The door swings open as we get close to it, and when we walk inside, I see that Molly was right, the room is nice, large and bright, the net curtains blowing lightly in the breeze from the outside. But when I look outside, there is nothing but a black void.

“Let me show you something,” she says, sitting down on the pixelated couch in front of the enormous, old-fashioned television screen. “This thing has hundreds of old movies from the twenty-first century, loads of TV shows and music too. It’s awesome.”

“Yeah,” Malachai says, a perplexed tone in his voice. “That’s great, but shouldn’t we be … you know … doing something?”

“You’ll have a room just like it once you check in,” Molly says, ignoring Malachai’s cynicism.

“Check in?” I ask.

“Yeah, once you decide to stay, they’ll assign you a room, you can join the party, make friends. Day and Shion are here,” she tells me. And there’s a strange quality in her voice now, similar to the woman I met at the bar when I first arrived. Hadn’t I also heard that strange detached tone in her voice outside?

“That’s great, Molly, but what about out there?” I ask. “What about reality? What about Happy, and the Regulars that are still alive? What about the end of the world?”

Molly smiles, but there’s no happiness there.

“You should meet everyone,” she says, getting up and moving swiftly.

She walks out of the room and back into the unsettling corridor. I’m about to follow when Malachai puts his arm out, and even though I can’t feel it, it stops me from moving forward.

“Dude, what is going on?”

“I don’t know … This isn’t what I expected,” I admit.

“What the hell is this place? We find the Missing and this is what they’re doing? Listening to smooth jazz in the Overlook Hotel?”

“We don’t know that,” I say. “We don’t know that they’re not planning their next attack on Happy, that this isn’t just their downtime. Malachai, they’ve found a way to cancel out the need to sleep. I’m sure they’re working on something. Let’s give Molly a chance to explain.”

Malachai lowers his arm. “I hope you’re right.”

“Come on,” I say, following Molly out into the corridor.

“This way,” she says, smiling brightly over her shoulder. She leads us slowly, dreamily, back to the elevator, where the silent and weird old man takes us down to the second floor without incident.

Molly exits the elevator and turns left. Malachai shakes his head as he follows. I feel like shaking my head too, but Molly is my sister. I know her, I know her spirit, and I have to believe that she’s part of a team that is planning to bring Happy down.