Yet there was that padlock on the gates and the investigators were actively discouraging all offers of help. Warnings had gone out: any players who got caught in the Parkworld would find themselves in ten tons of trouble.
When Griff realised that his mother’s frozen state wasn’t just temporary, his world collapsed.
He should never have stolen the rareio from his mum’s cache – that was wrong.
He should never have boasted about it to Lyle and Boom or prided himself on being such an amazing player – he wasn’t.
Most of all, he should have spotted the warning signs that he’d corrupted the rareio: the glitching, the look of pure evil on its face. He should have realised the danger and not used the rareio in the game. At the time, all he had been able to think about was being a hero and winning the game for Westford Abbey.
And now his mum was in hospital. No one could say if she was ever going to get better.
Griff spoke to the doctors and then the investigators and in a small, guilty voice gave them all the information he could about the rareio and how he’d taken it from Paula’s cache. He answered their questions honestly. He hoped desperately that they’d find some way of unfreezing all twenty-nine ‘Ray-Chay Victims’, as the newspapers were calling them. The investigators assured Griff and his dad that they were doing all they could to destroy the rareio. Once they did that, they hoped Paula and the others would wake up.
Ant couldn’t help but feel sorry for Griff, who wasn’t exactly Mr Popular anymore. The kids at school avoided him. Lyle and Boom wanted nothing to do with him. He spent most of his time on his own.
Ant had had to learn how to stay in control of his gaming. That’s why he and his dad had come up with the one-hour/two-hour rule. For Griff to go behind his mum’s back and steal from her cache, he’d been letting the game control him. That’s how Ant saw it.
One Friday lunchtime, Ant broke away from his friends and went over to Griff, who was sitting in a corner of the tennis court looking thoroughly miserable.
‘You okay?’ asked Ant.
Griff glanced at him and frowned. ‘Like you care.’
‘If I didn’t care, I wouldn’t ask.’
Griff glared straight at him. ‘Okay, if you want to know, I’m feeling rubbish. My mum’s still in hospital, I don’t know how long for. Everyone hates me.I hate me and everything’s … everything’s gone wrong…’
Ant heard the sob in Griff’s throat. He turned his head so as not to embarrass him.
‘Griff, how did you get hold of the rareio in the first place?’
‘Why? So you can hate me even more?’ said Griff.
‘I might be able to help.’
Griff wiped his nose on the back of his hand. ‘Help? How?’
‘I’ve had an idea.’ Ant crouched a few feet from Griff, his back against the wire fence. ‘This happened because you did something you shouldn’t have been able to do. You went into someone else’s cache.’
‘And…?’ Griff was starting to sound annoyed.
‘That should be the starting point for any investigation. You explained this to the Crunch Hut guys?’
‘Course I did! I want my mum out of hospital. I want everyone out of there. I told the investigators everything I could. Honestly, everything.’
‘And what did they say?’
‘Not a lot.’ Griff shrugged.
Ant got to his feet and paced up and down. ‘It feels like they’re missing something. I pass the park gates every day and … I don’t know … when I see the investigators, they don’t seem to be doing much. They’re not fighting, they’re just standing around. Tell me, Griff, how exactly did you get into your mum’s cache?’
‘Do I have to go through it all again?’
‘Please?’ said Ant. ‘Just tell me.’
‘All right, if you must know, I put her headset on. I was wearing myRay-Chay suit but I put on her stupid headset. That’s all. Suddenly I wasn’t in my world, I was in hers. I could get into her cache. I could go anywhere. Not properly, it was all glitchy. I knew there was something wrong. I should have stopped there and then.’
Ant sat down in front of Griff. ‘Tell me exactly what happened,’ he said, trying to control his mounting excitement. ‘Start at the beginning. Don’t leave anything out.’
By the end of lunch break, Griff had told Ant everything and a plan was hatching in Ant’s brain.
‘I need you to meet me after school,’ he said as the bell rang. ‘Go home, get your Ray-Chay suit and headset and meet me in the Dell at four. The same place you found me playing that time. Don’t tell anyone.’
‘There’s no one to tell,’ said Griff. ‘No one’s talking to me, remember? Anyway, we’re not supposed to play Ray-Chay. Not any more…’
‘I know but I’ve had an idea and if it works, it might help. I don’t want to build up your hopes but … it might.’
‘Why do you want to help me? We’ve never exactly got on.’
Ant was already walking towards the school buildings as Griff called after him. He stopped. ‘I know,’ he said over his shoulder. ‘You’re an idiot, Griff. You’re spoilt, you’re annoying and I’ve never liked you. But I can’t stand by and watch you suffer.’
Griff’s mouth snapped shut and Ant headed off to his next lesson.
Griff knew nothing about Ant’s mum, Carol. She had become very ill and died when he was just three years old, but he still remembered her kindness, her sense of fun and her beautiful smile. There were photos in their old album of her building sandcastles with Ant and Lia on the beach and snuggling up with them on the sofa to read a story. They still had the same sofa at home. Even though it
