Chapter 08: Marco

I've always believed in the power of laughter.

It sounds so dumb, right? Like some corny thing Dumbledore would say to Harry Potter instead of, y'know, actually teaching him a useful spell.

But it's true. Laughter is a shield. It's a crutch. It's a lifeline, when the rest of the universe is trying to tear you up, drag you down, grind you away. When my mom disappeared, my dad stopped laughing, and looking back, that's what really made the difference between him and me. It's why he fell apart, and why I managed to hold together. Being able to joke about stuff doesn't make it better, but it's something.

Sometimes, though, there really is nothing to laugh about. No silver lining. Nothing but fear and darkness and pain.

‹Hang in there, buddy,› I said, trying desperately to inject some kind of soothing quality into my thought-speak. I was as close to the building as I dared to get, perched on a small sapling just a dozen or so feet away from the false windows. The illusion was perfect—color, depth, everything. I could hear the muffled sound of laughter, the echoing splash as the fat kid belly-flopped off the diving board, exactly the same as when he'd done it five minutes earlier.

All lies.

‹There's kids here, Marco,› Jake whispered, his words just for me, and even through the filter of my own inner voice, I could hear his horror, his despair. I'd never heard Jake sound like that before, not even when he was losing his shit over Cassie going missing. It was like he was made of glass, hollow and empty inside.

‹We're on it, man,› I babbled. ‹We're going to put a stop to it.›

‹There's kids, and they come in with their parents, and they get in line, and they don't play or fidget or—or say anything, not one word, and then they bend over the water, and the Yeerk drops out, and all of a sudden they're—there's one girl, she's only like five or six, she still hasn't stopped screaming. I think her—her mom, I think her mom is the one who's guarding the cages, she hasn't even looked at her—oh, Christ—›

‹Jake, listen to me, buddy, are you safe? Are you in a good hiding spot?›

‹And the things on the pier—they're like demons, man, like actual demons with horns and spines and claws and spiked tails and—›

The last time I'd felt this useless, this impotent, had been when Mom's boat washed up on shore without her in it.

‹Jake, man, you're scaring me. Pull it together, tell me you're somewhere where nobody can see you.›

‹What? …yeah. Yeah, I'm in a corner, on the roof of the supply closet. It's all dark, no one can see me. I can see. I can see.›

‹Do you need backup? Do you need me and Rachel?›

I wanted to kick myself for letting him go in there alone. I wanted to kick myself for letting him talk me into the whole Mikayla scheme in the first place. I'd been so sure his magical predictions were bullshit that I hadn't really stopped to ask myself what we'd do if it turned out he was right.

And now my best friend was in the middle of a Yeerk stronghold, and I was totally, completely, utterly helpless.

‹No,› Jake answered. There was a strange mental sensation, like the telepathic equivalent of someone sucking in a breath, and when he spoke again, his voice was firmer, some of its authority returning. ‹No, I'm okay. Sorry. I can—I've got this. It's just—Jesus, Marco. This is so much worse than we thought. So much worse in every way. This is like, Auschwitz-level bad.›

We needed to get him out of there.

‹Rachel,› I beamed privately. ‹Any updates on security at the—›

‹DON'T DO THAT.›

‹Do—what?›

‹Shut up. Can't talk.›

‹We're going to make them pay for this.›

Jake's voice, right on the heels of Rachel's. I tried to answer both of them at once and ended up saying nothing at all.

‹Now. Tonight. This can't be allowed to continue.›

He still sounded hollow, but it was the hollowness of steel. ‹Might be a little premature there, Fearless Leader,› I said. I was pumping for altitude, trying to get enough height to circle back around to the front of the building. The YMCA was built into the side of a hill, with the main entrance at ground level on the top floor, and the pool dug into the basement on the opposite side. ‹Something's up with Rachel.›

‹What?›

‹Not sure,› I said tersely. ‹I pinged her, and she told me to shut up. Sounded tense. I'll have eyes on her in ten more seconds.›

Nine seconds later, I was back up to the front, able to see Rachel through the windows of the lobby. She was wearing the body of a single mom she'd acquired during our field trip to the other side of town. She looked fine, if a little flushed.

‹Looks okay,› I reported. ‹She's still talking to—no, wait, she's just now wrapping up with the girl at the front desk.›

‹Stay on her. I'm going to check out the inside of this closet-shed thing.›

‹Jake, hold on a—›

‹Whichever one of you interrupted in the middle of my sentence, you almost made me say my name out loud. You did make me ask if they were open on nights and any updates on security.›

It took me a long moment to disentangle her sentence as I angled toward another tree, half of my brain still worried about Jake while the other half fought the osprey body's intense interest in the squirrels below. Beneath me, Rachel pushed her way out through the front doors and set off down the sidewalk, her pace casual.

‹Well, there's a problem,› I said, filing it away alongside the resonance issue that Tobias had warned us about. ‹Although I guess this means we can make morning announcements a lot more interesting now.› I swiveled my head to look at the girl sitting inside at the front desk. She was leaning back in her chair, idly tapping at her phone. ‹Jake—›

‹I'm inside the closet. There's a bunch of stuff here—looks like weapons, maybe some heavy machinery. I can't really see, but I think maybe half of it is alien, half of it human.›

‹I'm demorphing,› Rachel interjected.

‹Wait,› I called out to both of them at once. The split conversations were piling up on top of my own thoughts, too fast for me to juggle, adding to my growing sense that everything was spiraling out of control. ‹Just—hold on a second, both of you. We need to stop and think. Jake, we need to get you out of there and regroup.›

‹No,› came a voice in my head.

‹Which one of you was that?› I asked.

‹Me. Jake. I'm not leaving until we find a way to shut this whole thing down.›

‹We came here for intel—we're not ready for any kind of mission. Let's quit while we're ahead.›

‹I still haven't checked any of the doors leading away from the main area, or any of the rest of the building.›

‹Rachel,› I pleaded. ‹Help me out, here.›

‹Marco's got a point,› Rachel said. ‹Jake, are you sure you're not in the middle of an ambush? What if they know you're there?›

‹I've been climbing all over this place for ten minutes now,› Jake pointed out. ‹Nobody's following me, nobody's hanging around. Everybody's either got a job or they're in a cage. Plus, I've seen a bunch of bugs and spiders and at least one mouse. If this is a trap, I don't know why they'd still be waiting.›

‹They could be waiting for you to demorph,› I offered.

‹Or for him to call for backup, in which case they'd capture more than one of us.›

‹No,› Jake said firmly. ‹Doesn't fit. Not their style.›

I clamped down on my objection. Jake's whole Professor X thing was a good bit more than I was ready to swallow, but this wasn't the time to nitpick. ‹This is crazy,› I said. ‹We don't have anything even remotely resembling a plan, here. Why don't you come back out, we can figure out a strategy, come back again tomorrow?›

‹We might not have until tomorrow,› Jake said. ‹They're building something around the inside of the doorway. Alien tech, red lights. Ten bucks says it's not for catching shoplifters.›

I did the avian equivalent of frowning, which was apparently hunching one's shoulders and rustling one's feathers. There were too many threads, too many threats—too many plausible possibilities, and almost none of them good. Even if they hadn't noticed Jake's presence, that could all change in an instant, and the lizard body had almost nothing going for it in a fight. It was obvious that we were overextended, but at the same time, if he was right—if it really was now or never—

He's just saying that because he's pissed off and he wants to do some damage.

True. But the Yeerks probably were planning to beef up their security. They had to know that a buzzer at the door wasn't going to cut it in the long run.

‹Rachel,› I called out. ‹What's the deal up at the front door?›

‹Six people came out, five more went in while I was talking to the girl at the desk. They all had little laminated IDs, and I think maybe there's passwords—more than one password. She kept using different greetings, and the people walking by sounded pretty natural, but I think the first and fifth person had the same combination. I think, anyway. She said something like, "hey, you're back already," and I'm pretty sure they both answered "yeah, I'm on a roll."›

I felt the osprey's heartrate tick upward. ‹Okay, that's not a good sign.›

‹What do you mean?›

I thought the question had come from Jake, but I realized I was wrong a split second later when he answered it, his inflection unmistakable. ‹It means they're smart enough to know that one password would be easy to crack and super obvious to random people hanging out in the lobby. Which means they're also smart enough to know that their current security is nowhere near good enough to keep out Andalites.›

Rachel got it right away. ‹So it's going to get tighter.›

‹It's not going to get tighter tomorrow,› I argued, feeling slightly dirty as the voice in the back of my head pointed out that it absolutely might. ‹Jake—come on, man, we have no idea what you're up against down there. You could walk around some corner and just get fried.›

‹That's why I'm not leaving yet. We have to know what we're dealing with. And if I see an opportunity while I'm poking around, well—this might be our only shot.›

‹Jake—›

‹This isn't a vote,› Jake said, cutting me off, and where his voice had been hollow steel, it was now diamond holding back vacuum. ‹Those demon things just dragged that little girl out on the pier and shoved her head under the water like they were trying to drown her, and when she came up, she wasn't screaming anymore. I am not walking out of here until I've done something.›

‹Jake—› I began again, more softly this time.

‹Marco,› Rachel interrupted. ‹I don't think he's going to listen.›

‹He'd better,› I shot back privately. ‹This is how we end up getting ourselves killed. We can't just charge in half-cocked—›

‹I know,› she said. ‹I know. But—aren't you listening? You're not going to talk him out of this one. And besides, what if he's right?›

‹If he gets himself killed in there—›

‹Saving the world, remember? I kind of get the feeling we're not all going to make it through this thing anyway.›

I fell silent, looking down at the entrance from my perch in the tree, at the alien slave sitting behind the counter, pretending to be human. I could feel the moment slipping out of control, all of my calm, rational arguments falling flat in the face of the enormity of the situation. Jake could die. Jake could get captured. Jake could get exposed, and the rest of us could go down as a result.

But we did need a way to take out the pool. It was the only weakness the Yeerks had, as far as we knew. The only way to hit them all at once. And every day that went by, they were taking more people, fortifying their position.

I remembered sitting in the woods behind Jake's house, just a few days earlier, telling Rachel that all the Yeerks needed to win the war was for us to do nothing.

But dammit, this was crazy. There was no way that the Yeerks had failed to put together some kind of Andalite response protocol. If they saw him—if they caught him—if he tripped some kind of hidden alarm—they were ready in all the ways that we were not. They would have guns. Force fields. Reinforcements.

And my best friend was down there alone.

‹Fine,› I snapped, including Jake in the beam of my thoughts once again. ‹Fine. Give me twenty minutes to get down there. If you're going to do this, I'm going to watch your back.›

‹Hey, wait—what about me?› Rachel objected.

‹No,› said Jake.

‹What? Why?›

‹You've got to stay outside so we can feed you information,› I explained. ‹If we both—I mean, if anything goes wrong, you and Cassie and Tobias need as much intel as possible.›

I launched myself out of the tree, spiraling down toward the roof of the building. I could demorph there and remorph into a fly—with a little guidance from Rachel, I should at least be able to find my way into the lobby, where I could hitch a ride on the next Controller to pass through.

‹Besides,› I said, trying to inject a little humor into the situation, ‹it's the YMCA. Men get dibs.›

For some reason, neither one of them laughed.

‹Where's Mikayla?› I asked as the last of my human body disappeared again, my feet curling and hardening into the sharp talons of an Australian ghost bat.

‹Gone already,› Jake said. ‹You probably passed her on your way in without noticing.›

‹So that's, what—half and hour or so, that someone's Yeerk needs to swim around and feed?›

We were both on top of the plastic supply closet, wedged into the back corner of the cavernous room, hidden from view by the dim lighting and the gently peaked roof. I had managed to make it all the way in as a fly, and had demorphed and remorphed as quickly as I could, fear prickling my spine as soon as it grew into place. Jake had done the same, resetting his clock. It would have been better if we could have shared the lizard morph, but we'd both acquired it from Cassie, and we still weren't totally clear on how the interference thing worked.

‹Sounds about right,› Jake said, his voice still hard and cold.

I didn't blame him. The Yeerk pool was every bit as horrible as his reaction had led me to believe.

There were no windows—or if there were, they'd been solidly hidden by the brownish metal plates that had replaced the usual paint and tile. The space was dimly lit with a hellish red glow, like a sunset in the middle of a dust storm. The air was filled with screams and sobs, and a sulphurous, evil smell lay like a layer of smog over everything. There were six half-filled cages evenly spaced around the pool, up against the walls, each large enough to hold thirty or forty people.

But the worst by far was the pool itself. It was huge, almost Olympic-sized, and filled to the brim with a dark, sludgelike liquid that constantly swelled and splashed as the Yeerks surged beneath the surface. There were two long metal piers stretching out into the middle, each about ten feet wide. Both were manned by the demon aliens Jake had described—on the first pier, they stood by to seize people as soon as their Yeerks relinquished control, and on the second, they dragged those same people back out and forced their heads under the water.

Some of the people cried. Others yelled and fought, struggling uselessly against the seven-foot-tall monsters. The saddest were the ones who didn't even try—who just hung there, limp, as the aliens threw them into the cages and then brought them back out half an hour later. I thought I recognized one of my old middle school teachers among them, and squeezed my eyes shut before I could be too sure.

Then I opened my eyes again. We needed to identify as many Controllers as possible, after all.

‹I make twenty of those demon guys going back and forth, plus the seven humans,› I said, making sure to include Rachel in my thought-speak. ‹One by the main entrance, one in front of each cage, all carrying some kind of phaser-looking gun.›

‹The demon guys, too?›

‹No. But they don't need them—they've got blades sticking out everywhere we've got wrinkles.›

Beside me, Jake twitched, his lizard tongue tasting the air. ‹Only one exit for sure,› he said. ‹All the Controllers have been coming and going through the main door. There are three doors along the long side of the pool—I've seen human guards going in and out of one of them, and demon guards going in and out of the middle one. The one on the right hasn't opened.›

‹Three doors?› Rachel said. ‹What do they look like?›

‹Big. Metal. But, like, human metal. You know, the kind that has a handle on one side and a horizontal bar on the other.›

‹There should only be two,› Rachel said. ‹I used to swim here. The one closest to the exit was the lifeguard's office, and the other one was the break room. Had a snack bar, tables, arcade games, that kind of stuff.›

‹Can you remember exactly where they were?› I asked.

‹Doesn't matter,› Jake cut in. ‹Mystery door is where we're headed. Too much traffic through the other two to risk it. I'm betting the third one is storage or machinery or something like that. That's where we're going to be able to do some damage.›

‹They're all pointing back into the hillside,› I observed. ‹Might be machinery, but it could be an underground exit, too. Or they could be digging back there. Expanding.›

‹Either way, that's first on the list. After that, we can either go fly and try to get into the other rooms, or get out and check out the rest of the place. There's a lot more to this building than just the pool.›

We set off across the darkened space—Jake darting along the floor, hugging the wall, and me flitting from perch to perch, waiting for moments when no one was looking in our direction. Once, as we passed one of the cages on our side of the pool, I thought I saw one of the prisoners look up at me. But if he saw me, he gave no sign—only slumped his shoulders and sagged back against the bars.

Soon enough, we were there. I clung to a section of piping near the ceiling, feeding Rachel more observations while Jake explored the door from below.

‹I can make it underneath the crack,› he said.

‹Hear anything?› I asked.

‹No. You?›

‹Nope. Might as well take a peek. If the coast is clear, maybe you can demorph and let me in.›

I watched as Jake vanished into the tiny space between the door and the floor. ‹Pitch black in here,› he said. ‹Rough ground—dirt and rock and gravel. I get the sense that it's pretty roomy, but I can't hear much of anything. There's maybe some machinery way far off in the distance? Like a constant rumbling. But nothing close by.›

‹Wait by the door for a couple of minutes,› I suggested. ‹Be ready to bail if anything happens. If it's safe, you can open it up for me.›

We both fell silent. I turned my head to look out across the pool, doing my best to memorize the space. I recognized four more Controllers in the various cages—two of them kids from our own school, though not from the same grade. With a small note of surprise, I noticed that the Controller guarding the cage was younger than me, the dangerous-looking weapon making her small hands look fragile and delicate.

Guess age doesn't matter much to Yeerks.

‹Okay,› Jake said finally. ‹I feel pretty safe. I'm just going to demorph halfway—enough to open the door, then back to lizard.›

‹You only need to open it about three inches,› I said. ‹We don't want to draw attention to ourselves.›

Of course, if the door had an alarm on it, we were boned either way. But clearly we had decided to throw caution to the winds. Besides, they had no reason to put an alarm on an internal door, right?

Yeah, no reason at all. Definitely not like this EXACT SITUATION might have occurred to them.

With my heightened bat senses, I thought I could hear the shifting and slurping of Jake's body as he partially demorphed on the other side of the gray metal. I wondered if half-demorphing had any affect on Jake's time limit—if it reset his clock, or if it burned up even more of his stored charge. I made a mental note to get him out of morph a few minutes early, then realized I was being dumb and just told him.

Suddenly, the door creaked open, revealing a black space a few inches wide. I dropped like a bombshell into the crack, veering sharply to the right and latching onto one of the rough walls as the door quietly clicked shut behind me.

‹It's a tunnel,› I said, firing off an echolocation burst and letting the bat brain sort out the resulting echoes. ‹Maybe fifteen feet wide, round—very rough, like it was just hacked out yesterday.›

‹That fits with there only being a thousand Controllers,› said someone—Rachel? ‹This whole operation feels like it's still in its first month.›

‹It's long, too,› I continued. ‹Goes at least two hundred feet back into the hillside before it doubles back. Can't be sure, but I think it drops off when it turns.›

With most of my attention tuned in to my sense of hearing, I also noticed the rumbling sound that Jake had reported. It sounded to me like distant digging—the scraping of dirt, the crunching of rocks. Mixed in were a million tiny clicking sounds, and an occasional otherworldly screech, like a parrot being boiled alive.

Cheerful.

‹I think whatever dug this tunnel is some kind of animal,› I added, feeling my apprehension growing again. ‹I can hear what sounds like digging down at the other end. Sounds like it's pretty far off, and sounds like there's a lot of it.›

Firing off another burst, I "saw" Jake as he skittered forward, his path zigzagging a bit as he navigated the pits and rocks blind. ‹So we're investigating?› I grumbled.

‹There were people going in and out of the other two doors, and according to Rachel, those are just rooms. Probably the command center for the pool, and maybe barracks for those demon things. We'll want to check them out, but this is bigger. Whatever this is, it's not good.›

I took wing, easily outpacing Jake as I flitted through the dark tunnel, the bat brain very much at home in the dark, still air. Reaching the corner, I banked right, staying close to the ceiling. It began to slope downward at about ten degrees, the tunnel pointing back at the pool but at an angle that would take it well beneath it. This time it stretched further, maybe four hundred feet before it turned once more.

‹Rachel, we might just lose contact with you,› I said. ‹Are you somewhere close to the ground?›

‹No, but I can be,› she answered. ‹I'm in snipe morph. I don't think anybody's going to notice.›

‹Jake,› I called back. ‹Heads up—looks like the whole thing is one big downward spiral.›

‹Rachel, keep pinging us every thirty seconds or so,› Jake ordered. ‹If we lose touch, I want to know when and where it happens.›

‹Roger.›

We continued spiraling downward for the next five minutes, taking two more turnings just like the first. The tunnel began to widen, with small offshoots appearing. I fired echolocation bursts into the first few entrances. Some of them were just tiny alcoves, but some of them opened up into caves or twisted and turned out of sight.

‹This reminding you of anything?› I asked, as we took another turning and the side holes began to appear more and more frequently.

‹Yeah,› Jake said grimly. ‹That aluminum anthill cast that Ms. Miller showed us back in sixth grade.›

‹I vote we go back,› I said, fluttering up to a boulder sticking out of the wall and resting my wings. ‹Those noises are a lot clearer now, and I'm not sure I want to meet whatever ant digs tunnels this big.›

Jake came to a halt as well, his lizard tongue tasting the air again. ‹Yeah,› he said. ‹I'm getting some really strong smells from some of the side tunnels, too, and the lizard brain doesn't like them at all. Rachel, you still there? How much time do we have left in morph?›

‹You guys remorphed only twelve minutes ago. Jake, you've got until 9:52—that's an hour and fifty-two minutes. Marco's got until 10:16—two hours sixteen.›

‹Intel,› Jake said. ‹The more we know, the more likely we are to find something we can use to blow this whole thing sky-high.›

‹Do we really have to know what's at the end of the evil fucking tunnel, to know that we're going to need to deal with it one way or another? I'm tired of waiting for something to go wrong, here, and I'm definitely starting to get a zombies-creeping-up-behind-you feeling from all those open tunnels we passed.›

‹Fine,› Jake conceded. He spun around in the dark and began heading back uphill. ‹This the right way?›

‹Mostly,› I said. ‹You're going to want to bear left a little—no, left, that's the entrance to one of the offshoots—›

‹AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!›

It happened in a flash—an explosion of movement and sound, followed by Jake's psychic scream. I found myself in midair, the bat brain fully in control as I zigzagged back down the tunnel, away from danger.

‹Jake!› I cried out, forcing the body's instincts into submission and wheeling around again. I fired off another echolocation burst, and almost dropped out of the air in horror.

It was a giant centipede, almost ten feet long, its conical legs the length of butcher's knives and each of its segments as large as a barrel. It had four irregular, jelly-like eyes spaced radially around its front end, and a gaping, circular mouth like a gun barrel, lined with rows and rows of teeth. As I watched, the monster slammed its "face" into the ground again, an awful crunching sound filling the air as it sheared away a layer of stone the size of a steering wheel.

‹AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH! AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH! IT ATE ME!›

‹Jake, demorph! Demorph now!›

I dove toward the heaving alien monster, ignoring the bat's desperate fear as I raked my talons across one of its jelly eyes. The thing screamed, a feral shriek that echoed down the tunnel. With heart-stopping dread, I heard another shriek in answer.

‹Jake!› I cried out again.

‹What's happening?› someone shouted.

Rachel. ‹Jake's down,› I shouted back, flittering around and stabbing at another of the hideous eyes, barely dodging as the monster thrashed and reached for me with a whiplike tongue. ‹Alien—like a giant centipede—it was completely silent, must not have even been moving, I didn't see it, didn't hear it—JAKE!›

‹I'm here!› he called out, his voice thick with panic. ‹I'm alive—demorphing. It got—the lizard body, it's dying, but I think I can—›

‹What do I do?› Rachel asked, frantic.

‹Nothing,› I said, ripping into the alien's third eye. ‹Stay there—if we go down, you have to—›

I broke off. As the alien screamed again, I heard the answering cries once more, already sounding closer. ‹Jake, are you going to make it?› I demanded.

‹Think so. Burning—acid—can't breathe—›

‹We're going to have company,› I said, and—hating myself—I abandoned my attack on the monster and flew back up the tunnel, landing a few dozen yards uphill. I began to demorph as quickly as I could, my mind racing to choose the right weapon—Andalite, tiger, tarantula hawk—

Behind me, the alien scream changed in pitch, grew higher and became a gurgle. I fired off another echolocation burst as my wings thickened back into arms, saw the unnatural bulge in the alien's midsection as Jake grew within its belly. There was a horrible ripping sound, a sick-wet squelch, and with the last of my bat vision I saw a fist tearing its way through the soft tissue.

If I'd had a normal stomach, I would have vomited. A foul, greasy stench filled the air, and I heard more tearing and splattering as Jake fought his way out of the alien's corpse, gasping for air.

How long did we have before more of them arrived? My super-sensitive hearing was gone, but I could still hear the echoing cries of other monster worms, could now make out the clatter of a thousand needle feet on rock and gravel. I was halfway out of morph, Jake was twenty seconds ahead of me—

I couldn't see it, but I heard it. Jake's panicked yell as the first of them arrived, turning into a wild shriek as the unmistakable sound of chomping and chewing filled the tunnel. It was like a feeding frenzy, a wild orgy of violence and hunger as what sounded like fifty other worms crammed themselves into the narrow space, all of them screeching and gnashing their teeth.

Jake screamed again, and I screamed with him, hoping to give him something to latch onto, a direction to crawl toward—anything. I felt Elfangor's tail slither out of my spine, and I staggered forward, half-morphed, groping in the dark. My hands touched alien flesh, and I spun, striking out with the still-growing blade, feeling hot liquid gush across my body as I made contact.

‹Jake!› I cried. There was no answer. Again and again I struck, fumbling blindly forward, following the sounds of the worms as they turned on each other and began to eat their wounded, always checking to be sure that I didn't hit Jake, careless of my own limbs. One of the monsters got ahold of my right arm and ripped it off at the elbow before I lopped off its top quarter; another seized one of my legs and was stomped into the dirt. Behind me, Jake's screams began to taper off, his breathing labored and weak as I carved my way further and further down the tunnel.

‹Jake!› I called out again, remembering Elfangor's mortal wound as my own blood gushed from a dozen ragged holes. ‹Jake, morph! Morph now!›

He offered no response, and I switched to Rachel. ‹Rachel, talk to Jake! Stay on him, get him to morph, don't let up until he answers you back in thought-speak!›

‹What —›

‹He's dying, just do it!›

In the back of my mind, I heard Rachel take up the call, and I let go of everything else, spinning and slicing and stomping, becoming a whirlwind of death. Finally, after what felt like twelve lifetimes, I buried my tail blade in the last of the horde, with only the fading squeaks of the dying around me. I could taste bile through my hooves, could feel whole swaths of fur and flesh missing, sense the numbness of my arm where it ended in a mangled stump. Ahead of me, further down the tunnel, I could hear another group of monsters approaching.

‹Jake, are you there? Get uphill—get past the bodies, where it's clear.›

They were cannibals—if we could get far enough past the pile, maybe none of them would bother to chase us. I followed my own advice, slowly picking my way against the gentle slope of the tunnel floor, placing each step carefully so as not to crush my friend. A wave of dizziness hit me and I stumbled, my head spinning from blood loss.

My Andalite body was dying.

‹Jake!› I screamed. ‹Where are you?›

"I'm alive," came the answer, weak but clear. "I think they—they ate—I couldn't think straight—ended up in my own body. My morph armor."

‹No problem,› I said. ‹Can you walk?›

"Yeah. I can't see, though. And I'm barefoot."

‹Can't help it. Just head uphill. Left hand on the wall, right hand out in front, spiral up.›

"The holes—"

‹There aren't any of them in the higher holes,› I said. ‹They all came up from below.›

We began moving, Jake unsteady, my own pace slow as I demorphed in motion. Behind us, the clamor rose again as the next group of worms found the pile of corpses and began to feed.

"What—what were those—"

"I don't know," I said, my human mouth emerging. "But whatever they are, it looks like they're not about to pass up a free meal to come chase us."

Far ahead of us, echoing down the tunnel, came the faint but unmistakable sound of a door slamming shut. "Dammit!" I muttered. "They're coming down to investigate."

"Side tunnels," Jake said, still sounding weak and exhausted.

"Screw that."

"Like you said…worms all down below…"

I grimaced in the darkness. He was right. Groping for his hand, I turned and retraced my steps to the last hole we'd passed. It was one of the shallow ones, going just a dozen feet back into the rock, with a slight turn to one side at the very end. I pushed Jake in front of me, hiding him in the little alcove, and began to morph once again, hoping that I still had at least one change left before exhaustion hit.

"What are you doing?" Jake asked, his voice a pale whisper.

"Gorilla," I said. "It's black—won't show up in the dark."

Twenty seconds later, a dim, unsteady glow appeared in the tunnel, brightening rapidly as the sound of running feet grew nearer. By the time the glow was bright enough to see my own hands and feet, my skin had already turned black and coarse hairs were beginning to sprout from every pore.

I'd practiced the gorilla morph just once since borrowing it from Cassie. I'd tried to rip a six-inch-thick sapling out of the ground. It hadn't quite worked, because I'd accidentally ripped the tree in half.

‹Stay back,› I warned Jake. ‹This thing is narrow, but if they come on hard enough, I can't keep them all from slipping past me.›

I clenched two fists the size of cinderblocks and waited. The thunder of feet grew louder still, and the tunnel suddenly glowed bright as daylight as the investigators rounded the nearest hairpin bend—

—and ran right past our little hiding spot without so much as a glance, a dozen of the demon monsters carrying lights and what looked like ordinary human cattle prods. They were visible for barely two seconds, and then they were gone, the light dimming as they sprinted downhill toward the feeding frenzy.

But—

I felt my brain click into overdrive. Cannibals—tunnel diggers—bloodlust—this wasn't the first time the monster worms had collapsed into violent chaos. The Yeerks still didn't know we were here.

‹Come on,› I said, reaching back to guide Jake out of the alcove and into the main tunnel. ‹We've got to get out of here before they come back.›

The Yeerks didn't know we were here, which meant they wouldn't be standing in a semicircle around the door with guns. The smart thing to do was to demorph and remorph, using the fly or the lizard to sneak out the same way we'd snuck in.

But I'd heard Jake screaming in the darkness, and I remembered the damage that my own Andalite body had taken. That hadn't been Jake-in-morph—it had been Jake. If he demorphed back to his own body, there was no telling whether he'd be able to hold it together long enough to make it through another change. Not to mention that I'd morphed six times myself in the past thirty minutes.

We were going to have to make a break for it.

‹Rachel,› I broadcast. ‹You there?›

‹Yes,› she replied immediately. ‹What's going on? Are you both all right?›

‹No,› I said. ‹But we're alive.› Behind me, Jake stumbled and collapsed, and I reached back and lifted him into the air, throwing him over my shoulder. ‹Jake's in a bad way. He's human and can't morph. I need to know the building exit closest to the pool.›

Thankfully, Rachel didn't ask any stupid questions. ‹Out the double doors and immediately left,› she said. ‹It opens out into the lower parking lot.›

‹We're going to make a run for it,› I said. ‹Cover's going to be blown. You got anything that can keep them off our backs while we bail? Something that can make a good escape on its own?›

‹Cassie gave me the tiger.›

‹They'll have guns.›

‹I'll take out the ones with guns first.›

‹Okay. Three minutes?›

‹Five, to demorph and remorph and get in position.›

‹Counting.›

I slowed as we turned around the final corner, the metal door outlined in red light two hundred feet away. ‹Jake,› I murmured. ‹You ready?›

There was no answer. Reaching up with a giant fist, I put my hand on his back. He was still breathing, long and slow and deep. He must have passed out.

Better that way anyway. I lowered him gently to the floor, feeling around for a patch of dirt or mud. Finding one, I began gently painting his face and hair, obscuring his identity as best I could.

I felt strangely calm, given the circumstances. Maybe it was shock. Maybe it was hormones. Maybe it was the gorilla, who knew next to nothing of fear. But for once, I found myself unable to worry. There was nothing to plan for, no uncertainty to integrate, no options to consider. It was no longer a question of whether—it had simply become a question of when.

Behind me, the echoes of the feeding frenzy were tapering off as the demon guards restored order. How long did we have before they started making their way back up to the surface?

‹Rachel?›

‹Almost remorphed. Ninety seconds.›

I hauled Jake back onto my shoulder, picturing the path from door to door, the line that would take me past the cage, along the pool, and out through the half-built alien archway. I could make the run in under ten seconds, if I didn't slow down. But there were the demon's blades, and the armed humans—two of them directly between us and freedom.

The cage.

I smiled. Apparently, gorillas do that.

‹Go now,› Rachel whispered. ‹I'll be there by the time you get out.›

I loped forward, feeling like a freight train. I was going faster than a human could run by the time I hit the door, and it flew off its hinges and skidded straight into the pool. It hadn't even hit the water by the time I had reached the first human guard.

I sank a fist into his stomach, grateful that it wasn't the cage across the pool—the one guarded by the little girl. I hit a little too hard, and felt a sickening crunch as he went down.

Around me, the other Controllers were starting to react. I heard cries of "Andalite!" and squinted my eyes shut against the flash of some kind of laser weapon. Roaring, I picked up the fallen guard's weapon and brandished it wildly, unable to pull the trigger but hoping that the Controllers wouldn't realize that. I tucked it under my arm for later, took one step, and reached for the cage door.

It was locked, of course.

The gorilla didn't care.

There was another flash of light, and I roared again as pain lanced across my shoulder. I swung the cage door—now free of its hinges—like a Frisbee, and hooted with satisfaction as my attacker—the human at the entrance—dodged out of the way. The hunk of metal smashed into the weird archway flanking the double doors, and there was another flash of light as some kind of alien power supply surged and died.

I saw the demon guards, running down the piers as they moved to cut me off.

I saw the other human guards, cowering behind their guns.

I heard the prisoners yelling behind me, shouting their defiance as they poured out of the cage.

And I saw freedom in front of me.

I ran.

I looked at Jake.

Jake looked at me.

Around us, the patch of grass was covered in blood, spurts and spatters and one thick pool, quickly soaking into the dry earth.

"Okay," I said, fighting to keep my voice level. "So you can't demorph."

Jake's face was pale in the moonlight as he began to unwind the makeshift tourniquets from his left bicep, his left ankle, his right knee. He said nothing—only bit his lip as he reached into our t-shirt cache and began to wipe the gore off of his newly-reformed arms and legs.

"Maybe if we went to a hospital, got you into an emergency room first—"

"No," Jake said, his voice cracking. "We can't risk it. Any one of the doctors could be a Controller. We know they've taken EMTs, remember? Even if they aren't, how do we explain a perfectly healthy kid's arms and legs suddenly disappearing and being replaced by—by—"

He broke off, sucking in a breath. Squaring his shoulders, he turned to face me with solemn, ageless eyes. "We can't risk it," he repeated. "Humanity, the whole war, everything. You know that. If I'd died back in the tunnel—"

He broke off again, and I scrubbed angrily at my eyes.

It wasn't fair.

It wasn't fair.

Sure, we'd been stupid. I had been stupid. I'd let him talk me into it, even though I knew it was risky, even though I knew we didn't have a plan. And now—

What?

What was going to happen?

"Not your fault, Marco. I'm in charge, remember?"

A joke. I needed a joke. Something to laugh about, some reason why I shouldn't just say fuck it and give up.

"This was still a success. You guys know where the pool is. For the next day or two, you know how it's guarded. You ID'ed like six Controllers, and who knows—maybe some of them got out after us. And we have the gun."

I looked down at the alien weapon, lying on the grass between us. It glistened wetly beneath the stars, covered in my best friend's blood.

One mistake. We made one mistake! Things shouldn't go this wrong based on one fucking mistake!

Come on, Marco, you know better than that. Your mom made one mistake, too. You've already learned this lesson.

"Besides," Jake continued, "maybe I'll get lucky. I mean, at least I ended up back in my own body. I could've panicked and gotten stuck as a bird or something. Maybe—maybe it'll work out, you know?"

It wouldn't. The universe just wasn't that kind.

"Look, man, can you say something? I mean, I hate to be—whatever—but, I dunno. I just—I could use a little Marco right now."

I looked up, feeling a lump the size of a cue ball in my throat. Jake's smile was lopsided and cracked, his eyes full of fear.

Say something funny, asshole!

But I had nothing.

"I'll—" I began, and then I broke off. Clearing my throat, I tried again. "I'll look after Cassie. And Tom. And your parents. I'll make sure—I'll make sure they come through this."

Jake let out a breath, his shoulders relaxing fractionally. "I know. No better hands, man." He looked up at the moon. "How much time do I have?"

I checked the watch we'd left in the cache of clothes. "Maybe two minutes. Maybe more. I don't know exactly when it happened."

"I guess I should lay down, or something. In case I faint or whatever."

He took a few steps away from the bloodstained patch, and slowly lowered himself down to the ground, lacing his fingers together behind his head. I felt my fists clenching, felt an all-consuming anger building up inside me, threatening to tear everything apart.

Not yet. Not until after.

I sat down beside him, crossing my legs, forcing myself to stay calm, to breathe, to run my fingers through the grass without ripping it up. I wished I had something meaningful to say to him—some secret I'd kept locked away, some apology I'd always held back.

But we didn't have anything like that between us.

Except—

"Jake."

"Mmm."

"When my mom drowned."

"Mmm?"

"I never said thanks. For—for everything."

The grass rustled as Jake propped himself up on his elbows and looked over at me. "Which things?" he asked quietly.

"For—"

My voice hitched, and I swallowed. "For never telling me some bullshit like sorry for your loss," I said, as steadily as I could. "For dragging me out to Six Flags on the anniversary. For laughing at all my stupid jokes. God, every one. You laughed at every single one, man. That—those laughs kept me going."

Jake nodded, another crooked smile spreading across his face. "Yeah," he said. "Those were some good jokes."

Last chance, Marco.

"Hey, Jake—what's Helen Keller's favorite color?"

He shrugged.

"Velcro."

There was a heartbeat's pause, and then Jake threw back his head and laughed—a long, rich laugh, full of light and life. "You dork," he said. "You're going to go to hell for that one."

He reached over and punched my knee, and I smiled weakly. Then he lay back once more, his eyes closing as his breathing slowed.

"Jake," I said softly.

Then again, louder. "Jake."

There was no answer.