Getting trapped like a big chunk of Snicker's Blizzard in a straw was something I was not prepared for.
I pushed my now-human arms in front of me and thrust my legs behind me. I lay fully extended on my stomach in the air shaft.
And then I stopped demorphing. I was me. For once, I was grateful to be a little on the short side.
Still, I was trapped inside a very dusty air vent.
I slithered down the square metal tube, away from the filter, toward a light beaming across the shaft. I pushed myself forward with my toes and pulled myself along with my fingers, trying hard not to panic.
The light was coming from a vent high on the wall of an office. I gave the grate a whack and it opened downward like a miniature door. I was a good eight or nine feet in the air. I lowered myself headfirst, slowly, slowly . . .
Keys jingled outside the door.
I dropped fast, forcing myself into a head-over-heels tumble as I fell.
20 BAM!
Right into a wastebasket.
"Three points," I whispered to myself.
The door to the office opened just as I scurried into the second room, a big, windowless space full of gray cubicles.
"Hello?" Lights popped on. "Mr. Grant?"
Footsteps. Slow, but coming my way.
I had no choice! I had to morph Mr. Grant.
I dashed into an empty cubicle at the back of the room and felt the changes begin.
Morphing a fly may be gross, but morphing a human being is far more frightening. Not to mention morally suspect. In this case, morphing an adult male was like getting an unwanted glimpse into my own future and realizing that my future was not pretty.
The first thing to change was my stomach. It grew out and around until the seams of my morphing suit began to tear.
My thick, gorgeous hair was sucked into my broadening skull. I slapped a hand to my head. A receding hairline! A balding spot right on top!
I watched as the skin on my hands wrinkled slightly. Pale blotches sprinkled themselves across the knuckles. I touched my face with the ugly fingers. Wow! Rough . . . At this rate I'd have a five o'clock shadow by noon!
21 My butt! I turned my double-chinned neck as far as it would turn and saw over my thick shoulder a wide protuberance - and my bike shorts in shreds.
Panic set in. I was pretty sure I hadn't grown taller but man, had I gotten wider!
"Mr. Grant?"
"Yes?" I yelped, sticking my balding, slightly grizzled head over the cubicle partition.
The woman stood in the doorway of the second room.
"Uh, are you okay, Mr. Grant?" She took another step inside.
"No!" I shouted. "I mean, don't come in. I'm very busy. I'm just fine."
"You were working in the dark Mr. Grant. Are you sure ..."
"Yes, I'm just fine, thanks. I'll be done here in a few minutes," I babbled.
Another step closer. "Why are you at Carlos's desk?"
Good one. I thought fast. "Uh, well, there's something wrong with my computer, so, uh, I thought I'd borrow this one. Uh, could you get me a cup of coffee from the Starbucks on the corner? Please?"
The woman's eyebrows quirked but she turned and headed for the door. "Sure, Mr. Grant. I'll be right back."
22 "Thanks, thanks a lot!" I said, ducking back behind the cubicle partition.
Yow! Too close. I waited until I hoped the woman had gotten on the elevator and sprinted from the cubicle. Time to find a place safe to de-morph and get the heck out of this building.
The men's room. I flung open the door to the hallway. And ran smack into . . .
"Aaahh!" I yelled. "Mr. Grant!"
"What the . . ." was all he got out before he slumped to the floor.
I shot a glance up and down the hallway. No one.
"Oh man, oh man, Jake is gonna kill me, and if he doesn't, Cassie will." I hefted Mr. Grant to a half-sitting position and dragged him across the hall and into a broom closet. It was like moving one of those stones they used to build the pyramids. The man liked his pastry.
I shut the door behind us and tried to catch my breath. Hard to do when you're panicking on several fronts simultaneously.
I propped him up against a mop bucket on wheels and started to undress him.
Quickly, I changed into Mr. Grant's blue suit. Well, all except the tie. I have no idea how to tie one.
When I was dressed I opened the broom closet
23 door, looked both ways, then scooted as fast as Mr. Grant could to the elevator.
A moment later the elevator doors slid open and I burst inside.
I was outta there.
24 5
It was almost lunch period by the time I'd gone home, changed, and got back to school.
Now, getting into school late is not the easiest thing in the world to do, but it can be done. Luckily, our school has no guards or metal detectors like they have in the high schools. All I had to worry about was the stray teacher or kiss-up hall monitor.
I leaned around the front door. Nobody. Just the janitor, but his back was to me and he was wearing headphones. And doing this weird kind of shuffling dance as he pushed a mop across the vomit-green linoleum tile that is our school's main hallway.
I slid around the doorjamb and booked the
25 other way down the main hall. I could see the tops of teachers' heads through the windows in the classroom doors, but knew they couldn't see me. Another benefit of being vertically challenged.
I made it to my locker undetected. A second later, the bell for lunch period rang and the halls were mobbed by kids charging out of class. One of them was Jake. I dropped my math book. He picked it up.
"Jake, you really do care."
"Where have you been?" he demanded.
"Guess who I saw?" I whispered, pulling a notebook at random from my locker.
Jake sighed. "Marco, just tell me . . ."
"Marco!"
A hand clapped onto my shoulder.
"So nice of you to join us today."
"My pleasure, Mr. Chapman," I said. "I would never want to miss a day of learning."
Jake gave me a "This-is-your-problem" look and sauntered away.
"Ah, amusing as always, Marco. And where might you have been? I called your home. No answer. No answer at all."
"I was . . . with my father."
"Oh, really?"
"Yes, Mr. Chapman. It was Take Your Son to Work Day at his off ice."
26 "Then I suppose you won't mind me calling him at work?"
"Not at all," I bluffed. "Would you like the number?"
Chapman looked me up and down. If he called my dad, I was busted, big time.
"He'll be in meetings all afternoon, that's why I came back to school," I added. "But you could leave a message on his voice mail."
"Just get where you're supposed to be, Marco."
"Yes, sir."
I should have said "Yes, you Yeerk-carrying freak." But that would have been fatal. To me.
Telling Jake about Visser One would have to wait. In the cafeteria I passed a note to Rachel.
Bam. After school. Good news and bad.
I sat at the end of a lunch table and ate my pizza alone.
Ignored the minor food fight going on at the table to my right. Vaguely noticed the pimply kid slurping some gross yellow soup from a plaid thermos at the other end of my table. Thought for two seconds about the history test I was going to fail that afternoon. Wondered if Chapman was going to bring up my cutting school and failing my history test at the next parent-teacher conference. Considered whether I'd rather spend my
27 life working at McDonald's or Burger King after I got expelled.
But my mind wouldn't stay on any one topic. Nothing really mattered, did it? Nothing except one extraordinarily complicated, amazingly wonderful fact.
My mother was alive.
Alive.
I saw Rachel giving me the fish eye from across the room. I mouthed that one word: alive.
Evidently Rachel doesn't read lips. She misunderstood what I'd said and responded by mouthing two words I won't repeat.
But I didn't care. No one could blow this one moment of relief for me.
She was alive. And someday, somehow, by some miracle I could only fantasize about, she'd be my mom again.
28 6
?Marco," Cassie said, "tell us why we're here."
"We" being four kids, a bird, and a furry blue alien. Freaks is our name, saving the world is our game.
"This morning I skipped school and took the bus downtown." I shot a look at Jake. "And before anyone jumps down my throat, I know it's dumb to call attention to myself, so sue me. Anyway, I was trying to avoid being trampled by the wing tips when I saw my ... Visser One. She was in disguise. A terrible wig, blue contacts, and big square glasses. But it was her."
"Oh, man," Jake said. "Are you sure it was your mother?"
29 "Oh, yeah. I got a great look at her right before I was going to trip her."
"You were going to tri p your mother?" said Cassie.
"Yes, because she'd knocked me down with this big metal briefcase. It doesn't matter. What matters is that it was Visser One. My mother. In disguise."
"You're sure she didn't recognize you and knock you down on purpose?" Rachel demanded.
"Yeah," I said. "Anyway, she thinks I'm a Controller. Remember when we went after the Yeerks' underwater complex? Don't forget: We spoke. She thinks I'm one of them. So why would she smack me, unprovoked? And if she knew the truth about me, she'd have done more than just knock me down."
"And what was the brilliant motive behind skipping school?"
"I'm an adventurer, Rachel," I said. "Much like Daniel Boone. Magellan. Marco Polo. I will not rest until I have explored every alley, every nook, every cranny of this big, crazy world of ours."
"Not funny, Mr. Polo," she snapped. "You could have gotten us in big trouble. . . ."
«What is a cranny, exactly?» Tobias wondered from his perch above us.
«So. Visser One is alive,» Ax said coldly. «This is not good news.»
30 "The corollary, Ax. My mother's alive, too," I pointed out. "I followed her into the Sutherland Tower. She's got an office on the twenty-second floor."
"What do you think she's doing in there?" Cassie said.
I shook my head. "I didn't stick around to find out."
"The last time we saw Visser One," Jake mused, "Visser Three saw us - the enemy - spare her life."
«lf Visser Three understood that we spared Visser One, he would conclude that she is a traitor^ Ax said.
"Which explains the disguise," I agreed. "But she'd still need access to a Yeerk pool. To Kandrona rays. Which Visser Three wouldn't allow if he thought she was a traitor. Obviously. So ..."
"So somehow she's alive, somehow she's getting Kandrona rays," Rachel said.
"The question is why?" Cassie said.
"Why what?"
"Why is she here, on Earth? Look, we know going way back that Vissers One and Three are enemies. Visser One let us escape from Visser Three early on. Visser Three must have suspected she was behind that. Then he's got the fact that we let her live when we could have finished her off. So he must want her bad. So why is she
31 walking around downtown? I mean, wig or no wig, Earth isn't a safe place for her."
Rachel grinned. "Come on, it's obvious. She's here to take down Visser Three. Why else? It's her only way out. Take down her main enemy. Then get herself straight with whoever is above them both."
I nodded. It made sense. Figure Rachel to understand the mind of Visser One.
"Whatever her exact motives, it's bad news for us," Cassie said.
"Not necessarily," Jake said. "Warring Vissers are a lot easier to handle than Vissers united against us."
«Divide and conquer,» Ax agreed. «We may be able to use the feud between the Vissers to our advantages
Jake nodded. "First step, find out what's in that off ice."
"She's on twenty-two, third door to the right off the elevator," I said.
«We might be able to gain access from the roof,» Ax suggested.
"Tobias?"
«Yeah, I know the Sutherland Tower,» he said. «There's a door on the roof that probably opens on a staircase leading to the top-floor hall. There's a padlock but the door's pretty rickety. We should have no problem getting in.»
32 "Fly morph?" Cassie said. "Up to the roof as a bird, demorph, morph a fly . . ."
"Not recommended. I had a bad experience with the ventilation system today. But a fast, heavier bug would work, one that can go under doors and through walls."
"You mean . . ."
"That's right." I grinned. "Everyone's favorite houseguest. The wily cockroach."
"We do this right away," Jake directed. "Tonight. But I'm out. Family function."
"Me, too," Rachel said, rolling her eyes. "I promised my mother I'd baby-sit for Jordan and Sara. And I have blown my mom off way too much lately."
"I hate to do this," Cassie said, "but I'm out, too. I am one test away from a 'D' in math. If I get a 'D' my parents will be in my life twenty-four hours a day."
«Ax and I are available,» Tobias said. «No families, no homes, nothing to do but watch the owls eat my mice. Ax-man and I will handle this.»
"And me, obviously," I said.
Jake looked at me.
"What about your dad?" Cassie asked quickly. She was trying to give me an out.
"What about him? He's been working twelve-
33 hour days on a big project. He comes home, he plops on the couch, he watches ESPN. He'll never know I'm gone."
Jake continued to look at me. Rachel looked away.
«There's the problem of Visser One inhabiting your mother's body,» Ax stated bluntly. «And the temptations that seeing her again might arouse.»
Leave it to Ax to be blunt.
"Ax is right, Marco," Cassie said. "Coming face-to-face with Visser One again will be hard for you. And dangerous. For all of us."
"Did I give myself away on the Royan Island mission?" I demanded. "Or today?"
"First time, pretty close," Rachel muttered.
"No, not pretty close," I snapped. "I didn't. And that's the fact."
There was an awkward silence.
"I don't believe this crap," I said. "We've been through this before. The mission comes first. Personal hang-ups, second. I'm in. I'm going. Period."
Jake sighed. "Okay, Marco, Ax, and Tobias. Tonight." He looked at me. "Don't do anything foolish. It's reconnaissance only."
I nodded.
"And if it comes to a judgment call, Tobias makes the call."
34 That caught me off guard. But there was no point arguing. In Jake's place I'd have done the same thing.
"No problem."
Jake came and took my arm and drew me with him outside into the afternoon sunlight. I cringed. I knew what was coming.
"I noticed a certain lack of details about what happened today," Jake said. "Which tells me you did things that I probably don't want to hear about."
"Yeah. You probably don't." I tried out a devil-may-care grin. Not a big success.
Jake folded his arms over his chest and looked down at the ground in silence. Then up at me.
Jake has changed a lot over the months we've been fighting this little war. The look he gave me did not come from my boy Jake, my bud, my pal. It came from a battle commander.
Freaky seeing how old Jake has gotten.
"Marco, you're my best friend. But if you ever go off like that again you and I will have serious problems."
In the old days I'd have said "Bite me," or something equally brilliant.
Now I said, "Okay, understood."
It was all I could do to stop myself from saying, "Yes, sir."
35 7
At eleven-thirty that night, with my dad safely snoring in his room, I morphed to seagull and flew to one of the little urban parks scattered throughout the downtown area. Benches, shru
bs, trash cans, a few spindly trees. A place where the suits go to eat their bagel sandwiches.
I landed on the dusty ground to pick through the bounty that is an overturned garbage can when I heard the call of a bird of prey. Reluctantly I turned away from the remains of a gyro and took off to join a red-tailed hawk coming in from the north and a northern harrier, coming from the south.
A scavenger like the seagull are good flyers, low and fast. But not nearly as good as hawks
36 and harriers. Too fat from gorging on hot dogs and clams, maybe. By the time I joined Ax and Tobias on the roof of the Sutherland Tower, I was exhausted from pushing for all that altitude.
«The light's not on in the office,» Tobias said.
«She's there,» I said confidently. She had to be. «Let's try that door.»
The door Tobias had told us about earlier wasn't keeping anyone out, least of all a roach. Clearly at one point someone had pried his way in with a crowbar, leaving gouges plenty wide for even a hefty seagull.
But roach was the way to go.
They say that after the big one, total nuclear annihilation, when every other living thing has been turned into a pile of glowing mud, roaches will still be powering over the ruins of civilization.
The amazing indestructible roach. They adapt almost immediately to whatever poison is unleashed on them. And they eat virtually anything- books, glue, plants, dead fish, old sneakers. It's almost impossible to destroy them.
I like that about cockroaches.
The wind was whipping. Heavy clouds covered the moon and the stars. Only the lights on in the surrounding buildings pierced the gloom. We were three mutants on a depressing, deserted
37 island in the sky. An acre of tarred gravel and air-conditioning machinery surrounded us. There was a flagpole, no flag. The hoist kept slapping the pole with a sort of hollow twang.
The sight of Ax halfway between Andalite and cockroach was more interesting than disturbing. Like an armadillo from planet Kill-or-Be-Killed. A cat-sized beetle with a shell made of steel and six roach legs, each with an Andalite hoof. Add to that a foot-long tail with a spike made to stab and you have one mean-looking being.
Tobias, on the other hand, looked disgusting.
Red-tailed hawks and cockroaches were not meant to merge. You've got absolute majesty on the one hand and absolute utility on the other. Mother Nature didn't come up with a birdbug on her own for good reason.