Then, getting the odd feeling that he wasnt quite as alone in his room as he had once been, Marco shoved the pillow off of his face. Sure enough, standing framed by the open door of his room, was his father. Mouthing the words "I knocked", the man made a gesture of having done that very thing, just in case his meaning had been at all unclear.

"Oh, hi," Marco stammered, yanking his headphones off. "Um, hi."

"Sorry for disturbing you," his dad said. "I just came to see if you wanted to watch the game with me."

Right, the game, Marco reminded himself. "Oh, the game. I really probably shouldnt. I have homework and stuff to do."

"Oh. I guess youre right," the older man said, turning and making to leave. He paused, seeming to think better of it. "You know, if theres anything bothering you, you can always talk to me. You do know that, right Marco?"

"Yeah," he couldnt; not with the kind of secrets he knew, the kind of enemies he had. Still, it was a nice sentiment. "I know, Dad."

"The games still on, if you want to come watch it with me," the older man said, over his shoulder as he turned to leave.

"Yeah," he muttered. "Call me when the pizza gets here!" he said more loudly.

"I will!" his father called back through the door.

"Real nice world you live in, Marco," he muttered.

There were things he couldnt tell the man; not only for the sake of his own privacy, but for the survival of his friends and that of the world in general. He couldnt tell the man what was really bothering him, or why hed been doing a fair bit worse in school than usual. Nothing about what was really happening in his life lately.

Honesty was out of the question, but companionship? He could still do that. He could march right down those stairs, sit himself down next to that old man, and watch the game with him.

"This aint happening," he said, looking over at the pile on his desk that concealed the book he was supposed to be reading. "Not tonight."

With those as parting words, Marco left his room to join his father in the den.

XX

Settling back into the rudimentary bed that she shared with her brother, Shara mulled over what had happened today. And, how she felt about what had happened. She knew she probably should have been feeling at least something after the way she had slaughtered those sharks, but she really didnt. They had been a threat to her comrades, and now they werent.

It was those thoughts, more than even the transformation she had managed to trigger, that let her know just how much she too had changed from what she had once been. Sure, she probably wouldnt have been feeling precisely guilty for protecting the lives of her friends by killing off a few bloodthirsty, killer fish, but she would have at least felt something. She hadnt been a sociopath, after all.

Shara didnt like to think that she might be becoming one, either.

Stretching out and laying down beside her brother, Shara tried to put those troubling thoughts out of her mind. Eventually successful, she was able to fall asleep.

XX

Shara woke up the next morning to the normal routine of eating and hiding; supplemented by watching and waiting for Cassies father to leave the barn so they could move around more freely. The times that he did leave the barn unattended were few and far between, but when he did leave, he was gone for long enough that they could get out of the hayloft and stretch their legs if they were so inclined.

Slade never seemed to want to, so she left him to stay up in the loft while she took time to learn the layout of what was to be their for lack of a better term home for the foreseeable future. She was eventually able to find out that Cassies father left the house entirely at regular intervals. Cassie had already provided a packed, non-perishable lunch for her and Slade, so Shara wasnt so concerned about eating when she went out.

She wanted to know the lay of the land, just what was where and how she could get to it.

Of course, she still had to be careful where she walked, since being invisible didnt in any way make her lighter than she was before. Grass and mud were especially troublesome for her. Both since they would reveal her presence to anyone who was looking, and because the mud would stick to her feet. She couldnt avoid the grass entirely, not with where she was and where she wanted to go, but the mud wasnt that hard to spot.

Even when she completely lacked color vision.

Studying the door in front of her, Shara reached out and turned the knob slightly. She was mildly surprised to find that it was unlocked. But, since she could hear a car pulling back into the driveway at the front of the house, she had to cut her explorations short. She knew Cassies father a gentle-seeming man named Walter wouldnt be able to see her no matter how hard he tried, but that didnt mean that he couldnt see her tracks in the grass.

Or that he couldnt hear her if she made too much noise.

Quickly but carefully making her way back to the barn, Shara climbed the ladder and moved back behind the hay-bales that Cassie had set up to conceal them while they slept, or even while they were awake and waiting for everyone else to go to sleep so that they could move around with at least some amount of freedom.

Even if it was a lot smaller than what she had been used to.

Settling herself back down next to Slade, who she couldnt help but notice was sleeping again, Shara wondered just when she would manage to get a look inside that house. There would be ample time for her to explore the house later; Cassies father obviously had things that kept him away from the place, even if they could be kind of unpredictable.

There were just some things that she wasnt willing to do without, like a hot shower and an actual toilet.

XX

The school day had passed, with its usual interminable slowness, and now all he wanted to do was get the heck out of there. Jake had said that they were all going to meet in the woods to discuss what they were going to do next; not that he had many doubts about what he wanted to do, but those were his own reasons and he wasnt very inclined to share them.

Telling the usual story to his dad, Marco headed out to meet up with Jake so they could morph and head over to Cassies place together. Once they were both in the air and heading that way, Marco let his control slacken just the slightest bit. He still kept enough to be able to direct the bird he was in to go where he wanted it to, but he wasnt in complete control anymore.

He thought he saw some of the other Animorphs on their way to the barn, but those could just as easily been normal birds.

Flying over the barn itself, he could see a raven and a swallow-tailed kite flapping their way out of the haylofts large window. Jake had probably contacted them and told those two where the rest of the group was going to be meeting, and Slades obsessive-to-the-point-of-insanity loyalist tendencies had done the rest. There were times he thought that Slade needed to grow a spine, and then he would remember what Shara had done to those sharks

Maybe it was better that Slade didnt act on his own, after all.

When he saw another group of birds swooping and diving toward the forest floor, Marco knew that it had to be the rest of the Animorphs. Especially since there were six of them, and each one corresponded to the morphs that one of the others used. Following on the tail feathers of the other Animorphs as they swooped and spiraled toward the ground, Marco wondered for a moment what the consensus after this meeting would be.

Folding his wings and diving through the trees after the others, he opened his wings and flapped them hard to absorb the remaining momentum from his dive. The others, even Jake, had all landed and started demorphing, so he turned away from them and landed to start his own demorph. The last thing he wanted to see was the others demorphing; especially through the eyes of an Osprey.

Once he had fully demorphed, he headed over to meet with the others. Cassie was the one who started the conversation.