Chapter 26

I grabbed the bolt between my teeth and slid it open. The door swung open and the girl burst through, covered in sweat and panting heavily. She was about the same age as Asha, with long, bushy red hair and huge hazel eyes. She was flushed, her cheeks bright red.

--Come on,-- I coaxed. --You'll going to be Ok – we've come to rescue you,-- I said rather lamely. --But we don't exactly have much time.-- Her eyes widened in disbelief as she realised the animals in front of her spoke with human voices.

--Follow me,-- I said. The girl obeyed. She was wearing exactly what we'd been wearing inside the spaceship – the horrible white monstrosity given to us courtesy of the Skrit-Na. She followed me to the sheltered area behind the dumpsters, wincing as the gravel and broken glass cut her bare feet.

"Who are you?" she breathed as we ran towards the others. God only knew how we were going to get her out of this mess alive. I hadn't exactly planned on escaping with a non-morphing Yeerk escapee.

--We're humans,-- I replied. "I'm Samantha. There's four of us – we're fellow passengers of alien-chaos airlines."

"You were on the spaceship?" she asked, taking no account of the fact that although I'd said we were humans, she was now hiding alongside a leopard and an ox. Philip and I were still in battle morphs, back behind the bins. My leopard nose could smell a ferret among the stench of the rubbish – so I assumed Ferdie and Asha were around somewhere.

--Yup,-- I said. --This will sound totally mad, but we were given the morphing power by, well, a good alien on board the space-ship, so that we could escape. We're on the run from, well, the bad aliens now, but hey, at least we can turn into animals.--

I knew I was probably making no sense to the girl whatsoever – I was just spilling out the words in my panic and barely making sense to myself – but the girl seemed to understand.

"Did you use a blue box?" she asked.

--What?--

"The blue box," she repeated. I stared at her. "Did a blue alien, with, err, a tail, make you touch a blue box and say you could turn into animals?"

This girl was either catching on very fast, or knew more than I thought.

--Yeah!-- I said. --The morphing power. It's- -- But I was interrupted before I could continue.

"I've got it," she said.

--What?-- I cried, for the second time.

"The alien gave me the morphing power with that blue box thing! He said – god, what was it? – that I could acquire and morph any animal I could touch. He told me to acquire him to fight my way free if I was captured by the Yeerks, and that he's try and get me home to find, well you four, I guess he meant. But it was all such chaos, and I didn't understand a word of it, and he told me to touch him - but he was killed before I could get a chance!"

I was silent for a moment.

--The alien died?-- I asked, shocked. Even though we had barely spent any time together in that hellish spaceship, I had already though of a bond connecting us. He had, after all, given us a great power in the hopes that we would survive.

"Aye, he was hit by one of those laser beam things," she cried. "Then, I was captured by two of those huge, bladed monster things- "

--Hork-Bajir-- I said automatically.

"- and I was carted off back to Earth at gunpoint, and then you guys turned up!"

I breathed deeply, unable to comprehend what I was hearing. I looked at her, holding her eye contact.

--What's your name?-- I asked.

"Maggie," replied the girl, speaking in a strong Scottish accent.

--Maggie - have you managed to acquire anything at all?-- I asked, fearing the answer.

"No, nothing!" she cried. "I think the alien that captured me – the blue-tailed guy said they were called Yerks, or Yorks, or something – have guessed that I have the morphing power and have had laser guns pointed at my face all day! I kept hoping a spider, or something, would creep into my cell, and I could morph it, but…"

I snapped into action.

--Ferdie, use your ferret morph and get me a live spider, or bug – anything small! Then, morph to raptor! Everyone else, raptors too!--

--On it!-- shouted Ferdie. The others and I began to demorph. I sunk further back into the shadows, trying not to look at the horrified expression on Maggie's face. I swallowed in apprehension and guilt. Her first morph would be worse than any we'd done so far.

A minute later, three of us were human. Ferdie returned a moment later, a large, ugly beetle in his mouth. I held out my hand, and he dropped it in to it. I put my other hand over my palm, feeling the beetle's little legs tickling my skin as it tried to get out.

"Maggie, I don't have time to explain anything, so you're gonna have to trust me on this one. I need to you hold this beetle here-" I passed the beetle into her trembling hands – "and concentrate on it. Keep concentrating on it until you feel your body begin to change. Close your eyes if you want." She shut her eyes and concentrated on the beetle. She panted in short, sharp breaths.

As I morphed to lanner falcon, and Ferdie back to human and on to hobbie, Maggie slowly became the beetle. Her skin hardened over, blackening, like it had been covered in lacquer. Her legs became thinner and covered in ugly black hairs. She opened an eye.

"Arrghhhh!" she cried. "No!" The morphing stopped suddenly. I clenched my fists, trying not to panic. Ok, so this was her very first morph, and she'd had about zero information, but we really didn't have time for rehearsals.

--Keep concentrating!-- I barked. I was almost fully falcon now, my lips hardening into the wickedly sharp beak of the raptor. --You're doing fine!--

Maggie resumed concentration. The changes restarted. My eyesight was sharpening, which allowed me to see every sicken detail. Her face hardened like the rest of her body, bulging outwards. Her jaw grew absurdly, becoming a huge pair of slashing black mandibles. Her eyes grew huge and shattered into the compound eyes of the beetle. Antennae shot from her forehead. An extra pair of fully-insect legs shot out of her chest, like something out of a horror movie. She shrunk rapidly, until she was a barely-visible speck on the ground. All the time, she was moaning and crying, not noticing when she'd switched over to thought-speak. I tried to emphasise, but then I saw something that had turned my blood stone cold.