CHAPTER TWO: TUNNEL VISION

The school bus was wrong.

None of this was normal, but this? This was something else.

I know what color a school bus is supposed to be, and this wasn't it.

The yellow was too bright. Too artificial. Like someone had painted over reality with a color that didn't quite belong. It hurt, like, the yellow was so wrong it hurt to look at it. Its color sharper than necessary, almost liquid, like the afterimage of a neon sign burned into my retinas. The more I stared, the more I felt like it wasn't a color at all—just a concept pretending to be one.

But that didn't stop me from walking toward it.

I couldn't stop. I tried! I tried to bite my lip, yelling in my head, anything…

My body moved on its own, my legs carrying me forward no matter how much my brain screamed at me to turn and run.

I forced my eyes to the side of the bus, looking for something—anything—that would make sense.

And that's when I saw it.

SPATIAL DISTRICT SCHOOLS – NO. 321

My stomach twisted.

Spatial District?!

What the hell kind of school district was that?

And the 321…

It reminded me of someone counting down.

I dug my heels in, fighting against whatever force was pulling me toward the bus. My mind was screaming STOP. STOP. DO NOT GET ON THAT BUS.

And yet…

I stepped forward.

The doors hissed open.

A man sat in the driver's seat. At least, I think he was a man. His face was so aggressively plain that my brain refused to process it. No wrinkles, no stubble, no lines—like a freshly-printed mannequin of a human being. His cap cast just enough of a shadow that I couldn't quite tell if he had eyes.

But I felt in my bones that something was off about him. He stared down at me with the kind of look you give someone who's already lost.

"Boy," he muttered, shaking his head. "You have no idea what you're getting into."

 The door slammed shut behind me.

 The first thing I noticed was that I was the only one on the bus. This bus looked, no, felt old. There were no cobwebs, no dust, no spiders or skeletons sitting in the seats. And that's what was so off putting about it. The seats were clean, spotless really, but the colors were saturated unnaturally. The air in the bus felt stagnant, stiff, and lifeless.

I swallowed hard, my throat dry. I didn't want to sit too close to the driver. If he was working with Lana—and at this point, I was sure he was—I wanted as much distance as possible.

I slid into a seat near the back.

Outside, the Meadowbrook Mall was still there. Then the bus moved, and reality shifted like a skipping record. One moment, the sunlight was warm against my skin. The next, shadows stretched long and jagged across the parking lot.

I blinked.

The sky was burning orange. Then deep purple. Then black.

Too fast. Too wrong.

My hands clenched the seat in front of me. "What the hell—"

Then it was night.

Then—

A tunnel.

A tunnel that shouldn't exist.

There are no tunnels in Bridgeport. I've lived here my whole damn life. This place doesn't exist. It CAN'T exist! Where am I?

Panic surged through my chest. I pushed myself up, gripping the back of the seat in front of me.

I turned toward the driver, my voice coming out hoarse.

"Just where the hell do you think you're taking me? Where are we? What day is it? Because it was just sunny a few seconds ago! Who are—"

The tunnel swallowed us whole.

The air changed. No, it vanished, an electric feeling the moment before a storm. The air simply stopped and the world held its breath.

A pressure built behind my eyes, slow at first, then crushing. Something was pressing against the inside of my skull.

I gasped.

No air!

My knees buckled, and I hit the seat hard, my head swimming.

What the hell is happening to me?!

A low chuckle drifted from the front of the bus.

"Relax, kid," the driver muttered. "You'll hurt yourself if you fight it."

My teeth clenched. Fight what?

I forced myself to look up. The tunnel stretched endlessly ahead of us. I couldn't see the exit. Only darkness.

The driver didn't even glance at me as he spoke.

"I get it. First day in a new high school." He chuckled, shaking his head. "Believe me—this ain't like no high school you've ever heard of."

The tunnel swallowed us whole.

For one horrible second, I felt like I was floating. Like gravity didn't exist anymore.

Then—

Light.

We burst out of the tunnel.

I gasped. My breath came back in sharp, frantic bursts, my heart pounding in my ears.

And outside the window—

The sun was rising.

Wait.

What?

I blinked. The sky was pale gray, clouds rolling over a landscape I didn't recognize.

Thin, skeletal trees lined the roads. Their branches were barren and twisted. Like they had died a long time ago.

And beyond them, in the distance—

A town.

A town I had never seen before. It didn't look like any city in West Virginia that I had ever seen. And perched above the town like a looming vulture, a school.

My chest tightened.

"W…w…where the hell am I?" I rasped.

The bus slowed.

The driver smirked, leaning back in his seat, but his expression didn't match his eyes.

His flat, empty eyes.

The doors groaned open, the hiss of air breaks sounding weirdly like a sigh.

"End of the line, kid."