{Jake, buddy, you better be right.}

{Yeah, I'd better be.}

...I waited. If I was wrong, Marco would die first.

— The Threat p. 84

Jake didn't immediately step back from Marco, even though I was tempted to yank him away. Marco already looked sickly-pale in the tacky blue glow of the tap light, but that might have just been stress. Or my own worries coming out.

I stared at the hole in the floor, stomach churning. I'd destroyed the only specimen. If we'd had any hope of finding an antidote it had been with the source of the poison. And now that source was stray molecules scattered around the smoking burn hole in the ship's outer hull.

Hell of a mistake indeed.

"You're going to be fine," Jake was saying. "You just need to morph, okay? Just like that time with the rabies."

"Yeah." Marco was sweating. His voice was unsteady. "Yeah, okay."

He hunched forward, starting to swell into gorilla shape.

"Uh, Marco?" Cassie said. "Just in case this is... something, you might want to go small, not big."

Marco swallowed hard, reversing the morph. Once he was human again he gave her a pained smile and said, "Is this the part where I tell you to shoot me before you let me start eating people's brains?"

Jake forced a laugh. Cassie just looked stricken.

Marco sprouted huge hairy fangs off the front of his face, and for a second I was afraid he was ignoring Cassie's advice. But when the second-third-fourth pairs of eyes sprouted out of the sides of his head (human eyes, at least at first, because that's morphing logic for you) I relaxed. The rest of his body steadily shrank down, his arms and legs splitting into extra pairs of limbs, even though just for a few seconds his head remained human size. And then he was a fuzzy spider, crouched lightly against the deck of the ship.

{How do you feel?} Tobias asked.

{Fine, actually,} Marco said. {Spidery. Like I want nothing more than to go snack on some bugs.}

{In that case you might want to demorph,} Tobias said. {Because the military guys noticed Tom blowing a hole in their ship and started coming on board. I can hear them running around now. They're probably going to find us soon once they stop kicking down doors, and we wouldn't want you to get stepped on.}

{Okay.} Marco swelled to the size of a rottweiler before he started sprouting human features, making me extremely glad I wasn't arachnophobic. When he was completely demorphed he tilted his hand to the light.

There was no sign of the marks the alien had left.

"Oh thank goodness," Jake breathed. He stepped forward, putting a hand on Marco's arm as if to confirm he was real.

Which was when Marco lunged.

Jake twisted out of the way and Marco's teeth snapped on empty air inches above his shoulder.

I dove, tackling Marco with more force than grace. We both slammed to the deck with bruising force. He landed on top of me, immediately twisting around to try and sink his teeth into my arm. I rolled out of the way but lost my grip on him in the process. Just for a second we separated, gasping and staring each other down in the low light. Marco dove again. He slammed his weight down on top of me and I grabbed at his arm, trying to shove him back.

His body bucked, shoving his weight forward again. A barely-human snarl built in the back of his throat.

I threw up my other arm to ward off the blow—and realized my mistake immediately. Stupid. We weren't in a fistfight; he wasn't trying to hit me. His head snapped forward, mouth open—

And Cassie yanked his arm back so viciously I heard the joint crackle. She lost her grip on him when he twisted away, but it was enough of a distraction that Jake grabbed that arm and then the other one. He twisted around, pulling Marco into an armlock and holding him there.

Marco was still writhing in Jake's grip as he tried to turn his head far enough to sink his teeth into Jake's face or arm, but he couldn't reach. Not with Jake holding both his arms twisted behind his back, upper body tilted forward to lessen the strain.

The whole time Marco's expression was blank, like there was no thought left in his head. Jake, by contrast, looked like he was on the verge of tears.

I was really really wishing that Marco hadn't commented on eating brains.

It was then, in the moment of shocked silence, that Marco suddenly relaxed. Jake's grip on his arms tightened, but Marco didn't try to make a move. Instead he frowned, glancing around at all of us.

Cassie took a cautious step forward. "Marco...?"

The door burst inward, collapsing against the far wall.

Turns out Tobias wasn't kidding about them kicking down doors, because that was a sliding door before it had become acquainted with someone's boot. I charitably assumed that they had yelled for us to get out of the way and we had missed it in all the chaos.

The scene we presented for the eight soldiers who crowded into the room must have been quite the picture. Marco and I were both covered in red marks that would soon be bruises. Cassie had kicked over one of the bodies in her haste to save me from Marco and now rigor mortis made the poor woman's arm and legs stick straight into the air like she was the world's largest dead housefly. Jake was still hanging grimly onto Marco, who was back to struggling to get loose. Chapman had retreated to a far corner of the room, watching everything in shocked silence. The tap light had rolled away and currently teetered back and forth as it waved its blue cloud of illumination at a random corner.

"What the hell happened here?" Captain Nasland snapped.

{Trust me,} Tobias said dryly. {As soon as we know, we'll fill you in.}

"Which one of you discharged the weapon?" he demanded.

I raised my hand, waving sheepishly. "I'm sorry. I know I screwed up—"

"Screwed up? Screwed up?" His face was getting redder and redder. He strode into the room, stopping when he was inches from my face. "Is that what you call it? Is that what you think of this situation? That this was some little screw-up? You could have killed someone! Do you hear me? Killed someone!"

I didn't react, looking him in the eye and letting him yell. I deserved it.

"You careless, naive child! I knew it was a bad idea involving civilians in this mess. I knew it. And you just proved me right, boy! Do you have any idea how many lives you just put at risk? You foolish idiot!" he shouted. "I oughta prosecute you for attempted murder!"

Jake opened his mouth, expression mutinous. I shook my head fractionally, and he shut it again.

Captain Nasland was getting even louder, probably because he wanted more of a reaction from me than he was getting. "I should arrest you right now, I swear to god! You stupid little boy. If one of my people had been standing directly outside when you decided to start playing with alien ray guns—"

"He wasn't playing with guns."

I startled when Marco spoke.

Marco lifted his head enough to make eye contact with the captain, eyes clear even though his face was flushed with fever. "He was trying to save my life."

Captain Nasland stopped, looking like he wasn't sure what to do with himself after his thunder had been so effectively stolen.

"What happened?" It was young Sergeant Grace who spoke that time.

We all looked around at each other, trying to come up with a decent explanation.

"Jake?" Marco said softly.

"Yeah?" Jake's voice was so rough I could hardly hear it.

"I think..." Marco took a deep breath. He sounded very young. "I think there's something wrong with me."

And then he slumped over unconscious.

Jake became the one to carry Marco's limp body off the ship. The woman in the business suit recommended "securing" Marco and then bringing a stretcher for him, but Jake didn't even bother to acknowledge this suggestion.

Someone must have radioed ahead, because by the time we all got back into the building there was a makeshift hospital room waiting for us. Jake set Marco on the provided bed, stepping back and watching grimly as more military personnel in hazmat suits came in to start an IV of antibiotics flowing into Marco's arm. The rest of us hovered in the doorway uselessly.

"He's going to be all right," Cassie said softly. "He'll be okay."

I wondered who she was trying to fool.

The hazmat-wearing guys ushered Jake out of the room and back into the hallway.

"I'm going to need a full debriefing from you, son. We're going to need to know exactly what happened going forward here."

I turned around. The Captain Nasland who faced us was solemn-faced, all anger gone.

"Yeah," I said, belatedly registering that I was the one being addressed. "Yeah, okay."

The Animorphs were all still looking into the room at Marco with fearful longing. None of them were paying attention to this conversation.

I took several steps away down the hallway, forcing Captain Nasland to follow me. The others had more important concerns.

"You saw most of what we saw in the ship. Only there was a... thing," I said quietly. "Furry, dark grey." I held up my hands to indicate its size. "Like, I don't know, like a tribble."

"Tribble?" he said sharply. "Where does that species originate?"

I stared at him, baffled. "The Starship Enterprise?"

That got me a concerned look.

I sighed. "You know, tribbles? The little fuzzy things from Star Trek? I'm not a xenobiologist. Sorry."

"Very well." Captain Nasland gestured for me to continue.

"Anyway, the tribble had already bitten the dead woman—and she had bitten the two kids. I realized the bite marks on her matched the way it was touching Marco and I..." I swallowed. "I just meant to get it off him, but I killed it. Marco morphed, and afterward he tried to bite Jake, and me. So whatever infected that woman—it's almost certainly in him too. And it can't be fixed by morphing."

The formally dressed woman clicked rapidly down the hallway from where she had been watching Marco as well. "Did you order the extraterrestrial being to cease and desist its hostile activities before you opened fire?" she asked crisply.

I was starting to appreciate why the others had spent half the morning staring at the Army people like they were hopeless morons. "I'm sorry, who are you?" I said.

"Killing a sentient being of another species is murder," the woman said. "If the shooting was not in self-defense..."

"I guess I was defending Marco, okay?" I said. Why was this even important right now?

"Did you or did you not engage in an unprovoked act of violence against an alien intelligence?" she asked.

"I have no idea."

"Because if you did, there will be consequences. We will not defend you, if it comes to that."

"What're you going to do, lock me up?" I asked. They couldn't disappear me. Jake and Eva would never allow it. That was small comfort right now, because we still had bigger concerns.

"If necessary, we will lock you all up," she said. "We need to maintain quarantine, and that means keeping this whole mess under wraps."

I took an involuntary step back. "Wait, what?"

Captain Nasland glanced over at the woman. He didn't say anything, but he looked a little startled as well.

"What do you mean, quarantine?" I was scared I already knew the answer to that question. Surely they were going to get help for Marco. Surely they were going to call in every favor they had to try and save him.

"It means that until we can be sure that no one else on this base is infected, we're not involving any outside personnel," the woman said.

"What?" My voice came out even louder than I meant it to. A few people glanced over at me, and I couldn't bring myself to care.

"We have three of our best internal doctors and a highly trained microbiologist already working on finding a cure," the woman said stiffly. "I have no doubt that they will find a solution within—"

"This thing, whatever it is? Killed those kids on board that ship," I said. "Killed the Skrit Na fast enough that they died before landing it. This virus kills people."

"Yes, and we won't allow it to get that far."

"By contacting the andalites?" I said. "Or the World Health Organization?"

She crossed her arms. "By engineering a solution using our own expertise."

Captain Nasland cleared his throat. "That's what makes the most sense, given the situation."

I think my mouth was hanging open. I could not believe this was actually happening right now. Sure, they'd been annoyed at the suggestion of involving any outside parties before, but everything had changed. There was at least one life at stake here. Maybe more. And they were going to keep their little secret at the expense of a kid's life?

I glanced toward the other room. Marco had woken up. He was struggling weakly against the doctors' hold, trying to bite down on either one of them. Captain Nasland pushed past me to go back up the doctors, leaving me alone with scary agent lady.

The situation was a i of a lot more urgent now than it had been an hour ago. Were they out of their minds?

"At least you appear to be handling the situation with the level of calm objectivity it deserves." The woman dropped her voice conspiratorially. She even directed a glance over my shoulder as if asking me to share in the joke that the Animorphs were overreacting to one of their own being seriously ill.

"Zombie face." I made a vague gesture at myself. "Trust me, I am not calm. At all."

Her eyebrows drew together. "Meaning what, exactly?"

"That right now I'm somewhere between being baffled that you can all be that stupid and pissed off that you can all be that stupid," I said. "The only reason I'm not yelling about it right now is because I don't think that will do anything to convince you to call for help. So I'll say it politely: please call the andalites. Now."

"They're starting him on a broad-spectrum course of antibiotics and analyzing blood samples for signs of the pathogen as we speak." The woman smiled at me in the way socially awkward adults smile at small children who they think don't know the difference. "I know you're worried right now, but just allow us to handle it and you'll see, it'll all be okay."

I dropped my voice, leaning closer to her. "There's a not-outside chance the andalites already have a cure, have a 'solution,' and if you waste time trying to reinvent their wheel then Marco's going to die. You get that, right? He's going to die in there if you don't call for help."

"I know this all seems very scary to you, but we know what we're doing," she said gently, managing to look down at me even though I was taller than her. "Don't worry, we'll take care of this without having to raise any unnecessary alarms."

"Why, because asking for help will make your sorry asses look bad?" I said acidly.

She stiffened, but didn't drop the condescending act. "I understand that you don't have much perspective on the situation right now. But what you need to understand is that the United States is in the middle of the single largest crisis of faith it has ever faced. Online businesses are going bankrupt left and right, there are already rolling blackouts throughout the state and the energy crisis is only going to get worse if a solution isn't found soon, people are terrified that authority figures might be controlled by aliens, the military is being undercut by—"

"The fact that you were all upstaged by a bunch of eighth graders during the last war?" I suggested.

She gave me a long, cold look.

"Fine, I get it, you want to protect your own," I said. "But surely you can find a way to save your own butts and get him some help." I glanced toward the room where Marco was being held.

"Sooner rather than later, you're going to need to grow up and face the fact that there are bigger concerns at stake here," she said. "We have a duty to this country, and to its people, and sometimes that means making the decision to work with what we have to resolve a situation instead of involving outside forces."

I inhaled, slowly curling the fingers of my right hand into the warmth of my palm. Punching her wouldn't help, I reminded myself sternly. Nor would panicking. "That's a really compelling argument," I said at last. "But hey, don't waste your breath on me. Go ahead and explain to that kid in there that he's never going to see his family again because you guys need more faith because our state has blackouts."

"As I said, the bigger picture—"

"You're right about me," I said, voice low and harsh. "I'm not keeping the bigger picture in mind. Right now my focus is really damn narrow. It's all on that seventeen-year-old in there whose family has already been through hell in the past five years, who deserves to die a hell of a lot less than the statistically average human being. Who answered the call to save his species even though he knew better than any of the others he was going to lose people along the way. Who I watched throw himself between his friends and a fucking veleek when he was fourteen years old. I'm thinking about him, and I'm thinking about his mother, and I'm thinking about my own little brother who isn't going to survive losing him. That's all. No politics."

The woman drew her shoulders back, narrowing her eyes at me. "Well, then, there's your problem."

"Yeah." Exhaustion settled down on my shoulders. I wasn't going to win this one. "That's my problem exactly. And I hope I die before I grow up enough to see the world the way you people do."

"If you think I'm going to buckle to the pressure of your teenage rebellion just because you know some people who have nice reputations, you are sadly mistaken."

Before I could say anything else she turned and walked away, heels clicking harshly against the plastic of the floor.

I took a deep breath, staring after her. They couldn't just... let Marco die. It was impossible. They couldn't. The base was full of people, and they were just people. There had to be someone who would forbid it.

Right?

Out of options for the moment, I turned away from her retreating back and walked back to the others. There were two more people in full hazmat suits bending over Marco now. He already had an IV in his arm, and one of the white-plastic figures was injecting another syringe into his wrist.

Jake and Cassie were watching silently from the doorway, fingers laced together so tightly I could see Jake's knuckles turning white. Tobias was perched on the railing next to the door, staring at Marco with a predator's laser intensity. Chapman was once again leaning against a wall, looking bored.

"They're not sending for anyone else," I said bleakly.

"Yeah." Jake leaned into Cassie a little tighter. "We caught the gist of that."

"I'm sorry. I tried."

He nodded, eyes closed. "I know."

"What are they thinking?" Cassie asked.

"What's going on?" Marco spoke suddenly.

Cassie and Jake glanced at each other, and then back at Marco.

"News is that good, huh?" Marco said hoarsely. He sat up, apparently in a lucid period again for the moment. "So. How long do I have?"

"You're not going to die," Cassie said.

"We don't know," Jake corrected, smiling apologetically. "The military... They want to see what the antibiotics will do first."

"So they're not letting anyone else in." Marco, for one, didn't sound surprised.

"We're going to change that," Jake said firmly.

Marco sat up, ignoring the noise of protest from one of the people trying to jab stuff into his veins, and directed a painful-looking smile at Tobias and Jake and Cassie. "Well, that makes perfect sense," he said. "They screwed this one up eight ways to Sunday, and they all know it."

One of the doctors cleared her throat pointedly. Marco ignored her.

"Let's see." He held up one finger. "Not immediately reporting the crash to the people who, oh, I dunno, would've actually known what to do about it." Another finger. "Trying to keep all that tech to themselves, even knowing they weren't supposed to do so." Another finger. "Sitting around on their butts while their little life form counter watched people inside the ship kick the bucket, including quite possibly those tax-paying American citizens whose bodies we found." Another finger. "Finally sending in a response team—composed entirely of civilians, including four kids." Another finger. "Not alerting the proper authorities about the possibility of a brand sparkly new type of alien life." He switched to the other hand with another smile that looked even sicker than before. "Letting an Animorph die."

"That's not going to happen," Jake said tightly.

Marco shrugged as if too weary to bother arguing with him. "Point is, right now the kids are so busy sweeping all the broken glass under the carpet and hiding the baseball, they don't even have anyone trying to fix the window. And no one's going to tell their boss she's wrong because she's probably the head of the NSA or something and can kill them with her brain."

"KTVH," I murmured.

Jake glanced over at me.

I shook my head. "Not worth explaining."

Jake gently extracted himself from Cassie, walking away. He said something quietly to Captain Nasland, who answered equally quietly. I could hear them starting to argue again, but I was still looking at Marco.

Marco had gone tense again, breathing harsher. "I want to bite every single person in this entire base right now," he said. "It's... Cassie, it's there. I can feel it."

Cassie pressed a hand against the glass. "We're going to fix this," she promised. "No matter what it takes."

"I'd say your chances are pretty good," I said lightly. "You guys have gotten out of way worse situations than this in the past, right?"

{Sure,} Tobias said.

"Then let the experts handle it!" That was Captain Nasland. He was yelling again.

"I think you and I are thinking of different standards of 'expert.'" Jake's voice was much quieter, but even harsher than the captain's.

I turned. He and Jake were standing a few feet apart, halfway down the hall from us. Both of them looked livid.

"How many times do I have to tell you, we are handling the situation," Captain Nasland snapped.

"No, you're not." Jake was ice-cold, shoulders drawn up with tension. "Call the people who can help."

"We are going to continue to work with our extensive internal resources until—"

"Until it's too late?" Jake demanded. "Until he's already—" He cut himself off, breathing in slowly. "You are so far out of your depth in this situation, you don't even know you're drowning yet."

"We're out of our depth?" Captain Nasland crossed his arms. "Son, you're the one who went charging into an unknown situation without properly securing the perimeter. Your brother is the one who conveniently destroyed all evidence of this alleged alien of yours, and your friend in there?" He gestured dismissively toward Marco. "Has no one to blame but himself for his current situation. What did he think was going to happen if he picked up an unfamiliar life form and started cuddling it?"

"Don't you dare pass the buck onto him, you incompetent old man," Jake hissed. "I don't care whose fault it is. You can give me the blame if you want. But you need to call for help. You need to admit that this situation has gotten out of hand, however it got that way."

Captain Nasland drew his head up. "Leave this situation to us. I'm afraid I have to insist." He even went so far as to imitate Jake's exact inflection from earlier.

Jake jerked back as if slapped. Before it had been almost funny, watching him wind the captain up. Now...

In the next room, Marco started coughing. It was several seconds before he got back enough air to stop.

"It'll be all right," Captain Nasland said. He looked like he regretted his sharpness.

Jake stared the captain down for another very long moment. He was white-faced with anger. I could see a muscle working in his jaw.

Nobody moved. Nobody breathed, except Marco still gasping for air.

Jake opened his mouth and both Cassie and I tensed to move forward. But all he said was, "I understand."

Captain Nasland let out a long breath. "I'm sorry it can't be different—"

Jake turned away, not bothering to acknowledge him, and strode quickly down the hallway. He glanced briefly at each of us for a second. Understanding, we all followed him.

"Okay," Jake said quietly as he walked. "We're going to need one person on diversion, the rest on piloting." He was staring straight ahead, not looking at any of us. "Cassie, I think it makes the most sense if in this case you're Ra—If you morph elephant." He flinched but kept going. "Yell, smash, raise a stink. I'm going to need Tobias to figure out our trajectory and Tom to work the computers. Chapman, any knowledge of Skrit Na tech at all is going to come in handy."

"I'll do what I can." He sounded doubtful.

"Hang on," I hissed, glancing around at the soldiers walking by. No one seemed to be paying us too much attention. "We're going to steal the Skrit Na ship?"

Jake shrugged. "Unless anyone else has a better plan. Might be stupid and doomed to fail, but I can't think of another way to get a message to the andalites, and that ship's guaranteed to have z-space comms."

{Can't we just get the computer to send a message from where it is now?} Tobias asked.

"Star Wars," Cassie said.

{Um, is that a metaphor for something?}

She shook her head. "American missile-defense system. It was originally conceived as a way to try and keep the Soviets from attacking the U.S. You know," she added dryly, "back when the U.S.'s biggest concern was getting attacked by Russians. Anyway, these days it's actually up and running, and not only is it capable of turning back most minor weaponized attacks from outside the Earth's atmosphere, it also does pretty well at blocking signals into and out of the planet to prevent coordination of external attacks. We're going to have to get beyond it if we want to send a message we don't want the military intercepting."

"So," Jake said. "Steal the ship, fly it straight up just until we break atmo, send a quick request for help, and put it back where we found it. No problem."

"Did you miss the part where your idiot brother blew a giant hole it its outer hull?" Chapman said.

I blushed. Jake turned a steely look on Chapman, who decided to stop talking.

"He's got a point, though," Cassie said reluctantly. She glanced apologetically at me, but added, "If we break atmo in that thing, even if we sealed the bridge first, we'd pass out from lack of air in less than fifteen minutes."

Jake smiled faintly at her. "I did say it'd be a quick message."

"And you also did specify that it's a stupid plan," I conceded.

"Think you can fly it?" he asked me.

"Kinda depends on how much tech the yeerks stole from the Skrit Na," I admitted. "But I can read a handful of Galard and thanks to the andalites there are some pretty universal design features. So... maybe?"

"Great," Jake said brightly. "Better than the rest of us could do."

"Not comforting, squirt."

"Too bad. Besides, Tobias is brilliant with aerodynamics so if you can figure out how to make it go he can figure out where to send it."

{Sure.} He sounded about as confident as I did. But he was already starting to morph to human so he could help us work the controls.

"Cassie, go around the far side of the base before you start smashing. See if you can convince them you're just very very angry about Marco. Do not do anything that's going to make them want to shoot you," Jake added.

"Wouldn't dream of it," she said.

"The rest of us shouldn't have too much trouble getting on board," Jake said. "They don't seem to have too many guards around it."

"Course not," Tobias said dryly, fully human now. "Who in their right minds would want to steal a broken ship no one knows how to fly that's probably a biohazard zone?"

"Okay, I gotta say it, just once." Cassie grinned. "This is insane."

"Yeah." Tobias's answering smile was oddly melancholy. "Let's do it."