"If we get offered classes based on life experiences, older people might get better choices. And everyone is getting reset to a baseline of health, so age isn't a problem" says one of the boardgame store people, an accountant who's hoping for a coordination class. "There's a retirement home half a mile from here."

Leone stands in the lobby, tossing and catching his dagger by the blade.

This a pointless job that might get him killed - not even if things go wrong, if things go right and this game thing is real - but that's all jobs really.

"Dario can see you now. Right this way... what are you doing with that knife, sir?"

"It's fake."

...the nurse (or whatever she is) gives him a tired sigh and leads him through a hallway of identical doors. There's wreath on one of them.

Jeez this place is gloomy. "How often does someone die here? I'm guessing like... one per month?"

The nurse (?) glares.

"Dario? Your nephew is here."

He's actually Dario's cousin once removed, but that's probably beyond the old man's comprehension.

"Uncle Dario! How's it going? They keeping you supplied with bingo cards? Portion sizes okay?"

...

"The pasta sculpture you sent is on my mantelpiece, I admire it every day! See any good squirrels out the window?"

Is the nurse person gone yet? Good.

"Okay, listen up, old man."

...

"You getting these blue boxes? You gotta be, as long as you still count as a person, right? So, something is making us all play a game, like... D&D. And what you might not know is that, according to box man here, all the players are going to start the game with the same health. Like we're all going to be level one commoners with all our hitpoints, all five of them, heh. Pretty sweet, right?

Now here's where I come in. It turns out, Fabrizio was a mite hasty with that ice pick. Dino's passed away peacefully in his sleep" he mimes spitting "and Piccolo drowned in a water ride if you can believe it, Allegra cheated on Dino, and how about it, you're the only one left who actually knows what happened with the lantern job.

I wonder, do you know that already? Have you been smug about that this whole time, ready to take the secret to your grave?

Well, you're going to talk now. You're going to talk in" he checks his phone "62 minutes. Don't think so? Going to be difficult? Hmmm." He takes out his dagger. Flip. Flip. "Do you want to know how many people I've killed with this? None, dummy, because we don't kill with knives unless we're real sure the body isn't going to be found.

But that doesn't matter. There's going to be a hoard of monsters at our walls in 62 minutes, and no one's going to notice your body, no matter what state it's in, or care to pursue me about it."

...

"Hey, don't be so gloomy about it, old man. The time for old grudges is long past, and there could be a nice place for you again!

The government is going to be pretty busted. All we've got is family."

"What do you mean that's against policy! The world is ending! It's bad enough that you lock them up to shrivel away and die normally, but in, uh, an hour they're going to be fully competent to care for themselves, and then what? You're not going to keep your charges as slaves on the justification that you all need to stay together to survive, right? If you'll let them talk to us then, why not now? Delaying might cost lives."

"I'm sorry ma'am, I'm going to have to ask you to leave."

"Those giant windows aren't going to last anyway, what do you say we smash one and talk to the inmates?"

"With the car dead, we need to start walking back in half an hour.

How about we write a note and give it to an alert-looking resident."

Leone paces, balancing his dagger on his elbow.

"...Abramovic is still going strong! I'll bet she's going to get an interesting Class. Chihuly is also still around and just as annoying as ever, sketches out how the glass should be and then calls it art when his 'assistants' blow it for him. Hey, so one time we were testing this art expert with some liberated Chihuly drafts and mixed in a scribble I did - I'm no forger, this was just to fake him out so he'd think there was only one forgery in the set - and he gave some story about needing to take them to a lab to use a scanning electron microscope and then vanished on us with the lot. And get this, three year later my scribble was on Silk Road. Hey old man, have you heard of a demoscene? Not that you'll be doing much art now but -"

Tap tap tap

He opens the window. "How may I help you, my lady?" If she needs a hole in her head he can provide, but she probably just got lost...