Jake was sweating bullets in the cop car on the way downtown. He didn't even want to think about what would happen if they called his parents who were probably controllers by now and they came to get him. Would they realize that he was an "Andalite bandit" because of the spandex he was wearing? Would they recognize him from the entire chase? It would be so easy for the Yeerks to get him then. His parents would pick him up, they'd have him in a car, and-
"Hey, kid, you OK?" the female cop called from the front.
"M-me?" Jake asked. "Oh, I'm fine."
"You aren't going to jail or anything. We're just gonna call your parents and tell them to pick you up. I mean, there'll be a fine, you might get grounded, but nothing too bad."
"He has mean parents," Marco put in. "Really mean parents." Marco tried not to notice Cassie grabbing Jake's hand and holding onto it gently in hopes of being a comfort.
"So, what's up with the spandex?" the male cop asked. Marco had nearly forgotten all about that, and he looked down in surprise.
"Um-"
"Gymnastics practice," Cassie replied casually.
"You took your cat to gymnastics practice, and she got sick, so the three of you got in a car and sped away?"
Marco and Jake looked at Cassie expectantly, hoping she was good at making things up on the spot. But they had nothing to worry about, because each of the Animorphs were very good at lying. Like it or not, each of them had to lie to their parents on an almost daily basis and had perfected the art.
"No, we were going to my house to study for a history test tomorrow and when we got there she was throwing up. So I called the vet to see what was wrong and they told me to rush her over."
Jake wanted to complement her on her flawlessness in explaining, but he couldn't at the moment so he kept quiet.
"I see."
Where's the limo? Marco wanted to know. He felt as if he wouldn't feel safe until he knew for sure where Visser Three was at this moment. Were they going somewhere special? To a Yeerk pool, maybe? Or did they have a small one in the car and already infested Jake's parents? Maybe they were on their way back to Jake's house to drop them off right now…
Tobias would know, he thought. But unfortunately, they had no way of asking Tobias. If only he somehow knew that it was a nice fact to know, if only he assumed that they'd want to be sure of the Visser's location. But he didn't.
"They're gonna kill me," Jake said quietly.
"They won't know," Cassie replied, her voice more silent than his. She didn't want the cops overhearing.
"How could they miss it?"
"Jake, the evidence isn't that strong."
"They'll realize it, just you watch. Then they're gonna kill you." Jake turned to Marco. "And you."
"Get a grip, man, no one's gonna die. We've lasted this long, haven't we?"
In the front of the car, the two police officers exchanged glances wondering what they were talking about because both of them had only heard bits and pieces.
"They aren't stupid," Jake insisted. "If there's one think we've learned about them, it's that they aren't stupid. And they'll put 2 and 2 together, and then they'll kill me."
"Did you do something else we should know about?" the male cop asked from the front.
"Huh? Oh… no."
"Are you sure?"
"Well, I forgot to clean my room."
He smirked. "Yeah, that was always a problem with me, too, back when I was at home. Even during college, she treated me like some 5th grader with all her "clean your room" stuff. Drove me insane."
"Yeah." The man in the front didn't realize that Jake was talking about something totally different. But that didn't matter much, because at least he was being nice. The nicer the cops were to the three, the more sympathy they would have on them. Maybe they'd even let them totally off the hook…
No, cops would never do that, Jake told himself, crushing his own hope. Especially if I wasn't driving with my permit, didn't have a licensed driver in the front, and was speeding like there was no tomorrow.
"Then I got out of there for a year and lived like a pig, now my wife's always nagging me the same way. I tell you, these darn women…" The officer seemed genuinely angry. Not in a joking way, but he really seemed like he disliked girls more than most people.
The cop in the front hit him on the shoulder. "Don't start with your dumb speeches, Mark. If you wanna complain to one of your guy friends I don't care, heck, I don't care if you wine to your wife, just don't say this stuff to me."
"You have a girlfriend?" the officer called back to Jake, ignoring the girl sitting next to him.
Jake glanced to Cassie. "Um… no, I don't think so. Well, kind of. Not really. Maybe."
He laughed. "That's OK, you're too young to be dating. My first girlfriend wasn't until… must've been first year of college."
"That's because you couldn't get one until college," the other officer told him smugly.
They sure don't seem like controllers, Cassie thought to herself. But then, she remembered, it's almost impossible to be sure. Still, why would controllers waste their time with such a pointless conversation? Maybe to throw us off, she reasoned. She decided it wasn't safe to assume they were just normal people.
Then voices from above appeared in Jake, Cassie, and Marco's heads. The first sentence was said by Rachel.
What the…
Um, Jake? We have a situation, Tobias declared. See, the limo… remember the limo? Well, they're going to the police station. Same one you're headed to.
The three kids in spandex exchanged glances.
Perhaps Prince Jake would like us to get into our battle morphs? Ax asked.
Controllers. Definitely. Let's bust 'em. That was obviously Rachel.
No, I don't want attention, Jake thought. Only if they try to make Controllers out of us will we fight back. Otherwise, we live to fight another day.
"Aliens!" the guy cop, Mark, exclaimed from the front. Jake, Cassie, and Marco snapped to attention when they heard that. "Do you remember that, Jen? Must've been a year ago, and we're still getting nut balls who come in reporting it."
"Some kind of Hell on earth," the girl agreed. "People in cages screaming…"
"What are you talking about?" Marco asked, trying to sound casual.
"I don't know if you kids'll remember this or not, but it was maybe a year ago when those kids were shooting off fireworks in the construction site. Remember? And everyone said it was aliens, and it was just a few stupid adolescents. And we get people that come into the station even now saying that it was all true. I just want to yell at these people to get a life. If they have nothing better to do than make up these stupid stories about aliens…"
"Aliens? How lame is that, Jake?" Marco asked him, nudging him with his elbow. "Aliens. Yeah, right. That's all Hollywood."
"Yeah," Jake said. "Hollywood."
"You know what?" Mark asked. "It is. These movies like Men in Black and Evolution, they all make it seem like something could exist there. The idea's crazy."
"I don't think it's so crazy," Jen replied. "Did you notice that all of the people that described that Hell described it exactly the same way?"
"Maybe they got together and decided on something."
"Yeah, right. Why would anyone do something like that? I think it's possible. In fact, just the other day I was at Burger King, and I was sure the guy that took my order wasn't human."
"Why?"
"He was so weird! The way he looked at me, and-"
"They call that flirting."
She smacked him on the shoulder. "No, you don't understand."
They pulled into the police station parking lot and the officers got out, then opened the doors for the teenagers. The back two doors were impossible to open from the inside.
They led Jake, Cassie, and Marco through a hallway, and then reached a little office-like room where they each sat down except for Jen, who stood by the phone and picked it up. Mark sat behind the desk, and the other three were in chairs that sat in a row on the other side of the desk.
"Yeah, I have three teenage spandex-wearing kids that were speeding down the street in Lakeview," Jen said into the receiver. "They look… maybe 14?"
"15," Marco stated.
"He says they're 15," she corrected. Then she paused, listening to the voice on the other line, then held the phone to her shoulder to muffle the sound and said to the kids, "I need your names, first and last."
They gave them to her and she reported them to the person on the other line of the phone. "I need parent phone numbers," she said. "Can you get those for me?" She then scribbled some numbers on a piece of paper, thanked the person, and hung up.
"We'll have you guys home in no time," she told them, winking. Then she dialed the first number. After a small pause, the answering machine picked up at Jake's house and she said, "Hello, this is the Maytown police station, and we have someone here named Jake who appears that he's your son. Please come to pick him up as soon as you can. He will be held here until either guardian, male or female, comes to get him with 2 forms of identification, one must be a license. Thank you." Then she hung up, and dialed 2 more numbers leaving the exact same message, but replacing "Jake" with a new name.
"Those were all exactly the same," Cassie stated.
"Yeah, that's the speech we give every time," Jen explained. "Pretty boring, huh?"
"Can I go to the bathroom?" Marco asked. "I've been holding it since we were tailgating." Jake shot him a Look.
Mark took it as a joke. "Sure. Out this door, turn left. 3rd door on your right."
"Thanks."
"Maybe I'll go, too," Jake said, standing.
Cassie nodded. "Do you mind?"
Mark shook his head. "Go ahead."
She smiled in thanks and the three left the room and entered the hallway, and Marco, who was in the front, turned right.
"Wrong way," Cassie said.
"I'm getting out of here," Marco stated. "Or else we're all dead. This is a trap, don't you realize that? The limo came here, you guys."
"If it were a trap, they would have followed us," Cassie argued.
"Well, I don't trust them."
"Neither do I," Jake agreed. "So where were you going?"
"Snooping. Where else?"
Jake smiled a little. "Maybe we'll find a Yeerk pool," he said quietly, being sure they weren't overheard. Marco nodded.
"Hopefully."
Then they continued down the hall. They'd been walking for maybe a minute, when Jake spotted the Visser in human form. He'd seen his human body before, so he recognized him right away. The Visser played his cop-like role, and said, "What are you kids doing wandering the halls?"
Run, run, run! Jake's voice inside of him screamed. He turned and bolted, and Marco and Cassie followed.
"Hey! Come back!"
"Stupid, stupid, stupid!" Marco said. "Why did you do that? Maybe he knows who we are, now!"
"He knows anyway," Jake sated.
"What do you mean? Of course he doesn't. How would he?"
"Think, Marco. Who else would chase him down the street? Andalites. He probably recognizes us from the car."
"Great."
On passing a janitor's clotheslet, Jake stopped suddenly and backed up a step or two, thinking to go in it. But then he realized that they weren't out of the Visser's sight yet, and he would know where they were. So then he continued forward.
"What was that?!" Marco demanded.
"Momentary lapse of brain activity," Jake replied. "Don't question me."
"He has a 35-year-old body, we have 15-year-old ones. We'll outrun him."
"We're on his turf."
"Oh, really, you're so pessimistic. "His turf?" Please. He doesn't even have any Hork-Ba-"
"Gwarfash!"
Jake looked at Marco dryly. "What were you saying?"
Just then 2 Hork-Bajir came from around the corner, and the three kids stopped running. They were trapped. Hork-Bajir on one side, the Visser and a couple human-Controllers on another, and two walls.
"I was expecting a few more," Marco muttered, referring to the Hork-Bajir.
"We've taken more than this," Cassie stated.
"Not in human form," Jake replied. As he spoke the Visser ran up to them, then stopped when he reached them.
"Demorph, Andalites," he said, raising a Dracon beam. "If you dare."