Invasion - Katherine Alice Applegate

I knew what was happening. She was fighting the horse's urge to panic.

"Human, human, human!" I said. "Everybody, stand in front of her!"

The police car squealed to a stop, sending the gravel flying. A single policeman stepped out. I waved at him.

"Morning," he said. "You kids, uh… hiding something?"

I wanted to look over my shoulder and see what kind of shape Cassie was in. But that would have been a mistake. "Hiding something?" I repeated.

"Step aside, all of you," he ordered.

We did, revealing Cassie. Fully human.

The policeman looked puzzled. But then he shrugged.

I breathed a huge sigh of relief.

"Can we help you, officer?" Rachel asked in her best "responsible" voice.

"We're making some inquiries," he said, still looking at Cassie like something must be wrong with her. "We're looking for some kids who were shooting off fireworks in the construction site across from the mall last night."

Suddenly Marco started coughing.

"Something the matter with him?" the policeman asked.

"Nope," I said. "Nothing wrong with him."

"We want these kids," the policeman said. "We want them real bad. See, it was dangerous what they did. Could have been someone hurt. So we want to find the kids."

Suddenly I knew. He was one of them. The policeman was a Controller. I looked at his face. It seemed normal. But inside his head was a creature from another planet — an evil, parasitic slug. Just behind those normal, human-looking eyes, something vile lurked.

"I don't know anything about it," I lied.

He looked at me real close, and I began to sweat.

"Hey, you know what?" he said. "You look familiar. You look like a young man I know named Tom."

"He's my brother," I said. I was trying not to let my voice go weird. But I just couldn't forget the fact that it wasn't really some normal, human cop I was talking to. It was a Yeerk. This wasn't even a human anymore. Not really. It was a Human-Controller. The human brain was totally enslaved.

"Tom's your brother, eh? Well, he's a good kid. I know him from The Sharing. I'm one of the adult supervisors. Great group, The Sharing. You should come to a meeting."

"Yeah, um, Tom invited me already," I said.

"We have a lot of fun."

"Yeah," I repeated.

"Well, you call me if you hear anything about these kids in the construction site. I should warn you — they may come up with some wild story to conceal their guilt. But you're too smart to believe a bunch of crazy lies, aren't you?"

"He's a regular genius," Marco said.

Finally the policeman took off.

"Okay, rule number one," Rachel announced firmly. "We don't do anything to attract attention. We have to be secret about everything. Especially morphing."

Cassie looked embarrassed. "Yeah, it was stupid of me. It's just, man! It is so amazing, running like that. Out in the open spaces, running and running."

"How did you manage to morph with clothing?" I asked. "When Tobias and I did it… well, let's just say it's a good thing neither of you girls was around."

"It took some practice," Cassie said, "And it can only be tight clothing. I tried it with a coat on. It got shredded. I don't know what we'll do in the winter."

"That's not going to be a problem," Marco said firmly. "Because there isn't going to be any more morphing."

"Maybe Marco is right," Rachel said. "This is too big for us. We're just kids. We need to find someone important to tell this to. Someone we can trust,"

"We can't trust anyone," Tobias said flatly. "Anyone could be a Controller. We tell the wrong person, we are all dead. And the whole world will be doomed."

"I don't want to stop morphing," Cassie said. "Do you realize all we could do with this power? We could communicate with animals, maybe. Help save endangered species,"

"Humans may be the next endangered species, Cassie," Tobias said quietly.

"What do you say, Jake?" Cassie asked.

"Me?" I shrugged. "I don't know. Marco's right, we could all get killed. Rachel's right, this is too major for a bunch of kids." I hesitated. I didn't like what I was about to say. "But Tobias is right, too. I mean, the whole world is in danger. And we can't trust anyone."

"So, what do we do?" Rachel demanded.

"Hey, it's not up to me to decide," I said hotly.

"Let's take a vote," Rachel said.

"I vote we try to live long enough to get driver's licenses," Marco said. "I vote we do what the Andalite said — fight," Tobias said.

"You've never even been in a fight," Marco sneered. "You can't handle the punks at school. Suddenly now you want to kick butt on that Visser Three freakazoid?"

Tobias said nothing, but a blush spread up his neck.

"I vote with Tobias," Rachel said, giving Marco a dirty look. "I wish we could dump all this on someone else. But we can't."

"Let's think it over for a while," Cassie said. "This is a big decision. I mean, it's not like we're deciding whether to wear jeans or a skirt."

I was relieved. Thank goodness for Cassie.

"Yeah, let's wait for a while," I agreed. "In the meantime, no one say anything to anyone. We just go back to normal life."

There was a smirk on Marco's face. He thought he'd won. But I wasn't so sure. Tobias was still blushing. He sent a secret, grateful look to Rachel.

Marco and I took off toward my house again, trying to act normal. We talked about the baseball season. We talked about who was going to slaughter who in Dead Zone 5, which is this CD game we were going to play on my computer.

By the time we'd reached my house, we'd run out of stuff to talk about.

We played Dead Zone for a while. Neither of us did very well. Face it, games just weren't all that interesting anymore. My mind was totally not there.

Tom came in after a while. "Hey, you guys," he said. "Can't give that a try?"

It had been months since Tom had done anything with me like play a game.

"Sure." Marco moved over and gave Tom his control stick.

We played for a few minutes, and Tom did pretty well. But then it was like he got bored or something. He gave the control back to Marco and just sat back and watched.

"You guys hear about all the stuff going on with the construction site last night?" he asked me.

Marco jerked in surprise. "What stuff?" I said.

"It was in the newspaper," Tom said casually. "They said some kids were there shooting off fireworks. A bunch of morons who live around there decided it was flying saucers or something."

He laughed. "Flying saucers, right." Marco and I both laughed, too.

"Yeah. And it was just these kids playing with fireworks," Tom said. "Uh-huh," I said. I was trying very hard to concentrate on the game. "You were out at the mall last night, weren't you?" Tom asked me. "Uh-huh."

"Did you come back through the construction site?"

I shook my head. "No way."

"Didn't see any kids hanging around there, maybe?"

"Nope."

"It's not like I'd get them in trouble," Tom said. "I mean, I think it's kind of cool. They're just shooting off fireworks and they get all these people terrified of flying saucers."

"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."

CHAPTER 12

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.

<Let me in, all right? I can't hover here forever!> 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.

<A red-tailed hawk, actually,> Tobias said.

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

<I never agreed to that.>

"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.