Vanya’s mom seated us at my favorite table by the window, and we all put in our pancake orders.

I leaned forward, resting my elbows on the table and whispered. “If that plumbing company doesn’t exist, then who’s in the van? And why are they following us?”

Charlie fiddled with his napkin. “I don’t know. But we should be careful to make sure we don’t lead them to the Vegans.”

It couldn’t be a coincidence that a strange, fake plumbing van had started following me right when I’d begun to shelter aliens in town. It must have been one of those government agencies Mr. Durr had talked about. They wanted the Vegans. They would keep them in cages, maybe experiment on them. Tears threatened to fill my eyes at the thought.

“Are you okay?” Willa asked, her voice soft.

I gazed down at my paper placemat. “I’m worried. What if we don’t catch the Vegans in time? What if something happens?”

Marcus reached across the table and patted my hand. “We’re all here together. We’re going to find them.”

Charlie shot up in his seat, his eyes staring at something out the window. We all watched as a slow-moving black SUV with tinted windows slid to a stop in a parking spot right outside the restaurant. My throat went dry. Were they here for me? Were they going to force me to give them the Vegans?

All the doors of the giant SUV opened and a bunch of enormous dudes piled out. My nerves went into overdrive. Then Jason climbed out of the backseat.

“Isn’t that your brother?” Marcus asked.

Charlie blew out a relieved breath. “Yeah.”

“He has a friend who can drive?” Willa asked.

“My brother’s a freshman but he’s on varsity, so he has some older friends,” Charlie explained.

The little bell on the front door jangled as Jason walked in. His eyes went right to our table. He stared for a moment at our hunched over, worried looks. Then he put a hand out, stopping the crowd of guys behind him.

“Too many little kids here,” he said, leading them out. “Let’s go somewhere else.”

“Wow,” I said. “He really wants no part of this.”

“This summer, a fire-breathing monster you released from a game nearly ate him,” Willa pointed out. “Can you blame him?”

I shrugged. “I guess not.”

They all piled back into the huge SUV and drove away. No plumbing van took its place. No one suspicious came into the diner. It was time to get down to business. No more distractions.

Our waitress brought our plates, filled with pancakes bigger than our faces.

Okay, I was now slightly distracted. But I could eat and plan.

“So,” I said, chewing a bite. “We know the Vegans are hunting oranges. What if we lay a trap?”

“Like put a pile of oranges in your backyard and wait?” Charlie asked.

“Yeah.” I stabbed a piece with my fork. “We buy out the fruit stand and then we’re the only orange game in town.”

Charlie nodded as he chewed. “There’s no school tomorrow, because of that professional development day. We should be allowed to stay up late tonight. We could all wait for them together, like a stakeout.”

“What if Bob shows up instead?” Willa asked.

I thought for a moment. “Then we salt him. Tie him to a tree.”

“And then what?” Marcus asked.

That was the problem that had been stewing in the back of my head all day. Even if we did catch the last two Vegans and Bob, then what?

I shifted in my seat. “Even if we catch them all and corral them in Grandpa Tepper’s garage, they can’t stay there forever. I have to figure out how to send them home.”

Willa pointed at my phone that lay on the table. “You brought them here somehow using the Alien Invasion game. Can’t you use it to send them back?”

“No, I’ve tried that. All the game functionality just works normally.”

Charlie squirted a ridiculous amount of maple syrup onto his plate. “That must mean you need that astronomer’s machine. Your phone was in the middle of it when you hit Summon and brought the aliens here.”

“Yeah,” I said. “But if we retrace the same steps, we’ll just bring more aliens here, not send the existing ones back.”

Marcus stopped with his fork in midair. “Then what if you reverse the functionality?”

I shook my head. “I broke into the app and checked it out, but there are too many variables. I don’t know what’s what.”

“I have a decompiler on my laptop that can turn the APK into source code,” he said.

I sat up straighter. “Can you bring it tonight? If we can find the line of code that caused all of it, we could rewrite it.”

Marcus’s eyes twinkled with excitement. “And then recompile, install it on your phone, and bam!”

Charlie’s forehead wrinkled. “I’m one of the smartest people I know and I have no idea what you two are saying.”

“Yeah,” Willa agreed. “I got the bam part, but that’s it.”

My mind churned with anticipation. This was a great plan. We would lay a trap of oranges for the Vegans and while we waited, Marcus and I could try to reverse the code in the game. But then my heart started to sink as worries crept in.

I chewed on my lower lip. “What if we can’t find the right section of code to reverse? What if we’re in over our heads? It would be great if we had help from people who … ”

My voice trailed off as a thought occurred to me. I didn’t know why it hadn’t also occurred to Marcus. It was obvious.

“Had help from who?” Charlie asked.

I looked at Marcus. “I know you don’t want to reveal their identities, but we’re in deep here. I think it’s worth breaking the secret. We need the Gamer Squad.”

Willa nearly choked on a sip of water. “The what?”

Marcus’s confident smile crumbled like an overdone cookie. He didn’t say anything. He seemed to be involved in an intense staring contest with his plate. So I explained. “The Gamer Squad is a private, secret group of elite gamers and programmers in town. I got an invitation to join, but I refused because they weren’t also inviting Charlie.”

Charlie’s mouth dropped open and a light blush colored his cheeks.

“Is that so?” Willa said in a strange tone, her eyes darting from Marcus to me and back again.

I ignored her weirdness. “Yeah. And Marcus didn’t want to reveal the identities of the other members of the group before, but I think it’s important now because we’ll need all the help we can get to reverse this code.”

Willa tapped her fingernails slowly on the table. “I think that’s a great idea, Bex. Marcus, tell us the names of all the other people in your little secret group.”

Charlie looked just as confused as I did, but the wheels were apparently turning in Willa’s brain—and for some reason Marcus still wouldn’t speak.

“Marcus, come on,” I said, frustration leaking into my voice. “This is important. Tell us the names.”

“Yeah, be honest,” Willa said teasingly.

Marcus put his fork down and wiped his mouth with a napkin. Then he looked up at me. “There are no names. There is no Gamer Squad. It never existed.”