Книга: The Test



The Test

The Test

The Test

OCRed By Arpit Nathany

The Test

The author wishes to thank Ellen Geroux for her help in preparing this manuscript.

For Michael and Jake

Cover illustration by David B. Mattingly Art Direction/Design by Karen Hudson/Ursula Albano My name is Tobias. Still a freak of nature.

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 Part human. Part bird. Confused? Don't worry, it publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any pay-gets better.

ment for this "stripped book."

I am flying over the forest. The air is thick. A 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, storm is approaching. It is only early afternoon, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to but the sky is growing black as the front moves in Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 555 Broadway, on the city. A towering wall of rain, wind, and cu-New York, NY 10012.

mulus clouds.

ISBN 0-439-11517-5

I had to find food before the storm. I was hun-Copyright © 2000 by Katherine Applegate.

gry. But then, I'm always looking for food. That's All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Inc.

SCHOLASTIC, APPLE PAPERBACKS, ANIMORPHS and associated logos life for a bird of prey. Hunger.

are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.

A shrew stepped out from its burrow. It loi-12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0 1 2 3 4 5/0

tered nervously, sniffing the moisture. We had the Printed in the U.S.A.

same thought, me and the shrew. Hunker down First Scholastic printing, July 2000

against nature's wrath, but fill your belly first.

1

I was higher on the food chain. I tucked into a persing terrified crows in all directions. If I were dive.

a true hawk, I'd have cleared out with the other My wings pressed tight to my body. Air whis-birds. Instead, I circled around and flapped tled past. Mountains, forest, and sky. All a blur, a toward the turbulence.

flashing streak. Everything but the shrew, shift-My friends, the Animorphs, the ones who ing agitatedly, chomping on a seed . . .

fight the Yeerk invasion of Earth, say that since My talons struck, embedded, and squeezed.

my capture, I live too much of life in my head.

Drained life instantly.

They must be right. I'd almost missed every-Wonder what it's like? Dig your fingernails thing.

into a too-ripe peach. Rip sections off with your Not just the helicopter. The humans below, teeth. Gulp them without chewing. The kill is streaming across rough forest floor, the tires of something like that.

their ATV's scoring the soil. The searchlights I downed the shrew and lifted off.

streaking the trees in the daytime darkness, makI don't think about the kill anymore. I'm hawk ing rabbits and deer dart in alarm.

and human. I'll explain later. Just try to underI flew to the nearest ranger station. It was stand that the hawk must feed the human. It has ringed by squad cars and TV news vans. I swooped to happen.

down, closer to the action. Landed on a low I don't think about it anymore.

branch. A blond woman in a raincoat held a mi-That's a lie.

crophone close to her lips and swatted wind-

"You vile little bird! Do you realize what whipped hair away from her face.

you've done? Do you realize what you've become?

"Bobby Mclntire," she shouted above the You're trapped! You have to live out your life as a noise of the vehicles, "missing now for two full bird!"

days since he wandered away from his camping Her name was Taylor. My Yeerk torturer. Her party. Hope that he'll be found alive is fading.

voice screeching. Bruising my ears. Tormenting But it's not just a race against time and the me after every kill. Other times, too. Still, after weather." Lightning struck the sky above her, all this time . . .

imparting urgency to her words. "Little Bobby THWOK! THWOK! THWOK! THWOK!

is deaf and can't hear the desperate calls of A helicopter! Hovering low over the trees, dis-rescuers. Kelly King," she concluded, looking sky-2

3

ward, "reporting live." She held a frozen, concerned assaulted with memories, images of all the times expression until the producer gave her the all clear.

I've been weak. Or think I might have been . . .

Like my first time at the Yeerk pool.

"I will break you." It was Taylor's voice again, My mind flashed back to it now, to the scene whispering in my mind. "You can't win."

at Yeerk Central, that echoing underground dome I set a course for the storm front. A strange with a sludgy pool churning at its core. The Yeerk thing to do, to turn toward the lightning. To fly pool. That's where the Yeerks do their dirtiest into the line of rain, the thunderclaps, the wind.

dirty work, where parasitic, sluglike aliens dunk But it made me feel like Lindbergh over the your head in the muck and force one of their kind Atlantic. Fearless and strong. Maybe even a little heroic.

through your ear.

The Yeerks squeeze your brain and wring out I wanted those feelings.

your freedom. They control all thoughts and move-See, it wasn't long ago that the Yeerks cap-ments. They silence your howls and screams of tured me. A crazed and insane human-Controller grief until you are nothing but a slave. A stupid made my life a hell for several excruciating hours.

puppet. An unwilling soldier of the Yeerk Empire. A I survived. I even thought the torture was over. I threat to all humanity.

didn't realize that torture doesn't end when you're freed.

But you've probably heard about all this by now. Right?

People think it does. People who've never Tha-BOOM! Boom!

been through torture think that when the phys-A thunderclap roared and half brought me ical injuries heal, you're healed, too. They're wrong.

back to the present. The other half of me was still at the Yeerk pool that first, horrible time.

Torture plays tricks on your mind. "You're weak Clinging to the rock face, praying for camouflage, and scared," it says. "You think you're in control?

searching the colossal cavern for a way to es-Hah!" it says. "Doubt yourself. Worry, and ques-cape. A way to get past Visser Three's men.

tion, and fear," it tells you.

<Where's Tobias?> I'd heard Rachel say, Pain can be very convincing.

faintly.

Sometime during my capture, my mind was How long since I'd morphed to red-tailed 4

5

hawk? An hour and fifty minutes? An hour and I let a fading thermal lift me into the atmos-fifty-five?

phere.

How long?!

My name is Tobias. I'm a human. I'm a hawk.

The others had escaped already. The other If you want to find something in the forest, you'd Animorphs, I mean. They'd dodged the visser's do well to ask me.

fireball gauntlet. They'd slipped out to safety, There's nothing I don't see.

back through the janitor's closet, back into the school. Rachel, Cassie, Marco, Jake.

Had I missed the deadline? Had I been more than two hours in morph?

Couldn't have. Can't have. No. I'd be trapped forever. A bird.

Independent, free, alone.

Forever.

Images of the human life I'd led till then flooded my mind. The images were dark. My apa-thetic aunt. My alcoholic uncle.

Then, something brighter, something powerful surged through my mind. Something else.

Shoring me up. Drawing me in. A wave of. . .

What? What had I felt then, at that moment, with the seconds ticking down? With the deadline chasing me . . .

Weakness or strength?

"You'll never know," Taylor said. "You won't know who or what you are when I'm done with you."

Bobby Mclntire needed to be found.

6

7

The Test

Quiet as a glider, my personal search plane swept huge, broad strokes above the trees.

My friends, the other Animorphs — the other kids who knew the great Andalite warrior Elfangor, who'd been there as he died, and who'd accepted the Yeerk-fighting Andalite technology to become any animal they can touch — they were expecting me to show up at Cassie's barn. There was a meeting scheduled for after school. If I wanted to make it, I had to travel east.

I edged west, following the search party's tire tracks. Tracing the lines as they crossed and con-verged in a half-mile section of sparse tree cover.

Tha-BOOM! Boom!

I was guessing that this was the last place the Thunderclaps. I let the warm air draw me up.

boy was seen. Good place to start. I dove to fifty Three hundred feet. Higher. I could see through feet, skimming the treetops, looking for a sign, a the haze, from city's edge to the mountains.

clue. Anything.

The national park is a very big place. You Nothing.

could hike for days and never see anyone. Spot-A raindrop struck my wing. No, not yet! Three ting a boy from a helicopter would be like finding more drops hit me like BB's.

the needle in the haystack. And the haystack was A whistling gale pushed me back into the air about to get really wet.

and blew me away from the search party tracks.

Binoculars, infrared goggles, and laser sights I flapped harder to fight the strengthening wind.

flipped on. I don't mean to brag, but nature gave It was pushing me toward mudflats. Forcing me me excellent tools. I can see a hiker's broken toward a dried up stream.

shoelace. A robin's chicks.

The raindrops were starting to feel like war-I can pick out deer poop.

game paint pellets. I remember. My uncle took

"You vile little bird!" Taylor's voice, always me to do the paint-ball thing. I hated it, but it humming in my ear.

was one of the only things we'd done together.

8

9

Anyway, I was going to have to stop. The down-out. Hork-Bajir? I wasn't practiced enough with pour was starting.

the blades not to lacerate the kid and I definitely Suddenly — a splash of red against brown. A couldn't let him see an alien. <Hang tight, Bobby.

shred of bright cloth caught on a bramble.

I'll be back soon. It'll be okay.> A lightning bolt Yes.

sizzled the ground nearby. Not good.

<Bobby?> I chanced in open thought-speak.

The trip to the ranger station was probably the

<lf you're here, show me where you are.> Brush-worst flight of my life. The rain pummeled me.

ing the treetops, I scanned the mud. Nothing.

The wind screwed up my feathers. But the very The wind was absurd. Violent one minute, worst part was the dead air. By the time I reached dead the next.

the ranger station, my body was burning liga-Then — a single footprint. A kid's footprint.

ments for fuel.

<Bobby!> I called again. <lf you can hear me, Through the windows I saw most of the search wave. Or move. Do something!>

party, inside and drying off. Getting ready for an-A faint rustling of brush. Then, more move-other round of wet and nasty searching. Then I ment. I circled in to land. A dirt clod shot saw a guy who looked like he needed a miracle.

straight up into the air, grazing my beak.

He was sitting outside on a stump, letting the

<Whoa, okay! Great, Bobby. Good work.> rain drench him through. The ink from his name I didn't see the giant sinkhole until I almost tag was running down his chest, but I could still landed in it. It was a pit so invisible under the read the letters. "Mr. Mclntire." Bobby's dad? He overgrowth, it would have taken searchers months fixed his sad stare on the mountains.

to find it.

I touched down just feet from him. Didn't I peered down at the kid. He was searching once think about the consequences. <Listen,> I wildly for the source of my voice. His eyes were said, <l know this is going to sound crazy. I know swollen from crying. His hands were raw from try-you'll think you're losing your mind. But I can ing to climb up the vertical, featureless sinkhole take you to Bobby.>

wall. He stood in stagnant water a foot deep. And You can tell a lot about a person by the a flash flood was on the way.

way they respond to a talking hawk. There's the

<We're gonna get you out of there,> I said.

run-away-screaming type. The bring-palms-to-But I didn't have a morph that could haul him head-to-squeeze-out-demons reflex. Even the kill-10

11

the-animal maneuver. Most people don't do too

<Overthe hill,> I directed.

well when their reality's challenged.

Then we crested the rise and I saw something But Bobby's dad was cool. I mean, he looked I didn't think was possible. Sheets of rain pun-kind of freaked at first. His eyes bugged out and ished the earth to our right and our left, but over he spun around frantically, looking for the Bobby's sinkhole . . . unbelievable. A corridor of prankster who was fooling with him. But once the rainless clouds with two ends of a weak rainbow initial surprise faded, he quickly regained his marking the borders.

composure.

I was sure my mind was making the scene up.

"Okay," he said. "Lead the way."

It couldn't turn out this well. Nothing ever did.

He probably thought he was nuts, but I don't Taylor wouldn't let it . . .

think it would have mattered whether he was

<Bobby!> I called. I pumped my wings and hearing voices or talking with aliens. He just found him, the water rising around his knees. I wanted his son back.

perched on a low branch and watched as three That kind of love . . . it made me feel . . .

powerful rangers pulled him to safety. Watched strange.

as Bobby collapsed in his dad's arms, shaking, as I flew from tree to tree, a few hundred feet at joy replaced fear.

a time, waiting for Mr. Mclntire and three rangers Bobby's dad glanced up at me, gratitude in he'd convinced to come along. All the while I his eyes.

gave him directions in private thought-speak. At Ever have something work out so perfectly, least I could stay a good distance from the men, you feel you could fly? That's how I felt — and to keep it uncertain whether a hawk was really the cool thing was, I could actually do it. I could running the show.

actually fly.

I pictured Bobby in the pit, the torrential rain I took off down the swath of rainless sky tunneling into channels, forming a raging ar-toward Cassie's barn. It felt so good. I played in royo. Racing like a hungry, deadly snake. A mas-the air like a pilot at an air show, awed the audi-sive, silent snake that Bobby's deaf ears wouldn't ence with my death-defying stunts. I cut my en-hear.

gines, fell into a nosedive, ready to pull up just

"You will die, Andalite. "Taylor's hateful voice, seconds before I hit the ground.

droning in my head.

And then . . .

12

13

The Test

A golden eagle, twice my size, screeching toward me like a wrecking ball . . .

WHAM!

And all was blackness.

I never even had a chance.

This hawk's gonna feel that wing. Hero or not, when he wakes up, he'll hurt like crazy."

My eyes snapped open. Through the links of my cage I spied the faces of two concerned, lab-coated veterinarians. Both women. One brunette, one blond. The words University Clinic were stitched on their pockets.

"Do you think Superbird needs an epidural?"

I tensed my extremities. Right wing not responding. A sore and twisted neck. That nasty golden eagle had banged me up pretty bad. The memory of the impact got my hawk heart pumping. Fear, territoriality, confusion.

"No, I gave him enough medication to keep him comfy till morning. Hey, look, he's awake.

14

15

Feeling better, Mr. Hawk?" the blond one said, This was bad. What was I thinking?

with the gentle condescension appropriate for My friends, they'd be looking for me, too. I'd wildlife who can't make it in the wild.

endangered our own security. By trying to fight I could have found both vets extremely annoy-Taylor's ghost, I'd dragged my friends into danger.

ing. But as it was, with an ugly vulture in the Stupid. Weak.

cage next to mine, and a prehistoric egret two I had to morph! Morph and get out before . . .

doors down, I was actually glad to hear a human But no. I couldn't morph in front of the vets.

voice.

And there were video cameras, mounted up in How much time had passed? What day was it?

the corners of the lab, recording everything.

"Seen the headlines?" the brunette asked Who'd get to me first?

me, as if in answer to my question.

"What's he doing? Flapping his wing? Hey, Sometimes, not always, if you ask questions he's gonna get hurt. Chloe, quick! We need to se-you want answers to, the universe will respond.

date him."

It was the evening edition newspaper that she Sedate me?

held in her hands, and it confirmed that I'd been I fell back to the floor of the cage and lay mo-asleep way too long. "'Father Claims Hawk Led tionless.

Searchers to Lost Boy.'" She smiled at me, then No way would I be sedated.

summed it up.

Not with two groups looking for me. Two

"You da bird!"

groups I knew would take that headline very seri-The vets chuckled. They didn't know this was ously.

no laughing matter. They didn't understand . . .

Group One: my friends.

It hit me, right at that moment. I'd messed up Group Two: my enemies.

big time. That headline . . . the kiss of death . . .

"Wait," the vet said. "Forget it. He calmed if the Yeerks found me first. . .

down. He's fine. I don't know what that was I was stupid. So stupid!

about."

Any time you get an animal doing unusual

"Okay, Superbird. Stay out of trouble. We'll stuff, you get Yeerks. To Yeerks, all animals are see you in the morning."

suspects, possible "Andalite bandits" disguised They were going away? They were leaving me in morph.

here!

16

17

The Test

Why did everyone leave? Why . . .

They walked to the door, switched off the main fluorescent overheads, deadbolted the door behind them.

They were going home. They had homes to goto.

They were leaving me to face my fate alone.

The room was cold and sterile. Sick and injured birds squawked and cooed in the partial darkness.

Alone.

And all I could do was wait.

Sccreeeeech!

The sound jarred me from a restless half-sleep. I looked at the clock: 1:12 A.M. Scanned for the source of the sound.

For a moment, glowing metal blinded my sensitive hawk vision. When my sight returned, the lock on the door was sizzling. Evaporating . . .

Behind the door, heavy, punishing footsteps slammed down the hallway. A sound that meant only one thing.

Hork-Bajir.

The door burst open.

Tseew! Tseew!

Seven-foot-tall bladed bodies charged into 18

19

the room! Video cameras disintegrated in flashes

"Drop the bird," a man with a mustache or-of Dracon fire.

dered. "Now!" The Hork-Bajir snorted a laugh at No time to morph!

the wiry man. "Bird is visser's. You rebel make I pressed myself to the back of the cage. Tried mistake." Quick as lightning, he raised his arm to cover my reddish tail, tried to pretend I wasn't and opened fire on the humans.

there.

The human-Controllers were agile and dove They were on me instantly, scowling with fiery for cover. They just weren't agile enough. An ab-eyes. Holding weapons to my head.

breviated scream echoed down the hall. The

"You mine, Andalite!" asserted the Hork-Bajir mustached man vanished in a flash of light and with the worst breath. "Visser Three will give heat, a silhouette scorched against the white-praise."

washed wall. The other humans didn't seem to This guy obviously hadn't been on Earth very notice the loss of their comrade. Or else, they long. Getting praise from Visser Three would be didn't care.

like trying to stop a brushfire with a glass of wa-Only Yeerks can lose a teammate and not bat ter. But I wasn't about to burst his bubble.

an eye.

He hefted my cage into the air and ran for the BLAAAAM!

door, banging me roughly. His henchmen, two in Four more humans coming up from behind!

front, two behind, surrounded him. Their weapons Slamming the Hork-Bajir before they knew what were drawn, their eyes were searching. They were hit them.

tense as we moved into the hall. On guard. Almost I didn't know who to root for. Hork-Bajir or hu-as though they expected . . .

man? Visser Three or. . . who? Who were these Tseew. Tseew.

people?

Three humans appeared twenty feet down the A long, sharp, Hork-Bajir blade caught my corridor. Their Dracon rounds ricocheted off the cage and lifted it. He ran swiftly toward the exit.

walls.

This guy could move! Smashed over a stainless What was going on?

steel medical cart. Crashed into empty cages Humans firing Dracons at Hork-Bajir!

stacked against the wall.

Controller versus Controller?

Blocked!

20

21

Three more people! Large ones, dressed in tie. Deafening Dracon fire was followed by a dark leather, with straps and metal clasps cover-momentary stillness. Heavy footsteps marched ing their bodies. Bodies that blocked the exit.

my way. Four Hork-Bajir feet came to a halt be-My captor halted, claws screeching across the fore my cage.

polished floor.

"Gafrash!" one roared. A hideous appendage He turned back and moved toward a window.

reached for me. I cringed, waiting to be taken Three new Dracon-packing people moved in to again, waiting to be seized.

block his path.

The Hork-Bajir arm jerked back.

Surrounded!

The feet tensed and turned to run, but there My cage dangled precariously from the Hork-was nowhere to go.

Bajir's blade. Aliens and humans froze in a grim, Because four more feet, twice as large, gigan-momentary standoff.

tic and familiar, landed with a thunder-thud.

Suddenly, my captor leaped at the smallest Rachel!

person. A woman. It was a low move, a desperate One Hork-Bajir was down. The other snatched attempt at escape. Foolish, too. The others were up my cage.

on him instantly.

<Oh, no you don't!> Rachel cried, baring her We crashed to the floor, my cage caving be-massive, flesh-tearing teeth. Her wild grizzly bear neath the Hork-Bajir's weight until the cold steel claws flashed like giant steel rigatoni and lashed bars pressed tight against my feathers. Around my captor's arm.

me swirled a sea of hands and claws, clutching

<The cavalry's here, Tobias,> she huffed.

wildly. For me. The prize.

<Hangon!>

I couldn't keep track of what happened next.

I just know that someone sent the cage careening across the floor. My frail, injured body tumbled like a rag in the dryer. The cage lodged under the large sink of a utility closet, my hawk body even more bruised and damaged.

I heard frantic shuffling from the fight beyond, but from my position, I could see very lit-22

23

The Test

up. Sleek, suede boots. Fashionably worn jeans.

The torso and head were in shadow. Who was this? Some innocent vet student, trapped by the battle?

Her arm appeared from behind her back. Her fingers clutched a Dracon beam . . .

My heart stopped.

The girl's fingers glistened and sparkled in the semidarkness. The way real flesh fingers never do.

<Taylor,> Rachel hissed, her voice rough with rage.

"Make one move, bear, and your next stop is the taxidermist."

"Ga

Tafrash horlit!"

<Yeah, right!> Rachel leaped, claws slashing.

The Hork-Bajir let go. My cage hit the floor Tseew!

with another painful crash.

Taylor seared a hole in Rachel's flank.

<Get Tobias!> Rachel cried.

"HhhhoooRRRAAWWRRR!" Rachel dropped, Marco, in gorilla morph, was the only one with groaning with pain.

an opposable thumb, an often undervalued ap-And Taylor grabbed my cage with her artificial pendage. He reached for me, but a downed Hork-hand. The hand she had accepted in exchange Bajir grabbed his leg and yanked him backward.

for her freedom. Taylor's story was a sad one. A So Rachel nudged me with her massive front story of a girl who'd lost her face, arm, and leg in paws, pushing my cage across the floor, down the a terrible fire. The Sharing, the Yeerk front orga-hall, away from the fight.

nization, had been there for her. Offering her a Suddenly, the cage stopped. We'd run into new face and arm and leg. All she had to do was something. We'd hit human feet.

agree to be infested. A voluntary Controller. All Rachel froze, sniffing the air hard. I looked she had to do was let a vile gray slug wrap around 24

25

her brain. But the Yeerk that infested Taylor was shut my ears, shut it all out. The animal screams, nuts. Taylor had pretty much lost it, too. Not a the grunts, the human shouts. The horror of reliv-very stable situation. And there I was.

ing a nightmare.

I couldn't believe what was happening. My Acquire her. Acquire her. Become her.

torturer had captured me. Again.

A nauseating idea. Necessary.

No.

I clutched her fingers tighter. To Taylor, it The fingers of her real hand poked through must have seemed like a pitiful attempt to fight the bars of my cage, threatening to touch me as back, but she didn't know the truth. She didn't she lifted the cage right up to her face.

know that I felt her DNA flow into me. Felt her NO!

body relax, slacken under the acquiring trance.

She didn't speak a word but her icy stare said The gaseous powder stung and tingled, prick-it all. Thought you'd seen the last of me, Andalite ing my skin like invisible nettles.

fool? Well, you thought wrong.

But Taylor, too, was immobile! Paralyzed! For Taylor straightened her pearly, plastic fingers.

an instant, I'd slowed her down. Incapacitated I knew what she was going to do. I'd known since her.

the moment I recognized her in the shadows.

Not enough. Not nearly enough.

"I love surprises," she whispered. And with-My talon went limp. My body fell numb. Tay-out any further warning, snowy particles frothed lor's eyes buzzed back to life just in time to from the fingertips of her prosthesis.

watch me realize that this gas was different from Gas!

the stuff I'd experienced before.

She was gassing me just like the time she'd

"Version 2.0," Taylor laughed. "Enough gen-captured me under the grounds of The Sharing's eral anesthetic to knock you out completely."

new community center. In moments, I'd be para-Blackness rushed in from all sides as my vi-lyzed. The only difference was that she didn't re-sion dimmed.

alize I was the same "Andalite" she'd previously

<Rachel?> I called weakly. <Jake?> captured. I could only hope she didn't remem-If they answered, I didn't hear them.

ber.

Why me? What had I done to deserve this?

I stretched out my talon. I gripped the fleshy Foolish questions, useless self-pity . . . I was a fingers of her real hand. Then I closed my eyes, warrior.

26

27

The Test

All I could do was look straight ahead. Into the dismal depths of Taylor's mad, hypnotic eyes.

In that moment, I saw clearly. I saw that I was just a blob of mud bobbing through the raging stream of her thoughts. The stream couldn't be stopped and it would destroy me.

It would break me apart.

Skrrr-eeeek!

The sound of a metal spoon dragged across the bottom of a pan. The smell of canned tomato soup warming on a stove. These ordinary things drew me out of darkness. I opened my eyes.

I was still caged, but now there were half a dozen Dracon beams aimed at my head, clamped to my cage with vises. Not high-tech mecha-nisms fresh off the Yeerk drawing board, but the kind of clamps you pick up at Ace Hardware.

It didn't matter. Point was, I didn't have any hands. My captors knew that hawk beak and talons couldn't unscrew anything.

Blinking beneath each mounted Dracon was a red light. A sensor? I didn't move. I didn't dare.

28

29

The thought of more torture set my bones you that option." She paused to take a slurp of knocking. I couldn't take any more.

soup, her eyes still fixed on me.

I started to tremble, uncontrollably. I watched I looked at the kitchen, and at the small, the sensors with both minds, hawk and human.

shoddily built, low-ceilinged structure. Something Each had been almost destroyed and both parts was definitely wrong with this picture. Yeerks of me remembered . . . the pain, the hopeless-choose the best. They take the best of everything ness! Impossible to escape . . . red light, blue we humans have, and when the best we have to light. Agony . . . endless . . .

offer isn't good enough, they use stolen alien Morph. I could morph to something small and technologies to make it shine. This was . . .

crawl away. Undetected. Steal away. Do it, To-what? Some sort of hovel. My cage rested on a bias. Do it.

Formica table scarred with cigarette burns.

"Morph, my friend," Taylor warned, her voice

"Choose death," she repeated casually, "or. . .

cold and confident, "and the beams will fire au-listen to what I have to say." She rose, dropped tomatically."

her mug in the sink of the strange little kitchen, I hadn't seen her there, sitting at a kitchen and returned to her seat. "I have a deal for you, chair, mug in hand, sipping soup.

Andalite."

I'd felt her, though. Her evil had a way of She was so casual. Not the Taylor I'd known.

dominating the very nature of a room, of coloring What trick, what scheme did she have up her everything around her and stoking my fear.

sleeve?

I couldn't escape. I never really thought I

"Good," she said, seeing that I'd decided to could. Not then, not now. Taylor was back, just as postpone death. "It would be much harder to so-I guessed she would be.

licit help from an Andalite who's dead."

"The computer controlling the Dracon beams Help?

is sensitive to basic changes in shape. You can-Yeah, and Rachel will pass up a sale at Ex-not escape."

press, Crayak will win the Nobel Peace Prize, a Wait. That wasn't true. I could escape. I could Yeerk slug will turn down a promotion.

morph. Morph and die!

What did she have up her sleeve?

"Yes, you could choose death," Taylor said,

"Civil war is coming, Andalite," she began.

answering my thoughts. "I've deliberately given

"Yeerk versus Yeerk. We've had enough of the 30

31

petty visser fights, the favoritism, the punish-mans." Her teeth snapped a crisp carrot in two.

ments . . . the Council makes us sick."

Her eyes stared at me. "We want to move toward Anger flushed her face. She'd said the last democracy and we need your help to do it."

sentence with such vehemence that for a fleeting It was like the world's weirdest press confer-instant, I knew I could believe her. The Council ence.



did make her sick.

I didn't believe a word she said.

But then, her guard went up again. The spark Not a word.

in her eye made her look part politician and part So I tested her. <l suppose all you need from actor, part trial lawyer, and part scheming teen-me are the names and locations of the remaining aged girl. It was a face shrouded in lies.

Andalite bandits? You know, as a token of my co-

"The Yeerks must move on as a race," she operation?>

continued. "The time has come." She got up Taylor laughed. She was a violent, aggressive, again and opened the ancient refrigerator. "We and ruthless personality. Personalities don't need to make a civilization with the hosts we change. Not much, anyway. I waited for her to have." She glanced at me. "Many of us realize prove me right. I waited for proof that she was that the eternal wars have to end and that the still working for Visser Three. That this talk of loss on Leera, the stalled offensive on Earth, and rebels was all a ruse.

now the apparent bungling on the Anati planet

"Nice to hear your voice again, Andalite. The have discredited the current leadership enough Andalite with the power to stay in morph for more that it cannot survive."

than the two-hour time limit. Your voice brings She pulled a bag of carrots from the fridge.

back such sweet memories." The tone in her voice Seriously bizarre. She was talking political strat-set me shaking again. "I learned a lot about you egy while she snacked. Like we were hanging out during our time together, Andalite. I saw your at her house after school, planning the rigging of mind. I saw your courage dribble away. I would the homecoming queen election.

enjoy finishing you now. Breaking you." She She continued. "We want to be more like you, slinked toward my cage. "Right here and right Andalite. We need a structure that will transform now. You think you're strong, but I know you're us from rebels to leaders. We want to be more weak. It would take seconds!" She paused just like Andalite society. Even more like the hu-enough to let the thought rattle me. "But this 32

33

The Test

time, Andalite, it's your cooperation I require. I need you and your fellow Andalites. I need you to help me destroy Visser Three."

She wasn't working for the visser. She was out to destroy him. That's what she'd said.

Unguarded anger seethed from her face. If she was lying, it was impossible for me to tell.

"You've fared badly as a bird." She looked at my bandaged wing, at my matted feathers, my twisted neck. "You have Visser Three to thank for that. His Hork-Bajir aren't big on gentle."

She wanted me to become angry, too, and take revenge, get back at the visser, join forces with her. . .

"Don't answer now." She pulled a scrap of The red sensors flickered out.

paper from her pocket and pushed it through the I hobbled from the cage, hopped to the win-bars of my cage. "Here." It was a Web address.

dow. The ground was a few feet below me. I fell

"Talk things over with your comrades and leave outside. Taylor. Visser Three. Civil war. Weak-me a message there. Sign it 'Bandits.'"

ness . . .

Then she unlatched the cage door, threw She'd let me go.

open the nearest window, and disappeared be-It was too much to sort out. I needed my hind a curtain, leaving her dirty dishes in the friends. I needed Rachel.

sink.

I dragged myself into the shadows, morphed and demorphed to repair injuries. Injuries which by this time were so painful they bordered on torture themselves. I lifted off. Free, but my mind was weighted.

As I rose into the air, I saw the place I'd been held. An old trailer, parked by a junkyard. A rebel 34

35

hideout. Far from the city and the Yeerk pool.

Okay. Okay. No easy answers. Just complica-Could she be telling the truth?

tions.

I flapped toward town, toward the lights, I demorphed and rocketed past street-toward Rachel's. Over buildings topped by digital lights, car headlights, and neon signs to Rachel's dishes and cell phone relays. Suddenly, I cut the house. Her window was open. I shot through and gas, strained my wings, dropped to a roof.

planted my talons on the bedpost, swishing my If she weren't telling the truth, if she were feathers as I came to a stop. She jolted out of feeding me lies . . .

sleep.

She'd have planted a tracking device on my

"Thank God!" she whispered. I fluttered down body. Of course! The Yeerks were tailing me. I next to her. She touched me gently. A smile filled was bringing them straight to my friends. Straight her face, then was replaced by rage. "That jerk!"

to the Andalite bandits.

Her voice hardened. "That scum."

When I'd finished kicking myself, I picked the

<l'm okay,> I said. <Taylor let me go.> I felt smallest morph I had. Flea. I focused on the tiny safe in RacheJ's presence, but my voice still blood-sucking body.

sounded raw.

SCHWOOOP!

"We searched for you for hours. I wanted to The roof rushed at me. Slate shingles became kill her."

slick and huge as glaciers. My vision fractured

<l think I wanted you to.>

like light through a prism and my hearing cut. It

"What's her deal?"

was all about the other senses. Taste, smell.

<She wants to work with us,> I said. My Feeling. I waited for the corner of a tiny chip words sounded preposterous. I wondered for a to bust out of my skin. Any tracking device would second if I hadn't dreamed it all. <lt's weird. She fall away from a flea's body. It would prove that says that if we give her help, she gives us Visser Taylor's words were meaningless. That I could Three. >

write her off forever. I wanted to.

"Don't believe it," Rachel muttered, charging I grew smaller and smaller. Nothing snagged, out of bed. "C'mon. Let's get the others."

nothing stretched my stretchable skin. Nothing An hour later, we had all assembled in Cassie's bulged from my body. No global positioning chip.

barn.

I was unmarked.

"A deal?! Come on. Our help?! Puh-leeze. If 36

37

some Yeerk contracts a democracy virus, I m ing. She's probably been plotting revenge ever supposed to care?" Marco said skeptically. "I since."

don't think so."

For a second, nobody spoke. Jake glared at

<l agree with Marco. I do not think her telling Marco and I was pretty sure I knew why. I was the truth is likely. We cannot forget that she was guessing it was probably also the reason no one a sub-visser. She rose to her position by being had mentioned how I'd been recaptured in the ruthless. I do not believe the Yeerk,> Ax nearly first place. No one had mentioned that I'd made sneered.

a huge mistake by rescuing the lost kid. Now I re-

"But what if she's telling the truth?" Cassie alized why. Marco'd mentioned torture, some-countered. Cassie was the only one of us who'd be-thing he was apparently not supposed to do when friended a Yeerk before. Who'd actually morphed I was around, not even in passing.

a Yeerk. I knew she, at least, would want to give Their hypersensitivity made me mad. Did they my story some consideration. "Maybe she really think the memory would mess me up? Couldn't does believe in a better way. She wouldn't be the they see me getting stronger? Couldn't they tell first Yeerk to have a change of heart."

I'd be fine?

"No, she'd be the last. That creep wouldn't

"Tobias, what's your take?" Jake said, break-even breathe if it didn't serve her," Rachel ing the silence. "You know more about her than sneered. "She's not about to found a democratic anyone."

leadership because it's a just philosophy. She What was my take, now that I wasn't locked in wants something else."

a cage, waiting to be tortured? Rachel looked at

"Seems obvious to me," Marco answered.

me. Her eyes gave me strength.

"It's the means, not the end, that interest her.

<Power,> I said, suddenly knowing the truth.

She's keen on democracy because it's a process

<Power is the one thing in the world I know Tay-that will eject Visser Three."

lor wants. Using me to get Visser Three must

"Do you always assume ttie worst of people?"

strike her as irresistible irony.> Cassie asked.

"Know what would be even more irresist-

"Always." Marco smiled. "People are who they ible?" Marco added. "Get Visser Three and the are. My bet is that when Taylor fatted to break Andalite bandits both killed in the process. Two Tobias with torture, the visser sent her pack-birds, one stone."

38

39

Rachel nodded. "Marco has a point. An irony If you look at the moon through a camera lens, in itself."

it's just a dinky dot in the sky. Our minds make it

"We've had other chances to get Visser Three bigger than it is.

and we've blown them," Jake said. "We might not

<She's dangerous,> I said after a moment, get a shot like this again. Can we afford to pass

<but if we face her together. . .> it up?"

I stopped. What if Taylor was all I knew she

<Civil war means Yeerk against Yeerk,> Ax ob-was and worse? I looked back at the orange-white served. <lt means confusion, betrayal within en-moon. I knew it was just an illusion, but I emy ranks, a foe distracted by internal strife. It is couldn't take my eyes off it, immense and amaz-a unique opportunity.>

ing.

"Right," Marco agreed. "Capitalize on the

<l don't know,> \ said finally. <But I think we chaos. Divide and conquer."

have to deal.>

"We tried that, remember?" Rachel said.

Win or lose, / had to deal.

"The time we pretended to help Visser One destroy Visser Three. It didn't go over real well."

"This is different," Marco replied flatly. "It's not about my mother this time. It's not personal."

Not personal? Marco didn't know how wrong he was.

"Tobias," Jake said. "I still think this should be your call." He looked up at my perch on the rafter. "Do we deal with Taylor or not?"

I looked away from the group, out through the loft window. Out at the moon, gigantic on the horizon.

People have told me that when the moon fills the sky like that, when it looms huge like a glowin-the-dark beach ball, it's really just an illusion.

It's your mind playing tricks on you. And it's true.

40

41

The Test

<lt has not been easy,> Ax said somberly. He was using an old car battery for power. All the wires and tape patches spilling from the jerry-rigged setup made Ax look pretty clever to me. <l reconditioned several other discarded computing modules and sold them to Computer Renais-sance. I thought the money would be sufficient. I did not know that cell phones and Net access require a credit card.>

"The bank wasn't reassured by the whole

'unemployed alien' aspect of your application?"

Marco said.

"That's right," Cassie said. "So I'm helping him. You know the cell phone I'm supposed to I he freak and geek club. The middle of the take with me, for emergencies only? Well, Dad night, deep in the forest. Four kids and a bird made a deal with me. I can talk for half an hour a crowded around a laptop salvaged from a Dump-week if I do Saturday morning meds." I watched ster and repaired by an alien kid and friend, Ax.

her locate the cell phone. It was opened up and An Andalite and brother of Elfangor. Ax's four-tangled in a nest of wires. "Ax, you can put that teen fingers deftly powered up the unit and di-back together, right?" she said, a bit nervously.

aled up the Internet.

<l assure you, Cassie, I know what I am do-

"Ax, this is way cool," Rachel whispered, "but ings The screen dimmed and revived. Rachel how did you do it? A cell phone? Internet access?

raised an eyebrow. But then, sure enough, the That's more allowance than I'll ever see."

AOL welcome screen loaded.

"You mean because Macy's has you on that

"Excellent," Marco said, smiling. "Oh, wait, pesky outfit-per-week plan?" Marco sneered.

wait! The James Bond home page! Play the

"I'd like to think that an Andalite who once teaser trailer. Ax. Listen to me!"

made contact with his home world could arrange Ax ignored him and typed in the address to Web access," Jake said.

Taylor's Web page: http://www.EarthlsOurs.com.

42

43

We got a message. "The URL cannot be lose," it read. "The plan is to attack and seize found."

the 'Pool.' Your special skills are needed. Meet

<l do not understand. If this address existed, me in a public place. Let's say Borders book-we would have located it,> Ax explained.

store. The wildlife section seems appropriate."

"Uh, Ax-man?" Marco pointed to the flicker-Everyone spoke at the same time.

ing screen and sounded out the address. "You

"Seize the Yeerk pool?" Jake repeated.

typed Earth-l-saurus.com. You made it a dino.

"An attack?" Cassie.

It's Earth-ls-Ours."

"I'm there!" Rachel, of course.

<Perhaps fourteen fingers are four too many.>

"The wildlife section!" Marco.

Ax, being uncharacteristically funny. He typed in

<The computer has, as you say, crashed,> Ax the right address.

announced coolly.

Taylor's Web page took a while to download and

"We'll need a human morph that won't give the image was fuzzy at first. Slowly, the screen us away," Marco echoed. "It ain't gonna be Ax.

became clearer. It was a picture of the earth from He attracts too many girls. And of course I can't outer space, a beautiful blue-green sphere cov-go. Same reason."

ered with clouds. There was a caption, "Triumph

"Guys," I said, half-scared, half-thrilled by will be ours," and a box to send a message.

the meaning of my words, "I just happen to have Ax waited for my dictation. I thought about the perfect morph."

what to say. I wanted to intimidate her, cut her Six hours later, when its doors opened, I down to size, make her wonder if we'd bite, make strolled into Borders bookshop. Strode past piles her worry that we wouldn't. I wanted ambiguity. I of self-help books and tiers of best-sellers. De-wanted to see her squirm.

spite Rachel's objections and Marco's security In the end, all I wrote was, "Okay, we'll play."

concerns, Jake had let me go. I needed to be the Jake signed off with the word "Bandits." Ax one to deal with Taylor. Jake knew that.

clicked "send."

But even Jake had some reservations about And then we waited. The others took turns this morph. About the victim becoming the vic-playing minesweeper and solitaire. This time, timizer. So for a variety of security reasons, Ax's extra fingers somehow gave him an edge.

watching from various stations both in and out-Taylor's reply came an hour later. "No time to side the store, were my friends.

44

45

Two seagulls on the roof, Ax and Cassie, seized up. I'd just given myself away. But she'd watching the front door and the sky. A fluffy cat, never figure it out. Would she? She'd never know prowling the back alley, keeping an eye on the the whole story, that my true form was hawk, that back door. In the magazine section, a short kid I was no Andalite. But already, I'd given her more with pants as wide as a tent, huge bug-eyed sun-than I'd wanted to.

glasses, headphones, and a knit ski cap disguis-I searched the brain of my new body for a ing nine-tenths of his face. And in a stall in the savvy reply. A strategic comeback. I searched it men's room, waiting for a signal, Jake, ready to for the ruthless, crushing Yeerk. What I found provide immediate firepower if necessary.

was gentleness, fear, and joy. Very little cunning.

Rachel chose the outfit, so I was dressed to Almost no hate. The human Taylor had once been kill. And I would have looked great in rags. See, an average kid. Like me. Like I'd been.

morphing uses DNA, and I'd morphed her body The realization steeled me against the neras it would have been before the fire, before the vousness that gnawed at my stomach.

accident. No artificial arm. No reconstructed

"You're not the only ones with scientists," I said guardedly.

beauty.

She accepted that answer. We walked toward I was a cover girl who could give even An-the cafe.

gelina Jolie a run for her money. I was . . .

"Taylor," I said easily, coming up behind the tall blond wandering the wildlife section. She spun around, surprised and off guard. Her mouth dropped open. She was face-to-face with herself.

And for a second, I'd trumped her. She was mine.

"That's clever," she conceded, recovering quickly like a good detached Yeerk should. "Yeah, a nice touch. But how? Is there some new, im-proved Andalite morphing technology that allows you to acquire while in morph?"

I smiled on the outside. On the inside, I 46

47

The Test

The kid raised his eyebrows. "Grass?" he said.

"I can juice you some wheat grass, but that's all we have."

Taylor glared at the boy. I laughed. We were mirror images, literal carbon copies. But I was alive. Taylor wasn't. Not really. I had a sense of hu-mor. Taylor had a coldness that enclosed her like a shield. The kid could see this. Anybody could.

We brought our drinks to a table and sat in opposing chairs. Three college kids were study-ing together nearby, but out of earshot. A writer was reading her work to an enraptured public thirty feet away. Salsa music spilled out of the speakers.

The high school kid behind the counter Taylor gripped her mug like it was the enemy.

stared wide-eyed. One, make that two very at-

"I suppose you want details," she said icily.

tractive girls were closing in on him.

"Of course."

"Uh, what can I get you?" he asked shakily.

"Listen carefully," she began, her voice

"Decaf latte with skim," Taylor purred.

hushed. "There's a natural gas pipeline, a large The kid turned to take my order. I smiled and one, that runs a half mile from the Yeerk pool.

he almost fell over. It was crazy to have such We need to dig a connecting tunnel from that power. I'd been on the receiving end before. I'd pipeline to the pool."

just never been the source. Is this what Rachel

"Why?"

experienced? Was this part of what made her so Taylor huffed, arrogant and exasperated. "So brave?

that the pipe can be ruptured. So that thousands

"Triple espresso. Heavy on the cream and the of tons of natural gas will spew into the Yeerk sugar."

pool complex. And so that the gas, when ex-Taylor turned to me. "You dare abuse my ploded, will kill everyone exposed. The hosts.

body, you filthy grass eater?"

TheYeerks."

48

49

But then, suddenly, her face transformed. All It was a disgusting plan. It was even more at once, her blue eyes filled with desperation.

horrible than I expected.

Her pink lips parted in wordless horror. A different I took a sip of coffee, to keep it looking nat-voice, a frightened, abused little voice, called ural. Twin teens, probably comparing notes on across the table in a toneless whisper.

last night's dates. "That's what you call a giant

"Don't listen," it said. "Don't listen to her!"

leap for democracy? I don't get it. You want to I sat transfixed as Taylor's hand blazed across end the violence with a big bang of your own?

the tabletop, crashing into her latte, smashing You think the violence will end there?"

the mug to the floor. There was a huge racket as

"Surely you see that we need a bargaining ceramic clattered across tile.

chip," Taylor replied. "We have to take control of The writer stopped her public reading. The the place and oust Visser Three. We have to get students raised their heads. The salsa music some leverage. Without this plan — if the rebels trumpeted on.

tried a more peaceful protest — the Yeerks in or-

"Miss, are you okay?" The high school kid bit would oppose us. But if the plan works, we was instantly at Taylor's side. She was crouched have a Yeerk pool full of hostages. They couldn't on the floor, her head in her arms. A second attack us without putting their own at risk."

passed. Two seconds. Silence. On the third, her

"That never stopped you Yeerks before," I rehead snapped up.

torted.

"I'm fine," she said, climbing back into her

"Well, the Yeerks in orbit have to feed, don't chair. "Get me a refill." Her face was strong again, they?" she shot back angrily. "There's no way controlled. And I knew what I'd just seen.

around that. Within three days every Yeerk will Taylor the Yeerk had a rigid command over need Kandrona rays. They will be forced to acher host body. No longer did she let her human cept rebel leadership. If they want to survive."

speak independently. No. Somehow, she'd sev-I forced a false tone of admiration. A little ered their collaboration. Except they'd been part-flattery wouldn't hurt with this egomaniacal Yeerk.

ners for so long, the host could still break in, on

"This plan is your brainchild, isn't it? It's brutal, occasion. Taylor the girl could still break in. Did ruthless. Brilliant, really."

break in . . .

"You know me well, Andalite." A smile washed Why? Why would the Yeerk watt until this mo-over her face.

51

50

ment to fully enslave her host? She claimed to

"What morph?" I asked. She wrapped the fin-be interested in democracy and peace. It didn't gers of her artificial hand around my arm and started to squeeze.

compute.

"I have a morph that will leave behind a tun-

"Any questions?" Taylor inquired, as if noth-nel at least as large in circumference as the pipe ing had happened. As if the conversation hadn't itself."

been disrupted by a distinctly Yeerk version of

"What morph?" I repeated.

multiple personality disorder.

"Taxxon, my Andalite friend. Taxxon!"

"Yeah," I said. "First one. A natural gas explosion as large as the one you're planning will collapse the Yeerk pool. And the city built above it. It will devastate everything for miles."

"My allies are in control of the pumping station," Taylor answered calmly. "The amount of gas will be carefully controlled. The Yeerk pool will not collapse."

"Fine. Question two. Just how do you plan to tunnel through the earth, from the pipeline to the pool?"

"I don't. That's where you come in."

"That's absurd," I laughed. "No earth animal, no morph we Andalites have, could do that kind of job in less than weeks. And even then, it would just be a tiny tunnel. Not nearly enough to move the volume of gas you're talking about."

"That's why I selected an animal for you to morph that can do the job in hours, not days or weeks." Her lips curled into a devilish smile.

"You always underestimate me, Andalite."

52

53

The Test

The Gap and bought a couple of T-shirts. No moss grows on that girl. "But I can handle it. I'm in."

"Whoa." Cassie held up an arm. "Wait a minute. Who says we're even gonna do this?"

I'd demorphed in the Borders bathroom. Jake had left a bag of clothing behind a trash con-tainer. I remorphed as my human self, and crossed the street to the mall. Now I sat in the food court listening to my friends freak out.

"When do we have to give her an answer?"

Jake asked me.

"We don't. We just show up at the natural gas pumping facility tonight. Or we don't."

"Answer me this," Marco said, rolling a plas-

"Is she insane?" Marco cried. He'd ditched tic straw between his palms. "If Taxxons are all the ski cap and sunglasses but the headphones Controllers, why doesn't She-Yeerk just ask a fel-still hung around his neck.

low Controller with a Taxxon host to do the dig-

"Yes. I believe we established that during our ging?"

last encounter." Ax, of course. He'd gone from I explained. "She says Yeerks are only ever seagull to Andalite to eerily attractive human boy partly in control of their Taxxon hosts. It's impos-in a Dumpster conveniently located behind the sible to master the Taxxon hunger, the murderous bookstore.

tendencies, the cannibalistic urges. Taxxon hosts

"Taxxon! I'd rather morph E. colt. I'd rather are given only to low-ranking Yeerks and, big sur-morph an ant again."

prise, soon they're more Taxxon than Yeerk."

"That's kind of what Taxxons are like, isn't

"But I've seen them take orders. I've watched it?" Jake said. "Brainless, driven, starved."

Taxxons move on command," Marco persisted.

"Who knows?" Rachel shrugged impatiently.

"They fly Bug fighters for. . ."

In the time between demorphing from cat and

"Right. But no one would ever trust a Taxxon joining the rest of us, Rachel had slipped into to be part of a conspiracy. You can't count on a 54

55

guy who'll sell out for a chunk of rotting meat.

We all needed to think. Ax wanted to eat. So, Most of her allies are human-Controllers, any-Marco and Jake volunteered to get food.

way," I added.

Cassie, Rachel, and Ax sat silently. I looked Ax broke in. "I was once told that controlling around. It was Friday, so the food court was a Taxxon morph is like facing the ultimate temp-crowded. Packed with a bunch of normal people, tation. Tay-shun. The more you resist the tempta-leading normal lives. Ordinary, mundane, won-tion, the stronger it becomes, until it ends by derful lives. All these normal people — moms carrying you so far beyond the realm of con-and dads, kids and grandparents — represented scious, controllable thought you become lost in the very thing we were fighting for. Humanity.

the Taxxon's most basic instincts."

Marco returned and set nachos for me and Ax

"Well then, what am I waiting for?" Marco on the table. I wasn't very hungry. I wasn't used said sarcastically. "Sign me up! An army of cold, to eating with others around and there were power-hungry Yeerks can't control the Taxxons.

people everywhere. Very different from my life as Not to worry. The short kid who got a B-minus in a hawk. When you're a hawk, you get nervous gym won't have any problems."

when you can't feed in peace. Someone could Rachel smirked. "You got a B-minus in swoop in and steal your dinner. Or someone gym?"

could swoop in and eat you.

Marco rolled his eyes and looked exasperated.

Jake reappeared and placed a large plastic

"People, if the Yeerks can't control a Taxxon, how tray piled with two hamburgers, three fries, a veggie wrap, and three large plastic cups on the in the world can we?"

table.

"Taylor says we'd only stay morphed for short

"Cassie, veggie wrap and orange soda," he periods," I said, feeling like her press secretary.

said, handing her one of the cups and the sand-Like part of her team. It was definitely weird.

wich. "7-up, Rachel. Coke, me. So," he added,

"And we'd morph one at a time, surrounded by sitting, "where are we?"

enough force to control any out-of-control behav-

"Seems clear enough to me," Rachel said ior."

with a mouth half-stuffed with hamburger. "De-Jake frowned. Marco looked skeptical. Cassie's stroying the Yeerk pool can only be a good thing.

eyes were darkening with some serious issues.

56

57

It's the chance we've been waiting for. It could his free will replaced by a slimy, stinking slug be the beginning of the end." She paused and that will take over his brain, say, 'yea.' Those op-swallowed. "Let's fry some Yeerk butt."

posed say, 'nay.'"

"I agree with Rachel," Ax said, looking up

"Okay," Jake interrupted. "We get it. We all from the plastic Radio Shack bag he was rum-admit that Taylor can't be trusted. Marco and To-maging through and reaching for a tub of nachos.

bias saw her lose it at Borders. She's obviously

"Strategically speaking, this is a very interesting got some problems. But even given the weird-opportunity. Even in spite of the risk."

ness, I think we agree this could be one of the Jake looked up at me with an encouraging most important missions we've had."

nod.

"Just remember, she can't be trusted," I reminded everyone. "She . . . " I paused. The others were looking at me like they were being extra careful to be polite. Just like at the barn, they were waiting for me to finish. No interruptions.

No snide remarks.

The Borders meeting should have proved to them that I was over the fear! I'd handled it fine.

I wasn't the one who'd broken down.

I tried to sound extra calm and sure of myself so they would stop worrying, stop doubting. "Even if she doesn't have it in for us, our work is only going to make her more power hungry. You can count on it. It's not like she's suddenly had a change of heart. That democracy stuff has got to be BS."

"Absolutely," Marco said. "A free Yeerk society? Give me a break. Let's just imagine the sce-nario for a second. Everyone in favor of having 58

59

The Test

encouraged her to sit back down. No one seemed to know what to say. She continued. She spoke very quietly, but urgently.

"Has anyone stopped to think that we'll be responsible for the death of hundreds, maybe thousands of people? People who already suffer the worst fate imaginable? And not that any of you care, but we'll be killing thousands of defenseless Yeerks right along with them."

"My God, you mean we'd be killing Yeerks?"

Marco said with a straight face. "That's...

that's unthinkable!"

No one laughed.

"Let her finish," Rachel whispered.

No one said anything. Silent agreement.

"They're not all like Visser Three," Cassie went Except for Cassie.

on. "We know that. Some of the Yeerks and Con-Her eyes got wide. She began to stand up.

trollers are just kids like us. They never had a

"None of you guys are really thinking about choice. They participate or they're eliminated.

this," she said in a voice that made a couple of And it's not like they get the information they older kids sitting at the table next to ours look up.

need to make an informed decision. If you'd been

"Shhh."

raised since birth on empire propaganda, you'd

"No," she said. "It's wrong. I won't. I don't fight to take over Earth, too."

want to judge you guys, but you're talking about

"You make an interesting argument," Ax said strategy and risk like this is some computer through a mouthful of nachos. "But there are a game. Like there aren't others involved. Have you lot of inconsistencies between what you say and forgotten that we're supposed to be in this to what you do." He swallowed noisily. "How can save lives?"

you make this argument knowing what you've Jake put his hand on her shoulder and gently done in the past?"

60

61

"That's different," Cassie responded forcefully.

Yeerk military activity. They recharge there so

"I'm not against defending myself and you guys.

they can continue their conquest."



I hate violence, but self-defense is justified, in

"Not true," Cassie insisted, regaining her all societies. Unlike murdering people . . ."

voice. She leaned forward. "What about Tidwell,

"Killing slugs," Marco corrected.

and others like him in the peace movement?

"Killing Yeerks when they're defenseless, They have to go to the pool because they'll die if when they're not engaged in battle, when they're they don't feed. For them, it's no different than not actively threatening our lives . . . no! You eating."

don't. . . why can't you . . . can't you see!" She

"The peace movement Yeerks are a small mi-stopped. I could almost feel the passion radiat-nority," Jake countered coldly. "We can't really ing from her body. "It's . . . it's just not right."

consider them, except maybe to warn them."

"But they are threatening our lives," Rachel

"Not consider them!" Cassie repeated disbe-insisted. "Not just ours, everyone's. Just by being lievingly. "What if your brother's at the pool when who they are."

the gas explodes?"

"Yeah, and why do you think they're at the Jake looked at his hands. "I guess it's a sac-Yeerk pool?" Marco put in. "I can tell you this rifice I have to deal with in order to protect much. It's not because they're planning Earth thousands more," Jake said, his voice now ex-Day activities.

pressionless.

"Look, during World War Two we bombed fac-

"Jake, I don't believe you!"

tories and highways and railroads. Even regular

"You should," he said, looking back to Cassie.

cities. Just because someone's not wearing a To me. "Besides, family involvement doesn't really uniform or carrying a weapon doesn't mean come into play here. It can't. The Yeerk pool is a they're not fighting a war. I know this plan is target. End of discussion. It's not like we're bomb-bad, Cassie, but we've gotta think of the big pic-ing a bunch of innocent people at the mall on a ture." He looked at her and touched her shoulder Friday afternoon . . . "

again.

Again, I looked at the people all around us.

"Yes," Ax said calmly. "The Yeerk pool is a Families, couples, kids like us. Enjoying them-command and control center. It is central to selves. Here to see a movie, meet their friends, 62

63

The Test

shop for clothes. They'd done the jobs they had to do at work or at school. Now was their chance to relax. Have fun.

Cassie looked around the food court, too, and then back at Jake.

"Isn't it?"

That's pretty much when Cassie decided she couldn't do it. She decided to sit the mission out. I admired her. I even thought about pulling out myself.

But who would be around to figure out Taylor?

Who would be there to watch for sabotage? I'm not really sure how or why we decided I was the best one for the job. But I decided to do it.

Early that evening Ax and I flew together, an owl and a red-tailed hawk, high up into the night sky so we could get a good look at the place before we landed. We wanted to be as sure as possible that we weren't flying into a trap. The natural gas pumping station came into view.

64

65

<The coast appears to be clear,> Ax relayed.

An unwavering optimism that's invaluable when

<Why do humans refer to the "coast" when talk-you're up against pure evil.

ing about a precarious situation?> We finished morphing and Ax trotted up be-

<l don't know,> I said. <lt's just what we side me. His main eyes studied me. His stalk say.>

eyes scanned the area around us. Then, sud-There wasn't anything within a half mile of denly, his tail snapped and zipped across the the structure. Just trees and bushes. I swooped blue-and-tan fur on my chest.

low to check out an abandoned van left a few

<Hey, watch it! What are you doing?> hundred feet from the pumping station. No hid-

<l am removing portions of your fur. We call it den group of Hork-Bajir waiting for us.

"unschweet." I believe you say haircut. I must The pumping station was pretty small, just a make you look less like my genetic double.> square building almost as big as a house. Secu-

<Fine,> I said. <But be careful. No razor rity lights brightened it like a baseball stadium burn.>

just before a night game. The lights made my

<When an Andalite warrior is reprimanded for hawk vision work almost as well as the owl's.

his conduct,> Ax continued, <a superior officer Through the few windows, I could see a maze of removes some of the offender's fur so that the pipes.

transgression is not soon forgotten. In the ritual We landed on the ground behind a line of of unschweet, the wrongdoer is not punished in heavy brush. It's hard to land directly on the the traditional sense. He must live with the con-ground. It's easier when you can grab on to some-stant reminder of his error, and the scrutiny of thing with your talons. I skidded a little. Ax was his peers. As his fur grows back, he is slowly re-right behind me.

deemed until, finally, the incident is laid to rest

<Well, Ax-man, I guess it's now or never —

and the warrior is whole again.> and, boy, do I wish it was never,> I said.

<l've had bad haircuts before but I never I morphed and Ax demorphed. Two identical knew what to call them. So Ax, do I deserve un-blue aliens began to sprout from the bushes. I schweet? >

like the way Andalite morph feels. It's about

<No,> Ax answered. <But it is the only way I strength and agility. A focused yet playful mind.

know to cut fur. Sorry.>

66

67

<lt's cool. Let's just get this over with.> very big, very mean — to show my appreciation We walked cautiously toward the pumping for your help. Follow me."

station, staying out of the brightest lights and She disappeared into the pumping station. Ax watching our backs with our stalk eyes. A tall cy-followed her. I followed Ax.

clone fence topped with barbed wire ran all We had to duck low to clear some of the pipes.

around the structure, but the rear gate was open The noise was unbearable, a constant clanging a crack. Someone was expecting us.

that made my head hurt. Taylor descended a I pointed a slender finger toward the gate.

twisting metal ramp into the basement. We fol-Ax moved out in front. An eerie squeak cut lowed, stepping carefully on the slick surface.

the still air as we slipped through the gate.

Downstairs it was considerably darker, though We moved quickly toward the shadows that there were fewer pipes. Taylor stopped in a cor-clung to the wall of the building.

ner of the room and gestured to an iron handle

"Evening, boys."

protruding from the smooth concrete floor. Then She stepped out of nowhere. A dark, human she backed up, leaned against the wall, and form with a voice that sent chills down my spine.

crossed her arms over her chest.

It was Taylor.

"He's in there."

"Nice to see you. I've been waiting."

Ax and I looked more carefully. The iron han-She'd been there the whole time. I couldn't dle was attached to a large slab of concrete set believe it. We'd been so careful. How had we into the floor.

missed her?

<This is it,> I said to Ax. Trying to forget I was She was wearing dark leather from head to in the same room with the monster who'd come toe. Tall boots that came up to her knees. Her close to destroying what little peace of mind I'd long blond hair was tucked into a high leather ever had. I bent down and grabbed the iron han-collar. It was a new look. Good-bye preppy. Hello dle with my relatively weak Andalite arm. It didn't soldier. We stared.

budge.

"I'm not here to be gawked at. I'm here to de-

<l will assist you,> Ax announced. Together liver a present," she sneered. "I know how much we pulled with all our strength. The slab rose you both like Taxxons. I found a choice one —

out of the floor. With great effort, we set it to one 68

69

The Test

side. A snort from below sent us both jumping back.

"How cute," Taylor said. "You're scared."

<We are not frightened,> Ax said coldly. <We are cautious.> He stepped up to the hole and peered inside. <l see no sign of the Taxxon.> Taylor tilted her head to one side and looked at Ax mockingly. "Then go get him, silly."

The cavern was dark. I could just make out the bottom, about ten feet away. It seemed to curve slightly. I guessed it was a tank, an old fuel storage reservoir or something.

The last thing I wanted to do was jump into a dark tank with a Taxxon waiting to eat me.

Again, Ax led the way. If he wasn't fearless, he was putting on a good show.

<lt is a long way down, Tobias,> he called from below. <Bend your knees on impact.> Taylor was watching, her beautiful face wearing the look of perpetual disdain she'd perfected.

I couldn't let her see my fear. I hopped over the edge and braced for impact.

WHAAAMMM!

70

71

My hooves hit hard on the concrete bottom.

teeth shredded my flesh and muscle. He didn't Damp darkness enveloped me. I could just make sever my arm and have a quick snack. No. He out Ax at my side.

sucked with iron jaws. Pulling me in. Dragging

<Where is he?> I asked. <What if there's no me closer to his stomach.

Taxxon at all? What if it's a trap?> I thought of I swung my tail blade, but lost my balance on the others waiting outside, hidden in various the smooth, curved floor. My hooves skidded morphs, watching. They were ready to storm the wildly as the vile mouth chewed. I was caught in place if we got into trouble. But how long would a slow-motion wood chipper!

it take them to reach us? I looked up and imag-Glowing red eyes, inching toward me . . .

ined being sealed in the tank. But then I remem-I whipped my tail blade frantically, slashing bered that Taylor couldn't lift the cover alone.

the blackness, missing the Taxxon. The force of Or could she? How strong was that artificial his jaws would rip off my arm!

arm?

<Ax!>

It didn't matter. No. Between the two of us, FWAP!

Ax and I could probably come up with a few Razor teeth withdrew and I stumbled back, morphs that would get us out. But that comfort-clutching my mutilated arm. I looked up. Dizzy.

ing thought came too late to stop my hearts from III.

racing. We stared into darkness, searching for

<Hurry,> Ax said. <We must move quickly. I the Taxxon.

fear I have mortally wounded the Taxxon.> Before he found us.

Stupefying pain throbbed in what was left of Ax moved forward and disappeared. I strained my arm. I backed away. I could feel a wet, sticky to catch sight of him in the blackness. I saw ooze beneath my hooves. The Taxxon's vital fluids slight movement to my right.

were spilling across the bottom of the tank.

<ls that you, Ax?> I reached out to make sure I bent down. Reached out my good hand and of where he stood and . . .

touched the Taxxon's side. His soft side heaved

<Ahhhhhhh!>

laboriously, up and down, as he struggled to Agony shot up my arm.

breathe. Yes, he was dying.

<Ax!>

I could see Ax in the faint light, already ac-The Taxxon bit down hard. A thousand razor quiring him. I began to demorph. When the tran-72

73

The Test

sition was complete, I reached out a talon and placed it on the disgusting flesh.

I could feel life draining from his body, and the firm folds of bloated tissue collapsing like a torn hot air balloon. I concentrated on the acqui-sition.

Usually, you don't feel anything about an animal while you acquire it. This time, I sensed something. Fierce and elemental, like a scream of rage.

I finished acquiring the Taxxon's DNA. And realized there was something inside me unlike anything I had ever known.

Maybe it was just my own tormented mind at work. Or maybe it really was the DNA, screaming

< It's sure enough about time, Bird-boy.> at me on some microscopic level. It was some-Marco's thought-speak greeted me at about three thing terrible.

hundred feet. He was flying in, too, and was just Something dangerous.

as late as I was. It was dawn. We were both work-A tortured shudder moved the length of the ing hard to stay up in the cool air.

Taxxon's body, from head to tail and back again.

<Enjoying a leisurely breakfast while the rest He shook for one violent instant, then stopped.

of us get ready to work?> he continued.

And I realized that he now lived only in Ax Actually, breakfast was why I was late. This and me.

morning, the meadow had been unusually still.

Not a field mouse anywhere. Kind of ominous, like they knew something I didn't. Like they knew it was better to stay at home.

I'd set out hungry, but along the way I'd spotted a gray squirrel. It was bigger than I like, but food is all I think about. In nature, in my world, 74

75

hunger doesn't just mean you'll be crabby in the she couldn't come within a mile of the dig or the car on the way to Taco Bell. It carries undertones pumping station before 8:00 A.M. If she did, the deal was off. When she did show up, she had to of death.

hang with us as we dug.

I'd dived, silent and swift. With wide-open She had agreed to Jake's conditions with an talons I snatched it, unsuspecting, from the eagerness I found disconcerting. I didn't mention power line it was making its way across. The it to the others. I knew it was nerves.

squirrel was heavier than I'd guessed. It yanked I could see the manhole cover next to where on my legs, sent me tumbling for the ground. I the others were standing. It was partly covered held tight. I even regained control, feet above the with sand and stuck out above the ground a few ground, flapping like mad to stay aloft.

inches. This was a good place to work, with little But then, the squirrel's teeth pierced my leg.

chance of being seen. We weren't far from the Sharp pain from the incision shot to my brain. I pumping station but were concealed by trees released one talon and let go of my would-be and brush on all sides. Taylor knew what she was breakfast.

doing.

<Some of us actually have to work for our The sewer cap was in a cul-de-sac, on the food,> I called to Marco. <But then, it's probably side of a gravel road that hadn't been paved. The a huge deal for you to get the Pop-Tart in the concrete curbs were in place and the gravel was toaster. >

carefully compacted a few inches below, ready I landed gently on a tree branch. Marco was for a layer of asphalt. It had been this way for a already demorphing. The others had gathered a while. The site was supposed to be a new indus-few feet away. All but Ax, who was hiding in the trial park. But local residents didn't want the thick grass, keeping an eye on the pumping sta-noise and the traffic, so construction had been tion.

temporarily stopped, leaving sewers and electric-Jake had changed plans on Taylor at the last ity, but little else.

minute. He had to balance the danger of not hav-

"Your left talon's bleeding," Rachel said.

ing her accounted for as we dug with the risk of I didn't answer at first. I didn't feel like ex-having our true identities discovered when we plaining. But Rachel's concern was genuine. It demorphed.

wasn't fair to blow her off.

So Jake had let Taylor know, by E-mail, that 76

77

<Breakfast sometimes bites back,> I an-for him. He feared that his internal clock might swered.

be thrown off by the power of the Taxxon morph.

"You're telling me," Marco broke in. "I was He and I were going to take turns wearing it while looking in the toaster to see if my Pop-Tart was Andalite.

done and wham, the thing shot out and hit me in He moved briskly to the manhole cover, stuck the eye."

the tip of his tail blade in the small hole intended

<l'll be fine,> I said, looking Rachel's way.

for the crowbar and, with one swift, fluid twist of

"Let me have a look," Cassie said. She was his tail, sent the fifty-pound steel cap tumbling still adamant about not going on this mission, through the air. It landed with dull resonance but she wanted to know where we were digging.

inches from Jake's feet.

In case we didn't come back.

"Smooth," Jake commented dryly. "You should Cassie's being there was a little awkward.

work for the city."

Maybe least so for me, I don't know. She wasn't I dropped from my perch to the edge of the there to wish us luck. And although Jake always hole. I could see that at the bottom of an eight-gives us the option, it's really rare that one of us foot shaft was a cylindrical chamber.

decides not to fight.

<l think I'll morph when I get down there,> I

"You should morph to fix the cut," Jake said.

said. <Wouldn't want to be responsible for any-

"That thing's going to get infected. So I guess one spewing their breakfast.>

you'll go first."

I hopped over the edge of the hole into the I'd go first? That slammed me into the reality darkness, falling slowly, with partially open wings.

I'd been trying to avoid. I wasn't looking forward A real hawk would never drop into such a tight to the work that lay ahead. Or to the creature I space. I could feel the raptor's anxiety. I landed had to become.

softly on the surface of the curved concrete.

<The time is now 7:50.> Ax came trotting out

"Take it easy, Tobias," Jake encouraged. "Nice of the bushes and stopped next to Jake. <The and steady. If you have problems, we're here."

pumping station is clear, Prince Jake. We should

<Remember that you may not be able to start diggings

control it like other morphs,> Ax instructed. <lt Ax was wearing a Timex Triathlon timepiece might be too overwhelming to suppress. The few around his front ankle. Rachel had picked it out Andalites who have successfully used the Taxxon 78

79

The Test

morph speak of becoming one with the animals nature, of channeling the violent energy. It cannot be stopped. But you can try to direct it. Use it, do not try to overcome i t >

"I'm right here, Tobias," Rachel called.

"Be careful." Cassie. "And . . . I'll see you guys later."

"Tobias . . ." Jake began.

<l can handle it, you guys,> I said, assuring myself as much as my friends. <l'll be okay.> I closed my eyes and focused on the DNA I carried within me.

The changes started immediately. Continued concentration wasn't necessary. Once it began, the morph gained momentum on its own, like a rock dislodged from a hilltop.

Hisssssss . . .

I felt my bones disintegrating. No, melting.

All the hard parts of my body — talons, beak, feather shafts — softened and liquefied. Usually when you morph, you feel the firm shape of new organs forming. This morph was exactly the op-posite. Everything was dissolving, then congeal-ing into one hideous continuum.

I fell down on the cement as my legs melted 80

81

away, only to be lifted up again as hundreds of I could smell the others. Up aboveground. I cone-shaped appendages shot out of a soft, rapidly knew exactly where they stood. I heard vibrations.

extending belly.

Their feet through the soil.

I was taking on the shape of a worm. Long I was over ten feet long. Long enough to crawl and formless.

up and squirm through the hole. I pictured Marco.

Crystal-clear hawk vision blurred. Think about And the next thing I knew I imagined him in my driving into the rain without turning on the wind-mouth, his soft tan flesh, sawed up. Swallowed.

shield wipers. Then this murky vision was traded And Ja&e. Bigger. And Ax . . .

for —

My worm body lunged for the hole. Before I Whoa! A thousand tiny fragments of my sur-could stop it. Before I could think. I didn't know roundings. Visual shards, like a kaleidoscope im-what was happening/The smell was so strong.

age with blurred edges.

The imagined taste so real. The Taxxon mind so I knew that Taxxons had compound eyes, like in need!

flies. Each red eye is really a thousand smaller Noxious digestive acid poured from my eyes, each scanning a small piece of the world.

mouth. My soft head pushed against the iron What I hadn't known was that Taxxon brains aren't cover Marco and Jake had put partially back in quite sophisticated enough to put all the pieces place.

together.

I would devour them. Lunge and devour.

The mouth formed last. The center of the Marco and Jake and Ax and . . .

Taxxon's existence.

Rachel.

The changes stopped.

My Taxxon body twitched. The thought of Then, all at once, I felt it coming. An unstop-even more food excited it. But something . . .

pable tidal wave riding up the shore.

something way in the back of my mind, way deep Insane, insane hunger.

in there, spoke out.

Desperate, all-consuming hunger. Like noth-Rachel?

ing you can begin to imagine. It reared up, larger I stopped. I heard something. The tiny, in-than any urge I had ever experienced. Blocking significant voice of a kid. Tobias, the human in out everything else.

me, was struggling to make his presence known.

Everything.

Somewhere beneath the Taxxon's evil and unimag-82

83

inable power, the kid in me was ranting like a lu-ing away the excavated dirt. I was an all-in-one natic. Stop, he cried. Stop! Stop! Stop!

machine. Earthmover, waste disposal system.

I can't say that I regained control. That would And that waste, that soil by-product, passed out be a lie. Like saying that the captain of a sailboat of my Taxxon body as a thick, sludgy layer. A goo, can take control of a storm.

that coated all surfaces of the tunnel that began But somehow I steered the enormous beast to develop as I tried desperately to satisfy an un-away from the other Animorphs. Somehow.

satisfiable hunger.

It was impossible to stop the hunger, impossi-

"Tobias? Ugh! Man, what's that stench?"

ble to slow it down, but Ax had told me I could Jake's voice reached me as a weak distraction, a focus it on something else. Okay. I turned it to vague disturbance. "Tobias, are you okay down the job at hand.

there?"

We had heard that the Taxxon was a great digI ignored him. I just kept eating. Or digging.

ger. But that's not true. Not exactly. The Taxxon Just like an earthworm, passing dirt right through is great at one thing. Eating.

my system to extract the organic material. Except Suddenly, ravenously, I began to devour the that unlike an earthworm, I had a ring of razor dirt beside the hole Taylor's people had jack-teeth to speed things up. Multiply an earth-hammered in the concrete pipe. I turned the full worm's speed and size by about a million and you force of the Taxxon's hunger on the dirt.

begin to get the picture.

I was inhaling soil like I hadn't eaten in forty Except that with a Taxxon, there's no hope of days. I bit off large chunks, coated them with di-satisfying the hunger with dirt, not even momen-gestive enzymes, and swallowed the sticky gobs.

tarily. There aren't enough nutrients in the soil.

Bite after bite. After bite after bite. The Taxxon Just enough to smell, to trigger the urge to eat.

was insatiable.

Just enough to keep me wanting more.

In no time at all I had excavated a body-sized

"Look at him move!" It was Marco's voice. They chamber. Dirt walls grew up around me as I were nearer now. They must have dropped into the lunged and gobbled and swallowed and secreted.

sewer. "He can't get no . . ." Marco gasped, proba-That's right. Secreted. I was scarfing down bly from the stink of my secretion. "Satisfaction."

pounds per second. I was the dump truck haul-He gasped again.

84

85

The Test

The longer I dug, the hungrier and more frantic I got. I didn't learn until later that a Taxxon will dig, starved and exhausted, until he dies.

<Tobias,> Rachel called in thought-speak.

She had already morphed. The others must be right behind her. <Answer us. Say something.>

<More!>

< Tobias, time's up, man. Take a break. Demorph.>

Jake.

The reminder of human flesh was more than I could resist.

I sped backward, sloshing through the goo, racing toward the others. I flew out of the hole into the underground area. A slithering worm.

Massive, starved, desperate.

<Whoa,> Jake cautioned.

<Whoahh!> Marco agreed.

My compound eyes filled with the broken blue form of an Andalite, the hulking masses of a gorilla and a grizzly bear, the sharp stripes of a tiger.

No pink flesh! No soft pink flesh!

86

87

I'd make do.

me." She turned back to me. "I'd love to have an The Andalite was nearest. I smelled the flesh excuse to finish you off." Her voice wavered under his fur, the muscles under his flesh. I was slightly, almost nervously. I continued inching to-aware of his tail blade. It even triggered a danger ward her. "But then, if you're the coward I know, alarm in the Taxxon mind. But the siren was faint, you'd rather be stuck as a Taxxon nothlit than die nearly insignificant. The tail blade could slash me with courage."

in two, but I didn't care. I might get a bite in first!

My Taxxon hunger fused with human hatred. I

<Watch yourself, Ax-man!> Jake called. <He's realized how much easier it would be to eat her coming at you. Tobias! Get a grip on the morph.

than to fight the urge. How much easier it would Get a grip!>

be even to die than to face Yeerk-girl. This mon-I rushed full speed at Ax. I'd body-slam him.

ster who haunted me day and night. With con-Knock him to the ground. Lock my teeth in his tempt. Arrogance. Power over me!

skin and eat him whole!

Had it been like this at the Yeerk pool? Deep But then I saw something else. Something beneath the murderous hunger, my mind won-that made even the Taxxon stop. My legs froze.

dered. Had I overstayed the two-hour time limit Taylor. Dressed in a tank top and soft, thin, so I wouldn't have to face simple facts of life?

cotton khakis.

Being a boy, living with foster parents, school, Her clothes would melt in my mouth. Her soft Rachel, Taylor. . .

pink shoulders beckoned to be devoured.

Marco grabbed me gently, attempting to stop I heaved my bulk in her direction. Began to me. I hissed and shook him off.

move toward her. Crawling. Slinking.

<Tobias,> Rachel called. <Stop. Just stop!>

"Just try, worm," she hissed, aiming a Dracon But she didn't block my path.

beam at my head, "and I'll fry you on setting Was I a coward?

six."

In the wild, there's only life or death. You feed

<You gave us your word, Yeerk,> Ax objected, your belly or you die. Success is survival. Failure edging toward her. <You promised not to use a is death. It's simple. There's no middle ground.

setting higher than three.>

At least, not for very long.

"Did I?" Taylor laughed. "Then try and stop Was I a coward?

88

89

I hated Taylor.

I'd already slipped once, at Borders. Not Because she knew the answer to that ques-again.

tion.

I focused harder and tried to do something Because she saw weakness in me. She saw it that can't really be done. Morph directly from because she was weak herself. People recognize Taxxon to Andalite. The instant my hawk parts their own kind. She'd sold out to save face. Liter-emerged, I focused on remorphing them to Anally. She'd become a voluntary Controller and be-dalite. It was excruciating, exhausting. Probably trayed her own mother because she wanted to be not very convincing.

pretty again.

Was she looking? Could she tell? Would she It was beyond sad. It was pathetic.

see what she shouldn't see?

Was I different, or was I just like her?

The others were smart. Smarter than I was.

I'd trapped myself. Why?

Rachel and Marco had backed Taylor against a I hated Taylor because she knew.

wall, blocking her view with their gigantic bodies.

I was going to destroy her.

As I demorphed and remorphed, Jake kept guard I rushed forward. Opened my mouth. Scram-and talked.

bled for her legs.

<l said you could carry a Dracon beam for Tseew!

protections Jake said firmly. <But we had an A bolt of Dracon fire knocked me down. Not agreement. You would not fire above setting strong enough to kill, but tough enough to para-three.>

lyze the Taxxon body and keep me down long

"Yeah, well, it didn't even work. What's wrong enough to regain control. And begin to demorph.

with this beam?"

I focused hard. The bloated worm began to

<You're one lucky worm,> Jake said to me pri-disappear. I imagined the first signs of my famil-vately. <Ax saved your butt. He modified her iar hawk body emerging from the pool of Taxxon weapon so it wouldn't fire beyond setting three.> slime. And then I remembered . . .

<She lied,> Rachel said coldly in private Taylor was watching this! She couldn't see me thought-speak. <Strike one. She'd have fried you go from Taxxon to bird. She couldn't know I was a if she could, Tobias. You'd be a smoldering pile nothlit. She thought I was Andalite. A mighty An-of slime if she'd had her way. I say we end this dalite.

right here. She can't keep a deal.> 90

91

The Test

<Wait,> I said, finishing the morph to Andalite. <l'm fine. I'm okay. Maybe she knew you'd tampered with the Dracon. Maybe she was just playing it up to scare me.>

<She did not know,> Ax said as Taylor threw the Dracon beam to the floor. He moved behind Jake to give my Andalite fur a quick tail-blade trim.

<Well, I was about to take a bite out of her.

She acted in self-defense.>

<She knows that's why we're here,> Marco answered angrily. <To keep you under control.

Even if it means killing you.>

<Well . . .> Why was I making excuses for her? Why? I couldn't make any more. She wasn't

< Careful, Ax,> I reminded him. <lt's . . .

my friend. She wasn't my kind.

well, it's worse than you said. Let the Taxxon smell We'd made a deal with the devil and the devil the soil. Just let it dig and eat. Try not to think of had just shown herself for what she was.

us.>

<She's gonna get us Visser Three,> I said.

<l will try to keep control of the morph,> said

<Remember? That's what this is about.> Ax. <As a young cadet, I researched the recorded successes and failures of Taxxon morphing. I once gave a presentation on physiological mecha-nisms for notallssith, the condition of being un-able to control a morph.>

<Why didn't you tell us this before?!> Marco asked.

<The results of my research were not encouraging^

<Oooookay.>

92

93

Ax began to morph at the opening to the tun-hensive system failure. Can't be fixed on-site.

nel that I had started. Taylor watched with fasci-We'll have to haul this beauty back to the shop.> nation. I was just grossed out.

<l am okay,> Ax protested, speaking at last.

Andalite features melted into a blue-black

<l have been practicing control. By temporarily pool until nothing was left but an oily slick. It triggering Taxxon hibernation, I am able to resist was as if everything Andalite had to be forsaken the urge to eat you.>

before the Taxxon could be born.

<Thanks for telling me about hibernation be-But then, out of the pool, the beast took fore, Ax-man,> I grumbled.

shape. Four round, red, jiggling eyes shook in the

<l did not understand it until now.> pool like tiny internal organs. The body grew

<Good,> Jake said tersely. <Now dig.> larger and larger. It was like watching time-lapse Before you could blink an eye, Ax shot down photography of a fungus. First it grew out, flat the tunnel.

along the floor, then up. It was hideous. The

<Okay,> Marco said. <So I was wrong.> strong, beautiful Andalite body transformed and I held my breath, wanting to be sure he corrupted.

wasn't going to come racing back for a quick The bloated worm neared full size.

lunch. It was a good distance to where Ax was We waited anxiously, silent, ready.

working, farther than you could see. But you Ax didn't move. The big Taxxon just stood could hear — no, you could feel — the sound of there motionless, as if in a trance.

digging. A high-pitched, far-off ringing. The sound

<Hey,> Jake snapped, <let's get moving.> of teeth scraping dirt. Of dirt being devoured.

<Ax?> Rachel said, more kindly. <Everything The sound sneaked up on you because it was all right?> She inched tentatively toward him, so soft, barely audible. But it filled your head un-the way you'd approach a chained dog you didn't til all you could imagine was the Taxxon digging.

know.

And digging. Yard after stinking, slimy yard.

<Give him a little nudge,> Marco suggested.

I shook my Andalite head, trying to break the He sauntered up beside Rachel, toward the big trance. Beads of sweat flew off. I hadn't realized worm, his ape arms dangling loosely. He looked how hot it was below ground. Four large animals at Ax with exaggerated puzzlement, strolled the make a cavern oppressive.

length of him, then announced, <lt's a compre-

"Did you like it, Andalite?" The voice came 94

95

from the far corner of the chamber where the gi-

<No, not that. I mean about us being like her.

gantic steel gas main intersected it. Taylor leaned Opportunists of the worse kind.> against the pipe. She was the only one who looked Rachel let out a small roar. She rolled her relaxed.

huge head from side to side. <l'm sick and tired

"Well?"

of this are-we-doing-the-right-thing, self-doubt

<Did I like what?> I said.

crap!> she announced in thought-speak that every-

"Being a Taxxon, silly," she replied. "I bet you one but Taylor could hear. <The Yeerks are killing did. Some individuals are cut out to be lower life-people. They're destroying Earth. Hello! What's forms."

gotten into you guys? If someone starts shooting

<You'd know about that,> Rachel said angrily.

up your town and you shoot back in self-defense,

<No living thing is lower than a Yeerk.> A low do you ask if it's justified?>

growl rumbled through her bared fangs.

Marco was uncharacteristically silent.

"You know I'm right," Taylor said to Rachel.

Jake paced back and forth, a big cat in a

"You know this one is weak." She gestured at me.

small, confining cage. I moved nearer to Rachel,

<l'll show you weak!> Rachel slashed the air.

brushing Jake in the process. He let out a re-

"You wouldn't dare. Hurt me and there's no pressed snarl.

explosion. You won't let this opportunity pass.

<Watch it!>

You won't let emotions get in the way. You An-

<What's wrong with everybody?> Rachel asked dalite bandits — you're too much like us."

me. <Everyone's falling apart.> Rachel growled and snapped her jaws, but

<lt could be her,> I said, looking at Taylor backed away. Taylor's words hung in my mind.

with both stalk eyes, keeping my main eyes on This was a Yeerk plan. Every deadly detail was Rachel. <She has a way of setting the mood. Or Yeerk. Mass destruction. No provisions to protect maybe,> I said, <maybe we're in too deep and we the innocent. That was to be expected, I guess.

know it.>

But we'd jumped on board.

<Don't talk like that. After tonight, it's going

<ls she right?> I said privately to Rachel.

to be different. We'll fry the Yeerk pool. The bal-

<Are you crazy? The way you live, the things ance will tip. We'll drive them out.> She was get-you do? I don't know anyone stronger. You're not ting excited again, the way she does when she weak.>

talks about the fight. But she sounded a little des-96

97

perate, too. Like she needed to convince me. And A Yeerk was in the corner, not twenty feet away.

herself.

A creature capable of the greatest evil, cowardly

<Then what?> I said.

hiding inside a human so that no one would see

<We could be together.> She paused. <AII of the threat. How many were there now? Thou-us, I mean. Do normal stuff.>

sands? Fewer? More? Every day there were more

<Yeah,> I said. <Rachel, do we know how human slaves. It was my first thought in the many Yeerks there really are? On the Andalite morning and my last thought before I slept.

home world? Invading other species? What if it's They'd killed Elfangor, my father. The father I never over? Sure, maybe we pull this off today.

never knew.

But it doesn't change our numbers. There are The day would come when there would be no still only six of us. One, two, three, four. . .> one left. An entire planet erased. I couldn't let

<Stop it!> she yelled suddenly. <Tobias, I that happen.

can't get the image out of my head. The way it

<They're Yeerks,> I repeated. <That's all.> will play out tonight. A Yeerk pool full of hosts.

Humans and Hork-Bajir. They smell natural gas.

They feel it pouring in. They look around, up, confused, puzzled. They start to worry. Panic. The smell gets so strong they can't breathe and they know . . . they know natural gas can blow . . .

they run . . . too late. Suddenly . . . Ka-boom!

A scorching, burning fireball destroys everything it touches. They're vaporized . . . Cassie was right . . >

<They're Yeerks,> I said.

<They're humans, too.>

I thought of all the stories Ax had told us of entire planets enslaved. Of how what couldn't be enslaved was killed. Of great and peaceful societies destroyed by Yeerks.

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99

The Test

head. I didn't answer. I wouldn't let her affect me. When she walked slowly up to me, I didn't move. When she reached out with her real hand and touched the fur just above my shoulders, I didn't breathe.

"A handsome species," she complimented, sounding not like a teenage girl, but like a sly, sophisticated Yeerk. "You deserve more than your tradition allows."

I backed away.

"Your friends don't understand how powerful we Yeerks are," she continued. "But I know that you do. We will have no place for your friends in our new society, but you . . . every comfort you wish Rachel rose on hind legs and cautiously would be yours. We could rule together. Join us."

lifted the sewer cap just enough to peer out.

I jerked away, shocked that I'd let her go on so Standing erect, she was taller than the ceiling.

long. She laughed. A long and confident laugh.

She pushed the cap aside. Jake followed her out

<l thought you were moving toward democ-with a lightning leap. Marco brought up the rear.

racy^ I said quietly.

Their time in morph was almost up. They

"Of course we are. Of course we are. But needed to demorph and remorph, and Rachel think . . . democracies need leaders, and laws to needed to do a quick check-in at home. I'd been protect the citizens. Someone has to make the in morph about an hour and a half. Ax's turn at laws . . . "

digging was almost up.

<lt will never be me.>

They put the cap partially back and disap-

"You deserve more," she persisted, then peared. It was just Taylor and me underground.

grinned, turned, and walked away. It was an odd

"Your friends have left you," she observed.

thing to say. I felt like a doomed mouse, poked

"What if they don't come back?"

and prodded by a clawed cat. I couldn't respond.

This was part of Taylor's fun. To play with my I could only look away.

100

101

A crescent of light illuminated the chamber. I I looked at Taylor. She sat with her back heard yelping and looked up to see two wolves against the wall and glanced from me to Jake to pawing and pushing at the heavy iron cap. They Marco with casual suspicion. I looked hesitantly slid it open and leaped down, landing very hard.

at the opening of the tunnel. It wasn't really large

<We wanted to be smaller,> Marco explained enough for our power morphs.

privately. <But we have to keep Taxxon-Ax in line,

<l have an idea,> I said. I took off the watch, and Yeerk-girl intimidated.>

checked the glow-in-the-dark numbers. Put it Jake paced back and forth before the tunnel around Jake's right front leg. <Cover me.> I trotted opening. The new morph allowed him eight several feet into the tunnel. When I saw, through paces before he had to turn around. Better than swiveled stalk eyes, that Jake and Marco had the five in tiger. He was silent for a minute, then, planted themselves in front of the entrance and looking at the watch I wore, <Guys, uh, we've got masked me from Taylor's view, I demorphed. Then a problem. Ax was due back by now. I've been I began to morph again.

calling him, but he doesn't answer. Did you Feathers turned to thin skin that stretched change plans, Tobias?>

tight as an umbrella over wing bones. Blindness

<No.> I raised an arm to silence everyone. We banished all trace of light. It had been dark al-listened. Marco pressed an ear to the side of the ready, but now there was a vision void. A nothing-tunnel. I could just make out a very faint grating ness that made my heart pound.

sound, much fainter than before. Maybe it was Then, a new sense. A kind of hearing. The Andalite hearing. Or maybe Ax was . . .

sharpest hearing you've ever known. I couldn't

<He's still going at it,> Marco announced.

make out everything, but the higher sounds were

<The boy's gonna dig to China.> crystal clear.

I took a few steps into the tunnel. <Ax, can Then suddenly, it was more than mere hear-you hear me? You have to stop. You'll die of ex-ing. I could tell exactly where all sounds came haustions There was no reply, thought-speak or from. They formed a picture of my surroundings.

otherwise. <He must be fixated. We have to stop So much like sight. So different, too.

him.>

I was echolocating. I was a bat.

<Just what do you have in mind?> Marco

<Jake, Marco, follow me,> I called. I flapped asked.

my thin wings far faster than a hawk ever does 102

103

and flew easily along the tunnel. The sonic chirps

<Too weak. Can . . . not. . . can . . . not I emitted told me exactly where the sides were.

move.>

The bat felt at home.

The tunnel had narrowed to barely bigger than

<Ax?>

the circumference of the Taxxon. Usually a Taxxon's No answer. I flew a long way, maybe a quarter vigor made its tunnel at least large enough for it to mile, until I came to something strange. The tun-comfortably wiggle out.

nel became something else, something expanded.

<Tobias, what's going on?> Jake, sounding A hollowed-out space. A large cavern-room. Like understandably edgy. <We can't see anything.> maybe Ax had gone nuts and circled up and down

<Follow the tunnel,> I said shortly. <Ax is ten or twelve times.

stuck. An overeating stupor. He's dying here I could hear Ax now. Closer. The high-pitched with, like, seven minutes left in morph. You have screeching of Taxxon teeth on dirt and small to pull him out.>

rocks was almost deafening to bat senses. Extra-

<You want us to march straight toward a loud echolocation was necessary to see over the Taxxon? Whose side are you on?>

noise. The tunnel continued on the far side of the

<He's too weak to turn around or hurt you.> chamber. I flapped my wings and flew in.

<l better get overtime for this,> Marco said.

<Ax, is that you?> My chirps weren't return-

<Serious overtimes

ing. They were being absorbed. By something Marco and Jake crawled through the pitch-soft, something . . .

black until they bumped into Ax.

WHAP!

<0h, man!> Marco gasped. <Wolf sense of I flew into Ax's backside and slapped to the smell is way too good.> The stench was over-tunnel floor.

whelming.

<Ax, stop!> I focused all my energy on that They bit into the soft baggy flesh and pulled.

thought-speak command, trying to penetrate his

"Skreeeee!" Ax cried involuntarily.

trance. It worked. He stopped digging.

<Hurry,> I said to Jake. <There's no time!>

<Cannot go on,> he groaned faintly.

The hulking worm began to move. Marco

<Darn straight. You've got minutes left in strained and fought. Jake snarled and pulled.

morph, Ax-man. Let's clear out.> Inch by inch they dragged Ax out. By the watch 104

105

The Test

around Jake's leg, it took a full five minutes to reach the carved out, earthen cavern.

Less than two minutes to go.

<l think he's unconscious,> Jake said.

<His skin has no bulge. It's like he's deflat-ing^

<Demorph,> I urged. <Please, Ax, demorph!> No answer.

<Ax, now!> Jake ordered.

<We were too late,> Marco said flatly. <He's going to die.>

<Ax!> I cried. Panic gripped my tiny bat heart. <Ax! Ax! Ax!>

<Yes, Tobias, it is me.> I caught the echo of something larger and more reflective than a Taxxon.

A form that was changing. Becoming taller than a wolf. . . four legs . .. two arms . . .

We collapsed in the darkness, exhausted and terrified, thankful to be together.

I demorphed and prepared to dig again as a Taxxon. But then . . .

"Hey, what's going on?"

A faint light, way down the tunnel. It was coming nearer, bobbing as it came.

Jake and Marco saw the light, too. We watched as it increased in size and brightness until at last 106

107

Taylor emerged into the earth-cavern. Rachel was I didn't need to be reminded. Jake didn't in grizzly morph right behind her, her body wedged want me eating them. He also didn't want Taylor tight in the tunnel.

seeing me morph straight from hawk to Taxxon.

Taylor crawled on hands and knees in the I hopped to the opening of the tunnel Ax had Taxxon goo. There was no question the Yeerk was dug and flapped a little to get out of sight. My in full control. It was the kind of thing Taylor-the-wings scraped the tunnel sides and I crash-landed girl would never do. Her hair was a mess, plas-about fifty feet in.

tered to her face by Taxxon slime. One hand

<l'm going Taxxon,> I warned.

gripped an electric fluorescent lantern.

I was better prepared this time. I was ready

"What happened here?" Taylor demanded, when the instincts reared up and told me to fol-looking at the cavern. When my eyes adjusted, I low the smell of my friends.

saw what a strange place the cavern was. It I turned my ravenous, empty belly to the tun-wasn't square or round or ovoid. Nothing normal.

nel instead. I rushed forward to the place where It was an undulating, chaotic intersection of Ax had stopped. Fierce hunger propelled me into many different, smaller tunnels.

the soil wall.

<l lost control of the morph,> Ax answered I was more aware this time. I felt what was honestly. <l do not remember everything. I know going on around me. What was going on inside that I became confused. I dug and ate in circles the Taxxon mind. It wasn't simple hunger. It wasn't for many minutes before regaining focus.> pure rage.

<He ate himself to exhaustions Jake added, No. What drove the Taxxon to eat and dig was more for Rachel than for Taylor. <We had to drag more complicated. It was something I under-him out.>

stood. A sort of insecurity or fear.

<l do not remember,> Ax confessed.

Yes, a fear. . . grossly exaggerated ... be-

"Andalite incompetent," Taylor raged suddenly.

yond anything humans experience . . . a desper-

<Watch yourself, Yeerk,> Rachel roared back.

ate fear of not having enough . . . a terror of

<lt's okay, Ax-man,> Jake said privately. <You starvation . . . a horror that your essential needs dug about ten times farther than we expected.

will go unfulfilled . . . a horror demented and con-Tobias, take it easy this time. And, uh, don't torted by the Taxxon mind until it became a sick, morph or demorph near us, okay?> murderous evil.

108

109

I wouldn't have understood, or even noticed, Soon there were more and more rocks in the if I hadn't been hawk for so long. I've experi-dirt. Small at first, then larger. Bigger than even enced just enough of that feeling to recognize it.

a Taxxon could swallow. I pushed the rocks aside A whole species of terrified overeaters. It made and continued until I hit a smooth, continuous me almost sorry for them.

surface. Probably the remnants of an old build-Almost.

ing foundation.

I dug and thought of Taylor. The Yeerk and the I tried to go around. It curved up and up, like girl. What they'd let themselves become . . .

the crest of a dome.

Was anyone all evil? That couldn't be possi-Then it hit me. I'd reached it. I'd found the ble. I've heard that even Hitler was good to his Yeerk pool.

dogs.

I continued along the surface until it became Taylor had been too insecure to face her peers almost flat and I found what I thought was the without her beauty. She'd done what she had to top. Taylor said we would strike fairly high. I never do to make the fear go away.

guessed we would strike at the center.

Evil, even the worst evil, has banal origins every There were no cracks or openings anywhere.

human can understand.

It was completely continuous. How could I break Weakness. Fear. Insecurity.

through?

I understood Taylor. I understood the Taxxon.

The Taxxon knew what to do.

The realization frightened me as nothing ever I opened my Taxxon mouth wide. Full capac-has.

ity. I swiveled my teeth so they scraped the con-Suddenly, the Taxxon's pace began to slow. I crete like a drill. A hundred teeth screeched was getting tired, if you can call it that. A digging across the stone. Friction made my mouth hot.

Taxxon doesn't get tired the way people do. It Caustic Taxxon spit burned and dissolved the rock.

doesn't notice it's tired. It doesn't decide to slow.

I gnawed deep into the shell of the dome, a It just fades away, like a drained battery.

hole four or more feet across and almost as deep.

I'd lost track of time. Must have been digging My body felt heavy and ill. And at last I saw a for over an hour. I pressed on. Eating. Expelling.

flicker of red light.

The dirt tasted good. It wasn't flesh, but it wasn't bad.

110

111

have multiplied since I'd seen them last. It was like a bizarre sort of amphitheater. The specta-tors were the people from town. Some of them I knew. Like Ms. Powell, my old math teacher, and Brent Starr, the anchor from the news.

Others were strangers to me. Mothers and fathers. Young kids. Bus drivers. Lawyers. Artists.

C-H--R-PT-E-R S D

Government employees. Everyone, from every walk of life. All screaming. Burning out their vocal cords. Tears pouring from eyes. Veins bulging from foreheads. Sweat coursing from brows.

They wanted to be free! They wanted nothing more than to be free.

Then I realized that a great number of the thousand horrors. A crazy, mixed-up hell caged prisoners weren't crying out. They watched right here on Earth. A melting pot of enslaved, the proceedings with distaste, but they didn't alien races. A sea of two kinds of motion: the rage with anger. They stood immobile and calm.

slow, deliberate movements of bodies who aren't I'd seen voluntary hosts before. Voluntary hosts free, and the wild, desperate spasms of doomed, enjoyed the show. These weren't voluntary.

caged prisoners.

Who were they? What had happened to these From my vantage point, the pool itself churned hosts? It was like they'd passed a point beyond the directly below. Hard to say how far down. Not more point of caring. Like they were zombies or some-than a hundred feet. Then there was the infesta-thing. But that was impossible. Everyone fights for tion pier, built out above the slugs. Human after freedom to the bitter end. Everyone has to!

human cursed or spit or wailed before the Hork-These hosts had an air about them. They Bajir forced their head under to accept a Yeerk stared off into the vast space with a look of. . .

master.

pride? Conviction? They looked almost as if they The cages that ringed the pool seemed to had purpose.

112

113

Maybe they were Yeerks from the peace fac-

<How did you get here? The others would tion? So many of them here? Now? Oh, man, not never let you walk away from them.> now . . .

"You don't think they trust me? I'm hurt.

"Beautiful, isn't it?" whispered a female voice Really."

inches from my head. I jerked against the tunnel

<What did you do to them?>

wall.

"You know me, Andalite. I wouldn't hurt a fly.

It was Taylor. Taylor!

I temporarily incapacitated them, yes. I needed How did she crawl down the tunnel alone?

to talk to you."

How did she get away from the others?

<We're in,> I said. I began now to broadcast Who cared?

my thought-speak, hoping the others would hear Every inch of me wanted to bite her head off.

me, wherever they were.

She was a fleshy meal ready-made. Plus, she was

"I can see that," she mocked. "But I don't care the scum of the universe. Would it be so bad to right now. I want to talk to you." I stayed quiet. I get rid of her?

felt sick. It wasn't the Taxxon's problem. It was I opened my mouth, moved in for the at-mine. Taylor had me cornered.

tack . . .

"Relax," she continued. "You're shaking like And was suddenly paralyzed. I couldn't move one of Visser Three's personal guards. It's just my mouthparts or upper body. How stupid was I?

me. Remember me?"

She'd zapped me.

<What do you want?> I asked.

"Don't be dumb," she said. "Get control of

"Look down there," she said, glancing at the your morph."

Yeerk pool. "We are so organized. We run with Ax had said something about a hibernation the precision of a Swiss watch. We are invincible.

state. I searched the Taxxon consciousness for a When I take command, we will reach new heights."

clue. I found it suddenly in a mental vision, an

<What are you talking about? Take command?

image of bodies mounded into an endless moun-You mean, when you introduce democracy.> tain. The picture relaxed me. I could feast for-

"Yes, of course that's what I mean," she said, ever. I didn't have to find food, I had enough the corners of her mouth turning upward with a right there.

shocking lack of subtlety. "I want you to join me.

I was in control enough to speak.

I think you know how smart I am. I think you 114

115

know my will to succeed. I want you to cofound I looked back at the rock face, my nothlit birth-the new Yeerk society."

place. I'd made a decision. Had I made a bad de-Suddenly, Taylor's words seemed distant. Be-cision? I didn't know. And suddenly, I realized that cause I saw the hidden spot, down by the Yeerk I would never know. I know that I stuck with my pool. I saw the place where I had perched as the choice. And that I had followed it through to the seconds counted down. The seconds before I be-very end.

came a nothlit.

I looked at Taylor. For the first time, her phys-

"What do you get as an underling with Anical beauty was difficult to see. Her hair and face dalite bandits?" she went on, her voice seduc-were covered in dirt. Her expression was the tive. "You are obviously not a leader. You are not twisted, power-hungry look of a dictator. The only even second-in-command. You are a nobody."

thing that could have made her beautiful now I flashed back to that night at the Yeerk pool.

was her inside. And there certainly wasn't any-Remembered how carefully I had weighed my op-thing beautiful there.

tions. Since then I'd been telling myself there

<l'm stronger than that,> I said slowly. <You're was no choice. That if I'd demorphed, the visser only out for power and control. That's it. And when would have been on me in a flash. He would have you get it — if you get it — you'll only want more.

known that we were human. He would have I think that power as your only goal is pointless.> found my friends.

"You don't really believe that," she mocked.

But there is always a choice. In any and every

<Don't l?> I said. <lf I didn't, why would I situation. It's usually the choice between bad find you so gross? How would I see that you're and worse. But it's still a choice.

weak? All you're about is envy and power.>

"Come on," she said again. "Be my host. Of-She looked at me, then at the pool, then back fer me your body and you can have anything you down the tunnel. "And it will be my pleasure,"

want."

she rasped, "to prove you right."

Choice. Traitor or. . .

<Can I have freedom?> I asked.

"It is a kind of freedom," she answered.

<Can I be happy?> I asked.

"It is a kind of happiness," she replied.

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117

The Test

could run just as fast backward. But I wanted my mouth, my weapon, to be ready.

I called again. <Stop!>

No answer.

I powered my legs like there was a raw T-bone six inches from my face. With the speed of a greyhound and the mass of a tree trunk, I skittered into blackness, after my prey.

My throat and neck were still numb. My tongue dangled from my mouth like a three-foot leash.

<Hey!> I called to the others. <Taylor's coming back through. Stop her!>

My needle-legs continued to scrape through the dirt, like the gallop of a hundred tiny horses.

She jabbed her synthetic fist in my still-

<We can't move!> Jake yelled to me. <How paralyzed throat and left me gagging. Then she long does this stuff last?>

turned away from the view of the Yeerk pool and

<Not long. Try. Try!>

shot off down the tunnel as fast as human legs

<Here she comes,> Rachel yelled. <Here she would carry her.

comes!>

<Where are you going?> I choked out. Her

<Get her!>

lantern disappeared from view.

<We can't!>

"You'll know soon enough, Andalite!" she cried.

Whoooomp!

I shed all thoughts of hibernation and sum-My body burst from the tunnel like a cork moned the hunger that had been sitting on the from a bottle. I was in the cavern Ax had carved edge of my consciousness.

out. I slowed just enough to catch sight of the I focused on the image of the girl and my legs others. An Andalite, two wolves, and a bear, began to scratch and scrape against the rocky sprawled on the floor like they were taking a nap.

tunnel walls. I squished my body into an impos-

<Go!> Rachel cried.

sible U-shape. I needed to turn around. Sure, I I crossed the cavern and dove into the tun-118

119

nel's first half. I knew I was close. I could smell

"Scum!" She was free and running for the her shampoo.

pipeline. I revved my feet and shot forward.

I was close. Her footfalls thumped the tunnel

"Stop right there!" she cried. "Come an inch floor. Faint lantern light filled the darkness. Then closer and I'll blow a hole through this steel."

more.

I froze.

<Stop!> I cried.

<You said that once the tunnel was dug, we'd

"Never!" she screamed.

have twenty minutes to get away.> I saw Taylor's form, and then I saw beyond

"You believed me?"

her. The sewer chamber was just yards ahead.

<l did and I do,> I lied. <You can't blow a Her lantern reflected off the pipeline's polished hole in that pipe because you know. You know steel.

that if we die in this explosion, you die, t o o I suddenly knew what she meant to do.

Her lips twisted into the now-familiar fiendish

<No!> I lunged. Missed. I lunged again. Full smile. Pure Yeerk and proud of it. "Wrong, An-feeling returned to my mouth.

dalite. You forget that I am not bound to this

"Arghhh!" she cried. I clamped down on her body. I am the Yeerk inside. And a skull entirely heel. Not hard enough to sever her foot, but hard replaced, bone by bone, by heat-proof, blast-enough for her to feel that I was in control. Shark proof polymer protects me. This body will burn, teeth? Bear fangs? Neither comes close to inflict-but I will survive."

ing the kind of agony a Taxxon inflicts.

I heard movement behind me. I glanced back.

"Worm! Slime! Get off me!" With her real It was Rachel in the lead, followed by the others.

arm, she punched my face. Only a distraction.

Dragging their still partially paralyzed bodies out Out of the corner of one eye I saw a flash — her of the tunnel and into the sewer chamber.

fake arm, her fake fingers.

<Get her!> Rachel cried. <Tobias, get her!> I released her foot, and twisted the upper Taylor's smile broadened. She turned toward third of my body so that it slapped her artificial the pipeline. She extended her artificial arm.

arm. Paralyzing particulates shot from her fin-

<No!> Rachel yelled.

gers. But not at me. They were wasted, flung at Taylor blew a hole clean through the metal.

the far wall.

And in an instant, reality changed.

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The Test

Fwooooosh!

A pressure wave of natural gas shot from the pipe. It ripped across the chamber and sent us tumbling through the air. Taylor. Me. The others.

Tumbling . . .

Straight for the tunnel!

<Ahhhh!>

Taylor blew right past me, propelled by the gas, a swirl of blond hair and pink flesh.

And she was laughing.

F weeeeWOOOOOOOOS H!

The force of a fire hose. A hurricane.

<Ahhhhhh!>

We were shoved down the tunnel at breakneck speed. We slapped the sides. Slipped on slime.

Gasped for air.

We were absolutely powerless!

Dirt scratched my tender eyes, blinded me.

Bammm!

I slammed the dirt wall. It knocked the wind out of me so I couldn't breathe, couldn't think.

<l cannot. . . stop!> Ax exclaimed.

<Grab onto each other,> Jake yelled. <Bite into each other. Anything!>

<No air!> Rachel gasped.

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123

The tunnel was narrowing. The Yeerk pool was circle that glowed like a harvest moon. Coming near. I was farthest down the tunnel, out in front.

nearer and nearer. It was now. Or it was never.

We were going to fly from a hole in the dome with

<Ahhhhhl> I cried, and dug in what legs I me in the lead. We were going to burst from the had left. They punctured the dirt, scraped the opening. BASE jumpers with no chutes.

stone, snapped like twigs.

We were going to die.

"Skreeeeeeyaaaaaa.'" A shrill scream from It would end for me where it had all begun. That the Taxxon. A primal yelp of despair.

cavernous hell. In seconds, we'd be five blobs on But the legs were slowing me. They were the pavement, gobbled up by Taxxon guards.

slowing us!

Ba-BAMMM!

Still, the force of the gas, of the others press-Marco slammed into my rump.

ing against me — I'd explode.' I was a balloon

<Ugh.'>

about to pop. My thin skin was being pushed to Jake plowed into Marco. Rachel plowed into the limit. . .

Jake.

But the pressure of the wall was slowing us KA-bam!

down.

Ax careened into Jake's rib cage, crushing I felt blood vessels fail, blood course into my him. Crushing us all.

eyes. My head was even with the Yeerk pool hole.

My legs, dozens of sharp sticks, scraped the It was all a blur. We inched forward, against our tunnel sides. I stretched them out as far as they will. Sheer agony. The march toward death.

would open. Strained to make them catch hold.

<Can . . . not. . . breathe,> Ax whispered.

<Can't breathe!> Marco gasped.

Six inches, five inches, four inches . . .

Acute pain shot to my core. Momentum Four inches and holding.

snapped off my legs. I was insane to think I The pressure didn't push us any farther. It could stop us.' It was like trying to stop a car trav-eased. And then it disappeared.

eling seventy by opening the door and dragging No one said anything. I called to them. Their your foot on the pavement. Not happening.

one-word answers came in gasps. We all needed But I had a hundred legs. And the tunnel was air.

narrowing.

<Move, guys. Move.'> I said. <We have to get

<l see light.'> I yelled. There it was. The red back.> I twisted my massive body up and around 124

125

The Test

and only then did I realize that the Taxxon was less affected by the gas. My alien physiology let me breathe in the noxious environment.

<Lungs . . . buming!> Jake sighed.

Their bodies, dark forms in the dim, distant light from the Yeerk pool, straggled lethargically along the tunnel.

<l can't,> Rachel said slowly.

<You have to!> I said. Marco dropped to the floor. The others stumbled like drunks. They weren't going to make it.

The tunnel was slick with Taxxon slime. I decided to use it for the one thing it was good for.

<C'mon!> I roared, then I charged. I plowed into them and pushed them along. Slowly at first, We were conscious. We were breathing. We then faster and faster.

were alive.

My hunger reemerged.

. Barely.

There they were. Four weak, dying animals.

No one needed to say, <Demorph.> No thought Mine for the feasting. Their smells. Their warmth.

had ever been stronger in my mind.

It was the hardest thing I've ever done.

"The gas is off." Those were the first words

<They're not food,> I chanted. <They're not out of Jake's mouth when he'd finished demorph-food.>

ing, the only words anyone managed to form.

The legs I had left were on fire. My hunger

"How?" he whispered. He stood for a minute, was alive. I slid my friends along the tunnel with numb and dazed. Incredulous. "How?"

my big Taxxon head.

Silently, we followed Jake up and out of the

<They're not food!> I screamed.

sewer chamber. He began to remorph to pere-After far too long, the dirt gave way to con-grine falcon. Marco, Rachel, and Ax followed his crete. It was the sewer chamber.

lead, went raptor.

We'd made it.

<Let's go,> Jake commanded.

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127

There was only one place the gas could have landed on the pavement, morphed Andalite, and been turned off.

joined the others. We crunched over glass and The pumping station.

stepped through what was left of the door frame.

I got a funny feeling as we got closer to it.

Moved into the building.

Flashing lights by the doors and on the roof

<Oh, man,> I heard Rachel say. <Oh, man!> doused the surrounding trees in red. I knew some-I stepped around her. My rear legs weakened.

thing was up, the way you do when a police car Then I saw the bodies. Human bodies. Maybe rockets past you on the street, no sirens, but half a dozen. Male and female. Suited to look lights flashing. There was definitely trouble.

like gas company workers.

The others landed behind the bushes where Sprawled now every which way. They were Ax and I had morphed earlier. They demorphed, alive — barely. They'd obviously been on the los-crouching low as their bodies rose from the earth.

ing end of one very fierce battle. None seemed And even though I knew they were all exhausted, conscious.

they slowly morphed again. Battle morphs. We Yeerk slugs wriggled and writhed helplessly weren't taking any chances.

on the floor.

The plate glass door was shattered. A thou-

<Who could have done this?> Jake gasped.

sand shards sparkled on the sidewalk.

<l think why is the better questions Marco

<Somebody charged this place,> I said.

added.

<Somebody wild.>

<Taylor,> Rachel said, her voice grim. <But

<Come on. Who'd break into a pumping sta-no, that's impossible. 'Cause she was with us.

tion? No cash. No goods,> Marco said.

This was her plan and she needed these people.

<Maybe their gas bill was too much to take,> Visser Three?>

Rachel answered.

I moved forward, stepping carefully over the The others stole along the perimeter single file, bodies with my four legs. I heard a police siren an absurd and unlikely circus troupe. I circled wail in the distance and I knew. I knew they were above. No one hiding in the bushes. No snipers coming here. Maybe real cops. Maybe Controller-posted on the roof.

cops. It didn't matter. No time either way. We

<Weird,> I said. <l don't see anyone.> I had to get out.

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129

The Test

But I kept going. I kept going because before the siren wailed, I'd heard a noise. A sound of life farther on in the building.

<Tobias, we've gotta get out of here. We're not going to figure this out,> Rachel said. <At least not now.>

I didn't turn back. I moved into the guts of the building, where compressors and pumps that once hummed smoothly sat silent and immobile.

I followed the sound. There was a door to what looked like a little office. I peered in.

And then I saw her, sitting with her elbows on a table, her head in her hands.

Cassie. Crying.

She had turned off the gas and saved our It was the next day. The sun beat down. And lives. She had done this.

produced columns of rising hot air. I must have

<Cassie, it's me.> She didn't look up. She gone twelve minutes without flapping a wing.

didn't move. <Cassie.>

Rachel, too. Nature was giving us a free ride.

With delicate Andalite arms, I tried to lift her We were way up. So high. You can't even see from the chair. She stood but was limp in my prey from that height. But what's cool is that we arms.

weren't the only birds up there. I guess true

<C'mon, Cassie. We have to get out of here.

hawks need to get away, too, sometimes.

It's okay. Everything's okay.>

Why? I don't know. Maybe they need the per-Her sobs stopped. Halting half-gasps took spective. Maybe they need to feel that they're not their place. She turned in my arms, turned so tied to the world of their meadow. Maybe they're that she stood and faced me. Her eyes, red and pushing the boundaries, seeing how high they wet, stared up at mine. Salt streaks dried on her can sail before the air gets too thin.

face.

Or maybejhey don't know why they do any-

"No," she said. "It will never be okay."

thing.

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131

<The beach?> Rachel called.

"I'm not sure," I said. "Did you talk to Cassie?

<Yeah. How about the cove?> We turned like Did she tell you what happened?"

fighter planes and pulled out of our ascent. The

"Yeah. Jake took her home last night, but I trees and hills raced toward us, the ocean frothed stopped by this morning."

not far beyond.

"Well?"

I thought of the sinkhole where Bobby nearly

"She contacted Tidwell because Jake said drowned. The dirt flat where his father gripped she could warn him. While we were digging the him lovingly.

tunnel, Cassie talked to the Yeerk peace faction.

I spotted the pumping station as we de-Guess what Tidwell told her?"

scended. It was roped off by caution tape. Still I raised my eyebrows.

buzzing with cops and investigators.

"Tidwell and all the peacenik Yeerks try to I thought of the last second in which I'd seen feed at the same time. They try to show up at the Taylor, blown through the tunnel, Barbie doll hair Yeerk pool together so they can exchange infor-streaming. Her image remained but her voice mation and make plans."

was gone. Maybe just for now, maybe forever. Too

"We know that," I interrupted.

soon to tell.

"Right. But we didn't know that they'd reor-The cove is the closest thing to a secret beach ganized their feeding schedule. We didn't know that we know about. It's all jutting rocks and that they'd rescheduled so they'd predominate twenty-foot drops to the sea, so it's not too popu-on Saturday afternoons."

lar with the regular beach crowd. You practically There was a long pause as I calculated just have to be a bird to get to it.

what that meant.

Rachel demorphed and I morphed to my hu-

"Somehow Visser Three got the news? He was man self. The sun was warm. The air was salty.

going to kill off all his opposition in one day! The We were together.

AndaTite bandits. The Yeerk peace faction. Two

"There was no way we could -have known,"

groups, one plan."

she said, sensing my mood, knowing where my

"Yeah. And Cassie thinks he wanted more mind was. "We were acting on the best informa-than our lives," she said. "She thinks Visser tion we had."

Three planned to pin the atrocity on the peace 132

133

faction. That he was going to weaken them by wouldn t have worried about us. But she did. And frying all their hosts, then discredit them by it opened up a course of events that couldn't making it look like they were responsible for ar-have occurred otherwise. It ended up saving the ranging the gas explosion and for engineering Yeerk peace faction. It was a good investment."

massive loss of Yeerk life."

"Cassie battled a bunch of humans. Alone.

"That sounds like the visser we know and You're saying that's a good thing?"

love."

"Of course not," Rachel said emphatically.

"And if he sacrificed some innocent Yeerks

"But it was the lesser of two evils."

along the way," Rachel continued, "it would be a I sat down on a rock slab. The waves crashed.

small price for a plan that would also, thanks to The wind whipped. Rachel sat down next to me.

Taylor, annihilate us."

Maybe I was weak, but at least I was free. My

"So Taylor was working with Visser Three all choices were my own. No matter what.

along. She pretended to be against him to get us Was it over for Taylor? Did she blow through to cooperate." I took a deep breath over the pain the hole in the Yeerk pool dome? Lodge in a in my chest. "After all the clues! All the gut feel-crevice of the tunnel till the gas pressure died?

ings! I don't believe I didn't see more clearly. I Catch a crag of rock and hang on? Did she live?

should have looked at the bigger picture . . ."

Would Taylor-the-girl ever live again?

"Hey. No matter what you think, Tobias, Taylor's Would I ever stop caring?

not your responsibility. Besides, how often is it pos-

"You never really know how some things will sible to see the big picture, really?" Rachel said.

turn out," I said. A twig blew across the surface

"Things happen fast. You just have to make the of ayrock, swept along by the wind. I reached out best decision you can and then go for it. You know to catch it. Rachel moved to stop it, too. Our what? I'd do the same thing again, if I had to."

hands collided gently. I took her hand. The twig

"How can you say that?"

blew past us, and fell into a crack.

"With me, it's about instinct. I knew we had

"Yeah," she answered, smiling. "There's no to dig that tunnel. Turns out I was right, but for real point in worrying about what you might have the wrong reasons. If we hadn't gotten involved done. The past is the past, Tobias. Let it go."

with Taylor, Cassie wouldn't have known about the plan, wouldn't have talked to Tidwell, 134

135


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