Notes:
--Finally, Jake!
Chapter 11
Jake
By Aura Kage
I didn't have an idea of how it happened. Hell, I didn't have an idea of what had happened.
All I knew was that I woke up to the glare of a bright light perched underneath a dome, faced right at my head. I blinked away the spots in my eyes and looked around, wondering…what had happened? Where was I? Where was the Rachel? Had she been…destroyed? Entirely? As in, beyond fixing?
I groaned and tried to move, but was quickly restrained by something coarse binding my neck, arms, legs, and stomach. I froze, and dread filtered into my sluggish thoughts, quickly clearing away anything else.
The word "Nesk" – the fish-people that we, the original Animorphs, had found so long ago – flashed into my mind. Was I…was I on some operating table? My head was too restricted to see, to look around.
I heard a rough grumbling behind me, so gruff that I could swear my ears cringed.
Then, immediately, something looked at me. Just looked at me, its dark, beady little eyes glittering. It was…a rat! Or a mole! With claws like swords attached to its hands!
It spoke to another in the room, and I heard a reply. The sounds – I could hardly distinguish one sound from another. But I knew that they were words. I mean, obviously I knew, but still some part of my brain wondered – how could these…sounds…be actual words? Actual, coherent words?
One of the moles lifted its claw and brought it down over my chest, and I exhaled as the blade-claw neared my skin. Was it going…to operate me? No way. Not again. Death couldn't be this repetitive.
But no. It merely traced something of a triangle, then lifted its claw and looked at me expectantly.
What was I supposed to do?
"Uh…" I said lamely. Oh, great. Nice reaction, there, Jake. "Um, I'm Jake. Who are you?"
The mole-thing gave an exclamation and looked towards its partner, who moved over to where he was in view as well. Their surly "words" were pretty inexpressive, but I was (somewhat) sure it was exclamation they were voicing.
Oh, look! The strange creature speaks!
One of the moles began jabbering to me excitedly, but I gave him a confused look and he fell silent. Maybe he was capable of reading human expressions. Hah, yeah right. Maybe he just saw that I wasn't understanding.
I struggled against the bed pointedly, seeing what the moles' reaction would be, and they backed away uneasily, looking back and forth between themselves and me, talking. I didn't understand any of it, but I was also pretty sure that the conversation wandered along the lines of: "It doesn't have any physical weapons! It must have something even more powerful in store to fend off enemies! We must be cautious!"
I stopped struggling, seeing that they wouldn't free me. Great. Just…just, great.
I wondered what had happened with Marco and all the others. Were they alright? Had they been caught like me? Had they…had they even survived the dispatched escape pod?
Please, please say they did. They had to. If they didn't…
Great. A failure already, and we haven't really even gotten to the life-threatening rescue yet.
But wait…could these…were these mole-things actually the Kelbrid?
My blood ran cold. No, they couldn't be…but then again, if they were, then that would at least tell me that Ax was somewhere around here. I could probably even escape this stupid table, just morph into tiger or rhinoceros…
That is, assuming that the moles were too shocked by my transition not to react. Morphing would mean that I would be caught in helplessness in the middle of the morph, and I didn't want to see what those claws could do.
Nothing to do except wait. Wait, and hope for a miracle.
In other words, I was stuck.
I sighed in exasperation and relaxed – or at least, tried to relax. The moles didn't seem to be very hostile, at least. Then again, if they were, then I would have probably been dead by now, not stuck on some operating table with a lamp stuck in front of my face.
Wait…how could they have picked me up and tied me up if they had hands like that?
Before I had a chance to mull over it, two more of the mole things came in, looking to be out of breath as they hunched over slightly, their torsos inflating wildly. The two in the room turned to them questioningly, and one of the new moles stepped forward and began speaking.
The old moles replied, a tone of confusion in their voice, and the second new mole backed up the first in whatever he/she had been saying, one claw lifting and lowering as if to explain something.
Ah, the wonders of a conversation you can't understand.
Then the mole that had been gesturing looked at me, and its shadowed eyes widened in surprise as it spoke an impulsive word…that I, of course, couldn't understand.
But there was something about that word. Something that sounded a lot like…
"Shuurrkg!" the mole repeated, taking a step towards me. One of the old moles lifted a claw to block her, the voluminous hair behind its neck rising considerably, showing disagreement. The mole that had gestured continued looking at me and shook its head, repeating what she had said.
Wait – how could a mole-thing know that gesture –?
Apparently, this had occurred to the mole-blocking-the-way as well, and he withdrew with a savage snarl and cried out, "Aagraah!"
The new-mole-that-had-spoken-first acted quickly – taking its claw and lifting it above its head, then bringing it down in a deadly but controlled arch into the old mole's head. Then, before the other could react, the attacker-mole sideswiped its claw and slapped it in the stomach, than the head.
They both fell to the floor, limp, most likely to wake up with horrible headaches later.
And the mole…the one that had said the slurred word…began morphing.
No, no, not morphing, some part of my mind said. Not morphing, you idiot. Demorphing.
But even having realized this and the further bewilderment it brought, I stared in disbelief as familiar features melted through the fur of the mole-thing with an ease like water – the fur simply dissolved into skin of the equivalent coloring, and suddenly before me stood –
"Ca…Cassie?!" I gasped. She rushed over to the table wordlessly, Wolverine claws still diminishing into supple human skin. "How – what – how-?"
"Ellimist," she explained in a contemptuous mutter.
Oh, Ellimist. Well, that made a lot of sense.
"The Ellimist?" I said as the cord that bound my neck slipped off, severed by the still-sharp X-men claw. "He brought you here? But…why?"
"For the same reason he brought us to save the Iskoort," she said in an exasperated sigh, slicing the bounds on my right hand. "Listen, though, we have to hurry –"
"Whoa…" disrupted a stunned, but familiar voice from somewhere behind me. The binding on my left wrist was removed; I sat up and looked back at who had spoken, though I had known. "Whoa. I'm…I'm strapped to a table." Marco shuddered. "Why do I suddenly experience this horrible feeling of déjà vu?"
Cassie looked up suddenly from her work on my leg, looking back at the mole-thing that was standing guard behind her, peering out of the burrow and keeping watch. "Alright," she replied, turning back to her unbinding.
"What?" I said, confused. "Who –?"
"That's Ankulei," Cassie explained hurriedly. "I can say more later, but we have to hurry – she says that someone's coming."
"Uh, alright…whatever you say," I said absentmindedly, as she freed me completely and moved on to Marco, who barked out a laugh as he saw the claws sticking from her knuckles.
"You're Wolverine! No, no, wait – you're She-Wolverine. I wonder if –"
"Save it, Marco," Cassie interrupted in a hiss, which surprised him so much that he fell silent. I was surprised myself – Cassie? Hissing? No, no…that was just wrong. Cassie wasn't capable of that.
But I would have to save it for thinking about later. I looked around the room, felt my eyes sting at the sudden change from light to darkness. There wasn't half as much light in the room as there had been shining in my face – I couldn't see a thing until my eyes adjusted.
Meanwhile, "Ankulei" had backed away from the "doorway" and was getting to work freeing Santorelli, who was, to my great relief, just awakening as well. Even Jeanne was blinking sleepily, yawning tiredly, and Menderash as well.
Good. Good. We were all here. We were all…
No, no. Where…where was Tobias?
"Aw, man," Marco moaned, sitting up and sliding off the table, rubbing his wrists. "Not the greatest way to wake up."
"Where's Tobias?" I demanded, turning on him with an impatience that was fed by my fear. Marco would know what had happened to him – he was with him, in the escape pod.
Please don't tell me he's…
"Oh, Tobias?" Marco said sluggishly, scratching the back of his head. "Tobias…oh, man…" He looked down at his arm for some reason, and frowned at the unmarked skin there. "Tobias…after we landed, I got shot with this…this little dart…and it was poisoned or something, because I blacked out, and I told Tobias to go…go," he finished lamely.
"To go?"
"Yeah, Jake. Go," Marco affirmed. "Didn't want him caught too, you know. He went…I think he went looking for you." He suddenly sniffed, taking a deep breath. "Hey, I can breathe in here."
"What?"
"There's, like, no oxygen outside," Marco explained. "I was just looking around outside of the escape pod, and I couldn't breathe at all."
They are coming! a thought-speak voice said urgently, jarring Marco and me from our conversation. I jumped and felt my heart's five-times-more-than-normal beating, and realized that it must have been the mole-thing.
They were capable of thought-speech? But then why were they talking…
"We have to get out of here!" Cassie echoed. Santorelli looked at her in disbelief.
"You…you can't be…?"
"Where?" I asked – to Cassie. She shrugged helplessly, frantic beyond logical thinking.
"I don't know! Not here! It's too small in here, they'll smell you!"
"What about you?" I asked back – but she began morphing back into the mole-thing, answering my question.
The other mole – Ankulei – walked over to the doorway and stood in it, its dark-furred bulk completely blocking out most of the room, and began speaking with another mole that had apparently come by, trying to distract while we…while we what? Hid? In plain sight?
This mission hadn't even seriously started yet, and we were headed into disaster!
"Under the tables!" I hissed, and everyone immediately complied, dropping to the damp ground and crawling under the wooden tables. I observed offhandedly, as I finished crawling into my makeshift hiding place, that they were not meant to be stationary – wheels were studded into the legs, one to each, and showed that they were meant to be wheeled around.
Wait – wheels? Made out of what? I touched it, and tried to guess the material by the texture – rubber, of something along that line. Rubber? Rubber wheels? But then why wasn't everything else more…more high-tech? For instance, why was the ground…well, ground?
Evidently, the mole soon moved away, for the mole on our side swaggered back inside the room, deadly claws swinging.
I have successfully diverted the Gyuren from this room, said an obviously female voice into our heads – a voice that was too…too, well, advanced for a mole-thing, or at least the mole-things as my first impression had deemed them. You may now remove yourselves from your respective hiding places.
In fact, that voice reminded me a lot of…an Andalite? But how –?
Everyone crawled from under the tables, including me, and I brushed off my jeans and turned to the mole, opening my mouth to ask an explanation.
But she beat me to it.
I am decol Ankulei-Shloroun-Dristhfill, the mole-thing said, proving that she was an Andalite by the all-too-familiar name-structure. I am an experiment under Project Hybrid, led by the Scientist Fradulan-Drisrouth-Semulan, Section Three-Seventeen of the Warith Field. I –
"That's enough," I said hastily, disrupting the morphed Andalite from reciting her entire history. As it was, I couldn't even understand what she was talking about.
She broke off, seeming flustered.
And you are Jake the Yeerk-Killer, previous Prince to presently Prince Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill, she said with painstaking formality. I was sent on a mission here to aid in rescuing him – Aximili, that is…or so I believe, though now I doubt that this was my single mission. The rescue crew – which I now assume is the group present excluding Cassie and I – were proclaimed missing at the point of my departure several days ago.
"Days?" Menderash spoke up. "That cannot be the case. It took us several Earth-months to arrive where we are, and it is impossible that you would get here in less."
The Ellimist interfered, "Ankulei" said simply, a tone of frustration in her voice. With the agreement of Cassie and I, he sent us across time and space to the current destination. We have aged the exact amount of time it would have taken for us to arrive here, but it seems to both of us that we were at Earth only yesterday.
"Whoa," Marco remarked. "That's confusing. But trust it to the Ellimist."
"The Ellimist," Jeanne said, words tinted with her crisp French accent, "is the one who took the form of the little blue man and did impossible things, yes?"
Marco smiled at her. "Have I already mentioned that I love your accent?"
We should get going, Cassie muttered, breaking into the conversation. Anku can explain more later, once we're in a safer…more secluded…place.
Who is Anku? Ankulei asked, looking at her. I was not aware that we had an expert whom would further elaborate our situation. That would be very –
"I think she means you," Marco said with a laugh. "You know, 'Anku?' A shorter version of Ankulay-Shoron-Distill?"
Ankulei-Shloroun-Dristhfill, Ankulei corrected, but she nodded understandingly. Ah, yes. A nickname. I now understand. I can explain further of the Gyuren and our present situation, but later, as Cassie stated. Follow me – I will attempt to lead you to safer grounds.
So we followed, through the labyrinth of tunnels that weren't exactly small, but weren't exactly tall either. I mean, I could reach up and probably touch the ceiling with my fingers, and if I stretched out my arms to either side I could just graze the walls.
Finally, after what seemed to be hours of searching and finding no secret place, Cassie made a suggestion.
Why don't we just go up?
"No way," Marco declined. "There's no air up there, remember? We'll be replicas of Smurfs in seconds! Well, tall replicas of Smurfs."
"Except you, Marco," I said with a grin. "You'll be a life-sized replica."
"Oh, that hurts, Jake. That really hurts."
No harm in attempting, Anku said, reaching both claws up and digging straight through the surface, which came away as easily as sand. I stared as she easily hopped from the hole, Cassie following with the same ease. Purple – yes, purple – sand was falling to the ground like grainy rain, and a brown hand that had been until now hidden reached down.
The air here's fine, Cassie informed us all. Someone grab my hand – I'll pull you up.
Santorelli was first – he grasped Cassie's dark, short-furred hand and gave an audible gasp as he was heaved up onto the ground. I stared – these things…these Gyuren? Well, whatever they were…they were strong.
And what had happened to the claws? Were there actually hands underneath them, or were they retractable, like a cat's?
Two more hands came down, and Jeanne and Marco were next, lifted from the hole with the same effortlessness as Santorelli.
Then, me. I snatched the hand that fell down to me, holding it tightly, and Cassie or Anku – I couldn't tell the difference – pulled me up. I blinked dazedly as I forced my eyes to adjust from the slightly-yellow-tinted darkness into the vivid lavender that stained the entire empty landscape, which resembled something of a desert.
An eerily quiet desert. No birds singing. Nothing. Just the sand, distant weird-shaped trees…and a very large sun. Well, large in comparison to the sun on Earth, anyway. I think.
Marco took a deep breath. "I can breathe," he said wonderingly.
I made sure to extract from the underground near a specimen of flora, Anku explained. Perhaps you were too far away from plant life to receive any of the oxygen it expelled. These trees are called Julasara, and they possess some of the same qualities of trees both on my home world and Earth, except they are not flammable and can endure the full ferocity of the sun's rays here.
"Speaking of things that are here…" I said uncomfortably, looking around the various landscape. "Where…is here, anyway?"