The power to the Lookout cuts out, plunging us into darkness for a couple of seconds. Then Mak clicks on a battery-powered floodlight. It glows a dull orange, making everything look like the inside of a volcano. Not that I’ve been inside a volcano, but this is how I imagine it to look – 270 burnt orange and full of shadows. The power failure has shut down the microwave, and I can see Chets unglitching and trying to untrap himself from the hollow wall.

‘This is it,’ I say, as we huddle closer, facing the swarm. ‘We got this.’

Mrs McAllister pushes her face through the hole, apparently not bothered about the sharp edges of the glass cutting her skin. She clacks her mandibles at us, as blood trickles down her cheek and spatters onto the floor of the Lookout.

‘It’s lucky that years of playing violent video-games has desensitised us to this kind of thing,’ Karim says.

Her shoulders force some more glass loose. It smashes onto the floor and she gets an arm inside, using it to push back on the wall and propel herself forward.

Another pane of glass cracks from floor to ceiling, and the bugs clamber over each other, trying to break it down.

‘I love you guys,’ Kat says, as we back up closer to the Tail, ready to fall back so we can make one last stand. We have only seconds until they’re on us. 271

It crosses my mind that my plan has failed. That I misjudged it all. That this really is the end. But I’m not giving up. Not yet. ‘She’ll make it,’ I say out loud.

Mrs McAllister finally widens the hole enough that she can climb through, into the room. She flings herself forward in a movement that is half leap, half flight, releasing spit balls as she does. We block them with our cushion shields, but as a whole section of the glass wall on our right comes crashing down, I know we have to move.

‘The Tail!’ I say, as bugs swarm across the floor, up the walls and onto the ceiling, trying to block our retreat. They’re pouring in now, spit balls flying, mandibles snapping. The sound of hoching is all around us and unbearably loud.

Then it stops. Every sporeling at the exact same moment freezes, mid-attack, and tilts their head, like they’re listening. There’s one, maybe two seconds of silence and stillness, then they turn and swarm out of the building through the holes they made. One after the other, like an army of ants pouring out of an anthill. They’re fast, efficient, working as one, and then they’re gone.

23

At All Costs

‘Ade did it,’ Mak says. ‘Legend.’

‘What did Ade do exactly?’ Chets hisses. He’s still struggling to free himself from the wall, wriggling and pulling, his face bright red.