Chapter Three: Complaints

Riley stood on an empty plain with black grass and dead flowers. Just the entrance to numerous worlds. To her left were Alex and Rachel. Riley wasn't sure if they ever knew how much Jake and Cassie loved each other during the first war or if Rachel would ever know how much she had to live up to, being named after the reason the Yeerks were defeated. To her right were Lee and David, "Here we are- the edge of insanity."

"Isn't that a bit over-dramatic?" David asked and rolled his eyes. His voice was accented slightly like his mother, pronouncing his I's like E's. It sounded like, "Eesn't that a beet ovair-dramateec?"

Riley knew that Marco and Jeanne wanted to spend some time in France, visiting her family when she left. One more thing she had to leave. "Not if you have seen what I have." Riley whispered and looked at Lee, who was named after her. "I have to travel into whoever's mind to follow him through dreams. It's gonna hurt like hell and be even creepier. There will be every one of his thoughts, his victim's thoughts, and whoever he is after thoughts. We will be in a mind of a murderer."

"How will it hurt?" Rachel asked, timidly. She was tanned, sharing mostly her mother's look, and had green eyes, or emerald, like her father. "I mean, don't you do all the work?"

"You'll get to feel the same thing as me, don't worry. And dreams hurt the worse. It is every nightmare, every pain, every fear being shoved into you." Riley said and put her hands together. "So get ready to be pureed, chilluns."

Riley closed her eyes and the ring glowed. The group was pulled apart, through everything, and thrown into a dark room. Riley stumbled and looked at Rachel and David, who had collapsed onto the floor.

Lee grabbed Riley's arm and steadied her. Alex helped Rachel up and David stood, embarrassed. Lee spoke first, "What now?"

"This is his next victim's dream." Riley answered. "So we find him or the victim and stop it from happening. Any problems?"

"Yeah. How?" Rachel asked, bringing up the obvious question everyone wanted to avoid.

"Since I have no clue if this thing is human, beast, or alien, I am not sure how. But if any of you kids want to spring an idea at me, go ahead." Riley replied.

"You know what, you are barely older than some of us and you are younger than Lee so why don't you stop calling us kids?" Rachel hissed. She placed her hands on her hips and stood there. She certainly had more of Ronnie's personality than Cassie's inside of her when it came to some things.

"I was born in 1989. Do we need to compare birthdates to realize who is actually older?" Riley glared at the girl. "Besides, experience rules over actual age."

"How about we stop the catfights and find whoever we have to save?" David asked and turned around to see the gruesome image of the Yeerk pool. People were being held under and screams came from the cages that held humans. But some of the cages were silent and that memory, that nightmarish piece, was the scariest. "Oh hell."

"Pretty damn close." Riley turned around and whispered. She looked at the faces of the four kids, who never had to see someone be tortured, taken, or killed before this day. She shivered, remembering her own nightmare down here. "I don't know what to do."

Lee placed his hand on her shoulder and squeezed it, "We'll make it."

Riley smiled, "As the real Rachel would say, let's do it."

"Do what?" Alex asked. "We don't know who we have to save or who is really the bad guy. We don't know anything and what- we are supposed hop out of the shadows and find a way to save someone?"

"He's got a good point." David chided in.

"Some heroes you are." Riley exclaimed quietly. "Whoever's dream this is will look different from the other people. Different color, more vibrant, something like that."

The others nodded; not wanting to start anymore fights and followed Riley around the shadows, gaping at the people. The place smelled of pain and fear and it sounded worse. Nothing that anyone should have to see. Rachel instinctively gripped the person closest to her, which happened to be Alex.

Starting all over, Riley thought, and looked at the group- thinking back to when she met the Animorphs, who weren't really the Animorphs anymore, and remembered the looks that Jake still gave Cassie. The looks between Tobias and Rachel before she had to take her back. They didn't compare to the looks between Cassie and Ronnie- a love that had never been through what they others had.

"What about that one?" Lee whispered and pointed to a girl who wasn't the dull color like all the rest. "Is that her?"

"Madison." Riley looked and gasped. Mikhail's younger sister, who had been a Controller during the war. Although Riley knew time had passed and Mikhail and Madison would be older, Madison looked the same age, if not younger, as if she could only be that age and in that war. "That is Mikhail's little sister."

"Weird." Alex noted, watching the girl. "They are both connected to you."

Riley, Lee, Rachel, and David all looked at Alex, realizing what no one had before. Riley spoke, "Who was killed before Mikhail?"

David looked up, remembering and frowned, "Shannen, age 49, ex-Controller and Jess, age 18, fought the Yeerks, somehow."

"Fuck." Riley said. "It's not about the Yeerks at all."