A warp tunnel is a specially crafted device that takes place in an isolated environment. Meaning the physics are confined to that physical space. A warp tunnel is fitted with a flexidisk block, a material that can change its density, allowing users to experience dynamic time warping. When not configured, warp tunnels are set to a default ratio of 1:2 Minutes. The Library of Archived Minds Entry #663

  Leon still had the map that Flicks had given him. It was unlikely that Flicks had sold them out, but they both agreed that he was likely a liability. They parked at the same lot that they had before. This time, without Flicks, it took them a while to find the vent; they eventually stumbled upon it.

  Ralphie noticed a scattered array of footprints in the dirt outside the tunnel. “You see this.” Ralphie pointed at the ground.

  Leon looked around; no one was in sight. “You think it's the same people that we saw last time?”

  “I have no idea, I’ll go first this time though, give me the Map.” Ralphie climbed in headfirst, and the top cube of the map turned on in a glowing red when he got inside the same cramped room. The arrow pointed firmly ahead. Studd’s eyes were glued on it, fixated on the notion that it could start flickering at any moment.

  Leon climbed shortly after. The cube stayed fixed on solid red. “Are we good?” Leon asked carefully not to take his eyes off the club.

  “I think so,” Ralphie said. Leon could feel Ralphie's tension.

  Leon reached over, popping the door open. There was a long hallway, the lights above were dimmed, casting shadows on the stone grey walls.

  “Let's go.” Ralphie's breath was steady; he took a couple of steps forward. The second cube powered up, emitting a green light, lighting up the hallway. There was a slight gust of wind gently tunneling down the hallways.

  “Keep walking, do you feel that?” Leon asked.

  “Ya,” Ralphie said back. He looked at the glowing red square in front of him. It was slowly starting to dim until it completely disappeared. They were standing at a crossroads, the glowing green block firmly pointing to the left.

  “This way.” Leon made a left into another hallway. The path twisted and turned, and with each corner that they came up upon, they became more confident.

  “I can feel it,” Leon whispered.

  Ralphie still wouldn’t take his eyes off the cubes. “What do you mean you can feel it?” Leon could tell Ralphie was scared, but he was doing a good job of hiding it.

  “The building, I can feel the building. It surges barely alive; it knows we're here.”

  Ralphie turned to Leon, “Don’t say that, be careful coming around this corner, I don’t want anyone to hear us.” Studd turned as the third cube shifted to purple. The purple block began to flicker fast. They froze, Ralphie's entire body consumed in a cold sweat. The fear shocked him so badly that he had trouble breathing. Everything around him felt as if it were about to crumble, and he had no control over a single muscle fiber within him. A rushing wind howled past Ralphie's ears. He kept his eyes trained on the flickering block, not moving. After a couple of seconds, the block's flickering slowed before returning to a solid purple color. The arrow spun before stopping firmly pointing forward.

  Studd allowed himself to breathe again in a non-rhythmic hiccup. He fell to his knees, Leon rushing to his side, holding him up. Leon's chin sat perched on Studds's shoulder, “Slow, slow, slow, slow. You're good, stay with me.”

  Ralphie's eyes were glazed, and his mouth was dry. “Was that it?”

  “Ya, that was it, but you're alright, it passed.” Ralphie gulped before nodding. Leon helped him to his feet. “Only a couple more turns then were there.” Ralphie was beginning to realize this was a bad idea. He could lose his sanity inside this building.

  The first two squares charged up green and white, both pointing straight ahead. They were at the base of a concrete staircase, and the steps were unusually long and flat.

  Uncertainty rang out through Leon’s voice, “I think we're close.”

  “It's been almost an hour, Leon. We're lost.” Ralphie peered up at the staircase, “But, we don’t have any other options. I have no idea how to get back." Leon grabbed the device, and it started to blink.

  “Hide in here,” Leon said as he opened one of the nearby office doors. Leon closed the door, leaving a small crack that they could peer through. A noise grew very faintly. It was a crawling, scratching noise, the noise of thousands of little feet scattering as far as possible. Leon hid the glowing cubes underneath his shirt. The remaining lights that were on were as dim as moonlight. The noise was faint, not getting any closer or farther away. Then it was underneath them, gently vibrating the floor. The noise eventually passed, followed by the static of silence.

  Leon and Studd took a look at each other in complete silence. Studd motioned towards the door before holding up his hands, asking if they were ok. Leon pulled out the cubes; they were still blinking. Ralphie crouched down lower to the ground to peek through the door. A man was standing in the hallway, crouching down just as they were. He was dressed in all black, and a black cloth wrapped around his head so that only his eyes peered out. He had a small red tag clipped to his sleeve.

  Other men were moving past him, in a single file, crouched down so low they were practically crawling. They were all dressed in the same black outfits, moving so slowly and carefully that they didn’t make a sound.

  Ralphie held his breath as the last of the men passed. There had to have been at least twenty of them. The man with the red tag stood still the entire time until the last man passed. He then cranked his head around to his surroundings before slowly tilting his head towards Ralphie's door. The cloth made him faceless, the eyes staring right into Ralphie.

  Ralphie pulled away from the crack in the door. There was no way that he hadn't been seen. Ralphie pressed his back against the wall, looking around the room they were in. He expected a fight. There was nothing besides a metal chair in the middle of the room and a long horizontal mirror that stretched the length of the back wall.

  They were weaponless, with nothing in the room to help them. Ralphie balled up his fists as he watched for the door to move. Leon positioned himself on the other side of the door. The door remained still, not waving, and not a sound was being made. Ralphie let out a long, slow breath as quietly as he could. The door seemed to sway a little. Ralphie tightened his fist more. He could charge at the door, but that would make a lot of noise, maybe alerting the rest of them. Both of them might be able to take one person if they came into the room. Then, suddenly, Leon tapped Ralphie. He had been so focused on the door that he didn’t realize that Leon had crawled over to his side.

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  Leon held up the Cubes; all three colors were solid green.

  Ralphie whispered, “Do you think we're ok?” A mix of confusion and fear infected his tone.

  “I think so,” Leon went over to the crack in the door before slowly opening it. There didn’t appear to be anyone in the hallway. He stayed low to the ground, slowly peeking his head outside the door. There was no one.

  “What was that? What did you see?” Leon asked. The hallway was filled with rooms.

  “It was the same people we saw last time outside the building. I swear one of them saw me.” Ralphie pursed his lips before looking back up the stairs. “They went that way.” All three of the cubes still pointed up the stairs.

  “Do we keep going? Or do we turn back?” Leon asked

  “We have to keep going, but if we see them again, we have to get out of here as fast as possible.”

  The top of the stairs split into three hallways, and the arrows pointed to the middle hallways. There were several strange-looking plants and a room that had a light still on. The plants were long, reaching up toward the ceiling. Their leaves resembled the pattern of a turtle shell.

  They made their way towards the office at the end, moving as slowly as they possibly could. There was a nameplate that was displayed in a reddish gold outside the room. The name had been forcibly scratched out.

  “This must be it,” Leon said. The Cube was all a bright orange color with no arrows. Studd released the tension in his hand, “No one is inside.” He breathed a sigh of relief.

  The room was a giant office, much bigger than the other rooms they had passed. The walls were embedded in digital screens. Some of the walls had been covered in notes and papers with ink scribbled out in messy handwriting, nearly impossible to read. Studd picked a couple of them off the wall, throwing them to the ground.

  “Leon, what do we do now?” Ralphie asked frantically as time seemed to speed up.

  The walls grew alive, images and pictures popping out of the wall, words shifting and flipping around across the walls.

  “Look through the drawers for anything helpful?"

  Studd began rummaging through the cabinets.

  “Look at these,” Ralphie pulled out photos of various types of weapons. One of the files said classified. A long-looking pistol, the barrel was a silver tube that was no bigger than a nickel, and the end of the gun was wrapped in black tape.

  Studd handed the red file to Leon. Leon looked at the file before pressing it into the digital wall. It stuck as a series of codes grew out of the file, the numbers feverishly being decoded in front of them. The file became pixelated in black and white colors before falling off the wall.

  ”The Minds are incredible,” Leon whispered to himself before looking over at Ralphie.

  “It's listed as an SDP-5, the Mindsweeper,” Leon said.

  “What's it do?”

  “Its description says it's designed to permanently erase a person's mind so that it can be replaced by a puppet. There's more here also.”

  Dullahan began to pop up on various parts of the screen. A man's face appeared; he had a sharp cheekbone with a yellowish tint to his eyes. His face was wrapped in bandages. He was a tall, long man, almost dangerously thin. The images of this man looked as if they were trying to peer into Leon’s soul. The corners of his lips were pressed tightly into his face.

  “Who is he?” Ralphie asked, looking at the decoding on the wall.

  “I don’t know, but a Dullahan is an omen of death.” The image on the screen flipped to something else. The file flipped through the screen in milliseconds in front of Leon’s eyes. Leon looked up, amazed at the power of The Minds.

  Ralphie recognized the name on one of the files, Project Commedia. “This is the project that Lily had told me about. She wanted me to learn more about it, see what you can find out about it.” Ralphie handed the file over to Leon

  Leon sat there, fixated on the screen, unsure how to get it to decrypt faster other than willing it to happen.“ This one is locked. Keep looking for other stuff.”

  Leon dropped the tone of his voice. “I think we were being watched.” Leon pointed to the desk. There was a small camera sitting behind the picture frame. It had a small red blinking light and a sticker of an eyeball.

  “That's freaky,” Studd let out a nervous chuckle before grabbing the camera, setting it on the ground, and crushing it with his feet. Red lights started to flash silently on each of the screens. “We need to hurry up and find that letter,” Ralphie shouted at Leon.

  He began rummaging through the drawers before noticing something odd. One of the drawer handles had been rubbed off, and the brass was showing underneath. Studd went over to the drawer and opened it up. Inside was a small black metal cube that was unusually shiny. It looked as if it were solid, but when Ralphie reached down to grab the cube, the top half opened up. It was some kind of case, and the inside was filled with red velvet padding, and in the center were small black balls that almost looked like pearls. Ralphie picked it up; it was unusually heavy compared to how small it was.

  “Is that Melt?” Leon peered over his shoulder. “Stash it and keep looking."

  Leon looked up away from the screen. The pupils of his eyes were dilated. “I can’t find anything. There are hundreds of letters that Chuck Thorne has sent out over the years. I don’t know how to find the one we are looking for.”

  Ralphie looked across the desk before staring at a photo of Chuck Thorne and Cliff when he was younger. The photo was oddly shiny, so he picked up the picture frame, “Leon, look at this.”

  Leon grabbed the picture frame, ripping open the back before he pressed it into the wall. “This is it, the file is huge. It's also encrypted; we're not going to have time to decode it. Did you bring a drive?”

  Ralphie handed him a long, flat silver block. “Here, this will work.” Leon stuck the drive to the wall before he grabbed the blocks and pressed them both to the wall. The colors fluttered momentarily before they turned green and white.

  “It's programmed to get us to the exit.”

  “Leon, do you hear that?” Studd turned around to face the door. The faintest noise of footsteps could be heard climbing the stairs at the end of the hallway. The footsteps echoed down the hallway. “We gotta go now,” Studd had a desperate urgency in his voice; the cubes were flashing.

  They ran to the edge of the door. Ralphie peered around the corner. No one was in sight yet, but the footsteps were getting closer.

  “Take a left,” Leon said. A low, howling sound could be heard in the distance, but the cubes were not flickering.

  “Come on!” Leon turned around swiftly, grabbing Ralphie and leading him down the hall. They ran for what seemed like an infinite amount of time. Ralphie's eyes teared up as the dry air hit his face.

  “Hold up,” Leon put his hand in front of Ralphie, looking down at the green square rapidly flashing. The floor vibrated for a couple of seconds before the cubes went back to a solid color. Multiple pairs of feet could be heard in every direction. They were going to be swarmed.

  “Crap, we're almost there,” Leon once again grabbed Ralphie as they began to sprint down the hallway faster this time. It was only a couple more turns before they were standing in front of a solid door clearly displayed.

  “Fuck,” Leon muffled his scream. “I programmed it in the wrong place. The footsteps were getting increasingly louder. Leon swung the door open, and they slipped into the room, shutting the door behind them.