Thanks for my reviews peoples! Keep it up and I promise to entertain!(p.s. other morphs will appear in later chappies! promise!)
Declaimer: Remember people, I don't own the Animorphs, okay? Good, proceed!
Chapter 1: Behind the Bolted Door
Marco POV
"Alright, so what part of our lives is Visser Three trying to screw up now? Has he instructed Chapman to have us expelled yet?" I was crazy tired when I walked into Cassie's barn. And it wasn't only me, either! Everyone was yawning like lazy cats in our rumpled, wrinkled, tossed-on-in-the-dark clothes. Even Ax's front two eyes were drooping closed. Of course, this sort of thing happens when you get a call at two in the morning to come in for an emergency meeting by an urgent android.
"Hurry, Marco, you need to hurry down ASAP," Erek nearly hollered into the phone. After my eardrums stopped ringing, I begged him to quiet down. Unlike me, my father was actually allowed to sleep in the middle of the night! Go figure.
"Not tonight, man, I need my sleep. It's either now, or tomorrow, during my science exam," I groaned.
"Please, Marco, you must come! We need your handsome and hilarious presence to make it through the night, oh Great One!" Okay, so he didn't say it in that many words, but I knew that's what he meant.
Anyway, i dragged my butt into a pair of old jeans, completely forgetting to change out of my Spiderman T-shirt, and rode the city bus all the way down to Cassie's farm, grumbling that the news better be worth the weird stares the bus driver gave me. Lo and behold, it was.
"Enough joking, Marco, this is serious," growled early morning Rachel, still supermodel gorgeous and grizzly bear peeved. Her hair was miraculously in place, despite her bedtime yawns. The wors 'witchcraft' popped into my head once or twice.
"Okay Erek, what's going on?" asked Jake, fighting his eyelids to stay open. The Chee turned to him, his hologram down, revealing his chrome and plastic, canine-ish body. He started up a holographic computer layout, opening file after file until he rested on a snapshot of a long, dark corridor, like a laboratory from a horro movie.
"This is live video feed from a security camera deep in the Yeerk pool. Hardly any Controllers are allowed this far, except for a high ranking Visser and a few others," Erek began to explain.
"How did you get a camera hook-up this far in?" asked Cassie, standing their in light yellow pajamas, suddenly wide awake. I guess we all were, seeing as anything can shock a teenager awake, if it's creepy enough. And it most definetly was, with Hork-Bajir and Human-Controllers guarding it like a Martian Fort Knox.
"I know a guy whose good with computers," he murmured. Then he started to laugh. "In fact, he is a computer!" No one laughed with him. He cleared his metallic throat with a sound like a woodchipper running over a VCR and continued. "One of our agents amongst the Yeerks recorded these images, which I thought you guys should see." On the video, the hallway ended with a large, steel door. It was bolted shut, almost like one of those huge storage freezers in restaurants. Except, the chill that went down my spine told me that it wasn't holding any frozen hamburger patties. Rachel just continued to stare until the audio kicked in.
"SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEE-EEEEEEEEEEE-AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!" We all clamped our hands over our ears to keep our heads from exploding from the screech. Tobias was freaking out up in the rafters.
What the hell was that?! he shouted, increasing the noise in my head. Erek somehow lowered the volume on the video feed and drew the group's attention back to it. Now, instead of the hideous screeching, the guards were swarming around the door, lasers aimed and ready to fire. Whatever was behind the door was pounding, trying to get out. Rivets and band began to buckle under the beating they were getting. There was obviously a horrible creature inside; what else could it be?! I could tell you it wasn't Bambi! One Human-Controller, obviously in charge, barked a command. Then, all at once, the guards opened fire on the steel door. After a few moments of complete chaos, a soft thud was heard to us in the dimly lit barn. We watched wide-eyed as the smoke cleared. The door was almost totally blown away, revealing utter darkness. And I mean like cave darkness. All the light seemed to be swallowed up into the room beyond.
"Oh my God," breathed Jake. I just kept stared, slack-jawed. I thought they were guarding the room from intruders, not blowing it up! There was another order and a Horj-Bajir was sent into the darkness to iinvestigate. The camera picked up its shaky knees as it marched into the room. there was a moment of silence as the rest waited for what was going to happen next. I released a breath i didn't know i was holding when the guard walked back out to report to the leader. Is it dead? I wondered as the dozen or so guards marched into the room next and about thirty more arrived. This thing must've been really dangerous to freak the Yeerks out like that! Which meant we should've been freaked out even more! We didn't have that kinda firepower if it ever came to fighting that monster!
"Survailance reveals that what was being held in that room is being called Visser Three's 'Pet Project,' although, some are calling it a weapon of mass destruction. This footage was received in a Pool under Poland. The creature has been relocated to a base about fifty miles out in the dessert," briefed Erek in a stony voice. We nodded our heads and watched the video come to a close. A medical staff filed into the room next, then exiting with a body on a hovering stretcher. Most of the body was covered with a white sheet, but it was small and frail looking. That's when, from beneath the sheet, a pair of black eyes peeked out at us--well, at the camera. It was a pale face, but all I could really see were the eyes, cold and lifeless, like a shark's. And with my bad history with sharks, those eyes on a humanoid face could terrify. The very idea scared the crap out of me! The video ended and we all looked at Jake, our leader. We needed..well, leadership! This obviously was going to be a problem, possibly life-threatening. Altough, what wasn't nowadays?
Jake turned to look at Erek with mature, stressed eyes that had seen so much in such a little bit of time. "So, are they going to do anything soon?" The android nodded ominously; never a good sign.
"Due to a sudden change of plans, they are planning on an infestation of the creature, to use it in battle against you guys."
"When is the infestation scheduled to take place?" inquired Ax. It was the first time he spoke since we all arrived.
Erek the Chee winced an I-was-hoping-you-wouldn't-ask type of wince, like the one I used when my teacher asked for my overdue homework. "Considering the time for set-up and transportation..." we inched closer, "...about twelve hours from now." Of course it had to be! Since when, in the history of histories wwere we given a break? NEVER, that's when! N. E. V. E. R. As an Animorph, luck is out of the question. The memory of the shark-like eyes flashed in my mind. I flopped down on a bale of hay to hide my involuntary shiver. Suddenly, sleep was a distant fantasy, not possible in any sense of the word.