“John!” Saffie said, feeling the cat’s coarse tongue lapping away at her cheek.

Yes, their cat’s name was John. John Alan Philips, in fact.

Saffie’s mum had thought the cat’s face bore a striking resemblance to her dead second cousin John Alan Philips. Saffie had seen a photo of the original John Alan Philips and concluded that grief could make people see pretty much anything they wanted; even a bald guy with a wonky eye in the face of a fluffy ginger cat.

What day was it? Saturday? Had she been sleeping on her bedroom floor? Her whole body ached. Saffie had been having a horrendous nightmare about her classmates pranking her and Dax falling into a coma, and she felt exhausted from it.

She wanted nothing more than to lie in until midday, but John didn’t seem interested in letting that happen. He continued to lick away, and Saffie soon realised that there was something strange about his tongue. Was it swollen? It felt larger than usual. It was also licking so rapidly and excitedly that Saffie wouldn’t have been surprised if there had been butter all over her face.

“Dude, what is up with you?” she said, opening her tired eyes.

It was not John.

Looking down at her with excited eyes was some kind of racoon or fox cub, except its fur was a vibrant mix of blue and orange, and there was a beautiful almost Mayan style pattern on its forehead.

The animal leapt onto her chest and began bouncing up and down with excitement.

“Mum!” Saffie called, her eyes bulging out of their sockets. “When did we get a new pet? No - scrap that question - WHAT is the new pet?!”

“What the blighters are you talking about, darling?” her mum called back.

The creature pounced from her and landed on the carpet, running around in circles like an excited little puppy.

Saffie picked herself up and backed into the hallway. The creature raced after her.

On the landing, Holly was on her knees, scrubbing the antique rug that lay between the entrance to her room and the staircase. Holly had bought it at a luxury boutique in Mayfair four years ago, and winced every time anyone dared step on it.

“Dax NEVER takes his shoes off!” she ranted, not even looking up at Saffie. “I’ve told him time and time again!”

The creature ran to Holly’s ankles and sniffed her, reeling back at the acrid stench of the carpet cleaner.

“Mum, what the hell is that thing?” Saffie said, pointing at it.

Holly looked up at Saffie, then down again.

“This ‘thing,’ darling, is a one hundred and fifty count hand-knotted Persian rug. You were there when I paid seven thousand pounds for it, remember?”

“No, not the rug!” Saffie spat. “That… creature! That weird looking rabbit, cat, racoon thing!”

Holly stared at her.

‘Saffie, don’t mess with me,” she said sternly, raising her rubber gloved index finger. “Your uncle began saying strange things like that a few months ago, and look at what’s happened to him.”

Saffie was now completely awake. Dax falling into a coma had certainly been no dream. She had placed the key to her temple and it had inserted something into her brain. She remembered the pressure and the pain, then the darkness. It had knocked her out. And now there was a weird animal sitting at her mum’ s feet.

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“Y-you… you can’t see it?” Saffie stammered.

“Okay, that’s it,” said Holly, getting to her feet and placing her arms on her hips. “I’m taking you to see Dr Rogers.”

“No! I’m fine, mum!” Saffie lied. “I don’t need to see a doctor.”

‘Saffie, you’re telling me you can see a rabbit on my rug!”

“No, forget I said rabbit. He looks more like a racoo- you know what? It was a joke.”

The creature suddenly raced back to Saffie and began crawling up her left leg. It wriggled up her side and perched itself on her shoulder. Saffie dared to look left, and saw that the creature was sticking its tongue out at her mum.

Saffie had to stifle a laugh.

“This isn’t a laughing matter, Saffie! You’re going to end up in a coma, just like your uncle!”

“I’m gonna go get dressed,” Saffie said, backing away with a wide, false smile on her face.

Saffie stepped into her room and shut the door quickly. The creature jumped from her shoulder, landed on her desk, and beamed at her.

“This is a video game, isn’t it?” said Saffie. “And you’re a part of the game?”

The creature nodded enthusiastically.

Of course her birthday gift from Dax had been a video game. He always got her a game of some kind. But this? No wonder he had been so nervous about giving her the key.

Saffie had played a few augmented reality video games earlier that year. The difference was that those had used her phone’s camera to place creatures and magic onto the real world through her screen. She was seeing the game world through her own eyes.

“This is mental,” she whispered. “You look so… real.”

She stepped towards the digital animal and extended her fingertips tentatively. Before she could touch it, the thing scarpered to her hand and buried its furry head in her palm, a satisfied grin on its little face. Its blue and orange patterned fur was soft and luxurious, and Saffie felt a little bit of cold wetness as it rubbed the tip of its nose all over her fingers.

“How on earth can I feel you if you’re not real?” she said, but the creature was too busy smooching her hand to acknowledge her question.

Getting overexcited, it pounced from her desk onto her bed and began jumping up and down. At first it seemed as though the bedsheets were crumpling beneath it, which Saffie REALLY couldn’t grasp, but then she looked closer and noticed a slight discrepancy in the fabric - the game was making it seem like the fabric was being bounced on with a clever illusion. In reality, of course, the fabric was completely static.

A pleasant female voice suddenly came from nowhere and everywhere at the same time.

“Welcome to Overworld, the world’s most advanced augmented reality video game ever created.”

Saffie glanced around wildly, but there was nobody else in her room. The voice was coming from inside her own head.

“You will by now have found yourself with an animal companion. Here in Overworld we call them panions. Look after your panion, as they are your first and most loyal ally in the game.”

“A panion,” Saffie repeated, and the creature stopped bouncing, eagerly awaiting instructions from her.

The voice continued:

“Overworld gives you the freedom to live your life and play at the same time. Whether you hone your magical skills, master the art of potion making, or become a fierce warrior, what you do in Overworld is completely up to you.”

Magical skills? Saffie’s mind started to race, but the voice continued talking and she had to concentrate so she didn’t miss any vital information.

“This is your health bar,” it said.

A circular green meter appeared in the top right of her vision. Saffie moved her head from side to side, and the graphic followed her line of sight as if she was looking at a first-person game on a TV screen.

“Whenever you take in-game damage, your health meter will fall. Health does not automatically regenerate, and must be replenished with potions or healing spells. Be careful and replenish often, for if your health drops to zero, you will enter a twelve hour sleep known as Morrowsleep, and when you wake, you will no longer be in Overworld. Eliminated players are blocked from rejoining with another key. You have just one life in Overworld. Make it count.”

Saffie could feel her heart beating rapidly in her chest.

“To start you off, here is your first spell - Scan. Simply focus on a target, say the word ‘Scan’, and any relevant information about that target will be revealed. The rest…” it paused for dramatic effect, “is up to you to discover. Good luck Overworlder.”

Everything was beginning to make sense. This had to be why Dax had been acting so erratic recently - he had been playing Overworld, seeing and interacting with all of these different things that no-one outside of the game could see.

And the whisper of Ultra Sleep?

Dax wasn’t in a coma. At least not in the traditional sense. The person who had been loitering on Oakley had to have been a rival player, and they had cast a sleeping spell on Dax through the open window.

Well, Saffie had played enough video games to know that every spell had a counter-spell. There was only one thing for it. She was going to discover that counter spell.

She was going to wake Dax up.