking in damp socks before much longer.

The rest of the group wasn't faring much better, from what he saw. Cari seemed to be the worst affected of all of them, leaning on Jeremiah at the front of the group and panting softly from the heat, her pants and blouse clinging to her from how damp she'd become, and even Ashley, who was better with the heat, was still wiping her forehead down now and then, brushing away some of the worst of the gathering sweat. Everyone else fell somewhere between those two extremes, but everyone was touched by it somehow.

Trudging along, David started looking down at his shoes, contemplating the future if they were caught by the transformed or by Rannoi again. Other than Bailey, all the transformations he'd seen so far had started at the feet. His shoes were pretty sturdy, but his mind started to fill with images of what would happen to him if he was caught in the transformation magic here. Would he change enough to split through his clothes? Would he shrink out of them? Stay the same size, just in a different kind of body? There were so many possibilities, so very many, and his imagination was determined to give him mental images of every one of them it could come up with.

He was going through the alphabet and had reached 'elephant', imagining great gray toes splitting open the front of his shoes when he walked right into Adam, stumbling backwards after rebounding off of him with a grunt. Catching himself on one of the building walls before he could fall over, he looked up to see what the problem was.

Surprisingly, they'd reached the end of the thin street that they'd been traveling through. Directly ahead of them was a large open area, filled with different rides. A spinning ride, with three clusters of pods that David knew from experience would spin around as the arms connected to them spun the clusters around; a boat ride, where a person would go through a tunnel with a theme inside, and probably come out the other end utterly soaked in water; even one of those hang-glider rides, where a person was strapped in, laying on their stomach, and would follow the ride as it was lifted to a diagonal angle, soaring into the air before plummeting back to earth in a great circle.

But the one that really caught his eye was the narrow, tall, yellow tower that loomed over everything else in the area. Now that they were closer, he could make out the name 'Scream Tower' on the side of it, but that wasn't what had his attention.

There had been a tower like that on the horizon when he'd watched Bailey go flying away in his stone bubble, and it had been pretty close to where the debris had gone up when it had hit ground. "Bailey has to be pretty close by," David said, his face breaking out in a grin at the thought of seeing his friend again.

"If he's still alive," Adam pointed out. "I saw him go flying; living through that landing would take a fucking miracle."

"I don't think that Rannoi would have killed him." Cari looked back at them, still leaning on Jeremiah. "He talked about the rules, remember?"

"He also said that he could add to them any damn time he wanted," Adam said.

"Add to, not change. And I don't think that he read all the rules to us, because he mentioned something about not just changing us all right away," she pointed out. "I don't think he can kill us. Not without doing it through transformation at any rate, and we have to make the mistakes to be transformed before he'll do something like that." She shook her head. "No...he wouldn't have killed Bailey, but I think he'll be transformed at least somewhat by the time that we find him."

Much as he hated the thought, David had to admit that it was likely. After all, there had already been some transformation for Bailey, losing his arms and getting fur; who knew what might have happened inside of the ball, or - if Bailey had gotten out of it - outside of it?

"Well, Adam, does your scanner detect any of those things out there?" Jeremiah asked, light shining off of his glasses as he looked from one ride to another.

"Nothing right now...just two big signatures," Adam said. "I think one is that clover thing that Mr. Crazy mentioned, but I can't figure out what the other one is."

"Think it's...him?" Ashley asked.

"Crazy guy? Don't think so; when he was around, he was ridiculously big on the scanner. Like, wiped out the whole damn screen, almost. Nah, this is something else." Adam shook his head, poking a few buttons on the edges of the scanner screen. "What, that's the question."

David stepped around Adam, leaning against the other side of their little street, taking a closer look at the scenery. Of course, it was difficult to see much of anything, considering the darkness of the dome and the only light coming from the Golden Tower, and that only in pulses, but he managed to make out a couple things. Like the ground was paved instead of covered in cobblestones, and that the rides had a few shreds of clothing around them; apparently they'd been in use when the transformation had gone over the park.

Sweeping his eyes across the open area, he suddenly froze as he saw something different, something that really didn't belong. A chunk of broken stone, right next to a long furrow in the ground, as if something big, heavy, and fast had collided with it and slid along. Something like a cobblestone ball catapulted across the park.

He stepped out of the side street, dodging both Adam and Jeremiah as they tried to grab him. "I think that's where Bailey is," David said, pointing to the depression in the ground. "Come on, if we hurry we can get him before anything else finds out we're here, grab the clover, and get out."

Shaking his head, Jeremiah looked back, then nodded. "Alright, but let's be quick; those things could be here any minute. Adam, keep an eye on the scanner. Cari, can you walk?"

"Yes...yes, I think I can walk on my own now," she whispered. "As long as we don't have to run again, I think I can walk."

Taking the lead, David jogged ahead of the rest of the group, reaching the trail. It was deep in the ground, whatever had caused it sinking further down the further ahead it had slid. Walking in the trail so that he didn't lose it in the dark, he kept on.

It didn't take too long to find the end of it, as even something thrown that hard would eventually have been stopped by friction. However, it was shocking just how deep it had pushed through the pavement, sinking almost four feet down from ground level before finally coming to a stop. The way that it wiggled back and forth, cracked slightly and with a hole at the top, it almost looked like an egg.

Rushing to the side of the stone ball, David rapped his fist against the side, calling into the hole. "Bailey? Bailey, are you in there?"

"David? Is that you?"

A smile so big that it hurt covered David's face, and he sighed in relief. "Oh thank God, you're alright," David whispered. "Anything broken in there, hurt?"

"Nothing broken, but I think that crazy guy changed his mind about what to do to me."

"What do you mean?"

"I don't know. I can't see anything in here." A thud echoed around inside the stone ball, followed by a muffled grunt from Bailey. "And I can't even get out of this thing."

"Alright...um...let's see if we can find something -"

"I think I got just the thing for that."

David turned as Adam walked over, rummaging through yet another pocket for something. "Now which pocket had the Trembler..." he muttered under his breath.

"Just how many things do you have with you?" David asked with a raised eyebrow.

"More than I can fucking remember. Ah, here it is."

What Adam pulled out of his pocket was so weird looking that David took a step back out of an instinct of self-preservation. It looked like two Y's attached to a central tube, with buttons along the tube and a lightning-bolt marked box that was almost as big as the rest of the machine put together. It looked almost like a bomb rather than some gadget.

He looked at it warily, taking another step back as Adam stepped forward. "What...is that?" he asked.

"The Trembler, just said that," Adam said.

"But what does it do?"

"Uh, what's going on out there, guys?" Bailey called out of the hole. "Someone gonna help me out of here?"

"You'll be out in a few seconds," Adam said before looking back to David. "Look, this thing basically attaches to something, then lets out extreme vibrations. Put simply, it turns what it's attached to into dust if it's on long enough. Shorter time, it'll just crack the thing."

"And you just...carry this around with you?" David asked.

Adam shrugged. "I carry lots of things; never know when I'll need it out there."

He wasn't so sure that it was the best idea, particularly when it seemed so...primitive, so untested. But they didn't really have much choice in the matter, if they wanted to get Bailey out of his bubble. Sighing, he stepped out of the way, letting Adam get in close to the stone bubble.

It didn't take long to get the Trembler hooked up to it, and David couldn't help but wince a bit as he saw just how careful Adam was to keep the large metal Y's from touching him, like he was afraid of what they'd do if they got in contact with him. He could only imagine how much this was going to suck for Bailey, being inside of the thing that they were going to be vibrating apart.

After checking a few things, Adam tapped a short sequence into the control part of the Trembler, and then rapidly stepped out of the way. "Stay back, everyone; this is going to be big!" he said, loud enough to make sure that everyone heard him as he climbed out of the miniature valley Bailey's stone capsule had created.

The air filled with a high pitched keening sound as the metal Y's started buzzing against the stone, and in seconds, David could see that the stone was vibrating at the same rate, almost buzzing in view as it shook, shuddered, shivered from the vibrations shoved into it. From inside, Bailey shouted, "Turn it off, turn it off!" but nobody stepped forward, no matter how much they might have wanted to.

Thankfully for all of them - as even David was pressing his hands to his ears after only ten seconds of the strange sound - it took only thirty seconds to crack the stone. The crack started at the hole, and spread from there, heading down the stone like the top of a rubber food container, the crack rushing down the side of the ball and around it.

The Trembler cut off just as the rock split completely, falling to the ground as the vibrations ceased. Adam hurried forward, grabbing it and stepping back just as the ball split in two, one half staying upright against the pavement it was lodged against, the other half falling forward.

Bailey stepped out of it slowly, grunting and holding his head. "Oooooh my head," he moaned, his hands pressed against the side of his head. "I think I preferred the Catapult to that...."

"Well, you're out; show some damn gratitude," Adam muttered, cradling the Trembler in his arms. "Hmmm...looks like it worked alri-"

TING.

Everyone stared as one of the Ys fell off of the machine, slipping from its slot and falling to the ground. It bounced, vibrating for a second, before going still.

Adam stared at it, his jaw dropping.

TING.

Down went the other Y, hitting the ground not far from the first, settling onto the ground even quicker.

As the Ys settled on the ground, the rest of the machine fell apart in one brief seconds, the pieces that held it together either shattered or broken as they came apart, falling into a small pile on the ground, a pile that was scattered all over the place as the giant battery fell down on top of it.

And through it all, Adam just stared at the mess that his machine had become.

"Well...looks like it's back to the drawing board for the Trembler," Ashley said, the sound of barely muffled laughter clear in her voice. "But man...you don't see anything like that outside of cartoons, do you?"

"More...often than you'd think," Adam said blankly, shaking his head slowly at his gadget. "What in the fuck happened? I had it calibrated perfectly, had it working right, had everything attached -"

"Maybe you vibrated it to pieces just like the stone," David suggested.

"Yeah right, I wouldn't -"

Adam looked up from the broken machine, and froze, the rest of his sentence dead on his lips as he stared at Bailey as the big guy crawled out of his temporary prison. "Holy shit," he whispered to himself, his jaw dropping.

David couldn't blame him; his jaw dropped as well as he stared at his friend. It was clear that the changes had continued while Bailey had been trapped in the shell, but whatever thoughts he'd had of finding his oldest friend turned into some furry beast were quickly dispelled; fur was one thing that Bailey no longer had. No hair either, for that matter, at least as far as he could see.

As Bailey stepped far enough out of the furrow for the group to see more than just his sheer size, three more jaws dropped, Jeremiah, Cari, and Ashley finally getting the chance to take in what Bailey had become.

There were still signs of humanity left to the big guy, but of the six of them, he was the most changed. How, why, David didn't know, but there was no question that of the 'survivors', Bailey was the one that had the least of his humanity left.

He'd always been tall, but with the transformation, Bailey towered over even his former height. Standing more than a foot and a half taller than he had, he was still somewhat slumped forward, which made David think that he would be even taller if he actually stood up. Over his shoulder, they could just make out the tips of pointed spikes, white as best as they could tell.

David reached out as Bailey passed, thinking that they were something that had been impaled in his friend's back. When he touched them, though...

"What...what are these, Bailey?" David asked, staring as it not only didn't move when he pulled on it, but didn't even budge his friend, the tugging not even giving him the slightest shake. "What happened?"

"I have no idea, man," Bailey said with a shake of his head. "I just...I felt these happening inside that ball; maybe Mr. Crazy was changing me in that, or -"

"It might have been Mirari changing you instead." They looked to Cari at that, and she gestured to the cobblestone ball. "Well, that is a part of the park, and Rannoi said that was the park's name. Maybe the park was able to transform you too, since it had part of itself wrapped around you."

Jeremiah turned to her, his eyes going wide. "Can it do that?"

"I don't know...but I think that's the only thing that can explain Bailey's changing more since we saw him last," Cari said with a sigh. "There's nothing else that can explain it. I mean, I think we would have noticed if Rannoi was around here somewhere, and he's the only other thing that might have changed Bailey; the transformed couldn't have done it, since they went the other way."

"Um...guys, I've been stuck in that ball for a while, could you please tell me what you're talking about?" Bailey asked, rubbing his head. "Oh man, my head hurts..."

As Cari went through the same revelation that she'd given the rest of them, David couldn't help but keep staring at his friend, looking over his body. The further that Bailey walked from his temporary prison, the more changes that he could see, and there were many.

Besides his additional height and the many spikes that had sprung from his back, Bailey had lost almost all of his hair. What little had remained on the top of his head had disappeared, with only a tuft of it remaining near the center of his head and running down the back. Some hints of red were there, and David couldn't tell if it was coming from the light pulsing in the distance or if it was some new change.

Shirtless due to the spikes, it was easy to tell that the big man had also gotten thicker. Not fat, but..almost as though something was pushing through his back, trying to grow out his skin. Looking closely at him, David could see that Bailey's skin was stretched tight around something, and could see little shapes under the skin, not moving, but something that was hard pushing against it, just on the verge of breaking through and taking the place of the fleshy covering around it.

He shuddered at that thought and hoped that when Bailey was hit with another transformation that it didn't hurt him, knowing that was all too unlikely.

The thought froze him in place. He hadn't thought 'if' Bailey was hit with another transformation; he'd thought 'when'. More than that...he'd actually found himself slightly looking forward to seeing what happened next.

"What's wrong with me?" he muttered under his breath, shaking his head a few times as he pulled himself to his feet. It was not right to be thinking of his friends like that. He should be thinking of how they could all get out together with as few changes as possible, thinking of the changes as something that they should still be able to avoid, not something that he wanted to see happen.

Needing something to take his mind off of both Bailey's transformation and his own thoughts, he hurried back to Adam. "So...how much further to the clover?" he asked.

"Clover...clover, right," Adam said, taking his eyes off of Bailey. Rifling through a few pockets, he quickly found the scanner, pulling it out and powering it up.

The familiar beep, beep, beep of the scanner was eerily loud in the empty square, and David knew he wasn't the only one that tensed up at the sound, looking around wildly for any sign of something coming to investigate. "Hurry, hurry!" he hissed at Adam.

"I'm hurrying, I'm hurrying, shut up," he muttered in return, shaking his head. Turning the device back and forth a few times, Adam muttered under his breath. "West...700 feet...Interference...Must be inside..." he whispered.

The beeping suddenly ended as he turned it off, putting it back in his pocket. "This way," Adam said, waving for them to follow him.

They walked past several smaller rides, passing the Scream Tower and the spinning ride, and eventually stopped at the boat ride. Adam nodded towards the controls at the front, and the boats in the water. "The scanner says that the clover is inside the attraction," he explained. "Looks like we might have to break rule one to be able to get this one..."

"How deep is the water?" Jeremiah asked. "Maybe we can wade through, or swim."

"Who wants to jump in first and find out?" Adam countered. "The way that this Rannoi guy acts, I wouldn't be surprised if getting in the water was good enough reason to come zapping us again." He lifted up one foot, shaking it back and forth. "I've already gotten enough new body parts; you want to find out how deep the water is, find something to throw in or jump in yourself. I ain't risking my neck on that."

Shaking his head at the argument, David walked over to the dock for the boats. It was similar to most of the other different rides that he'd seen; there was a slight raised section beneath the boats, something that held them in place at the dock. However, rather than that continuing all the way to the tunnel where the attraction started, the water suddenly went dark, as though the bottom was infinitely deep down. Of course, that might just be a trick of the light, but considering the way that this park defied all sorts of expectations, he doubted it.

"Jeremiah, how long is the chain on your pocketwatch?" David asked.

"36.5 inches precisely; why?"

"Let me borrow it for a second," he asked, holding his hand back as he laid beside the water. The water filled the canal almost up to the lip of it, and he had to be careful not to get splashed as the boat occasionally rocked and shifted in the water.

For a moment, he thought that Jeremiah would refuse to hand over the pocketwatch. If he did, David didn't know what they'd use for checking the water, but thankfully, he felt the chain get pressed into his hand. Smiling, he nodded his thanks before turning back to the water, and dunking the watch into it directly, letting it sink down into the water bit by bit.

As the watch sank into the water, Jeremiah expectedly began to throw a fit, throwing his arms up above his head. "What are you doing?! That watch cost me over $200!"

"Sorry, Jeremiah," David said. Already the chain had mostly swallowed up by the water, and the watch still hadn't touched the ground beneath it. He shook his head, pulling his hand back before it could touch the water itself. "But looks like it's a little too deep to easily wade through; at least we figured that out without anyone getting in the water, huh?"

"But my watch!"

"I'm sorry, but I don't think that any of us wanted to just jump in or anything. Did you?" David asked.

Sputtering and muttering incomprehensibly, Jeremiah shook his head, snatching his watch out of David's hand. He dried the chain off at the end of his jacket, grumbling all the while as he made sure that it was as dry as he could get it before putting it back in his pocket.

Meanwhile, Ashley had walked over to the controls. She looked over the buttons, shaking her head. "I always wondered what it would be like spending time out here, controlling the ride from these boxes. I guess that I'm finally going to find that out."

"That's right," Adam said with a shake of his head. "At least one of us is going to have to stay out here and make sure that the ride keeps running properly while the rest of us go inside to find whatever's got that clover mark on it."

The thought of splitting up brought the silence back. David stood up, looking over the rest of the group, watching as they looked back at him and each other. He was pretty sure that they were thinking the same thing as him; in every horror story out there, splitting up was the worst idea, and was guaranteed to get at least one person picked off of the group, if not more. Nobody with the slightest bit of genre savviness split the group up if they could avoid it.

But...

It didn't look like they could avoid it in this case. If the control box required someone outside to run the ride, they needed someone on the outside, and even if it didn't, if something went wrong, they needed to be able to get the ride going again, and they couldn't do that from inside.

"I propose a 3/3 split," Ashley said.

Everyone looked at her, and she shrugged. "That way, there's three people to deal with the things inside, and there are three people out here to keep an eye on things. They can make sure that the person working the ride doesn't get surprised by anything, and can pay attention to operating the ride."

"That's a good point, but we still need to figure out who's going where," Jeremiah said.

"I'd like to have Bailey and Adam out he-"

"No." Jeremiah sliced the air with his hand as he turned her down. "Adam needs to be on the boat to show the people on the ride where the clover is." He turned to Adam, as he looked like he was about to protest. "Unless you want to hand over your scanner and teach someone else how to use it in the next five minutes?"

Adam glared at him, but gradually nodded his head in agreement.

As Ashley turned to Bailey, walking over to him and patting his arm, David leaned over to whisper to Jeremiah. "You sure you don't want him outside? He's the one with the best machine experience, you know," David said.

"Ashley, Bailey, and Adam are all partly transformed; I don't think that it's a good idea to keep them together by themselves," Jeremiah whispered back. He nodded towards Ashley, how she was stroking her fingers up and down Bailey's arm, working towards his chest as much as her height would allow. "Haven't you noticed how they're acting...kinda weird?"

"Yeah...I saw her staring at the transformed when they walked by, too. She wasn't scared; she was...almost hungry, I think."

"That's why I'm not keeping them all out here. At the very least, they'll distract each other, and at worst..."

Jeremiah didn't have to finish the sentence. There was something affecting their minds, and as he looked over at Bailey, he could tell that his friend wasn't objecting to the attention at all. He didn't bother looking down - that would have been a little embarrassing, no matter how much he sometimes enjoyed looking there - but his friend's face was lit up from the attention he was getting.

A glimpse towards Adam confirmed that he was feeling something similar. The barefoot gadget man was watching Ashley and Bailey with eyes that were more than a little hungry, a look that was all too similar to what Ashley had looked like in the alley.

"Good idea," David said. "So...you or Cari staying out here?"

"Why not you?"

"Because I'm pretty sure that I'm the best swimmer in the group, and I think you'll want that guy on the ride if someone happens to fall out of the boat," he pointed out. "I can't see the bottom, and considering how freaky this park is, I don't want to bet that's anything like regular water rides."

"Point." Jeremiah nodded his head, and leaned away. "Okay everyone. Here's the decision. Adam, David, and Cari will head into the ride, and see if they can find the clover. The rest of us will keep watch out here and make sure that the ride doesn't malfunction on them. Everyone agreed?"

Adam nodded sullenly, while Bailey and Ashley nodded eagerly.

"Alright then," Jeremiah said, clapping his hands together. "Everyone, to your places. Let's try to do this quickly so we can get out of here before Rannoi comes around."

Filing into the narrow wooden boat one by one, the internal team took their places. Cari took the front seat, David the middle, and Adam the back, with the thought that it would give Adam the most time to point out the clover when it got close. There was very little room for moving around in the boat, as any weight shifting immediately set the boat to rocking and shaking, so they held as still as they could.

Sitting in the boat, David could feel the water beneath them bumping against the hull. It was moving kind of quickly, quick enough that if one of them fell, they'd be quickly out of sight of the boat if they didn't swim against the current. "Don't fall off, anyone," he said to his partners.

"I won't try to," Cari said.

"If I fall out, I'm more worried about getting zapped by some of the stuff I'm carrying than anything else," Adam pointed out.

"Well, are you ready?"

David gave the thumbs up to the exterior team at the control box, and Jeremiah pressed the button to release the boat.

Immediately the water carried the boat ahead, nearly knocking David's head back and forth at the sudden jolt forward. He grinned at the speed of the boat, grabbing hold of the sides of the wooden pod. Much as this was probably going to get them transformed in some way, at least it was going to be from a decent ride first.

They were carried away from the others, and into the dark tunnel of the ride.

Immediately, they were carried through a roller coaster of a water ride, the sheer power of the current forcing them up one hill and then down the other side, splashing through the water and nearly getting thrown from their pod. Adam gasped and shouted from behind, cursing as he desperately hung onto the scanner, while in front of him, Cari clung to the boat with a grip that somehow made her already snow white hands paler than they already were, riding through the chaos in silence.

For David's part, he was living it up with a grin on his face and his hands in the air. His legs were braced against the front of his seat enough to keep him from going flying, and that was enough for him. He grinned, his arms up in the air and waving. "Wooo hooooo!" he shouted as they whipped around a curve, and then dropped down what had to be dozens of feet.

Water sprayed up high and heavy around them when they hit the bottom of the ramp, and David grinned, loving the spray and the sound of the rushing water. The fear of it was almost forgotten as he enjoyed himself.

Almost forgotten; he still had the presence of mind to lean away from the splashes, particularly as Cari did the same in front of him, keeping herself out of reach of the water.

After another few hills that were fun, though not quite as exhilarating as the first few, they started to slow. The current was rushing around them, but the canal that they were riding through must have been molded enough to keep them from going too fast. They were riding along at a lazy pace, rather than the hectic one from before.

As he caught his breath, he turned to look over his shoulder. "Adam...that has to be a few hundred feet by now. How close are we to the clover?"

Adam shuddered, his face tight enough to be slightly pale, which actually made him somewhat visible in the dark. "Let me...get used to the...the water," he muttered under his breath. "I hate...hate water."

"Alright, but do it quickly. If we miss it, we'll have to go through this again," David said.

That was enough incentive for him to pull the scanner out, even with his face a little white. "Alright...alright," he muttered. The beep beep beep of the scanner echoed through the tunnel as Adam scanned the ride. "Alright...looks like we're getting close...about a...about a...Ohhhhhhh FUCK!"

"What? What's wrong?" Cari asked.

"We got incoming; at least twenty transformed are headed our way. They're already inside of the ride," Adam said, his voice getting faster and more panicked with each word. "Fuck this; we gotta get out of here now."

David shook his head. "The clover -"

"Fuck the clover! Those things are getting closer and closer, and there's no way that we can get away from them in he-"

"And if we don't get it, we'll have to run away from them and come back later, probably with even more of them chasing us. We gotta get it this time around, or we're screwed." David pointed ahead. "Where is it, Adam? Where is it?"

"David-"

"There!" Cari's quiet voice cut through their argument, and David turned to look.

She was pointing ahead of them, on top of a great golden pile. Well, it was to be expected that there was a treasure pile in a pirate ride, he supposed.

At the top of the pile, though, was a large goblet, one that was about the size of his head. It looked like it was made of metal, probably some sort of iron or steel. However, that wasn't the part that he was looking at, not the part of it that interested him.

It was the four leaf clover mark on the side.

"That's it!" he shouted, throwing his fist in the air with a cheer.

"Fine, fine, but get it!" Adam said, looking at the scanner again. "They're gonna get here any second now; get that thing and let's get the fuck out of here."

Nodding, David jumped out of the boat. It rocked under his feet, nearly throwing him off balance as he shoved himself out of it, and the way that it wobbled nearly tossed him into the water. As it was, his shoes hit the water below, dragging along the surface as he hit the platform with the treasure, the bottoms of his shoes getting slightly damp before he managed to pull himself onto the platform.

The pile of gold was massive, and as he ran forward, he realized that it wasn't just glued together; this was real. These were actual coins under his feet, and they slid around as he walked over them, nearly tripping him up several times as he rushed forward towards the goblet at the top of the pile.

A sudden shift in the coins underfoot sent him falling onto his face, grunting at the hard impact of the coins beneath him before he pulled himself to his feet again. His fingers sent coins flying as he yanked himself up, throwing them back and into the water behind him as he almost climbed through the pile rather than walking over it.

"Hurry, David! They're almost right around the bend!" Adam shouted.

"I'm hurrying, I'm hurrying," he called back. Just barely catching himself before he could fall again, David yanked himself up to the top of the pile. Sliding along coins for a second before he managed to grip the top, solid part of the pile, he pulled himself up. Arms shaking, teeth clenched, he lifted one arm, straining for the handle of the goblet. "Almost...GOT IT!" he shouted as he closed his hand on top of the cup.

"Good, now come on! We gotta get out of here!" Adam shouted.

David let the coins carry him down, sliding on top of them until they hit the bottom, and then running. The boat had continued moving around the treasure pile, and he only just made the jump before it was out of reach. He landed in it hard, almost knocking it over from his momentum, and both Cari and Adam had to yank him back into the boat before he could fall out on the other side.

He fell to his seat, panting softly and cupping the goblet to his chest. "That...almost didn't...almost didn't make it," David panted, shaking his head. He looked back at Adam. "How far? The transformed, how far?"

"That's the thing..." Adam held up the scanner. A massive cluster of lights filled the screen right on top of their position. "They're on the scanner, but I can't see them."

"What do you mean, they're there, but you can't see them?" David asked.

"Just what I said, dumb-ass." Adam put the scanner away. "Must be broken...Has to be."

David wasn't so sure. After all, they were in a dark ride, and they were still moving. Maybe there were transformed things underwater, or maybe they were hiding somewhere in the dark. Hell, the transformed might even be part of the ride, people that were transformed into different segments of the ride, and were just being detected as they kept the thing running.

And even if the thing was malfunctioning, when would Rannoi show up because of their violation of rule one? Would he show up? What would happen when he did? There were too many unknowns, far too many.

They needed more information on what Rannoi could do, and fast. Otherwise, they were going to be in a lot of-

Drip.

Drip drip.

Drop.

Drip drop.

The sound of liquid dripping into the water around them caught their attention, and one by one, they looked up to the ceiling.

Along various catwalks, strewn across the ceiling, some standing, some hanging, were many creatures. Many male, some female, but all dripping with sexual juices, their genitals plainly on display, their mouths hanging open and the glint of hunger in their eyes conveying what they wanted.

The transformed had found them.