Ralphie and Leon were on the road in the same old car that had been given to them by Chuck Thorne. Yellow had taken the van to go ditch somewhere. The windows cracked down just enough, so the wind blew through their hair. They had a long drive ahead of them. At least for the beginning of the drive, there was no point in talking.

  Eventually, Leon broke the silence, hesitant at first, “So what are you going to do?” He asked. Ralphie's eyes stayed stuck to the road; he shrugged off the question like it was nothing. He was good at keeping his guard up. But Leon was persistent, he was always persistent, “About your parents, I mean.”

  This time, Ralphie turned to look at him, “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Well, if we find them,”

  “When,” Ralphie corrected him.

  Leon paused for a second to allow him to reassess. He did not want a fight; he just needed to know where Ralphie's headspace was at. He kept his tone as calm as he could but slightly more forceful this time, “All I am saying is that when you find your parents, they may no longer be your parents. What will happen then?”

  Raphie let out a long sigh, breaking the tension, “I dunno, I was a fool in my youth, so easily deceived that I could not even tell that my parents were no longer my parents.” He fidgeted with his hand nervously, “But I believed in the lies that CelTec had put in front of me, and I connected to live a fake life, one of pleasure and ease. I think part of me might have known, but my life had been so good. So easy and full that I was willing to believe this lie. I remember my parents acting differently, but I did nothing. Now all I have is some vague blended memory that I cannot be sure of. All I know now is that my parents do not belong with CelTec. We need to get them back by whatever means necessary.

  At the start of their journey, they stopped by Lily's to gather supplies. Lily had greeted Ralphie with a giant smile, “I don’t know what I would do without my parents. It is probably one of my greatest fears,” she had said. Leon, at one point during the drive, said, “You know Lily seems to be very fond of you.” Ralphie chuckled, “Don’t say that around Sage, or I will have no point in making it out alive.”

  Lily had limited information on Socorro. It was a small city with almost no one living in it. She had given them a satellite phone for emergencies and had arranged for them to meet up with a guide that one of her contacts had recommended.

  During the drive, Leon mentioned Dullahan, “I mean, his name has been passed around a lot. A spooky story that people believe. I mean, even Lily has mentioned him. He scares people; they believe he’s the one pulling the string, a man of myth. One of my professors said he was a real man who went missing years ago. He was supposed to be the face of CelTec, but was forgotten. What if Chuck Thorne might be a pawn in the grand scheme of things, getting moved around?”

  Ralphie seemed unimpressed, “Chuck Thorne's hands are bloodier than we realized.” Ralphie had blamed Chuck Thorne for his parents, and rightfully so.

  Infiltrating the East Base would be more difficult than the Research Facility. The base was several miles longer, with several watch towers made out of large beams of metal that were fitted with trained guards. CelTec-trained Blues that were responsible for detecting threats. But luck was on their side. Lily had staged several walkouts in surrounding cities amongst a growing number of people who opposed the illegal research being done. The walkouts were guaranteed to stretch security thin, distributing Socorro Guards to the nearby cities.

  They drove into the town around dusk, blue and orange enthralling the sky in a fascinating tangle of colors. The town was quiet when they arrived. The guide's name was Kerney; he lived on the very outskirts of town. They were in gun country and needed to be well armed, to which Kerney was apparently heavily armed. There was an excitement that was surging through Ralphie and Leon’s blood. Guns were seldom where they were from; they were far away in somewhat of a distant land. It was refreshing that Leon had thought to himself. It had been a long time since he had been out of his hometown.

  When they stepped out of the car, they felt the cool breeze refreshing an otherwise hot desert. Kerney's place was more of a shack than it was a house. It was long and had pieces of wood that had been nailed over the original house. Almost the entire house was covered in wood planks. The parts of the house that could be seen had been torn to shreds by bullets.

  Ralphie and Leon looked at one another before they went up and knocked on the door. After a couple of seconds, the door swung open, revealing Kerney. He wasn’t a tall man, but was surprisingly put together. Unlike the outside of his house, the inside of the house was tidy. Kerney himself was wearing a well-ironed button-down shirt, and he was clean-shaven with his hair combed towards the back of his head. He greeted Ralphie and Leon, offering them each tea, which they both politely declined.

  “Yuh know, the two of you are the first that have been here in a while. Indeed, it's been a mighty long time, but I know why you're here. Been a while since we got hunters around here.” Kerney said there was a twang in his voice.

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  Leon asked what he meant about hunters.

  “Yuh don’t call them Mind Hunters where yuh from, do yuh, asking all the pertinent questions then I guess.”

  Ralphie looked at the man up and down, examining his character. Kerney was indeed a strange man, he thought to himself. He turned to look at Leon, and Leon's eyes agreed.

  Kerney leaned in close to Ralphie and Leon, “Now yuh didn’t hear it from me, but sometimes around here some of the uhhh, experimentees uhh, escape and it's common law around here to shoot em on sigh yuh feel. Because well, CelTec doesn't want nun of their secrets getting out if yuh get what I’m saying.”

  Ralphie felt compelled by the man's strange mannerisms to ask him if he was born here.

  Kenrey responded nodding aggressively, “I mean, as much as I can remember, which for me must be going on at least four years now.”

  Something about him had been altered, changed. Maybe it was the town; the town itself seemed quite large for a ghost town. But it made sense if the people in the town shot escapees on sight. A handful of the locals must have been put down in this fashion.

  “I consider myself one of the lucky ones now that I get to do all the shooting.” Kerney walked over to his closet, pulling out two long, shiny rifles. He took his hands and pulled them apart. Each gun is split into two halves before folding up on top of itself. “Now yuh don’t have to worry about ammo. Haham, I mean yuh can if yuh want. These are standard issue CelTec rifles, I think, used in some wars, I don’t know which ones. They collect their own bullets.”

  It occurred to Ralphie that this man was one of CelTec's experimentees. Ralphie posed his question to Kerney in the least offensive way he could think of. “Are you a puppet?”

  Kerney thought about it for a second, “Well, uhh I wouldn’t exactly consider myself CelTec’s puppet, so yuh don’t have to worry about me ratting on yuh mindhunters. I’m more of a cautious observer. CelTec does keep a record of all the mindhunters they encounter. Just a fair warning. I don’t know why they're doing them a service. But ya, I was an experimentee, a lucky one. I posted here all these years ago to hand out guns to anyone who wanted one. I collect them from the dead during the day. Trade travelers for food and supplies. I think they forgot about me if I’m being honest with yuh. They had a different name for me and called me the same thing you did just now, a Puppet. I’m not fond of that name, though it makes me seem like less of a person.”

  Leon asked him why there were so many escapees.

  “Well, some of them are useful, and others aren’t, so they release them like livestock to be killed. Most of them can’t speak; they either get shot or starve.

  So puppets can talk, Leon thought to himself. When Ralphie heard Kerney say he was a puppet, his face grew hard, and he envisioned his parents. He grew hateful towards Kerney. He’s not a real man; his mind is programmed with no human aspects. It's unnatural that an imitation should be able to pose as a human. Ralphie’s questions towards Kerney changed from being friendly to accusatory. Leon noticed Ralphie's hostility, “Ralphie, why don’t I meet you out in the car?” Leon suggested

  Ralphie glared at Leon before he left.

  “I apologize for his behavior. He's been under tremendous amounts of stress,” Leon then asked the man a series of questions about his thoughts on being a puppet and what the town was like.

  Kearney took out a long piece of cloth, which he used to wrap and seal the guns, tying them together with a piece of string. “Uhh, yuh know, it's hard for me to say I just live my life as best as I can. This town has a lot to keep me occupied, from shooting and trying not to get shot. I do sometimes wonder what my life was like before, but it doesn’t cause me too much concern. The town here is pretty free.”

  Leon asked if Kerney had known anyone who had managed to get inside one of the buildings.

  “Inside,” Kerney asked, shocked. “Now why would yuh want to do that unless you're offering yourself up as test meat?” Kerney thought about it for a second, “Yuh know I did know one fella that did end up going back, not here though, a couple states over. He shot a guard who was walking through town and then hid in one of their trucks. The guards are smart with yuh know the minds and all, but if you're carrying one of their trackers with you, they won’t be able to tell you're not one of them. And nowadays they're so lazy because no one else is crazy enough to try to get in there. Yuh wait one second before you leave, I have something else that I think might have some things to help you.”

  Kerney reached into a duffel bag that was propped up against one of the walls. He ruffled around for a little bit before he pulled out a small, deep metallic blue gun.

  There was no reflection on the gun as it absorbed most of the light. “Now here is a beauty, I accidentally shot myself a Blue a little while back. I can’t exactly show it off to many people without getting myself in trouble. It's as quiet as can be, doesn’t draw much attention, but you have to be close when you fire it. Sadly, it doesn’t exactly kill a person, it uh more immobilizes them. Oh, and if yuh fine, any other new and exciting guns while you're out hunting and don’t have any use for them, feel free to bring 'em down here. I can make use of them. There’s a tracker built inside this gun, so if you do run into someone important, they will think you are undercover. Blues are an arrogant bunch; they don’t think they can be killed.

  Leon explained that they weren’t mindhunters and asked why he hadn’t heard of this place before.”

  “Hmm,” Kerney grumbled. “I’ve met people like you before. I call it the great filter. Outside of here, no one knows of its existence; they can’t find it anywhere. I think CelTec has a way of keeping these places hidden, censoring any information about them. Telling people it's not real or doesn’t exist. I wonder if other pockets of this world exist.