"This is a job for the military now," Rachel's mom argued. "You kids have done enough. The secret is out: Leave it to the people who should be protecting this country. I mean, we paid enough in taxes to support the military; well, now let's see what we got for all that money."

—The Answer p. 15

They yelled. A lot. First Captain Nasland, then the lady who might be a government agent, then three or four other soldiers who apparently also had two cents to add. There were a lot of mentions of us being irresponsible, childish, short-sighted, reckless, blah, blah, blah. One dude in uniform even pulled my parents' favorite trick of yelling at me for not stopping Jake from doing something stupid, since apparently I was supposed to be Jake's conscience.

During the first opportunity he got, Jake explained, curtly, what we had been trying to do. And then he shut up and let them yell. He didn't offer apologies or excuses, which seemed to frustrate them even more.

Two of the Army officers split Chapman off from the rest of the group. When we overheard Lieutenant Novak arranging for transport to take him home, we all spent a fruitless ten minutes begging him to take a message to a z-space transmitter to pass on to the andalites.

"I won't do it," he said flatly, ignoring the Animorphs and looking hard at me. "Do you know what happens to former voluntaries who rub the U.S. government the wrong way?"

I crossed my arms. "You're not a—"

"I'm close enough." He shrugged. "My wife even closer. And what proof does anyone have?"

I shut my mouth. I knew the rumors just as well as anyone—that he and Allison Chapman had joined to keep their daughter from infestation—but all I'd seen with my own eyes was the two of them sitting calmly in a break room during feedings while the rest of us were dragged to and from cages.

We stared at each other for a few seconds. Of course he had no way of knowing that I'd offered to do the same thing for Jake. And yet...

And yet I got it. The others didn't. I was one bad coincidence away from being in his shoes right now and we both knew it.

"They wouldn't..." I stopped talking. It sounded weak even to me. Wouldn't what, exactly? Throw him in prison? The Army would be happy to do so.

Chapman smiled tightly.

"Fine." Jake didn't sound happy, but he also sounded thoroughly done with this discussion.

Two other soldiers were already trying to shepherd our group away from him. Chapman gave me one more look as if asking whether I had a way to get him out of this situation. I shook my head, turning away. I couldn't quite forgive him for choosing himself over Marco, but I also couldn't say for sure I'd do any differently if it was someone I loved on the line.

In the end the military guys stashed us all in what appeared to be an unused conference room, next door to the room where they were still holding Marco. It had walls of the same dull grey plastic as the rest of the base, and its only defining characteristics were the long table (no chairs) shoved into one corner and the transparent wall it shared with the containment room where Marco sat on a hospital bed. Cassie was already there, human again, and visibly annoyed.

"Did it work?" she asked, as we were shepherded inside.

Jake shook his head.

Cassie glanced over at Marco, and then back at Jake. "Okay," she said softly.

"We're not giving up yet," Jake said.

"Just stay here," Captain Nasland snapped. He actually pointed at the ground as he spoke, like we were a group of disobedient puppies.

Jake turned away from him, walking over to the large window that looked into the room where they were holding Marco. "How you holding up, man?"

Marco was sitting on the edge of the industrial gurney, IV trailing from where a large needle was sunk into his left elbow. He was definitely paler now, eyes wide and dark against his skin. "So I'm guessing all that hoopla was you guys trying something stupid?"

Cassie shrugged, looking self-conscious. "I broke a wall."

Marco snorted. "I'm going to assume that didn't go well, or you'd have told me the good news by now."

Thunk.

We all looked up. Two of the Army guys had dragged a Gleet Biofilter over and jammed it against the translucent plastic door of the observation room.

"Yeah," I muttered, "since one of those will totally hold us forever."

"Stay," Captain Nasland said again.

"For how long?" Marco's voice was deliberately whiny. He was trying to get information, but also to be non-threatening.

Captain Nasland took a deep breath. "Until the drugs start working or we find something else that does."

"Here's hoping I don't die first," Marco said cheerfully.

Jake flinched.

"I feel stupid and contagious!" Marco yelled, pacing around in circles. "Here we are now, entertain us! A mulatto! An albino! A mosquito! A libido!"

{How long do you think he can keep it up?} Tobias asked.

"If he loses his voice he can always just morph," Cassie said. "So... indefinitely?"

The IV line lay abandoned on the bed, the plastic bag it had been attached to entirely empty. Whatever the drugs had been trying to do, it hadn't worked; Marco was getting even paler and more manic in his movements, his skin wet with sweat.

"... and they're gone sooo fast, yeeah oooh, so hold on to the ones who really care. In the end they'll be the only ones theeeere..."

He'd already been at it for a good twenty minutes and was showing no signs of wearing out. The singing had come after he'd decided his over thirty minutes of demands for "a GameBoy! A television! Just one little cell phone! Fucking crayons! Something!" were not going to get the desired results. So now he'd decided to protest the lack of entertainment by—

"—today was gonna be the day but they'll never throw it back to you, by now you shoulda somehow realized what you're not to do—"

—annoying the rest of us to death.

Jake was watching Marco too closely, shoulders hunched and a little frown pulling his eyebrows together. He was worried. Which was making me worried. If I had to take a guess, the thing he knew that I didn't was that this—

"—oh baby baby, how was I supposed to know that something wasn't right here, oh baby baby, I shouldn't have let you goooooooo—"

—was what Marco looked like about two inches away from blind panic. He kept sitting down—on the bed, on the floor, up against the wall—and then jumping up again as he sang. The inside of his wrist where he'd been stung was raw from where he kept scratching at it, but he didn't seem to notice as he scrubbed it along the top of his knee.

"I get knocked down! But I get up again! You're never gonna keep me down! I get knocked down! But I get up again!"

{Yeah,} Tobias muttered, {you're gonna get knocked down.}

The rest of us were also... tense. Tobias kept fluttering around in circles and, even when he landed, repeatedly adjusting his perch on the floor. Jake was quiet but fidgety, pacing or drumming on the glass or turning to watch the rest of us any time someone moved. Cassie had examined every corner of the room in exacting detail and was now repeatedly checking out the window like she expected the view to change at all. I had settled down in a comfortable position and switched off my personality to save on battery power. I wasn't sure I'd had blinked or shifted position in the two hours since then.

"—think about it every night and day, spread my wings and fly away. I belieeeeeve I can sooooar, see me running through that open dooooooor—"

It occurred to me that the others were probably getting claustrophobic. There were five of us stuck in what was essentially a glorified break room without the coffee maker or chairs, so they might have started feeling cramped. I wouldn't know; after existing for so long in about three square inches of real estate inside my own skull I wasn't exactly bothered by having an entire small room to move around in.

"—say it ain't so, I will not go, turn the lights off, carry me home, keep your head still, I'll be your thrill, the night will go on—"

There was still no word from the Army guys. Twice people in lab coats had come in long enough to draw blood from Marco (which hadn't dampened the singing at all), but no one had come up with anything approaching useful information so far.

"—strumming my pain with his fingers, singing my life with his words, killing me softly with his song, killing me softly, with his song—"

{My ears are bleeding,} Tobias said.

"Well," Jake said diplomatically, "At least he hasn't cycled back to the dirty rewrites of Battle Hymn of the Republic yet."

"Actually, maybe he should cycle back," I piped up. Partially just to inform everyone, including myself, that I hadn't quietly died at some point in the last ninety minutes. "Those at least were annoying the Army people."

Jake turned around slowly, giving me an I-can't-believe-we're-related look. "Air Force," he said slowly.

"Huh?"

"They're not Army. They're Air Force. Probably why they have Air Force uniforms and Air Force helicopters and are here dealing with a spaceship, which currently falls under Air Force jurisdiction."

"No need to get all snotty, midget. I don't know anything about the military."

"They have little wings on their uniforms!"

"Yeah, and so do flight attendants!"

"Oh, in that case," Jake drawled, "I guess we should have all assumed they were flight attendants. What with the blue military uniforms and the giant guns—"

"Okay, if you're so smart, how come the Air Force is wearing Navy blue?" I demanded.

"For one thing, it's royal blue—"

"So shouldn't they be a part of, I don't know, the royal mounted forces?"

"And for another, this kind of thing is actually important to know in case of—"

"What, foreign invasions? Since they were so much help last time?"

"That is completely—"

"Knock it off!" Cassie yelled.

I shut my mouth mid-retort. Jake and I both stared at her in surprise.

"Thank you." Cassie looked a little chagrined. "Now. Are you two going to admit that it's not each other you're actually angry at, or am I going to have to separate you before the name-calling starts?"

"Sorry," Jake mumbled.

"Yeah," I said.

Tobias shifted in place, shaking out his wings. {Whatever branch of the military they are, shouldn't we focus on trying to persuade them to help us?}

Marco had stopped singing, I realized belatedly. He was leaning against the glass wall that divided our cells, gnawing on a thumbnail.

He looked like shit. Strands of his hair were plastered to his neck with sweat, and he was pale, breathing in rapid shallow pants. Maybe it was just from fear, I thought. Maybe.

"I think we pretty much threw that possibility out the window within ten minutes of getting here," Cassie said.

Jake winced.

"And even if we didn't, Cassie redecorating their back wall while the rest of us tried to steal their stuff didn't help," I pointed out.

{Isn't there something we could offer them or something?} Tobias insisted.

"You mean besides volunteering to sit down and shut up?" I asked.

Marco smiled grimly. If he'd been intentionally setting us up to make that offer, he'd done a pretty good job of it.

"Okay, but..." Cassie glanced at Marco, moistening her lips. "We can't give up. Not yet."

"Nobody's giving up." Jake stood up suddenly, pacing in a circle. "Nowhere close. Okay. Okay. What could we give the Air Force in exchange for them letting us get help?"

"Morphing power," Marco said immediately.

"Too dangerous to risk it." Cassie shook her head. "The U.S. military is already far too powerful. If we handed that over on top of everything else—"

"Gee, thanks." Marco pushed off the glass with angry force. "So what is going to be worth the risk for you? Should I go infect a few other people just to be sure?"

"Hey, hey." Jake went over to Marco, leaning his forehead on the dividing wall directly across from where he stood. "You know she didn't mean it like that, man. We're gonna be just fine, so let's try and keep it together until then. Okay?"

Marco nodded tightly.

"We cool?"

Marco's teeth were still clenched, but he nodded again.

"Okay," Jake said. "Cassie? I hate to say it, but if we offer, and they take it..."

She nodded, biting her lip.

"Assuming, of course, that they're still willing to piss on us if we're on fire," I said.

Jake took a breath—and then let it out without saying anything. He was dull-eyed with exhaustion. "It's..." He shook his head, stopping himself.

{What?} Tobias said.

"They had their guns drawn when they came in," Jake said reluctantly. "Drawn, loaded, pointed at us... They knew what they were going to find in the cockpit, and they still had unholstered weapons in hand."

"They're not going to kill us, right?" Cassie frowned. "They wouldn't."

"'Never point a gun at something you're not willing to destroy,'" Jake said. "That's the first rule of basic training. If they had guns on us, they're willing to face the consequences for killing us. And for what? For... stuff?"

He was looking at Cassie, but I spoke up. "It's not just about the ship." I paused, trying to find words for what I wanted to say without adding to Jake's worry. "I think, on some level, it's kind of personal."

"Yeah," Jake said, "I get it, I shouldn't have—"

I held up a hand. "Not just now. I mean, this is about how the military feels about all of you in general, about the war as a whole. It's..." I huffed a small laugh, unable to look at any of them. "Do you have any idea how it feels, to be this tiny squishy human amidst these clashing titans using alien technologies and alien species to fight over your very bodies? To have no natural defense, no way even to understand what's going on, no means of fighting back? To be that helpless? To know that no matter which side wins, you're probably not going to survive the—?"

Jake flinched. I cut myself off.

"'When elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers,'" Cassie said.

I gestured to her. "Yeah. What you said."

"Not mine. It's..." Cassie frowned as if thinking. "I don't remember who said that."

{'African proverb,'} Tobias provided. {That's all she had written underneath the quote. I remember that one too.}

Cassie looked at me. "She would have all these little post-it notes with famous quotes on them stuck to her bulletin board. Most of them were about war," she added with a sad smile.

"So, yeah," I said. "They're sick of feeling like grass. They want to trip some elephants. It's not nice, but I think that's what's going on here."

"It's a metaphor? I thought she pinned that one up because it had to do with elephants," Jake admitted.

"And that would be why you once got a fourteen percent on an English test and almost moved Mom to tears during her rant on the importance of language," I drawled.

"Yeah, yeah, but the point is that maybe we shouldn't be trying to bargain with the Air Force," Jake said. "Which, okay, but do you have any better ideas?"

"You ever think about skin?" Marco said suddenly.

"As a thing we could offer them?" I said blankly.

"No, like..." He moistened his lips. "Like, the skin itself. It's all right there. All over the surface of things."

"Marco?" Jake's voice was soft with uncertainty.

Marco grinned at him. "You know what I mean, right? You've felt it too. When you just look at skin and you just wonder what it would be like if you bit down. Sank your teeth into it. Tore off a chunk. Like... losing control of a morph. Where sometimes it feels so damn good just to give in. Ask Tobias. He knows what I'm talking about. When you bite down. When you tear into it. When it stretches. When it peels off in strips. When it's so chewy you could just turn it over in your mouth for hours. When it bleeds. The skin, and then the blood. Like it was meant to pop and peel."

{Sure,} Tobias said warily. {Skin. It's real nice. You okay, man?}

"Nope," Marco said brightly. "I'm dying, remember?" He licked his lips again. "But, like, all that skin, it's just there. Nobody talks about it, but we all know. It's just waiting for—"

When he curled forward on himself we all took a step toward him, as if moving to help even though we couldn't. But he wasn't seizing, or passing out. He had grabbed his own arm, the one the tribble had stung, between his front teeth.

"Marco!" Jake banged on the dividing wall. "Marco, snap out of it!"

He was gnawing hard now, a section of his wrist jammed into his mouth. Blood dribbled around his lips. His jaw worked with furious power. Grinding down. Forcing dull human teeth to penetrate through muscles and veins and... skin.