Chapter Three
"You're saying that's an android?" asked Ferdie, disbelievingly to Jake. "That kid in jeans and a shirt is, in fact, a robot?"
"Yup," replied Jake shortly.
I gazed at the boy walking towards us. No one could have told he wasn't human, certainly not me. For a second, I even thought the others were playing some kind of stupid trick on us, or testing to see if they could trust us.
"Guys, hi," said the android, taking a seat around the already crowded table. "How's it going?" He was quite tall, with smiling hazel eyes and light brown, wavy hair. I say 'he', of course this was apparently all some kind of hologram.
"Hey Erek," said Rachel, standing up to introduce us. "Um, is it safe to talk?"
"Sure, just a second," the android said, smiling. Just then, the air around us shimmered, as if we were suddenly enclosed in a bubble. I looked around in alarm. People on the outside were walking about as normal, seemly unaware of the oddity that had just happened. I felt Ferdie nudge my arm, and I looked again at Erek.
"Whoa," I muttered. Erek's human form had vanished, and in its place was now what looked like a sort of toy dog made of ivory and chrome metal, sitting upright in the chair.
"Sam, Ferdie, Philip and Maggie?" said Rachel, "this is Erek King. He's a Chee. An android. Erek, this is Sam, Ferdie, Philip and Maggie, the newest members of our team."
Maggie gave a very slight wave, her mouth open like a fish. Philip nodded curtly, his eyes narrowed in curiosity. Ferdie tossed his head in acknowledgement. The others said hi as if they'd known him since they were kids.
"Pleased to meet you," said Erek to the four of us. "It's quite safe to talk about anything now. I have extended my hologram to include the ten of you. People on the outside will just see a bunch of kids chatting about basketball."
"We're inside a hologram?" I asked, gazing at the shimmering bubble around us.
"Told you this dude was cool," said Marco. "But I have the feeling that what he's about to tell us isn't quite so fun."
"Yeah, every time you turn up, Erek, we always seem to end out practicing our fighting skills," said Rachel amicably. "Not that that's a bad thing or anything…"
"Easy for you to say, Miss Gung-Ho warrior chick," said Marco.
"Shut up, Marco," said Rachel airily. "Hey Erek, I take it you didn't just pop by to say hello?"
"Here is comes," said Marco darkly. "What's it this time? Visser Three has managed to clone himself?"
Erek smiled, then looked at us seriously. "No, nothing to do with Visser Three this time. How many of you have heard of the Cronin Building?"
"Isn't that some kind of FBI thing in Washington?"
"Not Washington, our state capital. It's government, but not strictly FBI. The offices there have connections to the CIA and NSA."
"What's that got to do with us?" Tobias asked.
Erek paused, then continued. "You are aware that I, along with various other members of our race have access to an exclusive internet system? Chee-net?"
Tobias and the others nodded, but Erek continued his explanation for our benefit.
"The Chee-net is what we use to share information," he told us. "It's like your internet system, only much faster and capable of sending and receiving much larger amounts of information in a fraction of the time. We can also use it to hook up to the regular internet, and to hack into the intranets of other organisations."
I nodded. After all, this sounded perfectly reasonable compared to everything else we'd gone through in the last few weeks. "And you found something out about the Yeerks, I guess? Something in relation to these offices?"
"Terrorist are planning to bomb the Cronin building," Erek said matter-of-factly. "In twelve hours from now. And the FBI don't know anything about it."
The ten of us gazed at him for a second, before Marco broke the silence. "Uh, shouldn't you call the police, dude? Or maybe that Agent Bauer guy from 24?"
"I don't think he's joking, Marco," said Jake, punching him. "How do you know? And how come the FBI don't?"
"Like I said, us Chee can access parts of the internet that even the most sophisticated human hacker could not. When one of us got hold of a thread that was of interest to us, it wasn't difficult to trace the thread to it's source and find out what was really going on. And, the FBI probably do know about it, but the thing is, they get like a thousand bomb threats everyday to this building. It's no secret that it's a government building, and since the attacks on the World Trade Centre, they've been bombarded with threats and reports. So far, they've all turned out to be flukes, and they've learnt to ignore most of them."
"So what's this got to do with us?" Tobias repeated. "Last time I checked, we were fighting the Yeerks, not terrorists."
"The government offices are crawling with Controllers. That building is like a major hot-spot for the Yeerks. Think of all the opportunities they have when they manage to make some important head of department a Controller. They have access to a vast amount of classified information, which they can then use to gather more information, and more hosts. If they have a host in that building, then they might have the ear of a man who works in the White House."
"They could be influencing the President," Philip said. "Getting access to military personnel, getting new laws passed, the list goes on."
"Not only that, but we have long suspected that there are so many Controllers there that the Yeerks are using it as a sort of secondary ground-based headquarters. They've got a lot of technology kept there, and part of their work involves improving and developing this technology, under the mask that they are working for the American government. They just make out that the work is classified to low ranking agents."
"So, what do the Chee expect us to do?" I asked Erek. "If you want the FBI to get to work on this, can't you make them believe this is a genuine threat? Why should we do it?" That came out a little harsher than I'd meant, but this wave of shocking information left me with little concern for my emotions.
"Plus, what's anyone meant to do in twelve hours?" Marco asked dryly. "You're leaving it a bit late, aren't you? Could have given us a few more minutes notice at least."
"Look, I'm not asking you to do anything," Erek replied, trying not to make eye contact with any of us. Just then, the truth dawned on Philip.
"You want us to decide," he said. It wasn't a question, asking for his confirmation, but a statement. "You want us to decide whether to let this bomb go off and kill all those Controllers, or inform the FBI and save the lives of hundreds."
Erek sort of nodded, unsure of what to say. Obviously, Philip had hit the mark with dead accuracy.
"Man, you are insane, buddy," said Marco, looking at the android. "You expect us to make a decision like that? Well, just to let you know, I'm not exactly into all that moral-reasoning crap. If you want my opinion, I say we stay out of it and let the damn thing go off. Major blow to the Yeerks; no trouble to us."
This, of course, got everyone's spirits flaring. Cassie was the first to rise.
"Marco, how can you just take that side without any care for all the people who could die? I think we should stop this!"
Maggie leapt up to support Cassie's argument, but Jake put his hand out to stop everyone.
"Look, we can't decide now, and certainly not here. This needs a lot of thinking and going over."
"A lot of time? Jake, that bomb is set to detonate in, like, twelve hours!" Rachel exclaimed, sounding rather excited. "We haven't got time to sit around discussing it!"
"Well, I suppose not, but we can't just go in with no idea of what to do. For a start, we're over a hundred miles from the site. We have to get there before we do anything."
"We can't just sit back and do nothing," Cassie said. "Otherwise people are going to die." Rachel started to protest, but, was again stopped by Jake.
"I say we should just settle down for a second. Go back to Cassie's barn and discuss this properly. Work out our options - quickly, efficiently, fairly. Decide what we're going to do. Erek, you want to come back with us?"
"Sure," Erek replied. "I'm sorry to drop you in it like this, but we felt that since you're the only guys who know about the Yeerks, you'd be the only ones capable of making a true assessment of the situation." He switched off the extended hologram. Immediately, his human shape appeared, masking his true self. But it did not mask the apprehension that was showing in his face.