My mom hovers in the kitchen, cleaning the inside of our refrigerator. She hasn’t spoken more than a few barked commands since we left the hospital. Not that I’m surprised. She freaks out over anything that might jeopardize my health—mental or physical. Last year she almost had me homeschooled after I was hospitalized for pneumonia. When she found out it had been going around our class, she interviewed a dozen tutors. She became an expert on state standards and testing and how homeschooling might affect my chances of getting into an Ivy League school.

I can only imagine what she’d do if she knew I went to the pier expecting the attack. I pinch my four-leaf clover pendant and cling to the hope that the footage I got will redeem me for my reckless mistakes. It has to. I captured the Death Mob. Lip Spikes. Copperhead. Parts of their faces were exposed. Enough to incriminate them, I’m sure of it. And I captured the breakout fights along the edge. I got Black Hat when his sunglasses fell off. The girl with cropped hair, the guy with bright gray eyes.

It’ll be enough to arrest some of them. They’ll rat out their leaders. The Swarm’s whole infrastructure will collapse. Whoever has organized the attacks for the past nine years will rot away in prison for the rest of his life. And my dad will be vindicated.

Even if my phone fell into the water, the images will have uploaded to the cloud—something I double-checked before heading to the pier.

I glance across the room at my computer, which can confirm the reason for everything that happened today with just a couple clicks. Any other night, my mom might be heading up to bed by now, and I’d be sifting through everything I’d captured, backing up data, and preparing to call Detective Irving. But until she decides I won’t die in our living room, there is nothing I can do but wait her out one excruciating minute at a time. My head falls against the couch cushion as I inhale the medicated mist, forcing my lungs to open and expand like they’re supposed to.

My mom sets water and pain pills on the glass table in front of me. She pauses, casting a disapproving look at WGN’s investigative reporter, Emi Vega, who’s yapping away with the pretense of concern.

I shove pillows over the neb machine to suffocate its insufferable buzzing and crank the volume on the remote. Emi’s eyes bore into the camera. She furrows her brow as if to emphasize the seriousness of her words.