Sleeping Player (Project Chrysalis Book 3), John Gold [free e books to read online .TXT] 📗

The hysterical woman chimed back in.

“Hey, are we supposed to walk around naked?”

“You’re going to be given a special change of clothes. As soon as you put it on, it will become indestructible. Also, while you’re wearing it, your call sign and hidden level will be displayed instead of your username. We do that to maintain your safety in case you make enemies here. You’ll also have a good mask you can wear if you want to keep secret the fact that you’re at a psychiatric clinic. Look around! In this room, nobody can see your username.”

The patients started moving around, looking to check out their new clothes. In the meantime, the cat jumped off the father’s lap and marched imposingly across the entire room. It drew the attention of most of the patients, although there were a few of them who didn’t react to anything. Orderlies handed them clothes and ushered them into the next room.

One of the patients fixed his eyes on the cat, who Robson was petting. Belish purred, offering his back and head to be petted. The patient completely ignored the orderlies in favor of the scene. Finally, one of the orderlies grabbed him by the shoulder and pushed him over to the rest. The portal was activated and started sending the patients to their houses.

Everything went smoothly. Alice got the impression that she’d been handed a calm group, so she decided to visit her new wards right off the bat. That took up the rest of her time that day. A few of them were open to conversation with her; others were in no hurry to chat. With two left on her list, Alice found herself in the room belonging to that last, strange patient.

He looked to be about twenty. When she showed up, ported directly to the table they were supposed to talk at, she noticed him sitting on the porch, where he was licking his own hand. It was easy to spot him—all the houses were identical. But what caught her attention was that he was wearing a striped cat outfit. Red and white stripes lined his pants and the remains of his shirt. There were feline ears on his hood. While the sleeves of his shirt had been torn off, he had cat gloves complete with claws on his hands. Toe holes had been cut out of his white slippers. Needless to say, there were claws fixed to his toes.

It had taken him just six hours to put together his costume, all made out of special clinic clothing. A thought flashed through Alice’s mind: the kid was pretty elaborate for a game avatar. That sometimes happened when players used a single account over a long period of time—the avatar adapted to the player’s growth and complexion. Really, the difference was in the details, just like right then.

The patient paid no attention to her address and invitation to come sit down. The porch was considered part of the house, so the system didn’t see any point moving him over from where he was. The kid continued licking his hand until he laid down and went to sleep.

Ultimately, she was forced to leave empty-handed.

Her father and brother just laughed.

“He’s smart, I’ll give you that. As soon as a patient puts their clothes on, they become personal and indestructible. He was good enough to do all that first and then put them on.”

The following three days proved that the boy considered himself a cat, just as independent as any other. The surveillance system showed that he hid from everyone else and spent most of his time sleeping in the game. He never logged out of Project Chrysalis.

On the third day, Alice asked her father for the kid’s file.

Bak Kvan was a patient at a hospital in one of the Venusian colonies. Brain trauma had resulted in psychological problems, a cerebral lesion impacting reticular formation. In real life, he simply couldn’t sleep. The med capsule at the psychiatric colony kept him permanently in the game, stimulating his muscles with an occasional electric charge to keep them from atrophying. His file said that he was part of a patient test group for new blood circulation stimulants. They were what had caused the stroke and brain trauma. At Clover, he took the name LJ and refused to answer to anything else.

Even his behavior turned cat-like. His manner of sleeping, eating, hunting, grooming himself, playing with his prey, sleeping most of the time—he thought he was a cat.

It had been almost a month since Bak showed up at the clinic. One of his neighbors on the island decided to play a prank on him, leaping out of the bushes with a shout of “boo!” when Bak was coming back from a fishing trip holding his prey in his teeth.

With one fast, powerful, precise strike, LJ ripped out his neighbor’s Adam’s apple. There was no weapon involved; all he had was the claws on his gloves. Alice was summoned immediately to his house. Then, the kid was ported there, as well. He showed up, fumbling with the bracelet on his arm as it intensified the shock. That was something the negators did when the patients had strong resistance to electricity. Right then, in fact, it was pulsing so strongly that even being close to LJ was dangerous. Ultimately, the charge killed him, and he respawned five minutes later in the same room.

That day, Bak was transferred to Fitz, the fifth island where all the most dangerous “guests” went. It wasn’t just anyone, not even someone with finely honed skills, who could tear out an opponent’s Adam’s apple with just one strike. For some reason, there was nothing about combat skills in his file.

Everyone working at the clinic started calling LJ an idiot. Alice’s father told her why.

“Bak Kvan is a Korean name, and the name ‘Bak’ sounds like ‘baka.