8:23 pm

After I was satisfied that we were far enough away I landed in a park. We de-morphed. This park was one of the three places Becky would be checking if we got separated. We may have a long time to wait so I decided to find out what was going on.

"What were you doing there?" I asked Rachel.

"Same thing you were," She said. "Trying to get the place shut down."

"Why were you alone?"

"I decided to go alone, thought it would too dangerous for us all to be leaving the valley at once."

"Whoa! Why are you all hiding in the valley."
"You know about the Applegate project right? Me, Marco, Jake Tobias, Cassie, and Ax all wrote those books in order to warn people of the invasion, of course some of the information was false to avoid us being found, well out project was discovered, about the time Marco had to flee to the valley, when we found out that the project was compromised we cut our losses and retreated. Before they traced the books back to us.

"Most of our families made it with us, but they killed my dad, when he tried to fight them. We got there but there were too few of us to fight and, Jake didn't want to risk it." Her voice wavered a little but she had obviously put most of the pain behind her. "We have been doing our best to fight the Yerks from where we are but it's not easy. The Yerks know how we look, and are in shoot-first mode, as you saw back there.

"Anyway tell me about you, who are you guys?" Anna answered the question.

"We are the members of a strike force called 'Glass Dagger' we have been fighting Yerk invasion for a about 5 years now we started about a year after you did. My name is Anna, this is my brother Erik."

"You've been around 5 years?" Rachel said puzzled. "How come we haven't heard about you?"

"Well," I said. "As you know the Applegate project spawned several different resistance attempts, but most of them, the ones you've heard about, failed. Glass Dagger is a metaphor, it is based on a dagger that would shatter on impact leaving no trace of the weapon, at least for the type of investigative techniques they had back when a dagger was useful. Our group uses stealth mainly, until we met Becky, who you'll met in a minute, stealth was the only way we could win our battles, stealth and a whole lot of luck. Ever since we got the morphing powers we have been able to step our attacks up a notch they now think we're a well group of Andilate rouges. They haven't shown any signs of knowing we're humans, which is strange considering that they found out about you. I think it's because they regard your ability to morph as an isolated incident since so few Andalites have come to Earth and since they have a policy against giving they're technology to 'lesser beings'"

"How is it that you can morph anyway are there more Andalites here, are they going to help us?"

"Sorry, no there are no more Andalites. Becky set up an antenna that picked up Andilate transmissions we were able to make a 'blue box' from that, but our power isn't as good as yours, our morphs are a painful experience."

"Wow I never thought writing a book would make such a difference, what made you believe us any…"

"Shhhh!" I heard an approaching engine. The paneled van we had drove pulled into the park. Becky got out and used a flashlight to flash out "GD" in Morse Code. Anna, Rachel and I stood up, Becky saw us. She motioned us into the van. As we walked towards it Becky said:

"Glad to see you made it out alive, wait," She saw Rachel. "Are you who I think you are?"

Gunshots rang out. One bullet grazed my arm, we ran into the van. We each took a seat and buckled up as Becky hit the gas. We were in sparsely populated part of town. Behind us the stereotypical black tinted car was following us, two men were leaning out the window firing every chance they got, fortunately I had metal studs installed in the tires of the van, they would be hard to shoot out.

"I didn't know they tailed us, we'd better move." She said. Taking a sharp curve that knocked me into the door. Anna had crossed herself and was praying silently.

"…Mother of God, pray for us…" She murmured. I grabbed a secure cell phone and called my dorm, I said four words:

"Mission accomplished, compromised, safe-house" (that was four words right?)

"What are you guys doing ?" Rachel asked.

"These guys are from the hotel I bet, since they followed us they don't know who we are yet. Don't worry we always lose them." I said.

"Always?! You mean you've done this before?!"

"Yes, I forgot to tell you that we are a lot more aggressive than your group, which reminds me." I grabbed a pistol from under my seat put on a ski mask leaned out the window and fired off three rounds one into each from tire and one through the head of one of the shooters. Rachel gaped at me. The car reverse fishtailed and hit a tree.

"Woo hooo!" I yelled. "Who's your daddy!"

"You shot them…" I had always wondered what an Animorphs reaction would be to the way we did things, I had always thought that Rachel, if anyone, would understand our policy. "thank goodness I thought I was the only one who saw it that way."

"What way?" I asked.

"I always felt that we needed to be more aggressive, if we had, well sometimes I think we would have saved lives…" she trailed off. Becky slowed down. She pulled into a nearby junk yard. "What are we doing?"
"We're going to dump this car, another way we've been able to avoid detection is by getting rid of the evidence of our presence. The car was picked up by a magnet and dropped into a crusher. GTA III style.