A/N: Sorry for the late posting; I had an interstate move between Cassie and Tobias. I'll be making it up to you with a bonus (short) entry in the next two days.

This entry marks the first appearance of the F-bomb. Having spent a full year as a thirteen-year-old, I would argue that it's still PG-13, but heads-up if you disagree.

Thanks to everyone who's read and posted comments so far. I owe a particular debt of gratitude to so8res, Quillian, R. Gavreau, and Teltura; any failings of this chapter can be blamed entirely on the fact that I didn't let them proof it before posting.

It should be mentioned that characters who TRY to be rational don't always succeed, and even those who do can still sometimes reach the wrong conclusions. Mistakes are a part of the fabric of reality, and our dear r!Animorphs are still at the start of a steep learning curve.

Am currently experimenting with various bracket symbols for thought-speak that may work better on FFN than (( and )). Apologies if it screws with you.

Chapter 05: Tobias

"This is my family."

"I know that, okay? But Jake—look—listen—think it through, man. The Yeerks know that we know that they were coming after your family next. Don't you think they'll be a little suspicious, if all of a sudden the four of you just up and disappear? It's not like Andalites would care one way or the other."

I was forty feet up, perched in a tree, still in owl morph as I kept watch. The scene below was incredibly clear to my predator senses, as if it were lit up by spotlights and covered in microphones. I could see Jake, his jaw set, his eyes glinting in the light of the distant streetlamp. I could see Marco, whose tone was growing more and more brittle as the long night wore on. I could see Cassie, a short distance away, sobbing quietly into Rachel's shoulder, and Rachel, whose face might as well have been carved from stone.

"Besides," Marco continued, still whispering softly enough that the girls couldn't hear. "From what Cassie said, it sounds like they only wanted you as cover for her. Since she's—"

He broke off, glancing over his shoulder. "Since she's dead, they might not even bother."

The four of them were hunkered down in a tiny patch of woods in the space between two backyards, a few houses down from where Jake lived. They were shivering slightly in the cold, naked except for the towels and blankets that Jake had smuggled out of his house, their breath forming little puffs of mist.

"We are not," Jake bit out, each word icy and sharp, "doing nothing."

To me, his clenched fists were a beacon, plainly visible. To Marco, they probably just looked like shadows.

"Then what, Jake? What are we doing? Because we don't even have a place to stash Cassie, let alone Tom and your parents. And unless you're ready to spill the beans on all of it, how exactly do you propose to get them all to pack up and leave in the middle of the night?"

The day had started with Rachel crying, had turned into a frantic search that had Jake crying, had transitioned into Cassie crying, and now looked like it was headed for a fistfight between Jake and Marco.

At four in the goddamn morning.

‹Just light it on fire,› I said wearily.

They both twitched, looking up in the wrong direction, and I rustled my wings to show my position. ‹I mean, if we just want to get them out of the house without saying anything.›

"You got a lighter, or are we rubbing two sticks together?" Marco shot back, no longer whispering. He turned back to Jake. "Listen, we can't just—"

"Then we cause a distraction," Jake said, cutting him off. "We go on the offensive. Turn up the heat so they don't have time to worry about tying up loose ends."

"How? The only Controllers we know by sight are Cassie's parents. You want to turn up the heat on them?"

"There's the firefighters," Jake said stubbornly. "The cops. Probably the teachers and the principal, since Cassie's mom said they aren't allowed to be alone. Which means at least one other person at the Gardens, too."

"Yeah, but which ones?"

"Cassie," Rachel whispered urgently, as Jake and Marco continued to argue. I swiveled my head to look down at them. "Which breeds of dog might be able to sniff out a Yeerk?"

"—if we stake out the station—"

"We've got school tomorrow—"

"Mom said it was going to be cancelled, out of respect—"

I watched as Cassie sniffed, gulped, squeezed her eyes shut for a moment before answering in a shaky murmur. "German Shepherd. Labs. Spaniels. Vizslas. Border collies. Doesn't matter, really—they've all been used in cancer research. I guess bloodhounds would be the best."

"Guys," Rachel called out, interrupting Marco mid-rant. "We could use a German Shepherd morph to sniff out Controllers."

The boys fell silent. "Cassie," Jake said, his voice suddenly soft and gentle. "Would that actually work?"

"Doesn't matter," Marco cut in. "We'd have to get close enough without raising suspicions, and that's not going to happen now that the Yeerks are on alert."

‹Weren't we trying to decide whether or not to save Jake's family?› I asked.

"Actually, what we should be talking about is how to rescue Cassie's family," Rachel interjected.

"No, we should be talking about how to save the frigging planet," Marco hissed. "Which is a much bigger deal than anyone's family."

Silence fell, and I found myself wishing I had hands to applaud with.

Up until two days ago, I'd never really paid any attention to Marco. He was just this wiseass kid that Jake liked to hang around with, the kind of guy who laughs at his own jokes and then acts like anyone who doesn't laugh didn't get it. I'd put up with him because he and Jake were a package deal, and Jake had seemed like the kind of guy you wanted on your side when social services dumped you into a new school in the middle of September.

Now, though, I was starting to see that Marco went a whole lot deeper than he let on. Yeah, he was just another spoiled suburban softie, but he got it, you know? He saw through the bullshit, understood how the world really worked. Drop Jake or Rachel or Cassie on the wrong side of the tracks, and they'd be conned, mugged, and left for dead before they ever figured out the grownups weren't coming to save them. Jake and Rachel and Cassie still thought rules were a thing.

Marco, though—Marco knew the score. Which was pretty much the only reason I hadn't taken off already. Spend enough time out on your own, and you learn pretty quick that some kinds of friends are worse than no friends at all.

‹Can we at least agree that keeping us out of the Yeerks' hands is the most important thing right now?› I asked. ‹I mean, if it comes down to a choice between you and your parents—›

"Our parents are a part of staying out of the Yeerks' hands," Jake said flatly. "If they get taken, we either get captured along with them, or we get exposed. We're on thin ice with Cassie as it is, and there's no guarantee they aren't just playing along for some reason or other. We need to decide what we're doing about this yesterday." He took a deep breath and crossed his arms. "Options. Everybody."

"Recruit," Rachel answered immediately. "We have the cube. Give them the power, and they're that much better able to protect themselves."

"They're not Yeerk-proof, though," Marco pointed out. "Even one of them goes down, and it's all over. Better to just get them out of Dodge—there's only one Yeerk pool, and it's here. Anything outside the county is probably safe for the next few months."

"Yeah, but what could we possibly tell them to convince them to get up and go?" Jake asked. "Even if we told them the truth, what's stopping them from just deciding they know better than us? Telling the cops, or going public?"

"Maybe we should go public," Rachel said. "I mean, if the Yeerks want this invasion to stay secret, then we don't—right?"

‹Unless it's like, they're being secret because they want seven billion hosts, and they know an all-out war would end up killing half the planet,› I put in. ‹But maybe they'd still rather have three billion than walk away empty-handed. We go public, we could kick off the apocalypse.›

"Or just get laughed at, more likely," Marco muttered. "So far, it looks like they're doing this thing smart, and if they've already got the police, then they've probably got the media, too." He scrubbed at his eyes. "Then again, they're here picking up zookeepers instead of in Washington nabbing Senators, so maybe they're not that smart."

"Actually," Jake put in, "there's a problem there. Why did they take Cassie's mother in the first place?"

‹It makes sense, doesn't it?› I answered. ‹I mean, the Gardens is the obvious place to pick up new morphs.›

"Yeah, but why would they be worried about Andalite bandits in the first place? From the way Elfangor was talking, the Yeerks won the space battle hands-down. And it's not like we've done anything to get on their radar."

‹Maybe they're just paranoid?›

"Or maybe," Marco said, his voice suddenly taut, "maybe there are Andalite bandits. I mean, something stirred them up, right? We already know Elfangor's brother is out there somewhere. What if another ship made it through? We could have allies down here."

I heard Rachel suck in a breath, felt the owl's feathers fluff and stand on end. That would change everything—

"No," Cassie said, speaking up for the first time. Her voice was a hoarse croak, and she bit her lip as Jake and Marco turned to look at her. "Not allies. They're fighting to beat the Yeerks. We're fighting to save Earth. That's—those are two different things."

She lapsed back into silence, and a grim silence followed as we all worked through the ramifications. I found myself remembering Elfangor's cold assessment of the situation, his solemn declaration. You are the wave they will ride as they sweep the galaxy clean of all who oppose them.

Maybe we should kick off an all-out war. Maybe a few billion dead humans was exactly what the galaxy needed.

I looked down at the others again. Cassie, returned to her quiet weeping, and Jake, pacing back and forth like a caged tiger. Marco, his frustration written in the set of his shoulders and the thin line of his lips. Rachel, uncharacteristically silent. All of them shaken, on the verge of falling apart, and Cassie's parents weren't even dead.

I shook my head, fighting to think through the haze of sleep deprivation. The sun would be up in two hours. There were only two possibilities—either the Yeerks were already closing in, or they weren't even coming. And in either case, this?

This wasn't helping.

The little voice in the back of my head—the one that told me when to move my money out of my wallet and into my sock, the one that knew exactly which couples wanted an orphan for all the wrong reasons, the one that had first told me to make friends with Jake—that voice had been getting louder and louder as the day wore on.

These people are a mess.

You don't owe them anything.

They're not going to make it, and they're going to drag you down with them.

Get out while you still can.

I looked through the trees, through the dark windows of the nearest house, to the clock on the microwave in the distant kitchen. I had forty minutes left in morph.

‹Look,› I said, breaking the silence. ‹I know I'm not exactly qualified to have an opinion, here. I don't have parents or brothers or sisters to worry about. So stop me if I'm being rude.›

I paused, but they just looked up at me, shoulders slumped and faces drawn. ‹But Cassie's parents—they're safe now, aren't they? I mean, I know being Controlled can't be fun, but—the Gardens—they're important people—the Yeerks are going to protect them, keep them alive. And as long as they're alive, there's hope, right?›

"Tell that to the Chapmans," Marco growled.

Rachel winced as if punched, and I hastened to clarify. ‹I'm just saying, it's just a matter of time, isn't it? I mean, one way or another, they're going to come after your families. Doesn't even have to be personal. They're coming after everybody. So you might as well decide right now, right? Either get them out now—tonight—or go ahead and accept that it's going to happen, and let it.›

"There's still that little problem of what happens when they send a squad out to pick up Tom and Jake and Mr. and Mrs. Berenson, and they come back with just Tom and the grownups and a story about Jake turning into a pigeon and flying away," Marco said dryly.

‹Only if there are four people in the house when the Yeerks come calling,› I pointed out. ‹If you can't think of a way to get them out, why not get you guys out? Fake your deaths, or run away, or whatever? The Yeerks show up a month from now, and there's no link.›

"There's still a link," Jake said. "Even if we assume they bought Cassie's story, they have to be suspicious. If all of her friends start disappearing, one by one…"

‹So don't start with her friends. Start by disappearing some other kids, somebody completely unconnected. You guys could be, like, three, five, seven, and nine out of ten.›

"Aaaand we're back to recruiting," said Marco.

‹You've got to do something,› I snapped. ‹Sitting here in the woods bickering until the Yeerks show up is not a plan.›

"Fine," Jake said. He stopped pacing and folded his arms. "We vote."

"I thought that wasn't—"

"We vote first, then argue about whether or not this should be decided by a vote. A, we get all our families out, tonight, and start working on a plan to rescue Cassie's parents. B, we start figuring out how to get ourselves out. C, we try to figure out a strategy for staying in place." He paused. "Anybody care to speak up first?"

No one spoke. "Fine," he repeated. "I vote A."

‹B,› I countered.

Marco and Rachel turned to look toward each other in the darkness. Seconds ticked by, each one adding to my mounting frustration. It had been two days and seven hours since Elfangor told us there were a thousand Controllers already. How much had that number grown since then? How much had it grown while we'd been sitting here dithering?

You're wasting time, the little voice said. This family bullshit isn't your problem.

Rachel spoke first. "B," she said, her tone reluctant.

No one but me could see Marco's raised eyebrow, but the silence implied it well enough, and she continued, looking anywhere but down at Cassie. "I can't—I mean, I don't want to—to abandon my family. But we need room to maneuver. We need time to think. And we shouldn't—we can't put anyone else in the line of fire. Not unless they know what's going on, and—and can protect themselves. If we stay, then our parents, my sisters, Tom—if the Yeerks figure us out and come in guns blazing, they'll—"

She stopped, took a deep breath, composed herself and continued. "We get clear now," she said, "we can build up an army and when we come back, we'll have help, we can get all of them out."

Marco shook his head. "The problem is, these are all terrible choices," he muttered. "C is just obviously wishful thinking at this point. Like Tobias said, they're coming, sooner or later. As for A versus B…" He took a deep breath in through his nose and let it out with a sigh. "It's got to be A. Four families moving out of the county is going to be a lot less suspicious than four kids going missing."

"Three families," Jake corrected softly, and Marco winced.

I could feel my shoulders hunching, my wings lifting up behind me in an involuntary response to the tension and stress I was dumping into the owl's brain. I had thirty-six minutes left in morph, and maybe thirty-six seconds of patience remaining.

"Cassie?" Jake asked, his voice still soft.

Cassie said nothing—only shook her head, almost invisible against the dark blue of the blanket Rachel was wearing. "She's not voting," Rachel translated.

Jake raised a hand and ran his fingers through his hair. "So we've got a tie, then," he said wearily.

Fuck this. They want to get completely paralyzed over, like, seven people while the world ends, that's their business.

‹No, you don't,› I said aloud, spreading my wings to their full length and testing the cold night air. ‹I'm changing my vote.›

"To what?"

‹To nothing.›

And with that, I leapt out of the tree and winged my way up into the sky.

I gave the tiny mouse an extra squeeze with my talon, feeling the bones in its hips pop out of joint. Its squeaks were pitifully loud in the owl's ears, and I felt more than a little guilt as I held it down with one wing and began to demorph. This didn't, strictly speaking, have anything to do with saving the world…

A minute and a half later, I was standing naked in the parking lot of the rundown thrift shop, shivering in the early morning cold as I acquired the mouse that lay dying in my hand. Trying to look in all directions at once, I strode across the rough asphalt toward the side entrance.

It took another five minutes and a brief stint as a mouse, but soon enough I was inside, thumbing through the racks of clothes in the dark and wishing that I still had owl's eyes. Foregoing the secondhand underwear, I threw together what felt like a sane outfit, grabbed some shoes and a watch off the shelf, and left through the front door, ignoring the wail of the alarm as I started to jog down the street.

I was definitely going to have to do something about the whole clothes problem.

As I jogged, I focused on Marco, on the DNA I had acquired what felt like weeks ago. As before, there was a feeling of vertigo as my head eased closer to the ground, and a blurring of my vision as my eyes were replaced with Marco's slightly nearsighted ones. The shrinking was followed by a kind of tugging sensation as my hair shriveled and stiffened, going from near-shoulder-length to only a couple of inches long.

There was also—though I hadn't mentioned this to Marco—a very uncomfortable sort of tightening sensation in my groin. My parents had decided not to have me circumcised when I was born. Marco's had apparently had different feelings on the matter.

I didn't quite know what to make of that. Clearly, the morphing technology took more than just a DNA sample. There had to be some kind of scanning going on during the acquiring process, or else all kinds of things would have been different—I'd read, for instance, that height had almost as much to do with hormones and nutrition as it did with actual genes.

But the owl I'd acquired had only had one eye, and I'd definitely had two when I morphed it. The same went for Marco's osprey, which had been nursing a broken wing. What was the difference between that and a little scar tissue? It couldn't be based on expectation—I'd had zero opinions on the issue of Marco's foreskin until after the morph had finished.

Just put it on the list.

Along with what a Yeerk pool was, which teachers were Controllers, and how long it would be before the air on Elfangor's brother's ship ran out.

The morph complete, I slowed and stopped, putting the size eightish shoes on my now-size-eightish feet. I walked for another ten minutes as my sweat cooled and vanished, until the squat brick structure of the Oak Landing Home for Children came into view.

My home, for the last five years.

I checked my stolen watch, the screen glowing faintly green in the darkness. It was 4:45, the sky still black, the streets empty. I walked down the sidewalk like I had nothing to hide, turning into the parking lot and striding past the low, barred windows until I reached the one that looked in onto my room. My old room, now.

I didn't bother trying to peer inside. It was pitch black, after all, and besides, I knew every inch of it. The four double-decker bunks, two to each wall, with trunks between them and a worn, splintering wooden floor covered in a threadbare gray rug. The peeling paint, broken only by the single mirror and the one old poster for the original release of Star Wars. The eight sets of thin blankets, the eight flat pillows, and the seven sleeping boys, three of them snoring like chainsaws.

I crouched down, reaching for the strangely-too-close ground, turning to sit with my back against the rough brick, keeping my eyes peeled for any sign of movement in the grounds around me. I'd never really been afraid of the dark before, but I'd also never really believed in monsters before, either.

Things change.

‹Garrett,› I called out silently, keeping the beam of my thoughts tightly focused. ‹Garrett, wake up. Wake up and come to the window.›

Jake, Rachel, Marco—they had families. Marco's dad, Rachel's mom. Rachel's sisters, and Jake's brother Tom. People they loved for no reason at all except habit. People who loved them back.

‹Garrett, wake up. This isn't a dream. Wake up and come tap on the glass.›

I didn't have a family. I didn't even, properly speaking, have friends. It's hard to make connections when you're in a different school every year, when the guys in your room are all different ages and they're in and out of foster care and you only have a month or two to get to know most of them and the ones you know for longer are assholes anyway because the good kids don't tend to come back.

‹Garrett, it's Tobias. I'm outside—you can hear me, but I can't hear you. Get up and tap on the window so I know you're awake.›

What I did have was Garrett. Garrett, and a promise we'd made to each other, almost two years before, cutting our palms with a shard of glass from a broken bottle and clasping hands while the blood dripped down our wrists. We'd both been put on room restriction for that—half the summer had gone by before they let us out for free play again.

‹Garrett, wake up, buddy. It's Tobias. I'm—›

Tap.

I sucked in a breath. This was it—the point of no return. At this exact moment, there was a grand total total of five people on the entire planet who were in a position to make a stand against the Yeerks. If I said one more word, then one way or another, Garrett was going to be involved. Was going to be vulnerable, hunted, a conscript in a very small and ill-prepared army.

But he's vulnerable already. He just doesn't know it yet.

‹Hi, buddy. It's me. Tobias.›

Tap.

‹I'm—um. I'm outside. I'm speaking to you telepathically. And no, I can't hear what you're thinking.›

Tap tap.

‹Yeah, I don't know what that means. Look, do you think you can get out without waking anybody up? I'll explain everything once you're out here.›

Tap.

‹Okay. Good. And—um. You remember our pact, right? That if either one of us ever figured out a way out of—›

TAP.

‹Careful, quiet! Okay. Right. Listen, you should—you should grab your bag. And anything else you want to keep, because—›

Tap. Tap tap tap tap tap.

‹Yeah. I don't think we're going to be coming back.›

I stared down at the tiny, crumpled note, easily readable in the predawn light. A mess of conflicting emotions swarmed into my brain—suspicion, anger, embarrassment, astonishment, frustration, shame. "Jake," I called out, loud enough to be heard from any of the nearby cavernous structures. "You just stay put until I'm done here."

"Who's Jake?" Garrett asked.

We were standing in the middle of the construction site, not far from the spot where Elfangor's ship had landed. Beside us was a low, half-finished foundation, filled with hard-packed earth. I had pulled aside a dozen or so of the loose cinderblocks, revealing the dark hole in which Jake had stashed the Iscafil device.

"You'll find out in a minute," I said darkly, letting the scrap of paper fall to the ground as I hefted the alien cube. "This first."

Garrett eyed the blue box warily, very obviously standing just out of arm's reach. "You lied," he said, a tremor in his voice.

"What?"

"You said you'd explain everything once I came outside."

"I did. I mean, okay, I haven't told you the second half yet, but I explained this part."

"No, you didn't. You said 'Andalite' and 'morphing power' like those were answers. What's going to happen to me if I touch that thing?"

"It's not going to hurt you."

"How do you know?"

"It didn't hurt me."

"Neither do shrimp, but if I eat one, I die."

I gritted my teeth, suppressing the urge to snap. For one, that sort of thing never worked with Garrett, and for another, he had a point. I'd seen the morphing cube work on exactly five people. That could mean it was completely safe, or it could mean it killed half the people who used it, and we'd just gotten lucky. Elfangor hadn't mentioned it being dangerous, but something told me the Andalites hadn't done a whole lot of beta testing on humans.

I dropped down onto one knee, putting my head just below Garrett's chin. "You're right," I said quietly, forcing calm into my voice. "I don't really know what'll happen to you. I don't really know what happened to me. It's alien technology, and I probably wouldn't understand it even if Elfangor had explained it for hours. But it didn't hurt me, and it didn't hurt the other people I was with, and you saw that it works. Think about it, buddy. Any animal in the world. Any person in the world. You'll be able to go anywhere, do anything. You won't ever have to go back to Oak Landing again."

"Any animal I can touch. For two hours at a time. Two minutes to change. Back to me in between."

I nodded. "Yep. Those are the rules."

‹Actually, there's one more rule.›

I stiffened and stood, turning to scan the skeletal buildings around me. "Jake," I warned. "Let me handle this."

‹Sorry,› Jake replied, and something in his tone told me that he had switched to private thought-speak. ‹Your family is your business, but the cube belongs to all of us. I'm coming out. I'm in Andalite morph—warn the kid.›

"Who's Jake?" Garrett asked again.

"A friend," I said reluctantly. I looked down at the note lying in the dirt, written in Jake's neat, careful handwriting.

TOBIAS—

Figured you'd come back for the cube. Notice how I DIDN'T take it away and hide it. That's a peace offering. I'm alone…can we talk? —Jake

"Brace yourself," I muttered. "You're about to find out what an Andalite looks like."

There was a soft crumbling sound from one of the concrete structures, the crunch of hooves on gravel. A shadow took shape in one of the open doorways, and I heard Garrett gasp as it stepped out into the gray morning light.

I hadn't really registered it the first time, on board Elfangor's ship. And there had been too many things on my mind the second time, in Cassie's barn. But now, watching the lithe blue shape emerge from the darkness of the half-finished building, I couldn't deny it.

Andalites were terrifying.

It was like a centaur, if centaurs had been half-scorpion instead of half-horse. The body, low and wide, rippling with muscles under the short fur. The legs, short and side-cocked, their every motion unnervingly fast, like a movie with dropped frames. The torso, held parallel with the ground, the arms waving like feelers over the dirt, ready to act as a third pair of legs if necessary. The eyes, one pair pointing forward and down, the other mounted on stalks, swiveling constantly.

And of course, the tail.

It had to be almost ten feet long, a smooth, tapering whip of pure muscle, capped by a reaper's scythe of dense bone. It hovered and dipped and darted in a strangely hypnotic dance, as if following the flight of a drunken mosquito. Beside me, Garrett squeaked and then disappeared over the wall of another low foundation, peering out over the cinderblocks with only his eyes and forehead visible.

"Jake, meet Garrett," I grumbled. "Garrett, this is Jake. He usually doesn't look like this."

‹Hi, Garrett,› Jake said, coming to a stop and rearing so that his torso stood more or less upright.

"You're a human?" Garrett asked, his voice shaky. "You're morphed?"

‹Yeah. This is Elfangor's body. He let us acquire him before he died.›

"Turn back into a person, please."

Jake gave no response, but the fur covering his body immediately began to shrink, the hairs thinning away to reveal pinkening skin beneath. Garrett watched with wide eyes as Jake's tail and back legs disappeared, as the smooth curve at the end of his torso reformed into head and neck and shoulders. A minute and a half passed, and the Andalite was gone, leaving a thirteen-year-old human boy standing in its place.

I noticed with begrudging respect that Jake made no attempt to cover up, showed no sign of shivering as he stood naked and barefoot in front of us, his hands clasped behind his back. His expression was calm and composed, his eyes sharp and commanding. It was the same look he'd given the three bullies who had me cornered, on the day we'd first met—a look that said you had two options, and only one of them was going to work.

He turned to me. "We ended up compromising," he said. "Marco's getting his dad out. Rachel and I are going to stay on alert for a couple of days. If they come for us, or for any of our family members, we bail. If they don't, we start working on plans to extract everybody. Cassie's on her way up into the mountains already with some spare camping gear Marco had lying around."

"None of that is my problem," I said bluntly.

Jake nodded. "I know. I get it. I got it back in the woods, when you stopped saying 'we' and started saying 'you.'" He turned to look at Garrett, who was still standing behind the low cinderblock wall. "Did Tobias tell you about the Yeerks yet?" he asked.

"After," I said, before Garrett could answer. "Two separate choices. He gets the morphing power either way."

Jake shook his head. "No. I mean, okay, yes, fine, you get to make your own call on that, I'm not the boss of you and we both know how to blow up the cube, so there's no point in giving you orders you're just going to ignore. But if he's not in, then he has to be out—all the way out, like out of the state, where he's not going to leave us vulnerable." He fixed me with a steady gaze. "Same goes for you."

"You don't get to make up rules," I snapped.

"That's not a rule, it's common sense," he answered mildly. "And don't act like it isn't just because you're pissed off. We're still on the same side, here." His gaze flickered over to Garrett before returning to me. "It also seems like common sense to say that recruiting ten-year-olds is a bad idea, and to point out that this little kid could be a Controller, and to find out just what the hell you think you're doing right now, but the sun's about to come up and I haven't slept all night and I'm just going to go ahead and ask you to look me in the eye and tell me why this isn't insane."

"I turn twelve in three months and eight days," Garrett remarked.

"My bad," Jake said, his eyes still on me. We stared at one another for a long, tense moment.

You are still on the same side, the little voice in the back of my head whispered. And he didn't take the cube away. That should count for something.

"I'm going after Elfangor's brother," I said finally.

Jake's eyes widened in surprise, and I continued. "He's been out there for almost three days. He could be dying, and the rest of you are just—sitting around. I'm going to find him, and I'm going to rescue him if I can. He might have intel. Weapons. Alien morphs, maybe. Stuff we can use. And even if he doesn't—we're the only ones who can save him."

The surprise had faded, and Jake's expression was now carefully, deliberately neutral. "Marco still thinks there might be actual Andalite bandits out there," he said.

I shrugged. "So maybe I get there and he's already gone. It's not like I've got anything better to do."

"And Garrett?"

"I trust him," I said simply. Jake could draw whatever conclusions he wanted out of that statement.

"He's eleven."

"I trust him," I repeated. "And I need somebody to watch my back."

Jake turned to look at Garrett, who had climbed up onto the wall and was now sitting there, watching us wordlessly. "A thousand Controllers," he said softly.

"You see any Bug fighters?" I countered. "Besides, the odds are only going to get worse. Now's the time to take that risk."

Jake shook his head. "Too much risk. There has to be a way to be sure. If you wait three days, maybe."

"Look, if we don't get moving, the Yeerks are going to win by default."

He looked me straight in the eye. "So it's 'we' again?"

I didn't answer. Just looked down at the cube in my hands, remembered watching each of the others shiver as the morphing technology took hold.

"Yeerks are—aliens?" Garrett broke in hesitantly. "Bad ones?"

Jake gave me a look that said you want to tell him, or should I?

"They're bodysnatchers," I explained. "Little slugs that crawl into your ear and take over your brain. Once they're inside you, they know everything you know, and they run your body like it's a remote control car."

Garrett's eyes widened slightly.

"They've taken maybe a thousand people already," Jake said. "Cops, firefighters, EMTs. Some of the teachers at our school. The mom and dad of a friend of mine. They're trying to take over the whole planet. They want to turn each and every one of us into a slave."

"Why?" Garrett asked.

Jake and I exchanged glances again.

"To use us as weapons to take over the rest of the galaxy," Jake answered.

"Why, though? What's the point? Like, what do they want in the end?"

I blinked. None of us had ever really stopped to ask that question. "Um. I guess because—I mean, they're just slugs, right? They can't see or hear or—or do anything, really. Not unless they have a host body to control."

Jake gave a low, quiet whistle, and I couldn't help wincing a little myself. When you put it that way, suddenly the whole thing felt a lot less black and white...

Except that every "free" Yeerk means another trapped human. No middle ground. It's literally us or them.

Garrett's head was tilted to one side, his expression thoughtful. "Once they're in, can you get them back out again?"

"We think so," Jake said. "Haven't actually tried, though."

"Can they take over animals?"

"We don't know."

I glanced at the horizon, growing brighter as the sun began to rise behind the clouds. "We need to get out of here soon," I interrupted, holding up the cube. "Jake?"

He raised his eyebrows. "If I tell you not to do this, will you listen?"

"No."

"Then why are you asking?"

"Because you might say yes."

Jake's eyes narrowed. "Elfangor gave us morphing so we could fight the Yeerks. As far as I'm concerned, that's what it's for. You already put the whole human race on the line just by talking to this kid. If you use the cube on him, and the Yeerks take him—"

He broke off, shaking his head. "There's not a lot of ways this can play out, Tobias. You just spent a bunch of points you don't really have. Ask me what Marco would say we need to do about you."

I'll admit it—that one gave me a little chill. "We're still on the same side."

"Are we?"

"I'm trying to get something done here."

"By cutting us down from five to four, and bringing in a stranger without any input from the rest of us."

"We're all strangers, Jake. Rachel, Marco, Cassie—I don't know those people. I barely even know you. You're a nice guy, and all, but—I don't trust you with my life. I can't. You're not—hard enough. You guys keep acting like we've got time to waste, like there's somebody going to show up and save us."

"Elfangor showed up."

"Exactly! That was our miracle! We're not going to get another one."

Jake sighed. "Yesterday—" He broke off, looking at the sky, and started again. "Two days ago, you chose me as your leader."

"That was before you fucking fell apart when Cassie went missing."

He stiffened, his eyes glittering, and I felt my shoulders tense. For a long moment, neither of us said anything.

"Fair," he growled. "I'm not as jaded and cold as Tobias the street-smart tough guy. I lost it, a little. Lesson learned. But you don't see Tom anywhere around here, do you?"

I shrugged. "I need somebody to watch my back," I repeated.

"Somebody who's not one of us. Somebody you trust."

I didn't respond.

"Cuts both ways, doesn't it?" he asked.

I still didn't answer. Just watched as he gnawed at his lip, looked at me, looked at Garrett, looked around at the empty, skeletal ruins of the construction site. As he shifted back and forth, and shivered.

Once.

"Garrett," he said abruptly. "You take orders from Tobias?"

"No." Garrett's eyes were wide, and they didn't quite meet ours, shifting back and forth between my forehead and Jake's. "But I listen to him."

Jake turned his gaze back to me. "Tell him."

I grimaced. "Garrett," I said tightly. "If you take the morphing power, you either have to come with me, or you have to go away. Far away, like England or Canada, and never come back. Because if you come back, they might catch you, and if they catch you they'll catch us all."

"That's a rule?"

"That's a rule."

"Not quite," Jake cut in. "There's a third option. You can come back and stay with us. With me and the rest of my group. But if you do that, you have to follow our rules."

Garrett nodded silently.

"As for you, Tobias," Jake said, crossing his arms. "I'm sending you on a mission. Go find Elfangor's brother. Bring him back if you can, or at least find out what happened to him. And if you need somebody to watch your back, you can use the morphing cube—once." He looked Garrett up and down, his gaze measured and calculating. "But it has to be somebody who's worth the risk. Not just somebody you like or care about. Somebody we can trust."

I bit back a bitter laugh. "That's how we're going to play this, then?"

Jake didn't flinch. "That's how I'm going to play this," he said. "You can do whatever you want. But I don't exactly see how us being enemies helps anybody but the Yeerks. Maybe next time you'll think about that before writing the rest of us off."

And with that, he turned and strode away, feathers sprouting from his skin as he disappeared among the dark, looming structures.

‹Something's wrong,› Garrett said.

‹You're just not used to it yet,› I answered. ‹Try to relax, let the bird do the flying.›

We were both in hawk morph, floating above one of the parks on the edge of the city. Our clothes—and Garrett's bag—were stashed high in the gnarled oak tree where we had morphed, hidden from the ground by the thick, leafy branches.

I had gone first so that Garrett could acquire from me, then demorphed again to hold him steady in the tree as he attempted his first transformation. It had gone without a hitch, and he'd immediately taken to the air, his delighted laughter filling my head.

Now, though, I could see him struggling, the rhythm of his wingbeats erratic as he fought to maintain altitude.

‹Relax!› I called out again. ‹Don't try to take control yourself!›

‹I'm not!› he answered, panic creeping into his words as they played through my thoughts. ‹Total autopilot, I swear!›

He began to twitch as I closed the gap between us, his muscles spasming as if he were having a seizure. ‹Never mind,› I shouted, ‹take control! Take control!›

‹It's not working!›

Suddenly, his wings folded and he tumbled, plummeting toward the ground three hundred feet below. ‹AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!›

‹Hang on!›

I tucked my own wings and dove, raking my talons forward. We collided a second or two later, my claws digging into his flesh, his actual scream cutting through the air as his mental one filled my head.

I flapped furiously, struggling to slow our descent, his own out-of-control wings buffeting me as we curved toward the ground. ‹Hang on!› I shouted again. ‹This is going to—›

CRUNCH.

I let go just as we slammed into the earth, both of us rolling, a mass of dust and feathers. I'd managed to slow us to maybe twenty miles per hour, and even the lightweight hawk body was stunned by the impact. A sharp pain shot up my right wing, and I let out an involuntary cry as I struggled back to my feet.

‹Garrett!› I called out. ‹You okay?›

‹No flying,› he moaned, his body still twitching in the dirt, tiny droplets of blood leaking through his feathers where I'd grabbed him. ‹No flying, no flying, no flying.›

‹Are you okay?› I asked again. I scanned the park around us. It was still early, maybe a quarter to seven, and as far as I could tell, no one had witnessed our wild tumble. There were a few bushes about fifty feet away where we would be able to demorph and remorph, restoring our hawk bodies to full health.

Except that whatever was wrong with Garrett's would still be wrong, since the morphed body was identical every time.

‹No. Flying.›

I shuffled closer, holding my one unbroken wing out for balance. ‹Did you break anyth—›

I stopped mid-thought, looking down at his crumpled body in shock.

No way.

Slowly, carefully, I extended my healthy wing again, watching as the muscles in Garrett's own wing twitched in response. I flapped once.

Twitch.

Twice.

Twitch, twitch.

I hopped backwards, fluttering, watching as a series of tiny spasms rippled across his body. The second I stopped moving, they ceased.

Holy shit.

‹Garrett,› I said. ‹Can you fly?›

‹NO FLYING.›

‹You've either got to fly or you've got to climb the tree naked,› I said.

‹Naked. No more flying. Never again.›

‹Fine, no flying. Can you stand?›

I held still as he rolled over, coming to his feet. ‹Yes,› he answered.

‹The bushes, over there. You can demorph and make a run for it.›

‹What about you?›

‹I'll wait here until you're demorphed. I think I'm—I think there's some kind of interference between us, from both using the same body at the same time. Every time I move, you twitch.› I extended my wing and flapped it once to demonstrate.

‹Don't,› Garrett said flatly. ‹Bushes. Morph. Tree. Got it.›

I waited until Garrett streaked past me before heading toward the bushes myself. It was a slow, agonizing process, my dead wing dragging behind me, sending shooting pains up through my shoulder. By the time I reached cover and demorphed, Garrett had reappeared, carrying his bag and my stolen clothes.

We left the park on foot, Garrett still visibly shaken. "Didn't you guys test that?" he asked, as we passed through the gate and headed down the street.

"Just for a minute," I admitted, embarrassed. "We checked to see if Marco could morph Dude. But he demorphed as soon as we saw that it worked, so we didn't have time to notice."

"Never flying. Never ever flying again."

"Oh, come on," I chided. "It worked fine until I got up there, too."

Though that did throw a wrench into the works. I had borrowed a fast-flying morph from Cassie, one that could theoretically make it out to Elfangor's brother in just two or three days. But it had come from the Gardens, and if Garrett and I couldn't share it, we were going to need a new plan.

"Where are we going?" Garrett asked, as we turned a corner and entered one of the nicer suburban neighborhoods.

"Marco's house," I said. "We need to warn the others about the resonance. And he's the closest to the beach."

"Why does that matter?"

"Because Elfangor's brother is somewhere in between Hawaii and Russia."

"We're leaving now?"

"He's been out there for three days already. We don't have any time to waste. And if anybody does decide to notice that we're gone, it'd be better not to be here."

"How are we going to get to him?"

"Don't know yet. Let me know if you come up with any ideas."

Another quick morph, a brief thought-speak conversation, and we were on our way once more. Traffic was picking up as the Monday rush hour began, and the driveways and street corners began to fill up with kids waiting for their school buses. We moved off of the main roads and began cutting through parks and backyards, avoiding the places where truant officers were likely to look. It was quiet and calm, the morning sun breaking through the clouds and warming our backs as we went.

"We're going to have to stash my bag somewhere," Garrett said, after a long silence.

"We'll find a place," I assured him. We climbed over a fence and crossed the railroad tracks, the smell of salt strengthening as we got closer to the ocean.

"Tobias?" Garrett asked quietly, his voice barely audible over the crunch of our footsteps.

"Yeah?"

"Why me?"

"What?"

"I mean—why not Louis, or Fletcher, or Johnny. They're—you know. Older. Smarter. Braver."

The last word was almost a whisper, as if Garrett wasn't quite sure he wanted me to hear it. I was silent for a while, considering my answer as we cut through a small patch of woods. "We made a promise," I said finally, looking over at the younger boy.

Garrett didn't look up. His brow was furrowed as he stared down at the ground, placing each step with careful precision. Another minute went by before he spoke again.

"I didn't think you were coming back," he said. "When you didn't come home Friday, and then you didn't come home Saturday either. Xander took your bunk last night. We all thought you'd just—gotten out."

"We made a promise," I repeated.

"I'm just saying. If you'd broken it. If you hadn't come back. You could've—I wouldn't've blamed you."

I stopped. After a few more steps, Garrett did, too.

I felt a kind of cold anger coming over me, the product of almost eight years of orphanages and foster homes and shitty roommates and grownups who weren't doing their jobs. Of swirlies and meatloaf and secondhand shoes, flat pillows and no money and no one, no one, no one you could really count on, all of it flashed into my head, crystallizing into a single, sharp icicle of bitter resentment. "Fuck that," I said, reaching out and grabbing Garrett by the shoulder, spinning him around to face me. He twitched uncomfortably out of my grasp, but I stayed close, almost nose to nose, looking straight into his eyes as they stared resolutely at my chin.

"You damn well better blame me, if I ever pull some bullshit like that," I hissed. "You'd better be fucking furious. Don't you ever try to play like it's okay for people to just blow you off, like—like you're nothing, like you don't count."

"Everybody bails eventually," he said softly.

"No," I shot back. I held up my hand, the scar from our pact almost invisible among the lines of my palm. "Most people bail. Most people don't know what the fuck a promise is. But that's their problem, not yours."

I turned and started walking again, holding my breath until I heard the rustle of Garrett's footsteps behind me. We went on in silence for another handful of minutes, as the ground flattened out and the gentle crash of waves became audible over the breeze.

"I'm scared," he said finally.

"Me, too," I replied, looking back over my shoulder. "You don't have to come, you know."

"I thought you needed somebody to watch your back."

"I do. And—look, I want your help, okay? You're not—you know how to take care of yourself, and you're somebody I can trust. Nobody else I know is on both lists. But I didn't get you out just so I could boss you around. You want out, just go. Jake's a decent guy, he'll look out for you. Or go to Canada. You can morph, so you'll be able to get food and stuff. You'll be safe there as long as anybody."

Garrett was quiet for another long minute. "It's really happening?" he asked. "The invasion."

"Yeah. You heard about vice-principal Chapman?"

Garrett nodded.

"They killed him. His wife and daughter, too."

"How are you going to stop them?"

I shrugged. "No idea," I said. "But saving Elfangor's brother seems like a good first step."

We stashed his bag under the roots of a half-toppled oak tree and emerged out into the headlands, scrambling our way down the steep slope until we came to the beach. "What now?" Garrett asked.

"Now we try to think of a plan," I said. "We look for animals we might be able to use, or walk down to the shipyard and find a boat that's heading the right dir—"

I broke off abruptly as we rounded the cape, my jaw dropping in shock. For a full ten seconds, my brain simply refused to work, unwilling to believe the signals my eyes were sending it.

"Oh," said Garrett as he stopped beside me, his voice shaky. "Wow. Hey, Tobias—I think I just came up with an idea."

The beach in front of us was packed, over a hundred people milling around, the air filled with the buzz of quiet conversation. Most of them were carrying buckets, the rest snapping pictures with their phones, or just standing there watching. They were gathered around an enormous, towering creature, a wall of gray flesh longer than a train car and almost as tall.

Sperm whale, said Cassie's voice, echoing out of a memory of her barn, two days and two lifetimes ago. Sperm whale and giant squid. Those are the only big animals we know of that go that deep, and they don't have either one of them at the Gardens. They don't have either one anywhere, as far as I know.

"This is impossible," I whispered, still trying to convince my sluggish brain to work. It was too convenient, too perfect to be a coincidence. I could see the whale's labored breathing, see the pooling of its flesh as it collapsed beneath its own weight. In a few hours, it would be dead. It had beached itself at exactly the right time for Garrett and I to come across it.

"Oh," Garrett said. "Is it a trap, then?"

I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to think. That would mean that the Yeerks knew we were human, that they knew about Elfangor's brother, that they could pluck a whale right out of the ocean and that they somehow knew in advance when Garrett and I would be arriving on the beach—

No. If they'd had that much power, the war would already be over.

But as I stared at the dying animal, I couldn't help remembering another conversation, this one much more recent than Cassie's lecture on marine biology.

Elfangor showed up, Jake had said.

Exactly! I'd answered. That was our miracle! We're not going to get another one.

"Tobias?" Garrett asked. "What should we do?"

I looked at him. Looked at the whale. Looked out at the endless horizon.

Three thousand miles of water, and in the middle of it, Elfangor's brother. Calling out for help.

Just put it on the list.

"We acquire it," I said. "And then we watch each other's back."