"In all circumstances take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one."
– Ephesians 6:16
In the gray half-light of dawn, I finally saw the weapons truck. It was big, black, armored, an obvious scar on the desert to my owl eyes. It emerged from a small mountain pass and pulled into a garage at the facility.
I flew back over the mountains and saw Ax running through a clearing in the woods. «Ax!» I called. «I saw the truck! It was coming from the access road, not the main road. Can you morph and fly with me to Jake's house? I don't know where he lives.»
«Of course.» I saw him slip into the shadow of the trees, and his fur running together into feathers. «Ah. The last one was three days ago. That makes sense.»
«Because Yeerks have to feed every three days?»
«Yes. They must have a portable Kandrona at the facility, but Kandrona wave generators are very energy intensive. They would need supplementary power every three days in order to generate enough Kandrona for all the Yeerks.» Ax sounded excited. «This means we can disrupt their operations even more than we anticipated.»
Ax joined me in the sky. He flew with me to a nice neighborhood. Every house had a lawn in front. We landed in the trees behind a blue house with two cars in the driveway. I could hear the first morning stirrings inside the house. I hoped we weren't waking Jake up.
Ax said, «We cannot approach the window, as Tobias and I have done at your house. Prince Jake's brother Tom is a Controller.»
«Oh,» I said, my thought-voice very small. «No one told me that.» For some reason, I hadn't considered the possibility that the Animorphs' family members could be Controllers.
He's the leader, thought Jax. The one who has to make the hard decisions, even about his own brother. No wonder he didn't hesitate to give the order to infest us. He wouldn't think of us as an exception because we're Tobias' family. He knows their families aren't safe.
Somehow, I thought, it makes the idea of following his orders easier. Because when he makes the orders, he knows it's his family on the line.
«Do any of the other Animorphs have Controllers in their families?» I asked.
«We cannot be certain unless we follow them continuously for three days. But the only other one we know is Marco's mother. She is host to Visser One, the highest-ranking Yeerk in their military. Visser One faked her death two years ago to pursue Yeerk interests full-time.»
«You tell Jake,» I said numbly. «I need a minute.»
I would have cried, and held Jax for comfort, if I could have. The odds against that boy getting his mother back were terrifyingly steep. The Yeerks' top general wouldn't give up a host unless the whole Empire crumbled. I had been so small in my thinking, not even imagining that the other Animorphs could have sorrows as great as Tobias'.
Now we know, thought Jax. Those poor boys. They're fighting for their families, just like we are.
«Prince Merlyse is perched in front of the window in peregrine falcon form. That means she has heard and understood. We may go.» Ax hesitated. «Would you like some company, Loren?»
«Yeah,» I said, a little shakily. «Fly with me to my house?»
We flew together, toward where the houses crowded closer and closer together. Ax said, «Does it surprise you so much? Surely you know that children are among the victims of every war.»
«I know. It just hurts so much, to think of Jake fighting to save his brother, Marco to save his mother, and they can't know. If they knew, it would all be for nothing. Jake has to live with the Yeerk enslaving his brother every day. Marco must have to pretend his mother is still dead.»
Jax said, «Even Rachel and Cassie have to lie to their families. I guess you and Tobias are the lucky ones.»
«I know,» said Ax. «I think of my gratitude every evening, at the end of the ritual.»
«"From the rising of the sun to the setting, to its rising again, we replace what is hard to endure with what is sweet to remember, and find peace." Yes, I remember.»
When I got home, I ate breakfast, then called Ellen to tell her I was cutting my hours. I took on a shift for that day, though, and for Saturday. It was harder to keep my composure than usual. I cried when a girl spoke to me of her mother's death, thinking of Marco. It must not have showed in my voice, though, because I was able to calm the girl's own hysterical sobs.
I got a call that evening from Jake. He said, "Hey, that project we've been having our eye on – you think Sunday would be the right day to tackle it?"
"Sunday," Jax murmured. "That's when it's due to come next. Before church that morning."
I hope I don't miss Mass, I thought, a little dazed. "Yeah. Yeah, sure. Sounds good."
"I'll see you Sunday, then. An hour in advance. We don't want to be late."
#
I sat in a booth at Rose's Diner with a bowl of French onion soup, wishing I'd turned my hologram on, if only for a moment, when I first met Chee-koril. I'd focused on all the wrong cues with my hologram off, their face, their "dæmon," the way they moved, all of it useless for recognizing Koril with the hologram blocking my eyes with darkness. Jax was looking out for them, of course, but his eyes couldn't see very far. I'd hear Koril's footsteps first, except I wouldn't know them, because I hadn't been paying attention the first time around.
Jax started at someone who came in with a big, furry, dark dæmon, but when it came closer it turned out to be a black bear. Then – No, this one has to be it. There are only so many black fuzzy dæmons that size. He stepped toward the dæmon, who stuck out his nose and said, "Hello, Jaxom."
"Hello, Rakhamet," Jax said, pulling his face back.
"Sorry I'm late," said Koril. "Rush hour traffic, you know." They pulled into the booth in a single smooth movement.
My waiter must have seen Koril come in. He came over and took their order, a Caesar salad. When he left, the sounds in the diner became strangely muted, like we were inside a bubble.
Koril said, "The other patrons will hear us talking about the latest episodes of The Young and the Restless. So please, speak freely."
I raised my eyebrow, the one that hadn't been scarred, out of habit. "The Young and the Restless?"
"I devote a tiny fraction of my brain to reading soap opera discussion forums, so I always have some easy small talk on hand. I work as a nurse in a clinic in Jamaica, and the TV in the clinic is always playing that show. It's what the patients want to talk about."
I put down my spoon. "You came here from Jamaica."
"I heard what you said to Alem and Naxes, when you called us cowards and Pharisees."
Jax opened his mouth to speak, but Koril's dæmon projection gave a deep whuff, and he closed it again.
"You were right. I think sometimes we're so aware of the power we don't have that we forget the power we do have. I knew I couldn't fight alongside the Animorphs, so I considered the matter no further, and missed all that I can do to save this world from the Yeerk Empire."
"And it hurt you," I said. "Thinking about get involved."
"Yes," Koril admitted. "I try to avoid that pain. Who doesn't try to avoid pain? But as our Lord tells us, the way to destruction is broad, while the way to life is narrow and difficult. It's time I chose the narrow road again, however hard it might be."
Rakhamet said – no, they said, through Rakhamet's mouth – "Here's the waiter again."
"Don't do that," Jax hissed. "I know it's just you, so don't pretend you're a real dæmon."
The privacy bubble dropped, and the Rakhamet-projection gave Jax an inscrutable look beneath its heavy black brows. The waiter's chameleon dæmon gave Jax and the false dæmon the side-eye as he served the Caesar salad. "Thank you," said Koril, and I heard a crunch as they speared a crouton with their fork. When the waiter left, the shield of privacy enveloped them again.
"Do you actually eat that?" Jax blurted out.
"Yes," said Koril. "I don't need to, but I was made to run off diverse power sources, so if one system should fail or run out of fuel, I can use another. Though I could just as easily eat tree bark or grass clippings."
"Sorry, that was rude," I said.
"I'm hardly surprised you're curious. The last person to whom I revealed myself was a minister I loved and trusted, back in the 1800s. He had far more questions than you do. They didn't have anything like robots back then."
"A minister," I said. "So you're not Catholic."
"Sometimes I am. I began to follow the teachings of Christ before the Catholic Church was founded. Belief in Him is what matters to me. Beyond that, I have joined whatever church has best suited my beliefs at the time. Or sometimes I worship on my own."
I nodded slowly. It made sense. If I lived for hundreds of years, I might try out a different church to see how it suited me. But the life I had was too short to leave a church that had pulled me through some of my darkest days. Unless...
"Do you believe that Christ died for you, Koril?" I said.
Koril stopped eating their salad. Their eyes, startlingly green in their brown face, went distant. "I don't think so. What use is the road to Paradise to robots who can't die?"
"What about the Pemalites, then? The Hork-Bajir? The Yeerks?"
"Do you know what the Hork-Bajir believe?"
"No."
"I don't either. But I'll tell you what the Pemalites believed." Koril ate a forkful of salad. "In the beginning there was the Big Bang, or as the Pemalites called the expansion of the universe, the Outwardness. In the infinitesimal fraction of time that began the Outwardness, all the matter that made up the universe was perfectly even. Balanced. Symmetrical. If it had remained that way, everything in the universe would be the same, everywhere. There would be no stars or planets, just scattered atoms in the void.
"But something happened in that tiny sliver of time. The Pemalites would say, the balance of the universe was played with. Matter was disrupted into beautiful chaos. Because of that imbalance, we have galaxies and stars and all life as we know it. The Pemalites worshipped that divine spark of fun, the Kolumatiy, that first played with the universe. They honored the Kolumatiy by spreading the beautiful chaos of life everywhere, and bringing its playful joy to people."
"That's interesting," I said, "and thanks for sharing, but why are you telling me this?"
Koril leaned forward, and the projection of the Newfoundland started toward Jax too, until they seemed to remember that he didn't like that. "Because the Pemalites are gone, but that doesn't have to mean the Kolumatiy is gone from the universe. I'm not sure what I believe about it. Sometimes I think it's time I let go of what my dead creators once worshipped. But sometimes, I watch the ripples on a pond as human children skip stones across the water, and the Kolumatiy shines as brightly as it ever did in the Pemalites' story-fires. What I'm trying to say is that there is something divine in this universe, and if the life it created comes in as many forms as there are stars in your sky, then maybe it must reveal itself in as many different ways."
My eyes burned, then began to spill over. Jax climbed up onto the booth beside me, and said, "I know. I know I should just pray and ask Jesus and Magdalene if the blood of their sacrifice runs in everyone's veins, but I'm scared of the answer. I would be scared if the answer were no, but I think it's not, and that's..."
"What would it mean, then?"
"It would mean we're killing sinners who could be saved. And they can, I know they can, because Cassie wouldn't trust Aftran if she couldn't."
"I'm in no position to tell you what's right, Jaxom. This is a choice I cannot make, a choice my creators made for me when they programmed me. That is why I follow Christ's teachings, but can never embody them, because I can't choose to do otherwise. I think the Hork-Bajir and the Yeerks, perhaps even the Taxxons, have Christ's love and the Kolumatiy within them. But I believe that this Earth is sacred too, and the Empire would crush its beauty and leave it nothing but a husk."
I wiped my tears with my napkin. Jax leaned against me, head on my shoulder. "My first real mission is on Sunday," I said hoarsely. "Just before church."
"God save your soul," said Koril. "Put it in His hands, Loren. Take up the shield of faith. It will protect you from the Yeerks' evil... and your own."
"You've never had to do anything like this," I said accusingly. "How would you know?"
"I've stood by while masters beat their slaves and girls were married to men three times their age," said Koril, "and did nothing. Faith is the only reason I keep trying."
I wrapped an arm around Jax and crushed him against my side. "Koril, will you be my therapist?"
They blinked.
"I think I'm going to need one too," I continued. "Though please, switch off your hologram when we're together. I'm tired of lies. I have to live with so many, now."
Koril nodded. "I promise. And I'm honored. Though I'll keep it for just now. We need to pay the check."
"Where do you work now?"
"A Lutheran clinic for people without insurance, part-time. I'll be posing as a voluntary Controller."
"I guess you'll need your shield too. I can't imagine what you'll see. What are voluntary Controllers even like?"
"From what Naxes has told me, they're more pitiable than anything else. The poor, the abused, the disaffected. In most cases they really do get a better life than they had, in the material sense. If your country served all of its people, the Yeerks would have much fewer volunteers."
I shivered. I didn't like to think that this was our fault in any way. But it didn't surprise me.
The waiter came back with the check. Koril insisted on paying, and I didn't protest too much – it wasn't like money was any concern for them, and disability didn't give me enough to eat out much.
"Thank you, Loren," they murmured, leaving the bills on the table. "For challenging me. When no one around me knows what I am, I get far too complacent."
You're still complacent, Jax thought. But you'll learn. All of you Chee will learn.
#
I tried to go to sleep early the night before, but it took me ages to fall asleep, and when I did, my dreams replayed the worst parts of my time in space as a teenager: the helplessness of being a Controller, the faceless boy from the fake mini-universe I created, the screams and wet tearing sounds of the Taxxon rebellion. When my alarm shrilled at 3:30 am, I was curled around Jax with a death grip about his ribs, and there were hoof marks on my thighs where he'd kicked me in intangible struggles.
As I brushed my teeth, I numbly wondered if I could even get gingivitis or whatever with the morphing. The routine gave my hands something to do besides crush Jax's ribs, though, so I wasn't about to give it up. I changed into my morphing leotard and looked down at Jax.
"I'm not sure I can do this," Jax admitted. "We won't be able to hear each other, not really, or feel each other, even while we..."
"The kids have done it a hundred times," I said.
"Terrible, isn't it?"
"They'll worry if we don't get going."
"Let's get started, then."
I threw open my window. It was raining. My floor would get wet while I was out. Why was I thinking of such things now? I thought instead of the long-eared owl, and the way the raindrops would feel as the wind flung them against my face.
I kept my hand on Jax's head, even as my hand wasn't much of a hand anymore. We awaited the moment when Jax would disappear with even more dread than the first time we morphed. The darkness of my room sharpened into focus as my eyes widened in my face, grinding my bones aside. Then it grew larger and larger around me, and the reassuring warmth of Jax's fur against my wing-hand was gone, along with his view of the world, in all its subtle grades of smell and dull smears of gray vision. My sob came out as a horrible rasp in my shriveling throat. I felt like I had died, dæmonless as a corpse.
Not dead. Changed into a new form, Jax whispered.
A monster.
Jax did not argue.
The cold certainties of the owl's mind were a blessed relief. It was focused on flying despite the rain, on stopping under cover to flick water off its wings and keeping the wind at its back. It carried Jax and me over the mountains, beyond the rainclouds, to the low, dry woods on the leeward side. The eerie light of Dracon beams pulsed dimly in the distance, making the owl uneasy. It could easily see movement beneath the foliage, though, so I landed there, where the children shivered in their morphing outfits in the cold desert night. I began to demorph, resetting my morphing clock before it all started.
«Morning, Loren,» Tobias said. «That just leaves Toby.»
"G-g-great," Marco managed between shivers. "You know, I never thought I'd say this, but I wish the Yeerks would j-j-just hurry up and get here already."
«Why is it acceptable for Marco to play with mouth-sounds and not me?» said Ax, shaking water off his fur with the flat of his blade.
"B-b-because I'm not playing, you big b-b-blue hairball, I'm shivering! Don't you remember from the North P-p-pole?"
«That is the problem with auditory communication,» Ax mused. «It can be disrupted in so many ways.»
I was acutely aware of that, as my body was in between states where I could thought-speak or talk. When my beak melted and reformed, making the inside of my face itch, I said, "Do you always do this before missions?"
"Freeze our asses off?" said Marco. "No, but we've been having a bad run of luck lately. Good thing the Yeerks aren't invading Winnipeg, or these morphing outfits would get to be a serious problem."
"Why would the Yeerks want to invade Winnipeg?" Rachel said. She was huddled against the bulk of her dæmon for warmth.
«Why are they invading Santa Barbara instead of Washington D.C.?» said Tobias.
Cassie rubbed her arms and said, "Maybe they first landed here, and got started with their operations. If they'd landed in, I dunno, Beijing, maybe they would have launched the invasion from there."
«We do not know how the Yeerks plan their invasions.»
"Maybe they picked it because of the weather. If you're going to invade a planet, you might as well do it where the sun is always shining."
Jax was finally solid in my arms again. I was curled around him, sitting on the ground, watching the last of my feathers disappear. "This is what I mean," I said. "Do you always talk about whatever pointless random stuff you can think of before a mission?"
"Marco talks about pointless random stuff all the time," Rachel said.
"And you talk about it right back," I said, raising my eyebrow.
«Hork-Bajir tell war stories before we go into battle,» said Toby, coming in for a landing above our heads. «We have plenty of them to go around, even if no one remembers the old wars anymore.»
«Do you have a war story for us, Toby?» said Ax.
Toby went silent for a moment, then said, «Meret knew she had a twin sister. The Yeerks took them away from each other too late for her to forget. She didn't know how she would ever find her. They didn't share a name, because the Yeerks don't allow hosts to name their children. She came up with the name Meret for herself.
«Meret was one of the first my parents freed, and joined the raiding parties as soon as she was recovered. In her second raid, she fought a Hork-Bajir who looked just like her. Her blades had the same curves, and her eyes were just the same shade of white-gold. Meret believed it was her sister, though she couldn't be sure. She fought desperately against the Yeerks, but could not capture the Hork-Bajir who looked just like her.
«In the next raid, she saw the Hork-Bajir again. She was fighting off another Controller, and her mirror image came in with a killing blade for her throat. But at the last moment, the blow hesitated, and Meret could twist out of the way. She knew her sister was in there, fighting. Someone caught the other Controller, and Meret focused on her sister. Her sister seized her throat in a stranglehold. Meret used impassioned strength to drive her blade deep into her sister's wrist, breaking the hold. Another blow to her face knocked her out.
«We had to amputate that hand at the wrist. Meret's blade had destroyed all the nerves there. For the course of the three days, Meret could not even look at her sister. But when it was over, she came to Meret and said, "Sister, what is your name?" Meret gave her name, and told her she had no second. "My name is Elgat," her sister said. "And we choose second name together." That is the story of my second-in-command in the raiding party this morning, Meret Kar, and her sister Elgat Kar.»
"That's a good story," Jake said quietly, Merlyse curled around him in tiger form. I thought of Tom, and felt like crying. "Are your people in place?"
«Yes. I will show Ax and Tobias where they are when we fly in closer. Speaking of which, it's time for both of you to come with me. They've probably caught your morphs by now.»
Dread filled me. For a wild moment I wanted to volunteer in their place, so they didn't have to go. But that would just send them into a different danger. I held out my hand to Ax, tentatively. He looked at it, startled for a moment, until I nodded toward his tail blade. I didn't have a blade to touch to his, so this would do. He pressed the flat of his blade to my palm. "Good luck," I whispered. Then Ax pulled back and began to morph owl, his tail blade withering into nothing.
Tobias landed on my shoulder for a moment. «We'll be fine. You'll have your eye out for us. Right?»
"Right," I said. When he flew off, I began to morph myself. "You should show me where your warriors are, too, Toby."
«The truck will be here in approximately thirty-five of your minutes,» Ax said. «You must return here before then. Their eyesight will be poorer than yours, and they may need your guidance.»
I wasn't sure how he could keep on talking like that while his bones were cracking into new shapes. I just nodded while I still had a human neck.
"Loren," said Jake. My neck had crunched into the swivel-head of the owl, and I pivoted my gaze toward him. Merlyse watched me with luminous yellow eyes. "We're counting on you to help all of us. So good luck to you too."
Jax heard the message beneath what he said. To help all of us, huh? Not just Ax and Tobias. I couldn't talk anymore, nor thought-speak, so Jax said, "We're ready to step up. We can do this." Then he disappeared.
"You'll do fine," Cassie said. "We'll see you soon."
The morph completed. The owl wanted to get off the ground. I wanted to cling to it like a child to her mother's leg. I took off anyway.
It wasn't raining on this side of the mountain, which made flying much easier. My morph didn't want to be anywhere near the other birds of prey, which helped me keep a less-than-suspicious distance from the others as we flew. There was only a sliver of moon, and my owl mind knew in a distant intellectual sense that it was quite dark, though the blackness of the sky was going gray at its eastern edge. Toby went into a stoop around the outer edge of the facility, where they kept the brush thick and unburnt, to keep away the eyes of anyone on the main road that came through the mountain pass. We slowly followed, spacing out our landings so they didn't look like a group bird maneuver.
As I dove, Toby's people came into focus beneath the foliage. I was impressed. The owl eyes could see everything down to mice scurrying under rocks, but the Hork-Bajir had tucked themselves so low to the ground and still in the dense cover of the brush that the owl had taken no notice of them until now, when I'd gotten a bit closer. If I couldn't see them, the Yeerks didn't have a chance.
«Yah!» Tobias said, as he came in for a landing after me. «Oh my God, I didn't see you there. Good job, guys.»
Now that I had landed in the brush, I could see that two Hork-Bajir were unconscious, breathing shallowly, their heads buried in the dry dirt. The raiders around them were gently stroking the head blades that protruded out of the dirt. «It helps keep them down,» Toby explained when she saw me looking.
«Touching their blades, or burying their heads in the dirt?» I asked.
«Burying their heads,» Toby said. «The stroking, it's just... they could use some kindness, after all they've been through.»
If we had just rescued some human-Controllers, even if we didn't know them, we would do the same, said Jax. Wouldn't we?
«Go ahead and demorph,» I said to Ax and Tobias. «I'll keep an eye out.»
Tobias flew down to perch on the neck of one of the subdued Controllers, acquiring his DNA. I swept my eyes toward the facility, though I could hear the crunch of bone and liquid sounds of organs dissolving as Ax and Toby demorphed. I could see a Controller using the latrine where Toby's people had probably caught the two unconscious Hork-Bajir below me.
«What do these Controllers do? What is their role in the facility?» said Ax.
A pause, then Toby said, «My people don't know. They were wearing black armbands on their left arms, just above the elbow blade. There's something stiff and square inside the armbands. They kept them for Ax and Tobias to put on.»
«Oh,» I said. «I've been watching them pretty consistently for a few days, so I think I know what that means. Those aren't trainees. They're like maintenance people. If a fire gets out of hand, they put it out, or if a Dracon beam breaks they go get a replacement. Stuff like that. And I think that thing in the armband is a key card. When they want to get into the facility they press the side of the armband into this reader by the door.»
«Thanks, Loren,» said Tobias. «That'll give us a good excuse to lure people out here. We can say that we saw something weird while we were out doing maintenance work, something attention-grabbing enough to get a whole big team.»
«We have two raiding parties,» Toby said. «You can use that excuse for the other one. For this group we can use bait. You can say you saw two Controllers take off their armbands and try to run away. They'd probably send a good-sized party after that. And it would be a distraction from what's going on at the truck. Any volunteers?»
Some silent communication – hand signals? – and Toby said, «Good, we have two.»
Tobias said, «Toby, I don't want to endanger your – »
«We know what we're doing, Tobias,» Toby said in a hard voice. «I don't question Jake's orders, you don't question mine. Got it?»
«Got it. Oh, thanks, can you help me put it on my arm? I'm afraid I'll cut it on my – right, there it goes. Say, Loren, is the coast clear? I'm ready to go.»
«Wait for me,» Ax insisted. «I want to know where you are at all times.»
«Don't worry, Ax, I'll let you know where he is.»
«You must go back to the others soon. Just wait.» A rasping sound of bone against bone, and the creak of sinew. «I am ready. Give me an armband.»
The Controller had left the latrine. There was no one nearby. «Coast is clear. Don't forget to go through the door facing the mountains. I'm not sure the other doors open to your keycard.»
«And remember,» Toby said, «the other raiding party is on the opposite side of the facility, past the shooting range. It's by that snag where we perched while we were watching for the truck.»
«I'll come back to check on you soon,» I promised. «I'm going back to the mountain pass now.»
I waited until Ax and Tobias were well away from my perch before I took off again. I didn't have Ax's sense of time, but I got a sense from the ragged eastern edge of light along the sky that the truck was due to come soon. As I flew toward the mountain, every pulse of reddish light in my peripheral vision made me tense up inside. I felt like I was teetering on a knife's edge within my own mind, and anything could push me over. When I glimpsed the Animorphs' human and dæmon forms through the trees, I said, «Get into your morphs. It's almost time.»
I perched in a tree by the edge of the access road where I'd seen the truck before. The squishing sounds of morphing set me teetering on that edge again. What if someone hears them?
We have owl ears, Jax reminded me. They don't. No one can hear them but us. Pay attention to the road.
Is it possible to be bored and panicked at the same time? Every second dragged through me slowly but painfully, like sandpaper rubbing inch by inch down my face. I couldn't imagine when it would end. But it would end, and whatever came next might be even worse. Jax and I murmured the Lord's prayer over and over, just to distract ourselves from the empty horror of it.
What's that? said Jax, swiveling our ears toward the mountain pass. I was disoriented for a moment, but he was right: there was the barest vibration in the air, getting slightly louder every moment. A truck's engine? I waited a moment to be sure. That's it, said Jax. Tell them.
«It's coming,» I said. «I hear it coming.»
«Should we charge?» said Rachel, her voice taut and eager. My head swam a little. How could she be excited about this?
Maybe she likes it better than that terrible boredom, said Jax. I can understand that, a little.
«Not yet, but come closer. Stay out of sight, but be ready to go.»
The sounds of fallen branches crunching beneath their enormous feet sounded as loud as gunshots to my owl ears. Jax had to remind me again that there was no way anyone in the truck could hear. Elephants sneak up on people all the time in the savanna. We've listened to that documentary, right? Sir David Attenborough is walking along and wow! There it is!
«If Sir David Attenborough is a Controller, I might just quit right now,» I muttered.
«What?» said Cassie.
«Nothing.» The truck came into view around the bend of the access road. «Get ready!»
«Where is it?» said Rachel. «I can't see anything but trees and some road.»
«I can't even see the road,» Marco complained. «Why did I pick rhino morph again?»
«I'll count down, OK?» I said. It was traveling at a fairly constant speed. «It'll be there in something like 15... 14... 13... »
«Oh, great, a countdown. No pressure, right?»
«12... 11... 10... »
«Oh!» said Cassie. «I think I hear it!»
«Me too,» said Jake.
«9... 8... 7...»
«I can see it now,» said Rachel. «Just a little.»
«6... 5... 4... 3... wait, no, now!»
I had miscounted. The truck was right in front of them. Luckily, the Animorphs had started moving shockingly fast at my cue, firing out of the woods like slugs from an enormous cannon. Cassie and Rachel, with their better eyesight, took the lead, Jake and Marco barreling behind them.
Cassie collided with the front of the truck, the passenger's side crumpling inward. There was a horrible meaty crunch: there had been someone in the passenger's seat, someone alien, now splattered. The tires screeched as the truck was shoved toward the left side of the road, then again louder as the driver struggled to take back control. I could hear him panting and gagging on the smell of his dead companion.
Rachel and Jake hit the side of the truck at about the same time. Rachel left a good dent, but Jake had better luck: with an unnerving shriek, the metal parted around his horn. A small pile of Dracon beams spilled out of the truck and scattered across the road. When Marco hit the back of the truck, he tore a hole too, more Dracon beams tumbling free. «Aha!» he cried. «They make armored trucks bulletproof, but not rhino-proof!»
Cassie went for the front of the truck with her tusks, shattering the side window and the edge of the windshield. The driver screamed and tucked his head under his arms to protect his face from the flying glass. With his grip off the steering wheel, the truck careened to the side of the road, crashing into the trunk of a big tree. Immediately, Rachel charged toward the hole Jake had driven into the side of the truck, forcing it wider with the impact.
I heard a muffled cry from the driver's side of the truck, and a Hork-Bajir warrior leapt out of the hole in the truck. Blades rasped against metal, and the hole in the back of the truck widened, another Hork-Bajir warrior bursting through. The fight was on, but the Animorphs were ready to meet it. Rachel wrapped her trunk around the Hork-Bajir's midsection and squeezed the breath out of it, then threw it back down to the ground.
«Will you be all right if I go check on the facility?» I said. «I want to see if anyone's noticed the commotion over here.» And I want to check on Ax and Tobias.
And I don't want to watch this anymore, said Jax, our eyes on Marco as a Hork-Bajir swiped a blade toward his eye. He tossed his head, the impact shoving the Hork-Bajir's attack aside and jarring its arm to the shoulder.
«Yes, go,» Jake said tersely. There were more Hork-Bajir emerging from the truck.
I turned tail and flew away. That was the nice thing about vision: if you weren't facing something, you couldn't see it. Sounds, though, couldn't be so easily blocked out. Screams both animal and alien followed me as I went back to the facility. But by the time I was within sight of the facility, even my owl ears couldn't hear them anymore. No danger of the Yeerks finding out anytime soon, then.
I looked toward the hiding places of Toby's raiders, and realized they weren't hiding places anymore. Most of them were fleeing beyond the hills, carrying unconscious Hork-Bajir-Controllers between them, while the rest covered their retreat with fire from stolen Dracon beams. Not a few Hork-Bajir lay dead, but I didn't have time to check how many of them had armbands. I spotted Toby overhead, still in owl morph, directing the retreat and covering fire. «Toby! Do you need help?»
«We're fine. Did they get the truck?»
«Yes. They're fighting some Controllers, but they can handle it.»
«Then go look for Ax and Tobias. I haven't seen them since they first directed a search party our way.»
Cold fear doused my senses. I circled the facility. It was chaos. Controllers were running and shouting, trying to find troops with enough training to go after Toby and her people, pressing Dracon beams into their hands. I saw three burly Hork-Bajir carrying wounded back toward the facility, dark blood seeping from a severed hand, a ruined eye.
Wait a second, said Jax. Remember what Cassie said? The Yeerks have no use for maimed hosts. They just kill them.
Those aren't hosts at all, I realized, with dawning terror. That's Ax and Tobias.
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