“Nate!” Saffie screamed, dropping to her knees.

She shook his arm as Talia fell to his side, and Octavius slithered away, but he didn’t respond.

“What have you done to him?” Saffie said, looking up at Jade.

“Don’t worry, he’s just sleeping,” Jade said with a smirk. “As you will be too.”

Jade raised her arm in Saffie’s direction, but Saffie wasn’t about to go down without a fight. She knew she didn’t have time to perform any kind of elaborate magic, so she quickly got to her feet and cast the simplest and quickest spell she knew.

“Ice Shot!”

An icicle burst out of her palm, soaring towards Jade’s stomach. It wouldn’t do much damage, but maybe it would be enough to distract Jade for a moment so Saffie could think of something better.

But Jade caught it effortlessly with her free hand, and said “Entwine!”

Several strands of neon green string flew through the air towards Saffie and wrapped themselves around her wrists and ankles, binding them together and causing her to fall backwards awkwardly.

Saffie tried to get to her feet, but the shackles tightened. All she could manage was propping herself up enough to be able to see Jade looking at the icicle and laughing slowly.

“Did you really think this would do anything to me?” Jade said, her manic smile turning serious.

She snapped the icicle in half and trod its broken fragments into the grass as she strode towards Saffie.

Acorn, who had been trying to chew through the twine around Saffie’s wrists, pounced at Jade with his claws bared, but Octavius lunged towards him and whipped him with a tentacle, electrocuting him and knocking him unconscious too.

“Acorn!” Saffie cried.

Jade slowed her steps as she approached Saffie, and behind her, several of her followers, including Liam, emerged from the shadows.

“Take care of the others,” Jade said to them. “I’ll deal with this one myself.”

Saffie tried to wriggle free from the twine, but it just got tighter as she did.

“I’m so disappointed in you, Saffie,” Jade said sinisterly, bending down and lowering her head so she was level with her. “You come into my restaurant, you take my precious Eternity Ink, you pledge your allegiance to me, and then you… steal from me.”

Saffie said nothing in return, so Jade narrowed her eyes and said, “Where is it?”

“I’ll never tell you,” Saffie spat.

The hint of a smile returned to Jade’s mouth, and Octavius floated towards Saffie’s head. Saffie tried to shake him off as she felt his tentacles sucker to her temples, but it did nothing to stop him.

“He won’t be able to read that kind of information!” Saffie said desperately.

“Not in his current form, no,” Jade agreed. “He is automatically set to read personalities. But with a click of my fingers… ” Jade snapped her forefinger and thumb together and Octavius changed from his usual black and green colour to more of an orangey red. “He will now be able to read factual information from your brain.”

As a wave of nausea washed through Saffie, Jade tilted her head to one side curiously.

This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work.

“Who’s Oakley?” she said in barely more than a whisper.

Saffie swallowed hard, keeping her mouth shut, but she felt a stronger wave of nausea flow through her. A moment later Octavius released his suction and floated away, returning to his usual colour. Saffie took deep breaths as the uncomfortable sensation passed.

“It’s in the cavity of a tree in her garden,” Jade called to her followers. “Twenty nine North Street, West Hampstead.”

“No!” Saffie shouted. “My parents will stop you!’

“Shh, shh, shh,” Jade whispered as if talking to a baby, then she stroked Saffie’s face just like she had done in her restaurant, and said, “Sleep, little one.”

Saffie desperately tried to keep her eyelids open but they felt like they weighed two tons each. Before she knew it, she was out for the count.

Saffie opened her eyes groggily and blinked away the gunge that had settled in their corners. She had no idea how long she had been unconscious for, and as she looked around, it took her a moment to realise where she was.

She was back in Jade’s throne chamber.

She immediately tried to move, but found that her arms were now tied to a hook on the wall behind her back with the same glowing twine she had been ensnared with, as were her feet. On the floor next to her, Acorn was wriggling furiously, but was also tied with the same stuff.

Saffie blinked again and tried to locate Nate. The room was full of Jade’s followers, but tethered to the opposite wall she could see Cora and Ruben, looking just as drowsy as she felt, and there, a little to their left, was Nate, his face full of bruises. He had evidently put up a fight when he’d come around.

“Nate,” Saffie said desperately, her voice cracking from seeing him in such a state.

“It’s okay, Saff,” he said, although they all knew that was not the case. There was nothing okay about this situation at all.

In the centre of the room, Saffie noticed that the plinth was now empty. Jade and Liam had to have discarded the decoy they had planted there during their extraction operation. Through Saffie’s blurry vision, she saw Liam approach the plinth, holding the real Onyx out in front of him. He placed it down carefully and pulled out the silver arrow Cora had given him.

“Liam, NO!” Cora screamed, but he ignored her and raised the arrow above the Onyx. “I brought you your Annihilation Arrow so you could escape! Not to help this mad woman!”

“Enough!” Jade snapped at Cora. Then she turned to Liam. “Are you sure this weapon will work on the real Onyx?”

“It has never failed to break through any other true protective casing before,” said Liam. “That’s how I knew the other one had to be a fake.”

Jade grinned.

“Then it’s time.”

Liam held the arrow over the top of the Onyx, so the head was almost touching it, then with a click of something on the side of the shaft, the head began spinning like a drill bit.

“NOOOOO!” Cora screamed, but Liam plunged the arrow into the top of the shell.

With a horrible crunch, it cracked like a dragon’s egg.

“YES!” Jade exclaimed, striding towards it with hungry eyes. As the shell cracked even more, she pushed Liam away and stuck her long fingernails in, ripping each fragment away so that the innards were exposed. Hundreds of thousands of garbled letters and numbers undulated, warping the air around it like heat refracting light above a boiling tarmac.

With a wild laugh, Jade plunged her right arm into the open vortex, and Saffie felt a deep churn in her gut, as if Jade’s arm had also plunged into her stomach.

As Jade’s arm delved deeper into the black space, her pupils began to bleed outwards until the whites of her eyes were completely consumed.

Lines and lines of text suddenly began flashing across Saffie’s vision, the same way messages usually did, except way faster, and instead of messages, the text consisted solely of programming code. It was as though Jade was scrolling through it all, searching for something specific.

And then the flashing stopped. It had landed on one line of text.

PlayerControl (individual)

After a moment, another appeared beneath it:

Radius = LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM

Jade grinned widely, green veins bulging out of her forearm. With a twist of her wrist, Saffie saw the first line of code change to:

PlayerControl (assignToPlayer=JadeSakata/count=all)

With horror, Saffie could only guess what this meant - Jade had gained control of all players in London.

Instantly, Saffie felt something change in every bone in her body. She urged herself to wriggle free of the twine, but she couldn’t move. Even the muscles in her face weren’t doing what she wanted them to do any more. She couldn’t move, she couldn’t speak, she couldn’t do anything. Her entire body was now under Jade’s control.

Jade pulled her arm out of the Onyx and surveyed everyone in the room.

“You,” she said, looking at Cora. “Raise your right arm.”

Jade made a gesture, and the twine that had been holding Cora in place disappeared.

Without any resistance, Cora raised her right arm willingly, like some kind of zombie.

Jade laughed deeply, then wafted both of her arms in a semi circle outwards, making the twine around the rest of them disappear too. Saffie felt her arms drop to her sides, but she still couldn’t make them budge.

“Everybody,” said Jade. “To The Trellis.”