The Hidden

by K. A. Applegate

  I said, absently brushing a black ant from the morphing cube. It hit the ground and ran up my leg.

  “No, it’s not, Cassie. It’s only mimicking,” Rachel insisted, shaking her head. “Don’t make this more than it is. It should have died a long time ago.”

  “She’s right,” Marco said, giving me a knowing look. “You didn’t do it any favors by keeping it alive, Cassie. Now one of us is going to have to …”

  There was an uncomfortable pause.

  “Well,” Jake said, rising. “I think we’d better get moving again. The Yeerks are going to find us, no question about that, but we want to be in place when it happens.”

  “Mee-meep,” Marco said, jumping up. “Anvil time.”

  I rose slowly. The buffa-human did, too.

  “You have to get it to morph back to buffalo,” Jake said, avoiding my eyes. “It’s probably safest that way. The rest of us will head out. We’ll move slow enough for you to catch up, Cassie.”

  And the buffalo? I wanted to ask. What about it? Am I supposed to lead it off another cliff, or out into the dangerous undertow and abandon it? What was I supposed to do with this poor, mutated animal that never should have existed? And why was I the one who was going to have to kill it?

  But I didn’t ask that last question because I knew what they would say.

  And they were right, only …

  I turned away as the others began their morphs.

  “Ready?” I said in a low voice to the buffa-human, blocking his view of the others.

  It cocked its head. “Guuuuhhhdd.”

  “Yes, you’re good,” I whispered, closing my eyes and concentrating on the buffalo’s powerful DNA. “Now, pay attention.”

  I felt the changes begin. The usual. Bones grinding, contorting, wrenching backward and forward, stretching and disappearing. The feeling that your entire body is shot full of Novocain, so you’re aware of the impossible crunches and gurgles, but you don’t actually feel them.

  I opened my eyes and saw the buffa-human finishing its morph. Thick horns were crawling out of the center of its massive head, slithering down past its tufted ears, and curving back up with deadly accuracy.

  SPRROOT!

  Its tail sprouted and it flicked it.

  I told him in thought-speak, watching his ears flick and twist, disturbed at the sound that made no sound outside his head.

  Thwok thwok thwok!

  Jake picked up the blue box and held it tight in his jaws.

  I moved behind a huge clump of bushes, where the buffalo couldn’t see me. Demorphed and remorphed into a wolf.

  I felt my teeth shifting in my gums, sprouting into long, gleaming fangs. Felt my body stretch and grow sleek with powerful muscles. Felt the thick ruff of fur ring my neck and ripple across my body.

  Thick pads bulged and hardened on my hands and feet.

  My skull cracked and remolded, expanding into a canine muzzle.

  Jake called impatiently.

  I said, as soon as the morph was finished.

  Rachel began.

  Marco said in his best “superhero voice.”

  The air stirred as the others raced out of the clearing.

  I smelled the buffalo’s confusion. Heard the dull clop of its hooves against rock as it hurried after them, snorting and calling, puzzled at being left behind.

  And suddenly, I was overcome. Fear. Frustration. Panic. Exhaustion.

  Why had this happened! To us? To this poor creature?

  I didn’t know and would never know. And I was tired of not having the answers.

  With a whimper I bolted into the woods after the others. Bulleted past the lumbering buffalo. Ignored its plaintive calls.

  Ran and ran and ran until the faint scent of the salty ocean filled my nostrils. Ran until the buffalo’s cries had faded to whispers, replaced by the dull, insistent throbbing of a distant, but approaching helicopter.

  I could hear the others padding swiftly through the woods in front of me and the faint crashing of the surf against the shoreline.

  I didn’t want to think about the buffalo lost somewhere behind me.

  Tobias called.

  Jake said.

  Thwok thwok thwok!

  The helicopter was getting closer.

  The plan had to work.

  I started to demorph.

  Something was moving in front of me.

  “Uhhh!” I backed up.

  Gaped at the ground in front of me.

  Something was growing. Fast!

  Black. Bulging. Three inches. Eight inches.

  Now it was a foot high.

  It was an ant, antennae waving and pincers snapping.

  And it was getting bigger.

  Two feet high. And counting.

  Demorph, I thought frantically, trying to scrabble away from the ant’s sharp, snapping pincers. Demorph!

  And the ant was still growing, its arms and legs waving, hair sprouting from its bulby head —

  Hair?

  The tips of its top pair of legs swelled and fingers erupted.

  Its segmented body melted and ran together, reshaping into a sturdy, human form.

  Wide, human eyes popped out of its head, flanking a strong, familiar-looking nose.

  SCHWIPP! SCHWIPP!

  Its pincers were jerked halfway back into its head, leaving the lethal tips spasming, and in between them, in some horrible, terrifying morphing disaster, the ant’s face split vertically and lips formed.

  Opened wide in a silent scream as gleaming, white teeth erupted from the pink gums.

  Please, no.

  I was gazing at myself.

  Somehow, and I don’t know how, maybe through my own human survival instinct, I finished demorphing, shooting back up to my full height. Now I was looking the ant-Cassie square in the eye.

  It was horrible. Terrible.

  It writhed and jerked, body parts melting then hardening from ant to human and back.

  Antennae burst from its human skull, were sucked back in, then shot out again.

  It looked around, eyes bulging with panic, and opened its mouth in a scream straight out of my worst nightmares.

  “AAAAAARRRRGGGGHHH!” Raw torment.

  I staggered back, clapped my hands over my ears, tried to shut out the unearthly shrieks.

  How had this happened? Where had this second abomination come from? How could an ant have gained the power to morph!

  There was only one way.

  The blue box. The ant must have touched it.

  Yes, it had, back when we had been resting on the rocks. The ant had been crawling on the box and I’d flicked it off. Then it had crawled up my leg. It must have acquired me without having any idea of what it was doing.

  I glanced back at it, watching it scream and writhe like it was in mortal agony.

  Why would it be in pain? Morphing didn’t hurt …

  And then the memories I had of being an ant resurfaced and I knew why the ant-Cassie was so terrified. For the same reason, except in reverse, that I never wanted to morph an ant again.

  They were all part of a collective. Mindless, soulless beings without wills or thoughts of their own.

  When the ant had morphed to human it had become an individual with the freedom to choose. With free will. The human brain, with all its diversity and innate curiosity, must be completely overwhelming it.

  Logically, I knew that. Emotionally, I was watching myself twist and squirm and double over in agony and I couldn’t take it.

  “Stop it!” I shouted.

  Bad move.

  It reared up and focused on me.

  And then its pincers sprouted full-length on either side of its human mouth, and it attacked.

  I stood, frozen in horror as it flung itself at me, stumb
ling awkwardly on two legs.

  Pincers snapping. Grazing my leg.

  The pain woke me up.

  “No!” I screamed, darting sideways.

  The ant moved with me, waving its arms, smacking and slapping at me.

  “No! No!” I sobbed. I tried to run, to get away from this hideous mutation of me, from this insanity. But I tripped over a branch and went down hard on my back.

  Instantly, the ant sprang. Landed on top of me.

  Reared up, pincers opening and closing. Arms melting back into spindly ant legs, then remorphing into human ones. Blocking my frantic punches and kicks. Growing shiny white teeth in a wide, wet, keening mouth and then shifting back into ant mandible.

  The pincers clamped down on my arm. Squeezed hard. Harder.

  It was going to snap my arm and the pain was unbearable.

  “NO!!” I screamed.

  That’s when I heard the now-familiar bellow.

  The ant-Cassie jerked upright, dragging me with it.

  “Here! Here!” I cried hoarsely, kicking at the ant as the buffalo charged into sight.

  Thwok thwok thwok!

  The buffalo lifted its head and scented the air. Tossed its horns.

  “EEEEEEEE!” the ant-Cassie screamed, dropping me and wheeling to face it.

  Crying, cradling my torn and bloody arm, I dragged myself out of the way.

  The ant-Cassie, antennae waving madly and pincers snapping like the jaws of a steel trap, ran crazily at the buffalo.

  THUNK!

  The buffalo twisted its horns and gored it right through the stomach.

  “EEEEEAAAHHH!” it screamed, arching backward, beating on the buffalo’s head with its fists and finally, with a wet, popping sound, pulling itself free.

  It staggered backward, clutching its bloody abdomen, pincers snapping weakly and human mouth opening and closing.

  I was watching myself die. Not as a human or an animal, but as a terrifyingly mindless drone.

  A nightmare.

  I threw up in the bushes. Sat up and wiped my mouth.

  The buffalo cried out, in triumph.

  But it wasn’t really triumph, because instead of dying the ant-Cassie was shrinking. Demorphing into a vile jumble of ant and human parts. Growing tinier and tinier.

  “No,” I croaked.

  I staggered over. Stomped the ground. Stamped and crushed everything and everywhere.

  Slammed my bare feet down again and again and again until it had to be dead because such a hideous abomination could never, ever be allowed to live.

  Thwok thwok thwok!

  The helicopter was closing in, drawn, undoubtedly by all the morphing energy.

  I had to go right now or our plan would be ruined.

  The buffalo had relaxed a little and was eating the sparse grass at the edge of the woods.

  I stepped beneath a tree. Focused on the osprey DNA.

  Instantly, I was yanked down toward the ground, falling at a dizzying rate of speed and then stopping short like a runaway elevator slamming into its next floor.

  A lacy, dappled pattern etched across my skin and rose into feathers.

  My face stretched out, pursing my lips into a beak and hardening like quick-drying cement. My eyes crawled to either side of it and my vision sharpened.

  My bones ground and hollowed out.

  Tail feathers sprouted.

  The morph was completed.

  I flapped my powerful wings and hopped up onto a rock.

  The buffalo looked at me, puzzled and uncertain again.

  I looked back, not knowing what to say or do.

  It gave a questioning snort and stepped closer.

  THWOK THWOK THWOK!

  I said, knowing it couldn’t understand me.

  The buffalo’s ears twitched.

  And then I knew what to say.

  I said softly.

  Its ears came forward and it made a soft, almost friendly sound.

  The helicopter buzzed into sight.

  TSEEEEEW!

  And then the Dracon beam blew up the buffalo.

  I shot out of the trees with dozens of other frightened, fleeing birds, flapping my powerful wings and fighting frantically for altitude against the helicopter’s fierce downwash.

  The helicopter circled the clearing where smoking pieces of the buffalo lay.

  They had killed it and yeah, okay, they’d saved me from having to come back and do it myself.

  But that still didn’t stop the feelings. Not at all.

  That buffalo had trusted me and for reasons it didn’t understand, maybe would never have been able to understand, I’d let it down.

  Or maybe somewhere in its developing, learning human mind, it had understood.

  I would never know.

  I escaped the helicopter’s swirling air currents and headed out over the ocean in the dull, gray half-light of the approaching dawn, fighting to go higher and higher.

  Far below me, I could see five identical dolphins swimming out to sea.

  And now, not so far below me, swooped a Bug fighter followed by the helicopter.

  I was fighting to rise, flapping hard against the dead air. If Operation Anvil was going to work and we were going to destroy the Helmacron sensors aboard the ship aboard the helicopter, I had to be high enough to drop the anvil.

  TSEEEW! TSEEEW!

  The Yeerks were firing Dracon beams at the dolphins.

  The dolphins dove, but I couldn’t tell if they’d done it in time to avoid getting hit.

  Higher, Cassie, higher, I told myself, struggling.

  TSEEEW! TSEEEW!

  Tobias cried faintly.

  TSEEEW! TSEEEW!

  The Bug fighter swooped and dipped, closing in, almost like it could smell blood.

  Jake yelled.

  The dolphins disappeared again.

  They were deliberately drawing all the fire, distracting the Bug fighter and the helicopter so I could put the plan into effect.

  But was it going to work?

  While the Bug fighter swooped and buzzed low over the ocean, the helicopter was hovering like a giant dragonfly in one spot — directly above where the dolphins were last seen.

  In order for me to drop this anvil, I had to be directly above the helicopter. If it moved, the whole plan would be wrecked.

  A helicopter could outrun an osprey, no contest.

  But I couldn’t think about that. If I did, I’d think even harder and see all the other things that could go wrong. And then I’d think about what would happen once everything did go wrong and I’d be lost.

  The dolphins resurfaced farther out.

  The helicopter moved again, hovering over them while the Bug fighter blasted away with the Dracon beams.

  I shouted, flapping and straining for altitude.

  came his faint reply.

  My heart skipped a beat.

  Blood meant sharks and they were the last thing we needed right now.

  I yelled back, leveling off high above the helicopter.

  His answer was too faint to hear.

  TSEEEW! TSEEEW!

  The dolphins surfaced and dove again.

  I followed it until I was once again directly overhead.

  TSEEEW! TSEEEW!

  <… losing a lot of blood …>

  <… Cassie …>

  The thought-speak was faint, fragmented, and broken.

  I’d just have to risk it. Risk it all on this one, insane plan modeled after an old cartoon I didn’t even like.

  And I’d have to do it fast because still distant but speeding closer and closing the gap, came the sharks.

  So there, way up in the vast
, cloudless sky over the enormous ocean, above a Bug fighter teeming with Yeerks and a helicopter with lethal, slicing rotor blades and a deadly, sucking engine intake, I demorphed.

  Without a net.

  The demorph should have been smooth.

  I should have been able to hold on to my wings until the last possible minute. But I was completely burnt out.

  The demorph went weird and instead of becoming an osprey-sized Cassie with wings, I lost the wings first and began plummeting down through the air, streaming and rolling head over heels, desperately trying to finish the demorph.

  I was rushing down, the wind sharp and hard, making me gasp for air.

  Concentrate!

  The feathers faded and skin spread across my body. I grew in one overwhelming surge to human size. My beak shriveled and disappeared. Arms and legs shot out.

  Frantically, I focused on the humpback whale DNA coursing through my bloodstream.

  Yes, that was our plan. That was it.

  I’d morph to a gigantic whale — the anvil — and drop out of the sky down onto the helicopter, crushing it and sending it crashing down into the sea. It was sort of like an idea we’d used once before — and it had worked then. I was hoping it would work again.

  And hopefully, I wouldn’t get sliced to ribbons in the process.

  Or trap the other Animorphs beneath the wreckage.

  But I was falling too fast, I could feel it. Not even my expanding mass could slow me down.

  TSEEEW! TSEEEW!

  I was bloating, bulging up and out. I was as big as a minivan but it wasn’t big enough.

  The skin on the top of my head crawled and opened into a blowhole.

  My bones crunched, ground, and knitted into a small but stretching whale skeleton. My arms flattened into flippers.

  The roar of the chopper was numbing my brain.

  I could feel the air trembling each time the slicing blades revolved.

  I wasn’t going to make it!

  I wasn’t big enough and I wasn’t going to be by the time I hit the helicopter.

  I was going to be sliced up like deli lunchmeat and flung far and wide across the ocean to feed the sharks.

  That’s when a movement caught my eye.

  At first I couldn’t tell what it was.

  Then I realized it was just one of a few of the gulls frightened by the helicopter’s downwash.