…Minus 089 and COUNTING… They were quartered on the fifth flo

Richards and the remaining applicants are kept on the fifth floor until ten the next morning. By then Richards is nearly overwhelmed by anger, worry, and frustration over Sheila and Cathy. The group has been reduced to about three hundred after more than sixty contestants, including the joke-telling kid, were quietly removed overnight.

The survivors are taken in groups of fifty to a plush sixth-floor auditorium. A polished Games representative introduces Arthur M. Burns, Assistant Director of Games, who congratulates the contestants for having “made it” and praises them as courageous men and heroes for seeking work through the Network rather than public support. One cynical contestant repeatedly undercuts Burns’s speech with bitter comments.

Ushers distribute white envelopes containing plastic assignment cards. The room fills with excited, disappointed, and frightened reactions as contestants learn which shows they have been assigned to, ranging from lesser programs to more dangerous contests. When Richards receives his envelope, his card does not name a show; it simply reads “ELEVATOR SIX.”

Richards leaves the auditorium and finds several other men waiting by Elevator 6 while the other contestants are sent up to the seventh floor. The cynical man with the sour voice, whose withered arm suggests polio, tells Richards that Elevator 6 likely means they have drawn the high-paying prime-time games where contestants are actually killed rather than merely injured.

After the other contestants are gone, a sixth man joins them, and the doors of Elevator 6 open. A policeman waits inside a protected compartment, reinforcing the idea that this group is considered dangerous. The sour-voiced man jokes darkly that they are being treated like public enemies who are about to be eliminated.