“I wish I could tell you more, but that’s also locked. It’s worth a try though. Manor records show there is an empty room at the base of the manor, probably for storage. It’d be interesting to see if you can notice anything there.”
“Let’s go.” Gus headed to the lift and was directed to select the third button from the bottom. From there they made it to another service elevator and descended some more.
“I can feel it. It is increasing in intensity, but nowhere near what it was in the mine.” The elevator clanged as it opened and Gus stepped out into a large chamber. His footsteps echoed on the hard floor, the only light spilling in from the elevator. Gus stepped back as he took it in. Even cycling through his other perception modes, he found it difficult to see anything of consequence.
“Is it totally empty, Nick?”
“There’s nothing on the schematics, try yelling as loud and long as you can.” Gus did so as Nick switched to a new view. The sound waves looked like the tide going out as they fanned away from him. They encountered nothing but the far end of the chamber before reflecting back. The room was high, maybe three stories and oval in shape.
“Sacred guano, Batman! I’ve got echolocation, Nick?”
“Unfortunately, yes. I worried you would take this and run with it…” Nick replied with a deep sigh.
“You worried right! You know, past Nick would have been very happy to show me this.” Gus chuckled with glee.
“It’s only useful in a limited number of situations, so don’t get crazy.”
The elevator began to buzz from being wedged open and Gus let the door slide shut. Darkness enveloped him, but he could see faint shading denoting the far wall and ceiling. Gus could see the ripples of sound caused by his footsteps as he moved to the center of the chamber. A quick look back showed the elevator’s position, but this was absolute dark. He continued to the center of the room; the effect was like being in the middle of a large arena.
“Wow, it’s like a really dark night…”
“Go ahead, get it out of your system,” Nick said, voice thick with affected boredom.
“Are you not entertained?” Gus boomed.
“No, I most definitely am not. Are you able to do anything here or are we about done?”
“Let me try.” Gus sat down and tried to figure out what he needed to do. “Any ideas, Nick?”
“Sorry, this is new territory for me as well.”
Gus tried to open himself to the feeling he’d had in Mengele’s lab, but too many thoughts rattled around in his brain. Pain definitely had a way of narrowing his focus. With some difficulty, he dismissed the intruding thoughts that wanted to impose on him. Questions, such as what if he couldn’t help his mother get better, or what if another group came and tried to take the manor arose. Unlike the past, he was able to shed the emotional weight of worry that these thoughts usually gave him.
I’ve worried too much about a past I can’t change and a future I don’t know will even exist.
It became easier to let those thoughts go. Gus turned his focus on the inner path. It was much fainter now, like an unused trail slowly being overcome by the surrounding vegetation. He mentally traced the path, traveling it. Skating down the pristine conduit, circling through each of the four extensions before returning to the nexus and then moving down the next pathway.
As he traveled, his thoughts became distant and there was only the path. Down. Up. Enter another door. Down. Up. Door. The process syncing with his breath. He exhaled more deeply than he thought possible, and it was as if he was expelling thousands of tiny spheres, their contents spent. Each inhale started to draw in one or two of the spheres, now filled partially with a red glow.
He followed the glowing spheres as they continued to travel down after passing through his lungs. Drawn down into the channels below, passing through his body as if it were a ghost. His mind chased the few spheres as they traveled in the center of the conduit, suspended there as if the walls were an opposing magnet, keeping it bobbing and balancing them equally away.
Breathe out, more spheres spilling into the surroundings, breath in, a few more of the filled ones coming back, trailing after the others like train cars. With each breath there was an inexhaustible supply of the spheres, continually pouring out. Only the filled ones came back when inhaling.
Gus began to see something. The red spheres within him began to pull on the other spheres filling from without. The process increased in speed and Gus felt the energy race along the track, reminding him of the afterimage of a sparkler as it was waved in the air.
There was a loud gong, which broke Gus’ attention, and his perception of the spheres became foggy then disappeared altogether. The rosy glow he had begun to perceive from the filling spheres nearby also evaporated into total darkness once again. As he came out of his concentration, the gong softened to the mild chime of a skill leveling up.
You have leveled up the skill: Mindfulness to Level 9!
1800 XP awarded.
1800 FP awarded.
595 XP to level 24.
Gus sat there in the darkness, thinking about what had happened, until Nick interrupted.
“Good, you’re finally back. Do you have any idea of how long you were in your little trance?”
“What trance?”
“The one you’ve been in for the last thirty-six hours! The others have been trying to contact you, but I didn’t want to disturb your concentration. There’s apparently another issue. I tried to reassure them, but they are becoming progressively agitated.”
Gus got to his feet, surprised he wasn’t achy and sore from remaining in one position for so long. Nth were great but they had their limits on what they could do. He felt energetic like he had when he was first on the island.
