The Pod had been free of monsters. The first safe place Felix had ever known. There were no cannibals, no terrifying monsters that would drag a kid away from his parents and, in this case, up dark stairs to some awful fate.

That had all changed. Some creepy alien thing had sneaked into Toni’s body and made him sick. Word was Toni couldn’t move. That he was still trapped inside, alive, but that creatures were running around in his blood. Doing evil things.

What would that feel like? To have aliens crawling around inside his veins and swimming in his blood? The whole idea made Felix’s skin crawl. Made him want to go stand in the shower where anything that might get on him would be washed away before it could eat a hole into his skin and crawl inside him.

But the worst part was that Toni had been put inside something called an isolation tent. He was now living inside a big plastic bag. The air he breathed was cycled in from outside, and then sent out through a vent pipe that heated it really hot before blowing it outside again. So hot that nothing could live.

Felix now sat in his room, his skin itching. It had been itching for days, but nothing like this. Had to be because he was afraid of itty-bitty aliens creeping around, looking for a place that they could crawl inside him.

He shook himself all over, pulled off his shirt, was looking for any sign of crawly . . .

The door opened, Mother stepping in. She had that look on her face. The one she got when things were really bad.

“Why is your shirt off?”

“Nothing. I was just looking at it.” He tried to frown studiously at the fabric.

“How do you feel, Felix?”

“I’m fine,” he lied. He didn’t dare tell Mother his skin itched, or that it felt slightly greasy. Just like his fingers always felt ever since he and Mother had taken the boat ride out to drop the buoy. The itch and greasy feeling had been getting a lot worse ever since Toni had spilled the algae all over.

Then Mother was bent down, her gray-blue eyes serious. “Baby, you have to promise me. If you start feeling sick, you let me know. Let me know right away, okay, sweetie?”

Felix nodded. He hated it when she called him baby. He was eight, after all. “I will.”

Did he tell her about the way his body jerked all by itself? Or how, on occasion, his vision would get funny, runny, and full of colors? And there was something going on that he couldn’t quite understand. Sometimes he’d think about reaching for something. Just think about it. And his arm would do it. All by itself. Even if he kept willing his arm to stay put.