Chapter 26

“She can’t outrun us forever,” Eighty-Eight grumbled. “She’ll tire eventually.”

“Eventually isn’t good enough,” Seven said. “We have to get her now, and we need a plan.”

“I can try and extrapolate her probable path and get ahead of her that way,” Twelve offered. “But if I’m wrong, then I’ve completely lost all of you.”

“I’ve got a scramble bug,” Eighty-Eight said.

“Why didn’t you say so before?” Seven exclaimed. “That would have been useful about the time we were all being covered in ants!”

“Not necessarily,” Twelve reminded him. “What if we’d then ended up covered in something worse?”

“Worse than ants,” Seven said flatly.

“I can’t think of anything,” Eighty-Eight said.

“Me either,” Twelve admitted.

“And it could have been something harmless, like leaves or something,” Seven pointed out. “That’s the point of a scrambling bug, it’s unpredictable.”