Crawlers

10:24pm

Jasmine heard a burst of laughter and music, which was muffled to silence again as the door snicked shut behind her. She turned. 

'Oh,' she said, surprised. 'Hi, Lisa. What's going on?' 

Lisa just shook her head. 

Jasmine looked at her. It was obvious what had happened: Samantha and Lauren had been pulling their routines on Lisa ever since Jasmine had known them. But she, like Ben, had sat silent when it first happened, and now too much time had passed: if she said anything about it to Lisa now it would look too much like pity, and that, Jasmine knew, might make things even worse. 

'You just missed something big,' she said instead, as casually as she could, turning in the chair and gesturing at the monitors as Lisa came up behind her. 'Riot police actually baton-charged the place a minute ago, but you'd never know to look at it out there now...' 

She glanced back at Lisa - and froze. 

Lisa's right hand, Jasmine saw, had just come out of her school bag. The hand was holding the missing crawler - one of the ones that had been stepped on earlier. Lisa's fingers were clasped firmly around its partially crushed body, and the creature's legs were twitching and pulsing with what was definitely some kind of life. 

Jasmine gaped. 

Behind her curtain of hair Lisa's glassy eyes narrowed. Realising she'd been caught, her thin lips parted in a silent snarl of fury. She dropped the bag and her left hand loomed in Jasmine's vision: the hand clamped over Jasmine's mouth, fingers digging into her cheeks, stifling her scream before she'd even thought to utter one. 

With her right hand, the one holding the crawler, Lisa lunged. 

Jasmine flung up her own hands, catching hold of Lisa's wrist. She was almost too late: the twitching creature was just centimetres from her face. Its five legs - broken and disjointed but hideously eager - grasped for her. Twin needles of bone, glistening with fluid, flickered in and out from the crawler's centre mass. For a long second Jasmine managed to hold Lisa there, keeping her off. Then, snarl widening into a grin of triumph, Lisa pushed harder. 

It was all happening so fast, Jasmine barely had time to be frightened. Even now, as she fought, the analytical part of her mind coldly noted the grim reality of the situation: Lisa's surprise attack had, essentially, worked. She had the drop on Jasmine, who was twisted round on her seat. Lisa, standing behind her, could bear down on her victim with her whole bodyweight. Jasmine resisted with all her strength but it was hopeless: Lisa's left hand was clawing at her face and the right, with its grisly burden, was coming closer. 

Jasmine slid down on the chair, which revolved and dumped her, still clasping Lisa's wrists, onto the floor. But Lisa just came with her, bending over her, forcing the crawler down towards her. 

Jasmine's blood hammered in her ears. Her vision narrowed. Her world closed in around the creature until there was nothing else left. 

With a last, desperate effort, she kicked out at the door.