“Owowow!” Good thing we’d worn jeans and sweatshirts — stuff we’d stashed in Cassie’s barn for emergencies — against the cool night air.
Across the concrete apron! Running full out! Weird to be running as a human. It had been a long time.
“Hey! You kids! Stop!”
“ROWROWROWROW!”
I glanced over my shoulder to see two German shepherds being held by their collars, straining to do what they were trained to do.
Take down the intruders!
I raced on. Our sneakers slapped the ground like hands clapping too fast and too loud.
A bullhorn now. “I said, stop in the name of the law! Or I’ll let the dogs go!”
“Anyone got any liver snacks?” Marco panted. “Nice doggies!”
“Almost there! C’mon!”
I reached out desperately for the handrail of the retractable staircase and yanked myself up the first few steps.
A mechanic appeared underneath me, vacuum-type tool in hand. He must have come from under the plane.
“Hey, girlie! You can’t …”
I darted a look at his balding head.
“Oh, yeah. I can.”
He reached up and over the rail to grab me. I twisted and he missed. I ran on and reached the door of the plane, Marco, Tobias, and Ax right behind me.
“ROWROWROWROW!”
“In, in in!” I shouted, dragging Ax — who’d had some trouble with the stairs — through the narrow opening.
Began to haul the stairs and door shut …
SLAM!
“Thank you, Rachel. Human legs are far too wobbly …”
“Later, Ax. Keep an eye on the guards.”
“I could get used to this,” Marco said, looking around the posh interior of the jet. “Not a problem. Cushy leather seats. Twelve-inch video monitors. Gorgeous women serving … hey, where are the babes?”
“Down, boy,” I snapped. “Tobias, make sure the door is secured. Tight. Ax, can you fly this thing?”
“Without a doubt. But first I will demorph in preparation for throwing myself out at the appropriate time …”
“If not sooner,” Marco muttered.
I growled. “You guys are not helping.”
“I am,” Marco said suddenly, turning from a window on the far side of the plane. “I’m telling you there’s about, oh, ten guys with guns and nightsticks, ready to beat the crap out of us. Once they shoot their way inside, of course.”
Ax stood in the small cockpit, four legs braced firmly, and began to flip switches on the control panel with his nimble fingers.
MMMrrrr …
The engines came to life. Ax pushed a control stick forward slowly and the plane began to taxi.
“You sure you understand the concept of takeoff, Ax-man?” Marco asked nervously.
Ax swiveled his stalk eyes and gave Marco a look of disdain. he said dryly.
The jet picked up speed. Ax steered it onto the taxiway and turned toward the runway. But still, it felt like we were crawling!
“Ax! The guards are gaining on us! Can’t you …”
Ax turned onto the runway and opened up the throttle. At last, some speed!
Suddenly …
A deer! It had bounded out of the woods off to the right! Too fast, too close for Ax to stop!
The deer froze twenty yards in front of us, its eyes glowing in the night, stunned by the jet’s headlights, oblivious to the shouts of men and the frantic barking of dogs!
Szwoooosh …
Ax swerved off the runway and the jet trundled over the grassy field. It missed the deer by — feet! Inches, it seemed!
“Excellent save, Ax!” I cried as he guided the plane back onto the concrete.
he said, his voice tight.
Tobias warned. He had demorphed and was perched on the back of one of the two forward-facing passenger seats.
“Is there any chance, Ax?” I shouted.
I darted a quick glance at Marco and Tobias.
Marco nodded, his eyes dark.
Tobias … his inscrutable hawk stare was unchanged, but I knew.
“Do it, Ax! Go for it!”
Faster, faster, faster. The engines louder. Trees rushing by, blurring …
I gripped the back of the pilot’s seat, my knuckles white.
Yes!
Ax said calmly.
I ran a hand over my forehead, beaded with sweat. I was nervous. Excited. Thankful. The rescue mission was underway.
We rose. Gained altitude and speed. Higher. Faster. Over the anonymous country, suburb, and city where we live. Toward the new Beane Tower. And the Yeerk pool. And Cassie.
Higher. Higher. And faster.
The sky slowly darkening, the blue deepening.
My heart pounding in my chest. Counting every beat as a second in time.
Ticktock.
Cassie’s time running out.
Our time running out!
Finally — finally! We were at seven thousand feet in the air over the Beane Tower.
“Ready, Ax?” I asked.
“Everybody ready? Marco, start your morph.”
“I’ve changed my mind,” he said. “All that stuff I said about needing insane? I was just suffering from low blood sugar.”
“Marco. Do it.”
Ax said.
“Yeah,” I said. “Get on with it.”
Szwooooosh …
“Holy …”
A ninety-degree dive! Nose down, hurtling straight for the roof of the Beane Tower!
A roof that looked pretty seriously solid right now.
“Okay, Ax! Give me the stick!” I shouted over the roar of the engines and rushing wind. “Morph! Then the three of you bail!”
“It’s okay, Tobias,” I said. “I’ll be okay.”
Ax dropped to his knees and dug his weak Andalite fingers as far into the nap of the plane’s carpeting as they would go. With weak Andalite arms he strained to pull his heavy body up to the door. With stronger, more muscled legs he shuffled up and forward.
Struggling to keep from falling back, Ax pulled open the door and barely caught himself as the suck of air rushed from the jet.
I struggled to hold the controls steady until the others got out. To keep my body from being forced from the seat by the ferocious vacuum. To keep from smashing headfirst down against the windshield.
I was vaguely aware of Ax shrinking to northern harrier. And an osprey and a red-tailed hawk giving themselves up to the enormous sucking power of the wind, and letting themselves float out of the plane.
Then, finally, was brutally aware of being alone in a four-ton jet, plummeting through the air toward what still looked like a too, too solid object.
Did I really expect the roof to retract for me? The enemy?
Had to ride the jet down. Ax was clear about that. Autopilot would be useless. Had to wait, wait, till that rectangular roof seemed to fill my entire field of vision, till there was no way to miss, till …
Morph! Now!
Bald eagle.
As soon as I thought it, I released my grip on the arms of the pilot’s seat.
SMASH!
I had braced myself but I was still thrown into the wall, then a passenger seat.
SMASH!
I ignored the bruises and allowed myself to be pulled, yanked, dragged toward the open door.
Yes! I’d made it.
I let go my grip and my still-human body flew
from the plane.
Insanity!
I watched through wind-battered, tearing eyes the jet seeming to slowly — then more quickly — drop away below me. Knew my friends had to be still above me, following. Engines still wide open. I felt the oven heat of the backwash.
Morph! Morph! Morph!
Head over heels! Heels that were shriveling, narrowing into the powerful, gripping talons of the hunter.
Too slow!
Panic … Fight it, Rachel! You’re the hero, warrior king! You can do this. You have to do this!
This is who you are.
Had someone called my name?
Hurtling, hurtling …
And then I felt the tickling along my arms, legs, back. The tickling that meant a tracery of feathers was etching itself on my skin. A tattoo that would cover my entire body and then … raise into three dimensions!
But a feathered human couldn’t fly! A feathered human would crash-land …
BOOOOMM!
The jet hit!
It hit the roof of the Beane Tower and plowed through the roof that had not retracted.
The jet exploded on impact, tearing a massive hole through the roof.
Whooooosh!
A fireball! Of amazingly enormous proportions that I, half-morphed and falling, speeding through the air, could not fail to see, hear, feel.
Blast after blast of intense heat! The air around me shimmered like the surface of a clouded, rippling lake. Then black, acrid smoke billowed up from the Beane Tower.
And I was falling, falling into the inferno! A feathered human now with the eagle’s keen eyes. Better to see my own destruction rising up to meet me …
“Ahhhhhhhh!”
Had I cried out? Or had I screamed in my head? And what did it matter?
The shattered roof, so close! Jagged pieces of metal and broken glass, sticking up at crazy angles. All around the edge of the hole. Like ragged, dangerous teeth, ringing the gaping maw of a beast.
The flames!
Still morphing … Was I lighter? Had my bones hollowed?
The speed, the heat, the wreckage, the …
ZWHOOOP!
I was through!
Sucked through the awful hole that had been the roof! Drawn down in the wake of the plummeting, fiery jet.
Feathers singed, lungs filled with smoke, but alive!
Morph, Rachel! Finish the morph!
Too fast! I was falling too fast! I’d smash into the jet, twisting and diving below me.
Be the eagle!
Down, down through one, two, three stories of empty building!
Tobias was right. No tenants. No floors or dividing walls or elevator shafts or staircases, either.
Just a hollow tube. A tunnel down to the …
Four, five, six stories!
Yes! Wings! My body still too large, not fully the eagle’s yet, but …
I flapped, pulled up against the sucking wake of the plummeting jet, struggled …
Seven, eight stories!
BOOM!
BABOOOM!
The wreckage of the jet crashed through a ceiling or a hatch or something.
I followed.
Down through the opening! The plane falling, spiraling down from the high-domed roof of the Yeerk pool!
Through the thunderous rushing of sound that accompanied the hurtling jet I could make out the harrowing cries of involuntary hosts. A cry far too familiar.
“GHAFRASH! WATCH OUT!”
Could hear the stunned, panicked shouts of Hork-Bajir-Controllers. Could see them, barely, herding hosts back and away from the edge of the lead-colored pool itself. Away from the jet …
SPLOOOOSSHHH! SZZZZZZZZZZ!
Into the pool! The still-flaming body of the jet tearing through the dull gray surface of the Yeerk pool. Disappearing for a moment.
The contents of the pool sizzling and sloshing and churning. Spitting up pieces of twisted metal that bobbed to the slimy, fiery surface.
Hundreds, maybe thousands of Yeerks were in that pool! How many were dead? How many had just been killed?
Pull up, Rachel! Pull up!
I flared, talons forward, killing airspeed.
Yes! I was fully eagle now.
I righted myself. Flapped and soared above the panic on the floor of the massive underground complex. No one seemed to notice an Earth bird in the commotion.
Involuntary hosts were being slammed into cages. Voluntary hosts, whose Yeerks were currently in the cauldron that was the Yeerk pool, were being slammed in alongside their reluctant brothers and sisters. Just in case.
But where was Cassie? My keen eagle eyes darted from right to left. I flapped higher, scoping the pool, the buildings … the two steel infestation piers.
And found her. A massive off-white beast, her fur matted and stained with blood and gore. Her head hanging low. Each tree-trunk leg manacled to the other. Surrounded by three Hork-Bajir guards, one who held a blade to her throat.
No time to lose! Even with the Yeerk pool disrupted, Visser Three would demand the Andalite bandit be forcibly infested by a Yeerk. Forced to demorph. Compelled to reveal everything …
How many minutes did Cassie have left in morph?
I’d lost track. Fifteen? Five?
No time to look for the others! Had they even made it alive through the burning, jagged hole that was once the roof? Had they survived the flames and blasts of intense heat and …
Only a slight, slight movement of her bent head. Enough for my keen eagle’s eyes to detect. Not enough to give warning to her Hork-Bajir guards.
A surprise attack!
One bald eagle against who knew how many Yeerk warriors!
Adrenaline surged through my body and mind and soul.
It was insane.
It was necessary!
I dove. Flared, talons out. In for the kill!
Swooosh!
“Raaahhh!”
I tore at the eyes of the guard who held his bladed wrist at Cassie’s neck. Immediately he dropped to his knees, blood dripping through the hands he’d raised to his face.
Attack! Talons extended, again. Another Hork-Bajir down. One more to go.
What was she …
Brilliant! Cassie was slowly, carefully demorphing. Controlling the demorphing process like only Cassie can. Shrinking, just enough to slip the manacles and chains that bound and incapacitated her.
Yanking the restraints away from her hind paws, tossing part into the still-roiling Yeerk pool. Wrapping another part partially around a front paw.
Now she was reversing the morph. Lumbering to her full height! Eight feet of towering polar bear! Powerful beyond imagining. And angry.
Cassie swung the heavy chain around her head.
“HSSSSROOOAAARRR!”
Yes!
THWUUMP!
The third Hork-Bajir, stumbling to his feet after surviving my attack, was down.
Cassie fell to her four paws. I landed on her broad, strong back.
I asked.
Down the infestation pier, big taloned feet thudding and thundering, blades hissing as they slid and jostled against one another, came five Hork-Bajir.
SWAAAP! SWAAAP!
The bleeding, blinded Hork-Bajir were slammed out of their way.
Closer! Then the Hork-Bajir leading the five guards slowed. Just a bit. Another few yards or so and all they’d need to do was push us back, off the pier, into the Yeerk pool. Easy. Why rush?
Cassie said wildly.
I
guessed.
If they take anyone, I thought, I’ll make them take me. And then, I’ll do whatever I have to do. Whatever.
But now …
Almost within arm’s reach!
I tensed for action. Beneath my talons I felt Cassie’s muscles bunch and coil, ready to charge.
The lead Hork-Bajir guard raised his blade-wielding arm and …
Thought-speak! Hugely loud. Thunderous. It could only belong to one person.
Visser Three.
The five Hork-Bajir stopped and stood as if frozen.
And then the horrible voice again.
Cassie agreed.
CLOP CLOP CLOP CLOP.
The visser came into view at the far edge of the pool. Next to him — suddenly, as if by magic — appeared the inspector. That weird, spindly, faster-than-the-speed-of-sound creature. In some odd way, the cause of Cassie and me being trapped here.
Two blue-furred, four-legged aliens. Possibly related only by the fact that each was a slave — perhaps both involuntarily — to a Yeerk.
Visser Three paused and swiveled his stalk eyes to look down contemptuously at his colleague. The animosity between the two was palpable, unmistakable.
the visser went on, He waved an arm broadly around, encompassing the pool.
the inspector answered.
I said, every eagle muscle tense, my keen eyes watchful, boring into the inspector, hoping to anticipate a move.
Visser Three chuckled. A very disturbing sound.