The Epidemic

This story continues takes place soon after the Fugitive's arrival in America, somewhere around books 16-19.

Chapter 1

My name is Jake.

And there was no way on earth that I could afford to lose this fight.

I took a deep breath, tensed all my muscles and focused my mind on the challenges that lay in front of me. Around me, I could hear the sound of gunfire and explosions.

"You might as well give up," my opponent said icily. I kept silent. There was no way I was going to give him the satisfaction of surrendering. My opponent laughed.

"There's no way you're gonna beat me on this one," he said, placing his finger on the trigger of his weapon. He took a step forward, his eyes glittering with triumph.

My opponent fired.

Game Over

I heaved a sigh of frustration.

"Marco, you cheat!" I exclaimed, throwing down my control stick. "You've played this game before!"

Marco laughed and put down his own stick. "How could I have played this before?" he grinned. "The school only got this thing yesterday."

"You've probably played it somewhere else," I retorted. "There's no way you could have known about that short-cut."

"You're just jealous because I worked it out quicker than you did," he said. "Better luck next time, buddy!"

Marco's my best friend. We've known each other seen we were in diapers, and we've been friends ever since. I have no idea why that guy continued to be my best friend. We're complete opposites. Different in everyway. I'm the serious, responsible type. He's the laughing, joking clowning-around type. The guy who always distracts you in class from doing your work. Unfortunately, he's also a lot smarter than me. He could probably be top of the class if he wanted to be. He just uses his brain for making stupid jokes all the time.

Just then, the bell rang. A kid watching me on the game sighed and muttered something about recess not being a long as it was in his old school.

"Saved by the bell, dude," Marco said, grinning at me. "You know, that was only level one. I dread to think how you're gonna cope with the boss levels."

"What makes you think you'll be any good later on? If you're telling the truth, and that was really the first time you'd played that, then how do you know it wasn't just a fluke? It could have been beginner's luck."

"Jake, you know me well enough to know that wasn't a fluke," he said, smirking.

I rolled my eyes and picked up my bag.

"Come on, dude, we'd better get to class. Mr Shaw will have a fit if we're late again."

This was what our life was like before the war. Before we became Earth's only defence against a race of evil, mind controlling alien Yeerks. I won't go into all that - it will only make me depressed and I'm sure you already know all you need to know. But that whole thing with the video game reminded me of the times before with became Animorphs, when Marco and I would be constantly joking about the most pointless little things in the world. Stuff like whether my favorite basketball ball team would beat his favorite. Whether Batman could take down Spiderman. You know, silly, mindless little things. Stuff to take our mind off our parents or our homework. Stuff any high school kid would chat about. And we still chatted about that sort of stuff occasionally. Usually when we weren't caught up in the middle yet another fight that we were so going to loose. Or when we didn't have another suicidal mission planned the day before a big paper was due in. We chatted about that sort of stuff when, for maybe an hour or so, we felt like normal kids. Normal, everyday, nothing-special kids. Unfortunately, those days were getting fewer and farther between.

We got to class and sat down at our seats. Yet another boring history lecture. It was Friday, and the last lesson of the day. Learning about some war that took placehundreds of years ago was the was the last thing I felt like doing, especially when we were in the middle of our own war. Reluctantly, I took out my text books and turned to the correct page, seriously hoping that I'd remembered to bring my homework with me. Hoping that I'd even remembered to do my homework. Beside me, I could see Marco doodling aimlessly in the margins of his notebook. I noticed he kept taking sly little looks behind him.

The teacher droned on. The kids tried to stopped themselves falling asleep. I tried to keep up with what Mr Shaw was taking about, but my mind kept drifting away to other things. Far more important things. Like the Fugitives. The new Animorphs we'd recently met. Four kids, maybe a year or two older than us, who had also been given the morphing power by an Andalite. They were now on the run from Visser Five - who the six of us had yet to meet - and had been ordered by the Andalite to come and find us. They'd travelled from Britain to here, entirely in morph, and had been in their fair share of battles along the way. We'd first met them when we were all down in the Yeerk Pool, trying to win a battle we'd never win. They'd morphed Andalites, and if I'm totally honest here, they'd saved our butts. We hadn't heard their whole story yet, but I think it was safe to say they'd be more than helpful in fighting the Yeerks. At least we knew they weren't Controllers. Tobias, the bird-boy, and Ax, our resistant Andalite, had been secretly been keeping an eye on them over the last few days, making sure they hadn't gone near any entrances to the Yeerk pool. They hadn't. They were clean.