Trevor went to grab for the marble.

     It was, like, four inches from his hand.

     He didn't get to it fast enough.

     Egoneg glided through the air like a fleshy tarp, his air all blown out of him.

     And, as he did, he knocked Trevor off his feet before, once again, swooping into the sky.

     No!

     Trevor had to do a tuck and roll to keep from slamming face first into the sidewalk.

     Trevor looked around frantically for the marble but couldn't see it. It could be anywhere.

     Egoneg swept back around. Way up high, he looked like kind of a floating pancake frisbee, a flat field of protoplasm soaring Trevor's way.

     Trembling with fear, Trevor withdrew his laser-knife and rose shakingly on his one good anti-grav to confront him rather than have him go after Niki and Fathom.      Egoneg came at Trevor as if getting ready to fly over him, but, at the last moment, he dropped to wrap himself around Trevor, all those yards and yards of flabby Egoneg flesh, until Egoneg himself was now a ball as big as an SUV with Trevor, suffocating, right at its center.

     Egoneg bounced like a ball, then bounced again, before rolling, then stopping, in the middle of a now vacant city street.

     Egoneg had Trevor wrapped up tight. Trevor couldn't breathe, and Trevor knew that, within minutes, he'd pass out.  

     Niki was out for the count. 

     Pomimi was dead. 

     Egoneg had won, and the fear that now pulsed at the core of Trevor's being would now infect the planet.

     No! It can't end this way! Trevor thought. It can't!

     He had only moments to figure things out.   

END OF CHAPTER EIGHT

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