Then the spell is broken when I hear what I can only describe as a roar from Mak. I risk a glance over my shoulder just in time to see Trent disappearing down the hatch and closing it behind him.

‘Son of a…’ Mak flings himself on it and tries the keypad. The light flashes red. ‘He’s locked himself in.’

‘Abort!’ I shout. ‘Back to the table.’

The girls are up now and holding the rug over 238Mak while he has one last try at getting the hatch open. Karim and I back up and make for the shelter of the rug, too. Chets obviously knows he’s won, so he walks on his hands back to his spot, happy to keep us in the annex until the rest of the swarm arrives to put us to sleep. We pull the rug over the legs of the table so we have a sort of ceiling and a bit more protection, then we sit and try to catch our breath.

‘Chets grew a stinger,’ Kat says. ‘A massive, spiky stinger.’

‘He did warn us that they’ve evolved. I guess that means being able to launch multiple spit balls, and unleash a beast of a stinger.’ I massage my forehead and close my eyes for a second. ‘They were dangerous at Crater Lake, but that seems like nothing compared to this. I don’t think he’ll take us on by himself in case one of us gets out – he just wants to keep us here until reinforcements arrive. Still, we’d better keep eyes on Chets at all times.’

‘I’ll take first watch,’ Kat says, shuffling to the edge of the table and peering around it. ‘I want another look anyway.’

‘I wonder what the stinger does, exactly,’ Ade says. 239

‘Apart from sting?’ Karim says.

Ade looks at him less aggressively than she was an hour ago. ‘There are different kinds of stings, though. Some hurt, some paralyse, and some kill.’

‘I hadn’t thought of that.’ I suddenly feel dead tired. ‘Do you think it releases the same stuff that makes up the sedative spit balls?’

‘I mean, it might,’ Ade says.

‘But…’ Karim looks about as worried as I feel.

Ade starts pulling clips out of her hair and putting them in a pile on the floor. ‘But it wouldn’t make sense from an evolutionary point of view. They already have the sedative spit; whatever toxin is in the stinger is probably something different.’

‘And by something different, you mean something worse?’ I ask, cos let’s face it, that’s the important question right now, and as much as part of me doesn’t want to hear the answer, we need to plan around the worst-case scenario.