Katherine Alice Applegate - Invasion

"Uh-huh."

"Flying saucers," he said. He laughed again. "Only complete dips believe that kind of stuff." He leaned close. "You don't believe in that, do you? Aliens and spaceships and little green men from Mars?"

I wanted to say no, none of them had been little or green. But I just said, "No way."

Tom nodded and stood up. "Cool. You know, Jake, I feel like we haven't been hanging around much lately."

"I guess not," I agreed.

"That's too bad," he said. He snapped his fingers like he'd just had an idea. "You know, you should join The Sharing. Marco, too."

"Why should we join?" Marco asked.

Tom just grinned. "I gotta go," he said. He gave me a playful punch on the shoulder. "Catch you guys later. And don't forget — let me know if you hear anything about those kids at the construction site."

He left.

Marco looked at me. "Jake. He's one of them."

"What?"

"Tom. Tom is one of them. Your brother is a Controller."

I swung my fist and caught Marco in the side of the head.

He jumped back and I swung again. But Marco was quick. He dodged my second swing, and I slipped and went down.

Marco snatched the bedspread off my bed, threw it over me to tangle up my arms, and sat on me.

"Jake, quit acting like a stupid jerk," he said.

I was trying to grab him, but he had me pretty good. "Take that back!" I yelled.

"Not likely," Marco said. "You think it's just a coincidence he's suddenly all interested in what happened at the construction site?"

I knew it looked bad. Even while I was struggling to get free and kick Marco's butt. I had this sudden flash about the smell I'd noticed on Tom when I was morphed into a dog. And there was that laugh I'd heard at the site.

But no. No! This was Tom, my big brother. Tom would never, ever have let those slimy creeps into his head. Never.

"I'll let you up if you'll calm down," Marco said. "Look, maybe I'm wrong, okay?" I stopped struggling, and Marco let me up. "You have to admit, Jake, it doesn't look good."

"Tom is not one of them, okay? That's final," I said.

"Whatever," Marco said. "Just don't punch me again, 'cause I might have to hit you back."

Just then I heard this fluttering noise at my window. Like someone beating on it very softly. I went to the window, followed by Marco.

There was a bird there. Some kind of huge bird like an eagle or a hawk, beating its wings against the window.

Marco's eyes went wide. He'd heard it, too.

I opened the window and the bird flew straight in. It landed on my dresser. It was almost two feet long, mostly brown, with gnarled talons and a sharp, hooked beak.

"It's some kind of eagle or something," Marco said.

"Is that you, Tobias?" Marco demanded. "I thought we weren't going to do any more of this morphing."

"Well, morph back, Tobias," I said. "You know what the Andalite said — never stay in any form for more than two hours."

Tobias hesitated. He tilted his hawk's head and peered at me with an incredibly concentrated gaze. At last, he hopped over onto my bed.

Let me tell you something, it is beyond weird, watching feathers turn into skin. The brown feathers ran together and merged and turned pink. It was like the feathers were melting. Like they had turned into wax and were being heated up.

The beak disappeared quickly, and lips grew out of it. The talons split into five and became toes.

Halfway through the process of changing, Tobias was a lump, half pink, half brown, with featherlike patterns still visible on his back and chest. His face was small and mostly human, except that he still had those sharp, alert hawk's eyes. Two tiny, shriveled arms protruded from the front of his chest with fingers like a baby's.

All in all, it was a pretty disgusting sight.

But the human DNA asserted itself over the hawk's and he became more normal. About three minutes sifter he'd started the change, there was a completely normal Tobias, sitting naked on the end of my bed.

"I haven't figured out how to morph clothes yet, like Cassie," he said sheepishly. "Can I borrow some?"

I loaned him a pair of pants and a shirt, but my shoes were all the wrong size.

"That was the coolest thing I've ever done in my life," Tobias said. His whole face was glowing. "I was riding the thermals."

"What's a thermal?" I asked.

"That's when there's warm air rising up from the ground. It forms this cushion under your wings. You can just float up there. Like a mile up! You just surf the thermals. You guys have got to do it! It is the best thing ever."

"Tobias, how on Earth did you do a hawk morph?" I demanded.

"There's an injured hawk right there in Cassie's barn," he said. "There's this cool osprey, too, but I decided on the hawk."

"How did you fly if the hawk you morphed from was injured?" I wondered.

Marco shook his head pityingly. "Jake, do you pay any attention in biology class? DNA has nothing to do with some injury. The DNA wasn't broken. Just a wing."

I ignored Marco. "You're lucky Cassie's dad didn't catch you," I said to Tobias. "He's so depressed," Tobias commented. "Who's depressed? Cassie's dad?"

"No, the hawk. I mean, I think he knows they aren't trying to hurt him or anything, but he can't stand being cooped up there while his wing heals." Tobias's eyes darkened. "It's terrible when birds have to be locked up in cages. They should be free."

"Yeah, free the birds," Marco commented sarcastically. "I'll get the bumper stickers printed up."

"You wouldn't have that attitude if you'd been up there with me," Tobias said angrily. "It was cool being a cat and all. But a hawk! It's just total, absolute freedom."

I hadn't ever seen Tobias so happy. I mean, Tobias has a pretty lousy home life. Thinking about it, I suddenly had this feeling…

I repeated the warning. "No more than two hours in any morph, right? You keep track of the time, right?"

Tobias smiled. "Yeah. I don't have a watch or anything, but with hawk eyes you can actually see the hands of someone's watch when they're half a mile below you. It's like being Superman. You can fly, plus you have super vision."

"Now he's Superman," Marco muttered.

"I was looking around. I guess I thought I might be able to see something from the air," Tobias said. "I was looking for something that might be a Yeerk pool."

The phrase sounded vaguely familiar. I remembered Visser Three saying something about "Yeerk pools."

"What's a Yeerk pool?" I asked Tobias.

"It's where the Yeerks live in their natural state. Every three days a Yeerk has to leave his host body and go into the Yeerk pool to soak up nutrients. Especially Kandrona rays."

Marco and I exchanged a suspicious look. Neither of us knew any of this.

"At the end," Tobias explained, "when the Andalite told us all to run for it, I stayed behind for a few seconds, I guess maybe I was too scared even to run."

I shook my head. I knew better. Tobias just hadn't wanted to leave the Andalite alone, I think maybe the Andalite meant even more to Tobias than to the rest of us.

"Anyway, he gave me… visions, I guess you'd call them. Pictures. Information. A lot of it, all at once. All jumbled. I haven't even started to sort it all out. But I do know about the Yeerk pools and the Kandrona."

Marco held up his hand, silencing Tobias. "Let me check the door," he said. He went to my door and peeked out into the hallway. "All clear," he announced.

Tobias gave Marco a questioning took.

"Tom," Marco said. "He's one of them."

"Don't make me hurt you," I warned him angrily. "Tom is not a Controller."

"Either way, we should be careful," Tobias said. He lowered his voice. "The Kandrona is a device that produces Kandrona particles. See, it's like this little portable version of the Yeerk's own home sun. The Yeerks need Kandrona particles to live, like a human needs vitamins or whatever. The Kandrona particles are beamed from wherever the Kandrona is and concentrated in the Yeerk pool. Once every three days, every Yeerk has to leave his host and go into the pool. They soak up the particles and then they reenter the host body."

"What does this have to do with you flying around playing Superman?" I asked.

"Well, it seems dumb now, but I was thinking maybe I could see the Yeerk pool." He made a rueful smile. "Saw a lot of swimming pools and some ponds. You get up there and you realize there are ponds and lakes and streams everywhere. But I didn't see anything special."

"And what if you found some Yeerk pool? Then what?" Marco demanded.

"Then we'd blow it up," Tobias said.

"Wrong," Marco said. "We decided not to get into this."

"No, we decided not to decide yet," I said.

"Well, I've decided," Tobias said.

"Suddenly the wimp is a hero," Marco sneered.

This time Tobias didn't blush. "Maybe I just found something worth fighting for, Marco."

"You don't even fight for yourself," Marco said.

"That was before," Tobias said softly. "Before the Andalite. Before he died trying to save us. I can't let that go. I can't let him die for nothing. So whatever you guys decide, I'm going to fight."

"We find the Yeerk pool," Tobias said. "And when we do, we blow it up and kill every one of those evil slugs."

I expected Marco to start yelling. But Marco is pretty smart. He could tell that Tobias had reached me with his talk about the Andalite. So he just smiled, a little sneakily.

"Remember that cop today, the one who is so interested in finding whoever was at the construction site? The cop who is probably a Controller?"

"What about him?" I said.

"Well, let's see. He invites you to join The Sharing. And now along comes Tom. And suddenly he is very interested in whatever happened at the construction site. And guess what? Tom also invites you to join The Sharing."

Tobias nodded in agreement. "Maybe this Sharing is an organization for Controllers."

Marco smiled. He's my best friend and all, but sometimes Marco really makes me mad.

"We're pretty sure the cop is a Controller. And I don't care what you say, Jake, I think Tom is, too. So, here's the deal. You want to get into this fight against the Yeerks?" Marco asked me. "Fine. Let's see how much you want to do it when it turns out it's your own brother you have to destroy."

That stopped me cold.

"It's not exactly some video game, is it?" Marco said. "This is reality. You don't know anything about reality, Jake. Nothing bad has ever really happened to you. You have this perfect family. Like I used to have."

His voice cracked a little. He never talked about his mom's death.

I realized he was right. I didn't know about reality. Not the way reality had happened to Marco — and to Tobias.

"So maybe we just walk away from this," Marco said. "Let someone else fight this fight. Sorry about the Andalite, but I've got enough death in my family."

"No," I said, surprising myself. "The Andalite gave us the morphing power for a reason. It wasn't just for the fun of being a dog or a horse or a bird. He hoped we would fight."