Marco snickered. “This fellow’s been brought straight over from the Taxxon home world where he made quite a name for himself. He ate his entire hive. Mother? Uh-huh. Father? Yep. Siblings? Children? Cousins? Oh, yeah. We tried infesting him, but it became obvious that he’s more effective at what he does when his natural inclinations are left unchecked.”
The Taxxon pulled violently, choking on his leash, oblivious to everything but the search for flesh. Hundreds of legs scrambled. The Orff could barely hold him back.
Cassie squirmed, struggling to break free. I thought she would pull her arms out of their sockets. I couldn’t watch.
“Help us infiltrate the EF,” Marco propositioned smoothly, “and her life will be spared. Tell me all you know and …”
“Tell him nothing!” Cassie snarled. “I’d sooner die a thousand Taxxon-deaths than aid the Empire.”
She meant it. No childish uncertainty lingered in her voice. No naive hopes. She was pure warrior, calculating as any visser.
But when I looked at her face, even though it was ten years older than in my memory, I saw only the Cassie I once knew, the Cassie I once cared for.
She saw my mind working.
“No, Jake!” she yelled.
“Decide now or it’s over for the girl. You won’t have a second chance.”
I looked from Cassie to Marco, and didn’t even hesitate.
“I’ll tell you whatever you want.”
“No!” Cassie shrieked, bucking and kicking. Marco signaled. An Orff clamped see-through fingers over Cassie’s mouth.
“This makes a new record for breaking a terrorist.” Marco smiled and fell into a chair. “It’s things like this that get you noticed by the Council. They knew what they were doing when they made me Visser Three.”
Visser Three?
“Cassie said you were Visser Two.”
“I am.”
“But you just said … you said three, not two.”
Marco’s grin broadened.
That was a slip. Proof that this couldn’t be real!
“It’s all just a dream, isn’t it?” I said excitedly.
Marco laughed. “Dream? Reality? Can you tell the difference? Are you so sure there even is a difference? Pain is pain. Fear is fear. If I order this Taxxon to eat you now you’ll feel agony beyond imagining. Call it a dream if you want, but it’ll be real enough.”
I looked at Cassie, still screaming muffled syllables through the Orff’s fingers.
I looked at the Taxxon. He saw me and jerked his head. Drool flew from his mouth. Struck my hand.
“You’ll do just as I say. Exactly as I say, or this Taxxon scarfs Cassie down in a New York minute. Get it?”
I got it.
“Start talking.”
“Okay,” I said nervously. “I’m waiting for further contact from the EF. They’re planning another attack. Worse than the one today,” I added, though I would not mention the moon-ray plan. “I don’t have details yet. I get them from my next contact. I’ll cooperate. I’ll do whatever you want. Just don’t hurt her.”
“Her?” Marco said, rising from his chair, moving toward Cassie. “Why would we have to harm her?” His voice was calm, confident. “She’ll give us the names of the other EF terrorists. She’ll give us their locations. She’ll help us catch them, help us reinfest them. Relax, Jake. I’m sure …”
Cassie head-butted the Orff. His fingers fell away from her mouth. She coughed, back deep in her throat, and —
Dead center. Marco’s right eye. She lodged the perfect loogie.
No one spoke.
Marco reached out and gripped her hair. Bent her head back. Pulled so hard she squinted. Then he let go of her, rubbed the spit out of his eye, and turned to me.
“Go back to work, Jake. Essak. Wait for the EF to contact you. Go with them. Do as they say. We’ll be watching.”
The room began to spin.
“No matter which way you turn, we’ll know. We’ll be there. Don’t try to deceive us.”
I grabbed the table for support. But the room just kept spinning. And spinning …
“We’ll be watching.” Marco’s voice was faint now. “Every step you take, Jake. Buddy …”
Awake. Somehow, back at my work console.
Controllers all over the office began quietly standing up, leaving their cubicles, systematically filing out of the big room toward the gravity-lift doors.
My computer was blank. No more rotating Chrysler Building model. Glowing numerals glared 6:36. The workday was over. My crew was already gone, which was lucky, because I would have had a lot of explaining to do.
Dreams within nightmares within hallucinations within visions. It was debilitating!
Play along. Get up and follow.
We’ll be watching …
Marco’s voice still vibrated in my ears.
I picked up the mug on my desk that had somehow appeared and took a swig of cold coffee. I bit into a half-eaten jelly donut. It moved down my esophagus like a wad of wet paper towel.
I stood up and followed the last Controller onto the gravity lift. It plummeted several floors and opened onto a long, yellow hallway. Pulsating triangles pointed the way to an enclosed bridge. A catwalk, running from skyscraper to skyscraper over dingy streets hundreds of feet below.
I heard music. A thumping bass filled the air. I quickened my step. Inviting smells. Food smells.
I followed the music and aromas to a huge carpeted room, like a banquet hall. Blue and red lights flashed and spun in the darkness. Long tables lined the walls and framed a dance floor. Orff lifted crystal mugs of green brew into the air, chanted something incomprehensible, downed the liquid, and slammed the mugs to the table. At the far end, a ring of Taxxons stuffed pot pie after pot pie into their mouths, cheered on by Hork-Bajir.
But much of the crowd was human. Evidently the Yeerks understood the human need for leisure time. And for junk food.
Tacos, hamburgers, chicken strips, cheese sticks, buffalo wings. Bowls of chips piled three feet high. No broccoli in sight. My mother would not be happy. I was in heaven. Nightmare or not, it was real enough that I felt hunger. Hunger so strong I felt I’d been adrift for a month in the raging Pacific with nothing to sustain me but rainwater.
I heaped a plate with tacos and pizza and edged toward the drink bar.
WHOOF!
A Hork-Bajir slammed me against the wall, knocking my plate to the floor.
I moved to strike. He blocked my arm.
“Don’t struggle,” he said quietly. “I’m a friend.”
I looked him over. Savage blades. Bandana strips tied like tourniquets on all limbs. Didn’t look like a friend to me. He reached for one of the cloth ties, pulled it down, and revealed a branding. A sort of poorly executed, self-inflicted tattoo. The letters “EF” etched in leathery skin.
“My contact?”
“No. A messenger,” he said. “Make like you’re going to the hovercraft dock, like you’re going home for the night. Then double back and duck in the side door to the kitchen.” His eyes trailed across the room to the door in question. My eyes followed.
He squeezed a hand against my neck to make it seem like he was an aggressor. Necessary for setting Marco’s men off track, I assumed. Then he fell back into the rowdy, pulsing mass on the dance floor.
I grabbed a taco off a table and crammed it into my mouth, then dance-walked over to the hovercraft dock. I strolled onto the platform, into the crazy hum. Hover ships crisscrossed the setting sun, swarming in apparent disorder like bees in a garden.
“Uptown?” a blue suit asked me. Her red hair glistened in the sun’s dimming rays.
“Yeah,” I said. She smiled. The hovercraft pulled in. She stepped on. I stepped in after her. We brushed shoulders, then I remembered.
“Wait! I’m, uh, still hungry.” I smiled apologetically. “One more taco should do the trick.” I slipped off the ship. Its doors closed. Blue suit was whisked into the sky.
&nbs
p; Back into the canteen, slinking low, lost in the throbbing mass of dancers. Moving along the wall, past a row of diners. To the swinging door.
Whoosh!
I was inside a dimly lit kitchen. Empty, though the still-wet floor reeked of bleach.
The door clapped shut, muting the after-work revelry of Yeerk happy hour. I moved through the pantry. No one. Into the main kitchen. Prep counters. Ranges. Refrigerators.
I froze. Labored breathing.
A kind of struggle for air through lungs that were seriously not well. I swung around and there, next to the island chopping block, was a wheelchair.
In the wheelchair, a woman. I’m not sure how I knew it was a woman. The face and body were grossly disfigured by injuries. She had no legs. Only one arm. A horrifying scar shut one eye.
The other eye looked up at me. It gleamed a brilliant blue.
I think I knew right then because the hair on the back of my neck stood on end.
“Aahhh Nihhh Morfff,” came a sound from lips that barely moved. A scraping voice, harsh as railroad brakes, weak as a whisper. Yet strangely animated.
Animorph. The password!
Relief washed over me. A sudden wave. I was in the presence of a friend. It was about time! This pitiable woman … just a clever disguise.
“You don’t even rec …” Thick wheezing cut off her words. She started up again. “You don’t recognize me.”
The arduous puffs of speech … this was no disguise.
“Cause I’m not kicking … Yeerk butt, you don’t … even recognize … your own cousin?”
A sprig of dulled golden hair tucked behind a battered ear.
Reckless vitality still shining in her one eye.
“Cassie said you were dead!” I blurted.
She jammed her hand on the wheelchair joystick and lurched forward, stopping aggressively an inch from my boot.
“Close,” she whispered. “But not quite.”
Rachel!
Not dead. Alive.
I couldn’t find words. There were plenty racing around in my head, but none made it out. I just dropped to my knees and looked into her face. She had been so badly hurt. I wanted to ask how — why didn’t she morph to repair the damage? But I was afraid of the answer.
I knew it was my doing. I knew I’d finally wasted Rachel’s life.
“We don’t do pity,” she snapped, answering the expression on my face. “This is business. The serious stuff.”
I nodded.
Why had Cassie lied to me?
“Eight blocks away is … the New York Public Library. A big abandoned building you … can’t miss. Get there. Make the trip … from here to there the crookedest … line you can. We want them off … the scent.”
I nodded again. It was hard for me to listen to her wheezing, but it didn’t seem to bother her much at all.
“Go in … the side entrance,” she continued. “Up two flights. Down … the hall and into the stacks. And wait.”
“For what?”
“We don’t do questions.”
Suddenly —
Whoosh!
An Orff flung open the swing door. Shone his amber eye-light on pots, pans, me, stacked dishes. Back to me.
“Explain your position, Orange Suit.”
Rachel’s chair was low enough to the ground that he couldn’t see her behind the island chopping block, but I was standing.
“I wanted more salsa. The tacos are bland,” I said.
He thought a moment. I stared him down.
But when he stepped through the door my heart pounded. Maybe he was a figment of my subconscious, but pain was pain. Fear was fear. Marco had a point.
“Get the sauce,” he bellowed, “and bring it to my table. You’re right, the tacos stink.”
He turned and walked out.
“They’ll trail you,” Rachel said. “At least now you know … who you need to lose.”
“But do I meet someone? I want to do this right. Who do I look for? How will I know them?”
“You’ll know.” An undercurrent of the old enthusiasm carried her voice, even through the labored speech. “Believe me, you’ll know.”
I moved to leave. Her hand grabbed my suit.
“Don’t let us down, Jake. It’s not just … our freedom in the balance … this time. It’s … life itself. There are many more … like me. Injured or weak or different. So let’s do it … and do it right.”
She released me. I wish I could say it didn’t bother me to look at the mess Rachel had become, but it did. And in my mind, her wounds chronicled my failures as a leader. It was more than I could bear.
Without a backward glance, I swung through the door and back into the rowdy canteen. I couldn’t tell exactly who was watching, but I felt the threat. I felt the stare of Marco’s men.
A gravity lift dropped me at street level. Me and a group of blue suits looking to start a brawl with a Taxxon gang. I left them on the corner and started to move.
Down an alley. Back onto a main street. Another alley …
I needed to morph. I focused on the image of a peregrine falcon. I waited for my bones to start shrinking, the ground to start racing up at me.
Nothing happened. The changes didn’t come!
I heard footsteps behind me. I looked back, but saw no one. Could Marco’s men have some antimorphing technology?
I broke into a jog, dodging in and out of blown-out storefronts, doubling back on my tracks.
All the while I felt eyes on me. I saw no one. Just felt eyes.
And heard footfalls. When I slowed, they slowed. When I sped up, they followed.
I kept trying to morph, but the changes wouldn’t come. Maybe it was me. Maybe my mind was too fragmented to focus.
In the middle of Forty-second Street, in the center of the path the Yeerks had cut through debris from the explosion, I stopped suddenly, waited two seconds, and spun around.
My boot struck the pavement. It was the sound of triumph. Because I’d captured exactly what I wanted.
I’d seen the Orff before they’d dimmed their eyes.
There was one on a first-floor balcony a half-block away, purple. And there was a group of three, crouched next to a junked hovercraft, their eyes red.
One of them was not even twelve feet away. A glowing orange follow spot. Invisible now, in the night, but that didn’t matter. I’d charted it on my mental map.
Five total. I would lose these guys. I’d lose them without morphing. For Rachel.
Ready, set …
Gone! I pumped my legs. Worked them like springs, jumping over the debris-laden street and across the pavement. A powerful body in top condition. A host any Yeerk would give five ranks to get.
I couldn’t see the Orff, but I could hear them. A fluid swishing followed by a thump, as each leg struck the ground. Swish-thump. Swish-thump. Swish-thump. Blending together so fast it was one sound. One rhythm. The Orff’s three legs. Like a well-oiled engine.
I turned into another alley. Swish-thump. Only one Orff was near. But how close? I twisted and caught a glimpse. It was Orange-eye. Sticking to me. He wouldn’t let me pull away.
I’d have to take this chase inside.
I dove through the storefront, its sheet glass already blown out. I landed on a bed of sports equipment. Hockey skates jabbed my ribs. Sneakers broke my fall.
I raced to the back of the store. Boxes of shoes and skates and hockey pads piled high, overturned, spilled randomly across the floor. I tripped through the obstacle course, heading for the backstairs when …
Whoosh!
The floor in front of me was opening up! I couldn’t stop. Moving too fast …
A black hole!
“Ahh!”
I grabbed for a shoe rack. It tumbled.
I was falling!
Like Alice in Wonderland, I was shooting through blackness. Or down a water park slide. Only beneath me wasn’t a stream of H2O, but a current of air so strong it kept me buoyant.
A
ir flew past so fast I could hardly breathe. I scratched the sides for a handhold, but they were smooth.
A twisting turn! Then flatness. Then a thirty-foot drop!
“Oh-wah-oh-wa-weh-se-gunta-go …”
What the … ?!
Kids. A mix of oral and thought-speak voices. Singing!
It was the first joyful sound I’d heard since waking in my cell.
I saw the end of the tunnel speeding toward me. No way to slow down!
“Yahhh!”
I was flying through night air, through a sky dotted by stars and warmed by the full moon.
Whumph!
An unexpectedly soft landing on a wide, grassy field. Next to me was a tree. But not just your average neighborhood maple or oak. This sucker was huge. A billowing, thriving tree whose branches bowed to touch the ground, then headed back up toward the sky. Like the baobabs of Africa I’ve seen on the Discovery Channel.
Every branch had a child on it. A smiling, playful child, singing and swaying. Some of them were obviously skilled tree-climbers. Not all of them were human, although most were. There were young Andalites, too. Even a number of Orff. And a Leeran.
“Oh-wah-oh-wa-weh-se-gunta-go!”
The singing stopped.
On the grass not far from me, beneath the tree, were some adults. A few were standing, others sat cross-legged. They didn’t wear the colored suits of the Yeerk metropolis. Instead they had on loose-fitting, linen-colored tunics. A bulge in a pouch on their sides revealed handheld Dracons, but I got the feeling the weapons weren’t used very often.
Adult Andalites stood thoughtfully nearby. A single Orff, barely visible in the darkness, crouched on his third leg while he extended the other two legs comfortably out in front of him.
A human female raised her hands with pleasure and smiled at the kids in the tree. “Very nice,” she said. “We’ll start the meeting now.”
All heads turned up to the starry sky. An adult Andalite stepped forward.
“Freedom guides us,” everyone answered.
“Freedom is all.”
Heads dropped. A human male asked the kids if they wanted to share what they’d worked on during the week. The female who’d led the song walked over to me.