"Hungry! Eat! Eat!" Milfoil cried, his voice now tinny and cartoonish. The formerly giant blob was now the size of a loaf of bread, slithering around in a clear cage, no bigger than an average aquarium.
"That's not glass," Future Girl said, tapping the walls of Milfoil's new cage. "These are artificial sharkskin cells, magnified hundreds of times. They have all kinds of interesting properties, and they're something Milfoil can't eat through."
Amy and Future Girl were on top of a dorm roof a few hours after the fight on the common. All the traces of the Milfoil had been either captured or burned into nothingness, leaving behind only a miniature version of the creature.
"If he ever gets out of here, he'll start eating everything again," Amy said. "Why not just destroy him? Get it over with?"
"It's a brand-new life form," Future Girl said. "Even if it's dangerous, there's still a possibility that we might learn from it, somehow, in some way."
"Eat!" the tiny Milfoil said with its new helium-style voice, before fruitlessly gnawing at the walls of its miniature prison.
"I should get home to Boston," Amy said. "Considering I just beat up a bunch of your school's guards, I'm guessing your Ms. Kahror will cancel that assembly."
"Don't worry about it," Future Girl said. "I'll spread the truth. Everybody here will know you're cool, and not some Hollywood phony."
"Thanks, and tell Dr. Urant he can send my new uniform to my P.O. Box."
"Before you go," Future Girl said, "I don't suppose you've ever heard of something called the Temple?"
Amy couldn't breathe for a few seconds. "What?"
Future Girl told Amy about her roommate's experience with campus security, in which something called the Temple was mentioned.
Amy had her own stories to tell, first with the Hater randomly rambling about the Temple, and then her former publicist name-dropping the Temple just before the men with flying jetpacks almost killed her.
"This is big," Future Girl said. "This is bigger than the two of us."
"I know what we should do," Amy said. "We should get a bunch of us together. Share information. Fight back."
"A bunch of us?"
"A team. Working together, getting to the bottom of this Temple thing. We could help the whole world, and not just our respective cities... or schools."
Future Girl thought in silence, her face getting more and more worrisome. "I'm sorry, but the answer's no. I'm needed here. I can't just leave school whenever I want."
"What about the Temple?"
"We can exchange emails. Compare notes. But I have my own life here."
"Tell you what. Let me set up a meeting. Come to it, meet the others, and let's talk it over before you make a decision."
Future Girl frowned, but then said, "All right. One meeting. But what others? Isn't it just you, me, and the guy in London?"
Amy smiled. "There's more. I have a date with a masked psycho inTheater City. But not, you know, an actual date."
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END OF CHAPTER 8
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Next: Hecklers.