Chapter Three

                                    

                                          

"So what happened exactly? All I heard was this huge racket of static on my radio, then you telling me they disappeared," asked Garrett after he arrived. His hand currently held behind his back. 
Garrett was essentially the voice between NCE and Reverstone, a man with no hair, slightly overweight and usually had bags under his eyes due to his poor sleeping patterns. He was very close to retiring and didn't care much for the colder climate, but had to wait another year before he could get his full pension from Reverstone and so had been charged with this last stint. He was under a lot of stress, as Reverstone had very strict rules about the financing of the project, what money went where and how. Garrett was the man with the responsibility. It was a weight he looked forward to having lifted from his shoulders.
	"Well sir, as you know, we believed that this place was still able to run and so we were attempting to bring main power back up" said the engineer, slightly trembling, as the shock was still starting to sink in for the poor man.
	"Yes, and?" asked Garrett impatiently, trying to keep his tone even. It would do no good to snap at the worker who was just following someone else's orders.
	"Well it worked. This place did still have a working power supply and so the lights came on. Then only a few moments later the room down there began to flare with electrical energy and there was a big flash of light and then they and everything in there disappeared," the engineer said in one big sentence only taking a breath when he had finished.
	"So in other words you vaporized them," said Garrett slightly irritated by this point. Reverstone would have his head. He rubbed his face.  
	"Sir! I didn't know!" pleaded the engineer.
	"What does all the sensors you put in here say?" continued Garrett ignoring the reply. "We have them down here for this very reason!"
"I'll take a look at our measuring equipment, however the energy show caused everything to shut down and now we're just waiting for them to restart. I want to know just how much of the incident got recorded," replied the engineer a bit surer of himself now.
	"That would explain why our equipment on the surface just cut off on us. Let me know the minute you have something," Garrett said then left without waiting for a response, returning to the surface. When he reached the top of the long shaft, a cold breeze whipped at his face. He was glad for his thick coat. He had a guess as to why no one had discovered this before. It was cold up in northern Canada, so not many people went on expeditions up there. Most of it was done in the badlands. Though he had to admit what they found was a lot bigger than he would have guessed. He never would have thought anything like it would exist, especially in Canada. Doesn't this stuff happen only in the US? He mussed. He was sure that this was the biggest discovery of the time. National Geographic would have a field day if they learned about this.
As he reached the surface professor Higgins came running up to him, almost tripping over wires that ran down the length of the shaft and crashing into Garrett, managing to stop himself at the last second. Higgins was second-in-command, only under Garrett in the whole scheme of things. However he had major degrees in engineering and computers. So he was a prime choice for the position.
	"I heard there was an accident down here," he said out of breath, adjusting his small glasses. Higgins was very close to Garrett's age; so running was not something he did often. 
	"That's correct, so why don't you go down there and help them engineers figure out exactly what happened," Garrett answered rather rudely, at the moment he did not want to talk to too many people at the moment. "That is why you are here."