Текст книги "Animorphs - 07 - The Stranger"

Автор книги: Katherine Alice Applegate

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She sounded perfectly calm. But her eyes flickered quickly to Ax, then back to me. Visser Three shook his head in amusement.

"If only I had known from the start that you were humans. For so long I believed you were Andalites. Until, at last, we caught you."

I felt strangely calm. I mean, considering what was happening. I was face-to-face with Visser Three – who was now Visser One. I was face-to-face with my own future.

"You're a Controller," I said to the older me.

"Of course," she said. She smiled. A cruel smile, not at all like me. "We won. You all led us on a nice chase, but in the end, we won. This planet is Yeerk territory. The human race has achieved its destiny as hosts for the Yeerk race."

"If you know so much, how did we come to be here? In the future?" Marco asked.

"An Ellimist has brought you here." Visser Three said. "In your own time, you face a choice. The Ellimist has brought you six humans . . . you five humans and one Andalite . . .

here to show you a future. To show you the future. Soon he will return you to your own time.

"

"What choice did we make?" I asked.

The older Rachel smiled her cruel smile. "The right one, obviously. Everything has worked out perfectly."

"Yeah?" Jake said defiantly. "Maybe not. The Ellimist brought us here to help us make a choice. So what if we go back to our own time and decide to accept the Ellimist's offer? Then Rachel won't be around to be turned into a Controller. She'll be with the rest of us on whatever planet the Ellimist takes us to."

I watched closely for any reaction by my older self. Nothing. Not a flicker. And yet, there was something. She was trying to hide something.

"You know what we decided. But still, here you are," I said. "So either you're here to change what I decided. Except... no, then it might change all of this. Or else you're here because your being here is what caused me to decide whatever I decided."

"Confusing, isn't it?" Visser Three sneered. "I don't know how the Ellimists keep it all straight."

"Let's leave," Cassie said suddenly. "I don't like this place, and I don't like these two . . .

creatures."

66 "But Cassie, I'm your best friend," my older self said mockingly.

"No, you're not. Maybe Rachel is still alive in there somewhere. But what you are is a Yeerk.

" Cassie started to turn away. As she did, she tripped. She fell against me. Suddenly the older Rachel was there. She grabbed me and held my arm steady so I didn't fall.

But to Ax it must have looked like she was lunging at me. His tail whipped forward in the blink of an eye.

Ax's quivering blade was pressed against the older Rachel's throat.

Her eyes went wide with fear. She shot a glance at Visser Three. And to my amazement, Visser Three seemed frozen. He was confused.

His main eyes narrowed. He looked from Ax, to the older Rachel, to me.

Suddenly I knew. "This wasn't in the script, was it?" I asked him. "This wasn't supposed to happen. Something has changed! It's Ax, isn't it? You said 'six humans" before. That's what you expected to find. That's what Rachel told you would happen. But the future has changed, hasn't it?

Something is different."

Visser Three glared at me, and now he dropped the pretense of politeness.

"Do you know what I did when I finally caught you and your little band of Animorphs? Do you know what I did? I gave each of you to a trusted lieutenant. And once you belonged to us, once you were MINE, I killed your bird friend here, and we roasted his body. " Visser Three leaned close to me. "He was tough and stringy, but we added a sauce you humans have. Barbecue, I believe it's called. And then your friend Tobias was delicious. You had a leg, as I recall. You ate it and laughed. "

I really wanted to morph right then. I really wanted to become the grizzly and tear Visser Three a few new holes. But there were hundreds of Controllers around. And while I was morphing I would be vulnerable.

Ax still had his tail blade pressed against the older Rachel's throat. "He can't hurt us." Ax said. "He can't do a thing to us. If he does, he would change history. He doesn't know how that would work out. "

"Good point, Ax," Jake said. He met my gaze. He had a dangerous, angry look in his eyes.

"He can't hurt us. But the reverse . . . well . . . "

"Excellent point," I agreed. I focused my mind on the grizzly bear. "So, Visser Three. You killed my friend Tobias and roasted him over a fire."

I was beginning to change. So was Jake.

"I have a hundred Hork-Bajir I can call!" Visser Three said.

67 "So call them," Marco said. "Maybe one of them will get careless with a Dracon beam and kill one of us. How do you suppose that will change the past? Hard to tell, isn't it?"

Claws had sprouted from my fingers. Coarse brown fur was covering my body. I could feel the surge of power as I became more bear than human.

"Visser," the older Rachel said tersely. "What do we do?"

"We?" Visser Three said. "We do nothing. I retreat. " Visser Three began backing away. But I wasn't about to let him go. I had him. After all the pain he had caused, I had him. After all the damage he had done, he was now powerless.

68 CHAPTER 17

I did not wait until the last of my human features was submerged. I was bear enough. I charged.

Bears are very large and look sort of clumsy. But they can be very fast.

"Now, you filth, let's see who eats who. "

I barreled toward him. He turned to run. But he had turned too late. I hit him. Eight hundred pounds of fast-moving bear hit Visser Three in the flank and brought him down hard.

I drew back one huge claw and swung with all my might.

My hand slapped the trunk of a tree. My human hand.

"Owww!"

I was human again. I was in the woods behind Cassie's farm. The others were all there as well. Tobias, once again a hawk, perched in a branch overhead.

"No! I'm sick of this!" I yelled. I slammed the tree again in sheer frustration. "I'm sick of this!

Cassie came over and put her arm around my shoulders. "It doesn't matter. That's a Visser Three who doesn't exist yet."

"I'm so sick of this," I said again, a little more softly. "What's the point? What's the point in anything? We know the future now. We know what happens if we decide to stay and fight."

I felt lost. The last ounce of energy just seeped away from me. It was too much. Too many things to deal with. And what was the point? What did it even matter what I did?

I flopped down onto the grass and pine needle-covered ground, and rested my head in my hands. I was done. Done trying to make sense of a world where I could be jerked back and forth like a puppet.

The six of us just lay there on the floor of pine needles for a while. Staring. Thinking. Letting it all sink in.

It was over.

The war was done. And we had lost.

"It could all still be an Ellimist trick." Ax said halfheartedly.

"No," I said flatly. "You know it's not a trick, Ax. At least not the way you mean. If the Ellimist wanted to force us to do something, he has more than enough power."

"We need to think this through," Jake said wearily.

I shrugged. "You think it through. I'm tired of thinking: I was just about to vote when the Ellimist dragged us off for his little show-and-tell. I was about to be good old Rachel and 69 vote no. I was going to be tough, one more time. But I'm changing my vote. I'm not going to end up as a Controller. That's not going to happen. Not to me. If that means I'm running away, too bad. I change my vote."

You know what? At that moment of surrender, I felt good. I wish I could say I didn't. But I felt a wave of relief wash over me. No more hard decisions. No more danger. No more having to be brave.

"That makes it Cassie, Rachel, and me, in favor," Marco said. "Three to two, unless Ax is voting."

"I follow Prince Jake." Ax said.

"Maybe . . . " Tobias began. "Maybe if some of the human race survives on some other planet. . . . Maybe it will be like when they brought wolves back to live in the National Forest. I mean, maybe someday we can return and take Earth back. "

"Are you changing your vote, Tobias?" Jake asked him.

"Jake, you know I would never run from a fight. . . . "

We all just sat there, staring at nothing.

We were going to do it. We were going to abandon the fight. We all knew it.

Jake hung his head. "Ellimist?" he said softly to the air, "We have decided. The answer is yes."

The Ellimist had said we would be transported immediately, once we decided. I expected my next breath to be drawn on some distant planet.

But nothing happened.

Nothing at all.

J. can't tell you how weird it was, going to school the next day. Sitting in class, trying to pay attention while my teacher, Ms. Paloma, talked about what led up to the Second World War.

"Maybe if the United States had been ready to fight earlier," she said, "the war would have ended earlier and fewer people would have been killed. But our country wanted peace."

I just kept looking at her and wondering, Was that your skeleton draped across the desk?

What was the point of going to school? What was the point in anything? I had seen the future. I knew how it all turned out. The human race was done for. Finished. That was where all our long history led – to a Yeerk pool.

"Because we were so devoted to peace, we may have actually made the war worse," Ms.

Paloma droned on. "We'll never know for sure, of course. You can't really second-guess history." You can if you're an Ellimist, I thought. If you're an Ellimist, you can look ahead and see it all.

70 "Why not?"

It was Cassie's voice. I glanced across the room at her. She had that same look of confusion I'd seen the day before. The frustrated look, like she sensed something she couldn't quite grasp yet.

"Why can't you second-guess history? I mean, if you could go back and change things so that the U.S. was ready to fight earlier. ..."

Ms. Paloma sat on the edge of her desk.

"Because events are intertwined in ways we cannot always see, Cassie. Sometimes small things can make huge differences. You know, they say that a single butterfly, beating its wings in China, may affect the way the wind blows here in our country. A single butterfly beating its wings may make a tiny change that becomes a bigger change that becomes a tornado. The world isn't like math. It isn't just one plus one equals two. It's more complicated than that."

And then the oddest thing happened. Ms. Paloma looked right at me. Right into my eyes.

"Much more complicated than that," she said. "A single butterfly ... a single butterfly ... a single butterfly..."

The hair on the back of my neck was tingling.

Everyone was looking at her like she was crazy.

Suddenly, Ms. Paloma shook her head, like she was popping out of a trance. She smiled a confused smile. "Okay, well, anyway, you all have the reading assignments."

The bell rang and I practically jerked up out of my seat.

Cassie threaded her way through the kids who were rushing out of the room.

"Okay, tell me that wasn't weird," Cassie whispered.

"I thought maybe I was imagining it," I said. "Besides, who knows what's weird anymore?

I'm sitting there waiting for the ... you know who ... to suddenly zap us out of here."

Cassie nodded. "So why hasn't he?"

Out in the fast-moving crush of bodies in the hall, we made our way to our lockers. "I don't know," I said as I spun my combination lock. "We decided to say yes. We're giving him what he wants."

I popped my locker door open.

"Unless. ..." Cassie said.

"Unless maybe that wasn't the answer he wanted," I finished her thought.

71 "But it's nuts," Cassie said, frowning. "Every thing he did made it look like he wanted us to say yes. He appears the first time right as we're about to be swallowed by a. ..."

She looked around to make sure no one could overhear.

"Just as we were about to be swallowed. I mean, come on. Obviously he must have figured we'd want to bail."

"We might have," I said. "Except we saw that dropshaft. So we thought we could escape.

Otherwise..."

I stopped talking. I stared at Cassie. She stared back.

"He showed us that dropshaft!" Cassie said.

"Why?" I wondered aloud. "Why? What is he doing with us? He appears when we're desperate. He says he doesn't interfere and gives us a choice. Then he lets us see a way out.

What's that all about?"

"Then he gives us another chance. He shows us the future. He shows us ... you, basically.

You in the future. So we know for sure that we must have decided to stay and fight. And we know we lost. And all of that means we have to say yes and let him take us away. So why have I been feeling like I was missing something?"

The warning bell for next period rang.

"This is insane, as Marco would say." Cassie laughed. "Yeah. I have gym next period. At any moment I might suddenly be swooped away to another planet, but in the meantime I have to go play volleyball."

I watched her walk away. Then I hurried to my next class.

A single butterfly, I thought.

But how is the butterfly supposed to know when to beat her wings?

72 CHAPTER 18

I was back in the underground Yeerk pool. Trapped. Stuck to the Taxxon's tongue. But not a cockroach. I was myself, in my human body, only tiny. Stuck. About to die.

Ax was talking. "Yeerk pool. It's the center of their lives. Almost a religion. " I squirmed and tried to get away. I tried to change into something else. The bear. I wanted to become the bear. But I was stuck. All I could do was beat my helpless butterfly wings.

He showed us the dropshaft, Cassie's voice murmured in the back of my head.

I swirled down dark corridors. I flew wildly on butterfly wings, always chasing a light that never drew closer and yet never disappeared.

The Kandrona, I thought in my dream.

The light is the Kandrona. "The center of their lives. Almost a religion."

"No, not the Yeerk pool, really. The Kandrona. That is the center for them. That is their light."

"He showed us the dropshaft," Cassie said again, only now she was Ms. Paloma.

My eyes snapped open. I sat up in my bed. I was as awake as I'd ever been. I was electric!

"Hah HAH!" I yelled in the darkness of my room. "YES!"

Then I hesitated. Was I nuts? Was I just desperate? I ran through it all again.

"Got "em!" I whispered. "Oh, man, we got 'em! Got the disgusting worms!"

I shucked off the T-shirt that I wear to bed, and quickly slipped into my morphing outfit.

I threw open the window. Then I paused. It would be Saturday morning in a few hours. No school. But if my mom found me gone, she might worry.

I quickly scribbled a note saying I had gone for an early-morning run. That I might go over to Cassie's afterward.

And then I glanced at the picture on my desk. The one of three-year-old me on the balance beam, being held up by my proud father.

I could not tell the others.

We had already decided. We were going to say yes to the Ellimist.

We would let him take us to a place where there would be no battles and no need to decide.

If I told my friends what I suspected. . . . I felt the weight come down on me again. The weight of uncertainty and guilt and fear.

73 I looked at the picture of my dad and smiled. "What would you think of me, Dad, if I walked away, when I still had a chance to win?"

And then I morphed. My arms shrank. My skin began to flow into patterns of soft feathers that could ride silently on the night breeze. In a few more minutes, I was ready. The moon was bright in the sky. Dawn was still hours away. A perfect night for an owl. But I paid no attention to the juicy prey below me as I flew at top speed toward the woods.

"Tobias! It's me! Don't panic, but wake up!"

"What the . . . to Didn't I tell you about zooming up in – "

"Come on!" I yelled.

"Come on, where?"

"Don't argue, just come on. I know you don't like to fly at night, but just come on, anyway!"

"Rachel, have you lost your mind? Where are we going?"

"We're going to be butterflies, Tobias. We're going to Cassie's barn, and then we're going to change history. "

He opened his wings and flew alongside me, just a few feet away.

"Whatever you say, Rachel." Tobias said grumpily. "But what makes you think – "

"I know where it is, Tobias." I interrupted him.

"Where what is?"

"Tobias? I know the location of the Kandrona. "

74 CHAPTER 19

Okay , it's three forty-seven in the morning," Marco said. "And I'm here, thanks to the fact that my dad is a sound sleeper who doesn't notice when I wake up screaming because an owl and a hawk have just flown through my window. So now maybe you can tell us all why we're here?"

Everyone was there in Cassie's barn. Jake looked sleepy but interested. Cassie was using the time to check on some of the sick animals. Ax just stood to one side, waiting to see what Jake told him to do. Tobias perched on an over head beam, tired from having flown too much.

We were lit by a single small bulb that never even touched the shadows in the corners of the barn. We didn't want to take the chance that Cassie's parents might notice a light on and come to investigate.

"Yes," I answered Marco, "I'll tell you why you're here. I know where the Kandrona is. I know where it is."

That got his attention. But he was still skeptical. "What makes you think you know where the Kandrona is?"

"The Ellimist. He showed us. We all thought it was unfair when he appeared in the Yeerk pool and asked us to decide when we were about to be eaten, right?"

"I told you, Ellimists care nothing about fairness," Ax said.

"No. You're wrong, Ax. At least this time. The Ellimist appeared when we were about to be swallowed by the Taxxon. But then he showed us the dropshaft."

"We saw the dropshaft because it was there," Jake argued. "It wasn't about him showing it to us."

"Are you sure?" I asked. "He waited till we had walked out of the Yeerk lunchroom to appear. He waited till we were standing where we were sure to notice the dropshaft."

I saw Jake raise an eyebrow thoughtfully. He and Marco exchanged a look.

"What if we're wrong about the Ellimist being unfair? What if Cassie's instinct is right – that he is telling the truth? That he's trying to do what's right? He tells us that in the future we lose the fight. That the human race is enslaved. That he has a way to save a small number of us by taking us to a safe place. And it's all true."

"If he's telling us the truth, that we lose in the future, what's this all about?" Marco asked.

"We've seen that future. Nothing we do will matter."

I shook my head. "No. It will matter. If it didn't matter how we decided, why even bother to ask us what we wanted to do? See? It does matter what we do."

"Yes," Marco said. "But the answer is obvious. We can only change the future by agreeing to the Ellimist's plan to take us to a safe planet."

75 "Yes, that's one way. He offered us that. But when we finally accepted, he didn't act. He didn't take us instantly away. Why? Why, after we agreed, did he leave us here?"

"Because he wanted a different answer," Cassie said, nodding at me and giving me a wink.

"That's what's been eating at me."

"What different answer?" Marco asked.

"He's in a trap," Cassie said. "The Ellimist is trapped. He wants to save Earth. But he can't interfere directly. Supposedly all he's allowed to do is offer to save a small number of us. But he knows that won't save Earth. It will save a few humans, yes, but when he showed us visions of Earth, he wasn't talking just about humans. He said Earth was a work of art. He wants to find a way to save it."

"Without interfering directly," I agreed. "But what if we just happened to see another way?

What if the Ellimist showed us the future, trying to convince us to let him take us away, and we just happened to see a way out?"

"What way out?" Jake demanded.

"The Kandrona. He let us see where the Kandrona is," I said. "That Yeerk pool downtown, that's the key. Why build a Yeerk pool downtown? Why level so many buildings to make room for it? Why leave the EGS Tower still standing? And why is there a glass dome on the top floors of the EGS? Ax is the one who said it – the Yeerk pool is the center of their lives.

That Yeerk pool? I think it's a shrine. Almost a holy place to them. It's where they located the first Kandrona to be placed on planet Earth."

Jake snapped his fingers, "The EGS Tower!" "That's what's under that dome on the top floors. The Kandrona. That's what the Ellimist wanted us to see. Just the way he let us see the dropshaft we used to escape. He wasn't interfering ... technically. The choice is still ours."

Marco laughed out loud. "You mean maybe the Ellimist is bending his own rules? So he can say 'hey, I didn't interfere," but at the same time he's putting us where we can figure it out? I can't believe it! The Ellimist is a weasel! He found a loophole! I think I like that guy."

"But even if you're right about the Kandrona, Rachel," Jake argued, "what does it prove? If we destroy it, are we sure it will change the future?"

Cassie looked at me and smiled. "Maybe yes, maybe no," she said. "But things are connected in millions of ways. They say a single butterfly, beating its wings in China, can start a tornado in America."

"Yes." Tobias said, "but how does the butterfly know when to beat its wings?"

"It doesn't," I said. "I guess it beats its wings the best it can, and hopes it will all work out. It's a butterfly. It just does what butterflies do."

"And what do we do, Xena, Warrior Princess?" Marco asked mockingly, knowing the answer I would give.

"We kick Yeerk butt," I said with a grin.

76 77 CHAPTER 20

At five-ten in the morning, the EGS Tower's windows were almost all dark. From the deeply shadowed plaza in front of the building, we could see a sleepy, uniformed guard inside the lobby.

"There are dozens of businesses and law firms and stuff in this building," Jake warned. "Most of them are probably just normal people.

Fortunately, at this time of day, almost no one will be here. But the guard is probably just a normal guy."

"How do we deal with him without hurting him?" Cassie asked.

Suddenly Tobias swooped down out of a dark sky. "I can't see anything useful through the windows up there." he said. "Too bad that glass dome is still in the future. But I can tell you one thing. Something up there is giving off some heat. I'm getting a beautiful updraft from the building itself. "

"Let's do this, already," I grumbled. I started morphing into the bear.

"Okay, but take it easy on any innocent bystanders," Jake said. "Tobias? I know you're wearing out, but stay up and keep an eye out while we morph."

"No prob, Jake. " He flapped his wings and slowly gained altitude.

"These doors will be locked," Cassie pointed out.

"Not for long," I said.

Ax was already demorphing, coming out of his human body and resuming his Andalite shape.

Jake's eyes were glittering, his body was lengthening, and striped orange-and-black fur was spreading like a wave over his skin.

Cassie was already on all fours. Rough gray fur grew thickly around her shoulders. Her mouth bulged out further and further to form a wolf's muzzle.

"Hey! A guy's coming up behind you." Tobias called down. "I think he's drunk. He's carrying a bottle. If it were daytime, I could read the label. He's definitely staggering. "

"Keep morphing." Jake said quickly. "Cassie? See if you can get rid of him. " Cassie trotted off, already fully morphed. And a second later we heard, "Grrrrrr, grrrrrr, grrrOVVWWRR!" followed by "Whoa! No way!" and the sound of a crashing bottle and running feet.

Cassie returned just as we were finishing our morphs.

"He decided to go in a different direction." Cassie reported.

"Okay, so let's go in." I said. I was fully the grizzly now, and feeling invulnerable.

78 "Actually, how about if Marco tries it first?" Jake suggested.

While the rest of us lurked in the shadows, Marco, now an extremely large, powerful gorilla, knuckle-walked to the glass door. He stood up on his hind legs and tapped with one massive finger on the glass.

The guard jerked in his seat. He stood up and moved cautiously closer. Then he drew his gun.

"Hey, get out of here," the guard said.

"Hi." Marco said in thought-speak. "I just came from a masquerade party, and I was looking for Visser Three. "

The guard's eyes went wide. "Andalite!" he hissed.

"Oh, so you area Controller. Good, That makes it so much simpler. " With that, Marco punched straight through the thick glass of the door.

CRASH!

His gorilla fist connected squarely with the guard's chin. The guard crumpled, still holding his gun.

"Move, move, move!" Jake yelled.

I barreled into the rest of the glass door. I was careful, but not too careful. I wasn't very worried about being hurt. Shattered glass flew everywhere. Cassie, Ax, and Jake leaped over the glass shards. Jake raced for the elevator.

"There may be an alarm. We have to move fast." Jake said.

"We'll never fit in one elevator." Marco said.

"Head for the freight elevator. That'll hold us." Jake said. "Go for the top floor. " Cassie and Ax kept an eye on all activity on the ground floor while they waited for the elevator to come back down. Jake, Marco, and I had the most firepower – so we went in first.

We squeezed our combined bulk into the one freight elevator car – not an easy thing to do – but we managed it.

"Can you press the button? I sure can't." Jake said. He held up one of his huge paws to show me.

It wasn't easy. Bear paws aren't exactly subtle tools. But after carefully lining up my first claw, I hit the top button.

79 The doors closed and we rose swiftly upward. There was a safety inspection certificate mounted on one wall. I leaned very close to make out the letters, and read it aloud. "Says here the maximum load is twenty people. "

"How many bears, tigers, and gorillas?"

The ride seemed to be taking forever. I watched the counter tick off the floors. Twenty-one.

Twenty-two. Twenty-three.

"So. Seen any good movies lately?" Jake asked.

"I want to go see that new Keanu Reeves movie." I said.

"He's supposed to be cute, right?"

"Duh." I said.

"I wonder if he'd ever want to go out with a girl like me. You know, lots of guys wouldn't want to date a grizzly bear. "

Suddenly I realized there was music playing in the elevator. The usual stupid elevator music.

"Get ready." Jake said.

"Been ready. "

"Top floor. Ladies shoes. Children's apparel. Everyone out." Marco announced in his best elevator operator's voice.

The elevator stopped. The door opened.

Just as three humans and two Hork-Bajir were racing toward the elevator.

"Rrrrrroooowwwwrrrr!" Jake roared in a voice that could crack concrete.

"Rrrrrooooowwwwrrr!" I echoed in my own muddier bear voice.

I charged like an enraged bull. I went straight for the nearest Hork-Bajir. That meant running through the closest human. I felt a slight thump as his body was knocked aside.

I slammed into the Hork-Bajir. The force of my charge just picked him up and carried him along till I hammered into the far wall.

It didn't kill him, but he wasn't going anywhere.

Jake took down the other Hork-Bajir with a lightning swipe of his claws. The remaining humans bolted.

"I'm cut." Jake said.

"Is it bad?"

80 "It isn't good." Jake said.

"But I'll be okay for a while. "

Just then the elevator door opened and Ax and Cassie piled out.

"About time." I said. "We've taken care of the welcoming committee."

"Sorry. Ax pushed the button for the wrong floor." Cassie said. She glanced at the two Hork-Bajir.

"You know they have more than those two up here guarding the Kandrona and. . . Jake!

You're bleeding." Cassie cried.

" I'm fine. The human-Controllers ran down that hallway." Jake said. " Let's go. We haven't won this battle yet. "

I took off at a loping run. The others were right behind me. My claws gouged the carpeted floor with every step. I couldn't see well, but I could smell the adrenalin of the frightened human-Controllers. I knew where they had gone. I could smell them. I could sense them.

They had challenged me. And I was going to show them who was boss.

"Watch out, Rachel." Cassie called. "There's a door straight ahead of you. "

"Nah. There's no door." I said, and plowed all my eight hundred pounds into a steel door that popped open like the lid of a jack-in-the-box.

Inside, eight Hork-Bajir warriors stood ready.

Eight walking razor blades.

Eight of them. Five of us. No way we could win.

A sensible person would have seen the odds and run away. But I charged straight at them.

Later, everyone thought I was being brave.

But you know what the truth was? The truth was, with my weak bear eyesight, all I could see was a blur. I thought they were humans.

I wasn't brave. I was just blind.

81 CHAPTER 21

"Rachel!" Cassie yelled a warning.

"Too late to retreat." Jake said. "GO!"

I figured out the eight blurry figures were Hork-Bajir when I was about three feet away from slamming into the first one. By then it was too late to stop.

"Kill the gaffnur Andalites!" a Hork-Bajir cried in the weird mix of languages that they use.

"Kill fraghent Andalite halaf kill all!"

Suddenly, I realized I was cut. A searing pain radiated from my shoulder. I swung my paw and hit the Hork-Bajir in the head. He fell, but as he fell he slashed with his tyrannosaurus feet, and ripped a second cut in me.

"Aaarrrgghhh!"

From that point on, it was a nightmare of terrible images that seemed to float in and out of my hazy vision.

I saw Cassie, with her bone-breaking jaws sunk into the throat of a Hork-Bajir.

I saw Ax, his tail like a deadly bullwhip, lashing, cutting, lashing again, till one of the Hork-Bajir stood screaming, holding his own severed arm.

I saw Jake and a Hork-Bajir locked in a deadly embrace as they rolled and slashed at each other with superhuman speed.

I saw Marco fighting with one arm as he held his own sliced stomach together with the other hand.

And everywhere, snarling, growling, raging, roaring noise.

"Look out! Rachel, behind you!"

"Die, gaferach, die!"

"RRRROOOWWRRR!"

"Help! He's on me!"

"Aaaahhhhhh!"

I couldn't tell who was winning. I couldn't tell who was hurt. It all became one long cry, one long scream of rage. Hork-Bajir and Animorph.

Alien and animal.

We were flesh-and-blood creatures thrown into a meat grinder. Thirteen deadly animals locked in a combat to the death.