Текст книги "Animorphs - 11 - The Forgotten"

Автор книги: Katherine Alice Applegate

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"Urn . . . Base Control, I ... urn ... Bogie is of an unknown type. Say again, unknown type."

"Definitely unknown," the other pilot said. "Way unknown."

"We're coming around for another pass."

I looked at Ax. "We really don't want to get shot down by a couple of F-sixteens."

"No, Prince Jake. That would be embarrassing. I believe I now know how to increase-"

FAH-WHOOOOOOOM!

Suddenly, we were outta there. Out of the clouds. Out of the atmosphere.

"Yes! This thing can move!" Marco exulted. "We need to buy this game."

We heard a fainter, crackling voice over the radio. "Did you see that? Did you see that thing move, Colonel? Did you see that? What the -"

Then we were out of range, still zooming straight up into black space. Below us I could see the curvature of the earth.

It looked just like one of those pictures the shuttle astronauts take from up in orbit.

"That's so beautiful," Cassie said. "Look at that! You can see daylight coming up over the Red Sea."

"Excuse me." Tobias said, "but I don't think the Red Sea is exactly on the way to Washington, DC."

"Yeah, I guess not," I said. Although it was such a wonderful sight that I almost didn't want to worry about where we were going. "Ax, maybe we'd better slow down, get some idea of where Washington is and ..

"No! No!" Ax snapped.

I was shocked. Ax is always polite.

"No, Prince Jake." he said, a little more calmly. "We cannot slow down."

"What's the matter?" Cassie asked him.

Ax pointed at one of the view screens before him. On the screen I saw stars. Then the moon came into view, a vast gray– and-white lightbulb. And silhouetted against the glowing moon was a shape. It was like some medieval battle-ax. The rear half was a two-headed blade. From the middle, like an ax handle, extended a long shaft. At the end of the shaft was a triangular head, very much like an arrow's point. It was black on black. And even if you had never seen it before and had no idea what it was, you'd know right away it was death.

I had seen it. I knew what it was.

"The Blade ship," I whispered.

The Blade ship of Visser Three.

8:54 P.m.

Visser Three, leader of the Yeerk invasion of Earth. Visser Three, the only Yeerk in all of history to take control of an Andalite body. Visser Three, the only Yeerk with the power to morph.

"Can we outrun him?" I asked Ax.

"No."

"Can we outfight him?" I asked. My voice was a whisper. My mouth was too dry to work right.

Ax turned his stalk eyes to look at me. "No, Prince Jake. We might get in a lucky shot. But the Blade ship is very powerful. This is the Blade ship that destroyed our great Dome ship."

"Here he comes!" Rachel yelled in warning.

A red glow illuminated the Blade ship as the Visser fired his engines and came for us.

"We can try and run. Or we can take a chance on a lucky shot."

Ax said.

He was looking at me. They were all looking at me. I grabbed the joystick. My hand was trembling.

"I feel lucky," I said. It was an absolute lie, of course. I didn't even feel slightly lucky. But it sounded good.

I caught Marco giving me a sardonic smile. He knew I was faking it.

I felt Cassie's hand touch my shoulder for encouragement.

"Hold on. You may be unsteady on your human legs." Ax warned.

He threw the Bug fighter into a quick, tight turn. Ax was right. I almost fell over before the Bug fighter's systems compensated for inertia.

Then Ax really lit up the engines and we leaped forward, straight for the Blade ship.

"Ready to fire!" Ax said.

It wasn't a question. "Not yet. Not yet. Not yet. Not yet.

Wait until . . . NOW!"

I swept the red target circle toward the black-diamond head of the Blade ship. I squeezed the trigger. And I kept squeezing.

Brilliant Dracon beams stabbed toward the Blade ship.

But at the same instant, the Visser fired!

Dracon beam hit Dracon beam.

ZZZZZOOOOOWWWW!

An explosion of light so intense I could actually see Through my own hand. I could see Cassie's teeth inside her head!

WHAAAMMMPPPH!

I was thrown against the ceiling.

I fell to the floor and rolled, out of control.

Rachel landed on top of me, knocking the wind out of me.

The Bug fighter was spinning. My eyes were filled with balls of light, like suns inside my own head.

Spinning . . . spinning . . . spinning . . .

And with each turn I was thrown hard. Into Ax. Into Marco.

Tobias batted his wings wildly, trying to get some control. It was like we had all been tossed into a washer on spin cycle.

Then, with a sickening lurch, the Bug fighter came upright.

There was a floor again. And a ceiling.

And through the window, there was a planet.

Earth.

Big, blue, and getting closer very, very fast.

"We're going down!" Rachel yelled. "Ax! Ax! We're going down!"

Ax scrambled to his hooves and made his way back to the controls. "Too fast!" he said. "We're going down too fast!"

"Look!" Tobias cried. "0ver there. To the left. We're not alone."

Tumbling down alongside us, just a mile away, was the Blade ship. It was twisting and twirling and falling, just like us.

"Wait . . ." Cassie said, sounding more confused than terrified. "It's daylight in the western hemisphere."

"Do I care?!" Marco yelled. "We're going down!"

"It was dawn in the Middle East," Cassie insisted. "Now it's daylight in the western hemisphere."

Suddenly, friction flames began glowing from the nose of the Bug fighter. We were going back into the atmosphere.

"Ax, can you pull us out of this?" I demanded.

"I am slowing our descent." he said. "We are slowing down. B.

. .

but I don't think it will be enough."

"Great," Marco moaned.

"At least the Blade ship will go down with us," Rachel said.

"Does that make you feel better, Xena?" Marco grated.

Rachel actually smiled. It was a sad, brief smile. "Not much better," she admitted.

"Ten seconds to impact!" Ax said. "Ten . . . nine . . . eight.

. ."

FLASH!

I was no longer in the Bug fighter.

I was square dancing.

I was giving Rachel a resentful look as I bowed to her in time with the music. What the ...

FLASH!

"Four. . . three . . . hold on!"

I saw green. Green on green, rushing up at me.

And then we hit.

And for a while, I didn't see anything at all. Time Unknown.

00! HOO! HOO! HOO!

HOOHOHOHO-HOHO! HAH! HAH!

KEEYAAAH! KEEYAAAH! KEEYAAAH!

I woke up.

I woke up very suddenly.

KEEYAAAH! KEEYAAAH! KEEYAAAH! YAHA-HAHAHAH!

My head hurt, and the screaming noises didn't help. My back hurt, too. I was lying on the ground. On mildewed, rot ting leaves. Trees towered over me. Insanely tall trees. Ferns dipped down to Tickle my face. There was a root or something under my back, which explained the back pain.

But I was alive.

KeRAW! KeRAW! KeRAW!

VrrEEET! VrrEEEET! VrrEEEET!

I sat up quickly. But that sent a spear of pain through my head.

"Oh, man," I groaned.

Then I saw the bug. The bug on my lap. The big, giant, MONSTER bug. I guess it was some kind of beetle. It had yellow and black stripes and something that looked almost like curved antlers. I swear it was six inches long. Or at least three inches. It would have been beautiful, if it hadn't been on me.

"AAAAAHHH!" I yelled and brushed the beetle away.

Then, I felt the itchy, crawling feeling on my leg. Ants!

There were a dozen ants climbing up my right shin.

I have been an ant. So you'd think maybe I have some sympathy for them. Wrong. I slapped at my leg till I was sure they were gone.

I climbed to my feet. I felt woozy and confused. Where was I?

Where were the others?

I looked around. Green. Green everywhere. I mean, every where.

"The visions," I said to no one.

I was in a jungle. I knew that for sure. I'd never been in a jungle before, but there was no doubt in my mind. Maybe it was the monkeys and birds screeching at an insane volume all around me in the trees that gave it away. Maybe it was the creepers and vines. Maybe it was a flash of an amazing red– and-blue bird flitting through the branches. Maybe it was the fact that beetles really shouldn't be as big as that beetle had been. It was jungle, all right. Just like it had been in the weird flashes I'd been experiencing since that afternoon while square dancing.

"That's what did it," I muttered. "It was the square dancing that drove me crazy." I decided to yell for the others. "Hey!

Hey! Cassie! Marco!"

It was like my voice had no power. The sound was just swallowed by the trees and ferns and bushes.

"Okay, get a grip, Jake. Try to remember. You were coming down in the Bug fighter. Obviously you crashed. Duh. So look for the Bug fighter. It can't be far away."

I glanced around me at the solid wall of green in very direction. The air was steaming with humidity. And the mells of overly sweet flowers and tropical rot made me feel like I was walking past some department store perfume counter. Then I spotted a tree where the top half had been snapped off. I started walking, trying to get a better angle on the broken tree. I saw a second tree, splintered. I began to notice what looked like a tunnel plowed through the dense foliage. A tunnel plowed through the trees and foliage should lead to the Bug fighter.

"Or the Blade ship," I reminded myself.

HOO! HOO! HOO! HOOHOOHOOHOO! HAH! HAH! HAH!

The jungle was quieting down a little, but there was still some fairly crazy screeching from up in the tall trees. The jungle animals sounded annoyed.

Probably they didn't appreciate someone crashing a Bug fighter into their home. And they didn't like my looks, either. The jungle floor was surprisingly clear. Down at foot level there wasn't much growing, just dead leaves. But at face level there were vines and bushes and ferns, all slapping me in the face as I pressed on.

Suddenly I came to a clearing. A hole in the canopy where a tree had fallen. Bright sunlight shone down through the gap.

And it was as if every species of plant life you could imagine was crowding into that sunny spot. I found myself facing an incredible wall of vegetation: a dozen types of brilliant flowers, mosses so green they didn't seem real, small vines wrapped around bigger vines wrapped around tree trunks. It was the greenest place on Earth. There were even plants growing out of the smooth trunks of tall trees. I trudged on, back into the shadows of the forest, and when I looked up, I could no longer see the tunnel through the foliage.

That's when I started to get really scared. I was in a jungle.

And jungle isn't like forest, where you can usually see for hundreds of feet in any direction. Jungle presses in close around. It's like being buried in green.

Ger-Ak! Ger-Ak! AKAKAKAK!

"Marco! Cassie! Rachel!" I yelled, feeling the edge of panic.

"How about Tobias?" a voice said in my head.

I looked up and saw nothing. Then I noticed him swooping down toward me from the high branches of a tree.

"Tobias!" I yelled. I waved. Of course, he'd already seen me, obviously. But I was massively relieved. So I waved again. The red-tailed hawk body seemed almost bland, boring in the context of this jungle. He landed on a rotting, moss-encrusted log.

"Tobias! The others?"

"Everyone is alive." he said."It took a while to find everyone, though.I think the Bug fighter must have spun around a few times tearing through the trees. Cassie ended up practically on top of this snake. This extremely large snake."

"Where are we?"

"I don't know." Tobias said. "But I'm pretty sure this ain't home. Come on, follow me. It's not far."

I followed Tobias, pushing and shoving and fighting my way through forest that seemed determined to stop me. I was dripping with sweat and gasping in the thick air.

Then, a clearing. Not a natural clearing, but one created by the crashed Bug fighter.

"Jake!" Cassie yelled and ran over to give me a hug. She had a nasty cut on one hand, which she'd bandaged with strips torn from her T-shirt.

"You're alive," Marco observed. "For now," he added darkly.

"I told you he'd be okay," Rachel said.

The Bug fighter was upright, but one whole side looked as if it had been peeled back. You could see right to the inside.

The left engine pod was cranked out at a sharp angle.

Ax was inside the fighter. He lowered his head to peer at me through the hole in the fighter's side.

"Prince Jake. I'm glad you're all right."

"I'm glad I'm all right, too," I said. "Now . . . where are we?"

"Where is easy," Cassie said. "Rain forest. Not Africa, because I've seen monkeys with prehensile tails. You know, tails they can swing by. Most likely, we're in Central or South America. Either the Costa Rican rain forest, or the Amazon rain forest."

"I'm betting Amazon," Marco said brightly. "I'm also taking bets on whether we live long enough for me to collect on bets."

I laughed. "You're always such an optimist, Marco."

I turned back to Cassie. "Amazon rain forest, huh?"

"Like I said, the question of where we are is fairly easy."

"Cassie, why do I have the feeling there's something you're not telling me?" I asked her.

"Remember when we were in orbit? Remember how it was night in North America, but the sun was just coming up over the Red Sea?"

I shrugged. "I guess so."

"Well, after we fired at the Blade ship, as we were going down it was daylight here. Over South America."

It took me a few seconds to realize what she was talking about.

Ax came trotting out of the Bug fighter. He wiped his hands on a rag. " Thanks to Cassie's observation, it seems pretty clear that when we and the Blade ship fired simultaneously and the Dracon beams intersected, we created what we call a Sario Rip."

"A what? A Sario Rip? What's that?"

"We blew a small hole in space-time. And were drawn in through that hole."

"English, please," I warned. "Plain English, please."

"We were blown through time, Jake," Cassie said. "We aren't Where we want to be. And we aren't when we want to be."

I stared at her. "Did we go forward or back? Are we in the past or the future?"

"Yes." Ax said."It's definitely one of those two choices."

1:22 p.m.

Again.

So let me just summarize here. We are probably in the Amazon rain forest. And we are either in our own past, or in our own

future. We have no way to fly this Bug fighter out of here. We have no way of knowing if there's a city or town or even a road near here." I looked around at my friends. "Anyone have anything to add?"

"I know that it is one twenty-two p.m.." Ax said. "I just don't know what day or year it is."

Andalites have the ability to keep track of time naturally.

Like some kind of internal clock. It's useful. Of course, it's more useful if you know what century you're in.

Cassie held up her hand, like she was in school. "The rain forest is full of poisonous snakes, poisonous insects, poisonous plants, and poisonous frogs."

"Excuse me?" Marco said. "Poisonous frogs? Did you say poisonous frogs?"

"Plus, there is at least one large predator, the jaguar."

"Love their cars," Marco said.

"Right now we have no food and no water,"

Rachel added helpfully. "Also, no weapons."

"Why do we need weapons?" Tobias asked. "Morph into birds and we'll just fly out of here."

"None of us can stay in morph for more than two hours," Cassie pointed out. "Realistically, we can't fly more than twenty or thirty miles an hour at best. That's maybe sixty miles per morph. And we could be a thousand miles from nowhere."

"Besides," Marco said glumly. "What are we supposed to do?

Find a town, make a collect call to our families and tell them we're in South America? "Hey, Dad, guess what? I'm in Brazil.

Or maybe Costa Rica. Could you come pick me up?"'"

"If there even is a town," Rachel said. "If there even are phones. If our parents have been born yet, or are still alive.

You're kind of missing something we may be in the year two thousand b.c. Or... we might be in the year ten thousand a.d."

"Ax, what's the deal with this Sario Rip?" I asked the Andalite. "I mean, is there some way to undo it?"

Ax didn't answer. Instead, I noticed his stalk eyes turning slowly to his right. "We are not alone." Ax said.

I shot a glance in the direction Ax was looking. Something moved! I had a fleeting impression of a shoulder, arm, and head.

"Humanoid." Ax said. "I didn't see it very well. But it was watching us."

"Swell," I said. "Tobias?"

"I'm on it." he said, opening his wings and flapping away through the trees. "As for the Sario Rip, I... all I know is what it is. It's a rip in space-time."

"Yeah, you told us that," Marco said.

"I think . . ." Ax hung his head. "Prince Jake, we studied the Sario Rip effect in school. But there was a game later that day. And I was thinking more about the game than class. Also, there was this female who distracted me."

Marco laughed. "Ax, are you telling us you were too busy flirting with some girl to pay attention to the lesson?"

Ax didn't answer. He just said, "I don't exactly know whether you can reverse a Sario Rip. I remember some things, but not everything."

"I'm thirsty," Rachel said. "Whatever else we're going to do, we have to find water. And food. Ax, can we fix the Bug fighter?"

"We can fly with just one engine." Ax said. "The ripped skin of the craft is irrelevant as long as we stay in the atmosphere and fly slow. But the effects of the Sario Rip have wiped out the ship's software. It's been erased."

"Can you rewrite the software?" Rachel asked.

"Yes. But it would take me twenty years, atleast."

"Better and better," I said. "Hey. Wait. What happened to the Blade ship?"

Ax looked blank.

"I saw it going down along with us," Cassie said. "But I didn't see it crash."

"So maybe, in addition to everything else, we have Visser Three and a shipload of Hork-Bajir warriors to worry about," I said. "Someone please give me some good news."

"Well, it's still daylight," Marco said, putting on a big phony grin. "When night falls, then we'll be "Jake! Duck!" Tobiasyelled.

For once in my life, I didn't stop to think about it. I ducked. And even as I ducked, I saw the face. I saw the arm. I saw the spear.

It was coming straight at me.

Right for my face.

The vision! It was the hallucination!

I ducked. The spear went over my head and flew on harmlessly into the bush.

Tobias flapped wildly into the air.

"I shouldn't have been resting." he berated himself. "I should have been in the air."

I was too weirded out to worry about Tobias.

"I knew that was going to happen," I said. "That spear. The kid who threw it. I knew!"

Cassie looked strangely at me. "Jake, what are you -"

"There" Tobias interrupted. "They almost look like they might be kids. They're hauling butt out of here. Which is what we better think about doing, too."

"Why?" Rachel demanded indignantly. "We can handle some kids with spears."

"Forget the kids. I see a group of twenty . . . maybe thirty Hork-Bajir. They're tearing up the forest and coming this way!"

"We can't leave the Bug fighter!" Rachel protested. "How else are we going to get out of here?"

"We can't stand and fight twenty Hork-Bajir warriors, either,"

I said. "We have to pull back."

I glanced over and saw Cassie. She had retrieved the spear from the bushes. It was a long, thin stick. There was no spearhead on it. It was just a sharp stick with the sharp end blackened.

"That doesn't look too deadly," I said.

Cassie shook her head. "No. You probably couldn't kill much with this stick. Unless the tip was dipped in poison. And we are in the home office of natural poisons."

"The local people ... I guess they wouldn't waste their time using a weapon that didn't work, would they?" I said.

"No," Cassie said flatly. "The chances are pretty good that this spear is poison-tipped. There are poisonous frogs and plants down here that are used for arrow and spear poison.

Very deadly. Very, very deadly. The Hork-Bajir are definitely not our only problem."

"Jake, you guys need to move." Tobias warned. He was overhead again. I couldn't see him, but I knew he was up above the jungle canopy. "I can't see well enough through all this foliage. But I think a group of Hork-Bajir is getting close to you."

Decision time. Stay and fight? We'd lose. Run away? We'd be giving up the Bug fighter, our only way home.

"Ax? Is there something . . .anything. . .you can take out of the Bug fighter that would make it impossible for the Yeerks to fly it?"

Ax stared at me with his main eyes, even as his stalk eyes swept the forest around us. "Yes. Yes, I can think of something."

"Then get it," I said.

"Jake! There's no time."

Tobias called down. He must have been close enough to hear me.

But the foliage was so dense I had no clear idea where he was.

Ax hesitated, not sure what to do.

The others all looked at me.

"Do it, Ax," I said. He raced for the Bug fighter. "Everyone else, get out of here."

"I'm staying with you," Rachel protested.

"I'm not staying. Minimum risk," I snapped. "We only need Ax to handle this. No point risking anyone else."

I plunged into the green. I grabbed Rachel's arm and pulled her along. Cassie and Marco followed me.

"Jake." Tobias called down. "lf Ax isn't out of there in under two minutes, he's not going to get out of there."

I didn't answer.

It's the worst thing about being a so-called leader – the times when you take a risk with someone else's life. If Ax ended up dead, it was going to be very hard to explain to my friends.

And to myself.

1:48 P.m.

I can't begin to explain what the rain forest is like. To explain it, you'd have to be a poet and a scientist and a horror writer.

All I can say is how it makes you feel. You feel small. Tiny.

Alone. Hopelessly weak. Afraid.

You feel heat and suffocating humidity. It's like there's not enough air. Every breath is like sucking air through a straw.

You're breathing steam and perfume and the stink of dying, rotting things.

The jungle is all around you. It presses against you on all sides. Wet leaves in your face; creepers that seem to reach up to trip you; sharp-edged stalks that cut you.

And then there are the twin horrors: bugs and thirst.

Mosquitoes, gnats, big flies, and other flying insects I didn't even have names for followed us in swirling clouds.

They'd descend and attack, then disappear for no reason, only to attack again later. If you stopped, even for a few seconds, you could find your foot covered with ants or centipedes or beetles or bugs that defied description.

And it didn't help that we were shoeless.

The heat sucked every ounce of moisture out of us. It was as bad as any desert. You'd think with all the greenery there would be water everywhere. But no. The actual ground under our feet was dry. All the water is captured in the plants.

All the while, as we fought our way through the thickets of vines and ferns and bushes and gnats and flies and mosquitoes, we were followed by a serenade of cackles, groans, screams, yelps, insane animal giggles, clicking, scratching, and the occasional coughing roar as each new species comments on the idiocy of a bunch of suburban kids wandering around the rain forest. For all we knew, they were taking bets on how long the dumb humans would survive.

We had pushed two hundred yards deeper into the rain forest from the Bug fighter when we heard an uproar behind us.

"Andalite!" a Hork-Bajir voice bellowed. "Andalite!"

"They're after him!" Tobias called down from above. "Ax has six Hork-Bajir on his tail! You happy now, Jake? Ax-man! Look out! Behind you!"

I bit my lip till I tasted my own blood.

"We have to morph and go back for him," Rachel said. Her eyes were blazing. I could have said no. I had reasons to say no.

We were in an unknown place, facing lousy odds. Besides, of us all, Ax was the fastest and best able to escape. But Rachel would have just gone anyway.

"Just two of us go," I snapped. "Me and you, Rachel. Marco and Cassie, stay back."

"Why are we staying back?" Marco asked, outraged.

"Because we need backup, Marco," I said tersely. I don't know if he understood this or not. Rachel did. She started to morph. I was morph ing into my tiger morph as fast as I could.

Rachel was already well into her grizzly bear morph – massive shoulders and shaggy brown fur and long, curved claws.

TSEEEWWW! TSEEEWWW!

The sound of Dracon beams reached us. The jungle animals up in the trees exploded in a fury of commentary.

Ke-Rrrraaaaawwww!

HOO! HOOHOOHOOHOO!

I could hear something large crashing around the brush, but I couldn't see anything. In the rain forest you're lucky if you can see five feet in any direction.

"I'm ready." Rachel said.

"Wait for me." I told her.

"Catch up when you can." Rachel snapped. She lumbered away, back toward the Bug fighter, a huge, rolling mass of heavy fur and muscle. I cursed her silently.

My body was already covered with orange-and-black-striped fur.

I was on all fours. Long, yellow fangs grew in my mouth. Long, wicked claws grew where my fingernails had been.

I felt the tiger's mind.

I saw through the tiger's eyes.

I felt the surge of power, the rush of the tiger's might. He was at home in a tropical forest. This was the kind of place he belonged. The tiger was lord of his own native turf.

But of course in the tiger's native jungles, there aren't Hork-Bajir. And there's no Visser Three.

I leaped forward, following the path Rachel had plowed through the bushes. I caught up to her easily. I belonged in the jungle. The grizzly did not. Rachel was breathing hard.

"I can't see... can't find them . . . keep hearing noises, but they keep moving."

I listened with my tiger's ears. I receded just a bit within the tiger mind and let the animal in stincts guide me. The tiger knew how to follow sounds in the rain forest.

"Come on, Rachel." I said. I plunged forward, toward where I heard the loudest sounds crashing through the forest. But I soon realized Rachel couldn't keep up.

I was really ticked off right then. At Rachel, for being so impulsive. At Tobias for acting like I wanted to put Ax in danger. At the Yeerks for causing all this. At the jungle itself. And worst of all, at me.

I'd made mistakes. Too many mistakes. Now I had to choose.

Stay with Rachel, or rush ahead and try to find Ax.

Help came from the sky. "Left about fifty feet, Jake." Tobias called down to me.

I was mad at Tobias. But not so mad I would ignore him. I charged left, slinking swiftly through the brush.

"Jake! Look out! There's one right-"

"Haarrgghh!" the Hork-Bajir yelled trium phantly. He swung a bladed arm at me and sliced through the ferns and bushes like a lawn mower going through grass.

His elbow disblade missed me by inches. I felt the breeze from it. I knew what to do next. I fired the coiled muscles in my hind legs and I flew. In midair I extended my paws, each as wide as a frying pan. Out came my claws.

And I roared. HRRROOOOOWWWWRRRR!

I swear, that sound actually silenced the monkeys and birds.

I hit the Hork-Bajir. He went down, swinging fast, but too slow. Hork-Bajir are fast. But when it comes to close-in work, slashing and parrying and applying the teeth, the tiger is faster and nastier.

He slashed. I felt pain sear my right shoulder.

I slashed and heard the Hork-Bajir cry out.

His snake-head jerked fast, aiming his forehead blades for my face.

I ducked and dove in, sinking my teeth into his neck.

From somewhere I heard the sound of a bear's pained roar. I heard crashing, thudding sounds.

I pulled back, leaving the deadly, bladed, seven-foot-tall Hork-Bajir lying on the jungle floor, moaning in pain.

I actually felt a moment of pity. The Hork-Bajir race has been enslaved by the Yeerks. This Hork-Bajir warrior didn't ask to be here, bleeding from a dozen wounds in an alien jungle a billion miles from his home.

But then, I didn't ask to be here, either.

I listened for sounds of Ax. Nothing.

I listened for Hork-Bajir. Nothing.

I listened for Rachel. Nothing.

It was like they'd all just disappeared in the green. Green, everywhere I looked.

Then . . .

A sharp pain in my left paw. I looked at the Hork-Bajir, but no, he hadn't moved.

I realized I was falling over.

Simply falling over.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the snake slithering off.

It was bright yellow.

"Demorph!" I told myself. "Demorph!"

But my head was swimming. And the green was closing in around me. Burying me in green.

A bird landed beside me. I could see that.

"Jake! Morph back, man! Morph back!"

I was trying. I was trying to remember what it was I was supposed to become. Then . . .

FLASH!

I was walking home from school. Me and Marco.

We were talking, wondering what Tobias wanted. Tobias's thought-speak voice was in our heads saying FLASH!

Tobias's voice saying, "That's it, Jake. Come on, man. Keep at it."

I could see again! I could see my hands stretched out in front of me on the ground. They were half-human, half-tiger. Could I morph away from poison? Would morphing get it out of my system? Should have asked Ax, I berated myself.

But I was already learning the answer. As I became more human, I felt the poison weaken.

"Come on, Jake, come on." Tobias said. "There's no time!"

"What. . . what is it? More Hork-Bajir?" I asked him when I had a mouth again.

"No. It's Rachel."

I felt my heart miss several beats. I climbed up, rickety from the quick change. I felt like throwing up. Maybe it was the poison. Maybe it was just too much happening at once. "Where is she?" I asked.

"Straight behind you. Maybe a hundred feet. Hurry! I'll go up and see what's happening."

He flapped away, leaving me alone and barefoot and vulnerable in the rain forest. I found Rachel by following the damage she had done: three Hork-Bajir lying unconscious or worse. I didn't have time to worry about them.

Because that's when I saw Rachel. She was out cold, still in grizzly morph. She'd been cut up badly by Hork-Bajir blades.

She was lying there on her side, bleeding. But that's not what made me want to scream.

Her fur was alive.

Alive with a million ants that were already ripping away a million tiny bites from her wounded flesh.

2:30 P.m.

Rachel!" I yelled. "Wake up!"

"Jake! Stop shouting." Tobias warned from up above me. "Hork– Bajir could still be all around here! I can't see through all this undergrowth caret I threw myself down next to Rachel and started swatting at the ants. But instead of getting rid of them, the ants just swarmed across my hands. There had to be ten thousand ants. Rachel had fallen almost on top of their mound. I could see ants carrying away tiny pieces of bloody bear flesh.