Disclaimer: See Chapter 1
Thank-you all reviewers! And whoever else is reading this story! Hope this chapter, though short, is worth the wait!
Chapter 6
The air shimmered for a moment and we caught a glimpse of the metal and plastic body underneath before the next hologram snapped into place, revealing the boy we all had come to know. He smiled sheepishly.
"How'd you know it was me?"
Cassie rolled her eyes expressively. "My dad never keeps the lawnmower that clean, Eric. Not to mention I'd put my lab coat was over there on the hay bale, and it somehow managed to hang itself neatly on the coat rack. And the mouse tracks in the corner had vanished, and that black smudge, right there," pointing, "was missing." She shrugged. "Little things. I probably wouldn't have noticed had we been anyplace else."
Eric looked relieved. "That's good to know. We've been working to improve our holographic range, but there are still a few bugs to work out. For the longest time the projectors kept going on the fritz if we tried to extend past 20 meters with anything more complicated than a brick wall. Once I was trying to imitate a large tree and it ended up with a plaid trunk."
I think that I should interject a note here on the Chee. The chee are holograpic masters, androids originally created by a pacifist species as toys, and as friends. The species was eventually destroyed, and the gentle Chee, not programmed to fight, fled with the remnant population of their masters to Earth. But just because the Chee are pacifist doesn't mean that they will stand by and let another world be destroyed. And with their advanced holo-technology, they are this world's greatest spies.
Except for the Animorphs, of course.
"So? where's Ax?"
Rachel rolled her eyes and shrugged, somehow managing to convey Don't ask and Look for yourself in one graceful movement. Jake gave a wry grimace. "I think we can start without him, Eric. He's rather...indisposed, at the moment."
Eric eyed the stall door, which at that moment chose to emit a particularly loud snuffle-grunt of pleasure. Jake winced. "Very indisposed."
Apparently, it takes more than a half-morphed, cookie-crazed Andilite choking on a paper Mr. Christie's bag to phase an android older than the earth itself, because Eric just shook his head. "You guys get weirder by the day."
"What? Don't tell me you think having an Andilite turned Cookie Monster in your barn is strange?"
The hologram smiled. "Actually, Marco, I was referring to your new hairstyle. But feel free to interpret the statement in any way you want." Switching his attention to the entire group, he began. "It was so subtle that at first none of our agents caught it. But something big is definitely in the works. The Yeerks have been discretely calling in reinforcements from the outside."
"And by reinforcements you mean…?"
Eric looked straight at me. "Humans. They are bringing back as many Human-Controllers to Earth as they possibly can."
I felt my heart shudder to a stop.
Humans? As in, the members of the species Homo sapiens that the Yeerks had 'killed off' to make them available for reassignment off-planet?
As in, my mother?
Ugh. This chapter went through some serious growing pains. And some seriously unexpected twists. It wasn't my idea to have Marco's mother come back to Earth. Really, it wasn't...I think my muse is playing tricks on me...
Because I couldn't resistthe cliffhanger, I'll work extra fast to get the next one out...