“Dr. Price?” I repeat, the name sparking something in my mind, something big and obvious and—for some reason—I can’t seem to grasp it.

“That’s right,” Molly continues, “he saw the end coming years before anyone else did. He started evacuating people from the city one or two at a time. He set up a false irradiated barrier at the edge of the Red Zone, and while the real radiation began to recede, no one knew.”

“Dr. Price,” I say again, more to myself this time.

Why would a sicko like that want to help anyone, let alone Regulars? This thought comes flashing into my mind, and I almost remember something important, but it flies away from me.

We exit the bar and find ourselves in the hotel’s lobby. A computer-generated man in a maroon waistcoat stands motionless behind a varnished wooden check-in desk. The floors are carpeted in beige, and extravagant furniture is dotted around. As we pass by the check-in desk, the man comes to life.

“Welcome to the Purgatory Hotel. Don’t let the name fool you; it’s a great place to stay. Would you like to check in?”

I hesitate instinctively as he speaks to us—but Molly tugs me forward. “Later. Come on, I want to show you my room,” she says. We pass by without answering and the check-in man snaps back to his original still position.

“Purgatory Hotel,” Malachai muses, “I’ve heard of that. Wasn’t Purgatory Hotel a video game in the 2020s?”

“Dr. Price had to act quickly when the end came,” Molly replies. “There was no time to write an entirely new program, so he ripped the code from an old VR video game and used it as a base. Everyone laughed at him, you know, told him that his hypothesis was impossible, that it was ridiculous.”

“I have a lot of questions, but hiding out inside a video game … this is undeniably pretty awesome,” Malachai says, looking around at the grand old place.

We walk over to an old-fashioned elevator, the kind with an ornate iron gate covering it, and Molly presses the button.

There’s a semicircular dial above the elevator doors. The mechanical arm points from floor twenty, to nineteen, eighteen, seventeen, until it gets all the way to the ground floor and the rickety thing jerks to a stop.

A very, very old man slides the gate open and silently ushers us inside with a grin on his face.

Malachai leans toward me and whispers, “That dude is creepy as hell.”

I nod, but follow Molly as she steps inside.

“Floor fourteen, please,” Molly says. The unnerving old man nods his head slowly and reaches out a long, shaking finger to press the button.

He slides the grate shut as the elevator begins to crawl skyward.