Chapter Eight – Sean

It was not always going to be that easy. The morph was a little faster, if a hundred times weirder than usual. But I was under pressure and by the time someone finally got the door opened, they would have been surprised to find the coat lying haphazardly on the floor.

And I was foolishly worried about the frog morph.

Stop thinking and get to Bryce, I thought. Act now, consequences later.

The centipede's vision was pretty much crap. My human mind remembered being underneath the coat and I sort of knew where the toilet was. It was in the opposite direction of all of the footsteps and the loud speech, which freaked the centipede out something fierce.

Noise! Loud Noise! Run! Its instincts cried. Then someone lifted the coat and the light poured down on me like a wall of blinding pain. Light!

I bolted for the shade of the toilet. The millions of feet at my side told me all I needed to know. I could feel the crevices and the uneven surface of the linoleum floor. As I neared the toilet, the feet on my right sensed the cool, smooth surface, which was much nicer to my senses.

"Where is he?"

Unlike the frog, I couldn't really hear anyone speaking. But the voices were softer vibrations that I could recognize.

"I don't know. There's a bug in here though."

"I know there was another one in the lounge. Someone must have stepped on it."

Pause. I rested under what I guess was a valve and tried to think of how the other centipede got in. I didn't exactly see it enter and if it came in from the lounge, then screw that because the sound of footsteps wasn't going away.

"Could it be…one of the Andalites?"

That didn't raise my hopes any.

"No, it was a human being. Remember, only the Andalites have morphing power."

I felt my way along the metal pipe. It was a bit cooler to the touch than the toilet and I knew it would go straight into the wall. As I felt along the wall for a crack, or an opening, there were more voices in the lounge.

"We should still tell Visser Six." Somehow I knew my dad would get brought into this.

At the end of the pipe, I sensed an opening in the wall and felt the space with my feelers. It was probably the size of a penny, but the centipede was only wondering why I was hesitating. The space beyond was dark, damp and cool. And the best part was, it was away from the large moving things that were in the bathroom and the room beyond.

There was a slightly disturbing sensation as I squeezed between the pipe and the drywall. But once I was inside the dark, moist area, the centipede's instincts calmed down. There were still vibrations. As a I picked a direction and started crawling, they came from all over the space.

"-need an IV on-"

"Can you change Misses-"

"-I'm taking my lunch now-"

"Clear!"

There were sounds of machines working, water running through the pipes. People doing all sorts of things involving water, but for the sake of what's left of my sanity I can pretend the centipede's senses weren't so strong.

I tried to listen for signs of where Bryce had been taken. If he was in the emergency room I'd basically be screwed, since there'd be way too many people and by now everyone was on the look out for me.

Frick.

The centipede had it easy. Moving up, down, over pipes and squeezing between spaces. If I hit a wall that didn't go anywhere, I could do a complete turn and move on.

Seriously, stand up and turn around. Turn around again. Do it ten times. I guarantee you, no matter how dizzy you make yourself, the centipede has done about a hundred more turns than you in the same amount of time.

With it's flexibility and the way the tiny little legs propell it, the only thing it has to worry about is someone stepping on it. If the Yeerks do manage to take over the planet, the centipede will be munching on cockroaches and other small pests and will only need to watch out for...well, I guess Taxxons would be an issue. They might not feel the kinship for their lower myriapod (that's right, centipeds are myriapods) brethren that the alien in Men in Black had for cockroaches and flies.

There was a light further down. The space beyond it seemed quiet. I forced the centipede towards it. With cautious twich of the feelers, there was a vast space beneath me. There was a loud machine working and there was a sensation of warmth, like the inside of an oven.

Since I doubted the wall was a part of the oven, I moved as quickly as cautiously as I could down to the floor. There were no people inside, from what I could tell. This could be a furnace room, or an incinerator. From the vibrations against the wall, my third guess was a laundry room. That meant I could possibly find some clean clothes, scrubs or a hospital gown, to cover up with.

When I was on what felt like a level surface I started to demorph. And as my full weight began to make the table rock, I fell on my back onto a pile of laundry bags. Well, if there could be one positive consequence to acting without thinking, I was glad it could be this one.

"There you are."

And there was the bad one again.