I folded my arms over my chest and shrugged. "That doesn't matter to you, Yeerk. You won't be alive to find out."
"They have a tracking device embedded under this host's skin. They'll be here in a matter of hours."
{You're lying,} accused Tobias, perched on my shoulder. {If that was true, you wouldn't have told us. It would give us a chance to escape, which you wouldn't want.}
Jake bared his teeth in an ugly snarl. "Quite the psychologist, aren't you, Bird Boy? Fatherless little Bird Boy. Motherless little Bird Boy. Bird Boy with no one to care about you at all, as a matter of fact."
Tobias sighed and glanced at me. {I guess he thinks that bothers me.}
"Sad, isn't it?" I agreed. "Listen, Yeerk. We nabbed you a day before your feed date on purpose. It means we don't have to put up with you for as long. In the meantime, we do have one day with you. Let me make this clear: Nothing you say is going to persuade us to let you go, so why not shut up and make it easier for all of us?"
"You're heartless," he snapped. "Jake has already gone through his Yeerk starving once. It's hell for the host too, you know. Are you going to put him through that again?"
{Do you listen to yourself?} Tobias demanded in disbelief. {Why not let the real Jake speak for a few minutes and tell us how depressed he is that we're going to kill you?}
"Yeah," I said drily. "I'm sure his heart is just breaking with sympathy."
The Yeerk glowered.
{Keep an eye on him, Rachel,} Tobias told me. {I'm going to take a look around and make sure no one's coming.}
"It's futile, hawk," Sub-visser Two snapped. "You know they'll be looking for me."
{Looking for you?} Tobias snorted as he flapped out the door of the shack. {They don't even know you're missing.}
The Yeerk eyed me. "What's he talking about?"
"While you were unconscious, we made arrangements." I shrugged. "Let's leave it at that."
"The Chee?"
I leaned the chair back against the wall, rocking on the back two legs. "So you didn't get promoted this far by being stupid. Didn't make it quite as high as Ax's Yeerk did, though. Or Cassie's. That must bother you. Not that it matters now."
He sneered. "I would have advanced that high in time. I still will. You know that these little ropes won't hold me for a full day."
"Of course I do. But we've been through this before," I pointed out cheerfully. "You'll morph, and we'll morph, and we'll run you down because there's almost nothing you can do to lose us. Besides which, Tobias will be in morph at all times, ready to blind you or keep you busy until I morph something big enough to crush you." I tapped my index finger against my chin thoughtfully. "Chances are you won't even get fully morphed before we stop you."
"Do you have any idea what kind of morphs I have now?" he screeched. "I could destroy you!"
"That may well be, but once again, you probably couldn't even finish the morph." I shrugged. "Isn't that fugue starting soon? Something like that? I know you're looking forward to it."
"You don't understand what it's like! You'll never understand what that is for a Yeerk!"
{So come out and we'll kill you quickly,} Tobias interrupted, swooping down to my shoulder again. {No? Don't like that option either?}
I glanced at him. "Nothing's coming?"
{No.} He curved his head around and pulled out a stray feather.
"There's one little thing you might not have thought about, little Animorphs," the Yeerk said suddenly. "Chapman's office is under a surveillance system. There are cameras everywhere. And people come in and out daily. Chapman will wake up soon, and then everyone will know you were there. You destroyed a wall of the school – do you honestly think no one will notice?"
"We took out the cameras," I said sharply. "And someone's... covering for the wall, so to speak. And Chapman."
The Yeerk's eyes narrowed. "You couldn't have destroyed all those cameras. How would you know where they are?"
I just smiled and looked at Tobias.
{I have to say,} he said privately, {that getting Erek to locate and erase all those security tapes was not easy. Neither was convincing him to impersonate Chapman like Lourdes is impersonating Jake. He wasn't all that happy about coming out of hiding... but when push came to shove he was there for us, as usual. Even down to casting a hologram over that wall.}
I nodded, knowing he hadn't let the Yeerk hear him. Erek had been jumpy about running the risk of exposure – especially since, from what Tobias had told me, the Chee had been nearly annihilated after the Animorphs were captured. Only a few were left.
"You're lying," the Yeerk said desperately. "There's no way you could have taken care of all those cameras. Or the wall. Or Chapman! Even if someone was covering for him, what happened to Chapman himself? You sanctimonious Animorphs don't kill people."
Tobias looked away. I shrugged. The Yeerk stared.
"We made a choice." I brushed my hair back behind my ear. "There isn't always an easy way out, Yeerk. We made a choice comparing one human to all the humans in our country, our continent, the world. Guess who won."
"You killed him! You loved it, Rachel, didn't you? The license to kill!" The Yeerk looked desperate.
"No. I didn't love it," I retorted honestly. "He was my friend's father; I used to look up to him. But you know our motto, Yeerk. Free or dead."
He closed his eyes and heaved out one last hopeless shot at me. "You can't make that choice for others."
"Sometimes we have to. Spare me the moralizing, Yeerk. It's too hypocritical for you."
{You do what you have to do,} Tobias said unexpectedly before lapsing back into silence. I knew he felt guilty about what I – we – had done, but he had accepted it. He was trying to share the blame for it.
I sighed deeply and pulled my knees up to my chest.
"What are you going to do now, Animorph? Try to get the other members of your little team free? Try to take back everything you've lost?" The Yeerk writhed with the ropes around his hands.
"Not just yet." I shrugged. "Now, we're just going to wait."
After another hour of sitting there in silence, Sub-visser Two began to scream. I knew the fugue had come. Our wait was almost at an end.