The attack came at about nine pm. Me and Karen were set to leave with Rachel in an hour. Every one but Anna, who was on lookout was sitting down in the living room. I was sitting on the couch holding hands with Karen and watching a re-run of Mad TV when I saw the lights I had installed around the dirt road that led to the house flash on.

"What the?" I grabbed a radio and contacted Anna who was in the crow's nest. "Anna can you see anyone coming up." I knew Anna was now scaning the road with binoculars.

"There's one truck pulling up, may be a lost hunter or… shit! There are two trucks, now three, four…"

"Can you see who's in them?"

"Yeah, oh lord, Erik they are armed I say again they are armed, we gotta get out of here."

"Stay calm everyone!" I said. Trying to calm myself. "Rachel, can you take us all to the valley?"

"I don't think Jake would like it but… I can't leave you here, follow me." She went towards the door.

"Wait!." I said. I ran through the secret door and into my lab, knowing that the cure I had wouldn't work if it was heated to room temperature I copied all files of my research onto a disk and ran out of the lab. When I came back up everyone was already in their various owl morphs.

I decided to morph the great horned owl, I began to shrink first, the pain of my bones decreasing in size was intense, my nose and mouth fused together to form a beak, this is one of the worst pains someone can experience, feathers began to break out on my body. My neck sank lower into me shoulders and my head rounded. My feet began to curve until they were talons, my eyes expanded and became the eyes of the owl.

Fully owl now each of us flew out an open door. As we escaped the door was broken down as we flew away I knew that this would be last time I would see the house. I risked a glance backward and saw that the Yerks had taken out flamethrowers and set fire to the house. I thanked my lucky stars I had carried a copy of the formula form my computer. The materials to make it were stored in a fireproof in the lab, which itself was built so a fire from the house shouldn't spread to it.

Even if the Yerks found the lab they wouldn't know what the chemicals were for and it was likely that they'd have little to no use for them, hopefully they wouldn't take them. We were in the air flying over the woods, our owls eyes made the night as bright as day so navigating was easy, I just hoped that no one in the group was wearing night vision goggles that would allow them to see 9 owls flying in the same direction.

11:00 pm

We landed and demorphed to recharge the 2 hours time limit. As humans it was pitch black and I could barely see anybody.

"Is everyone OK?" I asked. I heard affirmations from people all around. My next task was to check the pocket of my morphing suit: the disk was still there, thank God for small favors.

"What happened back there?" Rachel asked. James who rarely spoke during meetings or missions answered the question in his deep voice.

"Yerks must have tracked you to the house, they were attempting to remove you from it forcibly, and when they didn't find you, or who was protecting you they torched the place hoping that we were hiding somewhere."

"And now," Jerry said. "They're going to try and trace the house's deed to it's owner."

"I blew you're cover didn't I I'm sorry." Rachel said.

"Didn't blow a damn thing," Jerry said smiling. "The Yerks are going to run into firewall after fire wall, encryption after encryption, and then they are going to find out that the house is owned by someone who died thirty years ago, we don't call it a 'safe house' for nothing, Rachel, they won't find us."

"Just the same," I said. "I think it would be better for us to stay together, so when we reach valley we're going to stay there until we get a definite answer from Jake."

"If he lets you stay." Rachel said.

"Whoa, what the fuck, you're kidding me," Jerry said. "Why on earth would we stay in a valley for crying out loud, it's them who have to stay there not us!"

"You calm down now Jerry, we don't know if your security will hold up, you forget that the Yerks have good technology they may be able to trace it to us, I don't' know how, but they found out where Rachel was and we… Hey wait a minute, how did they find out where Rachel was?" Becky spoke up, squinting to see Rachel by the little light coming from the stars and moon.

"Rachel did any of the gauds get their hands on you?"

"Yeah," She said. "One grabbed my shoulder when I tried to run what of it."

"Do me a favor which shoulder?" Rachel pointed to her left one. Becky took a single match from inside her morphing suit and lit it. There was an area of Rachel's skin that was slightly discolored. "Sub dermal bug," Becky thrust the match into Rachel's shoulder.

"OW!" Rachel yelped. "What was that for?"

"Only way to disable one of those bugs is it cut it out, wait it out, or melt it. I chose to melt it."

"Wait you mean to tell me they were tracking me?"

"Yeah, they were, which means," Becky stopped realizing what this meant. "They know we're here lets move."

"Wait," I said. "If they were tracking her they may be nearby, that means that if they see a bunch of owls take off at once they'll put a shotgun to us, we need to split up, Rachel tell, Anna, Jerry, and Fred how to get to the valley, Karen and Rachel, you'll fly with me, Amy you'll fly with Fred and James you'll fly with Anna and. Got it?" Everyone paired up, it was not the time to question orders. Rachel quickly told us how to get to the valley. Since it would be a day long trip she gave us each a separate place to stop and rest followed by meeting place where we would enter the valley together I didn't feel good braking the team up like this, but it had to be done. Then we split up each running in a different my team stayed where we were. One by one we got thought speak confirmations that the other groups had taken off.

"Ready to go?" I asked then I heard an approaching engine. "Shit! Looks like we're going to be fighting again…"