110 «A little left,» Marco said. «That's it. Now, forward !»
I trotted. I broke into a run. I felt hard pavement beneath my surprisingly sensitive feet.
«Gate!» Marco yelled.
I lowered my horn. I increased my speed. The gate was metal bars. I saw them clearly about two seconds before I hit them.
More than two thousand pounds of rhino hit tempered steel.
WHAM!
I felt the impact in my massive, bony face and back into my shoulders. It was like getting hit in the face with a sledgehammer! But it was like getting hit and not caring. I felt the impact. But my rhinoceros body was used to impact. It was built for impact.
«What happened to the gate?» I asked, too blind to be sure.
«What gate?» Marco said. «0kay, now straight on, veering slightly right, big guy!»
I trotted on my four Greek column legs. I felt the twisted remains of the gate as I ran across them.
ScrrrEEEET! ScrrrEEEET!
«Man, does this guy have a lot of different alarms, or what?» Tobias said.
«0kay, fence number two,» Marco announced.
111 I kept running. This time it was just chain link. I felt something sort of tug at my horn.
«Where's the fence?» I asked.
«You just went through it,» Cassie said.
«AII right. This may work,» Marco said.
"Rowrrrowrrrowrr!" I heard the dogs very clearly. Smelled them even more clearly.
«Doggies!» Tobias warned.
I caught a vague glimpse of two dark shapes hurtling through the air toward me. I think maybe they tried to bite me. I'm not sure. I did feel a sort of scraping sensation on one side.
"Yow! Yow! Yow! Yowyowyowyow!"
«What happened to the dogs?» I asked.
«Doggies go bye-bye,» Marco said with a laugh. «The doggies are hauling doggie butt.»
«l think I like this morph,» I said. «What's next?»
«Final fence, then the door.»
«Look out! Guards! The guys with the shotguns^
"Holy crap!" I heard someone yell. "What is that?"
"Shoot it!"
I spotted them moving. It was like watching a very old, very fuzzy black-and-white movie on a bad TV. They were shadows, ghosts moving swiftly against a blurry background. Just enough for me to see.
ill
112 I turned toward them, all rhino instinct now. They were possible danger. They were challenging me. That was a mistake.
BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!
Rhinos get shot at all the time. Unfortunately, there are people stupid enough to think rhino horn is a medicine, and people creepy enough to slaughter endangered rhinos to get it.
But they don't go hunting rhinoceros with shotguns. You want to shoot a rhino, you need a high-power, high-caliber rifle. Not a shotgun that fires a bunch of small pellets.
BLAM! BLAM!
I felt something sting my face and shoulders. It made me mad. I charged. Not a trot, an out-and-out run, with head down and horn out.
"Run!"
They ran. I ran after them. It took about three seconds for me to catch the first one. I plowed right into him, felt the contact with his soft, mushy body, tossed my head, and . . .
. . . Let's just say that particular man won't be sitting down for a long, long time.
I had lost the other guard. But that was okay. They weren't my goal.
«Get me to the door!» I yelled to the others.
«Left. . . okay, now right. . . okay now . . . jeez, what are you, blind? Left, right, okay, CHARGE!»
114 I charged.
WHAMMMM!
I felt like I'd hit a truck. I backed up and slammed forward again.
WHAMMMM! Crunch.
«Man, that was a tough door!» I said.
«Um, Jake? You missed the door. That was the wall. You okay?» Cassie asked.
«l'm fine. One more push and we'll be in.» I reared back and slammed forward. I felt scraping along my back. Then I was in much cooler air.
«We're inside, aren't we?» I asked.
«Yes,» Tobias answered, sounding tense. «And we are out of time.»
113
I'm sure it was a beautiful house. But I didn't really see it. All I saw with my dim rhino-vision were walls and doorways. But at least we'd been right to guess that there were wide hallways. Wide enough for me to barrel down like a ... well, like a rhinoceros.
And the ceilings were high enough that Tobias, Cassie, and Marco could fly down them, searching madly from room to room. Searching with vision greater than human vision and hearing that could pick up the sound of a gopher belching from a distance the length of a football field.
They used me to open doors.
«Jake, open this door,» Marco would say. I'd
115 turn where he showed me, shove my massive bony face forward, and the door would explode in splinters.
Crrrr-UIMCH-Bang!
«We are trashing this man's home,» Cassie said. «l sure hope he is a Controller after all this.»
«He can afford to have his doors fixed,» Marco said.
«That's not the point,» Cassie said. Then, «Jake, open this door, please.»
Crrrr-UNCH-bang!
«Nothing,» Tobias complained. «Nothing, nothing, nothing! Nothing in any of these rooms, and there may be a hundred rooms in this place.»
«Tobias is right. We are out of time,» Cassie said.
«This isn't the way to do it,» I said. «We can't just search room-to-room. It could take hours. We need to figure this out. How do we find Ax and Rachel? Where would they be?»
«ln the last place we look,» Marco grumbled. «0r at least . . . wait a minute! Wherever they are, they'll be guarded.»
«Yes!» I said. «0f course. We just rampage till we see something well guarded.»
«l'll head upstairs,» Tobias said.
He zoomed away and up a large staircase. I
116 lumbered along into a vast open living room area. I stomped on through. I tried not to crush too much furniture, but I was big and half-blind, so I kept hearing the crunch of wood and the shatter of glass and pottery in my wake.
«Up here!» Tobias yelled.
Then, not as loud as before, but still loud enough . . . BLAM! BLAM!
«Tobias!»
«l'm okay! But I found an area with two big guys with big guns. It's upstairs.»
I tried to turn around and head back to the stairs, but then Marco yelled.
«Uh-oh! Guys coming up behind us. Man, how many gunmen does this lunatic hire? Jake, we have to go through these guys to get back to the stairs!»
«l got guys on my tail!» Tobias yelled down from upstairs.
I spun around and wiped out a couch in the process. «This way?!»
«No, a little left!»
I turned and annihilated a coffee table. Then I charged. I couldn't tell the difference between the men and various pole lamps and bookcases, except when they moved. The blur drew my eye, and I smelled humans.
I lowered my head and charged.
117
Shotgun pellets stung but didn't penetrate beneath my outer skin.
POP! POP! POP! POP!
I was hit. I staggered. I felt the bullet from the handgun tear into my right shoulder. A second slug lodged in the bone of my face.
I hit the guy with the gun. I was mad. I lowered my horn and I tossed my head back. He went flying back over my shoulder.
"Ya-ah-AHHHHHH!"
The other man jumped aside. I think he was fumbling to reload his shotgun. I sideswiped him and knocked him into the wall. Then I was out of the room, back into the hallway, tearing along back to the staircase.
I was bleeding. And I was weakening on my right side. My right front leg was moving slower. The bullet in my face must have ricocheted off. I felt pain there, but not the heaviness I felt in my shoulder.
I came to the stairs and tried to charge straight up. But rhinos were never meant for climbing stairs. My le
gs wouldn't lift high enough. My weight and momentum were too much. The wooden stairs splintered.
BLAM! BLAM!
«Tobias! What's going on up there?»
118 «l'm leading these guys around in circles and they're blowing the crap out the wall and ceiling trying to shoot me.»
«l can't make the stairs. We need more fire-power. Marco, Cassie, morph! Tobias, keep it up. Keep leading 'em on.»
A bird trapped in a house, being chased by two guys with shotguns. Had I just sentenced Tobias to death?
I started to demorph as fast as I could. But while my thought-speak was still functioning, something occurred to me. «Rachel! Ax! Can you guys hear me? Rachel! Ax!»
«. . . unh . . . what?»
«Who is that?»
«. . . unh ... it is me, Aximili,» Ax said.
He sounded dazed. I wasn't surprised. «Ax! Demorph! Time's up!»
«But there are humans here watching me, Prince Jake.»
Another decision. «Just do it, Ax, we're coming for you! Do you -» My thought-speak went dead as I became more human than rhinoceros.
«Yes, Prince Ja -» Ax fell silent.
I was shrinking. My armored flesh became tender human skin. My face was flat and delicate. But my legs could handle stairs. I still heard the sounds of gunfire from upstairs. And the sad thing was, I was glad. As long as they
119 were still shooting, it meant Tobias wasn't dead yet.
Marco and Cassie were just becoming human again. They were three-foot-tall lumps of feathers and shrinking beaks and emerging skin.
One wrong move and Tobias was gone. Ax might be demorphing in front of people who might be Controllers. Rachel ... no one knew whether Rachel was even conscious and capable of demorphing. Or alive at all. And now the three of us were utterly vulnerable, weak, pathetic.
I just kept thinking: This wasn't even supposed to be a very dangerous mission. And now, we were as close to being wiped out as we'd ever been.
"Come on!" I said, slurring my words with a mouth that was not yet human. "No chime kleft!"
I started up the stairs, staggering on my shifting, changing legs. The joints weren't right. The toes weren't toes, and my ankles seemed to have no flexibility. But time was up. I dragged myself up those stairs, hoping desperately that I had not killed us all.
120 .Ct+..Hf3.TjEfi...H.H.
J. was human by the time I had reached the top of the stairs. But human isn't a great morph when you're thinking about going against guys with guns.
As I ran I saw, to my horror, something emerge from the flesh of my shoulder. About as big as a fingertip, smashed, the color of mud. It was the bullet that had lodged in my shoulder. By good luck it had ended up outside my body as it morphed into a smaller form.
The bullet dropped to the carpet.
A hawk zipped by overhead, scraping the walls with its wings. A loose feather drifted down.
«What are you guys doing, looking like that?» Tobias demanded.
121 "Are they still after you?"
«Yeah, but I lost them temporarily. The room they were guarding is down the hall, then through this big, massive bedroom. You'll see a doorway. Last time I went past, there were still a couple of guys guarding it.»
"What do we do?" Marco asked.
I swear, I almost punched him. If one more person asked me what to do ...
"Morph again. Combat mode. Tobias? Try and reach Rachel and Ax with thought-speak. If you get Rachel, tell her to demorph right now, no arguing. If you get Ax, tell him to -"
«l hear my guys coming,» Tobias interrupted. «lnto that side room! It's unlocked. I'll lead them away!»
Marco, Cassie, and I all dodged into the side room. I heard the sound of heavy, weary feet tramping by.
"Where is that lousy bird?"
"What I can't figure is why we're chasing it and blowing holes in the walls and ceiling."
"'Cause we want to keep our jobs, that's why," the first man muttered.
By the time they were gone, I was in tiger morph. The rhino was great for busting things down. But I wanted eyes and ears and reflexes to go along with my power. And nothing I'd ever morphed could do as much damage as the tiger.
122 Cassie had morphed a wolf, Marco a gorilla. In a fight they were our standard morphs.
«Rachel!» I yelled, as soon as my thought-speak was back. «Rachel! If you can hear me, demorph! Demorph now!» To Marco and Cassie I said, «Come on! Let's do this!»
Marco opened the door with his almost-human fingers and we ran. Down the hall, through a bedroom that I swear, without exaggeration, was as big as a basketball court, and up to the doorway, where two very scared-looking guys stood cradling weapons.
One carried a shotgun. The other a small submachine gun. They were thirty feet away. For a frozen moment, no one moved.
I could cover thirty feet in two seconds.
In those same two seconds, the guy with the machine gun could fire ten rounds. He could easily kill me. If he failed, the force of my leap, my desperate need to defend myself, would ensure that he died.
It was time to gamble. «Look, you two men . . .»
They stared at me like they were going nuts. They could guess that it was me they were hearing in their heads. But they had never even imagined talking to a tiger before.
Then again, they'd never expected to be face-to-face with a small, angry zoo, either.
«Yes, it's me, the tiger. Don't worry about how
123 or why. Here's all you need to know: I don't want to hurt you. But I have to go past you. You may shoot me, but you won't kill me fast enough to keep me from taking you down. See this paw?»
I lifted one paw. My tiger paws are about as big around as a frying pan. I extended the cruel, yellowed claws.
«With this paw, I can literally knock your heads from your shoulders and send them rolling like bowling balls. Now, I don't know what you're getting paid for this job -»
"Not enough," said the man with the machine gun. "I can't believe I'm talking to animals. But that tiger makes sense."
"We're not getting paid nearly enough," his partner agreed. "We put down our weapons and walk away. Agreed, Mr. Tiger?"
«Agreed. Cassie? Keep an eye on them.»
Cassie trained her acute wolf senses on the men. If they had even thought about trying anything tricky, she'd have known it before they did.
«Marco? Now it's your turn to open a door. Open that door.»
Marco raised his huge gorilla arms back over his head, preparing to swing them down with shattering force.
«Marco? Try the knob first.»
«0h.»
He opened the door. And I leaped through.
124 P -H- -R-P T -E -R 5 3"
J. bounded into the room. It was dark, but my tiger's eyes could see through the gloom as easily as if it had been lit with stadium lights.
There seemed to be a sky overhead. Green, mostly, with vivid flashes of lightning. Scruffy plants grew from what seemed to be soil beneath my feet. And in the center of the room, perhaps fifteen feet across, was a shallow pond of liquid the color and consistency of molten lead.
There were two cages beside the pool. Ax was in one. He was halfway between his northern harrier morph and his own Andalite body. He was frozen stiff. Unmoving. Not even breathing, like some nightmare statue composed of gray feath-
125 ers and a scorpion tail and talons and a mouth-less face.
In the other cage was Rachel. Still a bald eagle.
My tiger eyes were very good. My tiger ears were good, too. I heard no heartbeat from her. I saw no slight movement of her chest rising and falling with breathing.
I felt my heart stop beating for several long seconds. Dead. Both dead. I'd been too late.
There was a man there, too. I recognized the face. Joe Bob Fenestre, the second richest man on earth. Head of Web Access America.
I recognized what he had in his hand, too: a Yeerk Dracon beam. He was not pointing it at me. He was pointing it at A
x.
Wrong again, Jake. This man was a Controller. Had to be.
Marco and Cassie came in behind me. After a few moments Tobias joined us. But Fenestre just kept staring at me.
At last he spoke. "So. Not Yeerks, after all. I'm to be destroyed by Andalites. Well, I suppose there is some honor in that, at least."
«Let my friends go,» I said harshly.
He shrugged, "You can take them. I don't care. Killing Andalites is not my life anymore."
«Yeah? My friends are dead,» I said.
126 He frowned. "Nonsense. Don't you recognize bio-stasis when you see it? They are simply frozen in time. I thought you Andalites were supposed to be so advanced when it comes to technology."
My heart quickened. Bio-stasis? What was that?
«Get them out of there,» I said.
"Or what?" he mocked. "You'll kill me? You'll kill me anyway."
I was panting. My mind was racing madly. What game was this man playing? How could I win? «Why would I kill you?»
"I'm a Yeerk," he said. "A Controller. Although my host and I are on very good terms. I made him rich. I wrote his famous Web browser. We've been partners all these years."
«Yeerks don't have partners,» I said.
He laughed. "No," he drawled, "we don't." He looked at me with a sharp, shrewd look. "Who sent you after me? Have you made some kind of deal with my brother?"
«Your brother?»
"You are obviously Andalites," he said patiently. "No one else has your amazing morphing technology. But I have to ask myself, why would Andalites go to so much trouble to kill me? Me, of all Yeerks?"
I was totally confused. I hesitated.
127 «This is weird,» Marco said, sending me a private thought-speak message.
«This guy is cornered,» Cassie said. «He thinks he's toast. You can see it in his eyes. We need to find out more.»
I paced a little. Tigers get restless just standing. Should I take a chance? Should I tell him at least some of the truth?
«We traced you here from the Web page. The one about Yeerks.»
He nodded. "Yes, but why come after. . . ?" His face lit up. "Of course! You were looking for allies! You weren't sure, were you? You thought perhaps it was all real, that humans were forming a resistance to the Yeerk invasion of their planet! You came here to see if I was for you, or against you!"
Then he began to laugh. He laughed in that sick way people do when they're laughing but nothing is funny.