Chapter 19

The Hork-bajir morph was no cat, in terms of reflexes, but it was up to the job of snatching a human focused on another human. As I jumped the log in one bound and covered the fifteen feet between me and him, he barely had time to turn away from Rachel and toward me. His big, thick glasses caught the sun and flashed as his mouth fell open into a little O of surprise.

The guy was short, skinny, and balding. His skin was waxy and pale, like he didn't go out into the sun if he could help it. If it hadn't been for one thing, I would have thought Cassie and Marco had made a mistake. But this skinny little man's right arm was still outstretched toward Rachel, and his left hand was already on the handle of the knife in his back pocket. The tips of his fingers were a bare six inches from Rachel's shoulder when I grabbed him. Instantly, the guy found himself in a half-nelson, but more effective than any human choke hold. Long, but strong, Hork-bajir arms encircled him, holding him tight, and then there was the extra incentive of the blades to keep him still. I felt a wolf nudge by my waist and tug at something, and the guy's knife fell to the wood chips that covered the trail.

We knew this guy was a Yeerk. A controller. We fully expected the Yeerk to be dead in three days, taking any and all of our secrets with him. We had decided not to push that, though. Jake had said it would be best if this Yeerk thought we were Andalites, just in case. Keeping him off-balance was the best choice. You know, on the off-chance this Yeerk somehow made it back to his comrades or whatever.

In the interest of keeping things confusing, I whispered in the Hork-bajir's snake-like voice directly into the guy's ear. I did this even as I was dragging him off of the path and back into the woods. "Don't move, human Tektek. Be good, or splat." I dug my elbow blade into his ribs a little to show I was serious. The guy nodded as well as he could with my forearm pulled tight against his neck.

I pulled him through the woods until we got several hundred yards away from the walking trail. We were still close enough for anyone on the trail to hear the guy if he yelled, but far enough away that we could move again before being found. 'Besides,' I told myself, 'It'd take a brave soul to come charging into the deep woods after hearing a scream, especially with everything that's going on.'

Abruptly, I let the guy go and shoved him to his knees. I craned my head forward on my long neck until it was almost resting on his shoulder. "Hands behind back. No yell, no sound. Or die." I snapped my hard, beak-like lips down to emphasize my last word, and it made a satisfying noise like a rat trap closing. I was glad to see the guy shudder, and his hands clasped one another at the small of his back.

During the time I had been pulling the guy away from the trail, Marco had been changing forms. Now, he knuckle-walked out of the trees in his impressive gorilla morph. He took a look at the way I had the guy on the ground, like some devil cop about to arrest a suspect, and mimicked applause. The guy flinched as Marco reached into his other pocket for the man's own gag and tape, and I poked him not-so-gently in the kidney area with my knee blade. "No move, either. Human versh be still." I tried to sound like other Hork-bajir we'd fought, who somehow managed to sound both dumb and dangerous at the same time.

Marco quickly pulled strips of tape off of the roll and held them up for me to cut, which I did with efficient slashes with my wrist blade. He quickly secured the guy's hands behind his back, then he tied the gag into the man's mouth. (Let's see how he likes it,) Marco muttered as he roughly tied the gag off. He gave me a calm thumbs-up when he was finished, though, and back off into the trees to follow us at a distance.

(What'd I miss?) Rachel asked. Just as planned, when we had grabbed the guy, she'd just kept walking like nothing had happened. We assumed the guy would forget about her the second we grabbed him, but we were careful, just in case. He never saw anything but her back when she was human. Now she was a little ways off, keeping an eye on us like the others, but doing their best to stay invisible. I assumed she'd morphed to grizzly – it was her favorite, unless she could get away with morphing elephant and stomping some stuff. Not that a grizzly could be called stealthy, but it was a lot less noticeable than an elephant stomping through the woods.

I pulled the guy up by the tape on his wrists and shoved him roughly in the direction I wanted him to go. "Walk," I commanded, and he obeyed.

Marco answered Rachel's question. (Oh, you know, the usual. We've apprehended a half-human, half-alien serial killer, and we're on our way to a party shack in the woods in order to starve the alien out. No biggie.) Nobody laughed. Now that we had in our possession an actual serial killer, nobody felt much like laughing.

As we marched through the woods, nobody talked. I occasionally caught glimpses of blue, brown, black, and grey fur on either side of me – obviously, Ax had demorphed and was accompanying us in his Andalite form. That was okay – the Yeerk was going to think we were Andalites, anyway, and just like with Visser Three, having Ax as himself was only going to help our charade.

(One mile out,) Cassie informed us. (Tobias, turn south a couple of degrees, and you'll be heading straight for it. Right, I mean – your right. Sorry.) I felt proud of her as I made the course correction – it seemed like at least Cassie was finally coming around to thinking in terms of cardinal directions while she was in the air.

I was anxious to get this guy to the shack. I wanted out of the Hork-bajir morph – it was a friend's body, and I didn't like using it for longer than I had to. Ket Halpak had given me her permission, but it still made me feel weird.

For another thing, the guy was really giving me the willies. He hadn't said a single word since we'd grabbed him, even before he'd been gagged. I'd expected the Yeerk to threaten, to insult, maybe even to beg – but he'd done none of it. Not a solitary word. He just tromped through the woods as he'd been ordered. He didn't look around. He didn't ask questions. He just walked, and that freaked me out.

I mentally shrugged it off. 'Who are you to complain if, for once, a controller wants to cooperate?' I asked myself, and the thought somehow made me feel worse instead of better.

A/N – I just realized where the word count on this one is. Turns out this fic might be closer to 35K – 40K words, instead of the usual 30K. Anyway, hope you're still enjoying, and thanks to those of you who continue to review!