SIXKILLER

Just to make things clear;

Sixkiller as you will find out, is a name of a character in my story. My story is pre-45, before the animorph's parents got introduced to the war. And it has nothing to do with The One or Book 54.

The boy in chapter one who committed the 'sixth murder' is called Roger. I have not decided Roger's nationality yet so you have to wait on that, I'll probably mention it in the next chapter.

The girl in chapter two who committed the 'seventh murder' is called Abby, she's an English girl.

I so cleverly (don't you love it when you have to say that?) weaved in the animorphs in my story, read on and find out how, this is soo exciting, you don't know what's going to happen next do you? Hehehe.

Chapter Three

"You're late." Said a skeptical voice coming from the sofa.

Abby slammed the door behind her causing Victor to turn away from the TV and glance her way. He turned back to the screen and said, "You're late."

"You're bloody right I am!" Abby said in her British accent, her soft green eyes were flared slightly and her nose and cheeks were a few shades redder than her normal flushed complication.

"Don't swear." Victor said calmly. Still not looking at her.

"I can bloody say whatever it is I have in mind." Abby clarified this point with hands on hips. Her auburn hair dangled around her face, it had gotten loose during her dash back to the forest line.

"Fine, you're entitled to say what you want to say," Victor sighed. "Why are you late?"

Abby started to pace, as she spoke, she gestured wildly, "I'll tell you why I'm late Vic. Mickey didn't get to me in time. I wasted half an hour waiting for him and he didn't show up. I thought of aborting the mission but remembered your specific orders, so what I did is knock the guy's brains out, and if that wasn't bad enough I managed to scare Red away, and I had a lovely three hour walk back to civilization, so there! That's why I'm late!"

Mickey who just came in to the living room grinned and waved at Abby, "Terribly sorry about this mornin' I had to give it the run around in case someone was following me. It took longer than I thought it would."

Abby stared at Mickey for a few seconds then shouted angrily, "Sorry? Sorry? What do you want me to do with 'sorry'? Vic are you hearing this? Vic? Vic? Say something for god sakes!"

"What do you want me to say?" Victor said with a hint of irritation, "What's done is done. And Mickey, don't take long routes. Otherwise we'd have to deal with huff and puff here."

"Why I-" Abby said in indignation, then turned to Mickey and then Vic and yelled "You ought to be ashamed of yourselves! Both of you!"

"What's all the yelling about?" Roger demanded walking boldly into the room, "I was sleeping in there."

"I'm glad someone noticed." Abby muttered. "For a while then I thought I was at it alone."

"What's she on about?" Roger asked, taken back slightly.

"Forget her." Victor raised an arm to stop Abby's objection, "I called a meeting in case you lot don't remember. The rest should be here by now." Victor turned to Abby, "Then we could remember you."

Abby shook her head and walked away to the kitchen, Roger followed her slowly. He watched calmly as she made both of them something to eat. Actually, she made Roger a sandwich and pulled out a bar of chocolate for herself. She sat on the table peeling away the packet as Roger munched on his beef sandwich watching Abby silently.

"The thing is," Abby started slowly, "I don't know what's happening, I don't know what's happening to us, what we're turning into."

Roger shrugged, "It's been a while," he told the English girl.

"Yeah, I know, but we're supposed to keep it together and besides," her lower lip quivered slightly as she went on, "What we're doing is against everything we fight for, its unjustified."

Roger's massive frame shifted uneasily, "I guess so. I mean. I don't know. With what they're doing…we should strike back. I'm done playing defenses."

"But what we're doing, do you like it?"

"What's in it to like?" Roger commented bitterly, "I'll be glad when this is all over."

"You think we'll last that long?" Abby wondered.

"With the way we are going?" He said skeptically raising his eyebrows.

Abby bit her lip and then looked down at her chocolate as if she lost her appetite, "Forget I asked."

There was a short period of silence when Abby broke it by sighing loudly. "What happened to the good old days of carefree life?"

"What happened?" Roger prodded.

She rolled her eyes at Roger, "It's a rhetoric question."

"Ah, the world is full of these."

Abby rubbed at her eyes, "I'm thinking Vic got the meeting on too late."

"Eh? Really?" Roger glanced at the walls trying to locate a clock, "Why, what time is it?"

Abby rolled her eyes again, "No, I meant we should have had a meeting before trouble started. You know, so that we could have planned against it rather than scheduling a troubleshooting meeting."

"Is that what we're going to talk about?" Roger speculated, "Troubleshooting?"

Abby flinched slightly, then said, "No, I don't think that's the only thing we're talking about, Vic said something about us telling what we're thinking about all this."

Roger scratched his back and looked at Abby, "I don't like those kind of meetings, I hate them actually. What's the point behind talking about how bad war is?"

"So we could justify it, I suppose." Abby fell silent as the front door crashed open and numerous voices and snatches of conversations leaked into the kitchen. The rest of the gang filed out in the kitchen and after a few moments, Vic appeared.

"We're all here." He said, "Good then we, better get started."

"Or else we'd adjourned for yet another time." Mickey called out helpfully, "Hey Vic, you want a curly white wig and a judge's black gown? Maybe a-"

Vic's somber look cut Mickey's attempt to lighten the mood. Jut as well, if not stopped, Mickey could attract the odd parts of attention. And considering how cranky the group was, 'odd attention' was not needed.

"I'm sure we all have things to say," Victor said, "But before we go on to those, I need you to see this."

Victor stood up and walked back to the living room, the rest followed as he plunked down on the sofa and grabbed the remote control. "Sit, come on, I've recorded something of interest on the VCR."

Abby had a feeling Vic's video of interest may be bad news or something that was bothering him, which ever way it was, she sat down quietly and gave Vic her undivided attention.

"The first part is from a few weeks ago, the others are about now," Vic said, "I'm sure we'll recognize it."

Vic hit the play button and it wasn't soon after Mickey found something to say, "What happened to you Vic? Since when did you start tapping the news?"

Victor didn't bother answering Mickey, nor did any of the others; they were all watching the tape silently.

It was something about a serial killer. Some killer who preferred to strangulate his victims and hang them, there was always a message nearby and there was the silver dime.

First murder was a Frank White, he was found inside the small licker store he owned, apparently, his best friend had found him. Scrawled out in red was the message, 'We will get you all'.

Second murder was a thirty two year old woman named Sally Wellford, she was found hanged in her apartment out of town, not far from her, scrawled on the windows was the same message.

Third murder was a Danny Troy, found dead in his little toy store, which he had owned with a business friend, again, both dime and message were found.

Fourth murder was that of a doctor named Robert Kent, he was found hanged on the overhead fan with a coin beneath him, the message written on his wall. There was an emotional interview with the wife.

The murders had a few things in common, one they were all hanged with wire, second there was the silver dime, third there was the strange message, and fourth, the new link; they all attended the sharing, and happen to be highly ranked members. There was no time frame between the murders, apparently one could be happening right now.

Sixth murder was an assistant principle named Hedrick Chapman, he was found hanged in a deserted ally way. Again there was the message and the silver dime. A family member, a girl was standing huddled by her mother crying. The mother was saying something to the girl.

"Look," Victor said, somewhat coldly, "Look what they say now."

Apparently, the fifth and seventh kill were a bit different. The seventh kill was a Richard Ben who was found shot dead lying on the ground by a tree in the national forest, the message and the dime where there forcing the authorities to link it with the other crimes.

The fifth murder was very peculiar, it was done in the same style as all the other murders, Gorge Fay was strangled with a length of wire and hanged. There was the silver dime, but the message had changed. It spelled something different;

'You took what's mine to keep and treasure.'

All eyes turned on Mark, but Mark wasn't looking at them, he was looking at the blank TV screen.

"We had an order Mark, we were going on that order, you had no right to change that, no matter how personal you think it is to you."

Victor's words had no effect on Mark, he continued to stare at the silent screen.

"Mark?" Abby prodded, "We know you cared for her, but you have to pull yourself together."

"Abby's right," Victor said, "We shouldn't fall apart just because one of ours had been taken."

"She's been with them for more than two weeks now," Mark said angrily, "We're not getting results, for all we know they could've killed her by now."

"Or they would have made a controller out of her." Mickey pointed out.

"No." Dominic spoke up for the first time that day, "They wouldn't."

"Why not?" Abby sounding surprised turned to the quiet French boy.

"Because we'd have seen her by now, I think." Dominic shrugged. "Don't you agree that the Visser would have used her to intimidate us? Maybe set a public appearance or something?"

"Dominic does have a point," Victor allowed, "But I don't get her disappearance, we don't know what really happened to her."

"We know they got her." Mark said coldly, "Isn't that enough?"

"We don't know that they still have her." Mickey made a sound of deep annoyance, "Nothing is killing me more than Mark's childlessness, wake up man, she doesn't give a rat's rear for you, why don't you get it?"

Mark growled and started to stand up, "Listen you-"

At the same time Victor had jumped up and yelled, "Hey, Mick, that's way out of line."

"No, seriously, why don't you listen to me?" Mickey protested, "We don't know a thing about that girl's history, we give her everything –thanks to Mark- and what does she give us? Squat. Nothing. Nada. For all we know, right now and then she could have escaped the Yeerks and blew us off."

"That does it." Mark spit out, "You and I are-"

"Mark." Victor pleaded, "Please, give what Mickey has got to say some courtesy, look, I'm half way agreeing with his theory, will you listen to us? She wasn't going to stay around with us for long anyway, its better we just forget her."

Mark whirled round on Victor and said, "I don't believe you, I don't believe any of you, we used to stand up together and now look. One of us is captured and you don't give a damn!"

"Mark." Abby said gently, "We used to stand up together before she joined our group, when she came to us she turned our perfectly valid team into a violent pack. Mark…"

But Mark wasn't listening to them; he stood up and started to leave. Victor sighed loudly. It's been that way ever since their team of five beamed a six.

All trouble could be traced back to that terrible moment. The moment they turned to the beautiful foreign girl and reached out for her.

Not knowing behind her wild eyes and frail frame lay a menace, a troubled disturbed girl who had lived a terrifying life of disaster. Who above all things was blood thirsty for revenge and had a desire to kill blindly. She tore them apart; Victor could see that ever so clearly each time he looked at his best friend Mark. His ex-best-buddy, that is.

What he would give to turn back the hands of time, to go to the moment they found the striking girl with wild exotic looks laying beside a river, unconscious and half dead. What he would give to erase the moment he first looked into the hypnotic eyes and said yes to her.

He had said yes to Sixkiller, at that time Sedra, a girl whose troubles extended far beyond his capabilities of foreseeing, it would have been hard not to say yes, in the beginning, she was but a troubled child with soft sad eyes. Little had he known about the poison that existed inside of her.

That was until the Visser started showing great interest in her. That was until she managed to overthrow Victor and became leader of this little resistance.

But most terrifying was the decisions that concerned Sixkiller's involvement in this group, they were not decisions that had been fore planned and worked out before hand.

No, they were impulsive decisions; spur of the moment. You see, the truth was, if the silver dime that sealed Victor and his group's fate had chosen to fall on its head rather than tail, Sixkiller would never have been here to start off with.

For that very same reason, Jimmy would still be alive. And for the same reason, Mark would still be his best friend. In a way he was, but not like the past. He became more violent, bad tempered, so much more ready to hurt.

Mark had turned around, shaking his fist he said, "None of you care. And for that matter, if any of you get caught by the enemy I'd leave you to rot there! You hearing me?"

Abby and Roger glanced at each other then looked away. Nick shifted uncomfortably.

"Mark, wait." Victor felt helpless, on one hand he held his friend's cooperation on the other laid another human's life. But after committing so many crimes, the life of yet another human seemed invaluable.

"We'll give it another try. Okay? We'll hit them hard. Roger's Chapman was a good hit, but I know a better one."

Mark regarded his friend closely, to determine whether he was lying or telling the truth, Victor held his breath.

"I'm listening." Mark said. Again, there were the glances and the shifting around.

"You can choose who it is you want to go with you," Victor said hastily, "And this time we'll write exactly what it is you want. You know, so we get some reaction."

"Okay." Mark said slowly. "I guess I'll settle for that."

Mickey spoke up at that, he didn't seem against the idea, "So, who is the lucky guy?"

"A member close to Chapman, someone named…" There was a moment of silence as Victor screwed his face trying to recall the family name.

"Em, yeah, Tom. Tom Berenson."

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Oh, wow, what's going on? You didn't expect it to come down this way did you? Please review, I'd love to see what you think of my fic, it would help me determine what comes by next. Anyway, thanks, I'll go write the next chapter.