Bug hadn’t blinked in forty minutes.

  Peppa had checked.

  She sat cross-legged in the corner of the garage, gnawing the edge of a Pop-Tart she’d stolen from the church pantry, while Bug sat perfectly still on the old mattress Peppa had hauled from Daisy’s shack.

  The mattress smelled like pine needles and vodka. The kind of mattress you should only touch if you had gloves, a hazmat suit, or were eleven and had no sense of personal safety.

  Bug didn’t seem to mind.

  “I’m gonna call you my rabid bat,” Peppa muttered. “Or like, Pocket Gremlin. Haven’t decided.”

  Bug blinked. Once.

  Hiding her was getting trickier.

  Peppa had lied so much this morning she nearly convinced herself she didn’t exist. She told Mason that the bumping noises were just the water heater (they didn’t have one). Told Alex the blankets came from Marlene’s “Bless the Dirt” charity pile. Told Tanktop Tony she was doing a science experiment and it involved wires and girl stuff.

  He’d practically run away.

  But Alex was getting suspicious.

  “Why do you keep running off in the middle of chores?” she asked, arms crossed, sweat glistening on her forehead. “Is it hormones?”

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  “I’m twelve,” Peppa snapped. “I’m not getting mysterious yet.”

  Meanwhile, strange things were happening.

  A few of the townsfolk said their watches were ticking backward. Someone’s fish died, came back to life, and screamed.

  And worst of all, Marlene’s front porch, where she'd painted a giant cross and the words NO SINNERS OR ALIENS, had disappeared entirely. Just clean gone. Like it never existed.

  Just like Bug.

  Inside the garage, Peppa watched her.

  Bug was sitting criss-crossed, whispering something to a spool of copper wire. Peppa couldn’t tell if it was a spell, a prayer, or both.

  Suddenly, Bug looked up. “There’s something under the dirt.”

  Peppa stopped chewing. “Under the what?”

  Bug stood, slowly. Her eyes looked too dark in the shadows. “I think it’s a machine.”

  “Like… your machine or a shooty death alien machine?”

  Bug tilted her head. “Yes.”

  That night, the crew gathered.

  Daisy dealt VHS tapes like tarot cards.

  Tanktop Tony brought a shovel for no reason. (He just liked to hold it. Said it made him look ‘trustworthy.’)

  Alex had a flashlight, Peppa had a wrench, and Mason brought an axe wrapped in barbed wire — just in case it turned into a Night of the Living Chicken situation again.

  They followed Bug into the woods, Peppa at her side.

  No one asked where Bug came from.

  But they all wanted to know where she was going.

  The crew stopped at a clearing, circled around the well.

  Bug placed her hand on the dirt.

  It vibrated.

  Peppa held her breath.

  Mason swore.

  Then the ground cracked open — just a little — and a soft blue glow lit the dust.

  A metal shape revealed itself, buried shallow like a half-forgotten tombstone.

  Bug stared at it, then whispered:

  “They planted this.”

  Peppa’s heart pounded.

  “Planted what?”

  Bug turned.

  Her voice was suddenly calm. Almost like a song.

  “The engine that starts the end.”