I flew over to the roof of a nearby Culvers to eat my stolen meal undisturbed, wishing I still had a normal sense of taste. I'd spent the last few weeks living off of beef jerky, processed lunchmeat, hot dogs, the occasional burger patty, and once in a while a bit of raw ground beef. It had been too long since the last time I'd eaten something that had actually been cooked within the last 30 minutes. I wanted to be able to taste the bits that had been charred black by the grill, taste the cheese that had melted into the burger's pebbled texture, taste the grease slowly dripping out with each bite. And then I remembered that school's attitude about food preparation, that this burger was boiled instead of grilled, and was probably dangerously undercooked. This might have been the only school-provided meal I'd eaten from that cafeteria that didn't taste bad.

With the last of the hamburger gone, I flapped over to the marquee to sit and watch the traffic for a while. I wasn't looking for anything specific, I just liked being able to watch completely normal things from a new perspective. Long before I'd ever heard of Yeerks or Andalites, I'd wished I could climb up tall trees, telephone poles, or lamp posts just to see how things looked from up there. Now, I was free to do just that any time I wanted. And that's how I came to be there when I saw, purely by accident, the first little clue that caused us so much trouble. Such a small clue that I almost missed it. It was just a man - one man out of hundreds - driving a car.

The car was unfamiliar, but not the driver. I'd seen him before, and his wasn't a face I would forget in a hurry. He looked uncannily like George Takei. It was one of the people I'd been able to confirm as a Controller. And not just any Controller - he was one of the voluntary Controllers, somebody who'd willingly allowed a Yeerk to crawl into his head. Why he'd agreed to collaborate with the invasion, I couldn't even guess. All I knew was that the night I got trapped in morph, I saw a Yeerk crawl out of his head before he calmly walked away from the edge of the Yeerk Pool and - instead of being forced into a cage like most of the other hosts - freely wandered over to a lounge furnished with comfortable chairs, TV, and a billiards table, like it was a parlor in a hotel. After all these weeks, I still hadn't worked up the courage to tell Lee that his dad was cooperating with the enemy.

What was going on here? We'd carried out surveillance on the building where Lee's parents worked after confirming that they were Controllers (the Esplin Foundation ocean research facility was a cover for Yeerk activity), and I knew what cars his parents drove. Mr. Hoshino had a red Nissan with New Mexico plates. But here he was in a green Chevy with California plates. Maybe there was nothing significant going on. Maybe this wasn't worth wasting any time trying to figure out. Still, here was a confirmed Controller doing something out of the ordinary, and I didn't need to check in with anyone for a few hours. I had time to indulge my curiosity.

I launched myself off the marquee and caught the warm air rising from the asphalt under my wings. The car wasn't going fast, so it was easy enough to keep up. Even if he did speed up, I could follow him as long as I had unbroken line-of-sight to the car. Not that there was much risk of losing him - he circled around a lot without actually going anywhere in particular. After the third time he drove past Kingsway Baptist Church, I started wondering if somebody was following him and he was trying to shake them off. Maybe he was just lost - they'd only been in town for a few months. Or wouldn't the Yeerk in his head know its way around? As far as we knew, this city had been their main base of operations for at least four years. Or maybe I was just overthinking it. After about twenty minutes, he got back onto the main road and drove straight over to a used-car lot. Of course. All he was doing was test-driving a new car.

I knew this place. Dealin' Dan Hawke's Used Cars. If you wanted a good car, this was probably not the place to go. My uncle bought a car there once and regretted it almost immediately. I'd had a hard time feeling sorry for him - especially with a black eye from the last time he'd come home drunk. Much to my surprise, Lee's dad wasn't the only familiar face present. Apart from Dealin' Dan's salesmen, there were at least five other people either on the lot or - half visible through the glare on the windows - inside the office who seemed to be in the process of checking out or buying cars. Every single one of them was somebody I'd previously spied on, either at a Sharing meeting, the parking ramp connected to the Esplin building, or elsewhere. Every single one of them was somebody I knew for a fact had a Yeerk inside their heads. No way was this a coincidence. My only question was why the Yeerks were interested in a cheap car dealer. Had this place been another Yeerk front this whole time? Was there another secret entrance to the Yeerk Pool here? Whatever was going on, I had to let the others know about it.

This story is an alternate universe from the books. Apart from the morphing time limit being longer, the Yeerks being able to go longer between needing more Kandrona rays, and a third player interfering with Ellimist and Crayak's "game", this is also a universe where Culvers, Kohls, Shopko and Menards have locations in California. For that matter, it might also be a universe where - assuming the Yeerks don't win - Shopko won't go out of business in the 2010s. Shopko. Easiest job I ever had, and the first place I remember ever seeing an Animorphs book.