The Extreme Page 9

  Don't know why we cared. The Venber had

  144 tried to kill us. Only they

  We made it home and relieved the Chee who'd taken our places. I don't know if they were glad to be done playing their parts or not. Who can tell what an android thinks?

  I put the whole thing behind me. You have to do that. You can't be in a war and think about all the stuff that happens. You can't keep all the fear and all the pain right there in the front part of your brain, you know? You go nuts like that.

  But some things are hard to get past. Sometimes it's the little things.

  "Marco? Are you still alive?" my dad yelled up the stairs.

  "Yeah, Dad," I answered.

  "You've been in there for an hour! Are you ever coming out?"

  "Well, sure, eventually," I said.

  "Could you at least turn on the fan? The whole house is turning into a sauna."

  "Sorry," I said. "I forgot."

  That was a lie. I hadn't forgotten. I wanted the whole house to feel like a sauna. And I was considering staying in the shower forever.

  145 Heat. Man, heat is a very, very nice thing. For humans, anyway.

  "Marco!" My dad, yelling again, this time from somewhere closer by.

  "What?" I yelled back through the steam.

  "Your room is a total pigsty!"

  When I'd gotten home, I'd been horrified to see someone had cleaned my room. I mean, cleaned it. There was not a chip bag to be found! So much for Erek playing the role of me. Hah!

  "I suppose I shouldn't have expected this sudden neat stage to last," my dad muttered outside the bathroom door.

  "Yeah, well," I said, reluctantly turning off the faucet.

  "I appreciate what you did to the basement and garage, though. I've never seen them look so good."

  "Oh, sure," I replied. "Say, did Marian happen to call in the last couple of days?"

  "In the last couple of days?" Dad repeated. "No. I would have told you if she had."

  "Oh," I said. "Oh, well."

  "Hey, you want to go out and catch something to eat?"

  I stuck my wet head out of the door. "Like what?"

  "I was thinking ice cream."

  146 "Ice cream."

  "Yeah. Ice cream."

  "Excuse me." I closed the door, stepped back in the shower, and turned on the water. Hot. Very, very hot.

  146

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  Marco, the other Animorphs, and Ax have managed to find out where the Yeerks are planning to build their next ground-based Kandrona. That's a good thing. The location is supposed to be somewhere around the North Pole. That's a bad thing. The Animorphs and Ax know that the Yeerks are a "cold-blooded" species, but this is a little nuts! Who wants to be anywhere near the North Pole without Arctic morphs-and wearing spandex?

  Even so, the kids know if the Yeerks succeed with their plan, Earth is pretty much done for. And Marco, the other Animorphs, and Ax aren't quite ready to give up the fight... .

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