Dax’s apartment was a small but stylish place in a high rise building in North Acton. Holly was always moaning about Dax being a middle aged man in a flat that was designed for twenty-something socialites, and repeated frequently that he needed to be in a proper house in a proper neighbourhood, but Saffie had always thought his apartment was pretty cool.
Up on the sixth floor, it had an incredible view of the Thames, and there was something about the compactness of it that Saffie loved. Dax was a freelance coder who worked from home the majority of the time, and Saffie could picture herself living somewhere just like it when she was older, doing some kind of work from a laptop and watching the bustle of the city outside.
“Do you know, this tiny place cost him roughly the same price as our beautiful house?” said Holly as she rummaged for Dax’s front door key in her handbag.
“Yeah, you tell me every time, mum,” Saffie replied vacantly. She had noticed something very odd about the door handle. Usually horizontal, it was hanging limply at a diagonal. She stepped towards it and pulled it down.
With a click, the door opened.
“Don’t tell me he left his door unlocked?” Holly sighed.
Saffie knew Dax would never have done that.
“Someone broke in,” she said.
“Oh, for goodness sake,” Holly snapped irritably. “Don’t start with that paranoia again, please.” She pushed past Saffie and strode into the apartment, making straight for the kitchen area. Saffie followed her in with caution, keeping an eye out for any lurkers. When she was content that there was nobody there, she realised that the place was completely untouched.
“He was losing his mind, Saffie,” Holly said, pulling on her rubber gloves with a snap. “Leaving his door unlocked would have been the least strange thing that he did in the run up to this coma.”
Saffie ignored her mum and went straight to Dax’s computer desk, where there was a half drank can of cola and two empty packets of crisps.
Dax’s gaming rig was an awe-inspiring sight. Three curved monitors formed a semi circle around a chair that looked like it belonged in a spaceship, and the PC itself was a water cooled tower that, when switched on, gave off a neon blue glow.
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The first thing Saffie noticed as she approached it was a printed coach ticket tacked to the leftmost of his monitors. Saffie picked it off and peered closer.
National Express
LONDON VICTORIA to
SWANSEA
The date printed on the bottom of the ticket was just two days away.
Why had Dax been planning a trip to Swansea? It was in South Wales, around a five hour journey by coach if Saffie remembered from a school trip she’d gone on in her first year at Willow Grove. Not the kind of trip someone just casually takes without a purpose. It was a picturesque place - lots of sandy beaches and rugged coastline, but Dax had never shown a great deal of interest in that kind of thing.
Saffie didn’t have particularly fond memories of the place herself, but that was probably because her classmates had put chips in the hood of her coat and she’d been attacked by about 20 seagulls. As far as Saffie knew, Dax had no connection to the coastal city. What business did he have there? And why hadn’t he mentioned it to her?
“Mum, do you and Dax have any… relatives in South Wales?”
“South Wales? Darling, you know your nana and grandpapa were both Scottish, and your father’s family are all still in Kent.”
“Didn’t think so,” Saffie said to herself more than to her mum.
She rummaged through the drawers on the left hand side of Dax’s desk until she saw something that immediately caught her eye. It was what looked like a regular pair of glasses except for one small thing. Printed on its right stem was a familiar symbol of a crystal encased in a flaming blue ‘O’: the Overworld logo.
Saffie put them on and glanced around the room, but they didn’t seem to do anything. The glass appeared to be just glass, and they didn’t provide any magnification. Saffie took them off and pocketed them. She made a mental note to examine them in more detail later.
Continuing to rifle through Dax’s drawers, Saffie eventually came across a notebook full of hundreds of sketches of characters. Dax was an excellent artist, and she smiled at the fond memories she had of him teaching her how to draw as a child.
She flipped through the notebook and tried to drown out the noise of her mum’s complaints, but it was difficult when they were coming out in a constant slew:
“He clearly can’t have vacuumed in weeks! Look at the state of the hobs! There are TEN packets of marshmallows in this cupboard!”
As Saffie reached the middle pages, she felt a lump form in her throat. Sandwiched between the cape of an unfinished elven warrior and a grisly orc was a sketch of Dax himself holding a creature that Saffie could only guess was his panion. It was a yellow, fluffy thing that reminded Saffie a bit of a space hopper she used to bounce around on when she was little. Scrawled next to it was what was presumably the name Dax had given it - Fumble.
This was the Dax Saffie remembered - smiling from ear to ear, full of life and energy. Not the lifeless body he had become.
Saffie turned the page to prevent her from getting upset, expecting to find more illustrations of Dax’s original characters, but as she pressed the paper flat, she felt the hairs on her arms stand on end.
It was completely blank except for a large word scrawled in sharp capital letters, and a five digit number:
ONYX
67209