"Slade, Shara," she called, drawing the attention of the siblings and the rest of the Animorphs. "My dad's going to be coming back in, soon. Can you hide, quickly?"

"Right," Slade said quickly, as he and Shara faded quickly out of sight.

"All right," Jake said, seeming a bit less off-balance than Cassie herself felt from seeing them turn invisible like that. "Let's get going; we still have to figure out where to dig. Slade, Shara; stay in the middle of the group. We don't want anyone bumping into invisible people while we're walking."

Jake nodded, probably in response to one of the siblings' telepathy, and the five of them – well, five of them who were visible, anyway – made their way out of the barn, just as her father made his way in.

XXX

It was strange, Rachel reflected, how it didn't quite seem strange at all; walking around with a pair of invisible people, following the directions of a red-tailed hawk, trying to find the center of the Yeerk Pool… Really, to anyone else, that would have seemed completely crazy.

Still, that wasn't what she was most absorbed in thinking about. The Yeerk Pool was huge, bigger than huge, even. The first time Rachel had ever seen it, she hadn't quite believed it was real; it still seemed like something that big couldn't exist underground.

She had ample proof that it did, though, so she tried not to dwell too much on the seeming-impossibility.

(Based on the entrances we've found over time, I think the center of the Yeerk Pool is right at this intersection,) Tobias said, breaking into Rachel's thoughts and bringing her full attention back to where they all were.

They were all standing at the intersection between the school and the mall. There were cars going past at regular intervals, but luckily for them, no one on the sidewalk who was close enough to overhear what they were talking about.

"Well, we can't dig here," she said, pointing out the obvious so that no one else would.

"We wouldn't want to," Marco pointed out. "I don't know about any of you guys, but I certainly don't want to be right over the pool when we dig through." Smirking slightly, Marco pantomimed something falling from high up. "Splash," he finished.

"Good point," she said; the idea of falling into the Yeerk Pool itself was almost physically nauseating to her.

"However, we want to be close to the Pool itself so we can tell exactly where it is when we dig through," Jake said. "That way, we can dig a horizontal side-tunnel out over the Pool and use it to drop the oatmeal."

Marco nodded. "I have the strange feeling that this will involve some kind of geometry that I should have paid attention to in class."

"You are asking for a great deal of precision, Prince Jake," Ax said. "We have no instruments. Struments. Not even primitive human instruments. Struuu-ments. Mints? In-stru-mints?"

"We have to make an educated guess, Ax. And don't call me "prince"."

"Yes, Prince Jake."

Tobias had come to land, perching on a high lamppost. Rachel knew how good the hearing was on a bird-of-prey, so she knew that he would be able to hear her. "Tobias? You're the one who keeps track of entrances and stuff. What's your best estimate?"

"And don't forget, we could use some privacy for morphing," Jake said.

Lifting off from his perch, Tobias took off and flew a quick, irregular circle before coming back to land once again. (I think I have a place. Follow me.)

Surreptitiously checking to make sure that there was no one staring at them, potentially wondering just what it was that they were all doing, Jake nudged them into motion. Rachel chuckled softly; Jake was such a General at times like this, it was really kind of funny. At least when there were no life-and-death decisions to be made.

Then, it wasn't nearly so funny.

Tobias lead them to a less-used section of the city, just down the main road from where they had all stopped originally, to an empty house just off a busy street, a house with a "For Sale" sign in the front yard. For a few moments, Rachel was concerned about the sheer volume of traffic on the road, but then she noticed that no one was really walking around in the area except for them; everyone else was driving. That was kind of a relief.

There was also a convenience store and a shop that sold hot tubs to further draw attention away from the house.

(All right, there's no one around close enough to see what you guys are going to be doing,) Tobias said. (What we want is in the back yard.)

Jake nodded subtly, just enough so that Tobias could see it, and the seven of them made their way into the back yard of the house. The fence was chain-link, so on the one hand it didn't make such a good visual barrier, but on the other hand it was much easier to climb than a wooden fence would have been.

The place Tobias found for them turned out to be a toolshed, made of rusty tin and with a dirt floor. The shed itself was empty, except for a couple bags of potting soil and an old rake.

"Perfect," Jake said, looking around the smallish shed where they were all gathered, as Slade and Shara faded back into visibility. "A little cramped, but perfect. Still, once we're all in mole morph, it'll be roomy enough."

Cassie cleared her throat, drawing their attention. "Um, Jake, maybe I should have mentioned this before… but, it's not going to all be in mole morph for this. Not at first, anyway. I mean, only one mole can dig at a time."

All of the others, with the clear exception of Slade, turned to stare at Cassie as what she had just said sank in. Rachel, for her part, had been imagining all eight of the Animorphs down in the mole tunnel they were working to dig. Now, however, she was getting a very different mental image.

She almost wanted to shudder; tight, dark spaces had never particularly agreed with her.

"We're going to be down there alone?" Marco yelped, letting Rachel know that she wasn't the only one who didn't like the idea; under other circumstances, she would have been happy to have some measure of support. "Underground? Dirt pressing in all around us? No air?"

Shara laughed softly; it wasn't a happy laugh. "Sounds almost like home."

"Well, you'll be moles," Cassie said, smiling slightly for Marco's benefit.

"Well then, it'll be perfectly fine," Marco said, still being his normal, sarcastic self; his voice was shrill enough to give him away, though. "We'll be moles then, so it'll be just great for us to be under twenty feet of dirt with no air."

"You're such a baby, Marco," she said, rolling her eyes. "It's no problem."

"Ladies and gentlemen, we have our volunteers," Marco said, stepping up between her and Shara so he could put his hands on both their shoulders.

Shara was smirking slightly, almost wistfully, at Marco. She didn't really know what the other girl was thinking, but Rachel was as fully aware of what her role in the group – the one that she had made for herself, and the one that pretty much all of the rest of the Animorphs counted on her to play – dictated that she had to do. Even if she didn't particularly want to do it.

"All right, now whoever wins the wrestling match-"

"So, rock, paper, scissors?" she suggested, cutting Marco off and giving him the stink-eye for good measure.

"Sounds good to me," Shara said, as the two of them stepped closer to each other.

"Once, twice, shoot." Smiling good-naturedly at the other girl as the two of them played each other for the chance to go down into the ground; under all that dirt… with no light to see by, and so little air… Rachel almost shuddered, wishing for a moment that she could have just asked Shara to go ahead and start before her.

But that wasn't who she had to be.

"Paper covers rock," Shara said, bringing Rachel's attention abruptly back from where it had wandered.

"Ah," she mumbled, looking down at her and Shara's hands. "Best two out of three?"

"All right, then," Shara said, a slight smile remaining on her face.

Rachel wondered what the other girl could have been thinking; if she might have suspected the reasons that Rachel had for doing this. Why she had to do this.

"Once, twice, shoot," she said, at the same time as Shara herself.

"Rock crushes scissors," Shara said, still wearing that same, faint smile.

"All right, looks like Shara's the one morphing first," Jake said, before Rachel could suggest another game.

Rachel couldn't quite stop the swell of relief that she felt at Jake's words, but luckily for all of them she was able to keep anyone else from noticing it. The others needed her to be strong, or at least to seem that way, so that they could have someone to look to when they weren't feeling at their best. Someone who could hold up under the kind of pressure that the Animorphs were always under these days.

So, she couldn't let anyone know that she was relieved to have Shara go first; that she hadn't been looking forward to going down into that tunnel, that she had hated the idea of being buried under all that dirt, that she didn't want to be smothered away from the light any sooner than she had to.