‘Lance, you’re bleeding,’ Ade says, grabbing a bunch of napkins from the floor and pressing them onto my face. ‘Hold these here with as much pressure as you can.’ I do as she says, cos even though I’m not that bothered about a little cut, we all know you don’t argue with Ade.

‘This is messed up,’ Mak says. ‘What the hell are we going to do now?’

20

The Sting

I try to think. First things first – we have to deal with Chets.

‘Remember that everything we say or do will go back to the hive mind,’ I say. ‘So if you have any thoughts, keep them to yourself for now.’

‘No, please say them out loud,’ Chets says. ‘We love seeing your little minds trying desperately to understand things that are million times bigger than you are.’ And he says it in such a nasty way that I feel my temper raging, and I have to keep reminding myself that he isn’t Chets. It’s not really Chets talking, and it’s not really Chets skulking up by the ceiling.

‘We’ve been learning so much from you.’ Chets does the creepy head tilt. ‘It’s extremely interesting to observe you figuring things out, and making your incredibly flawed plans, and all the while arguing and joking like the primitive creatures you are.’ 227

‘It’s interesting to watch you scampering around on your bristly feet like a fly,’ I say. ‘And at least now I know how you got so good at gaming. I guess the physical changes started early with you, like they did with my mum. There’s no way you’d be better than me without your spooky bug powers.’

‘Our race is infinitely superior to yours. It’s a miracle that you temporarily overcame us at Crater Lake. But we have been learning and changing, and this time you will not stop us.’

I want to be confident that we will, but at this moment I can’t see how. We’re trapped in the Lookout with alien Chets, and the rest of the swarm will be on their way here as soon as it’s dark and they can move through town without drawing attention. We could try to make a break for it now, but there’s no way we’d all make it out. Chets is too fast and too strong, and I have no doubt that he has other tricks up his sleeve. I’m not ready to sacrifice one of the group. I need to play this right.

‘I hate to say I told you so,’ Ade says. ‘But I told you so. Chets was stalling the whole time – encouraging us to argue and dragging everything 228 out so that we’d be stuck here when his reinforcements arrived.’

‘Right,’ I say. ‘But they’re not here yet. There’s one of him and five of us.’