Chapter 13
My fist connected with the side of Silver's head before I even registered what my body was doing. The unplanned punch wasn't powerful, not as much as it would have been if I'd prepared for it, but it was enough to knock him backward onto the floor.
"Dude!" he shouted angrily, getting to his feet. "What was that for?!"
I didn't answer, and instead lunged at him again with another closed fist. He was ready this time, and dodged so that I fell over, and then proceeded to sit on me with all his weight, pinning me to the ground.
"Red, quit it," he said, in response to my struggling. "Stop being an idiot."
"You're wrong!" I snarled, trying to push myself off the ground. "He's not!"
"Oh really?" Silver gave me a harsh glare. "How about we think for a second, huh? Remember how the Controller police are investigating the construction site? Do you think it's some sort of coincidence that your dad is suddenly interested in it too?"
I had to admit, the evidence was pretty solid. The connection was far too conclusive to be just a coincidence. And on top of that... something about the way my dad laughed still bothered me. Could he have been...?
No way! My dad was my dad! He didn't have some alien parasite controlling him–he wouldn't have let it happen.
"Are you calmed down enough yet?" Silver asked. "I don't want to have to sit on you all day."
I scowled up at him. "Not until you take it back!"
He rolled his eyes. "I'm not going to take it back, but I will admit that I might be wrong. Is that good enough for you?"
That was close enough to the answer I was looking for. I stopped struggling, and he let me back to my feet.
"Come on, Red," he said. "Even you have to admit that it doesn't look very good."
"He's not," I asserted. "He's not one of them."
Silver shrugged. "Suit yourself, but just remember the 'don't be stupid' ruleset, even around him."
I was about to retort something along the lines of, "You can take your ruleset and stick it up your–" when suddenly something started beating against my window, rapidly and repeatedly.
I whirled around, my mind immediately panicking and going to Yeerks. Could they have found us already? Had the cop from earlier just tricked us into thinking we were safe? Was it really possible for them to be at my house?
However, what was outside the window was definitely not a Yeerk, unless Yeerks somehow figured out how to grow wings and feathers. Just beyond the glass wasn't an alien or even a Controller–it was a large bird, flapping madly and trying to keep itself aloft.
«Can you guys let me in already?» the bird demanded. «This thing is not made to sit still!»
"No way," Silver said. "Green? Is that you?"
«Can't really hear you through the glass, but I'm going to say yes,» Green agreed. He started flapping harder, pounding his feathers harder against the glass. «Now let me in! If I stay here much longer, I'm going to get tired and fall!»
I figured I had better do what he asked–having a bird on the lawn wouldn't bode well for keeping a low profile–and slid the window open. Green swooped in and came to a landing on my bedpost.
The bird he'd morphed was a large tan thing, with a slicked-back red crest and reddish-yellowish tail feathers. It stood around two feet tall, and clenched the wooden post with claws that looked like they could do some real damage.
"What are you?" I asked.
«A Pidgeotto.»
"Hey, more important question here," Silver began, sounding stressed. "Why are you a bird right now? I thought we said we weren't going to morph anymore."
The bird attempted to make a shrugging motion, but its wings weren't built for that, and it only managed to shuffle them a little. «Nobody agreed to that. I didn't. We said we'd put it off until later.»
"Either way, you need to morph back now," I said. "Remember what the Andalite said? Two hours?"
«Relax, I have half an hour left at least,» Green assured me, making that strange wing shrug again.
"Green." A warning edge crept into my voice. I hadn't meant to make it that way–it had just happened. I realized I was already assuming the role of a leader. It was my job now to make sure my friends didn't do anything ill advised. I was responsible for keeping them safe.
Atlas sank a little lower beneath his weight...
The Pidgeotto that was Green gave me a hard stare, hesitating for far too long. Finally, though, he hopped off the bedpost and hovered to the ground, where he began the demorphing process.
I won't go into the details–they're honestly just too gross, and I've run through enough morphing sequences already that you can get the general idea. But I did learn an interesting fact while watching my friend transform: hollow bones reconstructing into filled bones does make a sound, and it's just as sickening as you'd imagine.
When Green was done, he sat naked on the floor.
"Uh," he said, looking embarrassed. "I kind of forgot that I needed to bring clothes. I can't morph them yet like Yellow can. Can I borrow some?"
I gave him one of my shirts and a pair of my pants, but they were both a size or two too small. There was too much of a size difference to loan him closed-toed shoes, so I let him borrow my flip-flops, which were passable.
Green had the same hyperactive energy about him that he'd had when he'd first told me he could turn into a Meowth. It was like watching a little kid discover a video game and decide that it was the best thing ever. He couldn't seem to talk about anything else–which was good, because that was exactly what we needed to talk about.
"Flying is so cool!" he burst out, keeping his voice hushed for security, but still conveying more enthusiasm than I'd ever seen from him. "I was up there, catching the thermals and soaring."
"Thermals?" I asked.
"It's when the ground is really hot and the air starts rising," he explained. "You don't even have to flap–you just stretch your wings and let it carry you up for miles. You guys have to try it!"
Silver coughed, feigning politeness. "As much as I enjoy hearing how it is to be a bird, I think we're ignoring the real question. Where did you get a Pidgeotto morph?"
Green shrugged. "After you guys left, I looked around a little in Yellow's barn. There was an injured Pidgeotto there, and a Staravia, but I chose the Pidgeotto."
I tilted my head. "Injured? You mean like, 'can't fly' injured? Then how...?"
Silver rolled his eyes. "And the science award goes to... Red, there's a pretty big difference between DNA and a body. Morphs use DNA, and you can't break DNA."
As much as I didn't like the condescending way he put it, he was right. I remembered the Biology lesson where we'd learned that, around a year ago. I hadn't figured we'd ever need to know that, so I'd let myself forget. Now I realized that there were a lot of things I might need to drag up from my memory.
"You really shouldn't have done that," I told Green. "What if Yellow's uncle had seen you?"
He waved my concern away. "Relax, Red. He wasn't there when I acquired it, and I was far into the forest before I morphed. There's nothing to worry about." Suddenly, he looked sad. "Although I am sorry that the Pidgeotto had to be locked up in a cage in the first place."
I cocked an eyebrow. "Why? Doesn't it help it heal?"
Green shrugged. "Yeah, I guess. But now that I've been in its shoes, I understand how depressed it must be, not being able to fly all the time."
"We could give it an ad for therapy," Silver offered. "I'm sure if it had someone to talk to it might be happier."
Green scowled. "Joke about it if you want to. You can't understand until you're up there. It's the best thing that's ever happened to me. I wish I could fly all the time."
That sent up a little red flag in my head. I'd heard before about people who talked like that, people who didn't have the best lives and were looking for a solution–any solution. Those stories never ended well. Green's enthusiasm about this new escape and his life circumstances gave me a very bad feeling...
"Two hours," I said. "No more than that, Green. Even an hour and a half is cutting it close." I paused, a sudden question having occurred to me. "How did you even check the time?"
He grinned. "Bird eyes are great. Well, bird of prey eyes, at least. I could just look down at people's watches or the clocks in shop windows."
Silver frowned. "And what if those were wrong? What then?"
Green gave him a frustrated look. "Silver, do you really think that forty people are going to all have their watches set wrong? You're just looking for something to nitpick."
Silver shrugged, getting that serious, cold look in his eyes that he had when we were talking about how far the Yeerks might have infiltrated our society. "Maybe I am. But somebody needs to think straight here, and it's obvious that it's going to have to be me. I still think this whole 'I'm going to morph a bird!' thing was a stupid move."
"I hate to say it, Green," I said. "But he's right. What were you even doing up there?"
"I was looking for Yeerks pools," Green explained. "I figured I might be able to get a better vantage point from the air."
"Yeerk pools..." I muttered. The words sounded familiar. I vaguely remembered Visser Three mentioning building new Yeerks pools. "What's a Yeerk pool?"
"It's where the Yeerk slugs have to go every three days to restock on nutrients. They get out of their hosts and soak in Kandrona rays."
I was beginning to get a little nervous. Neither Silver nor I knew any of this. Unless Green had a better explanation, then the only way he could know so much about Yeerks was if he was already a Controller.
"Mind telling us how you figured all this out, Birdman?" Silver asked, keeping his tone neutral. If Green was a Controller, we couldn't let on we were suspicious.
"When Elfangor told us to run–when the Yeerks were about to land–I stayed behind for a few seconds," Green said, his voice and expression solemn. "I was scared. Really scared. I guess I was so scared I couldn't even run."
That was doubtful. Green hadn't been as scared as he was saying. He had stayed behind not because he'd lacked the willpower to leave, but because he'd wanted to stay until the last possible moment. He hadn't wanted to leave the Andalite's side. Something about Elfangor had meant something to him more than the rest of us.
"Well, you know how he showed us what Yeerks looked like? Just a picture in our heads? He did the same thing but more powerfully while I was there. He gave me a lot of information about the Yeerks in pictures. They're fuzzy because he wasn't able to concentrate well, but I know for sure that there's such a thing as a Yeerk pool and a Kandrona."
"Before we keep throwing around alien words like cocktails..." Silver muttered. He opened the door and checked the hall, and then, satisfied, turned back to us and said, "All clear."
"Clear?" Green wondered, giving him a funny look. "From what?"
"Red's dad," Silver answered, making me bristle. "He's one of them."
"Do you want me to hurt you?" I asked. "Because that's what it sounds like."
He raised his hands in surrender. "No, not really." He gave Green a sideways glance and explained, "He may or may not be, but unlike someone..." He jabbed a thumb at me, just like he had at the mall before all this had happened. "...I like to play it safe."
"That's a good idea," Green agreed, lowering his voice. "The Kandrona is like a miniature version of the Yeerk home world's sun. It beams out the nutrients they need, and the Yeerk pools concentrate them. The Yeerks swim in the pool once every three days to keep themselves alive, and then go back into host bodies."
"And so you were a bird... why?" I asked.
"I mean, like I said, I was looking for a Yeerk pool or a Kandrona." He shrugged. "I guess I didn't consider that they might be underground, but I figure they have to be, because I couldn't see anything special from the sky."
"And what if you had?" Silver challenged. "What would you do then? Dive bomb it as a Pidgeotto?"
"We would blow it up."
"Nope. That's something idiots would do, and last time I checked, we agreed on a 'don't be an idiot' ruleset. We decided to stay out of this."
"We didn't decide anything," I corrected him.
"I did," Green said, deadly serious. I'd never seen him so intense about anything. "I decided to fight. I'm going to, with or without you guys."