III.

CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR - Downey

Downey, California. Birthplace of the Apollo Space Program and Weird Al Yankovic. No one really went out of their way to visit here, unless they had family or were fans of those things. It was a decent-sized city, with a mix of up-and-coming neighborhoods and run-down, has-been buildings. I vaguely remembered something on the news about car theft being a problem. That was virtually all I knew about this place.

[Sooo, how come we didn't use the secret highspeed subway?]

[You are never going to let that go, huh?]

[What, the fact that your secret agent outfit has underground teleportation?]

Tobias sighed. [It's not teleportation. It's an Andalite train system that lets us travel long distances in a short amount of time. You know, we've traveled to other planets and 65 million years into the past. Why is this even impressive to you?]

[Because literally no one in southern California has gotten anywhere, much less San Diego, in half an hour or less,] I said. [That's practically teleportation.]

I was trying to lighten the mood. We both had been on edge since leaving the others at the Hork-Bajir colony, but Tobias didn't just seem angry like I was. He was hurt. We were on a mission, but I always hated seeing him hurt.

[Well, we can't use the train to get to Downey. There isn't a station here and anyway, I know where we're going and we don't need it.]

He really did seem to know his way around Downey, which was kind of a surprise. Firestone Boulevard was coming up ahead. He hated Weird Al, but maybe he was a rocketship fan as a kid?

[How do you know where you're going?] I asked. [You've never been to Downey, have you?]

There was a moment of hesitation. [Yes, I have. Heather is from here.]

Oh.

We headed up Firestone, passing Ryerson Avenue. There were no ambulances in sight. Predictable, since it had taken us some time to fly here. We used our raptor eyes to scan the area. There was an OfficeMax, a Party City, and a couple chain restaurants on either side of the road, which led to a bridge over a narrow river. Across the river, an outlet mall.

[Eyes off the mall.]

[I wasn't even looking!]

[Sure you weren't,] Tobias said, the hint of a smile finally in his voice. [See anything fishy? I'm not coming up with anything.]

[Me neither. Why would they come here, anyway?]

[Maybe they're Taco Bell fans.]

[Huh?]

Tobias made a wide circle around a particularly sad and empty bit of strip mall. The restaurant had obviously been closed for a good while. It was already ringed by chain link fence and construction vehicles, but it still had its sign up on the roof.

[Seafood & Tacos Raul?] I read.

[A.K.A. the site of the original Taco Bell, opened by Glen Bell in 1962.]

[Shut. Up. Really?!]

[Really.]

[Whoa!] I circled around it, awed in spite of myself. It was no secret super-train, but still pretty cool. [That's kind of neat. Look how big the drive-thru lane is. Cars in the sixties were huge, weren't they? That's probably why - ]

[Drive-thru…?] Tobias echoed.

[Yeah?]

[When I first saw this place...I don't think there was a drive-thru.]

[Maybe it's new.]

Although if Seafood & Tacos Raul went out of business and the place was condemned for demolition, why would they have constructed in a brand new drive-thru?

We both thought the same thing at once, swooping down towards the world's first Taco Bell.

[This pavement is brand new.] I realized. [And look - the gate in the fence lines up perfectly for a car to come through. It would be hidden from the main road by that stone wall.]

[But then where does the car go?] Tobias wondered. We landed on the wall. A car could drive right up behind the wall from the parking lot, disappearing from view, and follow the paved road behind the restaurant. Then what? The end of the road led right back into the parking lot. [Think we're looking at another 'Happy Meal with Extra Happy' situation?]

[What, we're supposed to go down there, order a chalupa, and a trap door will open up?]

[We've seen weirder things in our lives.]

[We've seen weirder things today,] I agreed. [Although I'm sure they have some kind of security set up, so - what is that?!]

It was a strong, acrid scent that suddenly seemed to invade from every direction. The smell was so, sharp my eagle vision went blurry. There was a tingling in my talons that quickly became unbearable. When I looked down, through my watery eyes I could see that they were sizzling.

[Hold your breath!] Tobias cried. [Fly!]

I didn't fly so much as topple forwards, falling into the drive-thru lane. There, the invisible chemical seemed to be even stronger. I was completely blind, and every one of my feathers felt like it was burning. The eagle was screaming in agony, me along with it.

[Rachel! Rachel!]

[Get out of here, Tobias!] I shouted.

[No, I can get you!]

I heard voices coming from nearby. It was too easy to sneak up on someone when they were slowly being poisoned.

"There's a bird!"

"You're a fucking idiot if you think that's just some bird."

"It's a bald eagle!"

"Right. A bald eagle just hanging out at an abandoned restaurant?"

"Should I just shoot it?"

"No. We take it in. Find out who it is and let the boss make that call. We already bagged two of these guys today, we might get rewarded for bringing in a third!"

[Tobias get away, there are people coming. It's them,] I warned. [They have guns. If you don't get away we're all screwed!]

[I made it across the street. Still woozy. That's a neurotoxin they gassed us with, I'm sure of it.]

[I feel like they set me on fire. I think I'm twitching.]

[I'll find you, Rachel. I promise. Just...keeping talking to me.]

[I'm...I'm not sure I'll be able to talk much longer…] It was getting harder and harder to stay awake.

Suddenly I felt a large hand wrapped itself around my legs and hoisted me up like a roast duck in the window of a Chinatown restaurant. I screeched in pain.

"Who are you, little guy?" The guy poked at me. I couldn't see him, and I didn't answer. His voice was muffled. A gas mask, maybe.

[What are they doing to you?] Tobias called.

[One of them is holding me…] I said faintly. There was a slow lumbering movement, and I started to feel a chill. [I feel like we're going down some stairs or something, but I don't think we went into the building. The stairs were just, like...right there. It's cold...]

[They must have come up from under the pavement. A secret door. That must be where the ambulance disappeared. Is it a big place?]

[I can't see but...I think it might be. It's really, really cold. We're going down. Underground, I guess?]

[What? What was...Rachel?]

[I think they're carrying me underground…]

[Rach...can't...you…?]

He couldn't hear me. Wherever I was, it was cutting off our thought speak. The neurotoxin or whatever it was had finally subsided, although the damage had been done. I was still blind, and I could feel several of my feathers fluttering to the ground as my captor roughly swung me me around while he walked.

"Throw him in stasis?" One of the guys wondered.

"I guess? Wait, no. Boss is gonna wanna ask him questions. Let's throw him in a cage or something."

"Where am I gonna get a cage?"

"Then throw it in a tube, but don't activate the stasis. Even if it demorphs and morphs something crazy, there's no way it's breaking out of that thing."

The guy holding me shrugged. "All right."

My limp body was jerked upwards sharply, the pain so intense that I almost cried out and blew my cover. They tossed me haphazardly into something hard and shut me in. Inside the "tube", I couldn't hear what they were saying anymore. I couldn't tell if they were still in the room, so I waited as long as I could stand before demorphing.

"Ow!"

My legs were first to transform and it became very clear that the "tube" was too small in diameter for them to grow. My foot banged against a smooth, curved surface and my knees bent in awkward directions until I had arms strong enough to pull me into a standing position. My head was the last to change, and when I finally got my sight back, I stared.

They'd mentioned that the tube was unbreakable, and I would have liked to test that theory as a grizzly bear or elephant, but they were much too large to fit. If they were right, I'd end up squashed.

All around me were several other tubes, at least a dozen, just like mine. Also just like mine - they contained people.

Humans, as young as me, as old as my grandparents. There didn't seem to be any common bond between them other than they weren't awake and suspended in a strange, translucent-blue fluid. Their hair, if they had any, billowed around their heads as they floated. Asleep, and weirdly peaceful. It was hard to make out any features that were too distinguishing, though, as the curvature of our tubes distorted the light.

"My life really is a sci-fi movie," I grumbled, looking down. I noted hundreds of tiny little holes, almost like a big drain that covered the entire bottom of the cylinder. It was a drain, it had to be, if all the other tubes were filled with fluid. I couldn't' help but smirk. These clowns thought they knew all about morphing? I guessed not many of them were particularly interested in morphing bugs.

Cockroach or fly. Those were my choices. While neither were ideal, I decided I was not in any fucking mood to be a cockroach at the moment. My body shriveled rapidly before the filmy wings sprouted from my back and I was finally small enough to fit into one of the drain holes.

Several of my usual fears sprang up then, as I navigated in the darkness. First, my old friend Claustrophobia reared its ugly head. I had no idea if flies had hearts, but something was pounding, as I hit wall after wall of whatever pipe I was in. It couldn't have been more than two inches in diameter, and the thought of somehow being trapped there forever was maddening.

Second, it hit me then how lonely I was. It wasn't often that I went insect without one of the others nearby. Even during our worst Animorph bug experience - the whole ant tunnel fiasco - I at least knew I wasn't by myself. Being trapped in a tight, dark space was infinitely easier to stomach with company. If I died there, I'd be completely and utterly alone.

After what felt like several hours, but was probably only about ten minutes, I found a light.

[Fucking finally!]

I sped towards it, not even caring what it could possibly be. Literally anything was better than the silent darkness. I felt myself shoot out of a hole as tiny as the one I'd gone into, and was almost blinded by how bright it was. Quickly, and with so little discretion I knew every single one of my friends would have yelled at me, I demorphed.

I flipped one of the tables over and tried to wrench one of the table legs free. No good. I wasn't sure if I had the time to morph my grizzly, so I just dragged the entire table to the door and clumsily shoved the leg through the door handles. Good enough. That bought me some time to think, hopefully.

I stared up at one of the bodies suspended in the fluid.

Heather. The Heather. Butt-naked and floating around in her own tube, unconscious.

"Oh, shit. You are alive!"

At least, I assumed so. I didn't see her chest rising and falling with breath, but she was suspended in a faint green liquid. The men that brought me here had mentioned stasis. I'd seen enough sci-fi between Marco, Tobias, Ben, and my own damn life to know what that meant.

I looked around, trying to find a way to free her, following the pipes that led out from the base of her tube to a computer panel of buttons and switches. It seemed that each of the six tubes had their own panel. There were little screens that displayed only a single pulsing line. Vitals, maybe?

All the buttons were labelled, but in some code I didn't understand. There was a very long switch, however, that look pretty important.

"Decomp," I read from the panel. I tried pulling the switch down, but it was stuck. Next to it was a round, glowing red button. My favorite kind. "All righty. Let's get stupid."

I pushed the red button and braced myself. As the button depressed, it lost its red glow and another button underneath popped out, glowing green. Then, the sound of creaking pipes and rushing water. I whirled around to look at Heather's tube. No changes.

"Huh." I guessed the green button was next. I pushed that and suddenly the sound of rushing water stopped, replaced by a slow trickling. I looked over at Heather's tube. The liquid was draining from the base!

It didn't take long for the liquid to completely drain. Unfortunately, I hadn't thought far enough ahead to realize Heather had been floating in it. Of course, once the liquid was gone from her tube, her body would drop like a stone to the bottom.

Which it did, her legs and arms an awkward tangle and her face squished up against the side. I took maybe two seconds to be amused before pulling the switch, which was no longer locked in place. Sure enough, the tube began to pull upwards, disappearing into the ceiling. Heather's limbs flopped from the sides of the tube base.

"Heather?" I called out, cautiously walking towards her. "Heather, it's me, Rach - "

Suddenly she began to shiver violently. I gasped and ran over to her, completely unsure of what to do.

Her eyes popped open, wide with fear and confusion. Then her mouth dropped open, and she began to scream, a violent scream that chilled me to my bones.

I jumped up onto her base and pulled her towards me, clamping my hand over her mouth. Heather continued to scream through my hand, thrashing wildly.

"Shhh! Shhhh!" I hissed. "Heather, they're gonna hear you and then we're both fucked!"

She twisted stiffly in my grasp, her arms and legs still mostly limp, all movements coming from her trunk. It was almost as if she'd forgotten she had arms and legs. Maybe she had. I had no idea how long she'd been trapped in that tube.

"It's me, Rachel, I'm here to help you! Shhh!" Heather jerked so violently that she sent the both of us falling off the tube platform and sprawled on the floor. She cried out.

"Would you shut up!?" I gasped, crawling back towards her to cover her mouth.

She bit me.

"Ahhh! You little - "

"Ahhh…" she gasped. "Ahhh...Raaaahhh….Rahhhh…."

Heather was still shivering, but I could see her eyes focusing now. Focusing on me. Her teeth chattered.

"Yeah. Me. Rachel." I nodded. "It's okay. Just...stop screaming, okay?"

"Rayyyyy….Rahhyyyyy…" She coughed. "Sorrrr...Sorrr-reeeee…"

"It's fine." I held up my hand. "I mean, you broke my skin with your teeth so I'm probably going to have to start a course of antibiotics, but…"

"C-c-c-colllld…" she stammered. "C-c-can't...so...c-c-cold…"

"Uh…" It was easy to understand why. She was naked and soaked in whatever fluid that was in the tube. I could see the goosebumps on her flesh and her lips had gone slightly blue. There wasn't anything I could throw over her, either. Nothing to even dry her. "Um…"

"It's o-o-okay…" she gasped, clearly not okay. But she could see I was at a loss for what to do. "I-I-I j-j-just - "

I sighed, sucking it up and sliding back over to her. I wrapped my relatively warm and dry arms around her shoulders, pressing her naked body against me and my dry yoga outfit. My body heat reached her and slowly but surely, the shivering and chattering slowed.

After a few minutes, she seemed better.

"You, uh… After you d-d-drained the suspension fluid you're supposed to wait a half hour before opening the t-t-tube," Heather said. "There's a release of g-gases that help stabilize the body before transitioning to the environment outside of st-st-stasis. The body can go into shock if you don't."

"Oh. Oops."

"Well, I'm alive, so I guess I'm f-f-fine."

"Sorry?"

"Don't w-worry about it."

Another few seconds ticked by.

"So are you okay now?" I wondered. "Because you're my boyfriend's naked ex and I'm in a sports bra and yoga pants. This is kind of awkward."

"It's r-r-really, extremely awkward."

"So, I mean, if you're okay, I'd very much like to let you go now."

She shivered. "Yeah. Let go."

"You just shivered."

"It's f-f-fine."

I made a face and counted off exactly sixty more super long seconds.

"Okay, now I'm letting go."

"Thank you."

I pulled away and she wrapped her arms around herself. She was still shivering slightly, but at least she could talk.

"W-we don't ever need to t-talk about this again."

"Talk about what again?"

She smirked. "I think I can morph now. We can do insects and just sneak out of here. The Initiative tends to think big and not small. Like, they're prepared for an all out battle if we tried to escape with brute force, but they've never been big on the subtle approach."

"I noticed. That's how I escaped my tube."

Heather furrowed her brow. "How did you even - you know what? We'll talk about it later. We can't waste any time."

"Wait, we have to get Toby."

She stared at me. "Toby? The Hork-Bajir?"

Despite her being a huge, annoying hurry, I explained what she had missed, making sure to talk over her obnoxiously when she tried to stop me.

"Rachel," Heather said in exasperation, exactly the way my mom used to. It was profoundly condescending and I resisted the urge to slap her for it. "We have to get out of here, get some help, and then come back for her. We can't do this alone, do you understand?"

"The hell we can't!" I argued hotly. "If we leave, who knows if Toby will still be here? What if they've killed her or something by then? We do this now, while we have the chance!"

"You can't possibly be suggesting I go in there and fight them alone."

"You're not alone," I sneered. "You have me. Plus, we have to save these guys."

I waved a hand at the other people frozen in the tubes. Heather snorted at me.

"Do you know them?"

"No. Do you?"

"No! They're strangers! Yet you're proposing we free them from stasis? They can be a hindrance to us at best, and enemies at worst!"

"They could be innocent!"

"Of course they could be! They could be helpless, loud, injured, and weak!" Heather pointed out angrily. "That's why we come back to help them."

I stared at her incredulously. In all my years as an Animorph, was I ever this heartless? "But we can get them out now!"

"Rachel, we - ugh," she rolled her eyes to the ceiling, pressing on the bridge of her nose with her fingers. "You are so - we can't just save everyone all the time!"

"Maybe you can't," I snarled. "I can."

"I promise you, we will come back for them. I promise you. I'm not some monster, I want to save them too! But we can't right now."

"What if we don't come back in time?" I demanded. "What if this place like, blows up?"

"Why the fuck would this place blow up?!"

'I don't know! Things just tend to do that around me!"

"Jesus Christ. Tobias was right about you."

My eyes narrowed. "What did he say?"

"He said a lot. He talked about you all the time," she said. "The funny thing was, he'd say things that don't sound great at all, like 'things tend to blow up around her', and he'd do it all with a smile on his face. Like it's adorable or something, watching things go insane."

I grinned at the thought. Heather rolled her eyes.

"You two are crazy," she struggled to her feet, arms still crossed in front of her and shivering. "Anyway, if we freed these people, we'd have to wait the half hour for decompression, and - "

Sudden noise in the hall. We both shared a look of alarm.

"Hide!" she hissed. I dove behind one of the tubes, immediately starting my grizzly morph. Heather did the complete opposite of hiding, quickly pulling the table leg from the door handles.

"What are you doing?!"

Out in the hall, we could hear two men talking. I recognized one of the voices as the person who had been holding me when I was captured.

"Well, how were we supposed to know the bald eagle was Rachel Berenson's favorite morph?" he whimpered. He sounded afraid.

"Everyone knows that, you idiot! The Boss should have killed you, too!"

"Oh, man. I...do you think Scott felt any pain when the Boss did that...thing?"

"I hope we never find out, man. Let's just get the girl and bring her in."

"Do you think he'll still kill me? It was my idea to not put her in stasis, after all."

"Just shut up. God, if I lose my head too because of you motherfuckers, I swear - "

The doors opened. Heather was standing right behind them, so for a split second, she was out of their sight. Apparently, that was just enough time.

Her bare foot shot up from the floor, connecting with the chin of one of the men. He was down for the count immediately.

"What the - !?" The other guy started for a large orange box on the wall, something that looked like a fire alarm pull. He never made it, as Heather swung the table leg and cracked it against the back of his head.

She stood over them, all five and a half feet of her, and wiped the sweat from her brow. Then she looked at me.

"So. Which one of them do you want to morph?"

"What the hell was that!?" I gaped. "Nobody told me you were a fucking ninja!"

"I had a mixed martial arts phase," she shrugged nonchalantly. "Come on, let's acquire these guys, steal their clothes, and haul ass."

"You don't have rules on morphing humans?" I asked.

"Of course we do. Only in extreme circumstances with no alternative solution. Which I think this counts as. Why, do you object to this?"

I had to think for a minute. The Animorphs were always so hesitant to morph humans without consent. As a group, we had decided not to. But what about me, just me, without the others. How did I really feel about it?"

"Nope, no objections." I decided.

"Good," she said. "Did you hear them? The Boss is here. This is big. Huge."

"Who is this Boss they were talking about?" I wondered as I acquired the one closest to me. It was the guy who'd thrown me into the tube.

"We don't know. All we know is that he only shows up when something big is going on. In this case, I guess the kidnapping of Toby."

Heather had stripped her guy down and put on the clothes immediately before morphing. I watched as she shot up into his large 6-foot frame and filled out the sweatshirt that had been hanging loosely from her. I followed suit, but not before pushing the buttons on all the panels for the other captured humans, starting their draining process.

"What do you think you're doing!?" she demanded. "I told you, we don't have the time!"

"I'm making time! And in half an hour, I want them to have a fighting chance," I said gruffly. "I'm not going to leave them here."

"You are infuriating! Rachel, they are safer in there than out here!"

"They are expendable to these people, and you know it! You said it yourself - the Boss is here, and it already sounds like he's just killing people for whatever. They know I'm here. They know Toby is here. The moment it seems like they don't have a handle on this situation, the Initiative is going to run and dispose of the evidence. This evidence. You know I'm right!"

Heather looked about ready to karate chop me like she had the two guys, but suddenly she began pulling the switches down a quarter of the way.

"I thought you said - "

"If you pull them down part way, it automatically opens them in a half hour," she explained stiffly. "Only pulling them down all the way makes the tubes open up at once. Also, I hate you."

I laughed. "Let's go."

We piled the two guys into a corner and went into the long, dimly lit hallway.

"Wherever Toby is, it's going to be guarded." I said, squinting down the hall.

"So will wherever the Boss is."

"I don't care. I'm looking for Toby."

"We should all care. The Boss is who's behind this whole mess! We get him, we shut this whole thing down!"

I hadn't thought about that. All I could think about was saving Toby. Tobias's family. And maybe those people that we started bringing out of stasis. I didn't give a single fuck about this Boss character.

Heather noted my nonresponse and pressed. "If we save Toby, even if we save everyone, who's to stop them from just kidnapping them again?"

I shook my head. "People like this, it doesn't matter if we take out their leader. They get a new one and keep on going. We got Visser One, didn't we? Yet the Andalites are still out there fighting the yeerks. Getting one guy means nothing."

"This isn't the yeerks!" Heather insisted. "These are just some stupid thugs who got some really nice toys. They aren't as big as the yeerks."

"Someone gave them those toys," I shot back. "Someone big. Someone with a lot of power. Those stasis tubes? The morphing power? These are Andalite shredders we're holding, Heather. You think killing one guy is gonna stop people who have shit like this?! We are not ending this tonight, and I'm not risking Toby's life because you think we can!"

I could practically see the wheels turning in her head, slower and slower. It was being abundantly clear to me that the Initiative was a huge ass deal. Maybe Miss Secret Spy in the big super-confidential organization thought this was all something they could handle, but I knew better. I knew what being out of my league felt like.

"Even if it doesn't stop them, killing the Boss would deal a significant blow," she insisted.

"Significant enough to justify losing a pregnant Hork-Bajir and a bunch innocent people?"

Heather glared at me. I knew what she was thinking. Yes. Yes, it would be worth it to her. And there was once a time when it would have been worth it to me, too.

But I knew now what was important in my life.

"I'm finding Toby. With or without you," I sneered, stalking down one hallway. A few seconds later, I heard her footsteps following me.

"You are making a big mistake."

"It's not a mistake worth making unless it's a big one.

A/N - The original Taco Bell was originally opened at 7112 Firestone Blvd, Downey, CA. The building had since been used by Seafood & Taco's Raul, but they shuttered up in December 2014. So the site of the original Taco Bell is now empty and up for demolition. However, in Fall 2004 when this story takes place, it was still a restaurant...

But whatever, okay, I really wanted to put the original Taco Bell in this story for some reason because I'm sad they're gonna tear it down what is a HISTORICAL LANDMARK as far as I'm concerned. So I am memorializing it here. I can be as anachronistic as I wanna be, so deal with it. LIVE MAS!

**Just a note, I intend to move all my fanfiction to Another Site. I figure most readers are on That Site too, anyway. This fic, however, I'm not sure whether I should transfer or just keep updating here. It's been here SO LONG lol. Let me know what you think?