Chapter 2
"This is very strange indeed," I said. "Indeed. Deed. Duh."
"No kidding," Marco agreed. He was correct; I was most certainly not kidding. A dead Human Controller was a strange sight, especially one who appeared to have died for no reason.
"He's dead, Jim," I said.
Marco snorted to himself. "You've been watching Star Trek? Isn't that like a kids' show to you?"
"I enjoy the human perspective on space travel. And I find the optimistic view of your future to be quite intriguing. Ee-ging."
Then I noticed something underneath the Controller's corpse. There was blood, red human blood, seeping out from underneath it. The body was on its side, and the blood appeared to be coming from the head.
Marco quickly locked the door behind me, and I bent my wobbly human knees to look at the body.
"Don't get any blood on your hands, Ax!" Marco yelled at me. "I don't want to have to explain that to one of the mall cops."
"I shall ensure no blood touches my hands," I replied, turning the Controller over so that I could look at the bleeding side of the head.
Behind me, Marco moved into one of the plastic stalls, and was promptly, violently sick. I too felt ill at ease, but my aristh training would not allow me to lose control of my stomach, human or otherwise. Marco's mother is Visser One, or rather, she was until she was demoted and made a renegade. I had thought that of all my human friends, Marco was used to the horrors of our war. I was wrong.
As I turned the Controller over, one of its hands fell on the nearby Yeerk, which promptly began to seep green fluid with a sound I can describe as being a squelch.
I heard Marco throw up again.
The former-Controller was now on his other side, and I saw where the blood was coming from.
His ear.
"Marco!" I called. "Arco. Co."
The stall door opened and Marco emerged, looking slightly paler than he usually did.
"What?" he asked.
"I have discovered something odd."
Marco rolled his eyes in the human expression of disgust. "What? More unusual than a corpse in a mall bathroom with an alien slug lying next to it? Oh no, what could possibly be more odd that that?"
I recognised sarcasm now when I heard it. It was one of Marco's most frequently used forms of speech, after humour of course.
"I believe I have discovered what killed this Controller," I said grimly. "Someone has forcibly extracted the Yeerk from this human's skull with the Yeerk still attached to the host's brain. Bruh-ain."
Marco brown eyes appeared to widen at me. It still amazes me the number of expressions human faces can assume.
"How did someone do that?" he asked incredulously.
"I am unsure," I said, standing up and carefully avoiding the expanding pool of blood next to the Controller. "Look at the ear," I said to Marco.
"Yeah, what about it?"
"There are claw marks on the earlobe," I commented.
"From what?"
Before I could respond, there was a knock on the door to the bathroom, and a whining human voice called "who's in there, I need to go!"
I was unsure as to where the human needed to go, but before I could attempt to give directions, Marco stepped up close to the door and replied in his own version of an adult human's voice.
"Cleaning staff, mister," he said gruffly. "Use one of the other bathrooms."
The human outside made a very loud sighing sound, and apparently left.
I decided it was safe to continue. "The claw marks are not from human fingernails; the breaks in the skin are too clean," I said, trying my best to imitate the voice of one of the human law-enforcement officers I have seen many times on the television in my scoop.
"The marks are way too small to be from Hork-Bajir claws too," Marco said, quite rightfully.
"Or for Taxxon teeth," I added. "In fact, these marks are unlike anything I have seen before."
It was true. The marks that were all over the ear and down the same side of the face were crescent-shaped gashes of red, very thin and incredibly cleanly done. It looked almost like they had been done with surgical implements…
As if reading my mind, a skill I know humans do not possess, Marco spoke. "Could someone have taken the Yeerk out with a scalpel?"
"Not with weak human hands using it, no," I said. Marco seemed to take offence to my words. I was not insulting human hands, for they are much more powerful than my own, but I knew the force necessary to pull a Yeerk from a brain was too great for a human to exert.
"So, what then?" Marco asked. "Don't tell me that a little kitty tore the Yeerk out? Or that this guy's Yeerk though it would be funny to power drill itself?"
"I doubt the Yeerk would find that amusing. Oozing. Zing. But I believe the most important question is, not how the Yeerk and Controller were killed, but rather who killed them," I said as calmly as I could, despite the now overpowering stench coming from the Yeerk.
Marco turned away from me and walked toward the door, when it suddenly opened and nearly hit him in face, taking the lock off the wall as it went past him.
"Erek!" Marco yelled, half in surprise and half in anger. "You nearly took my face off!"
The android we know as Erek King calmly walked into the bathroom with us, pushed the door back into the doorway, and folded the handle down in such a way that would make it very difficult to open from the outside, and from the inside for that matter.
"I'm sorry, I came as soon as I could," Erek said.
"What do you mean?" I asked. "Neither of us has reported this to anyone."
"The guy who came to the door was one of us, he smelled the Yeerk's body when he stood by the door, and sent for me. Just as well I was in the neighbourhood," Erek said with a smile, and then added, "I'd like to see AOL match Chee-net."
I raised one of my human eyebrows in a very good imitation of the Star Trek character 'Mister Spock' to show I was sceptical. I knew that Erek could have run from his home across town to us in less than five Earth-minutes. Everywhere was 'in the neighbourhood' to a Chee.
"Do you know who killed this Controller?" Marco asked, looking first at Erek, at the body, then to Erek again.
Erek is a Chee, one of a race of Androids created by an extinct race called the Pemalites. The Chee are unbelievable fast, powerful and old, but are pacifists in the extreme, and only fight the Yeerks by providing us with information.
"It is a mystery," I said. "Who would murder a Controller in such a way?"
"Two Controllers," Erek corrected. "There's another one, I found her face-down in a dumpster behind McDonalds when I came out of the Yeerk pool. Her Yeerk was torn out through a small hole in her skull."
I looked to Marco and Erek.
"We must inform Prince Jake."