Field Investigations

Chapter 11: Arrival

I looked out the window towards the distant lights of Toronto, now condensed into a collection of small, bright dots on the horizon like a colorful constellation. I'd never been out of the United States before, but so far Canada didn't feel that different. Of course, I hadn't been outside of the bus yet, but through the windows, the neighborhoods beneath the highway looked a lot like my neighborhood in Connecticut. 

I couldn't believe how far I was from home now. I had to be at least two or three hundred miles away, and there was still a ways to go. Where were we going, anyway? I couldn't think of any logical destination for a school bus occupied by three sometimes invisible people, one of whom a kidnapped fifteen-year-old. Then again, none of this was all that logical. I'd been kidnapped and taken hundreds of miles from my house, turning invisible multiple times over the course of the journey.

Next to me, Kenna was typing numbers into her Field Interface and plugging them into the Transporter's graphing calculator. It seemed like she was preparing for another trip into the Field, but I couldn't see why we'd go in now. The road was almost empty, and we were cruising along at a speed of at least two hundred miles per hour (don't ask me how they got the school bus to go that fast). Actually, now that I thought of it, maybe Kenna was preparing in case someone pulled us over for speeding.

We zoomed down the highway for another half-hour before the bus screeched down to thirty or forty miles per hour and maneuvered through a hairpin turn onto the exit ramp. Kenna's Field Interface keycard flew out of her hands and swung in a circle around her neck as I was slammed against the window. The bus turned down onto a busy road, driving past a shopping plaza with five or six restaurants and a bowling alley lined up next to an enormous pharmacy.

As we continued down the road, the buildings got taller and closer together. Clusters of apartment buildings lined the street; modern, concrete structures with large terraces next to red, brick complexes that looked as if they were built in the early 1900s. The contrast of the different styles of architecture gave the area a discombobulated look, like two vastly different towns had been smashed together into the same small place. There were a few small shopping malls scattered around the town that, if anything, exaggerated that impression. 

We must be pretty close, but this town didn't look at all like the kind of destination I was expecting. Until now, I didn't think I really expected anything. Now, though, I realized that when I'd thought about where we were going to I'd been subconsciously picturing some sort of remote scientific research laboratory. 

"Hey, Kenna," I said. Kenna didn't seem to hear me, still swiping through graphs on her Field Interface and rotating the Transporter's dials as if she was solving a Rubik's Cube. "Kenna?"

She looked up. "Yeah?"

"Are we getting close?" I asked her.

She let go of the Field Interface and looked out the window. "Yeah," she told me. "We'll be arriving soon." She went back to her Field Interface, mumbling numbers under her breath to plug into the Transporter.

A few minutes later, the bus pulled into an empty parking lot next to a tall pile of concrete that looked like an abandoned construction site, plowing down a "No Entry" sign.

I was pushed forward in my seat as the bus came to sudden stop. This couldn't be our destination, right? 

"Hey, get up," Kenna smiled. "We're here." 

"I don't..." My voice trailed off as the lot around me transformed. It wasn't a lot anymore. No, we were in some sort of... garage? I looked down at the Transporter in Kenna's hand. The top of the sphere was open, the button pressed in.

"Are we... Are we in the Field?" I asked. "Wait - no, we can't be. This doesn't make any sense. Objects in the Field are invisible, right?"

"We're not in the Field," Kenna explained. "We're in what's called the Green. The Green is a set of dimensions in which objects or beings can be seen and interacted with only by people who are in either the Green or the Field. If you're in the Field, you can't be seen by people in the Green but you can still interact with them. You can think of the Green as sort of a middle ground between the Field and the regular world." 

I thought that through. "So it's like an alternate reality?"

"Sort of," Kenna said. "People can cross in and out of the Green, though, so it's more like another layer of the same reality that's disconnected from the other layers in some places. You'll learn all of this soon, though. You need to get moving."

"Isabel," Douglas called back from outside the bus. "We have to head out."

I got up and started walking towards the front of the bus. Kenna stayed in her seat. "Wait," I shouted to Douglas, turning back to her. "Aren't you coming?"

"I can't," she told me. "I still can't put weight on my leg. Douglas will send back one of the doctors, though," she said when she saw my concerned expression. "I'll be fine."

"Isabel," Douglas beckoned for me to leave the bus.

"Isa, not Isabel," I corrected, reluctantly walking to the front, still looking back at Kenna.

"Go," she told me. "I'll probably see you later."

I walked through the bus doors for the first time in hours, my legs stiff from sitting. Stepping out onto the concrete floor, I looked around, taking in my surroundings. I was, in fact, in a parking garage, mostly empty except for a few scattered cars and buses. A few hundred feet away, there was a row of elevators with glass doors that let you see the shaft and pulleys. Next to the elevators, there was a vending machine, the contents of which were too distant to clearly see. To the left, where the road had been, there was a large sign that read, "To exit, leave the Green" as well as multiple "not an exit" signs. I wondered if there had been a lot of accidents to make them put up so many warnings.

I followed closely behind as Douglas started walking towards the elevators. As we got closer to the vending machine, I realized that it was stocked with Transporters and repair kits. Looking at the prices, they were much higher than what you would typically see a vending machine item going for, the average price being somewhere around twenty thousand dollars. I guess that explained why the machine was completely filled. 

Douglas pressed the elevator button and I watched the ropes and pulleys shift position as the elevator lowered to our floor. When the doors opened and we stepped in, he immediately pressed the button for floor three. The elevator carried us up past what looked like an office and a large cafeteria before stopping and letting us out in front of a large, circular desk. 

At the desk sat a middle-aged man with short, dark, curly hair and dark brown skin. He wore a blue plaid shirt with a grey jacket and had a name tag that read, "John Weller, Executive Coordinator". 

"Hi, Douglas," he greeted when he saw us walk in. "You're an hour late. They're expecting you in a meeting down in-"

"Listen, you need to send someone from the medical team down to the garage," Douglas ordered.

"Why? What happened?"

"I'm sorry, but I'm not allowed to disclose that information." It was comforting to know that Douglas said that to other people, not just me.

After a minute of typing, John spoke again. "I sent out an email. They'll send someone down as soon as they can." He turned to me. "And you're Isabel Vega, right? It's a pleasure to meet you." 

We shook hands.

"Isa," I told him. "Not Isabel. And it's nice to meet you, too. Now, will someone finally explain to me what the hell is going on?"