She presses the button and calls the elevator down once again.

The old elevator attendant reappears, welcoming us in with his eerie smile.

“You’d better not drop us this time, you old bastard,” Molly says, pointing at the old man’s gray face. The lift attendant’s smile grows slightly. “Floor fourteen,” Molly mutters.

The button is pressed, the gate is closed, and we ascend toward floor fourteen.

“So,” Malachai says, “can someone please explain to me how, exactly, we’re dead?”

“Your physical form is in a cryochamber in an old arcade in the Red Zone. All the blood has been sucked out of your body and the capillaries in your brain have been filled with deionized water that conducts electricity. The rest is far too complicated for me to understand, but, basically, yeah, you’re dead.”

“I don’t want to be dead. I didn’t agree to being dead!” Malachai says.

“Hey, this kind of dead is better than the kind of dead that Happy wanted to make you,” Molly replies.

“But how dead are we talking? Like, not-coming-back dead?”

“There’s a ninety percent chance you’ll come back,” Molly tells him.

“What?” I say. “Ninety percent? As in there’s a one in ten chance we won’t wake up?”

“That’s right,” Molly replies, “but Dr. Price is always working on improving the Safe-Death system.”

“Safe-De—” Malachai starts, and then throws his hands up in despair. “This is madness.”

Dr. Price, I think, where have I heard that … ? and then the thought just disappears.

The elevator comes to a stop, successfully taking us to our destination this time. The attendant slides the rattling old gate open and we step out into the spookiest corridor I’ve ever been in. The wallpaper is spotted with mold and hangs off at the corners, there are stains that look like blood on the carpet, the lights flicker ominously, and I hear screams coming from behind the rows and rows of doors.

“The screams aren’t real,” Molly says, shrugging at the desolate architecture before us. “The rooms are actually pretty nice.”

We walk down the corridor, our virtual footsteps making exaggerated walking sounds on the video game carpet.

The lights in the corridor snap off and on three times.

“Ah,” Molly says, “that means the Mosquitoes are now out of range of the arcade. We’re perfectly safe again.”

And at her words something tries to come to the front of my mind, something that Molly had said … As soon as the Mosquitoes retreat, get out! There’s something wrong … Had she said that? Or was that just a dream from a long time ago … I can’t remember.

My thoughts are broken up by the sounds of creaking floorboards and slamming doors.

Something isn’t right here, I think, but dismiss it.

“This is mine,” Molly says as we approach room 1408.