I remembered Ayesha’s warning about revealing to any character inside the CodeX that it was a game. Had my grandmother broken that rule? Had she made a mistake? Was that why she hadn’t returned?
An image of a man in his mid-thirties appeared on the screen, making me jump, and I recognised him at once.
Grandpa John sat at a table with the warehouse space behind him, though there were no rows packed full of games yet—only a few scattered boxes and crates here and there.
My grandfather’s face was decades younger but ashen. He had bags under his eyes, his hair was dishevelled, and his voice was solemn, devoid of life. “Macy won’t stop crying. Wants her mommy. How can I tell her what really happened?” Grandpa John leaned forward. “I will do whatever it takes to find Alice.” The screen went dark.
I sat there, waiting, holding my breath.
Sure enough, a few seconds later, he reappeared.
This time, Grandpa John was unshaven, with a month of beard growth.
“I’ve made some progress.” He zoomed the camera out, revealing the open CodeX box on the bench next to him. He held up the crystal key. “This thing was in the alien passenger’s pocket.” He set the crystal down and lifted out the leather CodeX, only it looked more of a greyish-brown in the weak artificial light. “And I found this inside. A book of some sort, filled with mumbo jumbo. Can’t make sense of it, but I will.”
He leaned forward, and the image snapped off again.
I remained frozen like a block of ice.
When the picture returned, Grandpa John paced, wringing his hands. “It’s a game.” His voice rippled with nervous excitement. “It’s a game, and they trapped Alice inside. She’s a prisoner.” He stopped and faced the camera. “Ayesha said the CodeX gives you what you desire in return for completing the levels—your wishes, your goals—and I want my wife back.” He leaned in close and smiled. “I’m coming to get you, baby.”
The image fizzed and disappeared.
I sat there, trying to process.
Grandpa John thought Grandma Alice had fallen into the game somehow, which I’d already gathered, but if that was the case, why hadn’t she popped back out right away? Why did he think she was trapped? A prisoner?
When I went into the CodeX game and met Ayesha, no time had passed, and she’d let me leave. Why hadn’t the same thing happened to Alice? The CodeX had kept her inside. For what purpose?
The whirring and clicking from the tape player grated on my nerves, so I reached for the Stop button, but an image snapped on.
Grandpa John again. However, this time he looked older, years older, and angry. He almost spat at the camera as he spoke, “I have completed three levels, countless times each, and I still can’t find her. Each pass, win or fail, the damn CodeX and Ayesha force me to write out what happened before they allow me back in, before I can restart or carry on.”
He held up the CodeX, revealing the first few pages, now blank, ready for my grandfather to write his experiences.
Grandpa John let out a huff of annoyance and lowered the book. “Wasting my time. I need to find her. Don’t want to use up my days writing in the damn CodeX. I need to—”
The image warped, and the player squeaked and groaned—its final death throes. I hit the Power button and sat back, scratching my chin.
After Grandpa John left the CodeX, the book forced him to write out what he’d just done inside the game before letting him back in for another attempt.
I blew out a puff of air. That explained how time halted when he or I went into the CodeX, and yet forty years had still gone by since Grandpa John had started his search for Alice—he’d spent those years writing in the real world trying to get back inside the game.
Which also meant that if I went into the game myself, I’d have to do the same when I came back. I would need to record what I had seen and done. How long will that take? I wasn’t a fast writer. It would mean delaying my or Grandpa John’s return to the CodeX world.
Now the symbol on the front of the CodeX made sense to me—it was a beacon, a sign, a lighted arrow pointing the way to the matching glyph on my grandmother’s locket. It was an invitation to find her. A challenge.
I sighed. I couldn’t comprehend my grandfather’s desperation, his pain, and I started to understand why he had wanted to show me the CodeX in the first place.
Even though I couldn’t fathom why he didn’t tell my mother and father and let them try too, I could only assume I was the last resort after forty years.
Or a new hope?
Either way, I knew what I had to do. I looked at the shelves of video games, and my chest swelled.
It was up to me.
Twelve
When I got back to the lodge, I fed Milo and made an early lunch, pretending nothing out of the ordinary had happened. Another boring day in the woods.
I was in shock. On autopilot.
As I sat at the kitchen table, eating a ham sandwich and munching my way through a packet of chocolate biscuits with reckless abandon, I imagined standing in front of the lodge with my grandmother in two weeks’ time, watching the taxi swing into the driveway. I pictured the look on Grandpa John’s face when he laid eyes on her.
Then I thought about Mum.
She believed her mother was dead and had tried to move on from the grief by living in London, burying herself in her career, marrying a guy with the same philosophy, and starting a family of her own.
It wasn’t fair I got two loving, though hard-working parents when my mum had grown up with practically none. But since moving to America, Mum and Dad were absent ninety percent of the time, so this was an opportunity to help us all.
My stomach did a backflip.
The CodeX was my chance to change our lives—to bring a wife, a mother, and a grandmother home.
If I found Grandma Alice, my parents would have even more reason to be around. They wouldn’t work so much. The lodge would become a place where we could be a real family.
Alice was the key to unlocking all of that.
I only prayed the game world wasn’t too difficult to control. Will Ayesha give me the option of an ultra-ultra, super-easy, talentless-and-uncoordinated-kid setting?
Shoving two more biscuits into my mouth—I was still a growing boy, after all—I stood and balled my fists as another wave of determination flowed through me.
No one would stop me.
I was going into the game to find her.
I would succeed where Grandpa John had failed.
And I would build our family the way we were meant to be.
Within the CodeX, I’d play the part of Captain Leonardo Cooper, hunting for magical artifacts, and I would do everything in my power to find Grandma Alice.
There remained one minor problem—the crystal key and its whereabouts.
I hoped Grandpa John hadn’t hidden it in one of his forty billion game cases at the observatory warehouse, or I was well and truly screwed.
I smiled to myself as I remembered waiting for him with the taxi driver. If Grandpa John had only been gone five minutes, there was no chance he’d made it up to the observatory and back in that time.
Which meant the crystal was in the house.
With a rush of adrenaline, I leapt to my feet, “Come on, Milo,” and marched into the sitting room. “We have a magical key to find.”
I turned to see the Pekingese lying on the tiled floor, his belly bulging and his head resting on his paws. He let out a small sigh and went to sleep.
“Are you serious? What’s the point of you?”
Milo didn’t respond.
Silly sod never did.
He understood what I said, though. All dogs did. They only pretended not to, because as soon as anyone uttered the word “biscuit,” even in a faint whisper from another part of the house, you got their full and undivided attention.
Facing the sitting room, I scanned every nook and cranny, my eyes crystal-seeking lasers hunting for potential hiding places. Apart fr
om furniture, the sparse area only had a wooden sculpture of a bear next to the fireplace—no handy vases or ornaments to conceal crystal-key-sized items.
“If I were an old guy,” I muttered as I continued to scan the room, “where would I hide something from my grandson? Where would he think I wouldn’t search?”
I hurried to the leather chairs, thrust my hand down the back of each, and lifted cushions. I found three boiled sweets covered in liberal amounts of fluff, a ballpoint pen lid, one dollar and twenty-eight cents in change—woohoo—and last, quite bizarrely, a map of the London Underground.
I shrugged, tossing it all onto the nearest table. Then I examined a small wooden galleon on the mantelpiece, but there were no obvious hiding places there either.
I stepped back and scratched my chin. “Hmm.”
No way I was giving up.
“The bounty must be in here somewhere, right enough,” I said in a spot-on pirate’s accent. “Or me name ain’t Captain Leonardo Cooper.” I closed one eye and shook a fist. “Arrrrgh.” Then I regretted my team decision with Ayesha—perhaps I would’ve made a better cut-throat Kraython than a treasure-hunting Antarian.
Focusing on the task at hand, I guessed the key would be inside the lodge, but I doubted Grandpa John had stashed it in the kitchen—say, in a cereal box, or buried in the bottom of a coffee jar—because I was sure he wouldn’t risk either of my parents finding it by accident. After all, they’d seen Grandpa John give the crystal to me as a birthday present, so if it turned up somewhere odd, that would arouse their suspicions, especially in the case of my ever-distrustful mother.
Therefore, turning my Sherlock Holmes-esque mind to the problem, logic told me Grandpa John would not have hidden the key in a place with a high amount of Cooper family foot-traffic. Continuing to search the sitting room would be a waste of time. Besides, the bear sculpture looked heavy, and I was grateful not to have to move the damn thing.
I doubted the key would be in any of the bathrooms, it wasn’t in my room, and it wouldn’t be in my parents’ bedroom either, so . . .
I snapped my fingers. “Of course.”
Bloody obvious.
I ran down the hallway, stopped at a door on the right, then hesitated while I had second thoughts.
This was my grandfather’s bedroom.
His private space.
I shrugged and murmured, “Shouldn’t have lied to my mum about going on a hunting trip and hidden the blinkin’ key then, should you?”
I threw the door open and stepped inside.
I was sure he’d forgive me once I brought Grandma Alice home to the real world. I’d be the Cooper family hero forevermore.
My grandfather’s bedroom was like mine—around twenty feet square, with a double four-poster bed, walk-in closet, French doors leading to a veranda out back, and an en suite bathroom. However, unlike my room, a sideboard sat laden with photographs, and boxes overflowing with science magazines were stacked by the opposite wall.
A wooden statue stood in the room’s corner, an indigenous American boy with a feather headdress, moccasins, and breechcloth. His head was tipped back, and his hands were cupped around his face as though he was calling or shouting.
But that wasn’t the most impressive item in the room.
What drew my attention most were the forty detailed models strung from the ceiling by fishing wire, each made from card and wood. I recognised them as spaceships from the Antarian fleet.
I gazed up at them, trying to spot which was a Horizon-class ship so I could imagine being in command.
Not finding one, I stepped to the sideboard.
Picture frames took up every available atom of its surface, photographs in chronological order. On the far left sat the image I’d seen in my bedroom when I’d first arrived at the lodge—my mother as a baby, with a young Grandma Alice holding her, grinning at the camera.
I smiled back.
Next was a year later—my mother on Grandpa John’s knee, his arm around his wife. Alice wore the same gold locket on a chain, engraved with the infinity symbol.
The three of them looked so happy together.
The photos continued, one for every twelve months of my mother’s life, until I stopped at a nine-year-old standing alone in front of the lodge, scowling at the camera, her arms folded. My heart sank. This must have been taken after Grandma Alice vanished.
I moved along the sideboard, taking in solemn expressions, graduation, Mum with another woman I assumed was her aunt, and next, an image of my mother and father together, the start of family Cooper in our flat in London. The smile had returned to my mother’s face.
A few photographs and years later, a new baby appeared—an absolute stunner—and every photo from then on showed the three of us—me, Mum, and Dad, and one including Grandpa John when he’d visited us in London. He gave the camera an awkward half-smile, and I noticed a silver ring on his right hand. I leaned in. The ring had an engraving of a bird, but I couldn’t make out the detail.
I straightened up, frowning.
Grandpa John didn’t wear any jewellery. What happened to it? Did Grandma Alice give it to him? A treasured keepsake, maybe? Where is it now?
Looking back at the first image of Grandpa John, Alice, and Mum, I felt more determined than ever to find my grandmother. “Right,” I snarled. “Where’s the damn key?”
I looked under the bed. Nothing there.
Next, I checked the sideboard drawers, but they only held t-shirts, socks and underwear, a travel wash kit, and a bottle of prehistoric aftershave.
I peered behind the curtains and the indigenous American boy, and searched in the bathroom, the closet, and even on the veranda, but there was still no sign of the key. I closed the French doors in disgust, frustration gnawing my insides.
My attention moved to the floorboards. I was checking for loose ones with my foot when I froze.
My gaze drifted to the fleet of model spaceships above my head, and a huge grin spread across my face.
Thirteen
Knowing I was onto something, excitement coursed through me as I reached up to the first model spaceship in Grandpa John’s bedroom and hefted its weight before letting it rest at the end of its fishing line again.
One down, thirty-nine to go.
The key had to be nearby.
My anticipation grew as I pictured myself opening the box and going into the game.
I’d gone through twenty spacecraft when I lifted a ship with a wide body and stubby, wing-like shapes fixed to each side. My smile returned.
It was a lot heavier than the others.
No way card and balsa could weigh so much.
I circled the spaceship, looking for a way to open the model, giving the sides and front an experimental poke here and there until I stopped at the aft section. A cargo door took up most of the rear. I pressed my finger at the top, and hey presto, it swung down.
Standing on tiptoe, I peeked inside.
Something’s in there.
My heart raced as I reached in with my thumb and forefinger and pulled out a metal canister five inches long.
Stepping back, I unscrewed the lid and upended it, emptying the contents into my other hand.
My face dropped.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
Not a key.
Not even close.
“Oh, come on.” A wave of despondency washed over me.
The first object was black and rectangular, with grooves at one end and a clear window at the other. Inside was a blue crystal held by a delicate silver clasp. The second was a cube, around the size of a dice, made of a dull grey metal. The third item was a glass rod, two inches long.
These meant something to my grandfather. Maybe they were pieces of alien technology he’d taken from the crashed taxi. Otherwise, why hide them?
But seeing as none of them were a key, I let out an annoyed huff, shoved the objects back into the canister, screwed on the lid, and returned it to the cargo hold of the
model spacecraft. Grumbling under my breath, I continued checking the weight of each ship.
When I reached the end, the last model being empty, I sat on the edge of the bed, and my shoulders slumped.
Fine. Grandpa John had won. Brav-blinking-o.
I had no idea where he’d hidden the key.
It could have been in a million places.
I straightened up. That wasn’t true; there were only a finite number of hidey-holes to stash the key.
Shrugging off my irritation, I jumped to my feet, and as I stepped from Grandpa John’s room and closed the door behind me, another hiding place presented itself—the grandfather clock.
Grandfather.
Really?
Can it be that obvious?
I hurried over, opened the front panel, and let out a huge sigh of relief. Then I did a little jig on the spot, flinging my arms about like a lunatic and throwing in several whoops for good measure.
Sure enough, there it lay—resting in the bottom of the cabinet, beneath the swinging pendulum.
B-to-the-I.N.G.O.
I snatched up the key, and as I closed the panel, Milo huffed and puffed along the hallway toward me.
“Too late.” I waved the crystal at him. “Thanks for all your help, though, Watson. Much appreciated. The game is afoot.”
I marched into my bedroom.
Milo came waddling in after me as I slid the box from under the bed, placed it on the mattress, unlocked it, and swung the lid open.
I ran my finger over the infinity symbol, the same glyph engraved on my grandmother’s locket, and vowed to do whatever it took to bring her home.
No sooner had I straightened up and taken a step back than the crystal in the CodeX glowed, gaining in intensity.
“Back in a second.” I winked at Milo and lifted my chin. “Horizon Eighteen, prepare for the amazing, the incredible Captain Leonardo Cooper.”
As the point of light rose into the room, I thought of my grandmother. “Find her, find her,” I muttered under my breath. “Please help me find Alice Bowman.”
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