Leon thanked Kerney, telling him that he appreciated the extra gun as well as the sound advice. Leon left the house. Ralphie was sitting in the car with his hand on his temple, looking down at his lap, an artificial light illuminating his face. Leon opened up the driver's side door, causing Ralphie to jolt up at the noise.

  “Fuck, scared the shit outta me,” Ralphie said, putting his phone back in his pocket. “What took yuh so long?” Ralphie said mockingly

  Leon started up the car, “I just needed to pick his brains a little bit more.” Leon turned the key to the ignition, and the car roared to life.

  “How’s that?” Ralphie asked?

  “Don’t worry about it right now, pull up the directions to the hotel for me,” Leon said.

  Ralphie pulled out his phone, plugging in the address. “I heard gunshots while you were in there, but they seemed like they were off in the distance, so I wasn’t too worried. I tried looking it up, but I couldn’t find anything about these mind hunters that Kerny was talking about. I don’t doubt they exist.”

  Leon looked at Ralphie and told him that the reason they didn’t know about it was because of the great filter.

  It was nighttime as they drove on the road towards the hotel. “Here, why don’t you give Lily a call on the phone?” Leon reached into his pocket, pulling out the phone, which he tossed into Ralphie's lap. Ralphie picked up the phone and hit enter. The phone rang a couple of times before Lily picked it up.

  “So what the fuck is a hunter and why can’t I find anything about it?” Ralphie asked; he seemed on edge.

  Lily’s voice was very energetic, and she seemed jumpy on the phone. “You must have crossed a division line into a blackout zone. Everything you see online is filtered through CelTec. Most people don’t believe they exist, but they do. Most of the time, you can’t get any information in or out of there. That's why I gave you the phone so that you could contact me if needed. Once you get to the hotel, you should be safe. You guys made contact with Kerney, though, right?”

  Ralphie looked back at the wrapped guns in the back seat. They rattled as the car bumped against the uneven road, “Ya, we did, he was a weird dude.”

  “Ya, well, I'd better fill you two in now. When you guys get to the hotel, there's a key card in the supplies I gave you to get into the hotel. Don’t speak to anyone inside the hotel besides the desk clerk. There are also clothes for you two to change into that will help you blend in. Each facility has different uniforms, and luckily for you, they all wear masks to cover their face. That's why they use the digital key cards to tell who is who. Kerney should have given you one, and there was another one in the supplies. Now, there's also a series of cables that are in the hotel room that you two will use to attach yourselves underneath the Guards' cars. The cars have hooks as they sometimes carry cargo under the cars. Several guards frequent this hotel, somewhat of a vacation… They will leave promptly at six in the morning. Got it?”

  The tall hotel they pulled into was illuminated by fluorescent blue light. No one was walking around, and the parking lot was empty. By the time they got there, the clouds above them had turned dark black, rolling towards the ground as if the heavens were crashing down. It started to drizzle in the otherwise dry desert.

  “We are at the right place, right?” Leon said hesitantly.

  Ralphie responded, “It's the address you gave me.

  As they parked the car at the front of the hotel, a series of gunshots rang out in the distance. Ralphie looked at Leon, who nodded comfortingly. The inside of the hotel was nice; everything inside was made out of white, polished marble. The hotel lobby was massive and featured several large fireplaces that glowed brightly. Initially, there was no one at the front desk, but there was a bell that read, “Ring for assistance.” Ralphie rang it a couple of times before a young man sprang out of one of the rooms in the back. The man apologized before checking them in.

  “You’ll be on the sixty-third floor, the room should be just on your right.”

  It took almost two minutes to get up the elevator to their floor. Their hotel room was small, consisting of two twin beds and a window that had a view of the town, which was relatively dark apart from the speckle of street lights.

  “Here they are,” Ralphie said, his foot kicking the metal chains wrapped in straps that lay on the ground. “I guess this is what we used to strap ourselves to the cars.” He looked at them skeptically. It didn’t seem very safe. “Hey, Leon, I have to ask you how you can stand Kerney.” Ralphie grabbed the straps and placed them on his bed.

  Leon looked at Ralphie, puzzled, recalling Ralphie's aggression towards the man. “He’s just a person, just like you and I are?”

  Ralphie began to pace around the room, his hand running against his temple, “But he's not a person anymore, he's been replaced. How do we know if we can trust him?”

  “He seemed trustworthy to me,” Leon responded before sitting down on the edge of the bed. “What makes you not trust him?” He asked

  Ralphie was getting frustrated. “He’s not real; he was programmed by CelTec,” Ralphie said with his voice raised. “He’s a goddamn imitation."

  “Calm down,” Leon said in a reassuring tone.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “I’m not going to calm down,” Ralphie said, his tone steadily increasing. “For all I know, now my parents are one of those mindless puppets. I would rather see them buried underground than watch them live out the rest of their lives as mindless puppets. It would be a blessing if Kerney were dead, and I’m sure whoever he was before would agree.”

  “If Kerney was still being programmed, I would agree with you. We will do everything in our power to stop CelTec from creating more puppets. We can do both, prevent CelTec from creating more puppets while also laying to rest those who have already been wiped. But to end Kerney's life for simply existing is something I will not support.”

  Ralphie sighed as he kept rubbing his temples. He was getting a migraine, “No, you don’t get it.” Ralphie looked around the room. It was a small room with only a couple of feet between the two beds. It felt musty being inside, and there was the faintest tinge of odor that sickly tickled Ralphies. “I need to go outside and get some air.” He said he was feeling as if his chest wasn’t working properly.

  “Wait one second,” Leon said. He walked over to the guns, pulling one of them out of the cloth, and handed it to Ralphie. “You're going to want to be careful outside, you don’t know what's out there.”

  “I can carry this around outside,” Ralphie asked.

  “Yep, also, there is a grocery store just across the street. I would go over there and grab some stuff for us in the morning; it should be open.

  Ralphie walked outside, and the two halves of the gun slid together, making a loud snapping sound as he snapped the latch onto the side of the gun before slinging it over his shoulder. The rain that had been off and on slowed to a crawl. Ralphie could see the store from across the road, its lights illuminating in a Gaussian Blur. But before he had a chance, he heard a rustling coming from one of the nearby bushes.

  Ralphie raised the gun and pointed it towards the bush before calling out, “Hello?!?!” There was no response from the bush; it fell silent. Ralphie raised the gun until it was just a couple of inches above the bush. He squeezed the trigger, the bullet ringing out as it whizzed by the top of the bush, clipping off some of the leaves. A warning shot, Ralphie thought to himself. It took a couple of seconds before a wheezing of metal shards came flying back, burrowing within a pocket on the side of the gun. The gun clicked soundly, recycling the bullet.

  He kept the gun pointed at the bush for a couple of seconds, “Maybe I’m just being paranoid,” he thought. He approached the bush closely before he turned on his flashlight. The leaves softly ruffled back and forth in the wind. The flashlight penetrated through the bushes. No one was there. “Curious,” he said to himself.

  There was an underpass that went underneath the road. It was lit up by yellow lights. The tunnel was encapsulated in hard concrete. The walls were chipped and corroded, and had graffiti colorfully tying it all together. Ralphie didn’t like the feeling of being trapped in a tunnel, but he reckoned that he didn’t have much choice. The road was too wide, and cars would zip out of the darkness before vanishing. None of the cars had lights on and zipped through the town completely undetected. His body would be smeared out like jam on bread.

  It would be a ridiculous way for Ralphie to die.

  Ralphie began to walk through the tunnel. His footsteps echo, bouncing around the tunnel, ringing out against his eardrums. As he got halfway through, he noticed a pair of hands sticking out from the end of the tunnel. At first, he didn’t realize what they were. They were so still that he had originally mistaken them for tree branches. They were extraordinarily pale.

  Ralphie pointed his gun out towards the hands and called out. “Who’s there?” This time, a man's head poked out from behind the exit of the tunnel. He moved out from where he was, slowly and cautiously, moving towards Ralphie. His hands pointed straight up into the air. The man was extremely frail and was wearing a tattered cloak that was pulled over his head so that Ralphie couldn’t see his eyes.

  “Please don’t hurt me, I mean no harm.” The man exclaimed, stuttering as he talked. Ralphie kept the gun pointed at the man. “I was just trying to get some food from the store till I saw your gun. But since you haven’t shot me yet, I was hoping you might not be one of those hunters.” The man's voice was strained and distorted. He couldn't quite place it.

  “Take off your hood,” Ralphie said. The man pulled off his hood, revealing chiseled features with his eyes sunken into his head. “Who are you?” Ralphie asked, lowering the gun slightly. The man began creeping closer to Ralphie, his lips quivering. His eyes were still, confident.

  The man’s voice was wispy, still stuttering, “I’m a local here, a real local, not like these other gun-loving puppets. At least I’m real. The man was standing in front of Ralphie now.

  “How long have you been here?” Ralphie asked.

  “Oh, I don’t know over twenty years at least.” He outstretched his hand, indicating a handshake. Ralphie ignored it, keeping his gun raised. “Where are you going?” Ralphie asked.

  “The store,” the man said. “Shall we walk there together? It is safer to walk in pairs than alone at this time of night,” the man reassured Ralphie.

  Ralphie kept the gun pointed towards the man, “You walk first,” he insisted.

  The man shrugged his shoulders before he straightened up his back. He was quite tall once he stood up. “I’m not harmful,” the man said, his stutter beginning to iron out. “A guide, if you will. I know every inch of this area by heart,” The man said. “What is it that draws you here? I can tell that you're not from around here.”

  “My Parents,” Ralphie said hesitantly. “They’ve gone missing, and we believe that they came through here. I’m trying to track them down.”

  The man’s eyebrows raised, “We,” he asked? “You're not alone.”

  Ralphie looked up at The Man; he hadn't looked back once since they started walking, even though Ralphie had been pointing the gun at him. Ralphie lowered the gun to the floor after a while.

  The man looked back, “I don’t mean to pry, but usually when people come here in groups, they tend to stick together. Unless they're here to do something they don’t want other people noticing.” The road out from the tunnel spiraled upward towards the store.

  “Just needed a breath of air, that's all,” Ralphie said. “Plus, I can handle myself.”

  “I understand,” the man nodded. “Can I tell you something?" the man asked.

  “Sure,” Ralphie replied. They had exited the tunnel and were now on an upward climb towards the store.

  “You remind me of my sister; she was a lot like you, headstrong, never afraid of a fight. I can’t recall if she ever lost a fight. At least one of the ones she picked out.” The man tapped his finger on his chin.

  “My sister used to say she would pick a fight with the world because she knew that she could win. She said that all the injustice and pain would be eradicated. He was quite interesting, my sister was. He believed that fundamentally, everyone could be changed, manipulated for the better, of course.” Ralphie felt unusually comfortable around the man.

  “What happened to her?” Ralphie asked.

  “CelTec got hold of her,” the man said as sadness crept into his face.