The Invasion (25 page)

Even a person you think you know. A person you admire. Look up to. Love.

I broke my gaze away from Tom’s and looked down at my food.

A few minutes later, Tom got up to go. I knew where he was going. After he left, I went to the upstairs phone, where my parents couldn’t overhear me. I called Marco.

“He’s on his way,” I said.

I called Tobias and Rachel. I tried to call Cassie, but I got her mother instead.

“She’s not in,” her mom said. She sounded worried. “She wasn’t home for dinner. She went out to feed some of the animals and didn’t come back.”

My stomach clenched.

“She’s probably just out riding one of the horses,” I said, trying to reassure myself as much as Cassie’s mom. “You know Cassie.”

“All the horses are in their stalls,” she said.

I took a couple of deep breaths. Something was wrong. What had happened to Cassie?

“I’ll look around for her,” I said. “Don’t worry. I’ll bet she just saw some injured animal or something and went off to rescue it. You know Cassie,” I said again.

“Yes, I’m sure she’s fine.”

Right. She was about as sure as I was. But what could I do? The plan was set to attack the Yeerk pool and rescue Tom. Maybe Cassie was already at the school, waiting.

Maybe.

I had a very bad feeling as I rode my bike to the school. I hid the bike across the street, the way we had planned. Then I hooked up with Marco and Rachel.

“Cassie’s missing,” I said. “And where’s Tobias?”

Rachel pointed up at the sky. The sun was setting fast, but I could see Tobias circling high overhead.

“What is the matter with him?” I exploded. “He’s got a two-hour time limit and we don’t know how long this is going to take!”

“Maybe we should bail until we find out what happened with Cassie,” Rachel said.

“Could be she’s just scared,” Marco said. “I am.”

“Maybe,” I agreed, although I doubted it. But they say you never know who’s going to be brave or cowardly in a battle.

I just hoped I wasn’t a coward. The truth was, my mouth was already dry and my heart was already pounding. And we hadn’t even done anything yet.

Tobias swooped down and perched on Rachel’s shoulder. It surprised me a little. Why would Tobias perch on Rachel’s shoulder? And she didn’t seem at all annoyed. She rubbed her head against him a little.

Are we doing this, or not?
Tobias asked.

This was not starting off right at all. The bad feeling in my stomach was just getting worse. Cassie missing. Tobias already morphed.

Everyone was looking at me, waiting for me to decide.

“Yeah, we’re doing it,” I said.

The school was locked up for the night. But Marco had taken care of that little problem. He knew of a window in the science lab that didn’t lock.

We crawled into the science lab through the window. It was dark, except for the dying light of the sun that glinted off the glass beakers and test tubes. Tobias drifted through and landed neatly on the teacher’s desk.

“Let me take a look,” I said. I opened the door as slowly as I could and peeked out through the crack. I could see down the nearly dark hallway to the janitor’s closet. Instantly I pulled back in.

“There are people out there!” I said. “Three people heading into the closet.”

“Controllers,” Rachel said. “I guess it’s dinnertime for Yeerks.”

None of us thought that was very funny.

“How are we going to get in there?” Marco asked.

“Wait a minute,” Rachel said. “Do all the Controllers know each other by sight? I mean, maybe we’re Controllers, right?”

“So we just walk right on in like we belong there?” Marco asked. “Wonderful plan, Rachel. I have a better idea — let’s just kill ourselves now and get it over with.”

“Maybe Rachel’s right,” I said.

“Big maybe,” Marco pointed out. “Big,
huge
maybe. How about Tom? He would know whether you were a Controller.”

I cracked the door again and looked out. “I think Tom’s already down there,” I said. “Besides, the hallway’s empty now. I guess they all …” I fell silent. “Wait, here comes someone.”

I stared. It wasn’t easy to see faces in the gloom. I could tell there were two people. One was wearing a uniform.

It was the Controller policeman. And he was rudely yanking someone along with him. I could see that it was a girl.

I didn’t really want to see any more. “Tobias,” I said. “I need you to use your hawk’s eyes.”

Tobias fluttered over and stood on my shoulder. He peeked his fierce head out into the hall and then drew back.

Yes,
he said.
It’s her.
I felt like the floor had opened underneath me. Marco grabbed me because I looked like I was about to fall over.

“They have her!” I whispered. “The Controllers. They have Cassie!”

W
ho has Cassie … how?”

Rachel stammered.

“That policeman. The Controller, the one who came out to Cassie’s farm. The one who was at The Sharing meeting. He has her. He saw her at the meeting trying to get close to the full members.”

Rachel let go a few choice words.

We hadn’t even started and already everything was a disaster.

“Okay,” I said grimly. “We go ahead, like Rachel said. We figure there are too many Controllers for
all of them to know each other. I mean, they add new bodies all the time, right? So maybe we’re new Controllers, right?”

“Oh, man,” Marco moaned.

“You have a better idea?” I snapped.

“No,” he said. “I think we go ahead. We take our chances. Let’s rock and roll.”

“Okay, then, everyone act cool.” I looked at Tobias. “Too late for you to morph back now. But try not to let them see you.”

Rachel, Marco, and I stepped out into the dark hallway. My legs were stiff. My knees were rickety. I was walking like Frankenstein’s monster trying to look casual.

We headed for the janitor’s closet. Fortunately, no one else was in the hallway.

We entered the tiny room and stepped inside. I tried to recall the sequence for opening the door. Faucet to the left, then twist the second hook around to the right.

The door swung open.

There was more noise than there had been the other day. Or maybe it was just that my human ears heard it better than my lizard ears had.

There was a deep sloshing, swooshing sound, almost like gentle surf breaking on the shore. But
that was the nice sound. The other sounds were horrifying—despairing cries, terrified screams, shouts, shrieking triumphant laughter.

“You sure this is just the Yeerk pool?” Marco said in a nervous, shaky voice. “I see a guy with horns and a pitchfork and I am outta here.”

I stepped into the opening. The stairs were steep and there was no rail, so you felt like you were about to pitch forward with every step.

We descended together. The door closed automatically behind us.

At first I guess I expected there to be maybe a couple dozen steps. But the steps never ended. We just kept walking, and there were always more steps. The walls were dirt, then quickly became rock as we went down, down, down. It felt like those stairs would never end.

“Some superior aliens,” Marco whispered. “You’d think they could have put in an elevator.”

We all giggled a little. Very little.

Suddenly, the rock walls widened out. We had emerged into a huge cavern.

And when I say huge, I mean huge. They could have played the Super Bowl in there
and
had room left over for a couple of malls. It was like a giant bowl turned upside down, all carved out of solid rock. At the very top of the bowl was the faint outline
of a hole. I thought I could see stars through it.

All around the outer edges of the cavern I could see other stairways, like ours. They seemed to come from every direction, appearing out of the rock walls, and leading down to the floor of the cavern.

We clustered closer to the center of the stairway. It was a sheer drop off the side of the stairs.

“This is gigantic,” Marco said. “This isn’t just under the school. This is under half the town. Those stairways must lead up to a dozen secret entrances.” He shook his head. “Jake, they have this entire area set up with secret passageways. Oh, man. This is worse … this is so much worse … so much bigger …”