The Hidden
Page 7
And then the helicopter pilot below me glanced up. His eyes bulged and with one swift jerk, he yanked the helicopter out from under me.
I was going to miss him! Even at my ballooning rate I was still going to miss him!
The mission had failed!
I’d failed.
TSEEEW! TSEEEW!
The Bug fighter swooped in below the helicopter, blasting the wounded, surfacing dolphins again and again.
It was all over now.
Within seconds the others would be dead. If the Bug fighter didn’t get them, then I’d end up crushing them to death. The Yeerks would have the morphing cube and the human race would be finished.
SCHWOCK!
I couldn’t believe it.
One of the gulls had been sucked into the helicopter’s powerful, jet engine intake like a hairball into a vacuum hose.
KA-BOOOOM!
The helicopter exploded in a raging ball of fire.
The impact hit me like a warp-speed eighteen-wheeler. Sledgehammered the air from my lungs. Stunned me into shocked, deafened numbness.
Then came the scorching heat from the explosion, and the agony.
I was flung away from the burning wreckage, down toward the ocean.
And the last thing I thought in the millisecond before it all went black was, After all this, all it took was one poor seagull …
“No,” I mumbled, shaking my head and immediately breathing in a noseful of salt water. “Gak. Ugh.” I coughed, floundered, and when I couldn’t get a handhold, panic set in. My eyes popped open.
The first thing I saw was a dolphin with the blue box in its mouth.
The second thing was miles of choppy, gray water with a far-off outline of land.
No wonder I was wet, shivering, and pruny. I was human again, and floating on my back in the middle of the ocean, surrounded by dolphins who were gently supporting me with their snouts and nudging me along toward the shore.
My brain kicked in and it all came back, the buffalo, the ant-Cassie, and the humongous, teeth-rattling explosion. Panicking, I started to thrash and sank like a stone.
“How?” I managed to croak, still hacking up bitter salt water and trying to get control of my normal, human brain long enough to calm the billowing fear. I mean, let’s face it, the ocean was vast, deep and had swallowed hundreds, no thousands of better swimmers than me. Not to mention being home to sharks.
So, of course, I mentioned this fact.
Silence.
“A gull got sucked into the helicopter’s engine. But that was nothing compared to the ant-Cassie that almost killed me back in the woods with its pincers.” I stopped. “The buffalo saved my life.”
“Not that kind of an ant,” I said crossly.
Rachel said.
I zoned out for a minute while they bantered back and forth, thinking of the buffalo and how bravely it had fought side by side with us. Had it done it because the human DNA in his veins had stirred and somehow linked us together? Or had it simply been following his buffalo instincts and done whatever he had to do to protect its adopted herd? Or had it been a little of both?
I’d never know for sure, but I did understand the buffalo better. Its survival and protective instincts were strong, fiercely and powerfully strong, and in that way, we were the same. How many times had my friends and I fought to protect our species from the Yeerk invasion? And how many times would the buffalo fight to protect its own from other predators, including humans?
“The helicopter blew up,” I interrupted, teeth chattering. “The Helmacron sensors are destroyed, right?”
“So, you’re pretty sure the sensors are DOA,” I said. Say yes, Jake, I begged silently. Say yes. Please don’t tell me the whole mission has been in vain. That I had to confront my physical self as an ant, as a mutant, a thing …
Oh, great. That left a one percent wild card.
I closed my eyes, remembering the searing pain and the stench of sizzling whale blubber.
<— and we were going crazy trying to get you to demorph. You were only, like, half-conscious but I guess that was enough. I’m glad,> he said simply.
“Me, too,” I said.
Survival instincts. Funny, how our own genetic programming would automatically kick in when our logical, reasoning, conscious human brains weren’t around to jam them up.
I laughed but I was shivering so it came out ratchety and harsh. I wasn’t embarrassed that Marco had guessed what was going on. Jake and I like each other a lot and that’s no secret.
We all looked at him, amazed.
Marco said, groaning.
But he wouldn’t and we knew it.
None of us would.
No matter how bad the odds.
Or the humor.
The author wishes to thank Laura Battyanyi Wiess for her assistance in preparing this manuscript.
Who am I?
Marco.
Not Tuan or Kevin or Rasheed.
You know, “Hi, I’m Marco.”
If you yell out, “Hey, Marco!”, chances are goo
d I’ll turn around. Respond. “What?”
You could also say that who I am is far more than a name. That who I am depends on your perspective. On where you’re standing when you yell out to me.
Like, if you’re standing out in the everyday world — in Red Lobster on all-you-can-eat shrimp night, on a downtown street corner, or in the mall — you’ll see that I’m a slighty less than tall, brown-haired kid. Come a little closer, like into my home, and you’ll see that I’m also a son. A friend. And, on a very rare day, a decent dog-sitter.
If, however, you’re standing in a very particular, very up-close-and-personal spot — like inside my head — you’ll see that I am, in addition, a few other, less ordinary things.
Defender of Earth. Civilization’s Last Chance for Survival.
Stuff like that.
Generally speaking, I make it a policy not to let people stand in that very up-close-and-personal spot. Superheroes tend to rack up a lot of dead friends and seriously damaged sidekicks.
That is one reason it’s not a good idea for you to know much more about me than my first name.
The other reason anonymity is a good thing: the Yeerks.
The Yeerks. If it weren’t for Elfangor, an Andalite war prince, I wouldn’t even know about the Yeerks, aliens from a far distant planet. Wouldn’t have been enlisted — me, four other kids, and another Andalite — to fight them. To try and stop their slow but constant infestation of Earth.
See, Yeerks are like slugs. On their own, they’re blind, deaf, and mute. But in the brain of a host body, they’ve got eyes and ears and mouths. They’re parasites, the Yeerks. Living off the minds and bodies of any creature they deem worth controlling. Gedds. Hork-Bajir. Humans.
And one — only one — Andalite.
Yeerks wriggle their way through the ear canal and into each nook and cranny of the brain. Open memories, raise hands, move legs. Once a Yeerk is in your head, you’re totally and completely at its mercy. Saying what it wants you to say. Going where it wants you to go. Listening, silently, as it mocks your every desire and dream. Watching, impotently, as it enlists your mother or father or best friend into a life of slavery.
The right to privacy? Gone. The privilege of freedom? Gone.
What Elfangor did was give us access to Andalite morphing technology. This is our weapon, the ability to absorb through touch the DNA of a living creature and then become that creature.
We morph to fight and to infiltrate. To spy on the Yeerk cover organization, The Sharing. And occasionally kick Yeerk butt.
We become whatever we need to become. Elephant or gorilla or grizzly. Tiger or wolf or cockroach. Cheetah or polar bear or even Hork-Bajir.
All of which makes that “who are you” question a whole lot more complicated for me than for say, about 99.9 percent of folks on this planet.
That remaining .1 percent — those would be my friends. The other Animorphs. Jake. Cassie. Rachel. Tobias, the guy who lives as a hawk. Ax, Elfangor’s younger brother.
Obviously, there are a lot of issues we have to deal with. Issues far too complex for the six of us to waste a lot of time thinking about. Or maybe we’ve become far too complex for them to matter too much anymore.
In almost every way you can imagine, we’ve pretty much been there. Done that and bought the T-shirt and poster. If anyone from Guardian or Prudential knew the truth about us, we’d never, ever get health insurance. Forget about life.
Me and my friends, we are the definition of extreme living.
We are the definition of high risk. We don’t need to sign up for a class at the local community college or pay some slick shrink 150 bucks an hour to tell us we’re not realizing our potential.
Our potentials have been realized up the wazoo.
See, this war comes down to life or death. Freedom or slavery. Dignity or abject humiliation.
Failure is not an option.
Bottom line — we’re here to serve. It’s not only about us. It’s about you, too.
That’s why, every once in a while, it’s real nice to be alone. Shut out the world and do something just for me. Something totally and completely self-indulgent and soul-numbing. Something that requires almost no effort, physical or intellectual.
The house was empty. Dad and Nora were at a PTA meeting. Euclid was spending the night at the vet, recovering from some minor doggie surgery. Jake and Rachel were off at a family thing. Cassie and her mom had gone to some big veterinary conference at The Gardens. And I guess Ax and Tobias were doing whatever red-tailed hawks and aliens do on an off night. I just knew I was blissfully alone.
I lay back on the living room couch. Stretched like a lazy old cat. Reached for the remote on the coffee table.
Nothing good on the tube. Perfect. I channel-surfed, past SpongeBob SquarePants and a minor league baseball game. Past Two Fat Ladies on the food channel. Past a documentary on beetles.
Ah! Unsolved Mysteries. Cool. The Loch Ness Monster. Bigfoot. Aliens from outer space …
Mr. Fake-Spooky Host looked wide-eyed into the camera. “When we come back after these messages, we’ll continue our in-depth investigation of legendary creatures with an amateur video made just weeks ago, right here in …”
I hit the mute button and waited. Hummed some Kid Rock. Yawned. Bit a hangnail. Seven commercials later, the show was back.
And then the world fell apart.
About the Author
The Animorphs series, written by Katherine (K. A.) Applegate with her husband, Michael Grant, has sold millions of copies worldwide, and alerted the world to the presence of the Yeerks. Katherine and Michael are also the authors of the bestselling Remnants and Everworld series. On her own, Katherine is the author of Home of the Brave, Crenshaw, Wishtree, and the Newbery Medal–winning The One and Only Ivan. Michael is the author of the Gone and Front Lines series.
The invasion has begun.
Catch up on Newbery Medal–winner K. A. Applegate’s world-conquering series.
#1: The Invasion
#2: The Visitor
#3: The Encounter
#4: The Message
#5: The Predator
#6: The Capture
#7: The Stranger
#8: The Alien
#9: The Secret
#10: The Android
#11: The Forgotten
#12: The Reaction
#13: The Change
#14: The Unknown
#15: The Escape
#16: The Warning
#17: The Underground
#18: The Decision
#19: The Departure
#20: The Discovery
#21: The Threat
#22: The Solution
#23: The Pretender
#24: The Suspicion
#25: The Extreme
#26: The Attack
#27: The Exposed
#28: The Experiment
#29: The Sickness
#30: The Reunion
#31: The Conspiracy
#32: The Separation
#33: The Illusion
#34: The Prophecy
#35: The Proposal
#36: The Mutation
#37: The Weakness
#38: The Arrival
#39: The Hidden
#40: The Other
#41: The Familiar
#42: The Journey
#43: The Test
#44: The Unexpected
#45: The Revelation
#46: The Deception
#47: The Resistance
#48: The Return
#49: The Diversion
#50: The Ultimate
#51: The Absolute
#52: The Sacrifice
Text copyright © 2000 by Katherine Applegate
Cover illustration by David B. Mattingly
Art Direction/Design by Karen Hudson
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All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
e-ISBN 978-1-338-21770-4
First edition, March 2000