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CHAPTER TWELVE: JAKE

Being a flea was weird. I'd thought it would be gross, but it was mostly just peaceful. Almost boring. The little flea brain didn't want much: warmth, blood, and a body that held reasonably still beneath it. The cat Tobias had morphed offered all of that. Yes, even the blood.

I tried not to think about it too much. I knew I'd just get grossed-out if I did.

It's not as bad as eating a spider, I reassured myself. Or at least, it was supposed to be reassuring. Where were Marco's bad jokes when I needed them?

Not that I'd have wished Marco here if I'd had the chance to do so. It was bad enough that Tobias and I were here; at least the others were safe outside. As for the two of us...well, trouble wasn't nearly a big enough word to describe what we were in.

As Tobias filled me in, my little flea heart sank.

{So,} I said, trying to sound chipper, {the good news is we're not dead yet.}

{Sure,} said Tobias. His thought-speak voice sounded grim. {Jake, you need to go.}

{Go?} I repeated. I would have blinked, but I don't think fleas have eyelids. {Go where?}

{Away,} Tobias said in the same flat, grim voice. {Get out of this carrier, find somewhere to morph, and get away.}

{I'm not leaving you-}

{You have to. What good are you going to do as a flea?}

He had a point, but I didn't want to admit that. That felt too much like admitting how scared I was-and I was. We were trapped in a cat-carrier that might as well have been Fort Knox given our current shapes, being carried by my assistant principal who also just so happened to be a member of a secret alien invasion and who had once asked his walking-razor-blade soldiers to bring him our heads. Now those very same walking-razor-blades were on their way to us, and the scariest part of all?

I could leave any time I wanted.

All I had to do was turn my back on somebody who needed me. Turn my back on a friend, on a fellow Animorph. I wanted to go-which was exactly why I couldn't.

But what good was I going to do as a flea? I couldn't even feel the carrier moving as Chapman carried us upstairs. The only reason I even knew we were in a carrier was because Tobias had told me. All that my weak little flea senses had noticed had been Chapman's body heat when he'd carried Fluffer out of his secret lair. I didn't even know what part of the cat I was on.

Not whatever part Tobias had washed, at least. That was good.

But he was right about one thing. Unless I wanted to itch Visser Three's minions to death, I needed to get bigger teeth than this little sucker.

{Okay, Tobias,} I said, feeling like a traitor. {I'm going to find somewhere to demorph, and then I'm going to come back and get you out of this. I promise. The others are just outside. Together we'll-}

{No!} Tobias interrupted me. {No, the Yeerks don't know I'm an Animor- an Andali- whatever. They're just going to...to guard me until two hours are up. Then...then they'll let me-well, let "Fluffer"-go, and everything will be okay.}

{Uhh...slight problem where you'll be trapped as a cat, dude.}

And that was if the Visser let him live. This whole two hour test could just be some sick game to let Visser Three gloat over his captive maybe-Andalite for a while then kill Fluffer at the end anyway just to be safe.

{I was never very good at being a boy anyway,} Tobias said. I could tell he was trying to sound flippant, but he was no Marco. The joke fell flat and painful.

{Well it's not going to happen,} I told him. {We'll get you out of this-}

{No! Jake, you can't.}

{Sure I can. The others are just outside. I'll demorph, and go get them, and we'll come back and bust you out.}

{You can't,} Tobias said again. {It's too dangerous. If you attack, they'll know I wasn't just a cat.}

{So what?}

{So it's too big a risk!}

{What do you want us to do, then? Just stand back and let you get trapped?}

{Yes,} said Tobias.

{No,} I said.

{It'll be okay,} he lied. {You can...you come get me later, after the Yeerks leave. Swap me out with the real Fluffer McKitty and take me...take me home, to my mom. I'm sure Aragorn will learn to enjoy having a buddy.}

{Tobias, I am not going to hand you off to your mom like you're some stray cat I found behind a dumpster. And what'll we tell her happened to you, anyway?}

{The truth?} he suggested. That was so wild a concept I couldn't think of anything to say back. {I mean...my mom's crazy, right?} Even in thought-speak, Tobias's laugh was bitter. {She believes in aliens. She'll be able to take a talking cat that used to be her son in stride.}

{Tobias-}

{Promise me!} His voice was suddenly sharp, strident. {Promise me you won't come back, Jake! We're almost at the front door, almost outside. That means we're almost out of time. You need to jump off and find somewhere safe to demorph and get away.}

I didn't say anything.

{I don't want you to come back for me, Jake! I don't want to risk anybody else getting captured too, not for me.}

{We're all in this together,} I insisted.

{Promise me, Jake! It's too dangerous! Get out of here, and promise you won't let anybody get hurt on my account!}

I hesitated. Tobias sounded like he was freaking out-and could I blame him?

No. I understood exactly how he felt, so I said, {Okay, Tobias.} The words felt too heavy for my little flea body. {I promise.}

I could feel the cat body beneath me relax. {Good. Okay-good. Good,} Tobias said. {Now, just-just get out of here! Okay? You gotta demorph so you can get back to the others and make sure Ra-make sure none of them do anything stupid to try and help me.}

{Nothing stupid,} I said bleakly. {Yeah. I promise.}

It was hard to make the flea jump away from the warmth and the blood, but I didn't want to listen to Tobias thanking me for abandoning him. That made for the perfect impetus for me to get my little flea butt out of there.

It was hard to navigate as a flea-okay, no, it was impossible to navigate as a flea. I couldn't see anything, just vague impressions of light and dark. Heat and cold mattered more. The flea didn't like cold, so I figured that was exactly what I wanted: to get as far away from the things the flea liked as I could.

Fleas liked people, after all-people and animals-didn't just like them, lived on them. So the unhappier the flea was, the farther away I was from all the people, right?

It wasn't a lot on which to gamble everything, but it was all I had. So I powered my strong little flea legs and jumped and jumped as the flea got less and less happy. Eventually everything was dark and still and cold-and I knew I was running out of time. Wherever I was, it would have to do.

I demorphed.

It was almost as weird, turning back from a speck into a person as it had been morphing into a flea in the first place. I didn't change size all at once, but started to swell out sideways, going back to three dimensions instead of the paper-thin flatness of the flea as my organs sluiced back into existence. My exoskeleton split and cracked and started dissolving back into skin, but my bones hadn't returned yet so I just sort of flopped forward as an expanding lump of flesh and bits of flea. I probably looked like some kind of giant pimple monster.

I just had time to be glad that my eyes hadn't grown back yet and I couldn't see myself when, sure enough, I felt eyeballs blossom into my half-formed, cartilaginous skull. I'd have groaned if I'd had a larynx.

Seconds later, I was glad I didn't: light, piercing and yellow, blazed. I flinched, but I didn't have eyelids yet or enough of a spine to turn my head away so I could do nothing but stare into it-

And at the blurred, shadowy form above me.

It was a person! One of the Chapmans! I was spotted-but no. There was no scream, no sudden sizzle of Dracon Beam fire, no shout for somebody to "keep the heads." They hadn't seen me. Not yet.

As my watering eyes adjusted to the searing light, I realized where I was: the bottom of a closet, surrounded by mismatched shoes and dirty sneakers and hiking boots that looked like they hadn't seen fresh dirt in at least a year. The scuffed wheels of a solitary roller blade boot pressed against my side and the hanging lid of a dusty plastic cooler half-covered the ugly, swelling flesh of my semi-flea body.

It wasn't enough. If they looked down, there was no way they wouldn't see me.

I held my breath and hoped they didn't look down.

As I was lying there hoping and helpless, hating every squandered second, my vision was slowly clearing. Eventually I could see well enough to make a guess at who was searching the closet, and I felt my heart sink. It was Melissa Chapman. Maybe I should have been relieved by that. We knew she wasn't a Controller like her parents, which meant that she wouldn't know what I was; meant that she wouldn't pull out a Dracon Beam and fry me on sight.

No, what she would do if she saw a gross flea-boy-monster in the bottom of a closet was what any normal person would do if they saw a gross flea-boy-monster in the bottom of their closet: scream. Which meant her parents would come, and they would know that she'd seen too much, and there would be a Yeerk in her head by the end of the night and it would all be my fault and…

The door closed, shutting out the light. Whatever Melissa had been looking for, she'd either found it or given up.

I started breathing again. I started demorphing, too-faster than before. Tobias was running out of time. And as Melissa's brief intrusion proved, so was I.

{Guys!} I shouted, not knowing if any of the others were close enough to hear me. In their human forms, they couldn't answer me. For all I knew, I was shouting into the void. {Guys, are you there?} I shouted anyway. What else could I do? I was half a boy and half a flea, and neither of those things could do anything to help anyone right now. { I need you to listen to me…}