“Not to worry,” he replies, his smile even warmer now. “You’re back now. How are you?”

“I’m wonderful, thanks to you,” she replies, and clasps the man’s outstretched hands in her own.

“And who are these two handsome young men?” the man asks, turning toward Malachai and me.

“This is my brother, Luka Kane, and this is Malachai …”

“Malachai Bannister,” Malachai says.

Dr. Price’s eye widen at the mention of our names, and he looks at us each in turn, his smile widening.

“Mr. Kane, Mr. Bannister. Tell me, what is it like to have the ability to heal almost instantly?”

“How do you know about that?” Malachai asks.

“Oh, I know all sorts of things,” he says. “It’s lovely to meet you and it’s wonderful to have you here in our little community.”

“Dr. Price?” I say, the name sparking once again in my mind, and—finally—I remember Dr. Ortega saying something about an Etcetera Price. “As in Dr. Etcetera Price?”

“The very same,” the man replies, flashing a charming smile.

“All right,” Malachai says, “can someone please explain what is going on? Did I really die? Am I still in the Block? Is this the Sane Zone? Have I lost my damn mind?”

“Sit down, son,” Dr. Price, says, and Malachai slides into the booth. “You two as well.”

Molly and I join Malachai, and the three of us sit facing the old man.

“This is Purgatory,” he says, opening his hands. “A place I created to keep us safe from the artificial intelligence that wishes to destroy humanity. It runs off technology from a bygone era and so is undetectable by modern equipment. Of course, the problem remained that surveillance drones scan for signs of human life, and so I had to devise a way in which a human being could live without showing signs of being alive.”

“Safe-Death,” I say.

“That’s right,” the old doctor replies, smiling brightly at me. “They all called me crazy, called me names like Dr. Oxymoron and Victor Frankenstein. The thing is, I didn’t want anyone to know about my discoveries. I kept all my data offline, all my notes hidden, all my experiments unrecorded. It was my assistant, Dr. Soto, who revealed my findings to our superiors at the Facility.”

The name Dr. Soto sparks in my mind. I’ve heard it before, but I can’t place it. Why does this keep happening to me right now? My mind feels foggy, unfocused.

“What? You … you …” Malachai starts.

“Yes,” Dr. Price says, “I worked for the government at that cruel, cruel place.”

“You operated on prisoners, for Delays?” I ask, and the dulled sense of anger seems to float around me. Inside this place there are no trembling hands, no raised heart rate, no physical reaction to the words I’m hearing, and yet—it’s more than that—the anger just isn’t building like it should.