E-Book Overview
Jake's finally weakened. After a grisly battle, the Drode offers the Animorphs' leader an escape from the terrifying pressure. He'll reverse the decision to start the Animorphs. Now, there's no morphing, no missions, and no knowledge of the Yeerks. That is, until very strange things begin to happen and Jake, Rachel, Tobias, Cassie, Marco and Ax are forced to confront their new reality.
E-Book Content
Help me." OCRed By Arpit Nathany I tried to get up. There was a body lying on me. Hork-Bajir. His wrist blade was jammed against my side. I tried to lift up with all four legs, lift the dead thing off me. But I only had three legs. My left hind leg lay across the bright-lit floor, a curiosity, a macabre relic. Tiger's paw. I tried to slide. That was better. The floor was wood, highly polished. Slick with blood, animal, alien, human. I reached out with my two front paws, extended the claws, and dug them into the wood. They didn't catch at first. But then my right paw chewed wood and I gained traction. A voice said, "Help. Please help me." 1 I dragged myself slowly, carefully, gingerly out from beneath the bladed alien. The pain in the missing leg was intense. Don't let anyone ever tell you animals don't feel pain. I've been a lot of animals. Mostly they feel pain. It was Cassie. I warned Marco. Rachel came lumbering back into the room, eight hundred pounds of shaggy brown fur and railroad spike claws and a vaguely quizzical grin that hid sharp canines. I said. I demorphed. Out of sight of the doomed Controller. Then I grew falcon's wings and flew out through a window Rachel opened with her fist. 6 My name is Jake. I live in a normal American city, in a normal American state. I love my mom and my dad. I even love my big brother, Tom. I like basketball and hate math and get a little down when it rains for more than one day. I think those little Audi TT's are cool but if I had the money, and was old enough, I'd probably drive a Jeep. I live on burgers and fries and have never voluntarily consumed a brussels sprout. My room is a mess. My homework is late. My class notes are so disorganized they cannot be read by anyone except Marco, who has been living 7 off my notes for five years or more, and sometimes has to interpret them for me. I cried the day Michael Jordan retired. And I can still tell you what time it was, what day, week, month, hour, minute, and second, what I was wearing and what I was eating when Mark McGwire banged his record homer. I'm a kid. A kid with a dog and parents and teachers and friends. Just a kid. I have these nightmares. Sometimes I'm a termite, trapped inside a piece of wood, can't get out and the clock is ticking, ticktock, ticktock, can't escape, wooden walls and blackness all around me, pressing me tight. Sometimes I'm falling. Flying and my wings just aren't there and I'm a mile up in the sky, falling, and thinking, / can't fly! I can't fly! Sometimes still, even now, I see the dark red eye of Crayak and feel his malice reaching for me all across the millions of light-years. But the worst dream is just me and Cassie. And we're standing in the forest somewhere. She's outlined in light. You know, like there's a bright light hidden behind her. And it's almost like she's shining. And there's this cave. And I'm telling her to go in, and she's looking at me with trust in her eyes, looking at me and loving me and believing in me and trusting me and I'm telling her to go into the cave. I'm the leader of the Animorphs. I don't know how that happened. It was some doom pronounced by Marco. Why me? Because, Marco said. Because it has to be. We were five kids taking a shortcut home from the mall at night. There was a ship. There was an alien. There was the destructive worm of knowledge: You are not alone. You are not safe. Nothing is what it