‘Do you believe Hoche?’ Chets asks. ‘I mean, and please don’t take this the wrong way, but she didn’t like you at Montmorency. Why would she help you?’

‘She didn’t say it like she was trying to help us,’ Kat says. ‘It was more accidental than that.’

‘Unless she knew what you were up to and was trying to misdirect you,’ Chets says.

‘You think she’s one of them?’ I frown. And it fits like one of her awful shoes – she’s exactly the sort of person who would use her cunning to throw us off the scent.

‘Do you remember what she said back at Crater Lake, about how she’d make the perfect queen bee?’ Mak says.

‘And we don’t know for sure if she ever properly turned back. She left Montmorency straight after, and we never saw her again,’ I say.

‘She could have been one of them the whole time,’ says Kat.

‘But didn’t she help you get into the university building?’ Ade says.

‘Not on purpose,’ I say.

194 ‘Or was it?’ Ade raises an eyebrow.

Chets reaches for a pizza slice. ‘Well, she wouldn’t have been helping Lance, would she? It doesn’t make sense.’

‘I’m confused,’ Kat sighs and rubs her eyes.

I am too. I felt like we were making progress, but now things are even more mixed up than before. ‘OK,’ I say. ‘Let’s consider for a minute that what Hoche said was true – that the XGen signal cut at four, which is the exact same time my mum glitched. What would that mean?’

‘It would mean that the removal of the signal was connected to your mum becoming full alien,’ Mak says.

‘You say you believe they can all communicate with each other through their minds, and from what I’ve heard, that sounds plausible,’ Ade says, sounding more and more like the old Ade with each passing moment. ‘If that’s the case, and they are all connected to some sort of hive mind, perhaps it only activated at that moment – four a.m. on the night of the explosion, and that’s why your mum’s behaviour changed so suddenly.’

‘The XGen signal was preventing the hive mind from connecting,’ I say. 195

‘Maybe the phone and data signals get in the way of the messages going between the bugs.’ Kat claps her hands. ‘And the microwaves.’

‘It’s probable that any waves affect their communication,’ says Ade. ‘Microwaves, radio waves, digital data waves…’

‘That would mean they’d really want to get XGen turned off,’ Kat says.

‘There were XGen beacons in the alien labs,’ I say. ‘Maybe they’re testing them for weaknesses, to find the best way to destroy them.’

‘They are properly difficult to damage,’ Karim says, ‘without doing something drastic, like running them over with a truck or hitting them with lightning.’

‘Know your enemy,’ Mak says, ‘and you’ll know how to defeat them.’