B19C16 - Hearing

"Because I can't destroy you without destroying the girl," I said.

She shook her head. "No. No, that's not all there is to it." Suddenly she burst out laughing. "Ah, hah, hah, hah! Amazing! I just figured it out! You're trying to turn me. You're trying to get me to turn against my own side."

"I'm trying to save you," I whispered.

Karen snorted. "You want to make peace, don't you? You want to find a way to stop us without having to get your hands dirty. You want to defeat us . . . without having to kill us. It's almost sweet. It is sweet. Sweet and naive and foolish and utterly, utterly futile."

<I agree.>

I turned and saw Marco. Only he was in his osprey morph again, sitting twenty feet above us in a tree.

Ospreys, like all birds of prey, have amazing eyesight. But what many people don't know is that they also have very excellent hearing.

<I absolutely agree,> Marco said, his thought-speak voice vibrating with suppressed rage. <There's no peace with parasites. You don't turn them around. You bury them.>