Chapter Two
Jake

My name is Jake.

I wont go on about the Yeerks, apparently Marco beat me to it. I guess you could say I'm the leader of us Animorphs? I don't think so, but the other's insist I am.

The last month had been hard on us. Week after week there seemed to be one thing or another come up, and between trying to stop the Yeerks, going to school and keeping up our web of lies with our families, everyone was getting cranky and taking it out on each other.

Oddly enough, it had been Ax and Tobias who had snapped first. I noticed, about two weeks ago, they didn't communicate directly with each other, always in some offhanded way through someone else, or otherwise ignored each other.

I cornered Ax, since out of the two of them, he would be the most likely to tell me. He finally admitted it was technically a family issue, and he apologized and promised to try harder. Tobias had flat out turned and flew away when I asked him.

I wont count Marco and Rachel, they're always snipping at each other so all that happened was that it was just worse. But the final straw, was when Cassie and Rachel fell into a screaming match.

To be honest, I'm not sure what started it. We had been at school and it was between classes, and I just happened to walk by just as Cassie called Rachel a really nasty name, and Rachel yelled back, and both were marched off to Chapman's office for a talk and assigned detention. Now they weren't talking to each other. To make matter's worse, both girls were trying to get me involved, with Cassie being my sort of girlfriend and Rachel my cousin, both expected me to take sides.

I chose the Animorphs.

On top of all this, I was beginning to think that maybe the Yeerks were doing this on purpose. They were leaking information to either a)catch the Andalite bandits in a trap, or b) tire us out so we wont be prepared for an actual emergency.

Luckily, the other's agreed quickly, a break was what they needed. So with strict orders of no morphing (unless it was Ax morphing human), and no thinking about anything Yeerk related, the others made plans and the weekend was set.

I felt bad for lying a bit to Marco. My mom and dad did say no friends over this weekend… not including Marco, was their words.

But the opportunity to spy in on Tom, and see if maybe I could figure out what the Yeerks were actually up to was too tempting, and it would be a lot easier to spy if Marco wasn't here.

So Friday night, around 6:30, I was waiting for Tom to come home from his weekly Friday night Sharing meeting. A.K.A: Tom's Yeerk goes down to the Yeerk pool Friday after school, feeds on Kadronda for a couple of hours, and Tom is home before seven, just as mom is setting dinner on the table. Then Monday, during last period when Tom has a spare, he goes back down.

I was watching a movie, munching on a pizza I ordered, feeding Homer my crusts when the door opened.

"Hey Squirt." Tom called as he toed off his shoes, throwing his car keys onto the small table by the door.

"Hey." I said back around my mouthful, watching the car chase, "There's pizza."

"No olives I hope." Tom said jokingly, and I had to hold back a sneer by swallowing my mouthful.

"Shit- I forgot." I replied seriously as he opened the box and grabbed a piece of the pepperoni pizza, stuck up his middle finger at me and took a huge bite, moving off into the house. I heard him climb the stairs and go into his room.

The movie finished, and as the credits rolled I got up, intending to make some popcorn and grab a new drink while the station played it's usual fifteen minutes of commercials after a movie.

To get into the kitchen, I had to move past the big dining table we had, and I stopped in my tracks. The light above the table was swinging, and as I registered this, the house started to shake, then some more, then harder and harder, until it became hard to stand.

I stumbled towards a door frame, pressing myself up in it, dishes rattling so hard they began falling out of the cupboards, smashing to the ground, just adding to all the noise around me.

The quake seemed to be getting worse and worse, and I was beginning to panic. Windows around the house began to shatter, more and more furniture began falling over, plaster and drywall began falling around me, and my vision twisted with a large creaking noise, and a large 'snap' that reverberated through my body, and suddenly I was falling and it went dark.

"-ake! Jake! Can you hear me? Where are you?"

Someone was yelling my name. My whole body hurt, and I was surrounded by rocks and stone.

"JAKE!"

"Here!" I croacked out, immediately coughing, blowing dust out of my mouth and nose.

"Oh thank god." I heard Tom exclaim somewhere above me, "Are you okay? Are you hurt?"

"Dunno." I muttered, shifting around a bit. I was trapped, but I didn't think anything was broken, and I told him as much.

"Alright, alright. I'm coming down to get you out. Hang on."

For a moment, I was confused, until I realized that I was trapped in my basement. Or what used to be the basement. During the quake, the house must have collapsed, sending me into the basement and under some rubble. Luckily, it looked like the debris had made a sort of pocket above me, stopping the whole house from falling over me, but how long that was going to last, I didn't know.

I could hear Tom, grunting and swearing as he climbed down the rumble, finally stumbling into my view.

"Alright, where are you stuck?" He panted, leaning over me, resting his hand on what used to be the dining room floor.

"My legs, I think." I said, wiggling around again, "I can get out if I can move my legs."

"'Kay, great." Tom said, shifting down, getting his footing on the unstable rocks and stones. His face was uncomfortably close to my hip, so I fixated on a point as his hands moved down my legs, feeling for a way to free them. A few moments of silence past, broken by the creaking of the house above us as Tom felt around.

"I think I've got it." he said, shifting again so he could get a different angle. With both hands he braced himself more, grabbed the stone trapping me and lifted. It wasn't much, but enough I could wiggle out, falling into the rubble, but free.

Tom grabbed me, patting me down, asking me to move limbs, pulling my shoes off and wiggling all my toes. Once he was satisified I wasn't seriously hurt, he lead the way through the path he found and back up into the main house.

I was right about the bubble. The way the house was built, there was two support beams that crossed each other, this was the sort of cross road my in my house, where to the right you would go into the living room, sort of forwards but to the left was the kitchen dining room, and then a hallway that went along the stairs that lead to my dad's office. These support beams stayed intact, so the house looked as if it had collasped all along the outside, leaving the middle, where Tom and I were, basically untouched, but surrounded by rubble, there didn't look like there was a way out.

"What now?" I asked, for once somewhat happy I didn't have to make decisions. Tom looked around, thinking. He moved to the fridge, which was knocked over but still closed, and opened it. He pulled out a couple bottles of water, throwing me one, stuffing two into his large jean pockets, and took another one in his hands, which he quickly drank.

I copied him, listening to the eerie silence around me, the odd drip from a broken pipe the only noise I could hear.

Tom went back to looking around. It wasn't totally dark, there was enough sunlight peeking through the rubble, everything was that sort of odd dark gray color it got when you're eyes haven't adjusted yet.

"Maybe up?" He muttered finally, looking towards the stairs, which were intact, but rubble blocked the way.

He muttered to himself, moving around the house, trying to move some rubble here and there, trying to find a path.

I shifted uncomfortably. There was a few ways I could think of to get out of here, but they all involved morphing, and Tom wasn't allowed to know about that.

"Oh!" Tom exclaimed, making me jump. He was standing awkwardly on top of the staircase, brushing up at the rubble, "I think I found it."

I watched him work, pulling wood and other rubble down, kicking up dust, until finally, he created a hole. He stepped off the steps, onto a collasped wall, pulling himself up with a struggle and disappeared from sight.

It went silent around me once again. I moved closer as the minutes stretched on and I began to think Tom had left me. I wasn't exactly short for my age, but Tom was still taller than me, I wouldn't be able to reach the hole he climbed in on my own.

Trying not to panic, I stared to look around for my own way out, in case that fucking Yeerk left me behind when I stopped. I could hear and feel rumbling again.

With dread I figured it was after shocks, after a quake that big, it was expected that there would be some.

I listened intently, the rumbling getting louder, but the shaking wasn't the same.

I heard commotion from the hole Tom disappeared through.

"Jake! Jake! Hurry up! Grab my hand!" He screamed, his head, shoulders and both hands appeared, reaching out to me. The panic in his voice made my heart skip. It was pure panic; the Yeerk was scared.

Without question, I ran over to the stairs, running up them, climbing over what was left of the banister, with a leap of faith I pushed off hard, grabbing hold of Tom's wrist. He grabbed me quickly with both hands, holding tight and pulling me, allowing me to scramble a bit, getting my feet into a hold on the collapsed wall.

And hell erupted around me.