A/N: I wanted to update again yesterday just for you, SouthrnBelle, but I got wrapped up in... life. But I updated again as soon as I could. Happy belated birthday. :-)

JAKE

I waited up late for Marco, Rachel, and Tobias to come back, but eventually sleep took over. To be honest, I wasn't very worried. They were with some natives who knew their way around and spoke the language. The mission probably just went late. I knew they'd come back eventually.

But when morning struck, so did the panic.

Groggy, I opened my eyes slowly, but when I glanced around and didn't see the three of them I quickly – albeit clumsily – rolled out of bed and stood alert. "Where are they?" I demanded. Cassie moaned and turned away from me.

"Cassie, they're not back," I hissed. She yawned and stretched her arms over her head. Her eyes fluttered open and she turned back to me once again.

"What do you mean?" she asked slowly.

"They never came back last night."

She sat up in her bed and her neck snapped around the room. Nobody. Just her and I. Ax was in his Andalite form, hidden in the bathroom.

"No," she breathed. "Do you think they spent the night at Raúl's?"

"They know better," I insisted. "They know not to trust those guys that much, not to be asleep around them. That would make them too vulnerable. Marco wouldn't..." Something wasn't right; I could feel it in my stomach. I didn't know what had happened, but it wasn't good. "You don't think... they're... dead?"

Cassie shook her head quickly. "No, let's not jump to conclusions."

"...Or infested...?" I was going to be sick. We were in trouble now. They knew how to get to this hotel, and that meant the Yeerks probably knew by now, too.

"Jake, we'd be goners already."

"We have to get out of here," I replied. "Just in case. We don't know what happened." I walked to the bathroom and pounded on the door. "Ax, human morph. Hurry up."

I waited a minute, then he opened the door in his human morph. "What is going on, Prince Jake?"

"They're not back yet," I answered. "We're leaving."

He looked confused, but he didn't say anything back. I went into the room and looked around for belongings, promptly realizing that we'd brought none along. I nodded to Cassie and she stood up, and the three of us left the room just like that – but I swiped the 2 of the 3 card keys for the hotel room first.

Marco had the other one.

MARCO

I didn't sleep well that night. It took me hours to actually fall asleep on the cold, hard floor. When I finally did sleep, it was only vivid images mixed of horrible memories and dreaded fantasies... everything horrible I'd ever experienced during the war. All the injuries, all the close-calls, from times long back to recent times. Tobias getting trapped as a hawk, Ax crash-landing on earth, David almost annihilating all of us with his psychopathic ways, Cassie getting sick, almost blowing it for us at a school dance one time. Jake... just Jake, his face, too worn and too old for it to really be his. My arm disintegrating, gone. The sting just as real now as it ever was.

And how the past three times I'd seen my mother, I planned on killing her. And the past three times, I was unable. What had gone wrong? The plan... or me?

I woke up tossing around violently. In fact, I woke up when I was in mid-toss, and slammed my elbow against one of the cell's bars. I had propped myself up and was leaning in the corner, where the cement wall met the cell bars that separated mine from the next empty one. I liked this corner because I had a good view of the door that they always came from.

But now I didn't like it, because my elbow hit the bar just right and it was messing with my funny bone.

I realized my breathing was way too desperate. I could pretend to be distracted from my nightmare with my elbow, but my breathing gave it away. Yeah, I was more than a little shaken up.

Tobias, Ax, David, Cassie, Jake, me, my mom... David? What had made me think of him?

Where was Rachel?

I forgot about my elbow and my nightmare and stood up quickly, rushing to the other side of my cell. Tobias still out. That, or sleeping, but in either case he hadn't changed positions since I last saw him. But Rachel's cell on the other side, it was empty.

"Rachel," I whispered. "Tobias is out, and I could really use someone who has my back."

Sam's words "I will break you... you will break... suffer a pathetic fate..."

I don't know why I tried to morph again, but I guess I had some shred of hope that whatever machine it was that generated this shock was turned off for the night. No dice, but it was worth a try.

I couldn't shake the urgency, but there didn't seem like I could do anything about it. Too much was wrong... Rachel was gone, I couldn't make the decision I was destined to make, Tobias was out way longer than Rachel and I were, and after almost a year of forgetting, memories of David came back to me. It was weird. Nothing was right, but there was nothing I could do about any of it. A victim, left to contemplate what I'd lost.

"Tobias, you've gotta wake up," I told him. I knew he couldn't hear me, but it still made me feel better to talk to someone familiar. The only person I could trust right now. "Why aren't you up yet? Hurry up."

Eventually my legs got tired and I sat back down in my corner, where I wallowed in my self-pity, brooded in my frustration, and sunk in my helplessness. I don't know how long it lasted, but sleep didn't come, and eventually things lightened up. I didn't see windows anywhere, but they were probably around the hallway, or up the stairs, or somewhere I couldn't see. No matter where they were, I was fairly certain it was beginning to get lighter outside.

Manny came down the stairs. My first time seeing him since I'd been unconscious.

In movies, the people who handle the prisoners always bring food on some kind of tray. Not in real life. Manny was holding a paper bag with the golden McDonald's M on it. Of course Sam would serve a McD's breakfast. He did, after all, have a sense of humor.

The way I looked at Manny made him uncomfortable, and he slowed his walking as he approached me. "I'm sorry," he said. He had a genuine accent. I could tell.

"Why are you doing this?" I demanded. He was three feet away from the cell now. He bent forward and set the bag just outside the cell. I could reach through the bars and grab it.

"I have to," he answered simply. "This is the way it works."

"How does it work?" I used my "you're an idiot and have no excuse for this" voice.

"Those at the top order those at the bottom. No military group is functional without that important aspect."

"He brainwashed you," I stated bluntly. "Amazing. You seemed so smart. And, heck, friendly. Incorruptible."

"Corrupt doesn't exist," he replied. "Just different sides, but we are all fighting the same war."

He turned and started walking away. I shouted after him, but he didn't turn. Didn't flinch.