RACHEL
I saw light.
I was in a dark tunnel, a feeling that I was being towed through it, my
arms and legs uncooperative, dragged behind.
I stayed like this for timeless time. I did not know who I am, what I was
doing, why I was not reacting to this state of high tranquility, and inner
peace.
But the peace was being disturbed. And now I was being forced out of the
dark mud colored tunnel.
At first it was a pinpoint of light, a burning star. The tug was weak,
movement slow.
But right then and now, the speed had picked up, the mud-like color of
the tunnel was turning bright with life. My brain –a feeling that it had been
switched off- switched on.
It was slow at first, just like the movement and the light. Bit by bit,
my memory was coming back to me.
The basics first; like who am I? What is my name?
My name is Rachel.
And with it the complications of my life, the drill you are used to
hearing. I am not going to repeat the drill. The threat, the warning. Warning
about the war, threat of losing humanity. You know.
This essential part of my life had been reopened like a book and reread
by me. And when I finished reading. The tranquility and peacefulness evaporate.
It was like a splash of cold water in my face. A slap. Wake up!
I tried to move. I couldn't. So I panicked. I could see nothing, even
though I knew my eyes were moving beneath heavy eyelids. My heart hammered, my
brain raced.
No! This couldn't be true!
Was I captured? Oh god, it finally happened, I'm a controller! The
others! Tobias, Jake, Cassie, Ax and Marco! I couldn't betray them!
I tried to break free of the invisible bonds that held me down. At first
it was impossible, but slowly, the bonds loosen, and then they were no longer
there.
In front of me I saw a door. The door yawned open. And then bright light.
Blinding light.
I squinted, lifted my arm to
shield my eyes.
"She is awake, major general." Then as an after thought, "Sir."
My eyes adjusted painfully.
I was in a featureless room with cream-colored walls. I blinked rapidly
and realized that I was lying on my back on a narrow steel table. I jerked up. I
felt dizziness wash over me instantly. "Lay down." I heard a voice say,
"It will take a moment or two for you to function normally. Do not attempt to
get up."
I tried to look for the voice source where was it? It came -to my
surprise- from a human, he must have been around twenty years old, his brown
hair was cut short, he had a black collar round his neck and connected to it was
an earpiece.
"Fine." Said another voice,
"Masi, you shall leave us alone."
"Yes, sir."
I looked around, but I did not see any 'sir' all I saw was a woman in
her mid-thirties, her hair was cut boy style, short for a girl, but I saw that
there was four locks of hair that were allowed to grow at least four inches
longer than her short hair. Two fell down on either side of her face and another
two trailed down her neck.
She had hard brown eyes, a lightly tanned complexion and I noticed that
the roots of her hair where no longer black, but had lost their color and gone
white.
She reminded me of my cousin somehow, I didn't know why.
"I am major general Asi." She said in heavily accented English. I saw
that her left arm was in a cast.
"I'm Rachel." I said, I didn't know what to say, I was confused,
and being confused did not render me in a peaceful or friendly mood, so I
bluntly added, "Where on Earth am I?"
"You are nowhere on Earth." She replied simply, "But on Earth just
the same."
"What?"
"You are on the human mother ship Planet Earth." She
explained, "Our own planet was lost to the Yeerk scourge twenty years ago."
My brain went numb with shock.
"We lost?" I whispered. Then something other than shock filled me, I
heard an alarm bell ring, "What do you mean twenty years ago?"
"Twenty years ago we lost." She repeated slowly, as if she thought I
was slow or something.
"I heard that." I snapped, "I meant how, why? What happened? Where
are Jake, Tobias, Cassie and the others? Where are my friends? Who are you? What
do you mean? I don't understand."
"Rachel." She said. "Have you looked at your self in a mirror
lately?"
"What? No."
She nodded to one of the walls there was a mirror. I got off the steel
table and walked cautiously towards it, I caught my image. I appeared to be a
bit older than my usual self, not twenty years older, say two three years.
"I'm a few years older than last time I saw myself." I confessed.
"But that doesn't explain anything-"
"After the defeat, a couple hundred humans fled." She said, "Our
numbers expanded the past twenty years. Just now, I was called in to see you,
the Sasi said they found you in a fighter, locked in deep-freeze."
"The who?" I said sounding annoyed.
"The Sasi. They are the people who run the war council."
I held up my hands. "I'm
lost."
"That is okay." She said gently, "You will be meeting your friends
soon."
I sat down in silence, after a few minutes, Asi touched the collar around
her neck, she looked down at me, "It is time, come, you will be escorted to
your friends."
With that a door I had never known to exist slid open, a boy a bit older
than me walked in.
"Sem-i, Take her to the preserve, sector twenty-two."
The boy nodded, saluted her and said, "Yes major general sir!"
I frowned, wasn't she a woman?
The boy led me outside another sliding door and soon we were walking down
some corridor.
"I am Semi Shrag." He said, "You are Rachel. You are an
animorph."
I nodded; I didn't know what to say to that.
As we walked I noticed a few things about him, first of all, he walked
stiffly, like a soldier, and he was dressed exactly the same way as the brown
haired guy, the uniform was strange though, I couldn't figure out the fabric
but it was a silky black, he wore what would have been a T-shirt but with the
left sleeve torn off. He had a strange looking bracelet on his left upper arm,
and wore what could have been a replica of jeans only it wasn't jeans…
Like all of the humans I've seen so far, he wore a black collar and an
earpiece. He noticed me staring.
"It is my Si."
"Your what?"
He explained.
I fell silent. I didn't know what to make of it. What was going on
here? Was this an Ellimist trick?
How come the humans are fighting the Yeerks with advanced technology? I
felt desperately lost.
We reached a dead end. I stopped in front of the wall, I looked to see
what he would do, Shrag shook his head.
"These are the door of the drop shaft," when he came near them they
slid open. We entered.
We got off another level and walked down a crowded corridor, no one
seemed to notice either of us.
He stepped up, pushed open double doors that led to a vast area, an area,
to my surprise, looked quite similar to an African plan, I saw a herd of wilder
beasts and Zebras grazing underneath a zillion stars.
It wasn't the African plan that caught my breath. It was the stars
above me, and the sheer vastness of the area.
Shrag led me to what looked like wooden picnic tables and on them were…
Rachel! Tobias yelled.
"Tobias!" I gasped, "Jake! Cassie! Marco! And…Ax?"
I frowned, "Where's Ax?"
Jake shrugged. Tobias said, They wouldn't tell us.
I sat down, looked at my friends, "Did they tell you?"
One by one they nodded.
"Do you believe it?" I demanded, "Is this some kind of Ellimist trick?
It is isn't it? We didn't lose, we couldn't. Right?"
Marco looked at me with what could have been pity in his eyes he looked
away. I looked at Cassie and she too turned away. I looked at Tobias but his
fierce glaring eyes told me nothing. Jake, he would know.
I looked at Jake, "It's a trick right? He'll take us back to fight,
right?" I stared hard at him, 'Right?" I pressed.
Jake shook his head slowly.
"No. It's a trick." I said, my voice cracking slightly, "We had
it there, we were going to win, we believed it, it's just a trick, he'll
take us back right?" I was shaking now.
"Rachel…we lost." Jake said.
He said it simply, like there was no doubt about it.
"NO!" I said loudly, "We didn't. Remember yesterday? We were
planning to take down the main Kandorona. We were there!"
"Rachel." Jake said sadly, "Yesterday was twenty years ago."
"No." I whispered, it was like a punch in the stomach, I felt empty
and hollow. We lost.
More than six billion humans lost to them, no it couldn't be, this was
all a dream, right?
I looked at my friends, they all looked like they were a few years older
than what would have been yesterday.
But that couldn't be because yesterday was twenty years ago.
"I have a question," I said coldly, I glared at the boy who called
himself Shrag, I walked right up to him, grabbed his shoulder, spun him round
and said, "If we were in deep-freeze for twenty years, doesn't that mean we
would be either twenty years older or not changed at all?"
"No. You must have grown a few years older." He said with a shrug,
"They didn't tell me the exact details of the findings."
"Yeah, you know what? I don't think you're real. I don't think
you exist actually, so let me try something…"
His eyes flickered towards mine for a few seconds then he ignored me,
resumed his blank, I'm-on-guard expression. Turned around, faced out.
He didn't see me change.
He didn't see me grow.
But my friends did, "Rachel!"
I ignored them this wasn't real. And I intended to prove that. I stood
on two, stubby, brown legs and drew back my arm, and with my dim bear vision I
aimed my hooked claws.
I aimed them to connect solidly at his neck.
"LOOK OUT!"
"Rachel NO!"
But the boy had long reacted to their words; he spun round, his eyes wide
in surprise, stumbled back, mouth gaping.
He unfroze and grabbed what looked like a shredder from a belt round his
waist, aimed, he froze again, so did I.
"No." Jake said to the guy, "Wait!"
His eyes flickered towards Jake, he touched his collar, "I think we
have a problem here."
I demorphed and ten seconds later, a whole bunch of humans dressed just
like him appeared from a tree line, they surrounded us…
Amongst them was a girl.
She had dark brown eyes and
dark hair, it was cut just like that woman, Asi, when the girl looked at me, her
mouth dropped open, she stared.
"Rachel!?"
"Jordan?"
