ALICE TOLD the squirrels to sit on Christie and J5. They were like a furry prison. Tape Deck adjusted their collars with a small screwdriver, setting the controls to maximum. “After that, they’ll be lucky to control their own minds,” she said. “Though there was something a little strange with the collars.”

“Strange how?” I asked.

“Remember how Rosa’s bracelets had a RF off switch. They had something similar. It wasn’t just a power dampener, it seemed to be in communication with something or someone.”

“Any idea who?” Johnny asked. He still looked uneasy on his feet. They hadn’t done any physical damage but their sick games made us a little uneasy and jumpy. He looked like he just got off a long boat ride, or a rollercoaster.

“No. It was encoded somehow. I’d need to… or I could… but maybe.”

She continued talking in half sentences to himself until Alice finally cut in. “What? What do you need to do?”

“If I take off one of their collars and hook it up to my tablet and run the signal directly through my router, I can use my computer to see what it’s talking to. If, that is, it’s close.”We all thought about it for a moment. We’d seen what they could do with their collars turned as low as possible. Pulling one off would be risky. Very risky. We’d still have Christie and J5 locked away in squirrel prison, for however long they would stick around, but who knew what they were capable of if we provoked them.

“Hold on,” she said. She walked over to the furry prisoners and pulled her tablet out of his bag along with a bunch of wires and some wire cutters. She snipped and twisted and connected wires until there was a braid running from the collar to the tablet. J5 screamed in protest but once Alice said something in squirrel, his monologue was interrupted by a truly goofy yelp.

“Just keep quiet, and you’ll be fine,” Alice said.

“Look at this!” said Tape Deck. Alice and I looked at the screen and it showed a map with red blinking dots overlayed at various points on the map. “Those are transmission points. The fabulous twosome is connected to them.” She typed away at the screen for a few minutes and then unplugged it. Without explaining why, she got up and walked farther along into town. We followed Tape Deck as she looked for something.

We got deeper and deeper into Innsmouth. The town was utterly destroyed. Each house we passed was less and less intact, until finally, there was nothing but black shadows where houses once stood. Everything was char and ash. The air was hard to breathe and tasted noxious, the soot got in our eyes and covered our skin. There was a charred brick schoolhouse, which was just a single wall, a sign that said Innsmouth High, and piles of blackened bricks. We walked past it. On the street, ahead of us, there was a telephone pole. It was the only one on the street and was badly burned, but surprisingly, seemed sturdy. Tape Deck walked right toward it, looking at the tablet as she went. When she got to the pole, she checked the screen again, and then looked up. “That’s it,” she said.

“That’s what?” Marcus asked.

“One of the transmitters,” she responded. “Help me out.” Marcus walked over to Tape Deck and put her on his shoulders. Tape Deck reached up to a black box with her wire cutters. The box seemed untarnished, smooth and black, even though the pole had been burned. If it was plastic it should have melted, I thought. Tape Deck tried and failed to reach the lower wire on the box. Marcus let her down, grabbed the wire cutters, and sized up the pole.

“Well, this looks like a job for a chicken man,” he said, then swung his arms wildly as his sides and lifted up a few feet off the ground. He flapped and flapped harder, a panicked look came across his eyes, but his face remained still. With one quick movement, he waved the cutters and snipped the wire, before plummeting to the ground. We ran over to make sure he was okay. Johnny helped him up. We were all looking at the ground to help him, so we didn’t really see the magic happen.

The town emerged slowly as if from a mist. Hazy outlines of buildings appeared. The burned bark of trees dissolved into bright browns and birch whites. Melted plastic morphed itself back into solid shapes. Slowly at first, so the town felt like a dream. Something half-remembered. Entire buildings popped up where once there was ash. Telephone poles, mailboxes, doghouses, street signs, playgrounds. Birds appeared in the sky. Squirrels on the trees. Innsmouth rose from the ashes before us and after some moments of adjustment, settled back into itself.

It was a shocking sight. We looked at it in wonder and then collectively thought: “What?” But then there was Tape Deck. She had a big grin on her face. She was doing a little dance of joy, moving her shoulders back and forth.

“Congratulations,” I said. “You did it! But what was it?”

“Innmouth was a neurotransmuted net,” she explained. “There one across the whole town, sent out by these transmitters. It makes everyone that looks at the town think it looks destroyed.”

“So it’s like our mind is playing tricks on us, collectively,” I said. Tape Deck nodded. The town looked like it had been in a state of decay long before the evacuation. It’s downtown was not too dissimilar from Doolittle Falls, filled with one lone row of dense three story buildings in a New England style and one white steepled church that stabbed jaggedly into the sky. But it seemed like it had already been shuttered before the people left town. Windows were boarded up and “for sale” signs were hung in front of trash-strewn interiors. There where a few shabby looking stores, bars, pawn shops, and a Stop and Shop with a broken sign.

It was starting to sink in that there was no Innsmouth disaster. Johnny was right. All the photos and footage had been faked. But if there wasn’t an explosion what were they trying to cover up? And why did they frame Mom for it. The answer, I was certain, would be found at the two white towers in the distance. The pinging of the Geiger counter continued at a steady pace as we proceeded to walk toward the reactor.

As we got closer, weird inaccuracies popped up: the electrical lines appeared to have been cut at regular intervals, several large towers had been uprooted and left on their sides, and a few of the power stations appeared burned. The weather was still. It was like the whole space was devoid of any energy.

When we arrived at the gate in front of the power plant, a car came racing behind us. The sound cut through the air and we all dived for cover, looking for a place to hide.

“Stop what you’re doing and put your hands behind your heads,” a voice said through a megaphone. “Now jump up and down and quack like a duck.” I turned around to see Kurt behind the wheel of a half-built mustang. “You guys look ridiculous,” he said. “Check it out, my cousin’s car still works and had gas. Plus, this megaphone. Very official.”

“Hey,” Johnny said. “Wanna help us with this gate?”

“Hell. I’ve always wanted to do this,” said Kurt, ducking his head back in the car. The engine let out a loud growling noise and we could only see Kurt’s glowing eyes behind the wheel. The growl turned into a squeal and a cloud of white and black dust shot up behind the vehicle, which took off like a racehorse. Just as the smell of diesel fuel and burning rubber hit my nose, it plowed into the center of the gate. Sparks flew everywhere, the chain snapped with a loud crunching noise, and, finally, the gate popped open with a loud shriek and flew off into the parking lot.

We followed behind the car, breaking up into teams to search each building. Some of the doors were off their hinges so it was easy to get in and look around. The outside buildings, one and two story square structure, were mostly offices. All the power was disconnected so we couldn’t check the computers and the files we looked at didn’t seem out of the ordinary.

“Don’t you think it’s a little to easy for us to get in?” Alice said.

“Yeah, especially if there’s all this radioactive stuff around. Couldn’t someone just steal it and make a bomb?” Marcus asked.

“Wrong type of materials,” said Tape Deck. “Fuel for bombs is different. Also, they probably moved it all or sold it. Doesn’t seem like they were in a rush to get out.” We were coming up empty. As we were about to leave, we heard Tape Deck shout out, “I found it!”

She was standing above a large black box, which had been hidden under a false floor. “The last transmitter!” she said. She knocked on it and a hollow noise rang out. We looked around for things we might be able to smash it open with, but everything just bounced off of it. After a lot of hitting, kicking, and pulling it wouldn’t budge. I got sweaty trying to pry it open with a makeshift lever someone had found, and grabbed a bottle of water and took a sip. I looked down at the bottle and realized we did have one way in.

I handed the bottle to Kurt and eyed the metal tube. He nodded. He took the water and poured it through his hands and over the tube. It oozed over the surface slowly. “Do the honors,” I said to Tape Deck, giving her a hammer. She grabbed it and with all her force swung down at the tube. It shattered into thousands of tiny black pieces, revealing the thin flimsy cables below. She pulled out the cutters and snipped them one by one. We looked around the room, but nothing had changed.

“I thought that transmitter was going to do something,” said Tape Deck.

“What does a transmitter do, anyways?” Hamilton asked.

“Maybe something happened outside?” I said.

We went outside and saw the fruits of our labor. Something we hadn’t seen before. A large building, sitting right next to the reactor and an enormous tank with a giant gaping hole in it, which had, as far as I recall, not been there last I checked.