The week that followed was one of the most mentally challenging Saffie had ever had to endure. She was grounded indefinitely, and could only watch from her window as her dad swept away the scorched remains of her stuff. By Wednesday it had really begun to sink in that her most precious possessions were gone for good, and it left her with a hollow sensation in her chest, as though a piece of herself had been destroyed in the fire along with them.
Holly said nothing else about Dax’s life support, but Saffie dreaded every new day, petrified that it would be the one where her mum would make the final call. She knew she had to be on her best behaviour, so she acted as politely as she possibly could in the minimal interactions she had with her parents, and she worried with every single word that came out of her mouth that it might be the one to tip her mum over the edge.
Saffie debated telling her parents everything; about the electronic chips in both her own and Dax’s brains, about the in-game spell that had done this to him, and that she just needed time to gain access to the counterspell that would cure him, but what then? Her mum would no doubt go running to the doctors, who from what she could gather had no idea the chip was there. It was most likely using some advanced technology to make itself undetectable to modern medical equipment, but if the doctors became aware of its existence, they would probably attempt to remove it. Saffie had no idea what that would do to Dax, but something in her gut told her it wouldn’t be good. Would it leave him stuck in the coma forever? Would it kill him outright? She very much doubted he would just miraculously wake up.
No, Saffie knew she had to keep Overworld hidden from her parents.
Her time in her room was supposed to be spent reading a pile of non-fiction books that Holly had dumped on her desk, including An Introduction to the Joy of Antique Collecting, How to Have More Intellectual Conversations, and one with a pink “IMPORTANT” post-it-note attached to it called Ladette to Lady: Traditional Finishing School Teachings for Troublesome Teenage Girls, but she didn’t touch them aside from creasing a few of the corners to make it look like they’d been read. Instead, she kept a close eye on her Overworld map of Central London, checking to see if any rare beasts came within firing distance of her house, while Acorn kept watch on her windowsill for any smaller hostile creatures, getting so excited any time one wandered into the garden or floated by that he squealed and his bushy blue tail trembled like he was being electrocuted.
Saffie wasn’t quite as enthusiastic. Firing elemental projectiles at basic enemies from her open bedroom window as discreetly as she could was probably netting her a little bit of experience, but it was most likely nothing compared to what she could have been earning completing errands out in the wider city.
She battled each day with the temptation to leave the house. Her parents were both at their office jobs the majority of the time, so it’s not like they would have directly known she was gone as long as she was back home before them. But Holly had warned Saffie that the neighbours on either side were very aware of her grounded status, and if it was reported that she had been out and about, she would not like the consequences. She just hoped the slight waving around of her arms through her window would be written off as swatting away flies.
As the days dragged on, she really began to realise how badly she had messed up with Nate. The entire time she spent pondering over her map, she hoped a reply to her message would suddenly come through, but it never did. It wasn’t like she could blame him. She knew her message apology wasn’t enough. She needed to go find him and say to him in person how much she had appreciated his help, and that she would like to be friends if he could ever forgive her for the way she had treated him, but she couldn’t even leave her house to do that.
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On Saturday morning, Saffie woke up late after another restless night to a very loud whirring sound. At first she thought it was her mum’s blender whizzing up frozen fruit on max settings, but as she crept downstairs, the noise became so loud there was no way it could have been coming from any kitchen appliance. As she stepped into the kitchen, she realised it wasn’t coming from inside the house at all, it was coming from the garden.
Acorn clung to Saffie’s ankle as though the white machine hovering and wobbling just a few inches above the grass was some kind of monster, but it was nothing of the sort - it was the quadcopter Peter had been eyeing up for the last few weeks, with him inside.
Saffie placed her bare feet on the patio and tried to ignore the strands of her own hair that were whipping her face from the force of the four separate rotors.
“How about it, Saffie?!” Peter shouted, waving a letter at her that had to have been his license to fly. He pushed open the passenger door and beamed at her. “You and me! A Saturday morning flight around Hampstead Heath!”
“If you think I would ever allow our daughter to get in that thing with you, you’ve lost your marbles just as much as her!” Holly snapped from where she stood at the other end of the patio, clutching a mug of tea.
“Oh come on, Holly dear! It’ll be some real adventuring! Proper father-daughter bonding!”
Saffie couldn’t believe her parents were even having this conversation.
“Bonding?” she shouted. “After what you did to my stuff?” There were so many other things she wanted to shout, but she knew she had to hold her tongue, so she just kept her eyes locked on her dad’s and shook her head slowly.
After a moment the quadcopter lowered to the ground and settled, then the propellors wound down. Saffie turned away and went back up to her bedroom before the temptation to say anything overcome her.
She collapsed onto her unmade bed and pinched the bridge of her nose, hoping it would help relieve the headache she hadn’t been able to shake for the last few days, but as soon as she did, Acorn began growling.
She opened her eyes and glanced over at him. He was on top of the open map on her desk, dabbing his paw at something.
“Acorn?” she said, getting back up and walking over to him. “What is it?”
But she saw what he was reacting to straight away.
Creeping south from Piccadilly Circus to the St. James’s area was what she had learned at the guild was the rarest known creature in Overworld; a bonefiend. It was an ugly thing, like a giant spider made of various human bones, and it was thought to be something that awarded unusually generous amounts of multiple types of experience if defeated. They weren’t known to be very dangerous, but they were known for their evasiveness. After placating the yip-yaps, an impressed Ashmi had told Saffie that the only thing trickier to catch was a bonefiend.
The house-spider-sized animated icon continued to creep down the map, and Saffie and Acorn both watched it closely until it suddenly stopped at a particular location; The London Library. Saffie thought this was a little odd, but she dismissed it, and Acorn eventually got bored now that it was no longer moving, and went to stare out of the window again instead.
For the remainder of that day, Saffie lay on her bed desperately trying to think of some way to speed up the amount of experience she could gain in her home, but no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t think of anything, and it had just made her headache even worse. Every now and again she got up to check the map, and noticed that the bonefiend icon was still at The London Library, and as the hours passed, she found that she couldn’t stop thinking about it.
At just gone midnight, Saffie looked at the map one more time, and low and behold the bonefiend was still in the exact same spot. The library would be closed at this hour, which meant the creature had to be trapped inside. Without anywhere for it to run, if a player could somehow find a way to get in, it would be the perfect opportunity for them to corner it and easily bag a ton of experience.
Saffie pressed her ear to her wall, making sure that there was silence in her mum and dad’s bedroom, then she headed over to the window, where her line of sight travelled across the nearest branch, down Oakley’s trunk, and over the garden fence.
She took a deep breath, unsure if what she was about to do was the right thing. But she was sick of doing nothing.
“Come on Acorn,” she said quietly. “We’re breaking out.”