‘Cool, cool, cool,’ Karim says. ‘And do you know what happened to this Digger-slash-flying-alien-creature?’

Neither of us say anything. After Crater Lake we were all spoken to by shady government people, who did their best to convince us that what happened at the activity centre was a hallucination as a result of heat exhaustion, mixed with the toxic fumes from a bad batch of paint used on the walls in the dorms. We were told not to talk about it. They didn’t go as far as threatening us, but the warning was there, hanging in the air between us. The only answers we got were clearly total bull, so we stopped asking.

‘Right,’ says Karim. ‘So what you’re saying is that the escaped creature they told us about probably isn’t a bunny.’

‘That’s something that’s been bothering me,’ I say. ‘There was no structural damage inside the labs. No sign of smoke damage, or broken doors, no evidence of anything escaping.’

‘So you’re saying you don’t think Digger, if it is Digger, escaped,’ Kat says.

132 I nod. ‘I think he was released.’

‘On purpose?’ Karim says.

‘Yeah. Maybe as a cover for whatever’s going on in Straybridge. Maybe to do something that we don’t know about yet.’ I close my eyes for a moment, realising how tired I am, as the curfew bells ring out across the town. ‘We should get going – we’re gonna have some explaining to do when we get back, and we all need to rest.’

‘I don’t think I’ll ever sleep again,’ Karim says, as we go back to side-stepping up the river.

It takes us around twenty minutes to get through the rest of the golf course and cricket grounds, and then we pass the closed and dark Straybridge Community Hall, until we finally reach the border of Karim’s estate. There’s no way we can get through the estate without being seen, so we take down our hoods, stuff our scarves in our pockets and put our cover story into action.

‘Karim, look as sick as you can,’ I say.

‘Won’t be hard, I feel like poo,’ he nods. And even though he says it with a smile, I can see that he’s struggling.

Kat and I walk either side of him, our arms around him to support him. Then we walk quickly 133 through the streets, trying to look like we’re walking quickly cos Karim is ill and we’re out past curfew, rather than because we just snuck into a secret lab, got chased through a forest of Christmas trees, and almost got found and potentially ripped apart by an unidentified flying object that might have been the alien wasp formerly known as Digger.