After all of the Animorphs had made it back to their various homes – those who still had them, anyway – Tommy found what passed for his normal routine disturbed by the Controllers who were pretending to be his adopted parents.
"Angel Grove?" he asked, not knowing what to make of what he'd just been told.
"Yes, Tommy," the Controller who'd taken the role of his adopted father said, smiling in a way that had never failed to unsettle Tommy; even before he'd found out about the Yeerks and their invasion, that smile had unnerved him. "There are wonderful opportunities in Angel Grove, and they have a thriving martial arts scene, so you'll be perfectly at home there, too."
"Yeah, I guess," he said, knowing that there was no way he could object to what the Controllers playing the roles of his adopted parents without drawing the kind of suspicion that he and the rest of the Animorphs all tried to avoid.
He didn't have any real, close friends in the area – at least none that he could let himself be open about knowing, under the circumstances – and Angel Grove's seeming focus on martial arts would have been just the thing to persuade him. It would have been, if not for everything that had happened with him and the rest of the Animorphs. If not for everything he couldn't say.
In the end, Tommy faked as much enthusiasm for their move away from Century City as he could, promising himself that he'd tell the rest of the Animorphs as soon as Tobias contacted him for their next mission. The others would need to know, after all, and at the very least, Angel Grove was still close enough that a bird of prey could make it back to Century City in a reasonable amount of time.
As he began packing up his room for their next move, Tommy found himself wondering again just when his foster parents had been infested by the Yeerks; and also, just what they were being sent into Angel Grove to look for.
