Текст книги "Animorphs - 15 - The Escape"

Автор книги: Katherine Alice Applegate

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Animorphs The Escape

Converted to E-Book by:

Kamal Raniga

My name is Marco.

I've always kind of liked my name. Marco. It brings Marco Polo to mind.

Not that my last name is Polo. Or maybe it is. I'm not going to tell you.

None of us will tell you our last names. None of us Animorphs. Or where we live. Or anything else that would help the Yeerks find us.

Yeerks? What are Yeerks? you wonder.

I'll tell you. They are a species of parasites. Like tapeworms, only worse. See, Yeerks don't just crawl up inside your stomach or intestines. They crawl inside your brain. They sink their malleable bodies into the nooks and crannies of your brain. They tie straight into your brain's neurons.

They control your brain. They control you more completely than it is possible for you to imagine.

You think, Oh, well, I would still be able to keep control over myself.

But you'd be wrong. See, if you had a Yeerk in your head right now, it would be the Yeerk that would be moving your hands and fingers; the Yeerk who'd be focusing your eyes; the Yeerk who'd be deciding if you were hungry.

The Yeerks enter your brain and make you a slave. They open your memories and read them like a book. You can still think, sure. You can still feel. You can be afraid or angry or humiliated. But you can do nothing on your own. It is a slavery more total than any ever experienced on Earth. But then, the Yeerks aren't from Earth.

People with Yeerks in their heads are called Controllers.

Human-Controllers, if the Yeerk has taken over a human.

Hork-Bajir-Controllers, when the victim is a Hork-Bajir. Although pretty much all Hork-Bajir are Controllers, so we don't really bother to say "Hork-Bajir-Controllers."

We fight the Yeerk invasion led by the evil creature, Visser Three. Five human kids and an An-dalite kid. We're the only people who know what's happening. Just us. And the Yeerks, of course.

And how do we fight? With the morphing power given to us by a dying Andalite prince. The power to become any animal we can touch.

The power to morph.

How do you know who is a Controller and who isn't? That's the problem.

You don't. You can look deep into the eyes of the person you trust most and never, ever guess that behind those eyes is an alien parasite.

Now you know why I won't tell you my last name. Or where I live. Not even what state. See, I want to live. I want to live to fight.

And one day, I want to live to rescue the one person who matters most to me. The person whose eyes I looked into for years without knowing she was no longer my mother.

But being an Animorph is not always danger and battle. There are other times when the powers we possess can be useful. Even fun.

And on a nice Wednesday afternoon after school, I was at the mall with the others, doing just that: having fun. And we weren't at the usual, everyday mall. This was the new, massive Mega Mall they'd built across town.

It was Cassie's idea, oddly enough. Normally she'd be the last person to ever cook up a harebrained scheme. But this involved mistreating animals. And you don't want to mess with animals when Cassie is around.

"Squuuaaaakk! The food is good! The food is good! Squuuaaakkk!"

It was me, Jake, Cassie, Tobias, Rachel, and

Ax. Ax was in human morph, of course. So was Tobias. Tobias has regained his ability to morph now, but he's still a red-tailed hawk. He can morph into his old human shape, but if he stays in that shape more than two hours, he'll be trapped in it and never be able to morph again.

He made the choice to live as a hawk and keep his morphing power.

I don't know if I'd have been tough enough to make that choice.

As for Ax, well, he's an Andalite. He has a human morph he uses sometimes. He was using it now, fortunately, or otherwise there would have been a lot of screaming and panicking and general weirding-out. An Andalite walking around the mall is something you notice.

"Squuuaaaakkkk! Try the Rain Forest burger. It's squuuaaaakkk good!"

In this mall was a restaurant called the Amazon Cafe. It was a cool restaurant because it was like going on some ride at Disney World. The tables were totally surrounded by plants and stuff arranged to look like a jungle. There were lots of fake birds and fake alligators and fake snakes in fake trees.

Unfortunately, there were also some real birds. Parrots, to be exact.

These parrots were out where people wait in line to get a table. They were on perches, surrounded by people. Old people, young people, cool people, annoying people. People who would try to scare the birds or feed them garbage or poke them with cigarette butts.

Which annoyed Cassie. It annoyed her so badly she had come to me and asked, "Marco, what can I do to save those poor birds? They aren't allowed any dignity!"

And I had said, "Hmmm. Parrots, right? They talk, right?"

"Yeah. Why? Do you have an idea?"

"Oh, yes. I have a definite idea."

And now, a couple days after that conversation, we were at the mall. And we were right in the forefront of people annoying the parrots.

"Say 'Howard Stern rules!'" a kid urged a bright green parrot.

"Squuuaaaakkk! Amazon Cafe! It's an adventure!"

"No, idiot bird dude, Howard Stern rules, man! Say 'Howard Stern rules!'"

"Moron," Rachel sneered.

The kid turned to her. "Yeah, this bird is a total moron."

"I wasn't talking about the bird, you -"

Jake put his hand on Rachel's shoulder, quieting her down. Rachel has an occasional problem with anger. And she has no tolerance for jerks.

Rachel is tall and blond and beautiful and totally without fear. Now, sure, way down inside she's also insecure, scared by her own inability to fit in, and way too pressured to live up to her own high standards. But all that stuff is way down inside. Way down so far that if you ever tried to reach it, she'd have sliced and diced you before you even got close.

"Okay, let's do this," Jake said. "It's almost time for them to clean the parrot perches, if Cassie's timing is right."

"Every day at this time," Cassie assured us. "In fact, here comes the woman who does it."

I saw a twenty-something woman in a waitress uniform coming toward us.

She was carrying a large wire cage.

"Squuuuaaaakkk! Pot stickers! Pot stickers! Squuuaaaakkkk!"

"Okay, we're straight on this? Rachel, Marco, Cassie, and me, follow her to the back. Tobias and Ax, you stay here as backup."

"Backup," Ax agreed. "Ba-kup. Bakkup. Look! Is that the place where cinnamon buns are created? Oh, cinnamon buns. Bunzuh."

Jake sighed. "Maybe after we're done we could go to Cinnabon," he said in his talking-to-lunatics voice.

See, in his own body, Ax has no mouth. Andalites talk by thought-speech and eat through their hooves. So when he's human, the Ax-man can get a little weird about spoken sounds. And a lot weird about flavor. And utterly insane when exposed to cinnamon buns, which, as far as Ax is concerned, are the finest things the human race has ever created. Forget music and art. Ax would trade a Cinnabon for the Mona Lisa, straight across.

"Okay, she's going!" Cassie warned.

The woman had stuffed the four parrots into the cage and was heading back into the restaurant. We followed her.

"Duh duh, duh duh, duh duh, duh duh, duh duh," I sang, doing the theme from Mission: Impossible. "Your mission, should you decide to accept it: Give the parrots back their dignity and strike a blow for Mommy Earth!"

Cassie rolled her eyes at me. Jake hid a smile.

"I can't believe you're going along with this, Jake. Responsible Jake giving his okay to a totally personal use of our powers. Never thought I'd see the day," I teased him. "It's 'cause he really likes Cassie," I added to Rachel in a stage whisper.

"It's because I know that if I didn't say yes, Cassie would do it anyway, and she'd get Rachel to go along, and possibly you, and the three of you need someone . . . someone sensible along."

"Yes, Dad," I mocked.

Jake made this deep-in-the-throat grinding

noise he makes sometimes. But I just laughed. Jake's been my best friend forever. He may be leader of the Animorphs, but that doesn't mean I have to take him too seriously.

We followed the woman and the parrots up to the point when she walked through a doorway into a storage room. We waited till she came back out and headed up to clean the parrot perch. Then into the storage room we went.

"Dee dee dee, dee dee dee, dee dee dee, da dum!" I hummed.

"Have I mentioned shut up, Marco?" Rachel asked me in a conversational tone.

"Okay, come on, you guys," Cassie urged.

We went to the parrot cage. Cassie removed the birds one by one, placing them into our hands. The birds remained very quiet as we acquired them.

That's what we call it when we absorb the DNA of an animal: acquiring.

It always puts the animal in a kind of trance. The parrots were no different.

We hid the parrots in a well-ventilated cupboard. Cassie assured us it was safe. And now all that was left to do was to become the parrots. To morph the parrots.

So that's what we did.

Most people would think morphing into an animal is fun. And I guess it is. But what it is, more than fun, is terrifying. And bizarre. And extreme.

Until you've done it, it's impossible to really understand how extreme it is.

The body you've had since you were born, the body with two arms and two legs and a head with your own personal face stuck on the front, changes.

It changes completely. Until nothing is left of you but your mind. You don't have your fingers to wiggle, or your legs to stand on, or your mouth to talk with. You look at the world through another animal's eyes.

As I focused my mind on the parrot, I felt the

changes begin. The first thing that happened was that my skin turned green.

Not that tinge of green you might get when you're sick or something. I'm talking GREEN. Brilliant, glowing, lustrous green. The green of the parrot's feathers.

"Whoa! Cool!" I said.

And it was cool, because at that same moment, the others were changing colors, too. Jake was turning as white as snow. Dead white. Rachel was a fascinating mix of yellow and orange. And Cassie . . .well, Cassie has a sort of unconscious talent for morphing. On her, deep crimson, red the color of blood, spread down from her shoulders, down and down her arms, down to her fingertips. Then the color rose up her neck, to change her face like it was a glass pitcher being slowly filled with cherry Kool-Aid. The very last things to change were the whites of her eyes.

For a brief second they shone white, then, like all the rest of her, they turned red.

Once my entire body was brilliant green, I began to shrink. The dirty floor of the storeroom rose up to meet me. It was like I was falling.

Like I'd passed out and was dropping facefirst toward the floor.

And as I shrank, my feet became bird feet. My thick, solid human bones became hollow bird bones. My internal organs, my lungs and stomach and liver, all twisted around in ways that should have made me scream in agony – except for the fact that morphing technology deadens pain.

My green skin became even brighter as I became smaller. Feather patterns drew themselves across my skin. My fingers sprouted outward and thinned to become feathers.

And then my face simply exploded outward. My entire face. Just, SPROOT!

My teeth, my lips, my nose, my chin, all bulged out like they were made of Silly Putty and someone was sticking their fist through from behind.

My skin – the skin that had been my cheeks and lips – turned hard. Hard as old fingernails. My huge, ridiculously large parrot beak was forming.

It was the color of old-man fingernails.

I looked out at my friends through sharply focused eyes. Not quite hawk eyes, but better than human vision.

"Well, aren't we colorful?" I said in thought-speak. Thought-speak is the telepathy we have when we're in morph.

"Better get into the cage quick, before that woman comes back," Cassie urged.

And right about then, I felt the parrot brain bubble up within my own human mind. It was weird. I've dealt with animal brains that were nothing but fear, like a mouse brain, and animal

brains that were all about killing, like a wolf spider's brain. I've even had to deal with the ma-chinelike, soulless brain of the ant. But it is rare to actually feel something like intelligence in that animal brain.

I've been a gorilla and a dolphin, and both of those are very smart animals. The parrot wasn't that smart, but there was definite thinking power in that brain. The parrot could think. It could reason. And, I realized, it could feel. It could feel emotions beyond simple instinct.

The parrot brain didn't overwhelm my human consciousness. It was just there. And as I began to realize how complex that brain was, I began to understand why Cassie was so mad.

"Hey. These birds are smart," I said.

"Very smart," Cassie agreed. "Too smart to be stuck out there on a crappy perch and be pestered all day. These birds should be flying free in the rain forest, not stuck in a mall."

"Not that we can really run around freeing every parrot in the country," Jake said pointedly. "We're clear on that, right?"

"Yeah, but we can make the Amazon Cafe wish it never heard of parrots," I said.

A few minutes later, the woman came to carry us back out to the clean perches. I looked around at the crowd gathered there.

"Ah, so many people, so little time to insult

them all," I said. Then I tried something I have never tried with any morph. I tried to make the parrot speak.

Here's a clue: It's not easy talking when you have no lips. All the sounds have to kind of be made in the throat. Like a ventriloquist. But I figured it out, We all did. And then there was nothing left for us to do but talk to all the people standing in line.

And talk is what we did.

"Squuuuaaaakkk! Amazon burgers are made with cat meat! Squuuaaaakkk!"

"Squuuaaaakkk! Try our spaghetti with hair!"

"Squuuaaaakkk! Amazon Cafe nachos and toe jam!"

Tobias was in the crowd smirking as he watched the people turn slightly green. Ax was with him, scarfing a slice of pizza he'd gotten somewhere.

I could only hope it wasn't from the trash.

"Squuuaaakkk! Botulism! Food poisoning!"

"Squuuaaakkk! Enjoy the fried booger strips!"

Oddly enough, many people standing in line decided to go and find another restaurant. The restaurant manager took about five minutes to decide that real-live parrots were maybe not a good idea. But we decided we'd make dead sure he got the message.

"Squuaaaakkk! By the way, is that your nose or are you eating a banana?"

"Squuaaakkk! What's that on your head, a wombat?"

"Squuaaakkkk! It's a toupee! It's a toupee! Squuaaakkk!"

"Squuaaakkk! We should be flying free in our native habitat!"

That last one was Cassie, of course. It was a little talky for a parrot, if you asked me.

After that we were outta there. I spotted Tobias applauding softly and laughing. I was feeling pretty good, pretty cocky. Until I saw another face behind Tobias, way back in the crowd.

I knew the face. Erek.

Erek, the Chee.

Erek the Chee used to be Erek this guy I knew from school. But Erek is a lot more than just some guy.

The Chee are a race of androids. They pass as humans by projecting a sort of holographic energy field around themselves that looks human.

Erek may look like a kid. But he is older than human history.

The Chee came to Earth hundreds of thousands of years ago. They were companions to the Pemaiites, whose home planet had been devastated by a violent invasion. The Pemaiites had fled, but too late. By the time they reached Earth, the Pemaiites were finished.

Their deathless androids did all they could.

They gave the essence of the Pemalites a new life. They melded them with wolves. And from this union dogs were born.

If you know how basically sweet and faithful and loving dogs are, you know what the Pemalites were like. And you also know a little of what the Ghee are like.

The Chee are peaceful, but not out of weakness. Erek, all by himself, could have taken on every person in the mall that day, beaten them all, and ripped the mall down around our ears. Literally.

But the Chee are pacifists. It's the way they are. They are also enemies of the Yeerks. They watch the Yeerks and learn about them, and, in their nonviolent way, do all they can to delay the Yeerks.

Erek waited till we were done with our little prank. He waited till I was walking away through the mall with Jake. We had split from the others so as not to look like a "group."

"Hi, Marco," Erek said. "Hello, Jake."

We didn't exactly rush over to throw our arms around him. We'd seen what happened the one time Erek did go postal. It was hard to forget. Hard to treat someone that powerful like just another kid.

"Hi, Erek, how's it going?" Jake asked guardedly.

"Fine. And we know, through our sources, that you have been doing good work against . . . against our mutual acquaintances." He lowered his voice. "I think we'd better have some privacy."

Suddenly, the air around us shimmered. All the noises of the mall were blanked out. And Erek was no longer human. He was a chrome-and-ivory robot, shaped a little like a lean dog, walking erect.

"What did you do?" tasked.

"I extended my hologram out around us all. People walking by are seeing a group of security guards talking. No one will bother or overhear us."

It was a cool trick. But it made my stomach do a little flip. Erek wasn't going to all this trouble just to talk about sports or whatever.

"Rescuing the two free Hork-Bajir was a good thing. They may prove to be the seeds of something very powerful and good. You may have begun the salvation of an entire race."

I shrugged. "We like to keep busy. It's either rescue entire races or play Nintendo."

Erek laughed with his chrome dog's muzzle. Then he was instantly serious again. "I need to talk to you privately, Marco."

"Well, I don't have any secrets from Jake,"

said. "I think that's the basis of a good marriage: openness, honesty."

"It's about someone who was once very close to you, Marco."

My heart stopped beating. I knew instantly who he meant. I started to say something, but my first words died on my tongue. I tried again. "My mom?"

Erek glanced at Jake.

"It's okay," Jake said. "I know. I'm the only one who does."

Erek nodded. "Marco, your mother has returned to Earth. She is overseeing some very secret new project. It's being run from Royan Island. Or, to be precise, it's being run from the waters around Royan Island."

I wasn't really hearing what Erek was saying. I was still back on the part about my mom returning to Earth. Jake understood. He took over dealing with Erek.

"What are they doing out there in the ocean?"

"We don't know," Erek said. "But whatever it is, it would have to be huge for Visser One to be overseeing it."

"Visser Three must be a little ticked about that."

Erek nodded. "Visser Three is not one of Visser One's favorite Yeerks.

And vice versa."

"Yeah," Jake agreed.

"Look, I ... we weren't sure whether to tell you about this. But we've learned all we can. And I felt Marco had a right to know she was back on Earth. But you guys have to be clear about something. Visser One didn't get to the top of the Yeerk hierarchy by being nice. She is brilliant and dangerous."

Jake looked at me to see how I was reacting.

"You guys think I don't know what Visser One is Iike?!" I said hotly.

"I know you do," Erek said. "But humans are easily tricked by outer appearances. You judge people by their faces and eyes. The face of Visser One is the face of someone you trust, Marco. But if you Animorphs decide to investigate this thing on Royan Island, you may come up against Visser One directly."

I could see where he was going. And it made me mad. I don't even know why. "Look, Erek, I'm not an idiot, okay?"

He shook his robot head. "I know you aren't. But you love your mother.

You want to save her. So you may make mistakes."

I swear I would have swung at Erek. But he would have let me hit him.

And I would have just hurt my hand.

"There's one other clue," Erek said. "We have reason to believe that some new species of Controller is at Royan Island. We believe they are called Leerans."

"Thanks, Erek," Jake said.

"Will he be all right?" Erek asked Jake.

I didn't wait to hear Jake's answer. I turned and stepped out of the hologram. I saw a woman's eyes widen in shock. What she had seen was a kid stepping directly out of a casually chatting security guard.

Jake caught up with me a few seconds later.

"Erek didn't mean anything bad. You know that," Jake said. "He just meant – "

"I know what he meant," I snapped. "He meant if it came to crunch time, would I destroy my own mother to protect the mission? That's what he meant."

Jake grabbed my shoulder and turned me around. "And?"

I was still mad. But I knew why I was mad. It wasn't that Erek had insulted me somehow. It was that Erek was right.

"I don't know, Jake," I said. "I don't know."

Yes, I know what a Leeran is. I have heard of that species," Ax said.

"But where did you hear that word?"

It was the next day after school, out in the woods where Ax and Tobias lived. Tobias was off hunting. I wanted to talk to Ax alone. He was in his own body, of course, watching me with his main eyes while his stalk eyes cautiously scanned the trees in every direction.

I had asked Jake not to say anything to the others about Erek. The others didn't know that Visser One was my mother. They all thought what I had thought for the past two years. That my mom had drowned. That her body had never been found.

I hadn't wanted the others to know the truth. That my mother had been made into a Controller. That the Yeerk inside her head was the original commander of the Earth invasion.

I didn't want their pity. I still don't. I'm a joker. I'm a comedian.

That's how I deal with life. See, I've always believed that to some extent you get to decide for yourself what your life will be like. You can either look at the world and say, "Oh, isn't it all so tragic, so grim, so awful." Or you can look at the world and decide that it's mostly funny.

If you step back far enough from the details, everything gets funny. You say war is tragic. I say, isn't it crazy the way people will fight over nothing? People fight wars to control crappy little patches of empty desert, for crying out loud. It's like fighting over an empty soda can.

It's not so much tragic as it is ridiculous. Asinine! Stupid!

You say, isn't it terrible about global warming? And I say, no, it's funny. We're going to bring on global warming because we ran too many leaky air conditioners? We used too much spray deodorant, so now we'll be doomed to sweat forever? That's not sad. That's irony.

Note to Alanis: That is ironic.

But humor kind of breaks down when the tragedy gets up close and personal.

See, I saw what my mom's "death" did to my dad. And you know what? There wasn't anything funny about it. And I know that for a year I cried myself to sleep most nights, looking at her picture. I still feel like someone blew a hole in me. A hole that will never heal. A hole I don't want to heal, because I don't want to stop hurting for my mom, I don't want to get over it.

Jake knew my mom. So when we all came face-to-face with Visser One, he knew who she was. But not Rachel or Cassie or Tobias or Ax. And since we'd been in animal morph at the time, the human-Controller known as Visser One did not recognize "her" son.

"Where did you hear about Leerans?" Ax asked me again.

"Look, can you just tell me what you know about them?"

Ax hesitated. He is still a little uncomfortable being open and honest with humans. The An-dalites are not used to trusting other species.

"They are an aquatic race. Their planet is mostly water, like Earth.

Only their land masses don't have much life. The most advanced life-forms are in the oceans. The Leerans are a sentient race of amphibians." He shrugged. "At least, that's what I learned in school.

I've never met a Leeran, of course. They aren't allowed on our world."

"Not allowed? Why not? Are they dangerous?"

Ax laughed. He gets this kind of superior, know-it-all attitude sometimes. "0f course not dangerous, More like embarrassing."

"Why? Do they fart in public or something?"

"Leerans are supposed to be psychic. They can read minds. At least they can do it if they're within close range. We have technological and military secrets we don't want the Leerans to know. Plus, you know, thoughts you might not want strangers listening in on. Now, where did you hear about Leerans?"

"Erek. The Chee. He says there's some kind of secret underwater thing going on with the Yeerks. He says some Leerans are involved."

Ax looked puzzled. "Yeerks and Leerans? It doesn't make sense. The Yeerks could never invade the Leeran world like they're doing with Earth. The Leerans are psychic. They would instantly know if one of their people were a Controllers

"Yeah. You're right. On the other hand ... if you could make Controllers out of these Leerans. Psychic Controllers?"

Ax swiveled his stalk eyes toward me. "They would be able to root out spies. Like the Chee. They would be able to sense traitors."

"And they would be able to find five human kids and one Andalite," I said. "They would see

right through an animal morph. They would mean the end of us."

I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Through a gap in the trees I spotted a hawk soaring just over the treetops. Maybe Tobias, maybe not.

In addition to fantastic sight, hawks have excellent hearing. I wondered, if it was Tobias, if he'd overheard my conversation with Ax.

"I guess it doesn't matter," I muttered.

"What doesn't matter?"

"Anything," I said with a laugh. "It doesn't matter, does it?" I guess !

always knew my secret would come out sooner or later. Funny-boy Marco is destined to look pathetic. My friends will look at me and think, Poor, poor Marco. I shook my head. "Never fails, you know. The Irony Gods.

They wait for the chance to twist your life around. Mr.

Cool-and-Detached ends up being the object of pity. Great. Perfect."

"These Irony Gods are a human religion?" Naturally Ax was totally mystified by my babbling.

"No. They're just a Marco religion," I said. "The Irony Gods wait to find out whatever it is you don't want. And that's what they do to you."

"And this is funny?" Ax asked. He's a little unsure of human humor.

"Absolutely," I said. "If it was happening to someone else, it would be hysterical."

In the end I told Jake we had to do it. We had to find out what the Yeerks were doing on Royan Island.

But I told him not to tell the others the rest of it. About my mom. I still hoped somehow we'd be able to avoid my dark secret. And avoid pity.

"Royan Island is a small, private island about twenty miles off the coast," I told the others when we were assembled in Cassie's barn. The barn is also the Wildlife Rehabilitation Clinic. The place where Cassie and her dad take in injured or sick wild animals.

It was Saturday morning. We were planning to take a first, casual look at Royan Island.

"It's about four miles long and three miles wide and shaped like a crescent moon," I continued.

"Very poetic," Rachel said. "Crescent moon."

"Hey, it's a quote from the guidebook, all right?!" I said. I winced. I shouldn't have snapped like that. I should have had a comeback ready. I looked tense, snapping at Rachel.

I took a deep breath. "Anyway, Ax says these Leerans are psychic. So we have to be very careful. We can't get near one of them."

"How near is near?" Jake asked Ax.

"l don't know," Ax admitted. "l think a few feet. But I don't know."

"How do we get to the island?" Cassie wondered. "By air or by sea?"

"Twenty miles is a long way to try and swim," Tobias pointed out. He was up in the rafters, as usual. Keeping an eye out through the open loft and listening with his hawk hearing.

"So we do a combination," Jake said. "Fly out there. Rest. Morph to dolphin."

"Not everyone has a dolphin morph," Tobias pointed out. "l can fly cover." I saw Cassie cock an eyebrow at Tobias. I think we were having the same thought. It was a little like Tobias didn't want to morph, now that he had his morphing power back.

"Ax has a shark morph from when we first rescued him," I said. "That will do as well as dolphin. And if Tobias doesn't want to morph -"

"l didn't say that," Tobias said quickly.

Jake looked at his watch. "Tobias, you could still fly out to The Gardens and acquire a dolphin morph. The Gardens are on the way, more or less."

"l have to remain in my own body to acquire a morph," Tobias pointed out. "Kind of obvious, a red-tailed hawk suddenly landing on a dolphin."

"Yeah. Well. Never mind, then," Jake said. "Come as you are." He smiled.

"You've always been our secret weapon just the way you are."

Tobias hesitated. "No, you're right. I should do the dolphin thing.

Twenty miles over water. . . those aren't really my best flying conditions. You tend not to get thermals over water. I'll do it. I'll acquire a dolphin morph. Okay. I'll definitely do it. And then, hey, no problem. Right? I mean, a dolphin in water, that's like a bird in the air, right?"

We were all staring at him. Tobias isn't usually a babbler. But he was babbling. It was Cassie who figured it out first.

"Tobias? Are you afraid of water?"

"Water? Afraid? Me?"

"I'd say that's a yes." I laughed. "You're not afraid to be a mile up in the air, but you're afraid of water?"

"Not water," he said hotly. "lt's just that, you know, there's no air in the water. You can't breathe. It presses in all around you."

"Hey, how about if we stop busting on Tobias, okay?" Rachel growled. "If he doesn't like water, he doesn't have to like water."

"No, it's okay," Tobias said shakily. "l'm cool. I mean, I'll be a dolphin, right? They live in the water."

I nodded. "Yep. We've established that dolphins live in water."

"Okay, then," Jake said. "Tobias needs to go to The Gardens to play with the dolphins. And we need to make this fast. So let's fly, and let's hope we get lucky."

"They hold their breath underwater, right?" Tobias asked. "l mean, I guess that's obvious. But if they ever forgot . . . "

"It'll be okay," Cassie reassured him. "You'll see. Once you've been a dolphin, you'll never fear the ocean again."