1Chapter One

"What!" Marco whirled around Cassie's shed, trying to decide if she had a seriously bad sense of humor, or she was just deranged. He looked around the barn , at the rest of the animorphs, and decided that she must be crazy. And everyone else for that matter, because he seemed to be the only one that thought her idea was absolutely, no questions asked, crazy. Or as Stephen King says, Game over, case closed, zip up your fly

" There is absolutely no way that we would be bale to pull that off without attracting some kind of notice. How would the people, or the yeerks, for that matter, react to a bunch of animals, seemingly wild, running into this laboratory, and freeing all the animals there?" Marco looked around the group for support, and was astonished when he found none. He could understand why Rachel, the fearless amazon queen didn't want to help, Marco didn't think that there was a whole lot she wouldn't do. It was as if she was always switched on, rearing to go, like the energizer bunny.

What Marco didn't understand was why one of the smarter people of the group, namely Jake, the unofficial but very official leader of this group wasn't objecting. Could it be that there serious leader thought that if he let his girlfriend do this stupid, idiotic little search and rescue, that maybe he would get good little boyfriend points?

" Marco, we all agree that it is a battle that is small enough to not be noticed, but big enough to make a difference," cassie said, looking at Marco as if he were the enemy.

" Besides," Rachel chimed in, "you don't have to go if your scared. Really, no one will make fun of you if you are scared of rats or something. Besides, they'd have me to back them up, and really, when you look at it, it's a fair trade." She smirked at him, and that made up Marco's mind.

"I'm not scared of anything, least of all rats," Marco shot back. " but has it occurred to any of you that maybe yeerks control this little lab? That maybe they are using it to try and discover how to morph?"

Marco has a point Tobias said in thought speech. Tobias was a good reminder of the dangers that they all faced as animorphs. If you stayed in morph to long, you permanently became whatever morph you were in. He now lived in the forest with Ax, the friendly neighborhood andalite.

Ax was a new issue all together. Right now he was in his normal, (if his andalite body could be called normal) body. He looked like a cross between a scorpion and a horse from the waist down. He ate with his hooves, by absorbing the nutrients, and whatever else would fit, from the ground. He had a normal looking upper body, and his face had two eyes, and two slits where the nose should be. He also had an extra set of eyes at the top of his head, and when he morphed into his human form, he claimed that humans had the poorest eyes that he had ever used.

"Thank you," Marco said triumphantly. " now someone is finally making sense!"

There could be yeerks there, and if there are we should acknowledge the risk, and prepare to in anyway, just prepared for the worst. Marco swung his head around, shock on his face at Tobias' words. First he thought that Tobias was on his side, and now it turns out that he isn't. Of all the double crossing things a hawk could do...

Marco caught Rachel's smug smile, and stuck his tongue out at her.

Chapter 2

As Marco was walking to school the next morning, he thought of all the things the animorphs had talked about the day before. They had all agreed, despite Marco's intelligent, fact based warnings against it, that they would go to the Laboratory and free all the animals that were tested there. Ax-man and Tobias would find the location of the lab, and next weekend, all the animorphs would go check it out.

It seemed that Marco was the only one that cared about the safety of the group, and as such, always came out looking like a coward. He was also the only one of the group that had any sense of humor, which didn't really surprise him. It was pretty tough to find the humor in things when your planet was invaded by aliens, and you and four other teenagers were the only human beings, without yeerks in their heads, that knew about it. Marco's life had long ago taught him that it was a laugh or cry world out there, and what kind of guy would he be if he went around crying all the time? He would be a girl, that's what he'd be.

'Hey Marco, wait up" Marco turned around as Jake came running up to him. Jake and Marco had lived pretty close together since thy were kids, and therefore it was okay for them to hang out without the yeerks getting suspicious about it. Also, the friendship that Jake and Marco had shared before they had found out about the yeerks had changed to more of a brotherly relationship then anything. Both of them, Jake and himself, had relatives that were controlled by yeerks. Jake's brother, Marco's mom. Funny world, wasn't it?

"Oh, hey sorry about not waiting for you. I kind of wanted to get to school on time today." Jake socked him in the arm as they turned toward school.

" Ax and I were talking about the thing next weekend," Jake began, and Marco groaned silently, this sounded like one of those the teams agreed, and you're the one that we have decided to send into the deep, dark hole. It was one of the moments that you wish had a remote control, and could press pause, and then fast- forward and just skip over the rough parts.

"-it's safer if you did it that way." Jake finished.

"Wait," Marco said, "What did you say? I didn't catch the middle of that death sentence." He looked up at Jake, and could see the exasperation in his expression.

" I said, that if you were to go to the mall, you know the clothing store, that maybe you could walk around and see if you hear anyone talking about the lab. It's safer if we did it that way.

" The only problem is that Cassie, Rachel, and I are all cramming for the test that we have in English, and we don't have time to go snooping around the mall. We figured that since you always wait until the last minute to do your assignments anyway, you might as well be useful." Marco looked at Jack with the best wounded dog expression he could muster up.

" I can't believe that you, Cassie, and Rachel think that I waste good study days, and write half hearted essays. For your information, I just happen to be really bad at English, and it just so happens to be a very fragile subject for me to talk about." Marco covered his face with his hands, and sniffed delicately.

As he peeked through his fingers, he saw that Jake was falling for it. You'd think that after knowing Marco as long as Jake had, he would wise up to this routine, but Jake was too serious to get it.

" Jake, I'm kidding. Geez, you looked like you just told me my cat died or something. Cheer up; I'll go to the mall and be your little detective. And really, when you think about it, I'm the only logical choice. I'm the only one that cares about the safety of our team–." As Marco talked about his experience, he sensed that Jake was losing focus. Fine. He'll be Alice and wonder on down after the bunny, but in this case, the bunny was in the form of a alien slug, that controlled people's minds. Can you say hallelujah, Alice?