‹Yo, Marco!› I heard Jake thought-speak yell from a distance. ‹Tobias—the one at Rachel's—need to follow—Cassie!›
It was hard to follow what he was saying. Thought-speak breaks up over long distances, and I was well on my way to the Hork-Bajir colony to get some shut-eye. Plans change. No sleep for me. I turned a sharp U-turn in the air and headed to Cassie's house.
I tried thought-speak from outside her window. Didn't work. She was probably too deep into a dream about me to hear it. So, I demorphed outside on the rooftop, carefully slid the window open, crept into her room, and morphed gorilla. Then I put my face inches from Cassie's. Using my gorilla mouth, I figured I could perform one human word, at least.
"Boo."
Cassie's eyes snapped open. She stopped herself from screaming, which is good because I didn't really think ahead on the backup plan if Cassie's parents had heard a sound like that coming from their daughter's bedroom. Close one. Worth it. With everything being so stressful lately, sometimes you just need to have a laugh.
Cassie let me have it, though, as we morphed to great-horned owls. She was so mad, but she cooled down quickly as we hurried into the sky to find the rest of the group.
‹Do you know if they're okay?!› Cassie asked me for the fifth time.
‹I don't,› I answered. ‹I could barely make out what Jake was saying. Something about Tobias and Rachel. I don't know.›
‹Shouldn't we stop by Rachel's house then?› Cassie pressed.
Good point. So, we did. I wasn't surprised to see that the window was open and Rachel wasn't there. We flew toward the woods where Ax lived. Maybe he would know what was going on.
‹Jake?› I kept testing my thought-speak to see if we were close. ‹Jake?›
No answer. He was too far away or he was no longer in morph.
As if in response to my call, I heard Tobias's voice in my head: ‹Marco! Are you with Cassie? Jake says he can hear you.›
‹Yeah, buddy, the cavalry has arrived!› I said, relieved to have some contact.
‹Hey, that was my line.›
‹What?›
‹Nothing,› he answered, opening the discussion to include Cassie. ‹We're really close to Ax's scoop.›
‹What's the plan?› Cassie asked. We were flapping really hard to make good time. I could nearly hear how out of breath she was through her thought-speak.
‹Well, Ax took off to follow Zenguh,› Tobias explained. ‹He's really far ahead, but Jake didn't want him to get out of thought-speak range, so Rachel is about a mile behind him. Jake is getting ready to take off a mile behind Rachel, and then it'll be my turn.›
‹Pretty good idea. It's like an annoying game of telephone,› I mused. ‹Couldn't we just get actual phones?›
‹Sure, Marco,› Tobias said. ‹You go back to that cell phone store. Also, fly with a phone. Good luck with that.›
‹Tobias?›
‹Yeah?›
‹You've gotten more sarcastic as I've known you.›
‹I've noticed too, man.›
Just then I spotted him chilling underneath a tree. He was in Hork-Bajir morph and Jake was almost fully owl, like us. I could just make out Rachel way in the distance, in bald eagle morph. Oh, that girl.
Cassie and I landed and demorphed.
‹Catch up, guys!› was all Jake said before he took off. Now we had a chain of Zenguh, Ax, Rachel, and Jake in the air, without any real idea where anyone was headed.
Tobias filled me and Cassie in on the fight that had just happened. Another near-death experience for some of our team. I hated that I was getting used to that.
Tobias didn't have an owl morph for some reason, so Cassie and I acted as his eyes through the dark sky, trailing behind Jake quite a bit, yet close enough to maintain thought-speak.
‹Any idea where we are headed?› I called ahead.
‹No, and Rachel is saying she's lost track of Ax at the moment,› Jake said, somewhat calmly. He was hiding the panic in his voice, but I've known the kid way too long.
‹How are you doing, buddy?› I asked Jake privately as we flew through the air.
‹We need to end this,› he answered, simply, not really responding to my question.
‹Visser One could take some advice from this guy,› I tried to joke. Actually, the last thing we needed was the leader of the Yeerk invasion to be competent, let alone brilliant. The Yeerk hierarchy had quite a few flaws. No wonder a rogue Yeerk was so effective.
‹Let's hope they don't become best friends,› Jake said. We continued flying. Rachel reported to Jake that she still had no sights on Ax. I wasn't too worried, though. Ax is pretty good at taking care of himself.
Tobias and Cassie were behind me, and followed me through the air. I trailed behind Jake, who eventually landed on top of a high-rise apartment building. Rachel was there too. I took that as a sign that there was a new development. Once all of us had landed (minus the missing Andalite), we demorphed to try and make a plan.
Tobias remained in hawk form, but I saw him going in and out of his true hawk and the beefier hawk he had told me he recently acquired. He was really dedicated to extending the bird life, I guess. I suppose I would be too.
"All we have to do is find two aliens somewhere around this part of town," I said. "How hard can it be?"
"Well, the Yeerks are pretty good at hiding thousands of aliens," Rachel said.
‹True,› Tobias interjected. ‹But when has Ax ever been good at keeping a low profile?"
It was a good point. Even in human form, we never had to worry about the two hour time limit with him because our plans were always cut short from some commotion caused in public, usually by his sense of taste.
We peered over the edge of the apartment building roof, as if we might just see Ax and Zenguh hanging out directly below us in the parking lot.
Then we leaned back and looked at each other, hoping a plan would formulate as we thought of how to find Ax. He had to be close.
"Oh, duh," Cassie said, slapping her own forehead. "Tobias, can you thought-speak out to him?"
"I was doing that, Cassie!" Rachel exclaimed. "But he suddenly went silent!"
‹Ax?› Tobias tried, including us. ‹Ax, you around?›
‹Warehouse,› came a distant response. ‹Something significant about the human letters T, G, I, and F.›
"TGIF?" I asked the group, and laughed. "Is he at the TGI Friday's warehouse building over there?"
I pointed in the distance.
Before anyone could respond, there was a strange popping noise in the air, like when your ears pop during an airplane flight. The sound was followed by sizzling, growing louder until it was accompanied by an orange-and-purple light shining from the very building I was pointing at. A white lightning bolt erupted out of the top of the building, and the ground rumbled beneath us. Nice timing.
‹Ax!› Tobias yelled.
"Oh, this seems good," I said.
