the departure

[instar]

Trouble did a very good job of not leaving breadcrumbs leading to the other Animorphs any more than was already inevitable. Still, the cops - who may or may not have been Controllers - talked to Bella just because Trouble has been known to hang out with her; they talked to Renée a little too. Bella thinks she did a good job of affecting ignorance and dismay. Andi didn't, but Andi defaults kind of expressionless anyway even though her braces have been off for a year and a half.

At school - now in its very last days - everyone knows that Trouble borrowed fifty dollars from Amber Jefferson and made off with it. Amber is very gossipy and can afford to lose fifty bucks; he chose well.

Bella hasn't heard from Trouble - or for that matter Aspret - yet.

Comments

[aeskhyne]

"...When I say they wouldn't even think of it, I mean it like... that almost doesn't make sense as a question. Like, imagine you went up to a random person on the street and offered them twenty bucks to shoot the President. I bet you can guess most people wouldn't take it, but I sure couldn't tell you exactly what about it would put people off, except, you know, some kid just offered them twenty bucks to assassinate the President? Maybe some people wouldn't go for it because they believe in democracy, and some people wouldn't go for it because they don't want to kill anybody, and some people wouldn't go for it because it'd be dangerous, and some people wouldn't go for it because they wouldn't even know how, and some people wouldn't go for it because twenty bucks is too low, or a bunch of those reasons or a bunch of completely different reasons or just because there's no room in their head to even take an idea like that seriously."

[pandion]

<Fair enough, I guess.>

[aeskhyne]

Trouble shrugs. "It was a good deal for Aspret because she was already on the outs with the boss and she probably couldn't have survived any other way - even if she had sold us out, he could've killed her anyway, he does that sometimes when somebody pisses him off and then tries to make it up to him too fast. Most Yeerks we catch won't already be in deep shit like that."

[pandion]

<Noted. Disappointing but it makes mass opportunistic slaughter more appetizing, I guess, if they're generally going to be unsalvageable in non-parasitic forms.>

[aeskhyne]

Trouble snorts. "Yeah, there's that."

[pandion]

<Hmm. And the other question in the initial bunch of them was any good way to pick Controllers out of a crowd.>

[aeskhyne]

"Even other Controllers can't do it unless they already know somebody is one. There's some faces I'd recognize now, but mostly people don't bother telling each other their hosts' names, so I can't give you a list or anything."

[pandion]

<If you spot anybody while one of us is available to have them pointed out, do.>

[aeskhyne]

"Course I will," he says agreeably.

[pandion]

<And if you think of anything else useful we should know, share it, but I'm out of questions I'd expect Aspret to have the answers to. Do you have a plan for where to crash overnight when you can't just be animals most of the time?>

[aeskhyne]

"Yeah, I'm all set."

[pandion]

<How should we find you if something comes up?>

[aeskhyne]

He shrugs. "I'll keep in touch, I guess."

[pandion]

<I'd really like to have something more specific set up. No school, can't call you, you can't even show up at the house and ask Renée for our whereabouts in case she knows where Robin is. Where are you going to be?>

[aeskhyne]

"I don't know, around? I'm not planning to disappear for another week or anything. You'll hear from me."

[pandion]

<Could you come by regularly - like, I don't know, lunchtime every day? So we know when to start worrying if we need to start worrying.>

[aeskhyne]

"I don't think I can manage regularly," he says. "But I can try for often."

[pandion]

<Why don't you think you can manage regularity?> asks Bella tightly.

[instar]

<By which she means she wants a good head start if Yeerks get you again,> Andi contributes. <Or whatever.>

[aeskhyne]

"I don't have good access to clocks while I basically can't be human-shaped in public," he says. "Or, like, food, for that matter. And doing things at the same time every day is hard even when I at least theoretically know what time it is."

[pandion]

<Perhaps we could get you a clock to stash in whatever hideout you will be using most often. Certainly we can feed you, at least in morph, even if human-amounts of food going missing would be suspicious. Is there anything else we can do to make it less hard for you to let us know that we do not all have to panic and melt into the desert on some reasonable schedule?>

[aeskhyne]

"I'm not really gonna have a place to stash a clock. I'm not really gonna have a place," he says. "I can't be that pinned down. Anytime somebody in Phoenix sees my face, they might kill me or drag me off to a Yeerk pool. And I have to sleep at least a few hours a day. So every day, I have to find somewhere to sleep where I'll be safe for a few hours. But the best places aren't always going to be the same, and the best times aren't always going to be the same either. Keeping to a routine isn't just hard anymore, it's dangerous."

[pandion]

<I had imagined, like, a rooftop accessible to pigeons but not humans where you'd hang out when you needed to be a human for a minute. Wrong mental image?>

[aeskhyne]

"Yeah. I mean, maybe I'll find a place like that - one that's safe to use that often - but I don't know I will; I don't know there's such a thing."

[pandion]

<Okay. But you'll check in as often as you can?>