THE SALVATION

Author's Note: The end is very close now. Once I finish this, I'm going to go back and edit the earlier chapters in order to flesh them out, improve the writing, and make some other minor changes. Thanks for sticking with me over the past two years and change it's taken me to write this.

RACHEL

It was incredibly weird morphing another human. I'd only done it once, on the way to the USS George Washington, when I acquired a fighter pilot so that I could copilot the fighter Ax stole and blend in better among the ship's crew. But that had been years ago, so doing it again was basically a totally fresh experience.

Most of the weirdness came from the fact that I was more used to morphing things dramatically different from myself, so my features rearranging themselves felt more like an itch than the normal far-off, not-quite-pain sensation of morphing. I grew a little and felt my muscles bulge a bit, while my face tickled as my features rearranged themselves. My hair sucked itself back into my head until it was a short military cut.

Once I finished, I pulled on the clothes I had bought for myself with Marco's Swiss bank account. They weren't as stylish as I would have liked - the others argued that it would be suspicious if we were too well-dressed - but they fit, and that was the important thing. I headed back to the point where the others and I had agreed to meet.

Marco - sharply dressed in the body of one Mister Grant - was the first one back, presumably carrying Jake in his pocket as a cockroach as we'd planned. He nodded at me without speaking as we watched Cassie make her way towards us. Despite her protests, she had partially done a human morph. My old body, to be exact. She'd done it to conceal her features slightly so that she wouldn't lose her job if we were discovered. It was bizarre to look at her; she looked slightly younger since she'd acquired me when I was fourteen or so, and every time I looked at her I spotted some half familiar facial feature. Her hair was a bizarre intermediate color between black and blonde - almost dirty blonde, but not quite.

‹You're still okay with this?› I asked Cassie. She nodded. ‹Okay. Sorry about this.› I drew back my fist and punched her in the face, then shoved her to the ground, dirtying her up convincingly. Marco and I seized her under the armpits and pulled her to her feet, half-dragging, half-walking her towards the clearing.

‹Can someone please tell me what the hell I was thinking?› Marco complained as we walked. ‹I mean, this is insane. There's no way they're going to fall for such a stupid trick.›

‹Look at it this way,› I suggested. ‹If it doesn't work, we just start the "busting skulls" phase a little early, that's all.›

‹Great,› Marco said. ‹That's supposed to be comforting?›

‹Same old Rachel,› Jake interrupted. ‹And Marco, at that. Come on, let's focus.›

We emerged into the clearing, and immediately the Hork-Bajir guards straightened up and trained their Dracon beams on us. "Stop!" one of them shouted. We froze. "What are you doing here?"

Marco lifted Cassie's arm into the air. "We've got an Animorph for you!" he yelled back. "We want amnesty!"

"Stay right there," the guard who had spoken said, starting to walk over to us.

‹These guys are pretty well-spoken,› Marco said privately to me.

‹Yeah,› I replied. ‹Maybe we'll find out what their deal is before we knock them senseless.›

‹Or maybe we can just knock them senseless and not worry about it,› he said wryly.

‹I like that idea.›

The guard tilted Cassie's face up, looking her over carefully. "I don't recognize this one. Who is it?"

I shrugged. "Hell if I know, she doesn't say anything to us. We just saw her morphing and thought we'd bring her in here."

"We think she might've been one of those backup troops or whatever they were called," Marco put in.

The guard gestured to the other Hork-Bajir, who pressed a few buttons in the side of the ship. The hatch began to open. "Bring her in here while we check her identity."

We followed the guards into the ship. Now was the hard part. Cassie had tried to coach us on this beforehand, but we hadn't been able to grasp it very well. I focused on my right hand and began to demorph.

Thankfully, Cassie's lessons seemed to have paid off. My hand, and only my hand, shifted back to its natural form. Smiling darkly, I began to morph to grizzly - but since I hadn't demorphed entirely, only my hand could morph.

The Hork-Bajir nearest me was talking into a microphone set into a console. "They say they've brought one of the Auxiliaries," he said. "They want amnesty. Shall I bring them down?" I didn't wait until he got an answer, whacking him over the head with my morphed paw. He dropped like a sack of potatoes. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Marco doing the same to the other guard with a big gorilla arm. We and Cassie all quickly demorphed to human.

Marco pulled Jake out of his pocket and whispered, "The coast's clear." As Jake began to demorph, Marco and I quickly went all the way grizzly and gorilla while Cassie morphed to Hork-Bajir. A few seconds later, Jake's Siberian tiger joined us.

‹All right, guys,› Jake said. ‹We're not sure how big this base is, but it can't be too huge. If we stick together, we should be able to find Tobias relatively quickly.›

‹Not counting all of the Controllers we'll have to tear through,› Marco put in.

‹Hopefully we'll be able to minimize that, but yes,› Jake said.

They all looked at me.

If I was human, I would've smiled.

‹Let's do it.›