He releases his feet from the ceiling and gets into stinger mode, the black claw-like spear emerging from his lower back. Now that I’m closer to it, I can see a drop of clear liquid sitting right on the tip. Ade was right, it looks different from the sedative spit and, for half a second, I think this plan was a terrible idea. He tilts his head towards me, then Karim, and scuttles forward a couple of steps.

In the corner of my eye, I can see that Kat is in place. It’s now or never.

‘The funny thing is,’ I say, ‘that this has just been a distraction. What you really should have been worried about is Kat opening the trapdoor to the ceiling and tardigrading the rest of the swarm.’

Chets’ head flicks toward Kat, and then he moves. He flips his feet back onto the ceiling, and then on all fours, and I’m not even exaggerating here, he gallops like a freaking backwards horse towards Kat, stinger pointed right at her.

She was standing on the platform, but she 262 somehow finds finger grips on the wall and climbs higher, without looking behind her. In two seconds, she’s at the spot Mak pointed out and, honestly, I could never have got up there in two hours. Chets charges towards her, and it looks like she hasn’t seen him coming. I call out a warning, at the exact same time the others do, but I shouldn’t have worried. At the very last moment, she jumps to the side, above the entrance to the Tail, clinging on with her fingertips and toes, and Chets crashes into the spot she held a second before, stinger first, piercing the hollow wall.

I hold my breath, hoping so hard that it’s worked, and that it will give us the time to do what we need to do. Chets shrieks and makes to follow Kat – his hands pacing quickly forwards. But then he jerks back again as his feet can’t follow. His stinger is wedged into the fake wall. He can’t move.

Karim leaps for the shutter controls, as Kat climbs down to the Tail, and runs in with Mak and Ade behind her. He hits the button to lift the shutters at the same time that Kat pings the microwave on in the kitchen.