Suddenly a strange vibration in the air above me.
DANGER!
RUN!
WHHHAAAMMMPP!
It was like someone had dropped an entire three-bedroom house an inch in front of me.
The impact was awesome. The wind it caused was like a small but intense hurricane. It whipped my antennae back.
“Visser! Forgive my interruption. But there are several small insects here!”
A general murmur from the crowd, then one voice saying, “Don’t worry, they are only cockroaches. They are everywhere on this planet.”
“Fool!” Visser Three exploded. “Do you think Andalites cannot morph creatures so small? Someone kill this fool for me.”
BLAM! BLAM!
I felt the world spinning around me. Someone had been shot! Was it … Tom? Could it have been?
A new rush of air overhead. I could see something monstrously huge falling toward me, speeding down, ready to crush me.
I bolted.
WWHHHAAAMMMPP!
Millimeters from my tail.
“Kill those insects!” Visser Three screamed.
I took my own advice and relinquished control to the raw instincts and cunning of the tiny cockroach brain.
Say what you will about roaches. They’re gross. They’re disgusting. But man, when it comes to staying alive, that primitive roach brain knew its business.
WWHHAAAMPPP!
WWHHAAMMMPP!
Huge feet, each the size of a Greyhound bus, stomped the ground. But each time, the roach brain moved me in just the right way at just the right speed. They missed me by so little that I could feel the leather and rubber scrape my sides and tail as they impacted around me.
I made it to the corner of the wall and hugged in there as close as I could get.
I was blazing along at top speed as shoes tried to kick into the corner. But all I needed was a tenth of an inch and I could scrape past, uninjured.
SQQQUUUUEEEEEGGGEE.
A running shoe was being dragged along the corner, straight toward me. The soft rubber melded perfectly into the space. It would crush me!
I saw it coming, a black wall. A black locomotive rushing at me.
I jumped!
I landed on the shoe as it came near.
Whooosshhh! I was flying through the air on a magic carpet made of canvas. The man kicked. I lost my grip and went flying through the air.
I felt like I was going supersonic. Like a jet, tumbling out of control through the air.
Wait! I had wings!
Too late.
Fwappp! I hit the wall. It should have killed me. It would have killed me if I had been a human. But I weighed less than an ounce. The impact was hard, but not enough to hurt me.
I fell to the floor.
A tent of some sort — gray, black … a newspaper! It was a crumpled piece of newspaper on the floor. I dove beneath it and froze.
I looked up and saw that it was a photograph. I couldn’t make sense of the photo, of course, it was just big black dots of ink. I could make out letters, each as big as my head.
Good. That was two of them safe.
Then, my antennae picked up a strange new scent. Sweet. Oily.
Dangerous. Somehow, I sensed that….
It hit me in a flash!
I blew out from under the paper.
“There! There’s one!”
Vibrations of a dozen feet running after me. And in the air behind me, a vast fountain that seemed to explode from thin air.
An upside-down fountain. Like a rainfall that came from a single point and spread out to fill the air.
A droplet landed on me.
Then another.
I felt my legs stumble.
The door. I could sense it, just ahead.
WWHHAAMMPP!
A foot! A near miss. I was slowing down! I could feel my roach instincts becoming scrambled.
I was poisoned. The nerve gas was beginning to work. My legs were tangling up. My antennae were waving frantically, unable to smell anything but the deadly rain of poison.
“That got him!” a voice said.
“Don’t crush him,” Visser Three yelled. “He may demorph to save himself and we’ll have ourselves an Andalite!”
I was starting to twitch. I couldn’t breathe. And then, faster by far than the feet that had chased me, some new shape swooped down.
I tried to run, but I no longer could.
Three monstrous cables closed around me, and I was up, up, off the floor.
Morph, Jake! Morph now!>
Tobias had set me down on the roof of a fast-food restaurant. It was the closest safe place he could find.
I was lying helpless on tar paper and gravel. My legs were twitching. My antennae waved insanely. I was twitching and jerking and losing all control over my roach body.
But the human me understood what was going on.
I was dying.
I had watched roaches die from poisoning. I had stood over them and thought, “Ha, serves you right.”
Now it was me. Now it was my body that was failing. I was the one suffocating and jerking.
I knew he was right. It was the only way to stay alive. But it was so hard to focus when I was trapped inside a dying body.
I tried to picture myself human. I tried to form a mental image of myself. But that picture was all mixed up with dolphins and birds and tigers.
And the dream …
I was in it now, as the delirium swept over me. In the dream …
I was the tiger. Moving with perfect silence. Each muscle like liquid steel. Every movement controlled, calculated.
I could smell my prey. I could hear his clumsy human movements in the dark forest. He was slow. He was weak. He could not escape me. I would destroy him. I would bring down my prey.
My prey … Tom.
I saw him turn to look at me. I saw fear in his eyes. Fear of me.
I settled back on my haunches, preparing for the final lunge. The killing lunge that would end with my teeth sinking into his neck. My jaws crushing his spine.
He looked at me and held up his hands. “No!”
I leapt, uncoiling unbelievable power. I leapt, a huge, unstoppable hunter. I roared, a thunderous cry of triumph that could be heard for miles.
; And then I saw the tiger. Saw myself. Saw orange striped fur and ruthless yellow eyes and saber teeth and claws that could rip open a buffalo, hurtling toward me.
Tom had become the tiger. And I was his prey.
I closed my eyes. And when I opened them again, I saw, right above me, fierce eyes staring down from just a few inches away. The eyes of a hawk.
I raised my hand to look at it. Fingers. Five of them.
“I don’t know? Am I okay?”
“I’m alive,” I said, feeling a little surprised. But of course the amount of poison that had almost killed me when I was a roach was nothing to me as a human. “Where are we?”
“You saved my butt, Tobias.”
I sat up. “How are the others?”
“I guess I should get down from here,” I said.
“Definitely major,” I agreed. I stood up and began to look around for a way to escape from the roof. I was too tired and rattled to morph again.
“Yeah, I guess so. I mean, roach eyes are pretty lame. I can only go by what I heard.”
Tobias said.
I stopped looking for a ladder to the ground. Tobias was being too talkative. Too persistent.
“Tobias? What is it? What are you trying to get around to telling me?”
My first reaction was relief. Visser Three had ordered someone executed in that meeting. It had not been Tom.
“How, um … how did they look together? Visser Three and Tom?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I have a feeling maybe Tom is kind of responsible for a big part of this hospital plan.” I shut up and thought for a second.
“What will Visser Three do to Tom if this great plan is destroyed?”
Tobias said nothing. He knew the answer.
Those who fail Visser Three die.
I saw the lane open up between Juan and Terry. A clear lane to the basket.
Thonk. Thonk. Thonk. My right hand dribbled the ball. I stuck my left arm out, ready to ward off Juan if he came after me. I powered ahead.
Sneakers squeaked on the polished wood floor of the gym. One of the guys on my team yelled, “Go, Jake!”
Juan saw my move and came after me. But I was just a little too fast. Thonk! Thonk! Thonk! Stop. Pivot my back to Juan. Lock on to the basket, focus, focus …
I jumped and arced the ball toward the hoop.
It hit the backboard. It hit the rim. It bounced away. No score.
I fell back against Juan and Terry — the three of us ended up in a tangle on the gym floor, arms and legs everywhere. The ball rolled out of bounds.
“No wonder you never made the team,” Terry said, laughing as he helped pull me to my feet.
I had tried out for the team, but I didn’t make the cut. At the time it had bothered me. Mostly because Tom had been the big basketball hero when he was at our school. I wanted to live up to that.
Now, I realized I didn’t have time for after-school sports, anyway. And playing during gym class was enough basketball.
“Yeah? Well, I beat Juan with some of my excellent moves, and he is on the team,” I said. I reached back to help pull Juan up. “Although I can’t figure out why they would want some guy who looks like he’s made out of straws.”
“I’m just saving my best stuff for the finals,” Juan said. “I don’t want to waste my secret killer moves on you, Jake. And now you practically crushed my legs, you big ox. Man, you ought to be playing football.”
“Good idea.” I grinned at Juan. He’s about five-eleven and weighs like ten pounds. “Let me practice my tackling on you.”
Just then the coach whistled, which was the signal to hit the showers.
“Saved by the whistle, Juan,” I said.
“You should have inherited some of Tom’s moves,” Terry said. “That brother of yours has a jump shot.”
“Man, Tom could have been in college ball easy. At a good school, too. If he would have stuck with it,” Juan chimed in. “That boy has the gift.”
They were right. Tom did have the gift. But he had dropped out of basketball. The Yeerk who controlled him had other plans, I guess.
I showered and got dressed for my next class. Marco was waiting out in the hallway. He had gym next period.
“B-ball today?” he asked. “Cool. I thought it was going to be more wrestling. I hate wrestling. Getting up close and personal with sweaty guys? Not my idea of a good time.”
“The ancient Greeks used to wrestle with no clothes,” I pointed out. “Just be glad this isn’t Greece.”
“And no deodorant,” Marco agreed. “It’s going to be next Tuesday.”
“What’s going to be next Tuesday?”
Marco looked over my shoulder and then, very casually, around the hallway to make sure no one was close enough to overhear. “The governor. That’s when he’s going in the hospital. I’ll bet you a hundred bucks it’s for hemorrhoids.” He grinned. “That’s why it’s kind of secret. No one is supposed to know.”
“So, how do you know?”
“Well, we know from the meeting the other night that he’s going, right? So all I had to do is find out what his schedule is going to be. Turns out it’s no problem. I told them I was a reporter and they faxed me a copy.”
Marco pulled a folded piece of paper from his pocket and opened it for me to see.
“See? Saturday he gives a speech. Sunday he goes on a TV interview show. Monday he gives another speech. Tuesday … oops! Suddenly on Tuesday he begins a five-day vacation, and they don’t say where he’s going.”
“Why would he keep it a secret, I wonder?”
“Oh, puh-leeze. If it is hemorrhoids? A politician getting his hemorrhoids operated on? The jokes are just too easy. Letterman would be talking about it in his monologue.”
I smiled. “Yeah, okay. Good work.”
“Tomorrow’s Saturday,” Marco said. “Should we do it then?”
I guess the expression on my face showed how I felt. Marco cocked his head and looked sideways at me. “You okay, man? You had a close call last night. I’ve been there, so I know it isn’t easy to just get past it.”
“No, I’m cool,” I said. I gave him a push. “Besides, since when are you all psyched to go?” Marco had always been the most reluctant member of the group.
“You know since when,” he said softly.
I nodded.
Marco was no longer reluctant to fight the Yeerks. It had become a very personal battle for him.
“Yeah, sorry,” I said.
“As far as the others are concerned, I’m still the same old Marco,” he said. “I don’t want them thinking anything is different. I don’t want them feeling sorry for me.”
“Now, Marco, how is anyone ever going to feel sorry for you? You’re so totally obnoxious.”
“And I plan to stay that way.”
The bell rang, signaling
the next class.
“Okay,” I said. “Tomorrow. We’ll need to think of some way to get inside that hospital, though. They’ll really be on the lookout.”
“Actually, Cassie already suggested something to me,” Marco said.
I rolled my eyes. “Oh, man. You know I like Cassie. But this is the girl who suggested we try an ant morph.”
Marco started to head into the gym. I headed toward class.
“Not ants,” he said over his shoulder.
“I don’t even want to know.”
“Think dog poop.”
“What?” I demanded. But by then he was through the door and gone.
Something nice, but for fifteen bucks or less,” I said. “My dad’s birthday is in two months, so I have to spread my money pretty thin.”
It was after school. We had headed to the mall. Cassie and Rachel and I. My mom’s birthday was coming up. I had about fifteen dollars to buy her something, and the last time I’d bought her a present it hadn’t turned out all that well.
Who would ever guess that she wouldn’t appreciate a classic Ultimate Spider-Man #3 in almost mint condition?
Okay, so I was a year younger then. Plus I had asked Marco to help me find something.
This time I asked Cassie if she would help me shop. Which was almost as dumb, since Cassie isn’t really into clothing and cute little stuff.
So Cassie had asked Rachel to help. “How about that store?” I asked, pointing at one that had women’s clothing.
“Yeah, right. Good choice, as long as you have at least a hundred dollars to spend,” Rachel said.
“Okay. How about …” Cassie began.
“Uh-uh. Cassie, think about it,” Rachel said, looking slightly perturbed by our stupidity. “Look at the name of the store. It might as well scream ‘fat, middle-aged ladies.’ Jake? Do you want to tell your mom you think she’s fat?”
“No.” I shook my head vigorously. But then I thought it might be a trick question. “I mean, I don’t, do I?”
Rachel rolled her eyes. “No, you don’t. Duh. Have you two ever shopped for anything? I feel like I’m dealing with Ax here. I mean, are you two from this planet? We’re looking for something on sale. Something that says ‘Mom, I still think of you as being young and cool.’ Something classic, understated. Most likely, we’re talking a department store.” She pointed. “That department store. Second floor. Toward the front, on the right. That’s where we want to be. Look for sale signs. They’ll be red with black letters.”
Animorphs #6: The Capture Page 4
