Tobias isn't even "from" the main timeline, right? Drode calls him Elfangor's "time-shifted son," presumably both he and Elfangor were time-shifted from the timeline of the Andalite Chronicles where Elfangor was a human nothlit.
Right. Tobias is shifted in from the timeline where Elfangor became a nothlit and married Laurie (and was the guy who inspired both Steve Jobs and Bill Gates to create Apple and Microsoft).
Book 41-The Familiar
Written by Ellen Geroux
Chapter 1
quote:
Whummph!
BAAAM!
I slammed the Hork-Bajir into the concrete. Pinned him against the subbasement wall with two massive tiger paws.
His red eyes burned with hatred. His face was a twisted horror as he pushed back, desperate to free his tail blade from behind his body.
I strained to reach the scarred, saddle-leather flesh of his neck. To rip out the throat.
By the way, I'm Jake.
Can't tell you much more than that. Like my last name or where I live. I can't even tell you where I go to school. Here's what I can tell you: Earth is being invaded by parasitic slugs called Yeerks. Still with me? Pretty hard to believe, huh? See, humans seem to be their latest preference in host bodies. They take thousands a day. Make them into slaves. They just squeeze into your ear canal. Wrap themselves around your brain. Tap into your memories and dreams. And then they take over.
You can't even decide when to blink. No control at all. It's like your skull becomes a prison. And you're trapped in your own head. No way out.
My friends Marco, Rachel, Cassie, Tobias, an alien kid we call Ax, and I are the only active resistance. So now you're asking yourself, "How are six kids preventing the total takeover of Earth?"
Well, we were given the power to turn into any animal we touch. To actually acquire the animal's DNA. To morph. The Andalite technology was a gift to us from Ax's older brother, Elfangor. After he crash-landed, and before he was murdered.
So anyway, we're the only ones fighting back. We managed to slow the Yeerks down a little. But it was getting harder to keep up the fight. Harder to keep it together.
"Hhhhhrrroooowwwwrrrr!" I roared.
He faltered and I lunged forward. Missed! His tail broke free and he slashed!
And carved a hole in my underbelly!
I watched, stunned and helpless. Those were my guts, spilling from my body! I froze up for one instant too long. He pushed me down onto pipes that ...
Tsssssssssss!
<AHHHHHH!>
My fur was smoking, my flesh scalded!
Adrenaline cracked through my chest like a whip. I was up again, face-to-face with a Yeerk infested Hork-Bajir.
I had one more chance with this guy. This was it. And suddenly the vividness of the scene seemed to recede.
Don't get me wrong. My guts were still spilling out of my belly. Exhaustion still pressed on my shoulders like a granite slab. But I was in a new zone. It was him or me.
Claws bared, teeth flashing, I leaped.
WHAM!
Heaved him into the wall.
WHAM!
Plowed him into the concrete. His skull hit hard.
WHAM!
His tail dropped. His eyes went lazy, then rolled up into his head. He groaned weakly and slid down the wall.
We were three floors underground, in the dark, dank subbasement of a downtown high-rise.
Pipes and ducts ran close overhead. You could hear cries and growls from floor to ceiling and wall to wall. I wheeled around. And only then did I see how insanely bad things were.
We were completely outnumbered.
Cassie was one against two. Marco one on four.
I had to help them!
But I'd drawn a living barrier. Five battle-hardened Hork-Bajir, holding their blades like cocky gunslingers, were closing in on me like the walls of a collapsing room.
Just beyond the Hork-Bajir was what looked like - what I hoped was an exit. A steel accordion door thirty feet away, opposite the stairs.
<Everybody out, now! Get to the door!> I yelled, but the other screams and cries and crashes drowned out my words.
<More on the stairs! And Taxxons. I can smell them!> My best friend, Marco. Every quaking syllable told me he was at the end of his strength.
I caught a glimpse of Rachel, hobbling toward the sound of shock troops pouring down the stairs.
<Come on!> Her voice cracked. Blood gushed from gashes around her eyes, blinding her. <Where are they?!> She slashed her grizzly bear paws wildly.
<Rachel, no!>
Three Hork-Bajir struck. Ran her across the room like a football-tackling dummy.
"TSEEER!"
Tobias swooped and plunged, talons first. One Hork-Bajir fell off, clutching his eyes. Cassie clamped on to another's heel and yanked her steel-trap jaws from side to side.
Rachel was still helpless.
I backed up nervously. I was surrounded, closed off from the others by the approaching Hork- Bajir barricade. My butt hit the concrete wall.
I reared up and roared. Seven hundred pounds of ripping claws and slicing teeth. Fluid strength. Mercurial speed. The male Siberian tiger. The biggest cat in the world.
But my roar echoed back unmasked. I heard false confidence. I detected despair.
"Ghafrash nyut!" said a voice like gravel. "Die!"
The nearest Hork-Bajir lunged, blades flashing.
Mouth open, I leaped. My fangs sank in deep, past the armor of skin. Into the meat.
He jerked back and fell under my weight. I rolled off and slammed to the floor. My right ear!
Still stuck to his wrist blade! Sliced off!
Two more were on me. I'd forgotten any thought of victory. Now it was simply a mindless struggle. A blade embedded in my left hind leg ... Focus, Jake.
Survive.
FWAAP!
A tail blade cleaved the air above me. Blue fur.
It was Ax.
Fwaap, fwaap, fwaap!
Two assailants slumped and crumpled to the floor. A third screamed and cradled his knees.
<Prince Jake, if we do not leave now, we never will.>
Movement.
<Ax!> I cried. <Hit the floor!>
Ax ducked. The bladed body of a Hork-Bajir whistled through the air.
Then there was a fierce metallic crash and hiss.
Pssssssssshhhhhtttttt!
A cracked steam pipe! An explosion of steam! Pressurized fog billowed across the floor. It enveloped the room, everyone and everything. Confusion took over.
Now or never.
<Now!> I ordered. <Bail!> It was impossible to see more than an inch ahead. The scalding cloud burned my skin and eyes and throat. Choking on steam, bodychecking Hork-Bajir, I ran for the parking garage door and slammed my bloody mass on the weight-sensitive panel. The door began to creak open, inching up at first, then rising rapidly. Six inches, twelve inches, eighteen.
Cassie squeezed out through the opening. Then Ax. Tobias.
<I'll kill them!> It was Rachel's voice. Raving like someone possessed. <Get your hands off me, Marco! I'll kill them! I'll kill them!>
<Shut the door, Jake!> Marco roared. <There are more on the stairs!>
<Marco, Rachel, get out of here now!>
<We can't. Rachel's ... can't leave her. You cut the Yeerks off or it'll be too late!> He was breathless, but insistent. <We'll find some other way out.>
A Hork-Bajir emerged from the steam cloud, saw me, and broke into a run. Time was definitely not on my side today.
Lose everyone, or lose two?
I dropped and rolled under the door, sprang up and broke the glass box that housed the emergency close switch. Engaged the switch.
What alternative did I have? What choice?
The door ground to a halt, hesitated, then changed directions, descending like a slow but certain guillotine. Cassie's wolf eyes fixed on me.
<What are you doing? You can't trap them in there. You can't leave them!>
Well, that's the question, right? Marco and Rachel are separated and trapped, and everybody's outnumbered. Wht do you do?
Chapter 2
quote:
The lone Hork-Bajir dove and skidded under the door. I grabbed him, mouth and claws. We tumbled. It was like being stuffed in the clothes dryer with ten razor-sharp kitchen knives.
I used my weight, my fangs, the last of my strength. When his muscles finally slackened, I stumbled away. The accordion door was almost closed.
I looked through the crack and there, like a mirage, was Marco's gorilla form emerging from the steam cloud. He was dragging a roaring, slashing Rachel. And not more than six feet behind them, a dozen Hork-Bajir.
Ax grabbed a length of pipe and wedged it between the floor and door. The gears shrieked to a crawl. Then the pipe began to bend.
Cassie screamed.
The crunching metal door was just inches from the floor when thick, black fingers wrapped around the bottom. And with inconceivable strength, Marco heaved it up. Forced Rachel through. She was a bloody mess.
Marco stooped, crawled under the door, and released the pipe. Four Hork-Bajir dove for the opening. Slid, clattered, reached the door just as ... BOOM!
It crashed shut. No Hork-Bajir made it through. In one piece, anyway.
<Demorph!> I yelled.
We raced up the empty, spiral parking ramp.
I demorphed as I ran. Orange-, white-, black-, and red-striped fur thinned to a fuzz, then disappeared. My tail shrank into my coccyx. The guts that hung from my belly were drawn back in. Bones shifted, rearranged, and threw me onto my hind legs. I tripped and stumbled against the wall. My front legs were absorbed and then reissued as human arms. Back legs extended, paws minimized, claws grew into toes and fingers.
"Let's get out of here!"
We plateaued onto level pavement, our transformations complete. We sprinted, breathless, down a row of parked cars. Shot past a dumbfounded attendant who saw a hawk and five kids in spandex tear into a downtown street.
A busy downtown street.
"Look out!"
Honk! Honk!
Drivers slammed on their horns. Cars screeched to a halt.
I jumped back between parked cars on the side of the street. Rachel and Marco ran for the sidewalk.
"Cassie!"
She was in the middle of the street, frozen.
I ran back into the lanes. A driver opened his car door. "Punks!" He shook his fist. "Bunch of no good ..."
I grabbed Cassie's arm. Yanked her out of traffic. Dodged into the alley where Marco and Rachel had turned in, following Ax.
"Cassie!" I shook her roughly. She came to.
"Four of them," she said anxiously. "I may have killed four back there, maybe five." She searched my eyes, her usual calm shattered. "Jake!" she whispered. "How do I deal with this?"
I gently pushed her down along the alley, shushing her, and looking back over my shoulder. The Yeerks could still be on the trail.
"Every day we're more like them," she persisted. "Aren't we?" Tears welled over her lower lids. "Jake?"
I didn't have the energy for this. The doubt, the introspection, the analysis. I just didn't have the energy.
"No," I said flatly.
Why was she doing this? Why now? Yeah, we'd just had one of the closest calls I could remember. We'd had to scrap the mission and now the new Yeerk-pool entrance would open on schedule. But the brutality was nothing we hadn't done a hundred times before.
She began to cry almost noiselessly. I knew she needed to talk things over. She needed to work through the confusion we all feel after a battle and she wanted me to help.
But I walked away.
Marco and Rachel were up ahead, farther down the alley.
'You're wrong!" Rachel cried, still pumped. "I could have brought them all down." Her fist slammed the Dumpster. Marco kicked it even more violently.
"You had blood in your eyes! You couldn't even see the reinforcements swarming down the stairs. You acted like an idiot. A selfish, crazy, whacked-out ..."
"Relax," I said, stepping between them like the leader I was supposed to be. Marco didn't listen. "You're about to blow, Rachel." His face was bright red, hot from exertion and frustration. "Haven't you learned anything? You put everyone at risk by hanging back when Jake said to bail. We can't always cater to your personal need to bash heads."
"But as long as we follow Marco's righteous program, everything's fine?" She picked up an empty can and heaved it across the alley. "Mighty Marco can just ..."
"Forget about saving your life next time?"
"I said relax" I shouted.
There was a sudden rustling on the far side of the Dumpster. We tensed instantly.
Around the corner peeked a boy, an oddly good-looking kid.
Rachel gave a snort.
It was Ax, in human morph.
"I have not heard from Tobias," Ax said to me.
"Try again. Ask him if we're clear."
I looked up at the strip of late-evening sky visible from the alley. A raptor's form floated over then disappeared behind a glassy high-rise.
"Oh, that's really great! What a guy. So he's off the clock now?" Marco walked around behind the Dumpster and began to morph. "I'm going home."
I kept watching the sky. Rachel, already morphed to bald eagle, powered her body up past the bricks. I knew she was going after Tobias. Ever since a Yeerk sub-visser held and tortured him, Tobias hadn't been the same. Even more time spent alone now than before. Withdrawn, despondent. Not good.
"Prince Jake," Ax said. "Should we meet in the barn tonight and attempt the mission again tomorrow?"
I sighed. Cassie's sobs were intermittent now. She rose from the pavement, from the shadow of a pile of cardboard boxes, and walked slowly toward the street.
"I don't know, Ax," I said, watching Cassie. "Will you do me a favor, though? Will you make sure she gets home okay?"
You don't even think about the sheer amount of trauma that these kids are facing, I'm sure it doesn't help that, first, there's nobody they can talk to about any of this outside of each other, and second, that they constantly have to shift back and forth between this world, with it's danger and casual brutality and cruelty, and the "normal" teenage world, of school, homework, chores, and hanging out with friends.
Oh wow this one is starting off strong. I think this is really one of the more brutal scenes they've had and I'm continually surprised they just allowed being disemboweled so often in a children's book series. I'm tempted to do a count of how many times an animorph gets gutted on screen because it's at least 4.
Jesus, that... is really grim. Things are falling apart.
The obvious question is what's the mission, but that's a very good way to handle the first chapter.
Jesus, that... is really grim. Things are falling apart.
The obvious question is what's the mission, but that's a very good way to handle the first chapter.
just kind of seems like a generic 'try to hurt/delay the yeerks' that's become almost routine for them
Chapter 3
quote:
I headed home alone.
I demorphed in a tree in my front yard. I knew it was risky, being so close to the house and all, but I was drunk with exhaustion. When I dropped to the grass, my legs went limp under me.
The gravel stabbed my bare feet as I staggered up the path. The porch light was on. The other lights out.
I paused with my hand on the doorknob and glanced down at my body. Spandex bike shorts and tight T-shirt. I looked like I should be giving a testimonial on a Tae Bo infomercial. I had regular clothes stashed in the garage. I needed to put them on.
The garage. It seemed so far away. I was so tired, my muscles ached ...
I pushed open the door. Forget about my normal clothes. My parents, if they were home, would probably just think this morphing outfit was some new fashion. You know - something Rachel thought up. Well, she says this is cutting edge or something.
My brother Tom, my brother with a Yeerk in his head, would never buy that one.
But Tom wasn't home. Friday night meant he was at The Sharing. The front organization for Controllers.
I opened the fridge, grabbed a leftover slice of pizza, and started to stuff my face. I left the kitchen to climb the stairs to bed. One, two, three ... I could feel it already, my head hitting the pillow, sleep descending. Dreams would come. No nightmares. Just dreams of ...
"Jake?"
My head snapped up. A piece of pizza crust lodged in my throat.
The voice was loud and mocking. "Bare feet? You been riding your bike barefoot? At night?"
It was Tom. He stood at the top of the stairs. Tall and confident. Blocking my path. Guess it was a quick night at The Sharing.
I coughed, hacking up the pizza crust.
"Hey," I said, forcing a half-smile. "I, uh ... I was over at Marco's. Watching the game. It went into overtime and, well, Detroit scored and Marco jumped up and smacked a Pepsi all over my jeans and sneakers. I left them there to get washed."
"Yeah?" Tom said, frown fading. "Well, you look pretty stupid. But that's really not unusual, is it?" He was smirking now.
"Whatever," I ran up the rest of the stairs and jabbed him in the stomach, the way a little brother would.
He fell to the floor, feigning injury, but hooked my foot and tripped me as I walked into my room. We laughed.
"I'm gonna crash," I said, recovering my balance. "I'm beat."
"Yeah. Fine." He headed for his room. Did he buy it? Did he believe the lies I'd grown so used to telling? The fake-nice routine I put on for a brother who's not a brother at all anymore, but the enemy?
I dropped into bed. Pulled the blanket up to my neck. Began to shut my ...
A noise in the doorway.
I shot up. Flicked on the lamp.
"Hey, Midget?" Tom poked his head around my door frame. "Was that blood on your leg?"
My breathing stopped.
Sometimes, when you demorph, the blood of battle stays behind.
"Uh." My voice faltered. My brain slowed. "You know about my bike. It stinks. The stupid chain catches my skin. I should get Dad to buy me a new one." I dropped back onto my pillow. Switched off the light.
Waited.
Tom let it go.
But when I glanced once more at my bedroom doorway, Tom's shadow was still there. Did he have something more to say?
I was too tired to ask. Sleep was dragging down my eyelids.
Whatever it was could wait till morning.
Eyes closed, I saw Cassie. Watched her solitary figure walking down the alley. Away from me.
Toward a busy street where cars flashed past.
I saw Tom's leery eyes. Always watching. Policing. Scheming. Eyes controlled by the very small, but very real parasitic slug in his brain. The Yeerk. The race of alien invaders, pressing ever forward in stealthy conquest of humanity.
And suddenly, I stood before a giant wall, rising leagues above my head and running for miles in both directions. I had my hand crammed against a small hole, from which water slowly seeped and bubbled. On the other side I heard the raging sea. Pummeling. Pounding. Weakening, with each
lashing, every fiber of the wall.
And I wondered: Just how long would it hold?
I know we saw it in the last book, but this is a good illustration of the pressure Jake is under just being Jake and being in this fight.
Chapter 4
quote:
DE-DEET! DE-DEET!
The alarm was like a jackhammer to the head. I groaned.
DE-DEET!
Enough, already! I felt for the clock radio. The snooze button. Just five more minutes.
My hand patted the air. No bedside table? I lifted my lids. Where was my ...
My heart stopped.
I was staring into a triangular screen. A flat computer panel mounted flush in a peeling, white plaster wall across from the bed. Eerie copper letters pulsed at the top of the glowing gray screen.
5:58:16 A.M. Below the time flashed the words "TO DO" and a single entry: "Report to work."
This was not my bedroom. Not even close.
DE-DEET! DE-DEET!
My body stiffened to defense mode and I bolted out of bed.
The alarm stopped.
My mind, forced into consciousness by the shock, hurled me orders. Get out! it warned. Get out, get out, get out!
I raced to a tall black panel in the wall. A door. Had to be.
Get out!
I tried, but there was no handle. No release lever. Nothing.
I struck it.
"You are not prepared to leave for work!" said a shrill computer voice.
I pounded even harder. Hammered the panel with a clenched fist. A fist that ... I stopped suddenly as I studied my fist. It was big.
I mean it was rough and callused and had veins that pumped across the hairy, muscular forearm like I belonged to Gold's Gym and actually used my membership.
It was the hand and arm of a grown man.
My heart started up again, pumping now at record speed. I probed the polished steel door frame for my reflection, for the face I knew.
And yes, there! I saw my eyes, dark as midnight. My strong, broad face. My ... I swallowed hard.
My short-cropped hair? My six-foot frame? My day-old beard?!
I brought a hand to my face. My fingers scraped across my chin. Stubble like sixty-grit sandpaper. I needed a shave.
My breath got choppy. My head felt about ready to explode.
The Jake staring back at me was an adult! Not crazy old. But out of college a few years. At least ten years older than the kid I'd been the night before.
What was going on? Where were the others? How did I get to this place?
My heart was beating entirely too hard.
I was gonna have a heart attack if I didn't calm down. I stumbled back to bed and sat down on
the narrow strip no wider than a torso. A pad on a metal plate.
"Okay," I said out loud. "Okay." Use your brain. Cover the possible explanations.
An Ellimist trick? Yeah, it had to be. But why hadn't he spoken?
A Yeerk experiment, maybe? Could I have been captured?
It's hard to think straight when you wake up like Tom Hanks in that movie Big. At least he woke up in his own room, in his own clothes. Sort of. I was wearing this weird, faded orange jumpsuit, the color of a sun-bleached Orioles cap.
I fingered the suit, and then it hit me.
Of course!
I knew what was going on here. It had finally happened.
I knew it was only a matter of time, what with the pressures of leadership, the violent battle, the endless fights against a strengthening enemy.
I'd finally been driven to a complete psychotic breakdown.
I'd gone crazy.
And this was my padded cell.
I don't think it's that, But Jake is not himself.
I remember liking this book. Mostly cause of a neat alien? and cause I don't think I actually read megamorphs 4 as a kid so the similarities escaped me.
How far through the series are we? Not sure how much more trauma our heroes can endure without going quite insane.
I really like the underlying plot of this book, even if
the final conceit is really dumb and it comes too close after the previous book. Treating it as nothing more than an anxiety dream, it's really solid and has some good character bits.
How far through the series are we? Not sure how much more trauma our heroes can endure without going quite insane.
This is 41, there's 54 numbered books plus one more Chronicles.
How far through the series are we? Not sure how much more trauma our heroes can endure without going quite insane.
Currently on the 48th of 64 books so roughly more than 3/4ths through the series.
I'd also like to mention that with so many battles our heroes have fought it should definitely be more than a year that they've been at this, and that's about the time span Elfangor gave for the Andalite forces to arrive. We did get that ragtag group of Andalites who came to Earth though they weren't gonna provide the kind of help the Animorphs were hoping for. These two things I feel have likely dealt a blow to the Animorphs' morale. They don't know if help will ever come but they have to keep fighting no matter what.
I'm reasonably sure it's about two years from start to finish in book time
I'm reasonably sure it's about two years from start to finish in book time
You don't even think about the sheer amount of trauma that these kids are facing, I'm sure it doesn't help that, first, there's nobody they can talk to about any of this outside of each other, and second, that they constantly have to shift back and forth between this world, with it's danger and casual brutality and cruelty, and the "normal" teenage world, of school, homework, chores, and hanging out with friends.
One of the nice touches I remember - I think this comes down the track - is one of the characters off-handedly mentioning how for a while now, deeper into the series/war, their schoolwork and grades have basically just gone down the toilet. And they don't care because (in a literal sense, not an angsty teenage sense) what does it matter? I remember it contrasting really strongly to earlier in the series, when they're always talking about doing assignments and homework etc, and it stuck in my mind even though it's basically just a throwaway sentence or paragraph because it really underlined how much darker/harder/PTSD-ridden the later books are compared to the first 20 or so (which weren't exactly smooth sailing to begin with).
It's part of a transition out of the superhero trope of balancing your crazy saving-the-world life with your regular life, and you can see the end of the war looming on the horizon, and it does not feel like a good ending. It feels ominous.
edit - as a kid when I started reading the first few books, there was no doubt in my mind that as hard as the struggle was, the Animorphs/Andalites would eventually save the world and beat the Yeerks. I'm pretty sure by this point - even as a kid! - I was no longer confident at all that that was how the series would end.
Also the start of this book totally reminded me of the start of this trailer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q38yi0NmAm0
Chapter 5
quote:
It really was a cell. Maybe twelve by twelve. But it didn't look very institutional. What it looked like was the remodeling job from hell. A bizarre fusion of decaying early-century architecture and modern metallic installations.
Two walls of bubbling plaster rose twelve feet to a carved crown molding. An old porcelain sink basin stuck out in one corner. Hardwood flooring ran underfoot and spilled over into filthy yellow linoleum about halfway across.
Applied over all this old stuff was a second phase of construction. Brightly colored metallic retrofits sprouted from two gray, synthetic walls. I stood up and walked toward a purple, kidney shaped pedestal. The top slid off to reveal a golden cone. It was decorated - I guess - with a border of luminescent tubing.
Flit, flit, flit. Sheets of soft paper shot at me from a slit in the wall and floated to the floor.
Flit, flit, flit. More paper.
Whoooosh!
A violent suction nearly pulled my pant leg down the cone. The luminous tubing dimmed. The kidney lid slid shut.
"Evacuation complete!" said the jarring computer voice. I almost smiled. Whoever or whatever held me prisoner here was powerful, but they had a toilet that was out of order.
I moved to a tray colored brilliant fuchsia. It sat beside an electric blue cylinder. Ghastly stalks retracted the tubes into the wall as I walked closer.
Whoop. Bam.
I stared.
Whoop. Bam.
They reappeared, steaming with crisp bacon and scrambled eggs. Orange juice swirled in a blue beaker.
I certainly wasn't hungry.
I moved on to a long, narrow panel, solid but translucent. Faint natural light shone through it. My pulse quickened. A window? Maybe I could escape that way.
Shleep!
The wall absorbed the panel and revealed an opening three inches wide. A sliver of window.
Heavy, cool air tunneled in and caressed my face. I pressed my eyes closed, then opened them, and there ...
Structures, hundreds of them, rose beneath me, soared above me. Glass, steel, concrete, masonry. All jutting toward a simmering, red-cast sky. An urban jungle.
But just like my cell, the city looked as though it had suffered modifications at the hands of a deranged contractor. Chaotic clumps of black machinery clung, like unwelcome growths, to the skyscrapers' sides. Sickly deformations of a century's architectural monuments.
A few buildings were completely covered over by this industrial appliqué, like a ship's hull overrun with barnacles. A tree trunk strung with parasitic ...
The word left me with a very uneasy feeling.
Parasitic ...
Two fighters zoomed into my narrow field of vision. Their red lights blazed a streak across the cityscape.
Oh. Crap.
Yeerk fighters.
They headed for a distant pack of skyscrapers, an ominous elevation that studded the horizon like giant chipped and broken teeth in the mouth of some mythical hockey goalie. Two of the buildings looked familiar. Shimmering rectangles. Twin towers.
The World Trade Center!
New York. This must be ... except for ...
Yeerk fighters out in the open? That meant ... that meant they'd launched an open attack. Visser Three. They'd gained enough forces to forget stealth and secrets, and wage a totally in-your-face war!
DE-DEET! DE-DEET!
The alarm sounded again.
"Facility air quality jeopardized!" The computer voice was more authoritative now. The window cover began to shut, closing off my sliver of city.
Oh, no you don't! I reached up and grabbed the panel. Forced it back.
One of those fighters wasn't Yeerk.
Only one was a Bug fighter. Only one was a legless cockroach with two serrated spears.
The other held its shredder raked high over the fuselage, pointing forward. Like an Andalite tail poised for combat.
It was an Andalite craft. But grossly modified. Engines that should have glowed a cool blue instead burned a fiery red.
I fought the window cover. I had to see!
The two fighters rocketed through the sky. They buzzed through the sticky, filmy cloud that swelled above the city like fallout from a colossal explosion.
"Continued idleness prohibited!" The sharp computer voice broke through the monotonous, mind-filling hum from outside.
The fighters banked in tandem, slowed and hovered. Touched down on a platform connecting the World Trade towers.
I let the window cover slam shut.
There was no war being waged after all.
The war, it seemed, was over.
The fact that this was written before 9/11 gives us a World Trade Towers cameo. Also, Jake is surprisingly into interior design and this is a remarkably ugly room. But it has an breakfast plant. Which raises another question. Do you think controllers enjoy eating. I mean, we know from Ax that Andalites do...it makes him freak out. But lets say you're a Yeerk. You're used to swimming around the Kandrona pool absorbing nutrients, and then you get a host who needs to eat too. You think you enjoy eating? I'd think it would be an overwhelming feeling, taste.
Chapter 6
quote:
Tssssst.
The cell door opened and ejected me with a burst of air into the dim hallway of an old apartment house. I heard the hiss of other panel doors opening and closing at the same time. Tall, fit humans dressed in brightly colored jumpsuits swarmed into the corridor.
I wanted to yell. I wanted to grab the nearest person and shake him and scream, "What is this crazy place?"
But instinct told me to keep my mouth shut. Find the answers yourself, it said. Observe. Don't trust these strangers. Use them.
I let the orange and green and yellow suits sweep me up in their mass exodus down the hall. The wind grew stronger. The ghostly whir and hum I'd heard through the cell window churned louder and louder, until at last it vibrated every particle of air like a thousand-piece orchestra of different-sized
fans.
The building wall at the end of the hall had been knocked out. Everyone was stepping through the rough opening. And I followed - curious and terrified - out onto the crowded, open-air docking bay.
"Step up!" An impersonal computer voice cut through the whoosh of engines and flooded my ears. I realized I was blocking traffic.
I tripped forward toward a line of SUV-sized craft that hovered in the air at floor level, doors open, inhaling small groups of colored jumpsuits. And every few seconds ...
Woooooosh!
One took off from the apartment building and fell away in a controlled tumble, careening toward the streets three hundred feet below.
I stumbled past the blinking red lights that ran from nose to tail on every craft and bathed the docking bay and passengers in a sinister, pulsing glow. Stepped into what looked like a stripped down Bug fighter. No weaponry or combat stations. Just a pod with seats and windows. A floating, high-tech subway car.
The instant I fell onto a seat, a belt shot across my chest. Another drew tight over my legs.
Before I could panic ...
Shoo-shoo-shoo.
The unmanned hovercraft drew power. A deep computer voice boomed, "Midtown express."
Doors clicked shut and ... Sheeeeeeooo!
Into an aerial roll! Hanging upside down! My stomach went goofy. Gray high-rises shot past.
Other hovercraft streaked past the windows.
"Hey." A human voice cut through the hum.
We banked right. Flipped a sudden 180 degrees. And leveled off, upright, soaring parallel to the street grid below.
"Hey, Essak-Twenty-Four-Twelve-Seven-Five!" The male voice was friendly. I felt a hand on my shoulder. I flinched, but turned.
A guy in a green suit, strapped to the seat to my left, stared at me with icy blue eyes. Green Suit was talking to me!
My heart hammered. My head began to pound.
"When's the launch?" he said.
I stared blankly back at him, unable to speak as we traced a slalom course between buildings.
The launch? What launch?
Air brakes rose to a frenzied roar. The hovercraft grazed a landing dock. The computer voice boomed, "Middle management!" Everyone suited in green rose and filed out.
Green Suit flashed a mischievous smile. "Mr. Hotshot Scientist forget to have his coffee?"
He disappeared into the crowd. The doors clicked closed.
That green suit ... that green suit had called me by what I knew had to be a Yeerk name.
Yep, just a bunch of Yeerks hanging out, commuting.
an instant bacon and eggs dispenser... maybe the yeerks aren't all bad
And the tesla hyperpods run on time too
And the tesla hyperpods run on time too
Would the poor unfortunate Yeerk who got Elon Musk as a host be able to finally wrangle all of his mental bullshit to heel, or would Musk manage to brainworm the Yeerk into his ADHD-addled madness?
You think, if the dog ever catches the proverbial car, and the Yeerks gain complete control over Earth, there would be some humans among the 8 billion of us currently extant whom the Yeerks would, after about five minutes being inside of, just go "...Nope!"?
You think, if the dog ever catches the proverbial car, and the Yeerks gain complete control over Earth, there would be some humans among the 8 billion of us currently extant whom the Yeerks would, after about five minutes being inside of, just go "...Nope!"?
It's not the same thing, but we know from one of the Megamorphs books that Visser Four's host annoyed him enough reciting the Agincourt Speech from Henry V that he was willing to go back and kill Henry V so the play would never be wrriten.
It's not the same thing, but we know from one of the Megamorphs books that Visser Four's host annoyed him enough reciting the Agincourt Speech from Henry V that he was willing to go back and kill Henry V so the play would never be wrriten.
That was amazing, seriously.
Kinda interesting that Jake's immediate reaction to this frightening situation isn't to morph to insect or whatever, like Marco suddenly finding himself in D-Day. Yeerks or no, morphing would be my instinctive response to any kind of threat at this point.
Chapter 7
quote:
We shot high. Skimmed the tops of tall towers. The Chrysler Building filled the windows. Streamlined and whimsical, just like in the photo my mom had in her office. All rounded edges and gleaming stainless steel and ...
Wait a minute. I looked closer and saw it was covered in some kind of sack. A silver sheath, draped like a giant deflated gift balloon. Busy workers moved about on platforms jutting from the skin at all levels.
My mind was swimming ...
Even the Chrysler Building. Transformed.
Swimming ...
That green suit had called me by a Yeerk name ...
I wasn't Yeerk. How could I be? What was going on?
When a Yeerk slug slithers through your ear canal, when it melds and flattens into every crevice of your brain, you know it's happening. Trust me, you know. Because you can't eat or talk or call up memories unless the Yeerk lets you. You're a helpless observer of an endless nightmare. A prisoner in your own head.
I was no prisoner. My eyes moved freely. My legs, when they weren't strapped to a hovercraft seat, walked where I told them to walk. Why wouldn't whoever was responsible for this just talk to me?
Until today, I'd been the leader ...
No! I still was the leader of a small but powerful resistance to the Yeerk invasion. A group of six kids, five humans and an Andalite. We call ourselves Animorphs because of our secret weapon, the power to morph into any animal we touch. We fight the Yeerk invaders, led by Visser Three. Those slimy parasitic aliens who've come to Earth to enslave our bodies because without host bodies,
Yeerks aren't much more than the wriggling, helpless worms you avoid on the sidewalk after it rains. There was no Yeerk in my brain. I was no human-Controller.
Not Essak-Twenty-Four-whatever.
No! It's ...
"Jake! My name is Jake!"
The words slipped out before I could stop them. Pierced the relative silence of the cabin. "What's the matter with you?" said a yellow-suit with an accent. Eight pairs of eyes fixed on me. Eight faces I might have taken to be your average, ethnically diverse, cross section of New York
commuters.
Emphasis on "might have."
Because there was one crucial giveaway.
They'd reacted to me.
See, I'd been to New York before. A class trip. I may not have noticed much of the cultural stuff I was supposed to have noticed, but I noticed one thing. You can shout Hamlet's soliloquy or scream Limp Bizkit lyrics, you can blare "The Star-Spangled Banner" or stomp an American flag, and no one - I mean no one - will give you the time of day. They'll look you over, but then they'll walk right on.
All I'd said was, "My name is Jake." And these guys were on me like I'd driven a Kawasaki into their living rooms.
I forced a smile. These weren't New Yorkers. These were human-Controllers. These were Yeerks.
Watch your step, Jake.
I cleared my throat. "My host," I said. "Sometimes I still ... have trouble. You know, controlling him."
The craft stopped again. "Medicine," the computer voice declared.
"They have pills for that now," Yellow Suit answered. "You should visit the clinic."
He rose and shuffled out. Seven other yellow suits filed out after him. The doors closed. We twisted away from the landing dock. Just me and one other orange suit.
A short ride.
"Research and development. End of the line." The orange suit questioned me when I didn't rise.
"Going to the clinic," I said smoothly. "Not well." I pointed at my head. She gave me a look of understanding. The doors closed behind her.
I was alone.
"My name is JAKE!" I yelled. And then I yelled it again.
And for a second, I thought I would lose it. Really lose it. Start screaming stuff like, "I don't wear jumpsuits, I wear jeans! I'm not twenty-five, I'm a kid! I'm not a Controller, I'm free."
But I didn't. Chances were that someone, somewhere, was watching. At least that's what my gut told me. I've learned to trust my gut.
Down, down, down. The craft fell like a parachute, bobbing slightly with the buffets of wind, descending slowly toward street level.
I looked out over a small park. A fraction the size of Central Park. Trampling the crusty, late winter grass was a mass of bodies. Blue and tan fur. Hooves. Stalk eyes. The bodies were assembled in orderly, disciplined rows. Maybe fifty across and a hundred lengthwise. A fog horn blared and they stopped and turned, changing directions.
Captive Andalites. And they were feeding.
My spine felt like a live lightning rod. A world with Andalite-Controllers is no world at all.
In the world I know there is only one Andalite-Controller. And he's a sad mistake. Any conscious Andalite warrior would use his tail blade on himself before he'd let himself be captured.
The craft buzzed just feet above the street, passing rows of blacked-out windows on rundown facades. The ship entered a large, open space. A sort of parking lot. A paved triangle filled with other hovercraft. The engines were cut. The craft docked.
I didn't know what world this was. I didn't know what time this was. A world before or after or parallel to mine? A bizarre reality that had somehow imposed itself on the one I was used to accepting?
My own personal nightmare?
I didn't know. But I knew the Yeerks were strong in this place. They owned this city. They owned the people in it.
But they didn't own me.
As long as I was free and in control of my mind, there was a chance - no - the certainty that I could find out what was going on.
And then maybe, just maybe, somehow - even in this strange place - I could find the others and together we could ...
The doors opened and I dropped to the concrete. My heart was back to its regular rhythm. My mind calmed and focused on a single thought.
"Jake," I breathed quietly, "you didn't plan this one, but now it's time to deal."
Not to state the obvious, but this is a future where the Yeerks won the war.
Chapter 8
quote:
Ever imagine a scenario where world leaders lose their minds, fire up those intercontinental ballistic missiles and nuke the whole planet? Ever think what it would be like to step out of the shelter, after the worst of the residue cleared, into some kind of postapocalyptic wasteland?
Well, there I was, stepping out into the wasteland of Times Square. The desolate ground zero of some neutron bomb. A stage set, minus the cast of characters. The whole place coated in menacing silence.
Sure, five hundred feet overhead roared a Yeerk metropolis. But down here, down at street level ... no taxis clanking over manhole covers. No kamikaze bike messengers daring traffic. No giddy groups of camera-toting tourists. No sharply dressed natives surging like lemmings in and out of highrises.
The only life was the buzz of giant, electrified billboards a hundred feet overhead. You know, those big, bold ads that make Times Square famous? I scanned. Not even close to the endorsements for Coca-Cola or JVC or Calvin Klein I remembered.
"You can go home again." The words flickered like an electrical storm above the image of a darkened planet. What looked like thick, headless cattle roamed beneath the words against a pukegreen sky. Sickly, low-lying trees grew horizontally, like lengthy fingers of barbed wire. "Tired of the city?" another billboard read. "Make the Yeerk home world your home, too. Transports leaving noon and midnight, first of each cycle, Yeerk Empire State Building."
And at the bottom, in smaller print, were the words "High Council Division for the Relocation of Unfit and Insurrectionist Hosts." These words were sprayed over by the graffiti tag "EF."
I stopped in my tracks. The tagger's letters weren't some preconquest relic. They were new. They were fresh. They were angry.
Unfit and Insurrectionist Hosts?
A tinge of hope swelled against the well-anchored caution and fear in my mind. Was there a rebellion going on here? A resistance group somewhere? If I had allies in this town, I had to find them.
But I needed to find the others first. They had to be here, too, right? Only where? In normal NYC, Marco could be in any video arcade in Manhattan, Rachel in any Express from Midtown to SoHo. I looked at the busted-up storefronts and littered streets. Were there parts of the ground-city that still functioned normally? I wasn't ready to bet on it.
All at once I realized Cassie would be easiest to find. A park. She'd be in a park and I'd seen one of those. She'd be feeding the pigeons and ...
BAMBAMBAMBAMBAMBAMBAMBAM!
I hit the ground.
BAMBAMBAMBAMBAMBAMBAMBAM!
Machine-gun fire. I rolled behind a kiosk and searched for the source.
TSEEEW! TSEEEW!
Dracon fire return, followed by a piercing human cry. A shoot-out at the other end of Times Square? The echo of weapon fire died away and was replaced by a clacking. A clicking. Clawed feet scratching over concrete. Weird, half-whistled words ...
"Ssssssnit waaanaaa!" The loud, arrogant rasping drew snickering agreement from slobbering mouths.
I edged around the kiosk, and sure enough ...
Taxxons.
A gang of them. Six or eight. Swaggering up from Forty-Second Street, straight toward me. Bandoliers of energy ammo and handheld Dracon-beams crisscrossed their massive centipede bodies. Horrific scars striped their bloated chests.
I fought the urge to sprint. I needed to play the part of a Controller, and a Controller wouldn't run. But I had to get away! I was out of place at ground level. As far as I could see, I was the only human on the street and it didn't take long to guess why that might be. No Taxxon encounter had ever ended well. Why expect something new?
Where to go?
The McDonald's on the corner was a burned-out shell. The golden arches lay crushed and dim on the sidewalk. I'd be a sitting duck.
The high-rise lobby was all glass. No cover.
Suddenly.
"TSSEEERRR!"
A raptor's cry. A swishing of wings. Out of nowhere! A red-tailed hawk buzzed my head. He looked ancient. Thin, with feathers missing and skin taut around the eyes. He sailed into the steam cloud over a subway grate.
I blinked ...
Gone. He was gone!
"Tobias?"
No answer. A mirage?
"Ssssreee sreeenaaaa!"
I jerked back. I'd stepped out from behind the kiosk. The Taxxon gang leader had spotted me. Claw arms skittered. His speed increased to an all-out lumber.
I don't know. I sort of wonder why the shuttle is preprogrammed to land at ground level if it's....well, like this.
Morph, dickhead!
I will definitely give the ghostwriter this: they are much more descriptive and better at painting an evocative picture than some of the other ghostwriters we've had.
Also:
- "they have pills for that now" is way more disturbing than I remember it being as a kid. Not only are you a slave in your own body we're gonna drug your captive mind up, too.
- The billboards advertising returning to the Yeerk homeworld are probably just a bit of Blade Runner-esque colour the ghostwriter didn't think too much about, but they suggest that the war being over also means the Yeerk empire has become less totalitarian and restrictive, at least to the extent that individual Yeerks now have a choice about where they live.
- The billboards advertising returning to the Yeerk homeworld are probably just a bit of Blade Runner-esque colour the ghostwriter didn't think too much about, but they suggest that the war being over also means the Yeerk empire has become less totalitarian and restrictive, at least to the extent that individual Yeerks now have a choice about where they live.
Maybe. The ad is put up by the "High Council Division for the Relocation of Unfit and Insurrectionist Hosts", though, which seems ominous.
99% sure the pills don't do shit.
Maybe. The ad is put up by the "High Council Division for the Relocation of Unfit and Insurrectionist Hosts", though, which seems ominous.
Well, if there's one thing the Yeerks love, it's bureaucracy...
I'm Visser 21 and I think I speak for all of us in the High Council Division for the Relocation of Insurrectionist and Unfit Hosts when I say we're sick of the traitors and FOOLS in the failing RUIH Division
Chapter 9
quote:
Steam. The subway. Go!
I ran for the subway entrance and took the steps three at a time. Wham! I burst through the rustedout gate.
"Ugh!" A horrible stench. A humid rot. The foul scent of ... Taxxons.
I gasped for breath in the hot stink of the cavern.
"Who are you?"
"Yahh!" I almost had another heart attack. My head slammed the scissored turnstile in surprise. A guy, a human, only three feet tall but an adult, looked up at me quizzically. He whipped the stack of flyers he was carrying behind his back. I thought I saw the letters "EF," but I wasn't sure.
"What'd you do to get sent down here?" The way he said it freaked me out. Like some jury had sentenced me to a horrible fate.
I was still struggling for breath.
The guy shrugged and continued. "You won't last long down here. No one does."
I heard the gate bang open one flight up. The sound of skittering Taxxon feet. The little guy's eyes widened. He turned and ran.
I followed.
Down a white-tiled tunnel that narrowed and narrowed until my shoulders scraped the sides. Then into a still smaller channel that brought me to my knees. I crawled wildly through dampness. The Taxxon war cries grew fainter. Then, a new sound. Weak moans and muffled cries that filled the almost total darkness.
We emerged into a wide, domed hall with a stagnant, toxic puddle at its center. Clustered around this shallow, filthy water - cramped and miserable - was a sampling of human and alien life. A horrific sampling.
Clumsy Gedds loped along at a snail's pace. Battered Hork-Bajir, missing arms or legs or both, huddled around a glowing pit. Human children, and maimed or disabled adults, lay on thin, soiled mats. Battle-scarred Andalites, some minus tail blades and others without stalk eyes, milled restlessly. The stench was profound. The moans were heartrending.
It was the eyes that told the story, though. Defeated, dejected. Living death.
At the sound of our abrupt entrance, most turned and tensed. Weak as they were, they were ready to run. Not fight. That was clear.
"What is this?" I gasped. "Who are you?" The fumes made me light-headed.
The little guy interrupted his whispers of reassurance to a group of human kids. "Depends who you ask," he said. "The Emperor calls us fugitives. The EF calls us refugees. I call us casualties. Casualties of the Fitness Policy. But it doesn't really matter, does it? We're all prey." He smiled. "Your body is strong. You must suffer mental illness?"
I could hardly argue. "I must."
"Ah." His tone turned gentler, more condescending. "Take heart, friend. At least with your strong body you stand a chance against the Taxxon Special Force. With our help, you may last a month. Perhaps even two."
My vision was wigging out. The little guy's face seemed to approach and recede. The stench was eating away my brain. I moved back toward the tunnel and began to scrabble through.
"No," he cried, alarmed. "You must stay with us. Alone you won't last two hours!"
I had to get above ground. I was desperate for air. I was going to pass out.
Back down the tunnel. Left turn, left again. Onto the platform of a subway station. The light was dim and reddish.
Suddenly ...
Massive suction!
I was being pulled toward the rails by an intense, all-consuming suction! I had to fight against it! I ran for the exit, but I was barely moving forward. Like that horrible nightmare where your legs feel like fifty-pound weights. Or you're running through water.
I looked down at the rails ten feet below. They were covered in a dirt-packed ooze, seething and twisting with Taxxons!
It was a living stream of Taxxons. Traveling, legs pulled in. Being sucked like lugers along an underground highway, red eyes jiggling as they flew past.
This was Taxxon Mass Transit.
And I was six feet from being sucked in with them!
"Ahh!"
THWAP! thaap!
THWAP!
Two Taxxons rolled out of the suction stream. Lumbered onto the platform! Mouths full of razor sharp teeth snapped for me. Hundreds of clawed feet powered toward me.
Noooo!
I grabbed for a bench and pulled myself closer to it, fighting the intense suction. Then past it. I grabbed for the trash can bolted to the floor, pulled myself past. Column! Bench! Sign! Trash can!
I looked over my shoulder. The Taxxons were struggling against the suction, too, but they were bigger and they knew something I didn't. They had dropped to the floor and were slinking along.
Racing like salamanders.
Bench! Column! Column! Pull!
They would overtake me.
Gate!
I flung it open. The exit stairs! I strained. I reached.
"Ahhhhhhhhhh!"
Something cut into my leg. I twisted. Jammed a fist into an airbag chest. Slammed the gate on gaping jaws and a probing tongue.
Then I clambered toward daylight. Up, up, up. Sweating. Gasping. Leg nearly crippled with pain. Head throbbing from running into the turnstile.
The street! The pavement! Gasping breath after breath of fresh air, I collapsed. Rolled onto my back. And froze.
I wasn't alone.
So those would have been the "unfit hosts" he met before.
Chapter 10
quote:
"Gehhhtuupoorraanjjsoooot!"
Words like a waterfall of syllables, strung tightly together.
Totally incomprehensible.
"Wutryoodooingindtheaghetoo?"
Okay. This was a dream. That was the only possible explanation. But what felt like very real pain from the Taxxon bite shot up what felt like my very real leg.
Right then I decided that this was a world I might never be able to figure out. And if I didn't stop trying to, I'd crack up. Effective immediately, my goal would be simpler: Just get out of this place alive, body and soul intact.
I tried not to let the two forms in front of me, roughly human in outline except for a third leg and a seriously long neck, freak me too much. But it was hard.
See, each of them had only one eye, a big, internally lit thing that fixed on me like a follow spot. At the center of the eye was an iris, roughly like ours except for the faint amber and gray glow.
But you know how our pupils are in the middle of our irises? Not the case here. I was looking at pupils that orbited the iris like slow, optical satellites. These eyes studied me with all the suspicion of secret service agents at a presidential appearance. They seemed to stare right through me. Though it's more accurate to say I stared through them.
Because I was looking at blue lungs that filled and deflated with speech. And two bright green hearts pumping pale yellow blood through crystal clear veins. Miles of intestines coiled tightly near a swath of faintly reddish muscle.
Their skin was as clear as glass or water. Clearer, since there was next to no distortion as I stared at the organs beneath.
Specimens a biology teacher would die for. Although on whatever planet they were from, survival of the fittest was obviously not an issue. I mean, I was staring right at a beating heart. A perfect target.
Amber Eye stepped forward and yanked me to my feet. He repeated his question. All of a sudden, the rhythm in the speech, the slightly different note that filled each word ... The pattern. It all made sense. It clicked.
"Get-up-Orange-Suit!" he said. "What-are-you-doing-in-the-ghetto? Work-truancy-is-a-crime! Why-aren't-you-at-your-work-site?" A nearly invisible finger flicked something pinned to my chest.
Then he looked up, way up, at the Chrysler Building with its Mylar sheath whipping with the wind.
There was a badge on my jumpsuit that hadn't been there before. At least, I hadn't noticed it. There was a hologram of me, and my Yeerk name written out. There were numbers corresponding to housing, work site, and work sector. Under the words "job title" was the term "Planetary Engineer."
I gaped like an idiot. These guys were some street-level security force? I worked in the Chrysler Building?
"Maybe this is the place for this mute," Silver Eye sneered. "Looks like he's had a breakdown. Can you tell us where you live, Orange Suit?" He growled patronizingly while fingering a pair of redtinted handcuffs. "Or can't you remember?"
They could see where I lived. But I guess they just wanted me to say. I looked at my badge and tried to read the numbers upside down. "I, uh ..."
RrrrrrrrrBoomBoom ... RrrrrrrrrBoooooom ...
The earth shook and a deafening boom thundered through the street. Amber Eye spun around, then spun back and grabbed me. Dragged me with him as he moved with startling speed toward the sound of the explosion. Silver Eye followed.
"Floor eighty-eight," I said, faking an answer. "I live in the, uh, the Empire Towers." I thought that sounded pretty good.
"Don't be sarcastic, Orange Suit." He reached forward and slid the cuffs over my wrists. "You think I don't know that floors eighty-seven to ninety-two are a docking port? You're coming with us."
"Under whose authority?"
I struggled, but the cuffs were some living, organic material. The more I resisted, the tighter they squeezed.
The creatures laughed heartily, a sound like a trilling trumpet. "We're the Orff, fool. Security agents to the High Council. We're our own authority."
Rrrrrrrr Boooooooooommmmm!
Another massive boom and cloud of dust.
The Orff turned away from me.
I made a break for it.
"Hey!"
Silver Eye grabbed for me. I wrestled free from him and shot around the corner, limping from my Taxxon bite, moving toward a billowing dust cloud. But the Orff followed me. His tripod legs moved like quicksilver. Then he was on me. We struggled as the chaos grew around us.
I heard the distant sirens of approaching hover ships. The whistled lisps of Taxxon as they burst onto the street, spilling from three-hundred-foot earthen hives built up between buildings along the block, surging like beastly commandos.
What was this? What was happening?
Could I morph? I tried to focus. Tried to think ...
And then everything flashed a blinding yellow-white, like I was a bug inside some flashbulb. All was noiseless, but only for a second. Then -
BOOM.
BOOM.
BOOM!
The pavement heaved and thumped as deafening pressure waves threw everyone in the street to the ground. All down the block, entire building fronts were instantly reduced to lethal waterfalls of shattering glass and stone.
I raised my head toward what appeared to be the source of the explosion. A tremendous skyscraper, towering hundreds of feet, a fireball at its base, teetered hesitatingly, like a circus performer on a tightrope.
My mouth opened in disbelief as the building's graceful, tentative sway gave way to decisive instability. As the lowest ten or twenty stories disintegrated in a cloud of dust. Then the entire structure sailed toward Earth. Faster ... faster ... toppling in a single rigid section. Falling ... falling ... then -
A thunderous concussion as the building ruptured and broke in two, missing the Chrysler Building by what seemed like a hair.
Concussion after concussion battered the Manhattan bedrock. I should have taken the chance to disappear.
But it was all I could do to crawl to a doorway and lie there, as a choking cloud of white dust engulfed me and a spattering of small debris rained down from the sky.
Then heavier particles, chunks of steel and concrete, were pummeling the street. And then everything went black.
So we have a new alien race, the Orff!
these were cool aliens I remember!
quote:
This was Taxxon Mass Transit.
And I was six feet from being sucked in with them!
"Ahh!"
THWAP! thaap!
THWAP!
This series' onomatopoeia has become so ingrained that I automatically assumed an Andalite had shown up here (though in fact I think I'm wrong and an Andalite tail blade goes FWAP)
This series' onomatopoeia has become so ingrained that I automatically assumed an Andalite had shown up here (though in fact I think I'm wrong and an Andalite tail blade goes FWAP)
Haha, so it's not just me.
Although Andalites have FWAPP too, don't they? Did the really buff marooned Andalite from a few books back produce a FWOPPP of something?
Chapter 11
quote:
Sirens blared. A splitting pain numbed my head.
I opened my eyes to piles of rubble. Spewing geysers from burst watermains. Fires crackling, ripping through entire buildings. Hundreds of patrol ships on the scene. Taxxons savagely herding the injured into transports, satisfying their raging hunger by disposing of the dead right there and then.
The Orff were gone. The cuffs, somehow, vanished. Apparently, when you're in Yeerk Land and you hear sirens and they're coming to get you, you don't wait around. You move. I sprinted from the doorway.
"Ahhrgh!"
And slammed smack into a purple suit. Before I could regain balance, I was looking down the barrel of a handheld Dracon.
Yeerk Land definitely had it in for me.
I looked past the barrel, past the arm. Into the eyes of a dark female figure covered head-to-foot in dust. Blood dripped from even features. As our eyes met, her expression changed. It flashed from ruthless hatred to a mysterious mix of confusion, disbelief, tenderness, and anger. My chest heaved involuntarily because this woman ... This woman ... my memory ... "Ah!"
Without warning she shoved me out of the way.
TSEEEW!
Whumph.
Taxxon guts spilled onto the pavement as the bloated worm, teeth bared, skidded to a halt just shy of my legs. Three seconds more and my butt would have been nothing more than a pleasant Taxxon aftertaste.
The woman darted ahead. I sprinted after her.
She'd saved my life.
But it was for more than that that I followed.
With the agility of a triathlete, she scampered down a narrow alley mounded with discarded remnants of human society. A broken piano. Couch carcasses. Some rusting motorcycles. All of it covered over now in a fresh mountain of concrete, re-bar, and fragments of still-steaming sheet metal. I called to her. "Hey, wait." She paused and turned back.
I rushed eagerly forward and her face turned strange again like she was searching her mind, searching ...
TSEEEW!
"Hey! What the ..."
She'd fired at me, igniting the air over my head. Then she disappeared through a large metal door opening off the alley, a side entrance to a tall brick building.
Was that a warning shot? Or just bad aim?
A gang of Taxxons flowed down the alley and followed her inside. I picked up a piece of metal and swung it like a thug, trying to show I was ready to fight. They snarled, but amazingly, they ran right by.
One thing was clear. They were after the woman.
I flung open the thick metal door and ran into the mottled darkness. Light filtered through a partially blown off roof and illuminated velvety curtains, a stage, an orchestra pit - a vast space lined with rows of seats and tiers of balconies. I moved down the carpeted aisle, hoisted myself onto the stage littered with broken flats.
TSEEEW! TSEEEW!
Dracon fire lit the air. A 500-pound mass of Taxxon meat fell from the grid, whistling past a wall of ropes and rigging.
WHUMP.
It shook the floor. An exploded balloon. And boy, did it stink.
The woman streaked behind a drop painted with a scenic country setting. There was a red barn and green pasture. Horses and farm animals grazed in the background.
But no sooner had she disappeared than ...
TSEEEW!
She burned a Dracon hole in the faded canvas landscape and vaulted through. Chasing after her were three of the fastest Taxxons I'd ever seen. She stumbled, running backward, firing her weapon again and again. But the discharges grew weaker and weaker, pathetic slaps in the face to the hulking Taxxons.
And I was weaponless!
I looked up at row upon row of heavy lights. I wondered ...
I ran into the wings, where the myriad ropes converge in neat rows anchored by stacks of steel weights.
I threw open the latch that fixed a rope to its stack of anchors. Whooooosh!
An ethereal cloth backdrop came billowing down, deftly covering the predators and the prey below. Not happening.
The Taxxons continued to surge forward until at last, the woman's faulty weapon wouldn't fire anymore. She hurled it at the closest Taxxon, but it was like a toy in his mouth. It was swallowed up without hesitation.
I frantically disconnected rope after rope. The racing whine of pulleys filled my ears as a whole batten of heavy stage lights came crashing to the floor. And then another. And another.
I let myself look. Three bloated Taxxons were pinned to the floor, writhing. Still caught under the delicate scrim net.
I ran to the woman. Her arm was being crushed by a now-limp Taxxon. Her body was washed in a puddle of vile drool. She flinched as I neared her, still ready to fight.
I bent low and freed her arm. She finally seemed to understand that I wasn't going to hurt her.
Our eyes met.
"Cassie."
I wanted to hug her. Tell her everything was okay. That she was brave. That we would make it out alive.
But her eyes were like a wall or a mask. I searched them for the peace and sensitivity they used to hold.
Neither was there.
Her lips curled into a fake smile, a very un-Cassie-like look. And she finally spoke. "So. You're not dead."
It's Cassie. She's....changed.
Chapter 12
quote:
I answered with a smile, the kind of look I'd have given her if we were back in the world I knew."
This city's been doing all it can to kill me. But no, I'm not dead. I've been alone. Where are the others? How ... how did you get here?"
She didn't answer, but swung her legs over the stage apron, heaved a sigh, and dropped into the orchestra pit. I followed her down, where she stooped in a corner and uncovered a stashed case.
"Cassie, what's going on?" It wasn't like her to ignore me. She didn't even look up. "I got into bed, just last night, I think," I continued. "I was at home, living with my family. We'd just come back from our last messed-up mission. Remember? I wake up this morning and I'm freakin' twenty-five years old. With a beard and no memory of the decade in between. Is this Crayak? The Ellimist?"
"I haven't thought of those names in years," she said. Her tone was not nostalgic. She was rummaging through the case, I guessed for bandages to fix a splint to her arm. The case was filled with first-aid supplies, five or six handheld Dracons, another purple suit, emergency food rations, and ...
She turned her head just in time to see my eyes widen.
Spools of blast cord. Blocks of plastic explosives. Detonators. Dynamite. A crazy mix of low and high-tech destructive potential.
"I take it you're not with the EF?" she said.
I shook my head.
"The Evolutionist Front. The Yeerk rebel group? You know, the so-called Insurrectionists, dedicated to turning away from parasitism and toward the use of artificially created symbiotes?"
She shoved a Dracon into my hand and took two for herself. And then I glimpsed an emergency Kandrona particle emitter as she closed the case.
"You're a Controller?"
She laughed. "What else would I be? My Yeerk's name is Niss. We're in the EF together. We cooperate to fight the Council. I led the team responsible for the blast this morning. That's why the Taxxons like me so much. The damage will set them back, even though we didn't hit the ... "
"What!" An uncontrollable wave of nausea knotted my chest. It was like hearing my dad confess to being a drug pusher or a murderer. It was an impossibility. "Cassie, what are you saying? You engineered a blast that must have killed hundreds of refugees, the very people the EF is trying to help? That makes you a terrorist! How can you possibly justify that?"
"In a war, Jake, anything is justified." She spoke with an unnerving confidence. "I'm not a kid anymore. I'm not concerned with the nonsense I used to be."
"Like life and peace? You think that's nonsense now! Don't you remember our last mission - the Ragsin Building battle? The comedown? You needed to talk when we got out and I turned you away. Just didn't want to deal with it. I was an idiot that night, Cassie. You were on target with your doubts, just like you always were. You have to realize that."
She laughed dismissively. "You're talking about a different lifetime, Jake. There were so many missions back then. All just a pitiful blur of youthful idealism. You don't get it, do you? I'm saying that I finally understand war."
The way she was speaking, the way she was sort of talking down to me, made me feel like I was about as important to her as a screw in the stage floor.
Was there really no connection between us? Was my friend so changed?
"The Taxxons own the subway," I said. "The Orff rule the streets. Cassie, if you look around, it's obvious that somehow we lost our chance to win this war."
"The war is not lost!" she hissed. Her eyes were on fire. She looked ready to attack me. But then her eyes moved to the badge on my chest and all at once her anger relaxed, then brightened. Her expression changed so quickly it was frightening.
Over a decade of war.....
I was kind of grazing over this after the last AU but this being in a very different context makes it work. It's a good way to examine how the characters would be in situations that couldn't be part of the main canon... which I guess is me saying I appreciate these official fanfictions??
I prefer this one to the Megamorphs book tbh.
I don't remember this one too well, just remember it being very weird. But the real question is why isnt anyone morphing for god's sake
Also forgot to say after constantly talking about how cool it'd be to have a friendly yeerk that lives in your head with you, I'm really excited to see if we get to see anything about that dynamic with these yeerk-team-ups like what Cassie has going on.
Sorry. No chapter today. Tomorrow!
To be fair, all these time skips make it pretty hard to keep track of days.
Sorry. No chapter today. Tomorrow!
Chapter 13
quote:
"You're a planetary engineer? Working on the Chrysler Building project!" Suddenly, I was the most interesting thing in the theater. I didn't know what to say. She moved toward me. Her uninjured arm gripped my arm. Her voice was intense, almost obsessed.
"Jake, the Yeerks want the moon. They want to make it a small, Kandrona-radiating sun. If they succeed, it means an Earth bathed in Kandrona rays for the rest of eternity! It'll be something the EF could never touch and never disable. No one could."
I felt like a customer subjected to an intricate and manipulative sales pitch. The deal-maker was just around the corner, I could feel it. And I knew it somehow involved me.
"Your job brings you closer to the moon-ray technology than anyone in the EF. You know that shell over the Chrysler Building? The Yeerks have been working under there for months, fine-tuning the energy beam that will ignite the moon. The targeting has to be precise. Absolutely precise. The Yeerks need the beam to fire exactly the way you and your team have calculated, or else ..."
She was animated. Her eyes glistened as she stood before me. There was the spark I knew. Only it wasn't love of people or animals that put it there. It was thoughts of sabotage, terrorism, strategy.
And now she was drawing me into it, too.
I brought my fingers to the badge her eyes still fixed on. I yanked it off, breaking her trance.
"Tell me right now! How did we get here? Where are the others? How were you captured? Is this even real?"
Her enthusiasm settled. The fake smile reappeared. She didn't want to answer my questions, but if she wanted my help, she had to.
"If you really don't remember, I'll tell you," she said. "You won't like the answer." She laughed again a little. Less ruthless, more rueful, she looked me in the eyes. "How was I captured? I was betrayed, Jake. By you."
My heart stopped.
"Me!"
"Well, you were a Controller by then, of course. You can thank Tom for that."
"My brother?"
She nodded. "The Yeerk in Tom's head finally put it all together. Clues, maybe. Carelessness. I don't know. But he suspected you of being an 'Andalite bandit' and then one night, he was sure. He planned his attack so well that when it came, you didn't stand a chance."
She continued. "You, Marco, and Ax were taken immediately, in my barn. Rachel was killed outright. They caught me the next day. Only Tobias escaped."
A tightness constricted my throat. Rachel dead?! There was a time when I'd encouraged her recklessness. I'd put her, more than any of the others, in dangerous spots. And Tobias? With a hawk's life span, he'd be dead by now.
Cassie told me all of this matter-of-factly, like I should know the story. Like I should have known that this, all of it, was because of me ...
"Move!"
TSEEEW!
The black metal music stands in front of me vaporized.
"Get down!"
TSEEEW!
Cassie returned fire, striking the Taxxon. He keeled over, falling forward, falling right over the rail above the orchestra pit! Flailing fifteen feet to the floor. Crash! Writhing in agony at our feet.
He was badly wounded, but he'd live. Maybe Cassie'd shot him in the hind quarters on purpose, so he'd survive. All we had to do was run.
I opened the access door to the crawlspace under the stage.
"Cassie, come on!" She ducked in. I followed.
But then she stopped. She turned. She aimed right past me, back through the door.
TSEEEW!
A second hole sizzled through the Taxxon's vital organs, coldly finishing him off.
I looked at Cassie, searched her for an answer, tried to understand eyes ablaze with ruthlessness.
"They're just dogs," she said. "The Orffs' unofficial police squad let loose to catch us so-called terrorists. The Orff don't mind too much if Taxxon hunger gets out of control and they eat us instead of bringing us to the station. An eye for an eye, I say."
I wondered if maybe this was Niss talking. The Yeerk, and not Cassie.
"Come on!" she yelled.
I followed her.
""The creatures outside looked from Yeerk to man, and from man to Yeerk, and from Yeerk to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.""-in homage to Orwell.
Also, I think there's, I don't know, I think it's a red flag when your plan is to blow up the moon.
Chapter 14
quote:
We burst into the street. Ran away from the sound of sirens and hover ships and a still-chaotic crime scene.
Every hundred yards, Cassie turned back to return fire. The Taxxons finally fell off and we stopped at a smashed-up storefront. An old newsstand.
Sweating and panting, I glanced at the racks. The sunburned, wind-tattered cover of an old Sports Illustrated caught my eye. I picked it up.
"My dad ..." I said with surprise. "He just got this issue in the mail!" Cassie looked at the date.
"Yeah," she said flatly, "it's been about ten years. The Yeerk conquest concluded in a matter of weeks after we were captured. Turns out we were more than a thorn in the side of the Empire. We'd actually started to shift the balance."
And then I'd blown it.
I'd gotten careless and cocky and ruthless myself. I'd been too ready to use the others, especially Rachel.
"The others," I said. "Where are they now?"
Cassie paused next to a ratty pile of romance novels. "Ax became a high-ranking Controller.
From what I heard, he was the key player in the Yeerk attack on his home world. The Andalite planet was decimated. Millions died. Tens of thousands of Andalites were taken. EF leadership thinks there are some still free in deep space, but I can't imagine ..."
I sank to the floor beside a stack of yellowed New York Times dated three weeks from the night I fell into bed in spandex bike shorts.
"Tobias became a leader of sorts. Anti-Yeerk."
"Does he - did he - know about Rachel?"
"Yes. As for Marco." Her voice turned colder. "Marco's Visser Two now, in charge of Earth. He's done things ... terrible things."
This wasn't real. I couldn't be hearing this. I didn't believe it.
"The Visser Three you remember was made head of the Council. The supreme Yeerk leader. Emperor."
No. Cassie's Yeerk was feeding me lies. She was wearing me down. She knew ... she knew from Cassie's memory what would get to me, what could make me snap.
But I wouldn't snap! I wasn't crazy. My friends weren't ... No. My friends ... No!
Suddenly, I was running down an empty street. I didn't care that I had nowhere to go. I'd just keep running and running until I collapsed. "Free or die," I repeated to myself. "Free or die!"
"Free or ..."
"Stop it!"
Cassie cut in front of me and pushed me against the wall. Only then did I feel my face streaked with tears. My eyes blurred. My chest heaving.
"It was good luck that I met you, Jake. The job you have as planetary engineer is an incredible chance for the EF." Cassie was intense and obsessed again. "The controlled burn of the moon the Empire is planning? We need to make it uncontrolled. The perfect targeting of the energy beam? We
need it to be off. Exploding the moon will shower the earth with debris. It will knock out satellites, destroy spacecraft, disrupt the entire Yeerk social structure. It will create an opening for attack by the EF. Jake, do you hear me? It will be the opening the EF and free humans have been waiting for."
Two of her words struck my ears like bells. "Free humans?"
"Yes. Small groups still survive in the countryside. Hunted groups of fugitives."
"So, there's hope?"
"I told you the war wasn't lost. But it will be. All hope will be erased if this energy beam fires as the Yeerks want it to. Go to work." She knew I'd help her. She knew she was my leader now. "Live the life your badge describes. Watch, listen, get information, scope things out. But don't act until I contact you. I'll send someone who works with me to give you instructions. We'll need a code word."
Reluctantly, I clipped my badge back onto my jumpsuit. "How about 'peace'?" I said with a weak smile.
Cassie looked at me like I was a naive two-year-old. She reached out and touched my face tenderly. And for an instant, one sweet instant, the mask of hardness lifted. The girl I'd loved was looking back at me.
But she was gone as quickly as she'd come.
"It's too late for peace, Jake. All that's left now is to drive the invaders away by force. Make Earth too dangerous for them. How about a different code word? How about ... 'Animorphs'?"
I agreed and she was gone, leaving me with a Dracon beam in my hand and emptiness in my heart.
Was I on her side? I thought I wanted to be. She'd assumed I would be.
But she was so changed. Driven. Obsessed. Ultrafocused. She'd become a cog in the war machine. But then, who here wasn't?
Was I a pawn in her mind? A mere tool?
I knew the answer.
But I didn't care.
It might help me save her.
So, congrats to Ax, Marco and the former Visser Three on their promotions.
Only nitpick I have is that Symbiotic Cassie would probably not say things like "The Yeerks are gonna light the moon on radioactive fire" but rather "The Empire" or "The Council."
Otherwise, I'm always a sucker for AUs, so keep 'em coming!