“Who is coming for you?” Etcetera Price asks.

“Our …” But the memory is fading away again.

“Fuck this,” Malachai says, and kicks the doctor square in the chest, sending his avatar flying backward toward the reception desk.

“Malachai!” I say, shocked at my friend’s actions.

“Shut up,” he replies, grabbing me by the wrist and shoving open the double doors.

There is nothing on the other side, just an infinite blackness that swallows us.

Day 1

I can feel the blood being pumped back into my veins.

The numbness leaves my body as the liquid in the chamber drains away. I begin to breathe again, my lungs unfurling like parade balloons inside my chest.

I’m cold. Very cold.

The chamber spins open as the needles retract from my legs and I fall to the floor of the arcade, shaking and trying to get used to this real world: no pixels, no NPCs, and I can feel again.

I see Malachai on the floor beside me; he rolls onto his back and begins to scream in pain, his hands reaching up to the place where his eyes used to be.

I crawl over to him and place a hand on his chest.

“Malachai,” I say, my voice rasping, “are you okay?”

“It hurts!” he cries, and as his hands move away from the holes in his face, I can see the bruised flesh and torn skin.

“We can go back into Purgatory,” I say. “Let’s go back in.”

And as I say it, I can’t remember why we left in the first place.

“No,” Malachai grunts.

“But we’re safe in there,” I say, trying and failing to pull him toward the chamber.

“No!” he screams. “That place is evil.”

“What do you mean?” I ask. “It’s sanctuary.”

And now it’s Malachai’s turn to grab me. He has more strength than I thought possible for a young man in agony who has just been released from a cryochamber. “We need to get away from this place.”

“You’re crazy,” I tell him as he pulls me along. “You don’t need to suffer like this. None of us have to suffer anymore.”

“Luka, think about your friends, think about the people who have been with you through all of this. Think about Akimi, about Pander, think about Pod and Kina.”

Once again the synapses are firing in my bewildered brain. Yes, we had to get out, we had to get out quickly.

“There was something wrong with that place, wasn’t there?” I ask.

And finally, Malachai lets go. He lies on his back, breathing heavily. He nods his head. “Yes, there was something very wrong with that place. Right now I’m still too messed up to figure out what it was, but we can’t go back.”