Chapter 12

"Morph!" I ordered. "Yellow, morph now!" The police car accelerated. Had it seen something? "We can't explain this!"

"Which way?" Yellow wailed. "Human or Ponyta?" She shuffled her hooves in place, and I could see the Ponyta's muscles flexed, ready to panic.

"Human! As fast as you can!" I answered, stress straining my voice. "Everyone, cover her!"

The police car braked hard on the gravel. I hoped that meant the cop had only now seen something of interest. If not...

It must have been an odd sight for the police officer who stepped out of the car. The four of us not currently morphing stood shoulder-to-shoulder, like the row of defenders for a penalty kick. I waved at him, hoping to alleviate the tension. "Hi, officer!"

"Morning," he said. I couldn't see behind his sunglasses, but I could practically feel the gears whirring inside his head as he processed what he saw, and his suspicion grew. "Are you kids... uh... hiding something?"

I had to fight my urge to check on Yellow. If I did, the officer would know for certain that something was wrong. "No, sir," I lied, hoping by the time he forced the issue we wouldn't be hiding something.

That answer wasn't good enough. "Step aside, all of you," the policeman ordered. His tone made very clear that he wasn't about to ask twice.

We did, and by some miracle, Yellow had completely finished morphing back to human in record time. She smiled and waved, trying her best to avoid suspicion, which wasn't easy wearing only a gymnastics leotard in the middle of farmland.

The officer stared at us for a few seconds, his mouth a thin line. My breath caught in my throat. Had he been playing with us this whole time? Had he actually seen something wrong far before we'd shielded Yellow?

After several long moments, he finally shrugged, and I let out a silent sigh of relief.

"Can we help you, sir?" Blue asked in her "responsible" voice.

"Possibly, young lady," the policeman answered. "We're making a few inquiries around town about some teenagers who were shooting off fireworks in that abandoned construction site last night. I'm sure you saw it in the paper," he added, nodding towards the newspaper, still lying on the ground where I'd dropped it.

"Uh huh," I said, trying to keep my voice neutral. "We did."

Silver started coughing, like there was something stuck in his throat.

"Is he okay?" the officer asked, raising a skeptical eyebrow at him.

"Yes, sir," I answered quickly.

He shrugged, moving on. "You see, son, we want these kids. This is a very serious issue, and they need to be caught for it. See, the construction site is very near to a whole lot of homes. One thing goes wrong, and someone gets hurt. So we have to find them, to teach them a lesson."

That was the point where I knew that this police officer wasn't just an honest guy looking to apprehend some juvenile delinquents. I knew for absolute certain that he had to be a Controller. Inside his head, his brain was wrapped in an alien slug that was controlling his every movement, his every word.

"We haven't heard anything," I lied.

He gave me the same skeptical eyebrow he'd given Silver, and stared at me for a very long time. "You look familiar," he said at last. "Do you happen to know _?" he asked, using my dad's name.

"Yes, sir, he's my dad," I answered, trying to keep my voice under control. It was so hard to ignore the elephant in the room, to try to forget that behind that man's eyes, wrapped around his brain, lurked an evil Yeerk.

"Ah, he's your dad. Good man, _ is. I met him at a Team Rocket meeting a while ago. I'm one of the adult supervisors, like him. Great group, Team Rocket is. You all should come to a meeting."

"Yeah, my dad already invited me to one," I said.

"It's a lot of fun."

"Uh huh."

The officer shifted, standing up straight with his chest puffed out a little, just like any other cop trying to make the police look impressive to the youth. "Well then, I suppose I'll go now. Make sure to tell me if you find out anything about those kids. They might try to use that flying saucer story to throw you off, but you're too smart to believe something so crazy, right?"

"He's a modern-day Sherlock Holmes," Silver said.

After what felt like several years, the policeman finally left. We waited until his dust trail was out of sight before speaking.

"Right, ground rules," Blue announced. "No morphing in public. No talking about anything morphing or Yeerk-related in public either. We have to be secret about everything from now on."

"I like that," Silver added. "The 'don't be stupid' ruleset."

Yellow blushed. "Um... yeah. I was pretty dumb there. Sorry about that. It was just so hard to remind myself to be careful about anything, with the Ponyta's mind so fixated on running. When it's running, it's like it can't be afraid of anything."

"How'd you manage to morph clothes?" I wondered. "Green and I tried it, and we... well, I suppose it's just good you and Blue weren't around."

"It took a whole lot of practice and concentration," she explained. "And we can only do tight clothes. Anything looser than skintight gets shredded. It's going to be really cold when winter comes."

"But hey, that won't be a problem!" Silver said, his voice dripping with sarcastic optimism. "Because guess what? We're never morphing again!"

"Maybe we shouldn't," Blue chimed in. "This is way beyond us. We're just kids. We should tell someone, someone we can trust."

"No we shouldn't," Green countered grimly. "There's nobody we can trust. We can't tell anyone. Anyone could be a Controller. If we tell the wrong person, the world is doomed."

Yellow frowned. "Well I'm not going to stop morphing. It's too important of a power not to use it. Whatever the rest of you do, I'm going to keep doing this."

"Oh no you're not!" Silver snapped, glaring at her. "Because all it takes is one slip up, one time getting caught, and you've got one of those slimy things inside your brain, and that means the rest of us get taken too! Game over!"

She bit her lip, scowling at him like she wanted to disagree, but couldn't find a way around his point. Instead of arguing, she looked to me. "What do you think, Red?"

I raised an eyebrow. Suddenly I was the one whose opinion mattered? "I... I don't know. It's true that we could get killed, yeah, but it's also true that if we don't do anything, the human race is done for. And we can't trust anyone to help."

"So what?" Blue demanded. "What should we do?"

I threw my hands up in the air. "I don't know! Why am I the one who has to decide?"

"Then let's vote," she said.

"I vote we don't actively try to ourselves killed," Silver offered.

"Well I vote we do what Elfangor asked us to: fight," Green countered.

Silver laughed contemptuously. "Oh sure, you want to fight. Tell me, when have you ever been in a real fight before? You can't even stand up to the punks at school when they take your stuff. What are you going to do against Visser freakin' Three?"

Green didn't respond, locking his jaw and looking away in embarrassment.

"I'm with Green," Blue said, glaring at Silver. "We're the only ones who can do this. We have the power. We have a responsibility to use it."

Silver was about to go off on another tangent, probably involving a severe takedown of the word "responsibility," but Yellow spoke before he could.

"Maybe we should wait," she suggested in a placating voice. "This is a really big decision. We shouldn't rush into it without taking some time to think."

I sighed in relief. Thanks to Yellow, the argument wouldn't blow up any further. "I agree. We should wait. But until we decide, don't tell anyone anything. We just go back to normal life."

Normal life turned out to be a lot more challenging than I'd expected.

Silver and I walked to my house together, trying to keep the conversation as far away from Yeerks and Andalites and morphing as we could. We talked about baseball, and comic books, and video games we were planning to play when we got to the house.

We ran out of things to talk about very quickly, and walked the rest of the way back in silence.

When we got to the house, we went to my room, where I'd figured out how to hook up the Nintendo 64 to my computer monitor. The graphics weren't the greatest, but it was still cool to be able to play games in my room. We booted up Mario Kart and tried to play, but neither of us did very well. Silver kept running off the course. I could barely focus myself, and the computer players ended up flattening us. Video games had become far less interesting than reality.

My dad came into the room after a few races. "Hey, sport, hi Silver," he greeted us. He took a look at the computer screen. "Mario Kart, huh? Mind if I give it a shot?"

That was odd. My dad hadn't played a game with me in months.

Silver shrugged and passed my dad his controller.

We played a few more races, and I was surprised. My dad actually did pretty well, even on the harder courses. I wouldn't have expected him to be so skillful. But then, after a few minutes, he seemed to get bored. He gave Silver back the controller and just stood back and watched.

"Did you guys see all that stuff about the kids in the construction site?" he asked suddenly. Silver twitched, nearly running off the road again.

"What stuff?" I asked, playing dumb. It couldn't hurt to distance ourselves as much as possible from the search.

"In the newspaper," my dad said. "There was an article about some teenagers who were shooting fireworks in the construction site last night." He laughed. "Apparently some people in the area decided it was flying saucers! Isn't that crazy? And it was all just some kids with fireworks."

"Yeah," I agreed, trying to feign disinterest and keep my focus on Rainbow Road.

"Weren't you two at the mall last night?"

"Yep."

"Did you go through the construction site?"

"No way."

"You didn't see any kids going in there or anything?"

"Nope."

"That's good. I'm glad you weren't involved in that kind of behavior. That's a very irresponsible thing to do, using fireworks in a place so near to other buildings." He laughed again. "Still though, it's funny that they managed to get everyone convinced that it was flying saucers."

"Uh huh."

"As if anyone in their right mind would believe something like that. You wouldn't, right champ? You're too smart to believe in little green men from Mars, right?"

They hadn't been green, they hadn't been little, and they most definitely hadn't been from Mars. I had the bizarre urge to tell him that. "Not a chance," I said.

The race ended, and my dad nodded. "Great. That kind of stuff pollutes your brain, you know?"

Yes, it very much does, I thought.

Then came the question I'd wondered whether he'd ask since he first come in the room. "So, have you decided anything about Team Rocket?"

"No," I replied, honestly. "I haven't really given it much thought."

"Ah, well," he said, keeping his tone deliberately nonchalant. I knew how much this meant to him, though. Our first conversation about it had been more than enough to convey that. "I really hope you'll join up. You too, Silver."

Silver turned to face him, raising a skeptical eyebrow. "Why should we join?"

My dad grinned. "That's half the fun of it. If I told you everything now, where would the surprise be?" He ruffled my hair and headed for the door, but made sure to say before he left, "Oh, and remember, if you guys hear anything about the kids at the construction site, tell me. See you, sport!"

When he was gone, Silver gave me a grave look. "Red, he's one of them."

"What?"

"Your dad is one of them," he repeated. "Your dad is a Controller."