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“Eva, who the fuck is this guy?”

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m Barron Sinclair.”

He says it like it’s supposed to mean something to me. When he holds out his hand to shake, I hold up the remote and turn off the TV instead.

“As Sinclair said, the chance to save lives and livelihoods isn’t all we’re offering,” says Eva.

“What else do you people have that I’d want?”

“How about your old life?” says Sinclair. “All of it.”

Eva says, “When you finish your contract with us, you can go back to your friends. Candy, Kasabian, the others. Even your silly video store is still there.”

“Why should I trust you?”

“Because as an act of good faith, we can give you something I know you want perhaps more than anything else.”

“What?”

“The Room of Thirteen Doors.”

“Now I know you’re lying. The Room is gone. Occupado. Full of old gods or a new universe. Anyway, it’s off-limits.”

“Not to us. The Room is empty and waiting for you.”

I look around at all the ugly, earnest Wormwood faces. They look more scared than I am angry. And it’s not me they’re scared of. It’s something else. Maybe they’re afraid of each other.

“How can you have possibly gotten control of the Room?”

Eva says, “We don’t have control. Only you can control it. We just swept it out for you.”

“How?”

“Do you really want to discuss transsubstantive metaphysical plane displacement? Or do you want to see the Room?”

“I can go right now? Just walk right out of here?”

“Yes.”

“How do you know I won’t bolt?”

Sinclair leans in.

“Remember when you asked Eva if you were alive and she said ‘more or less’?”

“It’s actually a lot less than it is more,” says Eva. “Without our intervention, there’s a time limit to how long your body will hold together. If we pull the plug, so to speak, you will begin to decay just like any other corpse.”

I touch my face, my left arm. No flesh there. Just a black Kissi prosthetic.

Fuck. I really am alive.

“How did you get my body in the first place?”

“Don’t be stupid. We paid off someone in the coroner’s office.”

“And you’ve kept me on ice ever since. For how long?”

“We told you: eleven months, two days, and three hours.”