Somnia Online by K.T. Hanna (reading strategies book txt) 📕

well he’d done and how hard he’d work and the distinct sense of self that came with it.

The effect was instantaneous.

Jamesnegon stopped in his tracks, pausing for a moment, his shoulders rigid like he was fighting something off. He looked up to the sky, causing the hood to fall back from his face, and in that moment, Murmur saw his eyes had cleared, but there were still pinches of pain evident in his expression.

And then he screamed. Murmur wasn’t so sure that was a good thing.

Snowy barked next to her, and she knew even the wolf sounded concerned. She stumbled back and away, out of the reach of James’s arms just in case, and perhaps his spells as well. As the scream lessened in intensity, it grew in emotion until it became a full-on sobbing fit as he looked down finally and put his head in his hands.

“Hold your fire!” Devlish yelled. Murmur wondered how long he’d wanted to say that for.

Another roar echoed from somewhere deeper in the prison, and Murmur realized she’d probably made the actual prison boss really damn angry.

James looked up, blinking his eyes, and the form in front of them all slowly reverted to elven, through all the phases he must have passed through to get to the large elf mix he’d been. She had to remember he probably didn’t know her actual character, and she could hide her name from him fairly easily. Although the rest of Fable couldn’t, and it wouldn’t be too hard to figure out.

His eyes rested on her, and he cocked his head to one side, wincing in pain. He reached around the back of his neck and hesitated. Havoc moved faster than she did.

“Here. I’ll help.” Havoc directed Leeroy to take care of the strange pipe that fed whatever it was into James’s system. Murmur watched, her vision clouding as she saw the relief and coming down from pain reflected in the man’s eyes. Behind her there was grumbling. Irritation that they’d been denied an actual kill yet again, but Masha shushed them all, and Risk stood behind the cleric, his arms crossed in a way that told anyone complaining they’d have to deal with him.

James righted himself, his legs apparently wobbly. His body hadn’t reverted fully to elf and still had a mismatch of skin colorings peppered over his face. He appeared to be very disoriented, but he hobbled over to Murmur. She could see his hands shaking as he did so. Like he’d been withdrawn from a drug he didn’t know he was addicted to.

“You did that, didn’t you?” His voice spoke hoarsely. Maybe he’d been screaming inside that thing.

She eyed him cautiously. “If you mean I gave you a way out, yeah, I did.” She didn’t add that she’d had no clue what she was doing, nor that what she’d done could have gone very wrong.

“Thanks.” He looked at her, and she nodded. “But I think I need to go rest now.”

The next moment, he was gone. But Murmur had a bad feeling he wouldn’t be waking up yet.

 

Brainwave Focus Study Laboratory - James Hartfield’s home

Subdivision of Military Brainwave Research Institution

Somnia Online - Location unknown - First Login Terminated

Day Thirty-Two

James’s vitals appeared to be absolutely fine. In fact, better than fine. David watched them for any flicker of abnormality, but they remained there, nice and sturdy. Sort of like Staven, standing at the back of the room. Unmovable and strong at first glance.

Until all at once everything went haywire for about three seconds.

They were the longest three seconds of his life. Okay, the second longest. The first time had been when Wren stopped responding when she had her headgear on booted into the system. Still, though, as James’s heart rate began to come back down, his skin lost some of its pallor.

The doctor began to check him over, all the vitals, all the signals he could check to make sure James was fine. He stood back with a frown on his face after about five minutes. “He’s fine. Better than he was, yet I don’t see any signs of him waking back up.”

David hesitated. “Maybe it’s just a bit of lag?”

The doctor raised an eyebrow. “He could just be experiencing a minor complication due to the peculiar way he’s entered this coma. Even his brainwaves appear unaffected most of the time.”

“Most of the time?” Davenport asked as he paced the width of the rather large attic room.

“There have been occasional spikes that at least let me know he’s not like the vegetative state specimen that you have back at your lab.” The doctor wasn’t being crass or mean; he just spoke in a very clinical way.

David knew Michael was, for all intents and purposes, brain dead, but it still didn’t help to hear about it like that. “Will he wake up?”

The doctor hesitated, and then answered with a raised eyebrow. “His vitals are strong and certainly indicate a favorable recovery, but we aren’t out of the woods yet. Considering the odd cases you keep bringing me, Richard, I have to say that I do not know.” He ran a hand through his grey mane of hair. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go back to your other lab and check on your other patient. Because you do pay me to do both.”

And with that, he left the room.

David watched him go, glancing at the message from his wife he’d received a good eight minutes ago. When the alarms had gone off. “Hey. He’s logged out of the game. Wren did it…”

Except didn’t that mean he should be awake now? If he wasn’t, and they didn’t have a virtual stopover set up for him, where the hell was he going to spend limbo, and where had he gone to?

Davenport sighed, walking over to where James lay, his chest rising and falling like all he was doing was sleeping. The older man had a frown on his face. “You know, his bosses and I