For once, Trey doesn’t seem squeamish. His breathing is calm. The gun he just shot has been tossed onto the cot—my pistol, the one I pried out of Barry Stockton’s hands.

“You should put another bullet into that thing,” Tanq says, her voice muffled by sobbing, by Wyatt’s arms. “And then another. Just unload it.”

Trey says, “I don’t know if that’s a good id—”

Tanq launches up, dashes for the gun on the bed. “Then I’ll do it myself!” she yells. “For what it did to Manny, I’ll . . .”

But Tanq freezes when the creature on the floor shifts, raises the hand still holding the strange metallic object. Its arm trembles with effort.

It lifts a blood-smeared finger and presses it against the top of the quicksilver cylinder. Something clicks.

The alien collapses, deathly still at last.

“Is that a bomb?” Wyatt says.

We’re frozen, staring at the thing.

Nothing happens.

“Maybe it’s a beacon,” Trey says. “Transmitting our location.”

“Bomb or a beacon, we have to get out of here,” I say, snatching the floral purse from its spot at the foot of my bed.

“If it’s a beacon, I can run with it,” Trey says. “Draw them away.”

He takes a step toward it, but I grab his arm. “No teammates left behind, remember? Let’s go. The other tunnel, up the ladder. Emmaline, come!”

She trots over, and I scoop her up.

No one else is moving fast enough. “Let’s go, let’s go!” I yell. “Run, you idiots!”

That shocks everyone to action. Tanq grabs her pack and Manny’s book, Wyatt his rifle, Trey the pistol. I’m not sure we have time to waste grabbing anything, but I’m so glad to see them all moving that I don’t care.

Together, the four of us dash into the tunnel to the base of the ladder.

“Wyatt, you take that rifle and go first. Shoot anything you see.”

He obliges, scrambling up like a spider. Tanq shoves the book into her pack and follows while I gently maneuver Emmaline into Hazel Jenkins’s giant handbag. My dog barely fits, but she does. I sling the bag over my shoulder.

“I’ll take up the rear,” Trey says, and I know there’s no use arguing so I hit the ladder and climb as fast as I can, the strap of the floral purse digging into my shoulder.

I crest the edge of the manhole and blink against sudden daylight. Only Wyatt is there; Tanq is already halfway across the parking lot, heading toward Barb’s Barbecue. “Go on, Paige, follow Tanq,” Wyatt orders.

I crouch down and let Emmaline out of the bag; she has a better chance of surviving if she can run on her own. Then I turn to make sure Trey made it out of the hole—