The Test

by K. A. Applegate

  Weakness. Fear. Insecurity.

  I understood Taylor. I understood the Taxxon.

  The realization frightened me as nothing ever has.

  Suddenly, the Taxxon’s pace began to slow. I was getting tired, if you can call it that. A digging Taxxon doesn’t get tired the way people do. It doesn’t notice it’s tired. It doesn’t decide to slow. It just fades away, like a drained battery.

  I’d lost track of time. Must have been digging for over an hour. I pressed on. Eating. Expelling. The dirt tasted good. It wasn’t flesh, but it wasn’t bad.

  Soon there were more and more rocks in the dirt. Small at first, then larger. Bigger than even a Taxxon could swallow. I pushed the rocks aside and continued until I hit a smooth, continuous surface. Probably the remnants of an old building foundation.

  I tried to go around. It curved up and up, like the crest of a dome.

  Then it hit me. I’d reached it. I’d found the Yeerk pool.

  I continued along the surface until it became almost flat and I found what I thought was the top. Taylor said we would strike fairly high. I never guessed we would strike at the center.

  There were no cracks or openings anywhere. It was completely continuous. How could I break through?

  The Taxxon knew what to do.

  I opened my Taxxon mouth wide. Full capacity. I swiveled my teeth so they scraped the concrete like a drill. A hundred teeth screeched across the stone. Friction made my mouth hot. Caustic Taxxon spit burned and dissolved the rock.

  I gnawed deep into the shell of the dome, a hole four or more feet across and almost as deep. My body felt heavy and ill. And at last I saw a flicker of red light.

  A thousand horrors. A crazy, mixed-up hell right here on Earth. A melting pot of enslaved, alien races. A sea of two kinds of motion: the slow, deliberate movements of bodies who aren’t free, and the wild, desperate spasms of doomed, caged prisoners.

  From my vantage point, the pool itself churned directly below. Hard to say how far down. Not more than a hundred feet. Then there was the infestation pier, built out above the slugs. Human after human cursed or spit or wailed before the Hork-Bajir forced their head under to accept a Yeerk master.

  The cages that ringed the pool seemed to have multiplied since I’d seen them last. It was like a bizarre sort of amphitheater. The spectators were the people from town. Some of them I knew. Like Ms. Powell, my old math teacher, and Brent Starr, the anchor from the news.

  Others were strangers to me. Mothers and fathers. Young kids. Bus drivers. Lawyers. Artists. Government employees. Everyone, from every walk of life. All screaming. Burning out their vocal cords. Tears pouring from eyes. Veins bulging from foreheads. Sweat coursing from brows.

  They wanted to be free! They wanted nothing more than to be free.

  Then I realized that a great number of the caged prisoners weren’t crying out. They watched the proceedings with distaste, but they didn’t rage with anger. They stood immobile and calm. I’d seen voluntary hosts before. Voluntary hosts enjoyed the show. These weren’t voluntary.

  Who were they? What had happened to these hosts? It was like they’d passed a point beyond the point of caring. Like they were zombies or something. But that was impossible. Everyone fights for freedom to the bitter end. Everyone has to!

  These hosts had an air about them. They stared off into the vast space with a look of … pride? Conviction? They looked almost as if they had purpose.

  Maybe they were Yeerks from the peace faction? So many of them here? Now? Oh, man, not now …

  “Beautiful, isn’t it?” whispered a female voice inches from my head. I jerked against the tunnel wall.

  It was Taylor. Taylor!

  How did she crawl down the tunnel alone? How did she get away from the others?

  Who cared?

  Every inch of me wanted to bite her head off. She was a fleshy meal ready-made. Plus, she was the scum of the universe. Would it be so bad to get rid of her?

  I opened my mouth, moved in for the attack …

  And was suddenly paralyzed. I couldn’t move my mouthparts or upper body. How stupid was I? She’d zapped me.

  “Don’t be dumb,” she said. “Get control of your morph.”

  Ax had said something about a hibernation state. I searched the Taxxon consciousness for a clue. I found it suddenly in a mental vision, an image of bodies mounded into an endless mountain. The picture relaxed me. I could feast forever. I didn’t have to find food, I had enough right there.

  I was in control enough to speak.

 

  “You don’t think they trust me? I’m hurt. Really.”

 

  “You know me, Andalite. I wouldn’t hurt a fly. I temporarily incapacitated them, yes. I needed to talk to you.”

  I said. I began now to broadcast my thought-speak, hoping the others would hear me, wherever they were.

  “I can see that,” she mocked. “But I don’t care right now. I want to talk to you.” I stayed quiet. I felt sick. It wasn’t the Taxxon’s problem. It was mine. Taylor had me cornered.

  “Relax,” she continued. “You’re shaking like one of Visser Three’s personal guards. It’s just me. Remember me?”

  I asked.

  “Look down there,” she said, glancing at the Yeerk pool. “We are so organized. We run with the precision of a Swiss watch. We are invincible. When I take command, we will reach new heights.”

 

  “Yes, of course that’s what I mean,” she said, the corners of her mouth turning upward with a shocking lack of subtlety. “I want you to join me. I think you know how smart I am. I think you know my will to succeed. I want you to cofound the new Yeerk society.”

  Suddenly, Taylor’s words seemed distant. Because I saw the hidden spot, down by the Yeerk pool. I saw the place where I had perched as the seconds counted down. The seconds before I became a nothlit.

  “What do you get as an underling with Andalite bandits?” she went on, her voice seductive. “You are obviously not a leader. You are not even second-in-command. You are a nobody.”

  I flashed back to that night at the Yeerk pool. Remembered how carefully I had weighed my options. Since then I’d been telling myself there was no choice. That if I’d demorphed, the visser would have been on me in a flash. He would have known that we were human. He would have found my friends.

  But there is always a choice. In any and every situation. It’s usually the choice between bad and worse. But it’s still a choice.

  “Come on,” she said again. “Be my host. Offer me your body and you can have anything you want.”

  Choice. Traitor or …

  I asked.

  “It is a kind of freedom,” she answered.

  I asked.

  “It is a kind of happiness,” she replied.

  I looked back at the rock face, my nothlit birthplace. I’d made a decision. Had I made a bad decision? I didn’t know. And suddenly, I realized that I would never know. I know that I stuck with my choice. And that I had followed it through to the very end.

  I looked at Taylor. For the first time, her physical beauty was difficult to see. Her hair and face were covered in dirt. Her expression was the twisted, power-hungry look of a dictator. The only thing that could have made her beautiful now was her inside. And there certainly wasn’t anything beautiful there.

  I said slowly.

  “You don’t really believe that,” she mocked.

  I said.
r />   She looked at me, then at the pool, then back down the tunnel. “And it will be my pleasure,” she rasped, “to prove you right.”

  She jabbed her synthetic fist in my still-paralyzed throat and left me gagging. Then she turned away from the view of the Yeerk pool and shot off down the tunnel as fast as human legs would carry her.

  I choked out. Her lantern disappeared from view.

  “You’ll know soon enough, Andalite!” she cried.

  I shed all thoughts of hibernation and summoned the hunger that had been sitting on the edge of my consciousness.

  I focused on the image of the girl and my legs began to scratch and scrape against the rocky tunnel walls. I squished my body into an impossible U-shape. I needed to turn around. Sure, I could run just as fast backward. But I wanted my mouth, my weapon, to be ready.

  I called again.

  No answer.

  I powered my legs like there was a raw T-bone six inches from my face. With the speed of a greyhound and the mass of a tree trunk, I skittered into blackness, after my prey.

  My throat and neck were still numb. My tongue dangled from my mouth like a three-foot leash.

  I called to the others.

  My needle-legs continued to scrape through the dirt, like the gallop of a hundred tiny horses.

  Jake yelled to me.

 

  Rachel yelled.

 

 

  Whoooomp!

  My body burst from the tunnel like a cork from a bottle. I was in the cavern Ax had carved out. I slowed just enough to catch sight of the others. An Andalite, two wolves, and a bear, sprawled on the floor like they were taking a nap.

  Rachel cried.

  I crossed the cavern and dove into the tunnel’s first half. I knew I was close. I could smell her shampoo.

  I was close. Her footfalls thumped the tunnel floor. Faint lantern light filled the darkness. Then more.

  I cried.

  “Never!” she screamed.

  I saw Taylor’s form, and then I saw beyond her. The sewer chamber was just yards ahead. Her lantern reflected off the pipeline’s polished steel.

  I suddenly knew what she meant to do.

  I lunged. Missed. I lunged again. Full feeling returned to my mouth.

  “Arghhh!” she cried. I clamped down on her heel. Not hard enough to sever her foot, but hard enough for her to feel that I was in control. Shark teeth? Bear fangs? Neither comes close to inflicting the kind of agony a Taxxon inflicts.

  “Worm! Slime! Get off me!” With her real arm, she punched my face. Only a distraction. Out of the corner of one eye I saw a flash — her fake arm, her fake fingers.

  I released her foot, and twisted the upper third of my body so that it slapped her artificial arm. Paralyzing particulates shot from her fingers. But not at me. They were wasted, flung at the far wall.

  “Scum!” She was free and running for the pipeline. I revved my feet and shot forward.

  “Stop right there!” she cried. “Come an inch closer and I’ll blow a hole through this steel.”

  I froze.

 

  “You believed me?”

  I lied.

  Her lips twisted into the now-familiar fiendish smile. Pure Yeerk and proud of it. “Wrong, Andalite. You forget that I am not bound to this body. I am the Yeerk inside. And a skull entirely replaced, bone by bone, by heat-proof, blast-proof polymer protects me. This body will burn, but I will survive.”

  I heard movement behind me. I glanced back. It was Rachel in the lead, followed by the others. Dragging their still partially paralyzed bodies out of the tunnel and into the sewer chamber.

  Rachel cried.

  Taylor’s smile broadened. She turned toward the pipeline. She extended her artificial arm.

  Rachel yelled.

  Taylor blew a hole clean through the metal. And in an instant, reality changed.

  Fwooooosh!

  A pressure wave of natural gas shot from the pipe. It ripped across the chamber and sent us tumbling through the air. Taylor. Me. The others.

  Tumbling …

  Straight for the tunnel!

 

  Taylor blew right past me, propelled by the gas, a swirl of blond hair and pink flesh.

  And she was laughing.

  FweeeeWOOOOOOOOSH!

  The force of a fire hose. A hurricane.

 

  We were shoved down the tunnel at breakneck speed. We slapped the sides. Slipped on slime. Gasped for air.

  We were absolutely powerless!

  Dirt scratched my tender eyes, blinded me.

  Bammm!

  I slammed the dirt wall. It knocked the wind out of me so I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think.

  Ax exclaimed.

  Jake yelled.

  Rachel gasped.

  The tunnel was narrowing. The Yeerk pool was near. I was farthest down the tunnel, out in front. We were going to fly from a hole in the dome with me in the lead. We were going to burst from the opening. BASE jumpers with no chutes.

  We were going to die.

  It would end for me where it had all begun. That cavernous hell. In seconds, we’d be five blobs on the pavement, gobbled up by Taxxon guards.

  Ba-BAMMM!

  Marco slammed into my rump.

 

  Jake plowed into Marco. Rachel plowed into Jake.

  KA-bam!

  Ax careened into Jake’s rib cage, crushing him. Crushing us all.

  My legs, dozens of sharp sticks, scraped the tunnel sides. I stretched them out as far as they would open. Strained to make them catch hold.

  Marco gasped.

  Acute pain shot to my core. Momentum snapped off my legs. I was insane to think I could stop us! It was like trying to stop a car traveling seventy by opening the door and dragging your foot on the pavement. Not happening.

  But I had a hundred legs. And the tunnel was narrowing.

  I yelled. There it was. The red circle that glowed like a harvest moon. Coming nearer and nearer. It was now. Or it was never.

  I cried, and dug in what legs I had left. They punctured the dirt, scraped the stone, snapped like twigs.

  “Skreeeeeeyaaaaaa!” A shrill scream from the Taxxon. A primal yelp of despair.

  But the legs were slowing me. They were slowing us!

  Still, the force of the gas, of the others pressing against me — I’d explode! I was a balloon about to pop. My thin skin was being pushed to the limit …

  But the pressure of the wall was slowing us down.

  I felt blood vessels fail, blood course into my eyes. My head was even with the Yeerk pool hole. It was all a blur. We inched forward, against our will. Sheer agony. The march toward death.

  Ax whispered.

  Six inches, five inches, four inches …

  Four inches and holding.

  The pressure didn’t push us any farther. It eased. And then it disappeared.

  No one said anything. I called to them. Their one-word answers came in gasps. We all needed air.

  I said. I twisted my massive body up and around and only then did I realize that the Taxxon was less affected by the gas. My alien physiology let me breathe in the noxious environment.

  Jake sighed.

  Their bodies, dark forms in the dim, distant light from the Yeerk pool, straggled lethargically along the tunnel.
/>   Rachel said slowly.

  I said. Marco dropped to the floor. The others stumbled like drunks. They weren’t going to make it.

  The tunnel was slick with Taxxon slime. I decided to use it for the one thing it was good for.

  I roared, then I charged. I plowed into them and pushed them along. Slowly at first, then faster and faster.

  My hunger reemerged.

  There they were. Four weak, dying animals. Mine for the feasting. Their smells. Their warmth.

  It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.

  I chanted.

  The legs I had left were on fire. My hunger was alive. I slid my friends along the tunnel with my big Taxxon head.

  I screamed.

  After far too long, the dirt gave way to concrete. It was the sewer chamber.

  We’d made it.

  We were conscious. We were breathing. We were alive.

  Barely.

  No one needed to say, No thought had ever been stronger in my mind.

  “The gas is off.” Those were the first words out of Jake’s mouth when he’d finished demorphing, the only words anyone managed to form. “How?” he whispered. He stood for a minute, numb and dazed. Incredulous. “How?”

  Silently, we followed Jake up and out of the sewer chamber. He began to remorph to peregrine falcon. Marco, Rachel, and Ax followed his lead, went raptor.

  Jake commanded.

  There was only one place the gas could have been turned off.

  The pumping station.

  I got a funny feeling as we got closer to it. Flashing lights by the doors and on the roof doused the surrounding trees in red. I knew something was up, the way you do when a police car rockets past you on the street, no sirens, but lights flashing. There was definitely trouble.

  The others landed behind the bushes where Ax and I had morphed earlier. They demorphed, crouching low as their bodies rose from the earth. And even though I knew they were all exhausted, they slowly morphed again. Battle morphs. We weren’t taking any chances.

  The plate glass door was shattered. A thousand shards sparkled on the sidewalk.