The Conspiracy

by K. A. Applegate

  A dark car was turning onto my block. A hundred yards away. Fifty.

  "Hey, Dad." I limped over to him, sweating, heart thundering. "Let me do that."

  I took the hose.

  My dad smiled. "Volunteering, huh? So. What is it you want?"

  Twenty yards!

  "Just wanted to get outside. Fresh air," I said.

  "Unh. Well, thanks, then. I'll go do some packing."

  He turned. Too slowly! He walked. Too slowly!

  The car was there.

  The window was down.

  74 The gunman was staring at my father's back.

  I jerked the hose. Water hit the side of the car.

  The gunman yanked back in surprise; my father opened the door.

  I waved at the car and said, "Sorry!"

  The car passed by.

  I breathed. My hands were shaking. My heart was a jackhammer.

  I pretended to suddenly recognize Mr. Chapman as the car pulled away. "Hey, Mr. Chapman!" I waved.

  I felt someone watching me. I spared a quick glance. Tom.

  He was framed in our living room window. His eyes burned with rage.

  He'd have killed me, too. He would have had my dad gunned down and if I'd gotten in the way . . .

  And that wasn't the worst of it. Worse was knowing that my brother Tom, my true brother, had been trapped inside his own mind, trapped watching as the killers prepared to murder his family. Helpless, watching, unable to open his own mouth to shout a warning.

  I was clenching the hose so tightly the water was petering out. But I couldn't relax the muscles. Could not.

  I don't know how this war will turn out. Don't

  75 know if we'll win or lose or even, somehow, compromise and make peace. But I know one thing: I will kill the Yeerk who has done this to my brother.

  I will kill him.

  76 We met in Cassie's barn. All of us but Ax and Rachel. They were watching my house. My dad would be safe with those two.

  Tobias calmly, without blame, related what had happened that day and afternoon.

  "Stupid," Marco said.

  "I can't believe you took a chance like that, Jake!" Cassie said angrily. Cassie doesn't get mad, but she was mad. "Were you looking to get shot?!"

  "Obviously not," I said, meeting her gaze. "But what else was I supposed to do? Let them kill my father?"

  "That's not the point," Marco said, as angry as Cassie, but colder about it. "You demorphed

  77 r-

  in plain view. And Tobias says it was a matter of a split second whether you ended up machine-gunned on your own lawn."

  "The alternative was letting them gun down my father."

  "So you figured to let them kill you, too?"

  "It worked!" I raged.

  Marco threw up his hands in disgust. "Why didn't you have backup? Tobias says you told him and Ax to get lost. And not to get any of us," Marco said. He was leaning back on a bale of hay. Leaning back, but not at all relaxed. "We're supposed to be in this together. If you needed help, you were supposed to ask for it."

  "Yeah, I know," I said. "But you guys were in school during the surveillance and tonight, well, I didn't exactly expect Chapman to do a drive-by shooting, you know."

  "A mistake on your part," Marco said.

  "Yeah. A mistake."

  "And today, earlier? Tobias says you froze up when he asked for an order."

  "I didn't freeze up, I-"

  "We can't afford you freezing up," Marco said.

  I glared at him. "You're enjoying this, aren't you? This is payback for when I doubted you over your mother."

  "I was ready to do what had to be done," Marco said.

  78 "So am I!"

  "No. You're not. You endangered all of us. You demorphed on your roof! On your roof! In daylight. With your brother in the house! If Tom had seen you do that you'd be head down in the Yeerk pool right now, and the rest of us would be standing in line behind you!"

  "What's the matter with you all?!" I cried. "That was my father! My father! I'm supposed to just stand by and do nothing?"

  Tobias answered before Marco could. «ls it worth exposing ourselves and risking everything, all of mankind . . . literally all the human race . . . just to save one person?» he said quietly. «l'm sorry, Jake. I know he's your father. I know what you're feeling. But it's something we have to think about.»

  I looked away. My face was burning. "You know, we talked about this and we decided on surveillance. We watched my father in case he needed protection. Well, he did and I reacted. What did you guys really think I was gonna do?"

  "Just what you did," Marco said. "You're too close to this. You can't make this call."

  I barked out a laugh. "What, you're going to decide whether my dad lives or dies?" I looked at Cassie.

  "Jake . . ." she said.

  "You need to back off on this," Marco said

  79 quietly. "You can't make this call. Not about your dad and your brother."

  "You made it when it was your mom," I said.

  Marco shrugged. "Yeah, well, that's me. If it's any comfort to you, I'd like myself more if I was like you. But the question here is, how far do we go to protect your father?" Marco said. "And who is going to make that decision?"

  "I'm the leader of this group," I said.

  Marco hesitated. He bit his lip. Then, drawing a deep breath, he said, "We need a vote."

  "Rachel and Ax aren't here," I said.

  «Ax will refuse to vote,» Tobias said. «He'll say it's a human question. He'll say Jake is his prince and he'll do what his prince says. But he won't cast a vote either way.»

  "Rachel will back me," I said.

  Marco nodded. "Yeah. She will. That leaves it up to Cassie and Tobias."

  I didn't look at either of them. I expected to hear Cassie speak up. But she didn't. Silence.

  I felt like the ground was falling away beneath me. Cassie doubted me, too? Cassie didn't think I could handle this?

  I heard a ruffling of feathers up in the rafters and looked up. Tobias cocked his head, his fierce, hawk's gaze meeting my angry, human one.

  I was the first to look away.

  Tobias had been there twice when I'd risked

  80 my life - and his - to save my father. He knew how important it was to me and he knew how far I'd go to do it.

  «You guys are missing a couple of important points,» Tobias said quietly. «First of all, writing off a human life is something the Yeerks would do, not us.»

  Cassie nodded. She looked troubled. Like she should have thought of that.

  «Second, what if the Yeerks don't kill Jake's father? What if they succeed instead in making him a Controller?» Tobias continued. «Jake's already got one Controller in his family; if they make his father one, too, then there's gonna be a couple of very suspicious people watching Jake coming and going all the time, especially when there's Animorph activity. So I don't think it's a question of should we save him, but how we do it.»

  Thank you, Tobias, I thought silently, staring down at the ground.

  «But there's one more thing that nobody's talking about,» Tobias continued, stretching and refolding his wings. «l think we've been on the wrong path all this time. Sitting around waiting for the Yeerks to attack, then saving Jake's father again and again is no plan. The Yeerks may think it was a coincidence at the mini-mall, maybe a coincidence on the lawn, but they can count, you

  81 know? Sooner or later they'll think, "That's too many coincidences."»

  "Exactly," Marco said.

  «So, why don't we get off the defensive? Do something. Something big that'll distract their attention away from Jake's father until he and Tom and Jake can leave for the cabin tomorrow morning?»

  Marco hesitated. He knew the vote had gone against him. At worst he had Cassie on his side. That was two against three, leaving Ax out.

  Finally Marco nodded. "Okay, we go on the offensive." He tried a semblance of his usual humor. "I always wanted to die kickin
g and screaming."

  He stepped toward me. He held out his hand. "Nothing personal, Jake. I was just looking out for the group."

  I left his hand hanging in midair.

  After a while he withdrew it.

  "So, what's the plan?" Cassie said, trying to break the hostility of that moment.

  "Maybe we could think about-" Marco began.

  "I have a plan," I said.

  82 lid I have a plan? Not till that split second. Not till I was face-to-face with Marco and realizing I had to come up with something. Had to.

  Sometimes emotion works for you.

  We needed a distraction. The distraction I had in mind was big. And would hopefully last until I could get my father out of town.

  "Kidnap Chapman," I said.

  That made Marco stare. It drew a gasp from Cassie. Tobias laughed like I might be joking. Then he sort of moaned.

  Then he laughed again and said, «Well, I'll say one thing: This is going to make Rachel happy.»

  A daring plan? Yes.

  83 Crazy? Suicidal? Stupid?

  I hoped not.

  "Forces the Yeerks to decide their priorities," Marco said. "Do they save Tom or Chapman? Who's more important to them? Chapman. They'll still try and help Tom with his situation, but Chapman disappearing will be a total Red Ball, Maximum Panic situation. It works."

  Give Marco credit for one thing: No one is faster or better at seeing the ruthless solution. And Marco is honest.

  It wasn't going to be a pretty mission. We didn't have time for subtle.

  We hooked up with Rachel and Ax and explained the plan.

  Rachel said, "Cool!"

  I left Cassie and Tobias to guard my house. I'd have left Marco, too, but he would have taken it as me being afraid to have him around. I wasn't going to give him the satisfaction.

  Rachel, Ax, Marco, and I flew to a house across the street and down from Chapman's home on a quiet, suburban street. It was dark. Not late, but dark. I was twenty minutes away from my dad wondering why I wasn't home. Same with the others.

  The house was for sale. Vacant. The bushes were overgrown and untended. Perfect for us. Almost roomy at first. Less so as we morphed.

  84 "Move over, Marco," Rachel grumbled as his shoulders bulged and muscled up into a gorilla's massive form.

  "Oh, come on, you love being close to me," he leered, just before his jaw swung out and his lips became a puffy, black rubber Halloween mask.

  I shut my eyes and concentrated on my own morph.

  Rhinoceros. For this job we needed blunt, brute force. And nothing is blunter than a rhino.

  I heard the thin bone of my human skull crunch and split apart. Heard a sound like grinding teeth as new bone, layers and layers of new bone, filled in the gaps and made an almost impenetrable armor.

  My body thickened. My legs, arms, hands, feet, stomach, back, shoulders, all thickened. My skin thickened from human flesh to something resembling a car's leather seat to something as tough and dense and stiff as a saddle.

  My ears crawled up the sides of my head.

  My eyesight dimmed and blurred.

  My neck lost all definition, sucking back into my expanding, blimp like body. Bigger. Bigger.

  Huge.

  And then, at last, the horn. It grew from my face, down where my nose had once been. Long,

  85 curved, dangerous. A primitive, blunt weapon. A horn that could have impaled an armored knight.

  But despite the formidable body, the terrifying horn, the power of the rhino, its mind was peaceful, placid. Basically, it just wanted to eat and to be left alone. It was watchful but not scared or angry.

  That was okay. I had enough fear and anger for both of us.

  "Prince Jake, I am ready. Red-eeee. Eeeee," Ax said. He'd morphed to human, using the DNA combination he'd long ago absorbed from all of us. But he'd stopped the morph partway, distorting his features so Chapman wouldn't be able to recognize him later on.

  In his standard human morph, Ax is a strange and beautiful kid. Now, with his eyes a little beadier, his nose stubby and squashed, and his hair darker and shaggier, he bore a startling resemblance to Quasimodo.

  Minus the hump, of course.

  «Well, Ax, I'll never again think of you as just another pretty face,» Marco said.

  «Do you guys see anything suspicious?» I interrupted, twisting my ears around at each new sound and sniffing the air. «l'm half blind with these eyes.»

  «Suspicious? Well, I see a bear, a gorilla, a

  86 rhino, and some weird kid standing in the bushes, but aside from that, no,» Marco said.

  I didn't laugh. I didn't find Marco funny right then. I missed Tobias. We had no one in the air, and we had to cross the street.

  «Come on, let's do this,» Rachel said impatiently.

  «Ax, move out,» I ordered. «Marco, you, too.»

  Ax began to cross the street. It was quiet. I heard bare human feet and bare gorilla feet. I saw shapes, shadows, little else. But I had excellent hearing. I did not hear any approaching cars.

  Marco walked as much like a human as he could. A four-hundred-pound human. Once across the street he sidled into the bushes beside the porch. Ax walked up Chapman's porch and knocked on the door.

  A wait of several seconds.

  The door swung open.

  Chapman stood there, holding a newspaper and looking irritated at being interrupted.

  "Hello, is Melissa here? Hee-yer? I am a friend of Melissa? I have come here to speak to her regarding a class assignment. Class-uh," Ax said brightly, more or less following the script we'd worked out.

  Chapman peered out at Ax and frowned. Sighed. "Wait here. I'll get her."

  87 "Good," Ax said. "She is my close friend and also classmate and thus this is a perfectly normal thing for me to do."

  Chapman gave him another look and went to get her.

  «Ax,» I whispered. «What do you see?»

  «lt is as you suspected, Prince Jake,» Ax said. «This Controller has added security devices since our last infiltration. There are motion sensors camouflaged as a mirror frame in the front hallway. And I suspect Dracon beams concealed in the eyes of a statuette facing the doorway.»

  «0kay then,» I said as my adrenaline started pumping. «Everyone be ready.»

  «l've been ready,» Rachel said grimly.

  The front door opened and Melissa stepped out. The door closed behind her.

  She looked puzzledly at Ax.

  Before she could say anything, two thick, hairy gorilla arms reached up over the railing and lifted her off the steps and down into the bushes.

  "Aaahh!" she yelped before a massive hand clapped over her mouth.

  Melissa was an innocent. She didn't need to see what was going to happen next.

  «Got her tied up!» Marco yelled.

  «Go! Go! Go!» I yelled.

  88 «Go ! Go! Go!»

  burst from the bushes. Rachel was right beside me, moving in the deceptively fast, rolling gait of the grizzly bear.

  Ax leaped from the porch and rolled under cover to demorph.

  I crossed the untended lawn, focusing my dim sight on the porch light across the street. But as my massive head swung left and right I lost sight of it. Lights. Everywhere! Which was . . .

  «Jake! You're drifting left!» Marco yelled.

  I veered. Across the hard concrete of the street. A car! Twin lights raced toward me from my left.

  Screeeeeeech!

  89 The driver slammed the brakes. I ignored him. Too late to worry. Smash and grab and forget subtlety, I reminded myself.

  I stumbled as my thick, tree-trunk legs connected with the porch steps.

  «That's it!» Marco yelled.

  I barreled, full speed, heedless, horn down for the door.

  WHAM-CRUNCH!

  The door exploded inward. The frame ripped. Plaster and molding showered.

  "HHROOO-UH!" Rachel bellowed, right behind me.

  TSEEEEW! TSEEEEW!


  Hot, screaming pain. The stench of sizzling hair and flesh.

  The Dracon beam in the statuette fired again, burning another black, smoking hole in my armored hide.

  It hurt just enough to make me even madder. Now the rhino brain was enraged, too.

  I drove forward, through the doorway, slammed into the far wall and knocked the Dracon-concealing statuette over.

  Crash!

  TSEEEW!

  It fired one last, scorching, agonizing beam up into my belly before I crushed it beneath my feet.

  90 Mrs. Chapman ran out from the kitchen.

  "Andalites!" she yelled and leveled a handheld Dracon beam right at my face.

  TSEEEEEW!

  Searing heat sizzled my forehead, my ear, drilled a burning hole into my very brain, and I staggered, bellowing as the sledgehammer pain rocked me.

  The rhino was hurt. Badly.

  "GRRROOOWWRRR!" Rachel roared. With a paw the size of a man's head she smacked Mrs. Chapman and sent her flying into the wall. The woman hit, groaned, and slid to the ground, out of the fight.

  A flash of blue fur and Ax was with us. Chapman is escaping up the stairs!»

  «Let him go,» I snapped. «We'll even give him a minute to sound the alarm.»

  I was reeling. The rhino had taken a head shot. It was dying. The connection between brain and body were fraying.

  I counted to ten. «Long enough. Let's go!»

  «He's coming out the back window, upstairs^ Marco reported from outside.

  «Ax, up the stairs. Rachel, with me.» I crashed toward the living room. The doorway was too narrow. I widened it.

  I trampled over the couch and crushed the coffee table like it was made out of toothpicks.

  91 Through the living room. Through the French doors. Literally through.

  Chapman dropped from down to my right. Marco was there. Reached for Chapman with -

  BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!

  Chapman fired a handgun. Primitive human technology. Point-blank.

  Marco dropped straight back. He hit the ground. Chapman jumped over him.

  «Marco!» Rachel yelled.

  An Andalite form soared over my head and landed heavily on the grass. Ax had jumped from the second-floor window.

  «Rachel, take care of Marco!» I ordered. «Ax! With me!»