"Not necessarily," Shara said, having risen from her crouch and now dusting off her hands. "After all, it's not like Slade and I are operating under the same constraints as you guys."

"What do you mean by that, Shara?" Jake asked, before Rachel herself could ask that same question.

"It's not as confining for us down there, so we'll be able to stay down there for longer than you guys seem to like."

"I guess that makes sense, considering where we found you two," Jake muttered, looking thoughtful. "All right, if you're sure you can handle it."

Naturally, Slade was the first one to insist that he could, but Shara agreed fairly quickly, and so they all discussed just how they were going to split up the work that they still had to do. It was eventually decided that, since Tobias wasn't particularly comfortable down in the tunnels, he'd get to stay a hawk and keep watch for anyone who might come out this way. Unlikely as it was that someone would take an interest in an out-of-the-way place like this, the possibility wasn't something that could be safely ignored. Not with the stakes being what they were; not with their enemies being what they were.

The rest of them, Slade and Shara being the obvious exceptions, took hour-long shifts as they continued to extend the tunnel. Slade and Shara, however, remained in contact with Ax, both of them skirting as close to their two-hour time limits as Jake was comfortable allowing them to.

Soon enough, too soon really, six hours had passed; the time that they could safely remain away from their respective families was over. They needed to head home. Well, most of them did.

"Someone should carry a string down there, to see how far we got," Marco suggested.

Shara was the first one pretty much all of them looked to; Slade, while he was as dedicated as any of them, seemed just a bit too comfortable down in those tunnels. Sure, Jake had only had to straight-up order him to come back up to the surface once, but he'd been creepily blasé about the issue. She didn't understand how anyone could be so comfortable down there, but the tone of Slade's mental voice, the shades of emotion that were projected along with their words whenever he and Shara used that telepathy of theirs, made his feelings on the matter more than clear.

If Jake hadn't called him back up, Rachel thought it was entirely possible that Slade could have ended up trapping himself in mole morph purely by accident; it was a creepy thought.

(All right, I've reached the end,) Shara reported; she'd morphed mole as quickly as any of them had ever managed, and as elegantly as Cassie, and then Cassie herself had tied a string to Shara's tail. (I'll be right back.)

Rachel sighed briefly; she wasn't one for letting people know when she wasn't at her best, especially people who looked up to her, but most of the others looked just as haggard as she felt right now. Really, the only reason that Ax didn't was probably because none of them were particularly good at reading an Andalite's body language. Slade?

Slade was a bit too tweaked by the Radam to know when he should have been freaking out; Shara's little peek into their mindset had proved that.

(Would you like the measurement in feet or in meters?) Ax asked.

As Shara demorphed, Rachel saw Marco roll his eyes. "Whatever."

(I suppose, then, as feet are the most commonly utilized form of measurement in this part of your world, I shall use them,) Ax said, with what she took to be slight exasperation. (The total length of the tunnel is approximately sixty-two feet long. I believe the slope-ratio is nearly six to one; one foot down for every six feet of tunnel. That would mean we tunneled down approximately ten-point-three feet.)

"Ten feet? That's all?" she demanded.

(That is in essence correct, Rachel.)

(Great,) Tobias muttered. (Just great. If we're right, and we have to dig down fifty feet to get to the Yeerk Pool, that would take us nearly a week! This is nuts! Birds have no business being down in tunnels; and if I'm away from my territory for that long, do you know how many competitors I'm going to have to beat off?)

"More than you do already?" Marco asked, with mocking innocence.

(Don't get cute with me,) Tobias shot back, though he sounded more amused than annoyed.

"Well, luckily for us, we don't have to do all the heavy-lifting around here," she said, turning slightly to smile at Slade and Shara where they were standing.

"Yeah," Shara said, smiling gently. "If you guys really can't do this any longer, what with school and all, Slade and I would be able to handle things while you're out."

"Thanks," Jake said, nodding at the siblings where they stood, Slade's gaze snapping back toward him from where it'd been lingering on the tunnel that they'd all been working on. "All right," Jake paused for a moment, seeming to gather himself for what he was going to say next. "Slade, I'm placing you and Shara under Tobias' command." Rachel struggled not to laugh; it was such a strange thing to hear Jake – of all people – say to someone. But, then again, Slade wasn't someone who you could really talk to normally anymore. "You take orders from him; when he says for you to get out of the tunnel, you get out of the tunnel. Understood?"

"Yes, Jake," Slade said, clearly not having nearly as amused as Rachel – or any of the others, now that she looked at them – seemed to be at hearing Jake actually giving orders to someone.

Still, if you looked at it another way, it was just one more way that the Radam had messed with his head. And, when she looked more closely at Shara, Rachel could see that she wasn't the only one who'd realized that.

xxxXxxxx

It was weird, hearing Jake just order someone to do something; but then, Slade didn't seem to be the kind of person who'd respond to anything less than a direct order anymore. Tobias wondered, between Jake's specifying just what he wanted out of the three of them, what Slade – what Ness Carter – had been like before the Radam had gotten their hooks into him and his family.

It was clear, from the way Shara was looking at him, that he hadn't always been like this.

Once Jake and the others had left for home, all of them promising to bring him at least some money so that the siblings could buy food from the nearby Safeway, Tobias turned his attention back to the siblings where they stood. It was clear that Shara found their current situation nearly as amusing as he did.

But, even her amusement held a shadow of sadness; best to keep her distracted, since that had always worked for him.