The Separation

by K. A. Applegate

  «Rachel! Stop it, stop it right now!»

  I fell silent.

  137 «l'm going to tell you what to do, Rachel, and you are going to do it.»

  Silent. Waiting. Feeling the terror stalking me, feeling it tickle up beside me, feeling its cold hand reaching right through me. Trapped! A roach in a clear, plastic matchbox. No way to de-morph. No way out. Trapped!

  «Listen to me, Rachel, I want you to tell me everything you see. Do it!»

  «l-l-l-l see ... I see ... shadows. Moving. All around. Tall, huge!»

  «Are they Hork-Bajir?»

  «Yes. Don't know. Maybe. Yes. Hork-Bajir. Oh, God!»

  «Listen to me, Rachel. What else do you see?»

  «A light. Red, maybe. A clock, I think! Numbers in red. Counting down. Ooooohhh!» I moaned. I knew why they were counting down.

  «Rachel, listen, it's the Yeerks playing mind games. They want us to be scared. It's a countdown to make us think we're running out of time in morph. But listen, Rachel? They aren't even sure we're not just real bugs, okay? They don't know, Rachel. They're hoping. They're guessing. They don't know. Do you understand?»

  Counting down. Trapped. The rest of my life as a roach! Not a hawk like Tobias, a cockroach! No! No! NONONONONO!

  138 «Listen to me, Rachel, you can't say anything to them when they come. You can't say anything. No matter how much -»

  Say? Say? My feverish mind grabbed on to that thought. I could talk to them! I could beg them to let me go, let me go, let me go.

  «Rachel, listen very carefully to me,» Jake said. «You cannot say anything. It's the only way to survive. It's your duty.»

  «Help me! Help me!» I began to scream in open thought-speak.

  «Rachel, no!»

  «Help me! I'll tell you anything, just let me go!»

  Suddenly, movement!

  They were coming for me! The Hork-Bajir! Yes, they would let me out, let me out and I would tell them anything.

  WHAM!

  My box was snatched up.

  Fwit!

  I flew through the air.

  Then, slice]

  I fell through the air.

  139

  Turned out I didn't need some big plan. I saw Hork-Bajir, I morphed to Hork-Bajir and joined them. Hah! All I had to do was march along like they told me.

  The room was gloomy, lit only by faint, greenish luminescence that seemed to glow from the walls.

  There were a dozen pedestals. On each pedestal a small, glass box. And in each glass box a bug or other small animal. Roach, ant, snail, beetle, fly. Weird. Like some kind of insane collector had gone to a lot of trouble to capture and display some rare animals that were not at all rare.

  140 One thing was for sure: Jake and my idiot twin were two of those bugs. And they were dead meat!

  I laughed. Silently, of course. The Yeerks thought they were going to kill Jake and the other Rachel. Hah! I was going to kill them! No one was going to deprive me of that.

  I was in Hork-Bajir morph. Not any different than the other three Hork-Bajir in the claustrophobic little room. Except that those three didn't know who I was. They didn't know what danger they were in.

  Me against three? I had the benefit of surprise. Besides, I was me. ME!

  "Boring, huh?" I said to a big old Hork-Bajir beside me.

  He glared at me. Probably a little thrown off by my use of correct English. Hork-Bajir mouths and brains don't handle English all that well, so they use a mix of languages: their own, and ours, and Yeerkish, of course, and Galard, and I didn't care, because he was eyeballing me, and I was enjoying the moment of suspense, the point where time slowed down to a crawl as I prepared to attack!

  He said something about how it wouldn't be boring once Visser Three arrived, and as soon as he'd garbled out the last word, I struck!

  141 Right wrist blade to his throat!

  Ah HAH!

  He slumped, looking surprised.

  The second Hork-Bajir just stood there, puzzled, but number three was a smart Yeerk. He knew right away. He leaped at me. Too late!

  I had a foot up, cocked, as I leaned my weight back on my tail, waited for him to rush me, STRIKE!

  "RrrrAAAARRRGG!" he bellowed in pain.

  «Figure it out, yet, genius?» I said in thought-speak as I mocked the slow one. And then I swung. But even though he was dumb as dirt, he was quick. He dodged. I slammed into a pedestal and knocked it, like a domino, into more pedestals that fell over, sending their little bug boxes skittering.

  The Hork-Bajir who I'd gut-taloned was up, holding his insides with one hand and fumbling for an alarm switch with the other.

  BrrrrrEEEEET! BrrrrrEEEEET!

  The dumb one lunged. Dug an elbow into me! I windmilled my arm, tore his blade loose, and slammed the side of his head with my own head.

  He didn't drop. I didn't drop. And now it was one-on-one mayhem!

  Slash!

  Slash!

  142 Hork-Bajir blood was flying!

  «Ah hah hah HAH!» I cried in sheer pleasure.

  BrrrrEEEEET! BrrrrEEEET!

  Old Gut-rip had definitely set off the alarm. And now the doomed fool was throwing the stupid bug boxes at me! Hah!

  Slash! Slash! Slash! Slash!

  Four bug boxes, four sliced in half by my su-pernaturally fast blades.

  My main antagonist saw this and worried. He hesitated.

  «Come on, Yeerk, let's dance,» I crowed.

  He lunged. I lunged.

  Crunch. I heard the sound of a bug squashed beneath my foot. I could only hope it wasn't Jake or Rachel. I wanted them to know I'd killed them.

  Slash! I ducked. Swiped up, caught my foe beneath the chin.

  Bye-bye chin!

  Three of them! I'd taken three of them down! I was a goddess. Nothing could stop me! No one! Invincible!

  And now, to find Jake and the pitiful creature who called herself Rachel.

  Suddenly, whooosh! The wall behind me slid up. Gut-rip staggered out. Out into a much brighter room beyond.

  A dozen more Hork-Bajir waited, vibrating

  143 with destructive energy. And in the middle of them, the one, the only, the most dangerous creature I had ever fought.

  Visser Three.

  «Close it, you fool! You'll let them escape!» he shouted in a deafening thought-speak roar. I saw his Andalite tail whip and catch Gut-rip with the blade that was sharper than any Hork-Bajir blade.

  The wall slammed down.

  «Well, well,» he said, more calmly. «l had my doubts that we'd caught an Andalite. But now, I doubt no more.»

  «Come on in!» I yelled. «Come in here and I'll kill you!»

  «Yes, you might,» he said smugly. «So I think I'll have to decline. Instead, I think I'll simply wait. Call me when you are ready to submit to me, Andalite.»

  «Submit? I'll cut your heart out!»

  «No, I don't think you will. See, I have an Andalite body. I control an Andalite mind. And I know how to break you. Oh, yes, I do.»

  I heard a strange sound. Sliding. Slipping.

  I looked up. It was hard at first to tell in the dim light, but then I realized it was true: The ceiling was coming nearer and nearer. And one wall was closing in as well.

  «ls there anything an Andalite fears more

  144 than being slowly, inexorably, crushed?» Visser Three said softly. «ls there anything a free-running, herd animal like you fears more?» «l'll kill you!» I roared. «l'll kill you!» «When the room begins to squeeze the air from your lungs, call for me, Andalite. Call for me.»

  144

  145

  JL was on the floor! Out of the box!

  Huge, Hork-Bajir feet stomped all around me. But then, after a while, all was quiet. All but the sound of my twin's thought-speak voice raging at Visser Three.

  Then, the terrible realization of Visser Three's threat: that I had escaped one box only to find myself trapped in another.

  Demorph! I told myself. But, no, mor
phing was horrible. And Rachel ... the other Rachel . . . might kill me. She had to be furious.

  What should I do? I was trapped, unable to decide. To demorph was terrifying, to stay in morph was terrifying. It was the ultimate horror

  146 of the coward: I was caught between two frightening choices.

  Logically if both choices were terrifying, then it didn't matter. But it did! There was more at stake than fear. I had to find a way out! I had to survive!

  Demorph, Rachel, you idiot! I berated myself. You pathetic coward. It was true. Without my other half, what was I? Someone too scared and weak to save myself, someone who could be trapped, helpless, paralyzed between alternatives.

  The demorphing began. I don't even know when I started. I just did. And slowly, then more quickly, I began to emerge, to grow, to feel flesh on my returning bones.

  "You," Mean Rachel grunted in disgust.

  She had demorphed. She was human again.

  "I came here to kill you. You and Jake," she said. "But as you can see, we have other problems."

  She jerked her head up at the ceiling. It was slowly descending. The back wall was simultaneously moving forward. It would have been impossible in a normal room. But the Yeerks had the technology.

  "J-J-Jake?" I managed to stammer as my lips and tongue and throat formed out of roach shell.

  147 She shrugged. "Who knows. I stepped on a bug. Maybe that was him."

  "Oh, my God!" I wailed.

  "It's a war, he was a warrior, warriors die," Mean Rachel said dismissively. "The important thing is I'm in charge now."

  "We shouldn't be human," I said softly, crying hot tears for Jake. "Visser Three ..."

  "I don't think he can see in here," she said. But she was doubtful. Obviously the thought had just occurred to her. But still, she was probably right. If Visser Three had visual contact with us he'd have come in by now, seeing us as humans. Mean Rachel was right. By accident.

  "I'm gonna morph to grizzly bear," Mean Rachel said. "I'll kick butt!"

  "But the walls are closing in," I moaned. "If you get bigger you'll just get squashed sooner."

  She looked up at the ceiling. She bit her lip. Soon, very soon, there wouldn't be room for a bear. Soon after that there wouldn't be room for a human.

  "If he wants to kill us, why doesn't he just kill us?" Mean Rachel demanded.

  "He doesn't want to kill us," I said. I was sitting, eyes closed, hands over my head.

  "Of course he wants to kill us, moron!"

  "No. He wants our bodies. Only not our bod-

  148 ies. He thinks we're Andalites. He wants us to surrender. Wants to break us so we'll let him take our Andalite bodies to use as hosts for Yeerks."

  I could feel Mean Rachel staring at me. I cracked one eye to look at her. She was troubled.

  "Yeah. That's it," she admitted. She hesitated. She looked like she was fighting something inside her own head. Then, "So ... so what do we do?"

  Both my eyes opened. Mean Rachel was asking me what to do? Asking me? Me?

  "I'd kill them, but I can't get at them!" she yelled.

  I was amazed. It was insane. Mean Rachel, psycho-killer Rachel was asking me what to do. But when I even tried to think about it I couldn't. I mean, I could, but I couldn't think about me doing anything.

  I could see possibilities: The Visser thought there was only one of us. He wanted us alive. I could see possibilities, plans. But not for me!

  However, I could think of Mean Rachel doing them.

  149

  «You lose, Visser,» the nitwit said, trying hard to sound like me. You know, brave.

  «You're the one in a box, Andalite.»

  Nice Rachel laughed with a mixture of defiance and fear. The fear was real.

  «These Hork-Bajir blades are wonderfully useful, almost as useful as our own Andalite tail blades.»

  «Do you think you can slice your way out?» Visser Three mocked.

  «No. I think I can slice my own throat.»

  The reaction was instantaneous.

  Swoosh!

  The wall slid out of view. Through my com-

  150 pound fly eyes I could see thousands of tiny images of heavily armed Hork-Bajir. Thousands of images translated as dozens of actual Hork-Bajir. All were poised, ready.

  So was Visser Three.

  I felt the shudder of fear pass through my twin's Hork-Bajir morph. I fired my wings.

  «Make this easy for yourself,» Visser Three urged. «Before you could die from self-inflicted wounds, I'd have surgeons repairing the wound. And if you try and fight your way out we will overpower you with sheer numbers. Surrender, brave Andalite. I have won. You have lost.»

  I flew. I flew as only a fly can fly: wild, rolling, jerking, drifting, but ultimately with weird precision.

  It was hard to make out the Visser visually in the shattered glass world of my compound eyes. But I could smell the difference between the Andalite body he had and the surrounding Hork-Bajir.

  I zipped like a rocket with a busted fin. I landed on a vertical surface. In shadow. And I crawled toward darkness on my six, tiny fly legs.

  «Give up,» Visser Three said.

  «l . . . I . . . I . . .» my gutless twin mumbled.

  I was in far enough. «Visser,» I said. «0h, Visser Three?»

  151 His head jerked. It knocked me loose from the blue hair I'd been clinging to. I fought the fly's instinct to escape, escape, escape! I stayed within the shadow.

  «There's a second one!» Visser Three hissed.

  «Yeah. And guess where I am, Visser?»

  He hesitated. «Come out and show yourself and I won't have you killed.»

  «Visser? I'm in your ear, Visser. Way down inside your head. I can practically see the real you, the Yeerk slug. And here's the thing you need to think about, Visser: What happens when a morphed Andalite the size of a fly demorphs inside your head?»

  «You'd die!» he yelled.

  «So would you,» I said.

  There was a silence that lasted at least two full minutes.

  «You!» he roared for no reason. Then more minutes of silence. Then, I felt his body slump, go limp.

  «What do you want?» he said at last.

  «What do we want?» I asked Nice Rachel in private thought-speak. «l forget this part.»

  «We just want safe passage outside. No guards. Once we're outside, you'll fly out of his ear. After all, you don't want to commit suicide, right? So he'll believe you.»

  I relayed this to Visser Three. Five minutes

  152 later, we were outside, in the fresh night air. I flew out of his ear.

  The Visser backed away. We backed away.

  «Next time I'll simply kill you. I won't take chances. I'll just kill you.»

  «Likewise,» I said.

  I flew, Nice Rachel ran, and we put distance between ourselves and the foundry. She collapsed in a mess of tears and sobs - weird corning from a Hork-Bajir - when we reached a patch of shabby woods.

  «l have to demorph, okay?» she cried. «Then you can kill me if you want.»

  I was already demorphing. Soon we were just two identical girls, both named Rachel.

  "Poor Jake. I can't believe . . ." Nice Rachel boo-hooed.

  «l'm fine,» a voice said.

  Nice Rachel jerked like someone had stuck a power line in her nose. "Jake?"

  «Who else?»

  I saw what looked like a cockroach demorphing. Nice Rachel looked away, the gutless simp.

  «That's why I like roach morph,» Jake said. «Hard to kill. I was stuck to the bottom of Mean Rachel's foot for a while. Then I limped over onto Nice Rachel.»

  "What, were you just too scared to let us know

  153 you were alive? We could have used some help back there! I'll kill you for that!"

  "I wanted the two of you to find a way out," Jake said calmly as he became more human than roach. "You had to figure out that you need each other."

  I barked out a laugh. "Me need her? Her?
The wimp? The wuss? The simp? The mall-crawling nitwit?"

  "Yes," Jake said, almost fully human. "You had no plan, no clue. She came up with the plan. She's the one with the ability to think long-term. Without her you're nothing but rage and violence and yeah, courage."

  "Rage is all you need!" I protested.

  "Nice Rachel?" Jake said, turning to the twit.

  She nodded. "Yes. I know. I do need her. I can't... I can't do anything without her. I know she's crazy, but, you know, she makes me be able to be, like, strong and all."

  "Of course you need me!" I yelled. "I'm me! But you? You're just you!"

  "Mean Rachel," Jake said. "Without her, you're out of the Animorphs. Period. You can't join the Yeerks. You can't fight them alone. You want to be a warrior? You need to be able to plan, to have a healthy capacity for fear, and, by the way, a sense of duty."

  154 "Doody," Nice Rachel said and giggled.

  "Look, Ax has a plan. Both of you have to go along, or it won't work. May not work anyway. But Mean Rachel, if it wasn't for her, your other half, you'd have lost back there. She saved you, and you saved her, and you're both just huge pains in all our butts the way you are now, so do it, do it, just do it, or I swear I'll give you both to Visser Three."

  155

  -Lt was the barn. We were all there. None of the others had been ambushed. Their trucks had all been decoys.

  The Anti-Morphing Ray had not been destroyed.

  Tobias was perched in the rafters, silent, watching with his intense hawk eyes.

  Erek the Chee was there, too. I did not know why. Perhaps he was, like, curious?

  «You may begin at any time,» Ax said.

  I looked at her. At the face that was identical to mine. At the eyes that were so different, so hot and wild and dangerous. She scared me.

  156 I reached a trembling hand to lightly touch her bare shoulder.

  Mean Rachel rolled her eyes. "If this doesn't work, you're dead, Ax. Dead! Do you hear me?"

  Mean Rachel looked at me with contempt in her half-smile. Then she reached for my shoulder and gripped it hard.

  "Do you, Dr. Jekyll, take Ms. Hyde, to have and to hold -"

  "Shut up, Marco, you're already on my list!" Mean Rachel snapped.

  «You must begin the acquisition at the same time,» Ax instructed.

  "Count of three," Cassie said. "One . . . two . . . threel"

  I began to acquire my twin. Her DNA flowed into me, as mine flowed into her. I felt the soft listlessness of the acquiring trance.