i Look for other Animorphs

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#1 The Invasion #2 The Visitor #3 The Encounter #4 The Message #5 The
Predator #6 The Capture #7 The Stranger #8 The Alien #9 The Secret #10
The Android #11 The Forgotten #12 The Reaction #13 The Change #14 The
Unknown #15 The Escape #16 The Warning #1 7 The Underground #18 The
Decision #19 The Departure #20 The Discovery #21 The Threat

Applegate:

<MEGAMORPHS> #1 The Andalite's Gift #2 In the Time of Dinosaurs

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The Andalite Chronicles

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Width1Width3Width2669Width3Width3322 ii Animorphs

The Solution

K. A. Applegate

AN APPLE

PAPERBACK

SCHOLASTIC INC.

New York Toronto London Auckland Sydney Mexico City New Delhi Hong Kong

iii If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that
this book is stolen property. It was reported as "unsold and destroyed"
to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received
any payment for this "stripped book."

No part of this publication may be reproduced in whole or in part, or
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without written permission of the publisher. For information regarding
permission, write to Scholastic inc., Attention: Permissions Department,
555 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.

ISBN 0-590-76255-9

Copyright 1998 by Katherine Applegate. All rights reserved. Published
by Scholastic Inc. SCHOLASTIC, APPLE PAPERBACKS, ANIMORPHS and
associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of
Scholastic Inc.

12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 189/90123/0Printed in the U.S.A. 40First
Scholastic printing, October 1998

iv For Jeff Sampson and all his friends

v And for Michael and Jake

1

My name is Rachel.

And I was deep in this strange dream that seemed to involve me trying on
dresses at my favorite department store. Only the salesladies kept
bringing me things that were way, way too small.

So I said, "Hey, can't you tell these aren't my size?"

And the saleslady said, "Well, we don't have anything in your size."

"What?" I demanded. "You don't have anything in size three hundred and
twelve?"

Wait a minute, I thought. / don't wear size three hundred and twelve.
But at that moment I

2 caught sight of myself in the mirror. And I was in my elephant morph.

I was still growing. Bigger and bigger, till my massive bulk was
pressing people against the walls and floors and ceiling.

I looked down, and there, beneath one massive fold of elephant belly,
was a small figure in an orange hooded sweatshirt.

"Oh, my God! She killed Kenny!" someone cried.

"Aaaahhhh!" I screamed.

"Try Juniors on the second floor," the saleslady suggested. "Only please
don't use the elevator."

And then she leaped at me and started digging her fingernails into me.
They were really sharp. So I got mad and I shoved her. Only when I
shoved her, she suddenly wasn't a saleslady at all.

She was a bird.

"Aaahhh!" I yelled, sitting straight up.

There, in the darkness of my room, the large gray bird fluttered back
and knocked into my desk.

"Tobias?" I whispered. Only it wasn't a red-tailed hawk. It was like a
hawk, but gray and white.

<No, it's Aximili. You must come now. Tobias is ... missing. And Prince
Jake is in danger.>

3 I threw back the covers and my bare feet hit the floor. "What?"

<lt's David. He is a traitor.>

I was fully awake. Wide-awake and already mad. I grabbed some throw
pillows and shoved them under the blankets. Hopefully they would look
like me asleep if my mom came in to check on me.

I glanced at the clock. Late. Very late. So late it was early.

I quickly ran through a list of possible morphs. I had to be able to
fly. And it was night. I focused my mind on the image of a great horned owl.

I began to change, even as I hammered Ax with questions.

"What happened?"

<Jake, Tobias, and I watched and waited outside Cassie's barn. As you
know, Jake suspected David might have decided to turn against us.>

"That weasel! That slimy nyeeerrrrrff."

My tongue had shrunk rapidly in the middle of telling Ax what I thought
about David. Probably for the best. Ax would have asked me to define the
word I was about to use, and that wouldn't have been a good idea.

I was shrinking all this time, of course. And the brown feathers were
appearing on my skin. First as outlines, then as weirdly realistic

4 tattoos, then, quite suddenly, as actual three-dimensional feathers.

<David left the barn in his golden eagle morph. Tobias followed him. We
followed soon after, but we could not find either Tobias or David,> Ax
explained. <We went to David's home ... his former home, I should say.
We found David there and Jake spoke with him. I do not know what was
said. But the Yeerks were watching the house, and a handful of
Hork-Bajir attacked.>

<Attacked who?> I demanded sharply. <Jake or David or both?>

<l cannot be sure. But David escaped and Prince Jake followed. He asked
me to find you. He said we would need reinforcements.>

<Well, he's got the reinforcements,> I said. <Let's go!>

I fluttered my wings and hopped up to the windowsill. I looked out at a
night that was as bright to me as high noon.

I had become a great horned owl. With eyes that looked through darkness
and ears that could hear a mouse squeak at fifty feet.

<What about Tobias?> I asked Ax. I certainly hadn't missed Ax's
hesitation when he mentioned Tobias.

<l don't know for certain,> he said. <But I fear the worst. David's
morph is stronger in the

5 air than Tobias's. And Prince Jake ... he believes Tobias is dead.>

I felt my insides turn cold. For a few seconds that seemed to stretch
into hours, I couldn't move. Couldn't think. I just sat there with my
deadly talons squeezing into the soft wood of my windowsill.

Tobias? Dead?

If David had hurt Tobias, I would . . .

But what was the point in making threats? I didn't need to make threats.
I knew what I would do. So did Jake. That's why he'd sent Ax for me.

6

I. had eyes that saw every blade of grass beneath me. Eyes that noted
every small, scurrying rodent hiding in darkness. But I was blind.

All I could see was Tobias. Tobias dead? Not possible!

And David. I could see him, too. Smirking, pouting, easily offended
David. David, who half the time seemed to be as reckless as ... well,
me. But other times had been cowardly and quickly panicked.

David, the new Animorph. The one we ourselves had created after David
had stumbled across the blue box.

We'd had no other choice. Visser Three had learned that David had the
blue box, the Andalite

7 morphing cube. David's parents had been taken, forced to accept the
Yeerk slugs in their brains, and made into Controllers.

David's house had been half-destroyed in the battle that resulted. He
was known to the Yeerks. His face was burned into the memory of every
human-Controller on planet Earth. They would all be looking for him. All
searching for the boy who had the morphing cube.

So we'd made David one of us. Using the blue box, we'd made him an
Animorph. Capable of absorbing DNA from any animal he can touch and
becoming that animal for a period of two hours at a time.

He was supposed to be one of us. And he was, for a while. He was with us
on one of our most difficult missions: to rescue the leaders of the free
world from the Yeerks.

Sounds impressive, doesn't it? It would have been very impressive, if
we'd succeeded. But we had failed.

The leaders of the United States, France, Russia, Great Britain, and
Japan were meeting at a secluded beach resort to work out a Middle East
solution. It had been the ultimate target for the Yeerks. A chance to
make hosts - Controllers - of the five most powerful men on the planet.
Or four, at least. One of them - we didn't know which one - was already
a Controller.

8 We had tried to stop them. But we'd gotten ambitious. And Visser
Three, leader of the Yeerk forces on Earth, had laid a trap for us.

We'd escaped the trap, but not before David had fearfully agreed to go
over to the Yeerk side. Later he'd pretended it was all a ruse. That he
was loyal.

Now we knew better.

I flew over dark houses, and over dark parking lots, and over blazing,
brilliant, twenty-four-hour stores and gas stations. Ax led us back to
the place where he'd last seen Jake and David.

We followed the direction he'd seen them traveling.

Could we find them? And if we did, what would we find?

Suddenly, on the road below us, flashing lights moved swiftly past. A
police car. Siren off since it was night, but moving fast. It was moving
in the same direction we were.

I looked directly ahead. The mall. It was dark. The parking lot was
faintly lit by street lamps at regular intervals. That's where the cop
car was heading.

<That way,> I said to Ax.

<Do you see something?>

<No. Just a guess. But that police car is heading there. This is not a
bad neighborhood. A

9 speeding police car could mean we've found Jake and David.>

The patrol car was faster than we were. By the time we arrived at the
mall, the officers were driving from entrance to entrance, shining their
spotlight and looking for a forced entry.

A silent alarm must have gone off inside the mall. In the distance I
could see a second police car racing toward us.

I soared above the acres-large roof of the mall, silent as only an owl
can be. I intended to follow the police around the building, but then I
saw the skylight. It was a series of glass pyramids built down the
middle of the mall to let sunlight into the main section.

One triangle of glass was shattered.

<There!> I yelled to Ax.

We wheeled sharply toward the broken glass. I passed above it and looked
down. I could see glittering shards of glass on the landing below. It
was hard to tell how bright it was inside the mall, since owl eyes make
everything look bright. But it seemed to me that at least a few lights
were on.

The question was: What was waiting for me down there? David was an
Animorph. That meant he was a dangerous enemy. He had a lion morph, I
knew that for sure. And a golden eagle morph.

10 Could I take a golden eagle? No. Not as an owl.

Could I take a lion? No.

And he might be lying in wait. Lying in wait with superhuman hearing and
superhuman sight. Not to mention far more than human power.

Well, no matter how good his hearing, he wouldn't hear me. An owl's
feathers are specially evolved to make no sound at all as the wind whips
across their edges.

<Ax? Are you ready to go in? We'll need to move fast and spread out
immediately, just in case he's waiting for us.>

<l am ready,> Ax said calmly.

I spilled air from my wings, changed the angle of attack, and rocketed
down toward the jagged hole in the skylight.

Down through the glass! I cleared the reaching, tearing shards; flared
my wings; and turned my downward momentum into horizontal speed.

I blew past the marquee for the Old Navy store, barely beneath the
ceiling. At first I saw nothing. Nothing but Ax dropping down into view
and pulling an identical maneuver going the other way.

But then I saw the broken railing. It was made of thick, tubular steel
above thinner, square steel uprights.

11 All of this bent outward. As if an elephant had run into it.

I turned back and swept my gaze up and down the familiar main mall.

He was lying in a pool of blood. A tiger. Sprawled like he was asleep,
but with a shallow pool of black blood extending around his neck and head.

<Jake!> I cried and dropped down toward him.

<Rachel!> Ax yelled. <No! It could be a trap!>

I spread my wings wide and flapped back up, recovering my altitude.

Ax was right. David could be waiting for us to rush to Jake's side. And
there could be no possible doubt that it was Jake. Seven-foot-long
tigers don't cruise the mall.

<l hear breathing!> Ax said.

I hadn't bothered to listen. I'd assumed Jake was dead. But now I
focused all my senses. Yes! There were sounds of breathing. But weak . .
. reedy . . . with the sound of blood bubbling with each breath.

<He's unconscious,> I said. <0therwise he'd demorph. I don't see David.
But he could be anywhere. Anything.>

I saw a flash of light, far off down the main

12 walkway. Police lights passing one of the entrances. It would take
them a while to get inside. In the meantime they'd surround the mall and
watch all the exits.

It would be easy enough for us to get away undetected. But that wasn't
what I wanted. What I wanted was David.

13

<Ax. Demorph.> I felt weird telling Ax what to do. But Jake was down.
Not that that meant I was the leader. But I figured someone had to be.
We needed to work together.

I felt a slight quiver of doubt. Would Ax do what I asked?

But I could already see the changes in him. He would be fully Andalite soon.

<As soon as you're demorphed, go to the head of those stairs over there.
You'll be able to see Jake and cover me.>

It was a large, square opening between floors. An escalator on one end.
Stairs at the other end. Railing all around. You know how it is. Basic
mall architecture.

14 I waited impatiently for Ax to demorph. We would need firepower. And
very few things were more dangerous than an Andalite.

Ax trotted to the head of the stairs. I began to demorph. I would then
morph again and go down the escalator that came from the other
direction. I would go down that escalator as a grizzly bear. I didn't
think even a lion could do much to hurt me in that morph. And we'd have
Jake covered from both sides.

I gradually took on my normal, human shape again. It was so bizarre,
standing there in the mall. I was barefoot. Wearing just my morphing
outfit, a leotard. I knew exactly where I was, exactly what stores were
around me. After all, I spent a good part of my life in that mall.

But this wasn't the mall as I knew it. This was a place of dim lights
and deep shadows. Of threat. Of danger.

A sound!

I looked at Ax. We both strained, listening. A ringing sound. Coming
from . . . coming from a jewelry store about ten storefronts away.

Staring hard, I could see the broken glass on the floor. Someone had
knocked out the window to the jewelry store.

David! Of course. He was probably stuffing a sack full of diamonds right
now.

"Go!" I hissed to Ax. "I'll be right there!"

15 I finished demorphing and actually noticed, despite myself, that Foot
Locker was having a big sale. I began to morph again and -

I never heard him. There was no roar. No warning.

I just caught a glimpse of tan reflected in the glass of the Foot Locker
store. A low, tan rocket, skimming along the floor.

I spun!

Lion!

He leaped!

I grabbed the bent, twisted railing with one hand and threw myself over
the side.

"Aaahhh!" I cried in pain as my wrist and fingers absorbed the weight of
my body. I dangled, helpless, swinging above Jake and the floor below.
Then I got my other hand to a vertical railing and grabbed on.

But what could I do now?

David shot past and skidded to a stop. It was almost comic. Almost.

If I pulled myself back up, I'd be helpless. If I dropped, I'd break an
ankle or leg and be completely helpless.

There were two narrow crossbeams spanning the open space. Banners hung
from the crossbeams. I don't know what the banners were about. A sale,
maybe, or some special event.

16 The closest crossbeam was three feet to my left. It was maybe three
inches wide. An inch narrower than the balance beam.

I'm an amateur gymnast. But I'd neglected practice for some time. And
I'd never tried to swing and then drop onto a three-inch beam fifteen
feet or so above a hard, granite floor.

David recovered and came racing back. Ax was still not in sight.

I began to swing wildly, heart pounding the breath out of my lungs.

David came sauntering back, big lion paws silent on the floor, tail
swishing, massive, maned head lolling back and forth like some kind of
lion version of a way-too-cool dude.

<Alarm clock,> David said. <That's what the Andalite is chasing. I set it.>

I kept swinging. My legs were inscribing a wider arc. I glared at David
through the bars.

<AII I have to do is bite your fingers, Rachel. Aren't you going to beg
for mercy?> David mocked. <Nah, of course not. You're brave Rachel.>

He opened his mouth, turned his head sideways to bite into my fingers,
and . . .

I released!

I fell, looked down, saw the crossbeam too far away. One foot hit the
beam! I bent my knee and absorbed the impact. I swung my arms over my

17 head, throwing my weight, changing my center of gravity.

For a hideously long moment I teetered back and forth. My other foot
jerked and stabbed at the air. Then I felt the crossbeam. I had both
feet down!

I breathed for the first time in ages.

David reached a claw through the bars and raked at me. I felt the breeze
from his claws.

I stood, motionless, poised, and barely in control.

David glared at me with furious, yellow eyes.

<That's okay,> he said. <l'm not a murderer, you know. I wouldn't kill a
human. Now, a bird ... a tiger. . . sure.>

I stared back at the lion. The traitor. And I said, "Find a place to
hide. Because I'll make you a promise: I will kill you, David."

He turned and walked away, laughing as he retreated.

"I'll kill you!" I screamed. "I'll kill you! I'll kill you!"

18

Ax came running back, just as I was climbing back onto firm ground. I
was shaking.

<l heard you shouting,> he said.

"David was here," I said. "He tricked us. We have to get down to Jake and -"

I heard the sound of many voices. The police had gained entry.

I cursed angrily under my breath. "We'll have to hold them off!" I said.

<No,> Ax said. <Jake is unconscious. We cannot move him; he is far too
large. Your police will call for medical help.>

I took a deep breath. He was right. "They'll call Cassie's mom. She's
the closest exotic animal

19 veterinarian. But what if there are Controllers among these cops? We
need to stay with him."

<Agreed. And we must hope he revives within the next hour and a half,>
Ax added. <0therwise he will be trapped in morph.>

Flashlights were playing across the floor down the hall. The police
turned away from us, heading toward the JCPenney and temporarily out of
sight.

"We have to move fast. They'll be back."

We raced down the stationary escalator and rushed to Jake's side. Up
close I could see one of the torn veins in his neck, still pumping
slowly, still bleeding. But he was alive, at least. Alive. Unlike Tobias.

<What morph?>

"Flea would be best, but they're almost blind and almost deaf. I want to
know what's going on. Morph to fly."

We were halfway into fly morph when new cops arrived and began to walk
carefully, cautiously, down the main concourse toward us. They played
their flashlights around, looking for... looking for they didn't know what.

They were about to get a surprise, that much was for sure.

I morphed as quickly as I could, shrinking

20 rapidly. Jake's already huge orange-and-black bulk seemed to balloon
upward, rising above me like a sloped, furry wall.

I felt the gossamer wings extrude from my shoulder blades. I felt the
extra legs suddenly sprout from my chest. I felt the painless but still
awful melting of my face, the way my nose and mouth ran together, then
squirted outward to form the vile, sucking mouthparts of a fly.

But none of these things meant anything to me. Tobias was dead. Jake
might still die. And I was going to have to go after David. I was going
to have to hunt him down.

I was going to hunt him down and destroy him.

No, not destroy. That was a weasel word. It was vague, meaningless. I
was going to kill him.

I felt sick inside. It might have been the mor-phing that was
annihilating my internal organs and replacing them with the primitive
organs of a housefly.

Or it might have been the feeling that comes from rage and hate.

<Ax? Tell me something. When Jake sent you to get help, why did you come
for me and not Marco or Cassie?>

<Prince Jake was specific. Get Rachel.>

<Did he say why?>

Ax hesitated a moment. Then he said, <Jake

21 told me Tobias was probably dead. I said this was a terrible thing.
And Prince Jake said, "Yes. If David's killed Tobias, we may have to do
a terrible thing, too. Get Rachel.">

I don't know how that made me feel. I'm not a person who obsesses over
her feelings. You know what I mean? Some people can't stop "looking
inward" constantly, and that's not me.

But it definitely made me feel strange. Jake had called for me
specifically. Because he wanted someone who would do precisely what I
was planning to do.

Like I say, I'm not big on feelings, but something about that felt wrong.

And yet, as I completed the morph to fly, I knew Jake had picked the
right person. See, I cared for Tobias. I don't think I even knew how
much I cared till right then.

But if David had killed him, I would have revenge. I would make Tobias's
murderer pay.

22

I. was bathed in light.

A loud, booming, vibrating human voice said, "What the ... that's a
tiger! Frank! That's a tiger! In the mall."

"That sure as shooting is a tiger."

"What do we do with it?"

"Call it in to the sergeant. It's hurt. Need to call someone . . . and
I'll be racked if I know who. Just keep your weapon on it. It could
still be dangerous."

<Ax! Into Jake's ear,> I said.

We hit the start button for our crazy fly wings and lifted off. It took
a few seconds, using the fly's mondo bizarro shattered TV set eyes, to find

23 Jake's ear. But then we spotted a vast, triangular cave.

It was a cave full of long hairs. A cave full of resonating sounds from
outside and from the body of the tiger.

<Ax, how long has Jake been in morph?>

<l can only approximate. I believe it has been about thirty-two minutes.>

<About thirty-two minutes? That's your idea of "approximate"?>

<l am assuming he flew straight to this mall from the spot where I left
him, and morphed as soon as he reached this place,> Ax said. <lt may be
as much as thirty-five minutes.>

<Should be time enough for Cassie's mom to get here,> I said.

But Cassie's mom was not the next person to arrive. The paramedics
arrived faster. And to my amazement, they went right to work on Jake -
once they were sure the tiger was unconscious.

They put pressure on the terrible wound in Jake's neck and slowed the
bleeding. But there wasn't much else they could do.

Half an hour later, Cassie's mother arrived. So did Cassie's father. And
Cassie herself. Maybe she'd guessed that news of a wounded tiger in the
mall meant Jake.

24 <Cassie! It's me, Rachel,> I called in one-to-one thought-speak.

Of course Cassie couldn't answer. But she could hear.

"Set up for an IV. He's lost a lot of blood," Cassie's mother said in a
clipped, professional tone I'd never heard before.

<Cassie, this tiger is Jake. He's been in morph for a little over an
hour. You need to get him conscious. It was David. David attacked him.
And . . . Tobias. Tobias is . . .> I couldn't say it. I couldn't. <Just,
look, get Jake conscious, no matter what. I have Ax with me. We need to
go look for David. He may go after Marco next.>

"Wait a minute, I know this tiger," Cassie's mother said. "He's one of
ours. He's from The Gardens. No one alerted me there'd been an escape!
Okay, now squeeze the bag a couple of times to get the blood flow
started. I'm going to close that wound right here and now. He won't make
it otherwise."

<Cassie, if you hear me, just say "okay.">

"Okay," Cassie said. "Good luck."

"Good luck?" Cassie's father echoed. "We don't need luck, we have your mom."

<Ax, you ready?>

He said he was, and we flew. No one, with the possible exception of
Cassie, noticed two flies emerge from the tiger's ear.

25 As we flew off, I had to fight the fly's urgent desire to land in the
puddle of blood and take a taste.

We rose in our crazy, loopy fly way, and as I skimmed above the heads of
the paramedics, vets, and cops, I heard one of the paramedics say, "We
figure he fell through that skylight up there. The glass must have cut him."

"That must be it," Cassie's mother agreed. "Only, you know, if I didn't
know better, I'd swear this wound was made by another big cat."

"Will he live?" Cassie asked.

I didn't hear the answer. I wasn't sure I wanted to hear the answer.

I set course for the broken skylight. There were cops on the roof of the
mall but we found a place to land, out of sight behind a house-sized
air-conditioning unit.

We demorphed quickly. I could hear two police officers talking in a low
whisper just on the other side of the A.C. unit.

"A tiger, here? With no one knowing it's escaped? It must be one of the
Andalite bandits in a morph."

We knew the police force had been partly infiltrated by the Yeerks.
Still, it was a shock hearing them talk about Andalites.

"You may be right, but there's nothing we can do about it. None of the
other cops here are our people."

26 "Visser Three won't take that attitude," the first cop said,
shivering despite the fact that it was not cold. "He'll think we should
have found a way to kill it."

"Then maybe Visser Three doesn't need to hear about this."

"Yeah. No need to bother him with every minor thing that goes on. Yeah.
We keep our mouths shut."

Ax and I continued morphing again. He to his harrier morph, me to the
great horned owl again.

We flew away into the night in a straight line for Marco's house. Marco
would be asleep, unsuspecting. He was safe behind locked doors and
strong walls.

Only walls and doors meant very little to an Animorph.

I began to realize just how hard this was going to be. Visser Three had
been trying to wipe us out for a long time. He had thousands of
human-Controllers, Taxxons, Hork-Bajir, spacecraft, and all of his own
bizarre, deadly morphs.

We had just the six of us. Only ... it was just five now. And maybe four.

Just us, against a person who could become any animal he could touch. A
person who could be any living, breathing thing. A flea in your hair,

27 a cat in a tree, a bat in the night, and, when you were unprepared,
when you were vulnerable, a lion or tiger or bear.

I was starting to realize why Visser Three hated us so much.

28

The sun was just thinking about coming up as we approached Marco's
house. It was already bright as day to me, of course. But I could tell
the difference just the same. The black sky was becoming gray in the east.

I felt like I was boiling inside. Like pressure just kept building up in
me. Like I was going to explode.

Too much swirling through my brain. Tobias, dead. Maybe Jake as well.
David, a traitor with all the powers of an Animorph.

And at the same time, we had the biggest mission of our lives. The heads
of state were still meeting. Controllers, including Visser Three himself,

29 were still conspiring to enslave the most powerful of all humans.

It was too much. Way too much. I couldn't think about all that.

One thing at a time, Rachel, I silently told myself. Priorities: David
was number one. Everything else was number two.

David had to be stopped. Before he could stop us.

But still, somewhere in the back of my mind, it bothered me that Jake
had sent Ax to get me. Me, specifically. Once he knew that extreme
measures might be taken, he said, "Get Rachel."

What did that mean? Was that how Jake thought of me? As some crazed,
violent nut who would do anything?

No, of course not. He just knew I was good in a fight. That's all. It
didn't mean anything.

Besides, wasn't it true? another part of my mind argued. Wasn't it true?
Wasn't I just the person to call if you needed to kill an Animorph?

Marco's house. Marco's window. Open.

Open? Did Marco leave his window open? Yes, if he'd already flown out of
it. Maybe that was it. Maybe Marco wasn't home, had already left. Maybe
he'd sensed we needed him.

But as I wheeled to traverse the back of the

30 house, bringing myself closer to the window, I saw Marco inside, in bed.

<This smells bad,> I said to Ax.

<You have a strong sense of smell in that morph?>

<l meant it, you know, figuratively. Visser Three laid one trap for us.
David laid another. I'm done walking into traps.>

< Agreed. >

<Marco!> I called in thought-speak. <Marco! Wake up! Wake up, now!>

I wanted to see him wake up and look around. I wanted to make sure he
was alone in the room. He was asleep facedown. He rolled halfway over
and gave the blankets a kick.

<Wake up!> I yelled.

Suddenly he sat up and looked around. He scratched his face. Then he
looked around again.

<Marco, it's me, Rachel. I'm outside. Are you alone in your room?>

He didn't smile or leer. He just nodded. Yes, he was alone.

<0kay, let's go,> I said.

Ax was ahead of me. He swooped down toward the window. Marco stood
watching, smiling almost. His hands were behind his back.

Swoooosh! Ax swooped through the window and -

31 Marco pulled his hands out from behind his back. The Louisville
Slugger swung in a short, sharp arc.

WHAM!

The bat hit Ax square in the face. I saw a piece of shattered beak go
flying, twirling away like shrapnel from an explosion.

Ax fell to the grass outside. Marco laughed quietly. I saw his sides shake.

But of course, it was not Marco at all.

David. David had morphed Marco.

Ax lay on the grass, unmoving. Marco/David held up one finger. Then
another. Then another. One, two, three.

He was counting how many of us he'd killed.

One, two, three: Tobias, Jake, Ax.

But... it should have been four! What about Marco?

Of course! Marco was still alive because Marco had been human. David had
said it himself: He would never take a human life. He would only kill
animals. A hawk, a tiger, a harrier. Not a human.

As I watched, I saw Marco/David begin to blur. The nose and eyes became
subtly different. Now he was just David. But he was still morphing when
he stepped back out of sight.

I had to think. David was wiping us out, one

32 by one. What was his next move? What was his next morph? Jake would
know. Jake was the leader, not me.

I had to get to Ax. No! That's what David wanted.

No, I had to get to Marco. The real Marco, who was probably unconscious
inside the house.

No, wait, that wasn't right, either.

And then the golden eagle came flapping out of the window. Another of
David's morphs.

It was one-on-one. Him and me. Golden eagle against owl. He was faster.
Stronger. But it was still mostly dark and the air was cool, with none
of the warm lift it would have later in the day after the sun came up
and baked the ground.

He was faster and stronger, but the night belonged to me.

I turned and raced away. He followed. Ax lay still on the damp grass.
But he was breathing. And to my infinite relief, he was no longer
entirely a harrier.

<Follow me, David,> I said. <We'll see who wins this aerial dogfight.>

<Brave words,> he sneered. <But you're mine. Just like that Bird-boy of
yours was mine.>

And that's when the pressure inside me evaporated. I was cold again.
Cold as a frozen lake. I knew what to do. And I wanted to do it.

33 I shouldn't resent Jake for thinking of me, I realized. It's what
made him a good leader: He knew us all. He knew me.

<For you, Tobias,> I whispered. And I led David toward his doom.

34

I. flew at top speed. But David was faster. His huge wings plowed
through the air.

But see, I had an eagle morph, too. I know what eagles can do and what
they cannot do. I know it like no human being can possibly know it.

I knew exactly how quickly David could turn, how well he could
accelerate or slow down. I knew so precisely what David could see that I
might as well have been looking through his eyes.

I wanted him to see me. But he couldn't reach me, not yet. Not until the
time and place I had chosen.

35 Silently I swooped low across rooftops, swerved around trees,
swooshed down the shadowed setbacks between homes. I skimmed fences and
dropped behind them, out of sight, to suddenly change direction and gain
a few feet of breathing room. I shot through gaps in the trees, gaps too
narrow for David's vast wings.

But always he kept up. He never gained too much, and I never allowed him
to lose me.

<You're very good, Rachel,> he said. <You know, I wish I didn't have to
do this.>

<Yeah, but you just can't help yourself,> I sneered.

<You all left me no choice! You forced me. What was I supposed to do?
Let Jake order me around, let him get me killed? Spend the rest of my
life hiding?>

<What do you want, pity?>

<l lost my family. Everything! Thanks to all of you.>

<What are you, nuts? We're not your problem. Or at least we weren't
until you turned against us.>

I was nearing the most dangerous part of the chase. As long as there
were trees and buildings, I could take advantage of my smaller size and
superior night vision. But now we were emerging over an open field,
leaving the houses behind us.

36 Just a hundred yards or so to go.

David poured on the speed. Those huge wings propelled him after me.

I dodged. But he anticipated my move. He cut the angle and came within
two feet of me!

But I could see my target in the night. I could see the high power lines.

Could David see them?

Up, up I went, my wings screaming from the effort.

But now David was all over me. Within five feet of the wires, I felt
those wings shadow me.

<Aaaahhh!> Sharp pain, as steel-strong talons sank into the muscles of
my back.

<Noooooo!> I screamed in frustration. I stopped moving forward. My wings
beat uselessly. I wasn't going to reach the wires. I wasn't going to
watch David fry on ten thousand volts.

Talons squeezed harder. . . harder... I lost control of the muscles in
the back half of my body. One of the talons was sinking through my
flesh, trying to reach my heart.

David began to use his wicked, curved beak on me, tearing at the back of
my head.

I was losing. The realization terrified me. Not because it meant I would
die. But because it meant David would win.

Tobias . . . Jake . . .

David was going to win. My mind began shutting

37 down. / should demorph, I told myself. But no, I was too high up. And
it was so hard to concentrate. So hard to focus.

David was actually carrying me higher, lifting me up. That way, if I did
demorph, I'd fall to my death.

<Sorry, Rachel,> David said. <But after all, birds die all the time,
don't they?>

And that's when it happened.

I saw it drop from out of nowhere. Out of the sky. Out of the clouds it
dropped.

Wings back, talons raked forward.

It hit David in the back of his head! Eagle feathers flew. David
screamed in pain.

And Tobias - yes, Tobias - said in private thought-speak, <Rachel, David
is really getting to be a pain in the butt>

David released me. My wings flapped again. I was hurt, but David
couldn't know how badly. And he didn't want to fight two at once. He
turned and flew away.

<Tobias?> I cried. <But you're supposed to be dead.>

<l am? Who, me?>

38

Tobias was alive.

It turned out that David had killed a red-tailed hawk. And Jake had seen
that dead hawk. Only it was a different red-tail.

Tobias had simply lost David early in the evening and had been searching
for him ever since.

Jake survived. Cassie found a way to jab a big syringe of adrenaline
into him. Enough to wake him up just as her mom was scrubbing up for
surgery back at The Gardens.

He demorphed to human and calmly walked out of the zoo. He had to wait
two hours for a city bus, but fortunately, Cassie found him a pair of
shoes to wear.

39 Cassie's mother was seriously freaked. Not only had a near-dead tiger
simply disappeared. He seemed to have reappeared back in his
environment. And there were no signs of any injuries.

Cassie explained that she did a lot of shrugging and kept saying, "I
can't believe it, either, Mom. I was only out of the room for a second."

Of course, that tiger was the one whose DNA Jake had originally
acquired. Same tiger, but not the same tiger.

Ax was fine. He'd only been stunned. He demorphed, terrified some person
driving by, remorphed, and came looking for me.

As for Marco . . .well, Marco awakened to find David standing over him
with the baseball bat. He'd been tied up and locked in his closet.

It took him the rest of the night to get loose.

It had been a bizarre night. But the most bizarre thing was that when it
was all over, we had to go to school.

That's right, school. On zero hours of sleep.

I was so tired my skin was vibrating. I couldn't believe I hadn't been
busted by my mom. I got home that morning just about three seconds
before my alarm clock went off. And five minutes later she was banging
on my door, telling me to get up and help her get my youngest sister,
Sarah, ready for school.

The first few periods I just sat and stared at

40 the blackboard like someone in a coma. By lunchtime I was reviving a
little, but it was mostly hunger keeping me awake.

I sat with Cassie. She'd probably gotten three, maybe four hours of
sleep. And I hated her for it. Jake grabbed his tray and sat down with
us. Normally, we don't all eat together because we don't want people
thinking of us as a clique of some kind. That would be bad for security.

But this time we just didn't care. We were a very tired little group of
superheroes. I mean, if Visser Three could have seen us right then, he'd
have stopped worrying. We didn't look like we could kick butt on a
four-year-old, let alone on the entire Yeerk Empire.

"Hi," Jake said and slumped into his seat.

"Uh," I grunted.

"How are you doing, Jake?" Cassie asked.

"Uh," he said encouragingly.

"Well, this is going to be a perky little group," Cassie said, laughing.
"Obviously, we need a Starbucks here in the cafeteria. You two could use
some coffee."

"Stop. Talking," I said. I snarled a little. I would have snarled more,
but I was too tired.

Of course, Cassie wasn't in the least bit intimidated. "You're so grumpy
when you lose a Iittle sleep."

41 We saw Marco heading toward us. He had no tray. But he was smiling.
Well, sure, why not? He'd slept half the night and spent the rest of the
night in a nice dark closet.

"Hi, guys, how's it going?" Marco said. He swung his leg over the back
of the chair and sat down. Tired as I was, that set alarm bells ringing
in my head. Marco doesn't swing his leg over chairs. And Marco doesn't
act that perky, even when he's had a full night of sleep.

I guess Jake had the same reaction. I glanced at him, and all of a
sudden his eyes weren't glazed and unfocused anymore.

"David, I presume," Jake said harshly.

Marco smiled. And then I saw Marco - another Marco, just starting
through the food line.

Cassie was bewildered. She looked from Jake to me. I nodded my head
significantly toward the real Marco.

"I'll stop him," Cassie said, jumping up from her seat.

The last thing anyone wanted was two Marcos at one table. There was a
joke in there somewhere, but I was too busy to think about it.

"What do you want?" Jake demanded.

David/Marco smirked. "What? No small talk? No chitchat?"

I couldn't morph, not there in front of a whole

42 cafeteria full of yelling, laughing, talking kids. But I could reach
for my fork. And I could wonder what the tines would do if they were
driven hard enough into - I held on to the fork.

"I asked what you want," Jake said calmly.

"I want the blue box. I found it. It's mine. I want it."

Jake actually smiled. "Now, what do you think the odds are of me
agreeing to that?"

Marco/David flushed angrily. "You have no choice, big man. You can't
fight me. I have the same powers you have. And I'm smarter than you are,
so I'll win."

"There are six ... I mean, five... of us," Jake said.

I shot Jake a look. He ignored me. I got the message: No need to tell
David that Tobias had survived. The less he knew, the better.

"I want the box," David said stubbornly.

"What for?" I said. "So you can give it as a birthday present to Visser
Three?"

Cassie came back and sat down next to David. She managed to move her
chair closer to his without being obvious about it. It was deliberate,
of course. She wanted him to have to deal with her as a human being, not
as an enemy.

David blinked. He leaned away from Cassie. Cassie just gave him her big
"understanding" look.

"David, I know you've been through a lot,"

43 Cassie said in a very quiet voice. David had to lean closer to hear.
"I know your life has gone terribly wrong. I know you're lonely. I know
you're afraid. And I know that deep down inside you feel very sorry for
what happened last night. But you must know that you cannot bargain with
Visser Three. He won't give you what you want."

David shot her a sharp, surprised look. So did I.

"What bargain?" I asked.

Cassie took a forkful of her food and chewed it carefully. "Shall I tell
them, David, or would you like to?" Getting no answer from him, she
sighed and said, "David wants the box so he can ransom his parents.
Isn't that right, David? You want Visser Three to release your parents
so you can have a home again."

For a brief moment there was something vulnerable on the face David had
copied from Marco. But then his eyes hardened.

"That's okay, I don't need the box. I have something else Visser Three
wants. See, I know that the Animorphs aren't Andalite bandits. I know
their names. Their addresses. I give him you," he said, looking at Jake.
"And you," he added, looking at me. "And then, you know what? He can do
to you like he did to my parents. And he can get his blue box from you."

David pushed his chair back noisily. He stood up and walked away.

44

David walked away. The real Marco headed toward us, looking about like I
felt.

I got up.

"Rachel, what are you doing?" Cassie asked. She put out a hand to grab
my arm.

But Jake said, "Let her go."

I followed David's back as he wove through the kids just coming in. In
the empty hallway outside, David began to change subtly. He was
demorphing. By the time he reached the door to the quad, he was himself
again. He must have been close to the two-hour limit to risk it.

I caught up with him as he started to trot across the grass. I grabbed
his shoulder and

45 spun him around. I was keyed up, throbbing with barely contained rage.

"You looking for a fight right here?" he asked.

"Why not?" I snapped.

He laughed, a little uncertainly. "You would never morph here in the open."

"I don't need a morph to handle you."

"You know, maybe you forget this sometimes, but you are a girl, Rachel."

"And you're a worm," I shot back. "Want to see who wins that fight?"

"Pretty upset over that Bird-boy, aren't you? What, did you like him or
something?" He grinned. "That's it, isn't it? Aww, how sweet. Too bad.
But you know, birds have a short life span."

"So do worms."

"What are you doing? Trying to scare me?"

"Nah. I wouldn't want to scare you. I just want to tell you something.
You rat us out to Visser Three, we'll know. We have sources inside the
Yeerk organization."

He made a snorting noise. "Yeah, right."

"How do you think we knew the Yeerks were moving against the President
and the others? How do you think we learned that one of those heads of
state was a Controller?"

David looked a little less cocky. I could see the wheels turning in his
head as he realized I

46 was telling the truth. We hadn't told David about Erek and the other
Chee.

"So see, you sell us out to Visser Three, we will know," I said.

He shrugged. "Big deal. Nothing you can do about it."

"Yeah, you're probably right," I said. "Even if we were warned, we
wouldn't last long." I leaned close, close enough to whisper in his ear.
"But some of us would last a while, you little creep. Long enough to
make sure that your parents . . . well, use your imagination."

He stepped back, drew back his fist, and swung on me. I dodged the blow.
I grabbed his head with one arm and jammed the fork against his ear.

I fought a nauseating urge to twist the fork, to make him scream in pain.

"You want a war between you and us, that's one thing. We'll play that
out," I said. "But you try and sell us out to Visser Three, and your
little family will never get put back together again. Never!"

This time I was the one to turn and walk away.

I was shaking. The muscles in my neck were twitching. Suddenly I had a
raging headache. My ears were ringing.

I was exhausted, yes. But it was more than

47 that. I was high on adrenaline. High on the rush of power and violence.

What had I just done? In all the time we'd been fighting the Yeerks, I'd
never made a threat like that. What was the matter with me?

I felt... not exactly ashamed. But I knew I never wanted to talk to
Cassie about what I'd just told David. Or Tobias. Or even Marco.

And as for Jake, I found myself filled with a terrifying surge of pure,
utter hatred for him. I couldn't begin to explain it. But I swear at
that moment I hated Jake far more than I did David.

I should have gone back to the cafeteria. I should have told them all
what had happened. But Jake already knew, didn't he? Jake, the smart,
determined leader, already knew all about me.

And I couldn't face him. I couldn't face what he knew about me.

48

Jake's parents came back that evening. They'd been out of town helping
with a cousin of Jake's and mine. The cousin's name was Saddler. He was
an obnoxious kid, but he'd been badly hurt in an accident. Now he was
being moved to the children's hospital near us.

His relatives were staying with Jake and his family. But we were
expected to help out, too, even though my mom hasn't really gotten along
with Saddler's family since my parents' divorce.

I was informed of all this when I got home from school. I said "fine"
and staggered up to my bed, hit the pillow facedown, and didn't move.

49 But as tired as I was, sleep wouldn't come. It was a helpless
feeling. Being so exhausted and so unable to sleep.

My brain kept buzzing away, like I'd consumed six pots of coffee or
something.

I kept wondering: Had I always been like this? Back before the
Animorphs, back before that encounter with a dying alien who changed our
lives, who had I been?

I tried to remember, but it wasn't like I was thinking about myself. It
was like I was remembering some girl I used to know. Like she was an
acquaintance I'd forgotten about until someone reminded me. It was like,
"Oh, yeah, Rachel. I remember her."

I'd been very into gymnastics, I knew that. Shopping. I guess I'd never
exactly been a happy-go-lucky party girl. But I tried to imagine myself
back then, and tried to imagine grinding the tines of a fork into
someone's ear while I threatened his family.

I almost laughed. It was crazy. I mean, I'm not someone raised in an
abusive family or anything. Yeah, my folks got divorced, but probably a
third of the kids in school have divorced parents, and another third
wish their parents would divorce.

I'd never had to wonder if my parents loved

50 me. I knew they did. They told me. And they showed me.

I wasn't on drugs or anything. But somehow, someway, I had gone from
being this occasionally sharp-tongued girl, to being . . . well, as
Marco would say, Xena: Warrior Princess.

What made me feel stupid was that I hadn't realized I was changing. But
everyone else obviously did. Jake did. When he knew it was coming down
to kill-or-be-killed with David, he'd sent Ax to get me. Not Marco. Not
Cassie. "Get Rachel."

And in the cafeteria he had let me go, knowing what I would do.
Afterward, I'd seen Cassie in sixth period. She didn't ask me what had
happened. She didn't ask me what I'd said to David. She'd known.

I could have said, "Look at all the battles I've been through." It would
have been a good excuse. Except that Cassie'd gone through the same
battles. And Marco. And Tobias.

Would Tobias have done what I did? That was the killer question, see.
Because Tobias lived life as a predator now. He'd have every excuse in
the world. But I wondered if even he would have gone as far as I'd gone.

And, I wondered something else. What if David ignored my threat? Would I
... could I ...

"Rachel! Phone! What are you, deaf?"

51 I jerked upright. It was dark outside my window. "What?" I asked for
no particular reason.

Jordan, my younger sister, stuck her head into the room. "It's Jake.
He's on the phone."

I sat up. My head was buzzing. I rolled over and grabbed the phone.
"Yeah?" I said, pushing my hair more or less into place.

"It's time," Jake said. "That little extra-credit project we've been
working on. It's time for us to give it another shot."

"Oh. Yeah. I'll be right over. Soon as I, you know."

Man, I was stupid from lack of sleep. We still had a mission. We'd
failed yesterday evening and had almost been trapped by Visser Three.

Yesterday? Had it really only been yesterday? It seemed impossible, with
all that had gone on.

I splashed cold water on my face and ran a comb through my hair. Then I
went downstairs to face my mom and try to think up a good excuse why I
had to go over to Cassie's house.

"Rachel!" my mother said as she spotted me coming down the stairs.
"Good. I need you to watch Sarah. I'm going over to the hospital to be
with Saddler's mom and dad."

I was about halfway ready to say, "Fine. That sure beats trying yet
again to bust into some heavily guarded compound and getting our brains
beat in."

52 But that wouldn't do. "You want me to babysit for Sarah and Jordan?"

"No one baby-sits me!" Jordan said hotly.

"Oh, yeah?" I mocked. "You are either the baby-sitter or the
baby-sittee. And you are a baby-sittee."

"Mom! No way! I can take care of Sarah!" Jordan protested.

"Come on, little babies," I added for good measure.

Well, you can guess where it went from there. Ten minutes later I was
out the door. And ten minutes after that I was demorphing inside
Cassie's barn.

Everyone else was already there. Ax, Tobias, Jake, Cassie, and Marco. At
least, I assumed it was Marco and not David in morph.

"Marco," I said, once I had demorphed. "You know you're a toad?"

"Kiss me and I'll become a prince," he said without hesitation. "I'll be
The Prince Formerly Known As Toad. You know you want me. You can't help
it. After all, you're a female and I'm ... well, I'm me."

"Yeah, that's the real Marco," I said dryly.

Cassie laughed. "Believe me, we all did the same kind of thing. I asked
him to tell me what it was like when we morphed trout. Just to test his
memory."

53 "And I answered that it wasn't bad except that the cracker-crumb
coating chafed a little and I was allergic to tartar sauce. Now can you
all stop playing that game? I'm afraid I'll miss a punch line and Rachel
will morph to grizzly and eat me before I have a chance to say anything."

"Okay, down to business," Jake said. He sent Ax a significant look and
jerked his head toward me.

<Prince Jake would like me to tell you that we are operating under the
assumption that David may be here in the barn,> Ax said in private
thought-speak. <He is concerned that David may be here in insect morph,
listening to our plans. So our plans will be different than we are
discussing here.>

I gave a very slight nod. Of course. I'd forgotten. David was one of us,
at least in terms of his powers. But Jake hadn't forgotten.

Jake outlined a plan that was basically the same as our previous attempt
to infiltrate the banquet at the resort. There were differences, just so
it would sound convincing. And we all raised various objections, just to
sound even more convincing.

But it wasn't till we were morphed and flying away that Jake told me
what he really had in mind.

54 <0h, Rachel's gonna love this,> Marco said with a laugh.

He was right. The plan was outrageous, insane, out of control, and violent.

And heaven help me, I liked it.

55

It was a Marriott resort by the ocean. It had been taken over for a
summit meeting by the President of the United States, the prime minister
of Great Britain, the premier of France, the president of Russia, and
the prime minister of Japan.

Was there security? Oh, yeah. There was security. There were more guys
in dark suits and sunglasses with microphones in their ears than had
ever come together in one place before. It was like an international
Secret Service convention.

That was bad enough. But what was worse was the fact that some of those
security guys were Controllers. Some of the U.S. Secret Service,

56 for sure. Probably some of the French, British, Russian, and
Japanese, too.

And we knew Visser Three was there, doing everything within his twisted,
evil imagination to make Controllers of all these powerful men.

We also knew that at least one of the heads of state - we didn't know
which one - was already a Controller.

So basically, this was a tough target. Even for us. There were just way
too many guys looking to shoot anything suspicious.

It was also a mission we had to do. Period. Had to. If the Yeerks made
Controllers of these guys, that was it. Game over.

We had tried a subtle approach. We'd walked into a trap.

Now Jake was ready for the less-than-subtle approach. This would be like
when you're in a chess game and you know you're going to lose so you
grab the board and throw it across the room.

That was the plan.

First stop, The Gardens. I was all set on morphs. But Tobias, Cassie,
Ax, and Marco needed something new for their night's work.

We needed morphs that could make a big mess. And morphs that could take
getting shot by handguns. We all needed what Jake and I already had.

Once that was done we flew straight out to

57 sea as seagulls. It was a tough flight. The wind was getting stronger
by the minute, racing in across impressive waves. And then the lightning
started.

<Yaahh!> Marco yelled as the first jagged bolt lit up the clouds and the
waves.

It was one bolt, a long pause, then another. Another pause, and suddenly
it was as if a light show had begun. Bolts of lightning that looked as
thick as trees pushed their jerking way across the sky. Huge bolts
struck the waves again and again all around us, even though we were only
a few hundred yards from shore.

And the thunder! Imagine the loudest thunder you've ever heard, then
multiply it by five. It was like my head was stuck inside a steel drum
and someone was hitting it with sledge hammers.

Lightning, thunder, and then the rain began to pour.

<That's nice,> Marco said. <That's just perfect>

<Jake, we're not going to make any more distance against this wind,>
Tobias said. Especially not with wet feathers.>

<Yeah, you're right,> Jake agreed. <We'll swim the rest of the way along
the coast.>

<No problem. All we have to do is land in the water,> I said.

58 <Seagulls land in water all the time,> Cassie pointed out. <Although
maybe not in the middle of a hurricane . . .>

No doubt she was right. But seagull or not, let me tell you, it was a
fairly terrifying experience.

Here's the thing. You're a small, white bird. Smaller than an average
chicken. The ocean is black as coal, aside from the pale phosphoresence
as some of the waves crest. You basically can't see the waves at all
because the clouds are totally covering the moon and the stars. But
every few seconds the entire seascape is lit up by lightning. Sometimes
it's a dim sort of light cast by some far-off bolt whose thunder takes
ten seconds to reach you. Other times the lightning is closer, and then
the waves are turned into brilliant silver slopes and black, triangular
shadows, just long enough to let you realize how tall the waves are.

I floated down, following Jake, for once not rushing out ahead. I have a
lot of respect for the ocean.

I almost had to fight to go lower, the wind was so strong.Thirty feet up
... twenty feet. . .

Lightning!

Suddenly the water was no longer twenty feet below me. It was rushing
straight up at me. It was like being in a plane and flying over a
mountain, only suddenly the mountain swells up like a

59 zit about to pop and up it comes while all you can do is wait for it.

PLOOSH!

Water foamed over me. But I bobbed easily to the surface, like a cork. I
almost laughed. It was easy! I was too buoyant to sink. As I tucked my
wings back, it felt just like bodysurfing.

We landed yards apart, of course. There was no way to be more precise. I
caught lightning glimpses of the others, tiny white birds riding big
black waves.

<Everyone down okay?> Jake called out.

One by one, we answered.

<0kay, now the tough part.>

He didn't have to explain. We all knew. We were going to morph to
dolphin. Once we were dolphin, everything would be fine. Dolphins own
the ocean.

But to get to dolphin, we'd have to become human again. And maybe a
seagull or a dolphin belonged out in these two-story waves, but no human
being did.

60

<This is going to be rough,> Jake said. <Everyone be very careful.>

<Jake, why don't we do this one at a time?> Cassie suggested. <l'll go
first. Then I can help the others.>

<0kay,> Jake said. <Cassie morphs first. She's fastest.>

It made sense. Cassie was the best at morph-ing. Jake was using her for
her special talent. Like he used Marco for his suspicious mind. Like he
used Ax for his knowledge of all things alien. Like he used Tobias for
his raptor eyes and ears.

Like he used me. For what? For my recklessness? For something dark that
lived inside me?

Cassie's thought-speak voice fell silent as she

61 began to morph. I saw her only once in a one-second burst of electric
light. She was a twisting, misshapen mess of waterlogged feathers and
skin with an eerie, Halloween face.

I heard her yelp in surprise and when next the lightning flashed, all I
could see was a human hand raised above the water.

<Cassie!> I cried. <Cassie!>

No answer! She was drowning. Stupid to let her go first. She was a great
morpher, but I was a better swimmer. I began to demorph as fast as I could.

<Jake, she's drowning!> I yelled.

<Don't do anything stupid, Rachel. She'll pull it out.>

I thought bull, but I kept quiet and continued growing, heavier and
heavier, less and less buoyant. Soon I was a fifty-pound mass with a
handful of feathers. I began to sink. I sucked at the air and filled my
lungs, just as a wave crashed down and buried me.

I expected to bob right back up. But the wave had driven me down. And I
had no hands to swim with! My feet were huge bird claws, only now
beginning to web up.

Panic!

No, no! I ordered myself, enraged by my momentary terror. Keep morphing!
It's the only way.

But my lungs were burning already. I'd gone

62 from tiny seagull lungs to human lungs and there wasn't an ounce of
air in my body.

I craned my head back to look up. But was it up? I couldn't be sure. It
was dark all around me. Dark, as if I'd fallen into a vat of ink. Where
was up?

I was swimming now, kicking with human feet and snatching at the water
with human hands. But I couldn't feel gravity. I couldn't tell if I was
rising or simply plowing myself further and further down.

And then something bumped against me. I couldn't see it, but I could
feel rubbery skin.

<Relax, Rachel,> Cassie said. <You're going the wrong way.>

She pushed her dolphin nose under me and propelled me up and up - had I
sunk that far? - till my face exploded upward, passing from black water
into falling rain.

I swallowed air, swallowed water, slipped back under when a wave took
me, then was lifted once more into the air.

I realized I was straddling the dolphin's back. I sagged forward and
hugged Cassie's back. "Thanks," I managed to gasp.

<Take a minute. When you're ready I'll keep you above water till you're
dolphin enough.>

Ten minutes later we all had morphed to dolphin. Cassie supported me,
then she and I supported

63 Jake. The rest morphed quickly after that. Tobias went last. He had
to pass through red-tailed phase, so we all worked to keep him above water.

<Great weather for this,> Marco grumbled. <What is this, a hurricane?
It's not bad enough being a half-bird, half-human trying to swim. We
gotta do it in the middle of a typhoon?>

<Water,> Tobias said darkly. <See, this is what happens. Water is always
trouble. Up in the sky you can at least see what's going on.>

<And yet all the worry I felt seems to have evaporated,> Ax said. <l
feel . . . quite relaxed. Happy, even.>

<Dolphin brain,> Marco said.

It was true, of course. It's very hard to stay upset when you're in
dolphin morph. A dolphin in the ocean is like a kid in a candy store.
Like Cassie at a nature preserve. Or like me at a department store sale.

<Well, we're all alive, so let's get going. We're already probably
late,> Jake said.

Approximately ten minutes behind the schedule we discussed,> Ax said.

<Let's motor,> I said.

We took off, a happy, contented pod of dolphins, slipping in and out of
the water. We plowed through the almost vertical walls of advancing
waves, suddenly going airborne out the back sides.

64 Storm? What storm? Waves? Waves were fun! Darkness? Who cared? We
could echolocate. Wind? It was cool. It could make you soar further when
you jumped. Thunder? Just a noise.

As for lightning . . . well, if you swim underwater and you roll onto
your side so you can point one eye straight up, the lightning becomes
this huge flashbulb. The entire surface of the water flashes brilliant
silver, but it's a twisted, mottled silver, like a platter someone has
battered with a hammer.

One eye up to the lightning, one eye down into darkness. It didn't
bother the dolphin brain. The dolphin brain didn't really have the
emotion of fear. Maybe other creatures knew fear, but the dolphin brain
was not programmed for it.

Unless, of course, I suddenly saw a black-and-white pinto pony pattern.
That would mean a killer whale. And then the dolphin instinct for
survival would kick in.

But towering waves? Lightning? Howling wind? Black water? They meant
nothing to me.

We ran along the coast till a leap in the air revealed the
far-too-familiar lights of the Marriott resort. And now my human mind
came back full force, with all its own fears and rages.

See, we weren't done morphing in the water. And this time it would be in
the surf.

65

We echolocated a submarine about a mile offshore. Dangerously close, I
thought. And of course we were very aware of a number of fast Coast
Guard patrol boats cruising up and down through the surging sea.

They played searchlights over the water. But naturally, it was child's
play for a dolphin to avoid them.

They disappeared at last behind a small, rugged island about a mile
offshore. It was nothing but a jumble of rocks, really. Plus a couple of
scruffy trees. I popped up out of the water to get a better look. I
didn't know why, then, but something about that desolate place made me edgy.

66 Or at least as edgy as you can get while you're a dolphin.

We swam toward shore, the six of us abreast. I could echolocate the
rising slope of the seabed. It was only a few feet deep and even the
dolphin brain was nervous as we felt the waves crashing down and almost
slamming us into sand and gravel and broken shells.

<Are we close enough?> Marco wondered.

<We need to get as close as we can,> Cassie said. <A little more.>

Soon my gray rubber belly was scraping the sand and my tail was almost
useless.

<0kay, now,> Cassie said. <0ur morphs should be able to power up out of
this depth.>

I began to demorph. I wasn't looking forward to it. This was practically
Hawaii-sized surf. The waves gained power as they came rushing up the
sloping seabed. All that water just kept piling higher and higher till
it was a rushing, teetering, two-story wall of water.

I tried to time it, but there was no way. A wave caught me mid-morph and
slammed me facedown into the sand. Worst of all, we could not allow
ourselves to be washed up onto the beach. The beach was crawling with
security patrols. Guys in night-vision goggles who saw everything as
though it were illuminated by a green sun.

67 We could not be seen till we were ready. For that reason the surf was
perfect. For every other reason, it was definitely not.

I made it to human morph and was nailed by a wave of exhaustion almost
as devastating as the real waves. Morphing wears you out. Morphing
repeatedly on no sleep is beyond exhausting.

I swear I could have just lain down in the water and fallen asleep. But
then I was propelled almost headfirst into the wet seabed.

I fought my way back up and grimly set about morphing yet again.

Now things began to change for the better. I was morphing an African
elephant. Tons of African elephant. As I passed my first ton, I found
the surf didn't bother me quite as much.

I backed further out to sea to conceal my growing bulk and keep the very
recognizable elephant head silhouette from being seen onshore.

I looked left from one eye and right from the other. I saw the rest of
my friends growing vast and bulky in the surf.

Jake was in his rhinoceros morph. Marco had chosen to acquire that same
animal. Cassie, Tobias, Ax, and I were a matched set of elephants.

68 The elephant and rhino morphs had several things in common. They were
faster than they looked. It took more than a handgun to knock them down.
And people who saw them coming had a tendency to want to run away.

We were, I don't know, maybe fifteen tons of bone and horn and tusk and
muscle.

<Ready?> Jake asked.

<Ready,> Marco answered.

<This animal's nose moves quite delicately,> Ax said.

I could see fairly well with the elephant's eyes, unlike Jake and Marco,
who were half-blind. I could see the softly lit bungalows just off the
beach. I could see the taller, brightly lit hotel building beyond.

Our goal was the bungalows. They housed the world leaders. Our plan was
painfully simple. If we couldn't stop the Yeerks by subtle means, we'd
just tear the place apart. Then, most likely, the big banquet where
Visser Three hoped to strike would be canceled.

Like I said, not a brilliant plan. But you know what? As tired, mad,
scared, annoyed, worried, and filled with self-doubt as I was at that
moment, the sweet simplicity of it all seemed like pure genius to me.

<Hey, Marco, who's that comic book character

69 who's always yelling, "It's butt-kicking time"?> I asked.

<That's the Thing. And what he says is, "It's clobberin' time.">

<Yeah? Well, whatever. Let's go do some serious stomping!>

70

You almost had to feel sorry for the Secret Service and all the other
security guys on the beach, huddling in the rain beneath their ponchos
while they gazed through night-vision goggles. One minute it's nothing
but waves and lightning. The next minute it looks like a small pod of
whales has decided to get up out of the ocean and go hang out on the beach.

I mean, their training must have prepared them for almost anything. But
not, definitely not for the possibility that two rhinos and four African
elephants would come trumpeting and snorting out of a
one-hundred-year-storm surf.

"Hhhrrrreeeyyaaahhhh!" I announced myself.

I heard a human voice say, "What the -?"

71 I broke into a charging run. I had to deal with a little bit of a
slope, but I had plenty of power and legs the size of tree trunks.

I raised my trunk high and bellowed again.

"Hhhrrrreeee-uh!"

I was running full tilt. So were the others. Suddenly, the lightning
flashed and I could see half a dozen utterly baffled men and women in
drenched rain slickers, staring at us with six identical open mouths.

Only one reacted like he had a clue. He drew his gun and started firing.
Right at me.

BLAM! BLAM!

You'd think a trained marksman could hit an elephant. But I guess it
isn't all that easy in a pitch-black night with rain in your face.

Chances were the guy who was firing at me was a Controller. A normal
human's first thought would not be to shoot an elephant on the beach.

I went at the man, full speed.

BLAM! BLAM!

The muzzle flash was like tiny echoes of the lightning. This time I felt
a bullet hit me in the shoulder. It didn't hurt, exactly. I was just
sort of aware of it.

He didn't get a chance to fire again. I lowered my head, bringing my
hugely long tusks into line with the gunman, and he turned and ran.

72 <Remember, we have to assume these are all innocent humans,> Jake said.

His thought-speak voice came to me just as I was considering whether I
should run the guy through with my tusks or trample him. Of course, Jake
was right. These were innocent bystanders. Mostly.

We were here to wreak havoc and scare the heck out of everyone, but not
to hurt anyone on purpose.

Now other guards had decided they'd better shoot at us, too. All down
the beach came the sound of gunfire, along with shouts and cries that
were instantly snatched away by the howling wind.

<Everyone ready?> Jake called. <Charge!>

Marco laughed. <Chargel I bet he's always wanted to say that.>

We charged. Like some mondo freak-o version of Gettysburg, we raced up
the beach toward the two closest bungalows.

Fifty yards!

Twenty yards!

I was eating up the beach, my big round feet plowing deep with each step.

A line of bushes. I barely registered thorny scrapes on my gray leather
hide.

I was huge! I was a tank! I was running at full speed, my sail-like ears
flapping in the wind, my

73 powerful trunk trumpeting madly, my tusks thrusting, searching for
something to impale.

I was pure power, pure momentum, pure out-of-control animal energy.

I tore through a decorative trellis and stomped it to toothpicks. Then,
a wall! I ran, slewed my head to the side, and slammed that wall with my
right shoulder.

WHUMPF!

Crunch!

I backed up a step and swung my weight forward again.

WHUMPF!

Crrrrrunch!

<0ne more time!> I cried, laughing idiotically in my head. I backed up
and this time there was no "whumpf!" just a tearing, breaking, twisting
sound. All of a sudden, bright light shone out on me from the big hole
I'd made in the wall.

Then I saw Marco in his new rhinoceros morph plow into and through the
door. "Into and through" being all one motion.

The security guys were getting serious. Elephants and rhinos running
around - well, that was almost funny. Elephants and rhinos beating in
doors and knocking down walls - that was a whole different matter.

I shoved at the hole I'd made and found myself blinking in the bright
light. Blinking and

74 staring at Marco, and at the man sitting in an easy chair wearing a
tuxedo shirt, a tie, black socks, and glossy black shoes. His tux coat
and pants were draped over a chair. He had a somewhat familiar face. The
leader of a great power.

He was sitting in his Jockey shorts and calmly pouring a glass from a
bottle of clear liquor. Then he glared belligerently at me and Marco.

Now, I'm not going to say who this man was, or what nation he headed,
but he was drunk. Drunk, but no coward. He just sat there in his
underwear, glaring at us, defying us.

<What do we do?> Marco asked me.

<l guess we go tear up someone else's bungalow I suggested. Suddenly
about twelve security guys came bursting into the room, guns drawn. And
not just handguns, either. These guys had automatic weapons on us.

But the man in the chair said something loud and curt in a foreign
language. No one fired. The man in the chair made a sort of "after you"
sweep with one hand, indicating that maybe Marco and I should leave.

So we did. We went out through another wall and dragged half the roof
down with us, but we left.

Behind us I heard a loud roar of delighted laughter. Like we'd really
made the old guy's day.

75 I guess if you think about it, hanging out with a bunch of
politicians talking about peace must be kind of dull. After a couple
days of that, maybe you kind of welcome massive, enraged animals barging
through your living room.

75

76

We headed back out into the rain, which was now coming down so hard we
might as well have been back in the ocean.

It was chaos!

Spotlights were shining down from the top of the hotel, sweeping madly
here and there. There was the poplpoplpop! of gunfire. There were men in
dark suits racing back and forth, guns drawn. There were guys in tuxedos
and women in formal gowns running and tripping and yelling. I heard
helicopters chopping the air overhead.

And through it all galumphed elephants and rhinoceroses, banging into
anything we could bang into.

77 The thunder was rattling windows. The rain was turning everything to
mud. And every few seconds, the lightning would flash and I'd see the
entire madhouse scene frozen by the strobe light.

It would have been funny. If people weren't shooting at us.

I targeted the next undamaged bungalow and called to Marco. <Hey! Knock
that door down. I'll come right after you.>

<What door? I can't see that far.>

<Veer left,> I instructed. <0kay, go go go! Left!>

WHAM!

<That was no door!>

<l told you left,> I said. <Never mind, I'll finish it.>

I slammed the hole in the wall that Marco had started. This time it went
down easier. Two hits and the wall collapsed inward.

BLAM!BLAM!BLAM!BLAM!

Four bullets hit me in the head. I felt them as hammer blows.

I backed away from a phalanx of disciplined, determined-looking men.
There were three of them. Behind them, looking mystified, was the most
powerful man on Earth.

I swear I had to fight down this ridiculous urge to say, "It's an honor
to meet you, sir!"

78 But blood was flowing down my face and I was feeling dizzy. The
bullets had done some damage.

I backed up, dragging bits of plaster and pieces of splintered wood with
me. I backed up into a soldier sliding down a rope that seemed to drop
out of the sky. I could hear the helicopter directly overhead. More
ropes coiled down and more black-uniformed men slid down.

These guys were armed to the teeth. It was time to leave.

<Jake!> I yelled into the darkness. <Jake! The reinforcements are coming
in!>

<Time to bail!> Jake yelled to everyone. <Everyone back to the beach!>

Brahahahahahahahahat!

Automatic weapons were firing. I felt my left rear leg catch fire. At
least that's what it felt like.

I staggered back and the injured leg almost collapsed. I was hit, and badly.

<Come on, Marco, let's get out of here!>

<But I didn't even get to see the President,> he complained.

<Marco, this really isn't the time.>

We turned and crashed back through the trellises and shrubbery and out
onto the windswept, soggy beach.

A human staggered in front of me. He was

79 mud-smeared and ankle-deep in wet sand. And he was furious. Tony, the
White House protocol chief. Except that we knew Tony had been acquired
by Visser Three as a morph.

And judging by the screamingly enraged look on "Tony's" face, this was
Visser Three.

For a frozen instant, we locked eyes. He knew what I was. I knew what he
was.

<l guess we can assume the banquet has been canceled, Visser,> I said.
<Now, let's see how fast you can run!>

I went for him, but I stumbled. I was in worse shape than I'd realized.
He scampered back, realizing I couldn't catch him. He bounced up and
down with rage, shouting, "I won't kill you when I catch you, Andalite!
I will make you beg for death!"

No time to sit and exchange pleasant conversation. Besides, we weren't
even supposed to talk to Yeerks. We didn't want them realizing we
weren't Andalites.

Down the sand I saw the others, some staggering, some seemingly unhurt.
I left Visser Three ranting and raving and took off on three good legs.
We ran for the water's edge, bullets whizzing after us, and plowed into
the surf.

I began demorphing instantly, even as I continued to motor out against
the waves. Demorphing

80 would save my life. The bullets should drop harmlessly away, but even
if they didn't, all the damage they'd done would be repaired.

I was giddy. I was going to survive! I was laughing, laughing at the
sheer, insane rush of it all. No weariness now, just mad, frantic glee
at having escaped alive.

<How will they ever, ever explain that?> Tobias wondered.

<l don't know,> I said, <but that's one summit meeting no one will forget.>

81

I was demorphing to human as fast as I could. As dangerous as it was,
the weather probably saved us at this point. The Coast Guard boat had
come in closer, but there was no way it could get right in to shore, not
with those waves.

I demorphed to human and could feel the injuries fading away, the bullet
lead dropping harmlessly to the bottom of the sea.

Once again, I was half-drowned by the time I'd made it safely back to
dolphin morph. But I almost didn't care. The after-action depression was
starting to set in. The special brand of weariness that comes when all
the adrenaline has begun to wear off.

82 The dolphin mind rescued me. It was as irresistibly happy as always.
The DNA of its instincts was reconstituted, fresh with the morphing.

I kicked my gray tail and felt my rubber skin slide easily, confidently
through the water. I dove beneath the huffing, chugging Coast Guard
cutter and headed out to sea.

And that's when it happened. I fired an echolocation burst, a series of
fast, ultrahigh frequency sound waves. The sound waves traveled through
the water and bounced back from anything they hit. It was like sonar.
Underwater radar.

Then I saw in my mind the outline, the shape. The shape that was
imprinted in the deepest DNA archives of the dolphin brain.

It was long. Maybe twenty feet. It was vast, perhaps ten thousand
pounds. From its back a long, almost straight dorsal fin rose. The
echolocation did not show color. But I knew that when it got closer I
would see a black-and-white pattern.

<Killer whale!> I yelled.

It was coming toward us. Its speed was incredible! Something that big
shouldn't be able to move so fast.

It was coming for us, and we were helpless. It was faster, more
powerful, far, far more deadly. We were more agile, but I knew one thing for

83 sure: It was killer whales who ate dolphins, not the other way around.

<l have it on echolocation,> Cassie agreed tensely.

<What is this creature?> Ax asked.

<lt's actually a species of dolphin,> Cassie said. <A close relative of
this species we've morphed.>

<Yeah, close relative,> I muttered. <Like Chihuahuas and Dobermans are
close relatives.>

<There's just one,> Cassie said. <Strange.>

<Why? What's strange?> Tobias asked.

<Just that orcas usually hunt as a pack,> Cassie said.

<Yeah, well this one is hunting us all by himself^ Tobias said. <Big as
he is, he won't need any help!>

<What do we do?> Marco asked.

<He's just a killer whale,> Jake said. <We have human intelligence as
well. We can't outfight or outrun him. We'll have to outthink him.>

<Head for the Coast Guard boat!> Tobias suggested. <We'll get beneath it
and stay with it. The sound of the screws will keep him away.>

<Good idea,> Jake said.

We turned sharply and raced for the boat. It wasn't going to be easy. We
needed to get beneath a boat that wasn't all that big while it was
rising and falling on the waves. Besides, we were

84 air breathers. We had to surface to get air, and couldn't hide there
forever.

But it seemed to make sense. And would probably have worked. Except for
one terrible fact.

<Ha-ha-ha, you think the propeller sounds will scare me off?> the killer
whale said. <Nice try.>

85

Six thought-speak voices said the identical word at the same time.

<David!>

<Yes, David,> he said with grim satisfaction. <Five little dolphins and
one big orca. Let's see how that works out.>

<He still thinks Tobias is dead,> I said in private thought-speak. <He
hasn't counted us. Tobias, stay behind us and ->

Ax interrupted. <David doesn't know which of us is Tobias. He's
expecting five of us. We are six. The sixth person, the one who conceals
his presence, could be any of us.>

<What are you suggesting?> Jake asked him.

86 <l am wondering, Prince Jake, whether one of us has a morph that
could defeat David.>

<l do,> Cassie said.

<0kay, then, Ax is right. Cassie, hang back. Get out of range. Good
idea, Ax. But don't call me "prince.">

<Yes, Prince Jake.>

<0kay, we need to keep David busy,> Jake said.

<Let's do it!> I yelled. I didn't care if David was ten times my size. I
hated the creep. But the more sensible parts of my brain could not
imagine how I was going to fight him and last more than a few seconds.
Not as a dolphin, at least. Even a shark would be helpless. The orca was
just too big.

<Hey, I'm Free Willy,> David said with a laugh. <Free Willy's hungry.>

<Why don't you tell that joke to Visser Three?> I sneered. <Maybe he'll
arrange for you to die laughing.>

<Ah, Rachel. That is you, right? Psycho Rachel?>

<l'm the psycho? That's good, coming from a certified nutcase like you,
David.>

<l'm nuts? Hey, I'm not the one threatening to kill anyone's parents,
you crazy witch.>

There it was. Blurted out for all the others to hear. <l didn't threaten
your parents,> I lied.

87 <Yeah, you did,> he said, and even I could hear the ring of truth.
<Did you know that, big Jake? Did you know that, Cassie, with all your
moralizing? Did you know Rachel threatened to kill my parents? How about
you, Andalite? Of course we know smart-mouth Marco would approve>

No one said a thing. No one came to my defense.

I felt hollow all of a sudden. Like I could feel their silence as a big
hole in my insides. Who were they to be judging me? Which of them hadn't
done things they were ashamed of?

Was I ashamed? Was that what I was saying?

No time for all that now. David had kicked his tail into overdrive and
he was coming at us like a train.

<0kay, here's the plan: Whoever he chases, the others come in and nail
him. Aim for his eyes. They might be vulnerable,> Jake instructed.

I was still waiting for him to say something. Like maybe "It's okay,
Rachel, no big deal." But nothing. Nothing! I wanted to scream at him:
"Why did you let me go after David if you didn't think I was going to
threaten him? You hypocrite!"

But there wasn't time for that. Because now I could see the
black-and-white pattern racing at me out of the gloom. He was lit up by
a flash of

88 lightning. He looked like some weird cross between a cow and a bus.

But this creature had a very large mouth and a lot of teeth. And he was
very, very fast. He was aiming straight for Ax.

<l'm right here, David,> I said, and gave a kick with my tail. He
veered, changing course, and hurtled toward me.

I kicked hard and rocketed straight at him, like I was aiming for his nose.

Closer. . . Closer. . . CloserCloserCloser!

I turned my flippers and went straight up. Up-UpUp, skimming past
David's blunt snout!

WHOOOSH! Out of the water, into rain and lightning. High as I could fly.
I hung in midair, looked down as gravity grabbed me again, and right
below me I saw the killer whale's open mouth.

Falling! Falling toward that open mouth!

<Nooooo !>

But David was slipping back, too. He hadn't had time to get himself
ready. He was slipping back beneath the water, and I was falling toward
him. . . .

SPLASH! I hit water, not teeth, and I kicked madly to get speed. Where
was David? I couldn't see him!

Echolocate, Rachel. Come on, concentrate!

89 I fired a burst. The echo was instantaneous. He was behind me. I
jerked left and the big black-and-white snout went barreling past.

From nowhere another dolphin appeared. It rammed David's right eye with
its beak, then slid down beneath the great monster.

<Ahhh!> David cried. But he kept his focus on me. I couldn't believe how
quickly he turned. How quickly he built up speed to come back after me.

This was impossible! I was playing tag and I was it.

I rolled over, belly up, reversed course and slid beneath him, crossing
sideways, literally rubbing belly to belly. Then I came up his right
side, halfway down his body, back behind the tall, graceful dorsal fin.

Now I was out of his sight. As long as I stayed right there with him,
move for move, he wouldn't see me, let alone reach me.

But David wasn't content to play tag with me. He targeted the next
dolphin he saw and I couldn't match his speed.

As his tail blew past, I clamped my jaw down on it.

Big mistake.

He whipped me up and down, up and down as he kicked. Teeth ripped out of
my jaw. Dazed, I

91 had to let go. Then he turned and came for me again. I tried to swim,
but the whiplash motion had disoriented me.

All I saw was a huge, gaping jaw coming right for me. And I knew I could
not escape.

The orca filled my entire range of vision. So big! So impossibly fast.

And then . . .

Well, then I saw what orcas must want to be when they grow up.

Not the twenty feet of the killer whale, more like forty or fifty feet.
Not the four or five tons of the killer whale, more like fifty or sixty
tons.

Almost extinct, almost wiped out at one point. But there were still
humpback whales in the sea. And one of them was Cassie.

<Hi, David, it's me, Moby Cassie,> Cassie said. <Why don't you leave my
friend Rachel alone?>

If David had known much about whales, he'd have known that the humpback
was almost powerless against him. It had no teeth. Just baleen.

But I guess there's something about seeing a creature the size of a
house coming after you that makes you want to leave the area.

David left. But not before calling back to me, <Later, Rachel. There'll
be another time.>

90

Chapter 18

I flat-out was not going to school the next day. I just didn't care. I
went home and fell into my bed with my clothes on and was out cold.

Way too early in the morning I heard voices downstairs. Somber, muted
voices. No laughter. I didn't care. I went back to sleep.

Then Jordan came up and kicked my bed till I rolled over, face plastered
with hair, eyes glued shut. "It'd better be good or you are going to
wish you'd never been born!" I said.

"It's Saddler," Jordan said.

It took me several seconds to make sense of that. "Huh?"

"He's not doing very well, I guess. They think he's going to die."

92 Saddler. My cousin. Jake's cousin. Right. Yeah, now I remembered.
He'd been hurt. He'd been moved to the children's hospital near us.

"Oh. That's too bad," I managed to mumble.

"That's all you can say? That's too bad'?"

Obviously I wasn't going back to sleep. I sat up. I tried to wake my
brain up enough to think of the right things to say, but my head might
as well have been stuffed with cotton balls.

"He's probably going to die," Jordan said again.

I began to realize what Jordan wanted. She felt bad. She felt scared.
She wanted me to reassure her.

I made a "come here" motion with my hand and fought down a yawn. "Sit
here," I said, patting the sheet beside me. "Look, it's a bad thing.
It's about as bad a thing as there is. I mean, he's just a kid. His
parents are going to be so messed up after this. I know how you feel."

"It's just so bogus," Jordan said. "I mean, he was just riding his bike
and then, like, all of a sudden his whole life is maybe over."

I nodded. "Yeah. Life isn't fair."

Jordan rolled her eyes at me. She knows a dumb cliche when she hears one.

"Sorry," I said. "Look, bad stuff happens. Doesn't mean it's going to
happen to you. Doesn't

93 mean it's going to happen to me or Sarah or Mom or Dad."

"Yeah, but that's what's so weird and all. I mean, I feel like scum
because I felt kind of glad it wasn't me. You know? It was like 'Whew!
Close one!' But that's not right. I should just be sad. And I am. Only
it's not just sadness. It's also, like, 'Glad it wasn't me!' And then I
was all, like, 'I would never ride my bike like that.' You know, the guy
who ran into him is saying Saddler just shot out into the street without
looking. So I'm thinking Saddler got run over because he was stupid and
careless. But that's not right, either."

"It's not right, but I think it's probably normal," I said. "I mean, you
don't want to think it could happen to you. So you have to come up with
excuses. Ways it could never happen to you. You end up blaming the
person who got hurt. Because then you don't have to think about what if
it was you it happened to. You even start getting mad at the person it
happened to. Like 'How dare he drag me down into all this pit of
darkness? How dare he get hurt and make me feel bad?'"

Jordan nodded. "That's just so wrong, though."

I shrugged. "Yeah, probably. But it's also how people are. You don't
want to go around thinking,

94 'It could be me next. It could be my sister or mother or father.'
You're going to do anything you can not to feel that way. You have to
put up a wall between you and the fear. You have to cut yourself off
from it, tell yourself you're safe. Bad stuff only happens to people who
are careless or stupid or evil."

Jordan seemed to feel better. She even smiled. "Mom says we can stay
home from school today. You know, in case ..."

I made a face. "Talk about a bad reason to skip school."

"Yeah. Well, maybe he'll be okay."

"Yeah. It's like on ER. The doctors are always worrying, but then the
patient survives."

"And if they're a cute girl they get to date Noah Wylie," Jordan said,
laughing.

"Exactly. So don't write old Saddler off yet, okay?"

She left and I staggered, still half-blind from the sleep gunk in my
eyes, to the bathroom. I splashed my face with cold water.

<0oooh, I never realized you were so wise and all.>

I jumped straight up. I spun around. Search . . . search . . . search .
. . nothing! Nothing in the shower. Nothing on the floor. Nothing on the
ceiling.

95 I stood there, very, very awake. "What do you want, David?"

<l just wanted to hear your deep wisdom, Rachel,> he said. <What's the
matter? Does it make you nervous having me around?>

I kept searching the room. Inside the medicine cabinet. Nothing! Then,
slowly, with a creeping, crawling sensation of disgust, I realized. He
could be anywhere. He could be ... on me.

"Should I go get some flea powder?" I asked the empty bathroom. I tried
to sound tough and indifferent. Like I wasn't scared.

<You have to put up a wall between you and the fear, Rachel,> he mocked.
<You have to cut yourself off from it, tell yourself you're safe,
Rachel. You have to tell yourself that bad stuff only happens to people
who are careless or stupid or evil, Rachel.>

"What do you think you're accomplishing, David?" I asked.

<l'm sending you a message, Rachel,> he said with silky intensity. <See,
I know where you live, Rachel. That's my message. You want to threaten
me? I know where you live.>

I had to fight down the panic that was competing with rage in my head. I
couldn't let him know he'd gotten to me. "My family isn't part of this."

96

"Your parents are Controllers now. That makes them different."

<Are you a hundred percent sure that your mother and your sisters aren't
Controllers?>

I swallowed hard. I had to remain calm. That was the point. I had to
remain calm. If I blew up he'd know he had power over me. "You would go
after little girls, you gutless piece of crap. You said you wouldn't
hurt humans who weren't in morph. I always knew that was bull. A coward
like you has no honor."

It was a pathetic, obvious ploy. Would he fall for it? It depended. How
did David see himself?

<You want rules, Rachel? I'll give you rules: Give me the blue box and
I'm gone. I'll go to some other city. I'll take what I need. I have the
power! But I want that box!>

"What for, you idiot? You want to make more Animorphs? Why? So they can
do to you what you're trying to do to us?"

I guess that made him think. I thought it might.

<Stay away from my family, Rachel. I'll stay away from yours. Just you
and me. That's the deal. You and me.>

"I'll take that challenge," I said.

98 <Cool. Now, hey, go ahead and enjoy your shower.>

He was silent after that. He said nothing more. Maybe he was really gone.

But for the first time, I decided to skip my shower.

97

Chapter 19

I didn't feel even slightly safe till two hours had passed. That's how
long David could stay in morph. After that, if he'd been a flea or a
cockroach or whatever, he'd be stuck.

Two hours later to the minute, I arrived at Jake's house. There were
extra cars in the driveway. I guess Saddler's family had come over.

Jake answered the door. I saw half a dozen people beyond him in the
family room. They all looked like they were getting ready to go.

"Hi, Rachel," Jake said. "Did you come over to-"

I grabbed him by his shirt and yanked him outside onto the porch. I've
never done anything

99 like that to Jake. I shocked myself. I know I shocked him.

"David was in my house!" I hissed in his ear. "He was in my bathroom."

Jake looked puzzled. Then his eyes widened. "In morph?"

"Of course in morph. You think he'd come over and ask my mommy if I
could come out to play?!" I was yelling.

"Calm down, Rachel, the whole family is here. We're all about to head to
the hospital to see Saddler. Tom is here," he added with a significant
look. Tom is a Controller.

I lowered my voice to an intense whisper. "He was in morph. He may have
been a flea. He may have been on me. On me!"

Jake nodded warily. "Yeah. I guess we have to expect that kind of thing."

"He's made me his number-one target," I snapped. "Did you expect that?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean it's personal between me and him. And I think you know why it's
personal."

Jake shook his head. "Look, we all stand together, Rachel. You know that."

"Do I? Nice job of standing up for me before, Jake."

"When?"

100 "You know when," I said. "When David told everyone what had gone
down between me and him and all I hear is the big, empty silence from
Cassie and Tobias and all."

"It was a combat situation, Rachel. What did you expect me to do? Stop
and explain to everyone that David was lying?"

I glared at Jake and just then his dad came out on the porch. "We need
to get going, Jake. Hi, Rachel. Why don't you come with us?"

I don't know why, but I said, "Okay, yes."

Jake's dad closed the door again.

"You think David was lying?" I asked him.

Jake looked away. "It doesn't matter what I think, Rachel."

I laughed. "You know something, Jake, you are becoming a real leader.
You even have the whole hypocrisy thing down." I started to walk away.
"Tell your dad I changed my mind."

"Rachel." Jake trotted over to catch up to me. "What's bothering you?"

"What's bothering me? Aside from the fact I've never been so tired in my
life? Aside from the fact that David is out to get me? What's bothering me?"

"Yeah. Aside from those things. I mean, I know you, Rachel -"

"Yeah, you sure do," I snapped.

101 "Look, I don't have time for twenty questions."

"When you were going after David and you sent Ax for help, why did you
tell him to get me and not Cassie or Marco?"

Jake looked surprised. He shrugged. "I don't know. I guess I thought you
were closest."

"Wrong. Try again."

Jake flushed angrily. But then I saw the beginning of a rueful smile. "I
thought David had killed Tobias. I thought he might kill me. I wanted .
. . firepower."

"I see. You wanted me for my morphs." It was a good answer. It could
have almost been true. "Okay. So we come down to the second question:
What did you think I would say to David yesterday? In the cafeteria. Why
did you let me go after him?"

Jake's rueful smile became sadder. For a long time he didn't speak. "I
guess -"

"Jake! Come on. Rachel, if you're coming, let's go!" Jake's mom yelled.

At the same time the garage door opened and the family's new minivan
came backing out. I piled in with Jake and there was nothing more said.

Maybe it was true about the morphs. Maybe I had jumped to a conclusion.
After all, it was true

102 I had the grizzly bear morph and the elephant morph. Both of which
were as strong or stronger than David's lion. And it was true that
neither Marco nor Cassie had anything to match the lion's raw power.

Maybe that was all there was to it. Maybe my cousin didn't see me as
some crazed Femme Nikita killer.

But I'd have to wait and hear his answer to my second question.

Jake had said, "It was a combat situation, Rachel. What did you expect
me to do? Stop and explain to everyone that David was lying?"

But I knew one thing for sure: Jake was lying. He knew what David had
accused me of was true.

Not for the first time, I looked at Jake and wondered what he had
become. He was sitting there, looking like any other kid stuck in any
other boring minivan. If you saw him walk down the street you might
think, Oh, there's a nice-looking guy. But you wouldn't see half of what
there was to Jake.

But then, I guess that's true of everyone. You can never be sure whether
the pretty blond lugging a pair of bulging Express bags through the mall
is just another sweet, ditzy, harmless mall rat.

Or me.

103

You think hospitals are depressing? Try a children's hospital. You go to
a regular hospital and see sick people and you think, Oh, that's
something that happens to old people. You know, like lung cancer or
Alzheimer's or whatever.

But in a kids' hospital you see way too many people who look like they
could be sitting next to you on the school bus. It makes you nervous.

Saddler was in PICU. Pediatrics Intensive Care Unit. It was like the
hospital room from hell.

Four beds in each room, if you can call it a bed when there are these
monitors poised over your head showing your heartbeat and brain waves
and a bunch of other stuff in wavy, ghostly green lines.

104 Three of the beds were full. Saddler was in the one farthest from
the door. I took one look at him and thought, Okay, I believe in mercy
killing. No one should have to be so ... helpless.

But I guess that was dumb, because later I heard from one of the doctors
that more than ninety-five percent of even the most messed-up kids who
go into the PICU come out alive.

No one was being that optimistic about Saddler, though. He was going to
be one of the five percent. At least that had been the last thing we
heard from the doctors.

Now . . . well, let me just say that different people react in different
ways to "miracles." We almost couldn't get to Saddler's bed for all the
doctors and nurses crowding around. Some looked like they'd just had
Leonardo DiCaprio tell them they were pretty. They looked transfigured.
Others looked mad. Some looked scared.

Saddler's mother rushed to the head doctor. "Doctor Kaehler? What's
happening? What's happening to my baby?"

Doctor Kaehler was one of the mad ones. "What's happening? Good
question. Very good question. I have to tell you that we had a crisis
here about an hour ago. Your son's heart stopped. We were rushing him to
surgery, but in all honesty he was not going to make it."

105 "But-"she began.

The doctor ignored her. "I would have bet my entire career that Saddler
would be gone within the hour. Then, as they were taking him up to the
O.R., something happened with the elevator. It jammed or... or
something. The nurse and doctor with him seem to have been knocked out.
When they came to, the elevator was working again. They rushed your son
to surgery where he ... where he ... opened his eyes!"

"What?"

"He opened his eyes. And he said, 'Hi.'"

Saddler's mother lost it. She shoved wildly through the gaggle of nurses
and doctors. And there she stopped, staring in disbelief at her son.

Saddler was sitting up in his bed. He looked as healthy as if he'd just
stepped in from playing soccer.

"How?" Saddler's father asked.

The doctor just shook his head. "You tell me. There is apparently
nothing wrong with your son. And I mean nothing. No broken bones - all
healed. No internal injuries. No bruises, for crying out loud!"

He was mad. I could understand that. He was a scientist, basically.
Scientists like to understand things.

"It's a miracle!" Jake's mom whispered.

106 "I don't even believe in miracles," Jake's dad said, "but this is a
miracle. I mean, I saw him yesterday and he looked like raw hamburger."

Saddler's parents were all over their son. Hugging, kissing, jabbering
on and on. It was a cool scene. Even I was feeling overwhelmed. Then I
caught sight of Jake.

He was the only wallflower at the big party of celebration. He turned
away, rage barely concealed on his face.

"What?" I whispered to him. "What's the matter?"

He said one word. And I knew what I'd been too blind to see. This was no
miracle.

Jake said, "David."

107

Jake and I stepped back from the crowd. No one noticed. No one cared.
They had a miracle to witness.

"You think David morphed Saddler?" I asked Jake.

"I know he did. Days back, I mentioned Saddler to all of you. I saw his
eyes kind of light up. I didn't think much of it at the time. Besides,
we were kind of busy."

I nodded. "He needed a life. David's family are Controllers and he
needed a place to go, to sleep, to eat. But it's just a morph. If he
stays in it more than two hours at a time he's stuck, and he'll lose his
morphing power permanently."

108 "All he has to do is go the bathroom, de-morph, remorph, and he's
good for another two hours. And take a look at his parents. You think
they're going to notice, or care, if Saddler is suddenly very different
than he has been?"

He was right. Saddler's parents thought they were losing a son. Now he
was back. Alive.

A miracle.

So maybe his memory was a little impaired. Maybe he didn't remember his
friends or his favorite food. He'd be different, but that was to be
expected, with what he'd gone through. And anyway, Saddler always had
been a jerk. David should be able to play the role.

What could his family even possibly suspect him of? Being a morph?
Obviously not. Then something awful occurred to me.

"Saddler. . . where's Saddler? The real one?"

Jake looked grim. "I guess we'll have to ask David, won't we?"

I looked at Saddler. There was a momentary gap in the gaggle around him.
He saw us. We saw him. His look was pure triumph.

Then the wall of people closed around him again. I was not even slightly
surprised when, an hour later, Saddler said he had to go to the
bathroom. By himself. He was fine, perfectly fine. Everyone should stop
worrying.

He passed deliberately by Jake and me.

109 "Cousin Jake! Cousin Rachel! I'm glad you're here. Really, really glad."

For a brief moment, no one else was within hearing.

"You won't get away with this," I said.

"I won't? I already have. And what are you two going to do? The real
Saddler was toast. Now those nice people have their son back. So what
are you going to do about it?" He started to walk away, then turned
back, as if he had some funny secret to impart. "I'll take the blue box,
cousins. Bring it to me. You have twenty-four hours. Starting now."

He laughed, loudly enough for all to hear. So they all laughed, too,
giddy from the fact that unbearable tragedy had missed them.

Jake and I plastered smiles on our faces. But we both felt sick inside.

David had beaten us.

Jake and I left. We went out into the mostly empty hallway.

"Okay, we have to plan right now," Jake said.

"Plan what?"

"We are never going to know whether we're being watched by David or
listened to by David from now on," Jake said. "Right now we know where
he is. Right now we're safe."

"So what are you going to do? Give him the blue box?"

110 Jake's eyes flashed. "Never!" I smiled, despite myself. "Okay. So?"
"So... I don't know. Do you have any ideas?"

I stopped smiling. "What do you mean?" "I mean, what do you think we
should do about him? About David."

A nurse came by and flashed an automatic smile. When she was gone I
said, "Look, Jake, I don't know what you're getting at. And you know
what? I don't think I like what you're thinking about me."

"What? What's that about?" "You never answered me before, Jake. I want
to know. When David left the cafeteria and I started after him, and
Cassie said no and you said to let me go, what exactly did you think I
would do or say to David?"

Jake nodded. "Oh. That's what this is about." "Yeah, 'Oh, that's what
this is about.' What did you expect me to do to David? Did you think I
was going to kill him? Did you? Is that why you let me go after him? Is
that why you sent Ax for me? Because you think I'm some kind of violent
nut you can call in whenever you need some dirty work done?"

"Look, Rachel, every one of us has his strengths and his weaknesses."

111 "And my strength is being some kind of crazy killer?" I practically
shrieked.

"I didn't say that."

"You didn't not say it!"

"Okay, fine, Rachel. You want to do this, fine. I think you're the
bravest member of the group. I think in a bad fight I'd rather have you
with me than anyone else. But yeah, Rachel, I think there's something
pretty dark down inside you. I think you're the only one of us who would
be disappointed if all this ended tomorrow. Cassie hates all this, Marco
has personal reasons for being in this war, Ax just wants to go home and
fight Yeerks with his own people, Tobias . . . who knows what Tobias
wants anymore? But you, Rachel, you love it. It's what makes you so
brave. It's what makes you so dangerous to the Yeerks."

I let his words blow past me. I heard them, I'd feel them later, but I
didn't want to feel them right then.

"You did think I'd go kill David the other day. My God."

"No. I thought you'd scare him. I thought you'd say the things it took
to scare him. I thought you'd say whatever you had to. And I thought
that of any of us, David would be most likely to fear you."

An attendant pushed a wheeled bed slowly

112 past. I tried to look at myself the way Jake saw me. Was it true?
Did I love this war?

"I worry about you, Rachel. More than any of the others except Tobias. I
feel like this war is to you like booze is to an alcoholic. Like I don't
know what will happen to you if it all ends someday. What are you going
to do? Go back to being the world's greatest shopper? Go back to
gymnastics and getting good grades?"

I laughed harshly. "You worry about me? What do you think you're going
to do? Jake, you're a leader now. You make life-and-death decisions. All
the time. You've learned to do that. And," I added bitterly, "you've
learned to use people. You use them for their strengths and their
weaknesses. Worry about me? Like when all this is over you'll go back to
being a mediocre basketball player and a decent student? You're not even
in high school yet and you're the most wanted person in the Yeerk
Empire. Visser Three would trade his Blade ship for your head on a stick."

We both fell silent for a while. From inside there came the drifting
sound of laughter. David was back from the bathroom. Demorphed,
re-morphed, and good for another two hours. He could keep that up for
weeks, maybe years. At night he could demorph and sleep. In the dark
he'd look enough like Saddler. At school he could demorph and remorph
between periods, in the

114 stalls of the boys' bathroom. No need to worry about clothing. He'd
fit Saddler's.

The creep. The evil little creep.

My own emotions brought me back to the moment.

"I'm not going to lose it, Jake," I said, staring down at the polished
linoleum. "Maybe you're right. Maybe I do kind of get off on it all. But
I still know where the line is. And I won't cross it. I am not some kind
of nut. I know what I'm doing."

Jake nodded. "I know you do. But everyone draws their own line. Cassie's
is in one place. Marco's is somewhere else. Yours is in another. Mine .
. ." He made a failed attempt at a smile. "For example, see, I used to
think my line was drawn at using my friend, my cousin, to do my dirty
work. Guess that turned out not to be true. Sorry, Rachel."

I have no idea why I did what happened next. Because I'm really not that
kind of person. But I hugged Jake. And he hugged me back.

And then he whispered in my ear, "Okay, now let's figure out how we take
this creep down."

"You know it, cousin," I said.

113

" I

jake and I went over every possibility," I said. "Nothing. Nothing at
all. He has us cold."

I looked around at the others. It was a grim-looking little group there
in the barn.

"What do you mean, he has us?" Marco said loudly. "That little creep has
us beat? No way. We've been kicking Visser Three's butt all this time
and we lose to that jerk? I don't think so."

"Look, I don't like it, either. But it's reality, okay?"

Jake held up one finger. "Fact number one: David has the same powers we
have. Which means he's as hard to destroy as we are. And the Yeerks have
tried very hard to destroy us. How are

115 we going to succeed when the Yeerks have failed with all their
forces and technology?"

Marco raised his eyebrows in grudging acceptance.

<Yes, that makes some sense,> Ax agreed.

Of course, Tobias had nothing to say because Tobias wasn't there. Tobias
was away.

Jake continued. "Fact number two: David can sell us out to Visser Three.
I don't think he wants to do that because David's not a complete idiot
and he knows that any contact he has with Visser Three is likely to be
very dangerous for him."

"I'm not so sure he's not an idiot," Marco said darkly. "I would just
like to point out that I never liked that guy. I said from the start
that any kid who kept a pet cobra was trouble."

"Goodie for you, Marco," I said.

"Fact three: David has now acquired a morph of Rachel's and my cousin
Saddler. What am I going to do? Make my uncle and aunt lose their son
again? Better to leave David with them. And best of all, they live out
of town, so David would be out of our faces."

"I have a problem with that," Cassie said. "I have a problem with the
idea that these people lose their son and get this completely different
person instead. That seems sick to me. It seems wrong."

116 "It is wrong," I agreed. "But what's the alternative?"

Cassie shook her head slowly. "There's no good choice here. But you know
what? As sad and awful as it is that your cousin died, that's natural
and normal and part of life. Having some ghoulish fake version of
Saddler still around makes me kind of sick to my stomach."

"Fact number four: We give David the blue box and he has what he cares
about. I don't know what he intends to do with it. Maybe he'll create
his own little group of Animorphs." Jake made a face like "could be."

"Yeah, right," Marco sneered. "Here's fact five: David killed Tobias.
And we're going to reward him?"

I exploded. "Hey! You think we like this? You think I, personally, like
this? I hate that creepa-zoid. I would destroy him ... if I could. But
facts are facts, unless you're completely crazy."

Marco sneered. "I never thought I'd see the day. Fearless Rachel, mighty
Xena: Warrior Princess, humiliated by some kid. You're done for, Rachel.
No one will ever be impressed by you again. You're a joke."

I leaped at him and grabbed him by the throat. "Don't push me, Marco," I
hissed.

He just laughed. "You know, I'm glad about

117 this, at least," Marco said. "At least David shattered the myth of
mighty Rachel. It's a good thing you did survive, because now you have
to live with the fact that you got beaten by David. I guess maybe you're
not Xena, after all. But David may just be Hercules."

I shoved Marco back and turned away from his mocking laughter.

"Okay, then," Jake said. "Here's what I propose to do. I'm going to tell
David where he can find the box. One of us will go with him. He'll
probably want that, anyway, so he can be sure it's not a trap. He'll
probably ask for Cassie. She had the least trouble with him. Speaking of
which, Cassie, you're the only one who knows where the blue box is hidden."

"Not to be egotistical or anything, but where I hid it, no one would
ever find it. For one thing, I had Ax disassemble it."

"Say what?" Marco asked. "It breaks down?"

<0f course,> Ax said a little snippily. <lt has component parts. Cassie
asked me to reduce it to smaller components so that she could hide each
piece separately.>

"And so that I could carry the parts in morph," Cassie said. "Rachel and
I -"

"Wait a minute, Rachel knows where it's hidden, too?" Jake asked, frowning.

118 Cassie looked embarrassed. "I kind of was scared to hide it where I
hid it and not have someone with me. I mean, we had to do rat morphs to
get there. And it took several trips because I could only carry small
components one at a time."

Jake laughed. "I should have known if I told you to hide something
really well, it'd be hidden where no one would ever find it."

"Oh, it's hidden, all right, piece by piece," I affirmed.

Jake sighed. "Okay, then. I'll see David-slash-Saddler this evening.
I'll bring him a rat to acquire."

"That won't be much of a stretch for David," Marco said sardonically.
"He's already at least half rat."

"You're going to bring him a rat at the hospital?" Cassie asked.

"No, he and his family are at my house," Jake said. "Nothing's wrong
with him, so the hospital let him go. He's actually staying in my room.
His so-called parents have the guest room, and I'm on the couch."

"What, you didn't want to share a room with David?" Marco said.

"I don't want to share a planet with him," Jake said. "Although I'll
tell you all one thing. I wish it had worked out with David. Whatever else

119 you can say about him, he's smart, brave, and ingenious."

We all nodded in solemn agreement.

Yes, yes, he was smart. But was he smart enough? That we would find out.

120 We left the job of contacting David up to Jake.

My job, along with Cassie, Ax, Marco, and Tobias, was to prepare.
Preparation involved a lot of work. Hard, physical work.

"You're sure David was in the barn?" I asked Tobias for about the tenth
time.

<l can't swear he was in the barn,> Tobias said. <AII I can swear is
that a golden eagle left Jake's house. It flew here. It landed behind
that old toolshed of Cassie's. David emerged from the golden eagle. Then
he morphed to rattlesnake and was last seen sidewinding toward the barn.>

"Rattlesnake," Marco said. "Interesting choice."

121 "Good choice," Cassie said. "They fit in. They don't look out of
place in this environment. They are poisonous, have very good senses,
move faster than a lot of snakes. If, say, some red-tailed hawk decided
to try and eat him, he could use his fangs."

Tobias laughed. <He's not worried about red-tails. I'm dead, remember?
When he was in eagle morph, he saw me. He just assumed I was an innocent
hawk flying around.>

We went back to work. Tobias flew cover, staying up high enough to spot
anyone who might be approaching. But we had chosen a pretty deserted
area to make our preparations. There wasn't much chance of anyone
surprising us.

And we knew David wasn't around. Jake had called me to confirm that he
was impersonating Saddler and being fawned over and pampered at Jake's
house.

Already, it seemed, David was adapting nicely to the role. His "family"
would be taking him home.

"At least the weather is better," Marco said. "I'd hate to be dealing
with rain right now."

"Yeah, it's a beautiful day," I agreed.

<Why do humans consider some days to be better than others?> Ax
wondered. <And what, exactly defines a "beautiful" day?>

"Sunshine, no clouds or at least not too many

122 clouds," I offered. "Warm but not hot. Low humidity, because
humidity does bad things to hair."

<But rain is necessary, is it not? So why do you consider it to be less
than beautiful?>

We were chatting away like that as we worked. Chatting almost
compulsively. No one wanted time to think. No one wanted to have time to
reflect on what we were doing and what it would mean.

But of course the reality of it all crept into our conversation here and
there, in bits and pieces.

Cassie said, "I feel so sorry for Saddler's parents."

"Yeah," I agreed.

"I don't know how they are going to -"

"Also," Marco interrupted pointedly, "sunny days are better because on
sunny days girls wear shorts and, like, little short dresses or
whatever. What do they call them? Those dresses that have, like, straps
on top and are usually yellow or whatever?"

"Sundresses?" I suggested.

"See? There you go: sundresses. As in sun. You don't hear about
raindresses. You have rain-coats. No one ever says, 'Whoa, you look
excellent in that raincoat.'"

<These are types of artificial skin, I assume,> Ax said.

123 Even Ax was trying to keep the pointless blather going. Even he
didn't want to think too much about what was happening. What would happen.

Tobias swooped low. <l think it's time I went and checked with Jake,> he
said. <Ax-man? You need to get human if I'm not here to watch over you
guys.>

<Yes, I will do that.>

Ax began to morph, changing from blue An-dalite to olive-skinned human.
Early on, Ax had acquired DNA from Jake, Cassie, Marco, and me in a
process that allowed him to meld the DNA strands into one. The morph he
was now adopting was a strange, and strangely beautiful, human male. I
could look at him and literally see parts of myself in his face. Parts
of the other fully human Animorphs, too.

One big advantage: With Ax in human morph, we wouldn't have to worry
about obsessing over dark possibilities. Ax in human morph kept you busy.

See, Andalites don't have mouths. They don't make words and they don't
have a sense of taste. Those two things have a tendency to overtake Ax's
usual reserve and intelligence.

"These are good hands for working," Ax said. "Wurrr King. I am wurrr
king. With hands-zuh. They are strong. Strong hands-zuh."

124 Marco sighed. "Here we go again-uh with the Ax-man doing his Rain
Man impersonation."

I laughed. "Just be glad there's no chocolate around."

"Or nachos," Cassie added.

"Or cinnamon buns," Marco said.

Ax's handsome human head snapped around. "Cinnamon buns-zuh?"

"No, no, Ax. I'm pretty sure there aren't any cinnamon buns-zuh ... I
mean cinnamon buns . . . around here."

At last it was time to add the final piece to our creation. Ax and Marco
screwed it into place. Marco tested the moveable part.

"That should work," he said, looking up at me.

"It better work," I said. "Because as awful as this is, the only
alternative is worse. It has to work. It has to work or we ... all of
us," I added with emphasis, "we will have to become killers."

125 I avid had chosen the ground for our meeting. A public place.
Somewhere none of us could morph. It was inside a crowded Taco Bell.

Outside, night was falling. The neon signs were on. Most drivers had
their lights on. The weather had turned bad again. Nothing like the
storm the other night, but dark clouds that brought the night earlier
than normal.

Inside it was all blazing lights and plastic seats and kids scarfing
soft tacos.

The terms were that each of us had to be visible. But even now we
weren't going to appear to be some kind of clique or whatever. Marco was
with Cassie. Ax, in human morph, was with me.

126 Jake loitered around the counter, looking like he couldn't quite
decide what to order.

The bright, public nature of the place was supposed to reassure us, too,
I guess. We were supposed to be relaxed, not thinking it could be a trap.

But I'll tell you something. If Visser Three thought for certain that he
could catch the "An-dalite Bandits," as he thought of us, he wouldn't
let the public get in his way. He wouldn't need to send in the
Hork-Bajir. He could machine-gun the place using human-Controllers.

That would have made the news, but no one would have thought it was all
that strange. I guess that says something about the condition of the
human race, with or without aliens.

I sat there, watching Ax eat. I had started out hungry. But watching Ax
tear through tacos, bur-ritos, nachos, refried beans, packets of hot
sauce and the bag they all came in ... well, that kind of took care of
my appetite.

"Spicy, right? This flavor. . . ver ver. . . this flavor is called 'spicy'?"

"Yeah. Spicy. Hot, too."

"Yes, it is hot."

"No, I mean the flavor is hot. So is the temperature . . . skip it."

"Skip?"

"Forget it. Let it go. Drop it."

127 No sooner were those last words out of my mouth than I regretted
them. Ax promptly dropped the container of refried beans he'd been
holding. It landed wrong side down on the table.

I didn't even have the energy to roll my eyes. I just went back to
staring at the doors, slowly shifting my gaze from one to the next.

Then there he was. Saddler. David.

He swaggered in like he owned the world and everything in it. I so
wanted to wipe that smirk off his face. But that wasn't in the script.
My role was to seem chastised, beaten down. Defeated and humiliated.
That's what we figured he'd want. That's what would make him happy.

David smirked at Jake. Then he brushed past him and came over to sit
down across from me. "You can leave," he told Ax. "This is a humans-only
section."

Ax turned his head awkwardly to look at Jake. Jake nodded. Ax got up and
left. Jake took his place, sliding in next to David.

"So," David said, "we meet again, Rachel."

"Excuse me. I'm not involved in this," I said. I started to get up to leave.

David reached across and grabbed my arm. "What's the matter, Rachel? You
don't like me?"

"Rachel's not involved, David. It's Cassie who hid the box. She'll show
you where it is."

128 "I don't think so," David said. "I think Rachel is the guide I want."

"She doesn't know the way."

David laughed. He laughed exactly like Saddler. "That's a lie. Rachel
knows."

"No, I don't," I said weakly.

"Don't be an idiot, Rachel!" Jake fumed. "David knows. He must have been
in the barn." Jake looked like he was suddenly furious at the beans Ax
had left behind. He swiped at them with his hand. A couple of globules
of the brown goo landed on my arm.

Jake did not apologize. He just glared at me balefully.

David leaned forward, suddenly all business. "Okay, here's the deal.
Rachel takes me to the box. And all of you will follow, staying back at
least a thousand feet."

"You want us to follow you?" Jake asked incredulously.

"Of course. How else will I know where you are?"

Jake made a show of looking confused.

"Rachel will lead me to the blue box. You will each be there, right
where I can see you, out of morph. Then Rachel and I go in, get the box,
and we all say a tearful farewell. You go on fighting Yeerks, I go get
rich."

Jake nodded.

129 But I said, "I can't go in there with him. I don't trust him! He
could -"

"Rachel," Jake said, dripping disgust, "you know, I always thought there
was a coward hiding deep down inside all that tough talk of yours. Just
do it. You want to remain an Animorph? You'll follow orders."

I nodded, meek and afraid.

David searched my face through Saddler's eyes. Was he suspicious? Had I
overplayed my part?

Then he reached across and smeared the re-fried beans down the sleeve of
my shirt. And laughed.

So I did something I don't do much. I started to cry.

130 I avid and I flew. He was in golden eagle morph, and I was in
seagull morph. He kept me out in front. He followed close behind. If he
had decided to attack me, I would have been helpless. I was like some
little Cessna flying with a 747 behind me.

I led the way to the construction site. The construction site where
everything had begun so long ago. Where Elfangor had given us our powers.

It was also the place where David had found the blue box.

<Aaah, yes,> he said. <0f course. The last place I would have looked for
it. You put it back where it started out.>

131 I said nothing. I just flew. Jake, Cassie, Ax, and Marco followed at
a distance.

I led the way down to one of the several unfinished buildings. It was
just four cinder-block walls with a few doorless doorways. I think it
was originally going to be a convenience store before the whole thing
got canceled. Or maybe a fast-food place. Who knows? It didn't matter.

We landed in the center of the open, desolate enclosure. There were beer
bottles and Coke cans strewn around. There was construction debris,
weathered from long exposure to the elements.

<Stay in morph,> David ordered.

I did what he told me. I saw him begin to change, watching the brown
feathers melt into pink flesh and the fabric of his morphing outfit.

I saw the moment when David's smirk emerged from the long, hooked beak.
Glancing up, I saw the others circling overhead, doing as they'd been
told. The darkness was spreading. My friends were fuzzy gray shadows
against the darker clouds.

"Now, Rachel, now you can demorph. But as soon as you do, I want you to
go into the rat morph we'll both be using."

I didn't bother answering. I just did what I was told. As I changed,
David said, "You know, Rachel, it's a shame it worked out this way. I

132 mean, if you weren't such a harsh person I would have invited you to
quit this little gang and hook up with me. Jake doesn't even know how to
use his powers. I mean, come on, who cares if the Yeerks are around?
With Animorph powers we can have anything we want."

I began to change into the rat. It was a morph I'd done once before with
Cassie. It was not something I wanted to do again. But David had to
believe I had morphed it to help Cassie hide the pieces of the blue box.

I began to shrink. The fast, ever falling, falling, falling shrink you
do when you're getting very small.

White fur rippled across my body. Down my arms, up my neck, down my
back, itching against my outer clothing.

The concrete floor was rushing up at me. All the barely visible cracks
and crevices in the concrete now looked like ditches and dried creek
beds. The empty beer bottles loomed as big as buses.

My own legs were shrinking, becoming stubby, squat, shuffling things. My
arms did the same. I could no longer stand. I fell forward.

I shriveled and shrank and became hideous as David seemed to grow ever
more huge. He was a monster a million miles tall!

My face bulged out impossibly far, narrowing

133 down to a sniffing pink nose. My ears crawled up the side of my
head. And from the base of my spine I felt the distant, numbed sensation
of the long, hairless, ugly tail sprouting.

David began to morph, but I could not make it out for a while. Not till
I saw the diamond-patterned scales ripple and replace his skin. Then his
arms and legs began to dwindle away to smoke, and I knew for sure.

He was morphing the rattlesnake.

He was smaller and smaller, but as he morphed, he slithered his coils
around me. Brown and tan and black coils looped around me, a fence
twice, three times my height.

Sliding over the coils, the head appeared. A forked tongue as long as I
was whipped out, tasted the air, and shot back in.

<0ne wrong move, Rachel,> David said. <Just one wrong move . . .> Then
in "loud" thought-speak, he told the others to come down.

Down they came, spiraling through the last gasp of sunlight to land atop
the walls that surrounded us. A falcon, a harrier, two ospreys. All
deadly enemies of a rat.

<IMow, all four of you demorph. One wrong move and I bite this rat here.>

He opened his fleshy jaws, revealed the hollow, poison-delivering teeth,
and moved to within an inch of me.

134 I knew the rat was fast. But not faster than a striking rattler.

I was completely and entirely in his power. And I was afraid.

I was afraid. But the rat, surrounded by birds of prey and with its
ancestral enemy the snake just a breath away, was in a state of
shrieking terror.

135 <l low, all of you demorph. As soon as you've demorphed, remorph,>
David instructed.

<What morph?> Jake demanded.

<Cockroach.>

<That's not part of the plan!> Jake yelled.

<Too bad. You think I'm some kind of an idiot? You think I'm going to go
into rat morph and have the four of you waiting around to squash me like
a bug? Not a chance.>

<That's it, deal's done,> Jake said.

<0h, yeah? Then you're going to lose another cousin, Jake,> David said.
<You are all going to morph to cockroach. Period. And if there's no
deal, I bite Rachel right here and now.>

136 I knew logically that Jake would go along. I knew that as a human.
But the rat brain inside my own mind only sensed greater peril.
Suddenly, the rat's body froze. Froze stiff with terror. I could not
move a muscle. All I could do was quiver.

<l want your word,> Jake said weakly.

<You have my word, Jake,> David said generously.

It took ten minutes for the others to demorph and remorph. Soon four
cockroaches scurried just beyond the snake's coils.

Then David demorphed.

I knew what was coming next. We all knew what was coming next. Still, it
wasn't easy to act the part we had to act.

<So far, so good,> Jake whispered to me.

<Yeah. Let's just hope he doesn't go nuts on us,> I said.

<Cassie thinks he'll play it out the way we think he will,> Jake said.

I would have smiled if I'd had lips. Jake has a lot of respect for
Cassie's ability to "read" people. So do I. Although, I reminded myself,
Cassie had not seen how evil David could be.

<ln any case, we do have a backup plan if he starts stomping us all,> I
said.

<Not a great backup plan,> Marco said morbidly. <More like a really
pathetic backup plan.>

137 David loomed larger and larger as he sprouted back into his human
form. I saw him reach down and scoop up what could have been a beer
bottle. He rummaged and found a cap.

<Here we go,> I told Jake and the others.

<What's he got?>

<Like we planned: a bottle.>

<Beer or soft drink?> Cassie wondered.

<Looks like Pepsi.>

<l guess that's good,> Marco said.

<Do cockroaches have a sense of taste?> Ax wondered.

David reached down and scooped up one of the four cockroaches. He put
the mouth of the bottle beneath it and dropped it into the bottle.

<Hey! Hey, what's happening?> Marco yelled.

David laughed. "I'm putting you somewhere safe."

<What are you doing?!> Jake yelled.

"Don't worry, I'll keep my word," David said. "I'm not going to hurt any
of you. I just want to make sure you don't hurt me. Now stand still and
we can get this over with."

One by one, David scooped up my friends and dropped them into the Pepsi
bottle. Then he screwed the bottle top back in place.

"Now, Rachel, we go get the blue box," David said. "Now that there's no
chance of your friends interfering."

138 I saw four brown cockroaches trapped within the bottle. There was no
way they could de-morph. If one of them tried he would begin by crushing
the others and would then be smothered within the bottle, ending up as
nothing but a blob of unformed flesh.

David lifted the bottle up to eye level and laughed. "I've done what
Visser Three and all his Yeerk Empire couldn't do! I have the Animorphs!
Trapped! Hah-hah-hah!"

<You don't have the blue box yet,> I reminded him.

"But I will, Rachel. I will if you expect to see any of these friends of
yours alive again. Yeah, I will have the blue box."

Cassie started screaming. <We'll be trapped as cockroaches! We'll be
trapped forever!>

David sat the bottle down.

"Two hours, Rachel. Two hours till they are trapped forever as roaches.
Let's go get that blue box."

139 Ln the concrete floor of the never-to-be-finished building was a
drain. The drain cover was off. Scurrying on rat feet, I led David to it.

It was about six inches in diameter. To a rat it was plenty big.

<Down there?> David asked nervously.

<Down there,> I said.

<You go first,> he said.

I nosed over the edge and blinked blindly at the darkness. I took a deep
breath. At least it was better than the time I'd had to morph a mole and
dig through the dirt. Not much better, though.

I dove over the side and into the pipe. I landed hard after a six-inch
drop onto damp, rot-

140 ting leaves and filth. I was expecting it. I had tested the route
with Cassie earlier.

I quickly scurried a few inches down a horizontal pipe. David made a
satisfying splat as he hit face first.

<Aaahh!>

<Watch out for that first step,> I said.

<l can't see anything!>

<Well, that would be because we're in a pipe underground^ I said.

<Don't make me mad, Rachel,> David said ominously.

<First piece is down this pipe,> I said. I scurried off, utterly blind,
with David bringing up the rear.

<This better not be a trap,> David said. <You mess with me, I'll make
sure you never get out of here. And your friends will spend the rest of
their lives afraid of bug spray.>

<So what are you going to do with the bluebox?> I asked.^,

<What do you care?>

<Just curious,> I said meekly.

<l'll need some people to help me. Like a gang.>

<Aren't you afraid that once you give someone morphing power they'll
turn out to be a ... to do what you did to us?>

David laughed. <You don't think I already

141 thought of that? You guys made a big mistake: You got me. See, I was
smarter than any of you. That's why you lost. I'll be more careful. I'll
only choose the kind of guys who are too dumb to do anything except obey
me.>

I rolled my little rat eyes. This guy's ego just kept growing.

<Here's the first piece,> I said.

<Where?>

<Squeeze up here and you can feel it.>

<How do we get out of here with the piece?>

<Back up. There's a side pipe we can use as a turnarounds

<0kay. You drag the piece.>

I grabbed the piece with my sharp little teeth and scooted backward,
running occasionally into David's nose. Served him right.

We found the side pipe and awkwardly turned around.

<Where's the next piece?>

<Right down that side pipe. But we have to drag this one out first,> I said.

<Why? Why not get all the pieces and then push them all back to the exit
pipe?>

<!...! guess we never thought of that,> I said.

<0f course not,> he said condescendingly. <But it's kind of obvious,
don't you think?>

<Yeah. I guess it is.>

142

I headed down the second pipe. Now my heart was really pounding. So hard
I thought David might hear it and begin to suspect.

But no, I had carefully fed his bloated ego, and I had played the role
of the beaten-down, humiliated girl. His guard was down. He'd killed
Tobias. He had my friends trapped. What was there to be afraid of?

<Everythingready?> I called in private thought-speak.

<Everything is ready,> Cassie answered in a tortured voice. <May I be
forgiven for what I am about to do.>

143 D,

down the pipe. Through muck and standing water and filth. Past bugs of
several types.

Down the black, claustrophobic tunnel. With David literally stepping on
my tail.

I was close. Very close.

Fresh air! No! No! David would sense it, he'd realize . . . distraction!
I had to distract him.

The pipe suddenly opened into what felt to us like a cavern. It was
perhaps a foot square, steel all around, but the smell of fresh air was
unmistakable to my sensitive rat's nose.

To my utter horror, I heard the sound of a distant jet flying overhead.
There was no way we should have been able to hear that jet.

144 <What's that?> David demanded. <That sound, what is that sound?>

<Water in the pipes?> I suggested nonchalantly.

David pushed into the chamber beside me. All I had to do was back out,
get back down that pipe before he did. But if I lunged he would know
instantly.

<Smells different in here,> he said.

<Yeah, it does,> I agreed.

Neither of us could see the other. But I could almost hear the wheels
turning in his head.

A sudden sound of movement!

He knew! He was going for the exit.

I jumped to block his path. Damp fur against damp fur, we collided. In a
flash he was on me, teeth and paws tearing at my face.

<You think you can trick me?!> he shrieked.

We fell back, face-to-face, both bleeding. The pipe was on my right, on
David's left. We were equally close to it. Equally far away. Both
utterly blind.

<Be ready,> I told Jake grimly. <Be very, very ready. We have problems.>

David rushed at me, but this time I slid beneath his gnawing mouth, then
jerked upward, throwing him off-balance.

I leaped for the exit.

Stopped!

145 He had my tail in his jaw. He was pulling me back. I couldn't reach
him, and if I tried we'd go around in a circle like a dog chasing its
tail. He'd be able to get back out of the pipe, maybe escape altogether
in the sewer network.

<Have a good grip back there, Davey boy?> I said.

<You won't get away!>

<Yeah?> I twisted back, just as David hoped I would. Only I didn't
attack him. Instead, ignoring the hideous pain, I chewed through my own
tail.

<Aaaahhhh!> I cried in agony as the last shred of skin parted.

<Nooooo!> David screamed as he fell back, holding nothing but a few
inches of tail.

I darted for the exit, and before I was halfway into it yelled, <NOW!
NOW! NOW!>

The steel gate slammed down. It would have snagged my tail, if I'd still
had one.

David slammed against the barrier. It was adull thump.~M!-

<No! N00000!>

Suddenly, there was light everywhere. A flashlight shone right on my
face. I blinked like a miner coming up after a day digging coal.

<Hey, you want to point that somewhere else?> I grumped.

In the light of two wavering flashlights, everything could be seen. The
way the ground

146 above the pipe had been dug up, baring the pipe. The way the pipe
had been cut. And the steel box that had been affixed to the pipe end.

Not to mention the sliding door that turned the box into a cage. A trap.

The top of the box hinged up. But there was a strong wire grid to keep
David inside.

There he was, a rat. He blinked up at the faces around him: Jake,
Cassie, Marco, Ax. And my face as I quickly demorphed.

<No way! How did you get out of that bottle?> he demanded.

That's when Tobias swooped down from the dark sky and landed atop the cage.

<But. . . but you're . . .>

<Dead?> Tobias supplied. <No. You killed some poor red-tail who was
minding his own business. I broke the Pepsi bottle. The bottle we
deliberately left where you could be inspired to use it.>

"See, David," Marco said, "we knew you were in the barn, listening to
our every word. How did we know? Tobias. So we played out that whole
pathetic scene for you about how disgraced Rachel was. We knew you'd get
so much sick pleasure out of forcing her to obey you."

"That piece of the blue box we retrieved? A Lego," I said.

<AII of your actions, even your emotions, were

147 anticipated,> Ax said. <We anticipated how you would respond. So we
were able to manipulate you.>

<0kay, okay,> David said with a laugh. <0kay, so you guys won. That's
cool. I can accept that. Fine, I'll go my own way now.>

No one said anything.

<look, I'm serious, all right? Jake, you're the man, okay?>

I looked at Jake. He looked like he hated being alive. I turned my gaze
to Marco. He was carefully staring into empty space.

Cassie was crying.

David hadn't asked who the mastermind of the plan was. Who it was who
had so accurately appraised his emotions, his need to build his ego, the
fact that he would choose me to be his "companion." Cassie, of course.
Cassie had worked it out, step by step, after Jake and I failed to come
up with anything.

For Cassie, it was an improvement over the alternatives. See, no one was
going to have to die.

But David's life would end, just the same. And so would "Saddler's."
Eventually, they would find the real Saddler's body, and then they would
know, that at least for them, there was no such thing as a miracle.

<No,> David whispered as the truth began to dawn on him. <No, no. No.>

148 None of us had a watch, of course, since we'd morphed. But Ax was
very accurate about keeping track of time.

Jake looked at Ax. Ax showed no visible emotion. But I knew Ax well
enough to know that he was not exactly enjoying any part of this.

<He has been in morph for thirteen minutes^ Ax reported.

<No, no, no. You guys aren't going to do this!> David cried.

"You tried to kill us," Jake said. "You threatened to turn us over to
Visser Three. Not to mention what you've done to Saddler's family."

<You can't judge me!> David cried. <You're not God!>

"David, we have fought the Yeerks for a long time now. It seems like
forever," Jake said wearily. "We are not going to let you beat us. We
are going to save the human race if we can. There are larger issues . .
. more important . . ."

Jake looked at Cassie helplessly. He shrugged and made a face like he
couldn't stand hearing himself talk.

"We're doing to you what you were trying to do to us," I said. "Law of
the jungle: eat or be eaten."

I looked at the others. "No need for all of us to hang around here. It
looks too obvious. It's bad security. I can handle this."

149 <l will stay, to keep track of the time,> Ax said.

I nodded.

"You don't have to do this, Rachel," Jake said. "Everyone is in on this.
We all made this choice."

"Yeah, but it won't bother me. It will bother you guys."

Of course Jake didn't believe me. Neither did Cassie or Tobias. Maybe
Marco did. I don't know.

No one made a move to leave.

"Look, get out of here!" I roared. "Get out of here! You're just drawing
attention. What if someone comes by? Get out of here!"

Jake nodded. "Yeah," was all he said.

Jake's a good leader. He knows when to use us. He knows when to protect
us. He knew he had to protect as many of his people as he could from
what was going to happen.

He took Cassie's arm and called to Tobias and Marco.

<You can't do this,> David moaned. <You can't do this!>

<lt is now fifteen minutes,> Ax said.

I closed my eyes and wished I could cover my ears to keep out the
sounds. But it was thought-speak I was hearing. And you can't block that
out.

150 It took two hours for David to become a nothlit. A person trapped in
morph.

Two hours. But that two hours of horror will last forever in my mind. If
I live a hundred years, I will still hear his cries, his threats, his
pleading, each night before sleep takes me. And beyond sleep, in my dreams.

Once we were sure he was trapped, Ax and I morphed. I morphed into bald
eagle, Ax into harrier. We took turns carrying the helpless rat out
across the beach, across the breaking surf, out to the tiny, desolate
rock a mile or more from shore.

There were other rats there. Guess there had

151 to be a food supply. But the rocks and the waves kept humans away
from the place.

We left him there. And we flew away.

<Rachel?> Ax said.

<Yeah?>

<l think ... I think I will never want to speak of this again.>

I didn't answer. I was still listening to the thought-speak cries that
followed us for so long. That long, wailing, <Nooooo!>

At last, the cries were left behind us.

We flew over the Marriott resort where the summit meeting had taken
place. It still looked pretty bad. There were repair crews everywhere.
No sign of the world leaders.

Maybe they'd decided to take the meeting somewhere else. I can't even
imagine what they made of the whole thing. Hard to explain being
attacked by elephants and rhinoceroses here in ... well, never mind
where "here" is.

Something kind of snapped in me after that. I didn't suddenly become all
soft and mushy or anything. I didn't turn into a wimp. But somehow the
joy I'd gotten from combat, the thrill I'd gotten from battle against
impossible odds . . . well, I guess maybe I just grew up a little.

We never heard from David again. Not di-

152 rectly, at least. But months later I heard some kid at school
talking about the rock.

It was haunted, he said. He and his family had passed close by on a
boat. He swears he'd heard a faint, ragged voice crying, "No! No!"

153 Don't; miss

o

Hello. My name is Tobias. I ..."

I hesitated. The secretary was looking at me skeptically. Like maybe I'd
come in looking to borrow a quarter for the video game at the
convenience store.

"My name is Tobias." I told her my last name. Weird. I could barely
remember it. It felt like I was using an alias. "I think Mr. DeGroot
wanted to talk to me."

She was puzzled. I looked at her nameplate. Ingrid.

"It's pronounced DeGroot. It rhymes with boat."

"Oh."

"Let me just check with Mr. DeGroot." She picked up her phone and
punched a line. "Mr. DeGroot, there's a young boy named Tobias --- out
here. He says - oh. All right."

154 She hung up the phone.

"I guess he does want to see you," she admitted. "Right through that door."

I checked the door. Fine. The lawyer's office was still sharing a wall
with the laundromat. If I started yelling it would take Rachel about
three minutes to morph and come through that wall.

Three minutes is a very long time when you can't even fly.

I used the doorknob. Yes, human hands were very cool. As a bird I'd have
been totally defeated by a doorknob.

DeGroot was younger than I'd expected. More in his twenties or thirties
than really old. He was wearing a white shirt and red suspenders. His
jacket was thrown casually over a chair.

He jumped up and smiled.

"So, you are Tobias."

"Yes. I'm Tobias."

He looked me up and down. I did the same to him.

"I've been hoping I could locate you, Tobias. Have a seat, please. Would
you like some water? A soda? Coffee? No, I guess you don't drink coffee
at your age. A soda? We have Coke, diet Coke. And we might have some Dr.
Brown's cream soda. I'd have to have Ingrid check."

If he was getting ready to pull a gun and shoot

155 me, or expecting to have Visser Three come storming in the door, he
hid it very well.

I relaxed a little. But I was baffled. Water? Coffee? Soda? What was the
right answer?

"Urn ... um ..."

Good grief. You'd think it was Final Jeopardy and the category was
Obscure Modern Poets. I was so out of practice being human.

"I'd like a Coke!" I practically yelled.

DeGroot pressed his intercom. "Ingrid, our young friend would like -"

"- a Coke. Yes, I heard him. All the way out here."

The lawyer and I stared at each other till the Coke came. I gripped the
can self-consciously and pressed it to my beak. Lips.

It had been a long time since I'd tasted sugar. I almost burst out
laughing. It was like being Ax in human morph. The taste of sugar was
overwhelming! And the coldness. I hadn't felt cold in my mouth in a very
long time.

"Tobias, where have you been staying? Your legal guardians both seemed
to think the other one had you."

Not a question I wanted to answer. "I take care of myself."

DeGroot smiled. "No doubt. But you are under age. You can't 'take care
of yourself.' Not legally."

156 "You can't lock me up," I said. Literally true. One thing about
being an Animorph: No home, no building, no school, no jail or prison
could hold me.

The lawyer looked pained. "That's not what I am talking about."

"Okay. What are you talking about?"

That seemed to set him back a little. It was weird. I had a toughness
I'd never had when I was human. As a human I'd been a bully magnet.

"Here's the thing. I represent your father's estate."

"My father is dead." That's what I told him. But over the years and
especially lately I'd begun to wonder.

"Tobias . . ." He leaned across his desk. "Your father, that father, the
man who died? That may not have been your real father."

"What?"

"I have a document . . . it's a strange situation. Very strange. Look,
Tobias, I'm going to level with you. My father used to run this office.
He's dead, too. He left this document along with the rest of his
clients' papers. But on this he wrote me specific instructions. Very
specific. On the date of your next birthday your father's last statement
was to be read to you, if at all humanly possible."

157 I didn't know what to say. If this was a trap, it was a weird one.

"Are you okay? You don't seem surprised."

No, I didn't, I realized with a start. I had forgotten to make facial
expressions. It was something I didn't do as a hawk.

"I am surprised," I said. I twisted my face into what I hoped was an
expression of surprise. But it occurred to me that I was facing a new
problem: He'd said he'd read the document on my next birthday.

When was my birthday? I couldn't exactly ask him.

"Now there's this new complication. A woman named Aria, who says she is
your cousin. Your great-aunt's daughter. Apparently she's only just
learned of your situation. She's a very acclaimed nature photographer
and she's been on long-term assignment in Africa. She wants to meet you."

"Why?"

"You're family. She wants to help you."

"Oh."

"She'd like to meet you tomorrow. At the hotel where she's staying. If
that's okay. It's the Hyatt downtown. Do you know where that is?"

I could have said, yes, I am familiar with their roof. A peregrine
falcon has a nest there in a niche in the radio tower. And the thermals
are great, sweeping up the south face of the build-

158 ing, warm air radiating up from the street below and gaining
strength from the sunlight reflected off all those windows.

What I did say was, "Yeah, I know where it is."

"She's very concerned for you."

"Uh-huh."

"Do you need money? A place to spend the night?"

"No. I'm fine."

He shrugged doubtfully. "You look healthy enough. Well dressed."

I almost laughed. Rached had picked out my wardrobe. I looked like a
poster boy for Tommy Hilfiger.

"I get by okay. Dm ... so when did you say you're going to read this
document?"

"On your birthday."

"Ah. Okay. Bye."

