THE VENGEANCE

So in skimming through The Beginning again for details in this chapter, I noticed that there were some minor inconsistencies between it and The Salvation, mostly to do with Cassie's job and the nature of the Animorphs' ship theft. I'll be retconning some of those problems in this fic, but otherwise assume that wherever my canon diverges from Animorphs canon, it's AU.


Brown fur sprang from my body as I began to morph to grizzly. Tobias hopped down, preparing to do his own battle morph, but the Hork-Bajir amassed in front of us parted and Cassie stepped through. Sighing inwardly, I quickly reversed the morph.

"Thanks for at least stopping me before I ruined my clothes," I groused. Beside me, Tobias started to morph to human.

"Sorry," Cassie said with a self-deprecating smile. "This is my honor guard. The Hork-Bajir elders insisted."

"I'm just glad we didn't attack them," Tobias said, finishing his morph. "Uh, anybody got a spare pair of pants?"

The agent who had brought us in tossed him our duffel bag. Tobias pulled out some clothes and quickly put them on before Cassie led us over to a long table. Five people were already seated there. Cassie sat at the head of the table and I slipped into a seat next to her.

"Thank you all for coming," Cassie said. "As most of you know, I'm Cassie Chambers, Secretary of the Department of Resident Aliens. I'm also a former Animorph, as is my friend Tobias here." He nodded a greeting to the others at the table. "I've been appointed chair of the committee to form the Taungu task force. The details of your mission are in these folders, but I'm here to give you an overview." She handed out manilla folders and a few of the others started to leaf through them.

"The situation in Taungu is currently extremely precarious. The government is on the verge of collapse and there is widespread violence. Your mission is to extract Marco Black and Jake Berenson from the country, if possible. Current intelligence indicates that they're still living. It is possible, though we're considering it unlikely at the moment, that the people behind the Bug Fighter attack are still seeking them out to kill them. Your folders contains a dossier on each of the suspected attackers. In the event that you come into conflict with any of these people, you are authorized but not encouraged to use lethal force."

Cassie looked around the table. "Any questions?"

The woman sitting across from me spoke up. "How will we be going?"

"By boat, unfortunately. It's slow, but it's the least conspicuous way to get you there. You'll be met by a couple of CIA cars in Sandoway, Burma, splitting up for the trip to the Taungu border. After that you'll be on your own."

"Will we be armed?" asked a man sitting on our side of the table.

"No. Your morphing abilities will be enough." Cassie looked around the table. "If that's all, you're dismissed for the time being. Meet back here at 0700 for departure. Melissa, Tobias, stay behind so I can give you directions to the hotel you'll be staying at."

Everyone except the Hork-Bajir and the CIA agent filtered out of the room. After a nod from Cassie, the agent left as well. "You'll hit this in your dossiers," Cassie said, "but I wanted to let you know ahead of time so you aren't surprised. There is a secondary objective to the mission."

"I don't like the sound of that," I said darkly.

"I'm sure you'll fully approve," Cassie said, a note of irony coloring her voice. "It's actually a secondary retrieval. Secondary to the government, anyway, but you have a bit of a vested interest." She pulled a photograph out of the manilla folder and tossed it to the table in front of me. I held it in the light cast by the bare bulb nearby and examined it closely. The dark-haired woman in the headshot looked familiar, but I couldn't quite place her.

"Tobias?" I handed the photo over to him. His expression was, as usual, unreadable, but his eyes flicked to Cassie and I saw her give a slight nod.

"Rachel... that's Jordan."

The room spun. I grabbed the edge of the table to keep from toppling out of my chair, dimly aware of Tobias's supportive arm around my shoulders. "What... what is Jordan doing in Taungu?" I managed to stammer, forcing my equilibrium back into balance.

Cassie looked at me nervously. "Well... she's been living with Marco for several years now. They're engaged."

"WHAT?" Without being aware of jumping up, I was on my feet and my chair was clattering to the ground behind me. "Why the hell did nobody tell me about this? That slime! That utter cretin! How dare he take advantage of my baby sister like that?"

Tobias stood up and pulled me into his seat. "I think I can see why you weren't told," he said wryly.

"From what I hear, they're quite happy," Cassie put in.

"Traitor," I said, shooting her a dark look. "Figures. My mother said she was away doing international reporting."

"Technically true," Cassie said. "She was working for the local newspaper while she lived there. Anyway, since she was living with Marco and Jake, she was almost definitely caught in the attack. The sources that lead us to believe they're still alive seem to indicate that she is as well, but the government isn't especially concerned with her recovery. It was only because I was the chair of the committee that I managed to get her in the dossier at all."

As my anger at Marco subsided, I felt sick with fear. My sister was with Jake and Marco, sure, but without being able to morph herself, Jordan was vulnerable. And Taungu right now was not a good place to be vulnerable. For the moment, though, there was nothing I could do. I was helpless.

I hate being helpless.

"Let's get to the hotel," I muttered irritably. "We need to get to sleep if we need to be here by seven."

"I'll drive you there," Cassie said. She gestured to one of the Hork-Bajir. "Falak Har will come with me. The rest of you stay here until my return." The honor guard saluted, and one of them stepped to Cassie's side. She turned back to us. "Let's get going."


"She's fine, Rachel."

"I don't want to think about it, Tobias."

I popped open another beer and slumped back into my seat. The TV was on, playing a re-airing of the Animorphs episode we'd seen earlier. The show didn't make any more sense this time around.

It was hard for me to believe it'd only been a scant seven hours ago we were watching and mocking it the first time. A month's worth of crazy seemed to have been stuffed into the past quarter day, and my head was reeling from the information overload. But above everything else, one thought was clear in my mind: I needed to save Jordan.

"Argh!" I threw my empty bottle at the wall. It shattered, sending glittering pieces of glass cascading to the carpet. Without saying anything, Tobias went to the closet, grabbed a dustpan, and cleaned up the pieces. Frustrated, I tore off my outer clothes and threw them on the bed.

"Going somewhere?" Tobias asked softly.

"I need to fly," I said. "I can't sit here and do nothing."

"We need to sleep, love," he said, wrapping his arms around me from behind. "Come on. Let's go to bed."

I broke free of his embrace. "There's no way I can sleep like this. I'm not even a little tired."

Tobias sighed, then demorphed. ‹I'll come with you, then,› he said, morphing directly to owl.

A few minutes later, we were taking wing from the hotel room's balcony. The last time I'd morphed an owl was shortly after breaking Jake out of prison, and I hadn't really been able to properly enjoy it then. Now, soaring silently above the night, I saw and heard everything. Straggling tourists leaving the bars, spies meeting covertly in alleyways, politicians sneaking to late-night trysts — the night was laid bare before my keen owl senses. I absorbed myself in the ins and outs of late-night Washington for a while, allowing my worries about Jordan to slip away behind the owl mind.

‹Tobias?›

‹Hm?›

‹I don't know if I could handle Jordan dying.›

‹Jordan's not going to die, Rachel.›

‹But what if she does?› I banked, heading back towards the hotel. ‹How do I manage? How do I keep living my life?›

Tobias laughed mirthlessly. ‹I am probably the exact wrong person to ask about that.›

‹I'm scared, Tobias.›

‹I know,› he said. ‹All we can do is do our job and hope for the best.›

Exhausted as I was after our flight, I fell asleep almost as soon as I demorphed and crawled into bed. But my dreams were tortured and nightmarish, full of images of Jordan, dead, dismembered, entrails spilling from her gut, killed by a bullet to the brain. Visions of Marco clinging to her and sobbing. A vivid scene of myself impaling Jake, who had thrown Jordan off a building, on my grizzly bear's claws. Impressions of a larger battle with hundreds of lives hanging in the balance. When I awoke at six, I hardly felt rested, but I was full of new purpose.

Jordan would not die. Her big sister was coming to save her.