All four of them started talking at once, most of them asking the same questions about what was going on, what was happening in the town, was everyone really dead…
“All right, hold on, stop,” the woman said as she held up her hands. “One at a time, and I honestly can’t guarantee that I can answer any of your questions anyway.”
“What was that flash of light?” Laura asked.
“That’s classified.”
“Why is the military here?” Jesse asked.
“That’s classified.”
“When are you going to let us go?” Henderson asked.
“Probably also classified.”
“Then what the hell is even not classified?” Henderson asked. “If I ask you if Redline Flight Cranks are included on the Skyway T/A BMX, are you going to say that’s classified, too?”
“I… I don’t have any clue what that means, so I couldn’t tell you if it’s classified or not.”
Murky had to hold back tears as she spoke. “Are Mom and Dad really dead?”
The woman cussed softly to herself. “Jesus, is that really what they told you?” She paused, obviously giving careful thought to her answer. “No, your parents aren’t dead. Probably. Not yet, at least.”
“What do you mean, not yet?” Laura asked.
The woman paced around a couple of times before she appeared to come to a decision. “Okay, look. I don’t care what’s classified or not. You four obviously have a right to at least have a clue about what’s going on.”
“Who even are you?” Henderson asked.
“For now you can call me Agent Larson.”
“Agent for what?” Jesse asked. “The FBI?”
Agent Larson smiled a little at that. “We’ll just say that for now. I’d give you the real answer, but…”
All four of the kids spoke at once. “It’s classified.”
“Now you’re starting to get it. As for what’s going on, well, most people probably wouldn’t be surprised to know that the government has been doing a lot of secret things as part of the Cold War. We’ve got to try to stay ahead of the Russians.”
“So the Russians did this?” Murky asked.
Larson shook her head. “This wasn’t the Russians. This… this was our fault. There was a secret project some way away from here. Discoveries were made, and they were being studied in a hope that we could weaponize them. In the latest attempt to study the phenomena, a miscalculation was made. Something that was supposed to happen in the lab went elsewhere, and… well…”
“Please don’t say ‘it’s classified,’ again,” Henderson said.
“It is, but… honestly, I don’t care anymore. I’ve been assigned to the project as a liaison, but no one has been listening to me when I said things were getting out of control. It’s my military counterparts who are responsible for blowing the lid off this thing. The responsibility for people knowing is no longer on me.”
She looked around at a few of the supply crates that had been haphazardly stacked in the tent and went to sit down on one of them. “It’s called Project Subterranea. It’s an offshoot of a previous project that investigated the possibility of alternate realities and other dimensions. Subterranea refers to a specific dimension that was discovered. We don’t know if it’s from Earth in another time period, or a different planet altogether, or a parallel world or universe. All we know is that the portals we’ve discovered open onto some kind of underground world, a world full of things that we have only begun to imagine.”
Jesse looked at her with unabashed wonder. “Really? That doesn’t sound like a bad thing at all. That sounds awesome!”
“It was, except then something on the other side realized we were poking holes into their world.”
“What kind of something?” Laura asked.
“Ant-like creatures. Giant ones, the size of humans, except with eight legs instead of six. They walk on the back four and use the front four like arms.”
“Really?” Murky said with undisguised interest.
“That’s even more awesome!” Jesse said.
“I don’t know what’s crazier,” Larson said. “That I’m just blabbing away government secrets to a bunch of kids, or that you’re believing all of this without calling me a liar.”
“I’ll call you a liar if you want,” Henderson said. “I can call you a lot worse things than that, too.”
“Not helping, Henderson,” Laura said.
“The first time we opened the portal and found them on the other side, they swarmed out and kidnapped a large number of our personnel as well as our scientists. I tried to convince everyone that it was too dangerous to open the portal again, but the general in charge of the military side of the project was convinced we could get some of these ants and, I don’t know, breed them as super-soldiers or something. He was always pretty nutty. So they programmed the machinery to open again, this time with plenty of soldiers on the other side to capture some. It was not as easy as the general expected. Some other giant creature came out of the hole first and wiped out most of his forces before the ants invaded again. This time, the machinery used to open and close the portal was damaged. We suspected the portal was going to open again by itself, but not in the lab any longer.”
“So it just opened in the middle of Kettle Hollow?” Laura asked.
“That was the flash and rumble you felt. The portal to that underground world is right in the center of your town. No one has gone into town yet, but surveillance suggests it’s just like at the lab. The ant things poured out of it and grabbed everyone, then pulled them back in. We have no way of telling yet if anyone in the town escaped them. Except for you four, that is.”
“Why are you still surrounding the town then, if it’s over?” Laura