Chapter 32

Eliza had been observing Anji for almost seven months now. All this time, she had also been playing Chrysalis and watching how her charges played. For all the children, this game had been a revelation—a ray of hope. They were happy to find parents, even if only virtual ones, who were strikingly similar to real ones. Every project created before had felt cardboard-like in comparison to Chrysalis. Right after the beta test concluded, children with in-game parents were offered the chance to move to a new game world. When a child logged in, they found themselves surrounded by the same family, but in a new setting.

Anji’s case was an exception, even though psychological data suggested the boy was doing fine. Eliza didn’t believe it. He had spent seven months in some location where it was always evening, the sky choked with black clouds tinged red. At first, he lay motionless for ten days, then spent two weeks running through an ashen wasteland. Eliza stopped watching. The fact that the boy had tried to befriend the inhabitants of the misty shroud was too horrifying to even recall. How else could his attempts to get their attention be interpreted? And then he had fled from them himself. It all resembled Hell more than anything. But how he had ended up there—that remained unknown.

Attempts to make contact were ignored; threats only made things worse. Even the silence test had been a breeze for him. During the last ten sessions, neither Eliza nor Anji had spoken a single word. He would just sit there, motionless, while in the game, he was active and cheerful—at least at first.

For the last six months, she hadn’t observed the boy, only asking Moro to collect gameplay footage. She needed a break—and more information—to properly define the problem and determine a solution. Now, she had finally decided to check what Anji was up to.