As she and Cassie said goodbye for the day, Cassie's father having given her a ride back to her house, Rachel thought about the things she'd learned today. She'd never really thought about Shara having problems about what had happened to her, and never about the other girl thinking she might have been better off dead. Or, not her personally, but that the world itself would have been better off without her.

She didn't buy that; with the kind of power that Shara had demonstrated on more than one occasion, it was obvious that all of the Animorphs were better off with Shara and Slade on their side; now all she had to do was convince Shara that she was right, since Rachel wasn't about to leave one of her friends with such a messed-up idea about their own lives.

Of course, she was going to have to get to know Shara better if she was going to be able to do anything at all to help her, but that was probably something that she should have already been trying to do before, considering the fact that Shara and her brother were obviously going to be with them for the long haul. Yawning as she made her way up to her room, having finished a light dinner with her family, Rachel settled herself into bed with a promise that she would go visit Shara after school tomorrow.

XXXX

The next day, with yet another day of school safely behind her, Rachel told her mom that she was going to be visiting Cassie. Smiling as her mom offered to drive her, and figuring that it was safe enough since she really was going to be visiting with Cassie at least some of the time, Rachel agreed. Anything to be spared Cassie's dad's taste in music.

The drive itself was fairly boring, since neither she nor her mom were much for talking during car trips no matter how long they were, but once they arrived at Cassie's house Rachel felt better. Shara was there, waiting just out of sight in the barn, and Rachel was determined to make the other girl see reason come hell or high water. Thanking her mom for the ride, she turned and walked up to the door as her mom drove off.

Knocking, she spoke with Cassie's dad briefly before the man let her in. Finding out that Cassie was working in the barn, though probably not for the exact same reasons that her dad thought she was, Rachel thanked him for the information and told him that she would go in to help, so Cassie could get out sooner. She knew that saying that would mean that she wouldn't have as much time to convince Shara not to think stupid things like what she'd talked about yesterday, but given the fact that she was going to be staying around for at least a few hours, Rachel was sure that she could convince Cassie's dad that Cassie had been showing her something particularly interesting if the two of them ended up taking a bit longer than expected.

Making her way into the barn, Rachel saw that Cassie was about halfway up the ladder that lead into the hayloft; that was pretty much perfect.

Following her best friend up the ladder, Rachel paused for a moment as Cassie climbed off. The two of them nodded to each other as Cassie turned around, and Cassie moved aside as Rachel herself climbed all the way up into the hayloft.

"I didn't expect you to come all the way out here just to help me with this, Rach," Cassie said, looking solemn just before she smiled. "But, I'm really glad you did."

"No problem, Cass," she said, smiling.

Watching as Cassie gave Slade and Shara their food, and smiling slightly in response to the vaguely curious look Slade gave her, she sat down to watch. She'd never really watched either of them eat before, but with the way Cassie had talked about it, she'd gotten the impression that it was pretty out of the ordinary. And now, sitting here watching the siblings as they scarfed down the food that Cassie had gotten for them, Rachel could see why Cassie had brought it up in conversation.

Sure, the two of them had pretty good table manners, or at least enough that her mom wasn't likely to call them on anything if under some weird circumstances they were ever invited over to her house, but it was almost painfully obvious that the both of them were ravenous. She didn't know why both of them were so hungry, but then again she didn't really know why Shara had seemed so tired while the three of them had been talking yesterday, either.

Right then and there, however, Rachel made a silent promise that she would ask about that. It couldn't be any more difficult to explain than the things they had already talked about, Rachel knew.

Once the siblings were done with their respective meals, Slade yawned deeply, then he laid down right there and flipped the blanket that he and Shara were both obviously using over himself. Rachel was surprised enough by the action that she didn't say anything, but Cassie, oddly enough, seemed to be expecting something like that.

"Let's go somewhere out of earshot," Shara suggested, quietly enough that Rachel had to strain a bit to hear it; Shara always tended to speak a bit more softly than Rachel was used to. "Slade told me that we nearly woke him up, yesterday."

Rachel hadn't thought that any of them had been talking that loudly, but Shara also seemed completely sincere about what she was saying. So, she got up without another word, following Shara and Cassie to the other side of the hayloft where the three of them settled back down.

"Are you sure this is going to be okay, Cass?" she asked, knowing that Cassie wouldn't have told her parents about Slade and Shara living in the barn; it was obvious, both since the Animorphs didn't know just who they could really trust with their secret, and because Cassie herself was still going to so much trouble to hide them. "We're pretty exposed out here, you know."

"I know," she said, nodding. "We'll have to continue our main conversation later," she said, then looked back over her right shoulder at the main room of the barn. "I just wanted to make sure that we'd be out of Slade's hair while we talked. Shara," Cassie continued, looking back at the other girl. "Can you talk to Slade when he wakes up? Find out if this is far enough away for him not to be disturbed?"

"Yeah," Shara said, nodding. "I can do that." After she'd finished speaking, Shara yawned almost as deeply as Slade had, just before he'd gone to sleep. "I think I just might need a nap, first, though," Shara said, sounding rueful.

"I thought you might," Cassie said, smiling as she put her hand on Shara's right shoulder.

Rachel was a bit confused by the whole thing; why would Shara need a nap when she hadn't really been doing anything? Come to think of it, why did Slade conk out so fast? Neither of them really seemed to have anything to do, besides hide out in Cassie's barn, try not to be discovered by Cassie's parents, and go on the occasional mission with the Animorphs.

But, by the time she'd managed to think of those questions, Cassie was climbing down the ladder, and Shara had already settled herself down for a nap next to Slade. So, Rachel figured that she would ask Cassie what was going on with Shara and Slade. Her best friend probably would know, Rachel figured, since she was the one who took care of them and was around them for long stretches of the day.

"Hey," she called, once the two of them were standing together on the main floor of the barn. "Cass, do you know what's going on with those two? I wanted to ask Shara, you know, about why she and Slade seemed to be so tired the last two days, but I didn't think of it until we were leaving."

"It's not something Shara likes to talk about," Cassie said, sounding morose. "I mean, if it'd happened to me, I wouldn't either, so I guess I can understand," Cassie shook her head slowly, seeming to bring herself back to the present with that action. "She says it's something to do with what the Radam did to her; something about how they work, or something like that. She didn't really like talking about it, so I didn't pry."

"Oh," she said, considering what Cassie had and hadn't said about just what had happened to Shara.

Unspoken between them was the request for Rachel not to pry into just what it was that the Radam had done to Shara and her brother; and the rest of her family, if Rachel remembered the details of their conversation from yesterday right.

She wasn't going to pry if neither Cassie nor Shara wanted to talk about it, but that didn't mean she wasn't going to make an effort to find out just what was going on with the other blonde.

XXXX

It was kind of strange, Saber reflected, the way that Gunnar always seemed to be a bit leery around him. He knew his own reasons for not wanting to spend time around any of the Teknomen that Darkon had created, but if he hadn't known better, Saber might have almost thought that Gunnar shared those reasons or something. On the other hand, maybe I don't know better, Saber mused, as he continued to carefully pick through his backpack for something to eat.

It was kind of a weird thought, that Gunnar wasn't really any more loyal to the Radam's cause than Saber himself was, but Saber still wondered if it could possibly be true. It would be a hell of a coup if it was; having someone else on his side could only help with... whatever the hell it was that he was ultimately going to be able to do to hinder Darkon and his forces in their efforts at conquering the Earth.

Finally settling on the granola bars that he had packed for himself before they'd all set off on their fateful camping trip, Saber pulled out three and settled down on the ground next to his pack to eat. Nothing much seemed to be happening at the moment, except for whatever it was that had had Gunnar so agitated however many days ago it'd been that his fellow Teknoman had returned from the errand that Darkon had sent him on. Saber sometimes wondered just that that errand had actually been, but he knew better than to waste time asking.

Gunnar wasn't likely to tell him, with the way he seemed to feel about Saber, and Darkon didn't bear thinking about; Warlords weren't to be questioned by their soldiers, after all.

Finishing the last of his food, or what would have to pass for such while he was still down here, Saber shoved the crumpled wrappers into a pouch on his pack that he'd been using for that express purpose even before he and the rest of his family had fallen into this dank, alien-infested hellhole. Saber might have hated the Radam with a fury that he hadn't thought himself capable of before, but they weren't going to be here forever. And he had been brought up not to litter.

Standing back up, already starting to feel the familiar lethargy beginning to settle over him again, Saber reluctantly made his way back to the teknopod that had been effectively reserved for his personal use. He didn't particularly want to climb back inside that extraterrestrial Venus flytrap, but Darkon would start to suspect something about him if he didn't. Saber knew he couldn't afford that.

There were only two fates awaiting a traitorous Teknoman; neither of them good.

Stripping off his clothes as he got within range of the small tangle of vines, the same vines that were even then starting to uncoil themselves and reach for him, Saber folded the garments and set them down within the small space occupied by the vines. He still wasn't entirely used to the way the vines would coil around his clothes, hiding them from sight the way they were doing now.

Forcing those kinds of thoughts, and all of the other doubts he was starting to have about the tentative plans he'd been making for dealing with this new situation that he found himself in, Saber climbed back into the warm, slick environment of the teknopod. The interior membranes were soft to the touch, and the liquid inside had the consistency of warm, half-melted Jello. Under any other circumstances, that combination would have deeply, truly, utterly disgusted him; however, once he was actually inside the teknopod, Saber always found that he was a great deal more comfortable than he was in what could loosely be termed the outside world.

If nothing else, that served to remind him just how wide the gulf between Cain Carter and Teknoman Saber actually was; not to mention freaking him out whenever he thought about it too much.