Eric Campbell
"There are ten one-thousand pound bombs on this train. They're going to go off in four minutes from now. You have four minutes to evacuate. Anyone still here in four minutes is dead."
If there had had been panic before, Cassie's announcement produced utter pandemonium. Now we knew for sure the crash was no accident.
Visser One lost all interest in me, all four eyes focused hatefully on the Animorph girl even as she hopped off the train and treaded through the pool towards the cages, careful to keep her head above water. She briefly scanned the skies for the hunter robots, but, of course, she didn't stop to question why they were no longer in place. Which made it very, very clear to me that her words were no bluff – this installation was about to go up in smoke!
I ran back out of the cage, leaving the door wide open for the others to scatter out, and started to run headlong towards the next cage, but Ewell clamped down on me hard and started to demorph from Chris' form back into my own body.
«What are you DOING?» I demanded angrily, fighting to get control back.
Ewell's thought-speak response was colored by the frantic fear we both felt. «I'm morphing Cheep Cheep!» he responded, panic in his thought-speak voice. My uncle's decidedly adorable blue jay flashed through my memory momentarily, as he focused on the bird's feather patterns and melodic voice. «We've got to get out of here fast or we'll die!»
«We have to help the others!» I reminded him, although to be honest, the good majority of me wanted to get out of there too. But I couldn't bear the thought of having left when I could have helped.
«We'll never make it!» Ewell objected, but even as he did he began reversing the morph anyway. Our eyes scanned the chaotic crowd, looking for… what? The people most deserving of our help? It was impossible to think we could save all of them, not in less than four minutes, even if we resigned ourselves to death and opened cages 'til the last second. There were just too many of them. To be honest, I suppose I was looking for Chris, to make sure that he got out alright. But neither of the other Chrises was where he'd been when last I saw him, and I was wasting precious seconds in my indecision.
Fortunately, now that Ewell had agreed to help, he was more decisive than that. He went straight for the nearest cage and reached for his belt – only to discover that the key wasn't there! Frantically, we finished demorphing, idly wondering if there was even enough time to morph something with sharp blades and still have any hope of getting out ourselves. Thankfully, it never came to that, as a lady from the previous cage had thought to grab our keys and came over to open it.
"Quick, give me one!" I said, taking the keyring and sliding the nearest key, the silver one, off of it, before handing the ring back to her. The people in the cage bolted for the exits, and the lady took the rest of the keyring and ran towards the Animorph with the gorilla morph, who was struggling vainly to pull a cage door open.
I glanced around quickly and it was only then that I caught sight of Chris' brother, Chance, shaking the bars of another cage back and forth violently. In the cage with him were half a dozen humans, mostly other high schoolers. Immediately, Ewell bounded my legs in that direction. But was the silver key the right one for that cage? I couldn't remember the dumb coding system! Thankfully, it turned with a click, and Chance bounded outward with the others. «Okay, that's the best we're gonna do, let's go!» I declared, and Ewell started concentrating on Cheep Cheep.
It was one of the girls in the cage, incredibly one of the ones I'd heard screaming the loudest in despair and anger just minutes earlier, who had the consideration that even Ewell and I hadn't considered. She pointed to the pool and said, "What about the other Yeerks?"
"There's no time!" Ewell insisted, but the girl grabbed our shoulder and, jolted, we stopped morphing.
"No," she insisted, looking into my eyes as though trying to see Ewell through them. How she knew I still had a Yeerk in my head, I'm not sure. But she did. "You saved some of us, we'll save some of you." And with that, she ran towards the pool. Touched by her bravery, Ewell couldn't help but follow, not that I objected. I agreed.
We didn't make it more than a few steps before a horrible creature broke the surface of the pool, twenty bloodshot eyes staring around and twenty tentacles thrashing. Essentially what a temper-tantrum would look like if it were thrown by a cross between a squid and a spider. «Andalite scum!» the Visser cried, his thought-speak raging through the entire complex. «Vile human resistors! I will tear the heads from your bodies before I let you escape again!»
Needless to say, thoughts of saving any of the Yeerks in the pool were abandoned. «Not Cheep Cheep,» I told Ewell. «We need a morph that can lead Chance and the others out of here.»
Ewell broke my mouth into a smile. «Fine, I've got just the morph.» And with that, he led Chance and the others towards the Bug Fighters' hangar bay.
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Christopher Windward
«You want to fight?» the boy within the gorilla's body called out calmly, staring at the horrific monster that Visser One had become. I'd have stared in awe of the boy's courage, but I had more pressing matters. Like finding my brother, who was no longer in the cage he'd been in – or was that even the right one? I'd gotten so confused, so twisted around…
The morphing. That was the solution, my morphing power. I could morph the cougar and use it's sense of smell to track Chance, and perhaps Orkath.
«We can fight,» the gorilla assured Visser One matter-of-factly. «But it'll be a short fight. About one-and-a-half minutes, two minutes tops. And no survivors.»
A hand grasped my arm, breaking my concentration. I turned and looked into the eyes of Jean Berenson. "Where's Tom?" she asked, panicked.
"I don't know," I replied, just as panicked. I couldn't keep from glancing continually back towards the pool, and Visser One, while simultaneously scanning the crowds for Chance. Suddenly, morphing the cougar was the furthest thing from my mind. I glanced back at Jean and, in that moment, decided that saving the mother of the Animorphs' leader was the best thing I could do for the human race. Seeing his mom alive and free would boost Jake's morale, and could even make the difference between winning and losing the war. If Chance and Eric and Orkath died here, I would at least make sure that their deaths' weren't in vein. "We've got to get you out of here, though."
«Thaaaat's right,» the gorilla gloated, watching the Vissers' eyes turn towards the pool. «Ten one-thousand-pound bombs right behind you. No lie.» Already the Visser was pulling back, sinking under the pool, probably morphing to something that was capable of escape. If he felt that sort of urgency with all the powers of morphing at his disposal, what chance did a regular human like Jean have at this point? Taking her hand, I pulled forward, towards the staircase that led to the mall entrance.
"No," Jean said, pulling back firmly.
"What do you mean, 'no'," I asked, my voice sharp with controlled panic. "We don't have much time!"
"We don't have enough time at all," Jean insisted. "Not enough to escape."
"We can't just die in here!" I yelled, tugging again, but in my natural human body, I remained too much of a wuss to budge an adult from her footing.
Instead, she grabbed me, steadying me. "Think," she insisted, glancing around. "We'll never make it out of here in time… we have to find shelter IN here somewhere." She gestured towards the control tower, where the hunter robots had been controlled from. "What about that metal, will it survive the blast?"
"No," I replied, shaking my head with exasperation. "There's nothing down here that c…" I stopped abruptly, glancing back towards the oatmeal containment area. Thinking about the passageway behind it. "Wait, there IS a place we can go. The Kandrona!"
"Kandrona?" Jean asked, confused. "I thought those were just rays of light that these slugs fed on."
"Yes," I agreed, "rays of light that are emitted from a Kandrona Particle Generator. We used to keep one on top of the EGS Tower, but Jake and the others destroyed that one. It was replaced by two larger, reinforced units, including one placed in a shelter designed to remain intact if the pool was destroyed!"
"Great," Jean exclaimed, "but can we reach that shelter in a minute flat?"
Without wasting the time to answer verbally, I grabbed Jean's hand and ran flat out past the pool itself. Along the way I had the foresight to grab a cleaning bucket and just scoop into the sludgy water of the pool, tugging it along as I ran. Maybe a dozen or so Yeerks floated around inside, some of which were undoubtedly dead from the crash, but I didn't exactly have the time to sort them out – at least a few could be saved, and maybe one of them could tell me if Orkath had been seen in there. Flying into the oatmeal containment area, I kicked a barrel aside and pulled out the tunnel underneath, tossing first the bucket and then Jean downwards with reckless abandon, unwilling to wait the precious seconds needed to use the rung ladder. I hoped the outer shielding was enough! Down I jumped, closing the lid behind me. The fall was nearly twenty-five feet, and I felt a surge of pain in my ribs as I landed. Jean's fall had been easier on her, or at least it seemed so by the way she managed to limp towards the steel outer door.
"What's the code?" she asked desperately, glancing at the lit green panel on the door's side.
"Coffee," I responded, grabbing the bucket and dragging myself across the floor after her. She mumbled something about proof that the drink was evil before keying the code and popping open the door.
We barely had the chance to shut it before the first explosion rocked the cavern.
BA-BOOOOOM!
There was a short delay, and then it was as if an earthquake shook the shelter. I could only imagine the screams and cries and shrieks above as thousands of lives ended.
BA-BOOOOOM!
BA-BOOOOOM!
BA-BOOOOOM!
Explosions reverberated through one cavernous tunnel after another. Dirt shook from the ceiling and huge dents appeared in the walls. The lighting disappeared, save for the small blue hum of the machine in the corner, roughly the size of a small car – the Kandrona generator.
For several seconds, we were both silent, processing the fact that we were still alive. Then, relief flooded over us, and despite the fact that we'd seen each other maybe once in our entire lives, we embraced as fiercely as we would have had we been mother and son. "We're okay," I whispered happily.
"Alive, yes," she responded more skeptically. "Okay, I don't think so. Look." She pointed towards the blast door, dented inward. "We're not getting out of here any time soon."