First Point-of-View :

Special Agent AnDrew Dorian

Codename: Half-Breed

Age at Date of Recording: 26

Race: Unknown

Gender: Male

Marital Status: Single

Conviction Status: Guilty

Current Life Status: Executed For Treason

My name is Drew. I'm only using this weird little thing because it's the new protocol for this "mission." It will record things as I see and hear them, and I'm supposing will dispose of everything else that doesn't relate to the "mission" at hand. Maybe someday I'll be famous for being one of the first to use this "experimental" technology.

Anyway, the reason I'm recording this right now is because the Earth FBI, CIA, NSA, and about every other big boy out there are investigating the case of the Animorphs after the war with the Yeerks. Apparently, about three years after Animorph Rachel Berenson's memorial service, Jake Berenson, Marco Rodriguez, Tobias Fangor, First Officer Menderash of the Intrepid, and two volunteer soldier trainees from one of Jake Berenson's classes stole a Yeerk prototype ship that had been placed in orbit by a few members of the Andalite High-Command. Then, they entered foreign space that was forbidden by most species to go.

Kelbrid space.

The Animorphs seemed to have thought that one their old comrades, an Andalite by the name of Axilimi-Esgarrouth-Isthill, who had been reported to have been captured and taken (whether he was dead or alive was unknown) in a Kelbrid ship. So they valiantly went off to rescue their friend, unknowingly leaving the ship's surveillance system on during their entire trip.

The United States government now has the surveillance discs and knows now what exactly happened until the Yeerk prototype ship (the ship they dubbed The Rachel) came into conflict with the Blade ship. Quite simply, they picked a fight with a ship that was vastly stronger than them, and the government doesn't understand why any of the Animorphs are still alive to tell the tale. The surveillance discs show up until The Rachel takes damage from ramming the blade ship, and then it just stops.

That is why each of the remaining Animorphs, each now convicts, are being forced to give their account of what happened in Kelbrid space. The government is getting all antsy for the Animorphs to give some more tie-ins for a movie deal.

Well, anyway, this is what I was wasting my Saturday, and a few days of my vacation time doing. Rounding up the remaining Animorphs and making them record their memories in these little new techno-gadgets that the Andalites are ticked off at us for making them and advancing their own technology off their "sacred tool" or whatever and making a diary out of it.

I was looking out the window of the car I was in and trying to see anything inside the "safe-house" that the Animorph was being held in. We had been sent to pick him up from this supposedly safe location, and deliver him to a Police Station and use this stupid device on him. I wonder if that would count as interrogation?

It was 7:00 PM and I was waiting in the patrol car (we had nothing better in such a small town) looking for any sign that they were coming out with the prisoner. No luck, and there hadn't been any for the last ninety minutes. I reached into my pocket and pulled out the carton of smokes I'd bought a few months back, back before I quit. Now they served as a constant reminder of what I didn't want to be anymore.

For a moment I just look at the pack of Chesterfields, the plastic wrapping over the box, the wear marks, the smudges from whatever I'd dipped my fingertips into and smeared on the box and wonder if I can't just have one more. If I can't just take the lighter I still carried in my pocket out and just light up the tip of one last cigarette, one last smoke, one last hurrah, one last good-bye to it all. My wife wasn't there anymore anyway, and what would be the harm of one last cigarette after she had left me so long ago? Just one last, good taste of tobacco . . .

And then Special Agent Scott Derden, my partner, walked out, his hand gripping the shoulder of the man in the orange jumpsuit, hand-cuffs linked to a chain linked to his ankle-cuffs, making it hard for him to raise his hands above his elbows, and forcing him to do this little penguin waddle kind of walk. His hair was unkempt and long, for a guy, seeming to cover the tops of his eyes, which seemed to keep to the ground instead of ever looking up once. It was also obvious he hadn't shaven in maybe a week, with a thin beard showing like he was that Aragorn guy from those one ring movies from a few years back. I guess he was a tall guy – around six foot or so, and more muscle then I'd imagined him with when I read the reports.

Who knows, he might've beefed up while he was away.

While they were walking toward the patrol car, I quickly shoved the pack of cigarettes back into my jacket pocket, and tried to remember when I had opened the pack and put my finger inside the pack, about to pick up one of the seven remaining in the box.

After a moment, Scott got the Animorph to sit in the back seat and closed the door as he himself slipped into the front passenger seat. "Ready to roll," he said, looking at me and almost smiling, unsuspecting of the cigarettes that I had had out and the thoughts I had been thinking a moment before. "Let's get out of here."

I started the car and pulled off the curb and began to drive down the street, dusk starting to creep its way through the light and take hold of this little town, further encompassing and accentuating the lack of innocence this town always seemed to have. As usual, there wasn't much traffic, so we got out of the small town pretty quickly.

As we drove through the windy country sides, the Animorph still said nothing. I guess he didn't have anything to say, or . . . maybe he was just . . . observing us? Examining us for possible physical threats? That was one of the scariest thoughts that crossed my mind that evening, as we passed through countless dumpy towns that only those who could not afford to live anywhere else lived.

I nearly jumped when my partner, Scott, said the first words I'd heard for hours. "How's the gas," he said in his surfer style accent. "I figure we gotta be pretty low on it now."

I looked down at the fuel gauge, whose arrow was pointing steadily lower and lower than the Empty sign. "Gone," I said blandly. "I'll stop at the next gas station."

And I did, at an Exxon station, I believe. I got out of the car and looked quickly to make sure that Scott was still awake. He was reading a magazine – Playstation or Sports Illustrated or something like that. He was chewing the side of his lip and seeming to struggle to read the small print words on the page using the light from the gas station.

I stepped out and went to the pump and inserted a card that was from the pocket that was the same one as the one I held the pack of cigarettes in and inserted it into the payment slot and selected the gas type and inserted the pump into the gas tank of the car and pulled the lever. I stood there for a while, and till I flicked the latch on it to keep it going until the tank was full and I stood there with my hands trying to warm themselves in my vest pockets.

And then I looked and saw I was right next to the window of the car where the Animorph was seated. He still hadn't moved, and I could barely tell if he was breathing, and I doubt he had made a sound since I'd seen him. I leaned in to the window and looked at him.

So this is him, huh? I thought to myself. This is the last Animorph who hadn't been interrogated. One of those that had stopped the Yeerks a decade ago. One of those that had suffered for three years fighting in secrecy against a parasitic epidemic plaguing the planet. I wonder what it must have been like?

And somewhere along the line I realized that this guy could probably kill me and I wondered, if he wanted to get out of here, why didn't he already? I was sure we were push-overs compared to a lot of the things this guy must've went through. Was I right before when I thought that he was just evaluating us for possible threats?

Was this guy just playing with us?

And I guess that just kind of set me on edge because when I found that I wasn't gazing at him anymore but staring intently, as if he was some sort of interesting speciment. I was scared of this guy, hell yeah – this guy was dangerous, and I would've had to be an idiot not to be scared of this Animorph.

My face went closer and closer to the tinted glass, and I guess at some point he noticed and his eye twitched to the side and I jumped and nearly screamed.

The gas pump clicked and signaled that the gas was full and I removed it, still worked up from the guy moving his eye to the side, which, if you think about it, should've been the least of my worries – I was transporting a convicted killer halfway across the state and I was worried about his eyes moving.

I got back in the car and started to drive, constantly looking at the Animorph in the rearview mirror. I hardly took my eyes off him until we got to the secure location in the mountains – some four and a half hours later.

The Animorph didn't seem to give Scott any trouble as they were exiting the patrol car, and it he was pretty easy getting into the complex in the mountains. Funny – I heard this one was violent. Can't say I had anything to complain about though.

We walked through the lobby of the large, neighborhood like big group of buildings, to the reception desk where we got clearance to go into the back hall. "Thanks, Jimbo," I heard Scott say as he lead the Animorph by the arm to the door that had just beeped open. He opened the door and went outside, and I followed quickly behind, catching the door as it was about to swing closed. In the hall, the doors of offices and interrogation rooms streamlined the small and crammed corridor. I swear, if Scott wasn't there I would've gotten lost in a flash.

I followed Scott and the Animorph to the interrogation room, where I watched from a distance to make sure that the Animorph didn't do anything while Scott was chaining to the metal loop on the chair that would reside between the man's knees. Throughout the whole thing, he kept the blank look that he'd kept since we'd picked him up, his eyes not raising off of the tabletop once.

When he was done, Scott walked back to the door, tapped my shoulder, and said, "Let's go."

I followed him out of the Interrogation room and into the hall, where we went into an empty room with a door on each wall. Scott turned and went to the door on the wall to the left, and I followed him close behind. As we entered the Observation room, a man seemed to be on his way out – he was a heavy man, maybe in his mid to late fifty's, his hair strewn like he was too lazy to take care of it, and his glasses, pretty thin by the looks of them, hung to the edge of his nose like they were clinging to dear life. The man made a feeble attempt to smile and muttered, "Excuse me . . ." as he passed by us.

I followed Scott the rest of the way into the Observation Room, where we watched the Animorph while he was chained to the chair that was locked to the ground in the Interrogation room. There was recording equipment everywhere, and crew managing it. All in all, I believe there were about eight people in that room that night, including the police chief who was solemnly drinking his coffee and reading a packet of papers, most likely some sort of report or bio on the Animorph we were interrogating. I looked at him for a moment, but the most attention he gave me was taking another sip of his coffee.

I saw a table that had the words, "Hirac Delest Device" with one small box with a bunch of dials and buttons with one light blinking red. The box was hooked up to what I could only guess was a recording unit. I noticed another one of the small boxes hooked to the back of the metal chair the Animorph was sitting in.

One of the "techies" noticed me looking at the Device, and laughed briefly. He pointed to the device and said, "It transmits directly into his mind when we flip the switch, at which time the light on them will start flashing green instead of red, so he won't even know what hit 'em with no one there setting anything up."

"I don't know," I muttered under my breathe when the man had turned back to his controls and started typing something while biting a pencil in his mouth. "I think he might just know exactly what hit him."

And I don't think he'll be happy about it either, I thought to myself, already gazing back into the Interrogation room.

While looking through the one-way glass, I noticed the chrome coloring the whole interrogation room had. The illusion of clean. The whole time, the Animorph said and did nothing, remained motionless

The man Scott and I had passed on the way into the Observation Room now walked into the Interrogation room and sat down in the chair across from the Animorph. The Animorph still did nothing. Still said nothing. He didn't move or make any noticeable sign that he wasn't just a manikin sitting in a chair like a man.

Even from behind the glass, Scott and I could hear the heavy man's heavy breathing, and I thought he might just croak right there. But instead, he took out a clipboard with a bunch of paper's and rummaged through it on the table, making marks here and there and then finally asked, "Sir?" to the Animorph. "Sir, please state your name and age in reverse order for the record?"

The Animorph didn't budge, didn't do anything and didn't say anything.

"Sir?"

The Animorph stood his ground.

"Sir? Please comply or I will have to use extreme measures."

Still, the Animorph did not cooperate.

The heavy man sighed, his glasses not moving from their position on his face as he seemed to take a sort of depressed expression on his face. He pulled a switch out of his back pocket with a red button on it. He looked at the Animorph across from him on the other side of the table and sighed depressedly one last time before he pressed the button.

Only then did I notice the wires that were connected to the leg of the steel chair.

As the electricity went into the chair, and shocked the Animorph sitting there, I saw his face tense up and his teeth clench. As the heavy man eased up on the button controlling the electrical current to the chair, the Animorph tried to catch his breath but still did not move much. And then the blood dripped from his nose.

"Jesus!" I said, and then I asked no one in particular, "Is this really necessary?"

And then, I returned my attention to what was happening in the interrogation room.

Once again, the heavy man was asking for the Animorph to respond. "Sir?"

The heavy man didn't yet seem ready for the Animorph to show any sign that he had heard him, and jumped when the Animorph turned his eyes to him. This was the first direct view that I had had with the Animorph's eyes and I saw what I expected to see . . . and a little more too.

Of course, there was the sadness in his eyes. That was rumored to have been there for more than the last ten years. And there was the intense glare that he had been said to have had out of habit because of his nothlit form for so long. But among the sadness, there was anger, so much anger . . . until it surpassed fury. And I suspected that this wasn't a new look formed by the torcher from the electrocution. In fact, I was pretty sure that this was his regular expression.

"S-sir?" the heavy man now stuttered as he saw the look in the Animorph's eyes. "I need to state your name and age in reverse order for the record."

For a moment, the Animorph seemed to smirk, and then it was back to the shield he had before, the angry, if not emotionless expression he'd had the entire night. And then he said with a deep and threatening voice that nobody expected him to have, "Twenty-three."

The heavy man seemed anxious and wrote this down very quickly, as if he expected the man to kill him. Cautiously, he asked, "Name, sir? What's your name? For the record of course." He made a feeble attempt at a friendly smile while signaling under the table for the equipment guys to activate the device.

With a sullen type of rage, the Animorph said, "Tobias Fangor."

And the light on both the Devices on the desk and on the back of the chair started blinking green.

Author's note:

I don't own any of the things referenced to in the Animorphs series. Just making sure everyone knows.

Also, thank you to gpshaw for letting me use his cover sheet idea, and Marco's last name.