The Warning

by K. A. Applegate

  "Shoot them!"

  "What, the birds?"

  "Yes! The birds! Those are the orders!"

  91

  «Prince Jake!» Ax cried out, «l have been hit!»

  I saw the northern harrier stagger in the air and start to fall. Could I reach him before he hit the ground?

  «Hold on, Ax-man, I'm coming,» Tobias said. He was the only one of us with any altitude. Down he came in a mad, suicidal stoop, plunging toward the ground.

  Ax had been thirty feet in the air when he started falling. Tobias was fifty feet up. It was impossible!

  But down Tobias went, like a reddish bullet. He caught up with Ax when Ax's fluttering body was three feet from hitting the ground.

  «This is gonna hurt!» Tobias yelled. He sank his talons into Ax's shoulder and chest, opened his wings, and swept down along the falling slope of the lawn, never more than an inch from disaster.

  Cassie was rushing to help. She grabbed one of Ax's wings and she and Tobias managed to drag and haul the injured Andalite over the inner fence and the second fence. But they dropped him in the dog run.

  A team of Rottweilers came tearing for him.

  The dogs were racing, salivating, their big jowls shaking. Their trainer followed more slowly, unlimbering a submachine gun.

  92 «Cassie! Tobias! Now or never!» I yelled as I went into a shallow dive. Too shallow, too slow. The dogs were sure to see me coming. But I aimed right for them. Right for the eyes of the nearest animal. I swept my talons forward.

  The dog caught sight of me out of the corner of his eye. He turned! I struck!

  Snap! A massive, crushing jaw closed over my left wing tip. But the teeth found nothing but feathers. I hit the grass, rolling. The dog came after me. In three bounds he'd have me. I was helpless.

  Then something rocketed down, just behind me: a second osprey! Marco!

  Marco raked the dog from behind, tearing a red line up the back of the dog's neck.

  ROOWWWRR!

  The dog spun, Marco flapped away, and I worked like a madman to get off the ground.

  But the second dog had kept his focus on Tobias, Cassie, and Ax. Tobias and Cassie were flapping madly, dragging Ax's tattered bird body along the grass. They would almost get off the ground, then slip back. The dog was on them.

  «leave him!» I yelled.

  «No way!» Tobias cried.

  «Do it! Do it or you're all dead!»

  Tobias and Cassie released Ax's body. They

  93 fluttered away and the dog ran straight to the injured Ax and snatched him up in his jaws.

  "Keep! Keep, Achilles!" the dog handler yelled.

  With my keen vision I saw the dog freeze his jaw. He held Ax but did not bite down.

  «What do we do?» Cassie cried.

  «Get out of here! Move! Move!» I yelled.

  I caught a slight breeze and soared up and away. Armed men and more dogs encircled Ax.

  Through the supposedly open window of the house, I saw other men running to surround Rachel.

  Two of us captured. And I was to blame.

  94

  UJ.

  le joined up, those of us who were left, on the roof of a Wendy's a quarter mile away. We hid there behind rooftop air conditioners and exhaust fans, amid the smell of grease and the rippling heat.

  «How long have we been in morph?» I asked.

  «l don't know,» Marco yelled. «How am I supposed to know?»

  «We could have gotten Ax out of there!» Tobias accused.

  «They have Rachel and Ax,» Cassie said frantically. «We have to get them back!»

  It was panic. No one thinking clearly.

  I tried to focus. But the air conditioners were

  95 roaring. The stink of frying burgers and onions and ketchup was overpowering.

  «l think ... I think we've been in morph about thirty minutes,» I said. «We have an hour and a half.»

  «To do what?» Tobias demanded. «That place is a fortress! Fences, dogs, and some kind of force field in the windows.»

  Controllers,» Marco said. «Fenestre is a Controller. It was a trap. Has to be. Who else would shoot at birds?»

  «Rachel and Ax will have to demorph in less than an hour and a half or be trapped,» Cassie said. «An hour and a half. That's how long we have. If they demorph surrounded by Controllers ... I mean, they'll know Rachel is human, which means they'll figure out that we're all human. All except Ax.»

  «l know,» I said. Actually, it was worse than that. See, Rachel knew she couldn't demorph where she could be seen by Controllers. If I knew Rachel, she'd rather be trapped forever in her eagle's body than let the truth out. She knew that if the Yeerks ever learned we were humans, not some bunch of renegade Andalites, our days were numbered. In low numbers.

  «Being trapped in eagle form may not be the worst thing facing Rachel,» Tobias said.

  96 «0h, yeah, you'd think that!» Marco sneered with savage sarcasm. «Maybe Rachel doesn't want to spend the rest of her life eating mice and living in trees like you, Tobias.»

  «That's not what I meant,» Tobias snapped back. «l meant she may not be alive. Or the body she's trapped in may be injured beyond saving.»

  «Ax was alive, I'm sure of that,» Cassie said, a bit calmer than the other two.

  «Didn't any of this show up when you researched this lunatic's mansion?» Marco demanded of me.

  I didn't answer. I had to think. Time was running out. Tobias and Marco were at each other's throats. Cassie was starting to moan about how they'd find her parents, sooner or later. How once they had Rachel it was only a matter of time.

  I had to make a plan. But who was I to be making plans? I'd led everyone into a disaster. Rachel ... Ax ... all of us, maybe.

  «l don't know what to do.» It came out as a sob. I hadn't planned it. Hadn't meant to say it.

  «What?» Tobias said.

  «Ticktock, ticktock,» Marco said angrily. «We need a plan. Time is running out!»

  «l don't have a plan, all right?!» I yelled.

  «Don't give me that,» Marco shouted in my head. «You got us into this, now get us out!»

  97 «Leave him alone,» Cassie said, coming to my defense.

  But Marco's words had been spears aimed right at my heart. And Cassie defending me just made things worse.

  My mind was split in two. Part of it was racing like an Indy car whose engine is ready to explode. Another part of it was swimming through molasses, stuck on the awful fact that Marco was right. I had failed my friends.

  «We ... we could use cockroach morphs,» Cassie said. «Crawl into the mansion and -»

  «No time,» Marco said. «We'd have to morph way outside the outer fence, then get all the way up the hill, hundreds of yards. Besides, they're Controllers in there. They'll be ready for us now.»

  «No,» I said suddenly.

  «No, what?» Tobias said.

  «They aren't Controllers,» I said, suddenly absolutely sure. «Any time we've ever gone after the Yeerks they may have used a lot of human-Controllers. But backing them up were always Hork-Bajir. No Hork-Bajir. And everyone used guns. Plain old, everyday guns. And dogs. The Yeerks wouldn't use dogs.»

  «What kind of a human being would tell his guards to shoot birds?» Marco demanded.

  «l don't know. But these are humans. Just humans. But Rachel and Ax may not know that.

  98 We have to get them out of there. And we don't have time to be subtle.»

  «They still have guns,» Cassie pointed out. «They may not have Dracon beams or squadrons of Hork-Bajir, but they still have guns and fences and dogs and probably some big, thick doors.»

  «Yeah, they do,» I agreed. «And we don't have any morphs between us that are fast enough, and tough enough to bust into that place without getting shot up. But I have an idea. How far are we from The Gardens?»

  99 B

  J. flew as fast as my falcon body could carry me, which was pretty fast. But the wind was against me. I tried to tell myself it
would all work out because on the way back the wind would be with me. But who can tell with the wind?

  I left Marco and Cassie behind to keep an eye on things. I gave them instructions to do nothing. I didn't want us to get back and find they were captured, too.

  But who was I to be giving anyone orders? I'd led my friends into a trap. A trap I might have expected if I'd taken the time to do some research. But no, I'd spent the night wasting time with my family.

  Cassie had been right all along. We should

  100 have tried to save Gump. That would have been the easy thing to do. Instead I had to try and play the big general and decide to go after Fenestre, even without any preparation.

  Tobias flew with me to The Gardens. I wanted to be alone, really, but Tobias is a hundred times more experienced than any of us in the air. He knew the winds and clouds and thermals. He could help me fly faster.

  We'd had less than an hour and a half. By the time we were flying above the animal habitats of The Gardens, we would have less than an hour. Half an hour to get back. That left half an hour to do what I had come to do, and to rescue Rachel and Ax back at the mansion.

  There was no time to waste.

  «Are you going to tell me what we're here for?» Tobias grumbled.

  «Right down there,» I said.

  Below us was an outdoor habitat of mixed grasses, a muddy wallow, and a water hole. Four shapes were visible in the habitat. Four large shapes that looked like fugitives from the age of dinosaurs.

  «Rhinos?» Tobias asked incredulously.

  «Yeah. I need a morph that can go straight through those fences, through the doors, and take a couple of bullets if need be. You have a better idea?»

  101 «Nope. Not me. But how are you going to get close enough to acquire one of those things?»

  «Two of the rhinos are off at the far end of the habitat. The crowds may not able to see them all that well.»

  «You're just going to go right in?»

  «There's no time for anything else.»

  «0h, man. Look, at least let me provide a distractions

  I hesitated. Tobias was waiting for me to say yes or no. What if I was wrong? Again? Still, I could use a distraction. «Yeah, okay. But don't get hurt. You hear? Do not get hurt.»

  Tobias peeled off and I floated down, down, like going down a spiral staircase. I aimed right for the broad back of the biggest rhinoceros. I flared my wings, reached out with my talons, and landed as gently as I could.

  The big beast barely twitched.

  I stood there, balanced on his back, my talons holding lightly to the thick old gray leather. So far, so good. But you can't acquire new DNA when you're in a morph. I had to be human to do it. And that was going to be tricky.

  I looked off toward the high railing where people were watching the rhinos meander. With my falcon vision, they seemed shockingly close. I could see the color of their eyes. I could see a loose button on one guy's shirt. Of course, they

  102 only had human eyes. They couldn't see nearly as well as I could.

  It doesn't matter, I told myself grimly. No time to worry. Do it.

  I began to demorph. On the rhino's back. My falcon feathers began to melt and run together, confusing their neat geometric patterns. My talons grew less sharp, thicker, clumsier, with extra toes beginning to grow. I heard a deep, internal grinding sound as my human bones began to stretch out of the hollow bird bones.

  I was already twice as heavy on the rhinoceros's back. Would he throw me off and trample me? No time to worry. Would the people notice what was happening? No time to worry. I had to trust Tobias.

  And that's when I saw him swoop down from the sky and snatch a cotton candy from a little girl's hand as easily as he snatched mice from the grass.

  Swooop! And off he went with the bright pink fluff ball. The girl yelled, the people around all gaped and laughed and pointed. Tobias began to put on an aerial display worthy of the Blue Angels at an air show.

  No one was watching me as my lumpy human shape emerged from the sleek falcon's body. But I was still on the back of the rhino. On the back

  103 of a two-thousand-pound behemoth with a three-foot-long horn.

  The rhino moved! But he was just ambling over to greener grass.

  I continued to demorph. Then, all of a sudden, the rhino noticed.

  "Ffmraha!" he snorted. He broke into a trot. I had no hands yet. No talons anymore, either. I rolled off and lay face down in the dust.

  Come on, Jake, morph!

  The rhinoceros towered above me. It was like lying down on the ground beside a truck. He blinked one eye at me. And then he lowered his massive horn.

  Sniff. Sniff.

  That face, that horn, hovered inches from me, as the rhinoceros sniffed me and I prayed he wouldn't impale me. He was growing more agitated. He was upset by what he was watching. No surprise. It would have upset me, too, watching a boy squirm and mutate his way out of a bird.

  And then I had a hand. I stuck it out, half-blind, and touched the horn. I wrapped my still-emerging fingers halfway round it, and I focused with all my mind.

  When you acquire animals, they go into a sort of trance. Except sometimes they don't. And if

  104 this was one of those times, the rhino would trample me and use me for target practice with his horn.

  I focused on the beast. I focused and felt him become a part of me.

  105 We raced back from The Gardens. I was exhausted. Tobias was exhausted. We had no choice. Time was running out.

  The wind had shifted. It wasn't in our faces, but it was strong from the south and we were flying west. We kept having to fight our way back on course.

  Marco and Cassie were waiting in the trees across the road from Fenestre's front gate. Their time in morph was short, too. As short as Rachel's and Ax's time.

  «Marco! Cassie!» I yelled down. «Anything happen?»

  «Yeah, the clock kept ticking,» Marco said.

  «We noticed one thing,» Cassie said. «Thank

  106 goodness for these eyes. We saw you were right not to try and sneak inside in some kind of insect morph. There's a band of poison around each door. And some kind of bug zapper in the windows. That must be what shocked Rachel. I think Mr. Fenestre has some psychological problems.»

  «He can afford them,» Marco said. «Now what are we doing to get Rachel and Ax out of there?»

  «l'm going to knock down the fences, kick in the door, and stomp anything or anyone that gets in my way,» I said.

  «Cool.» Marco laughed with a touch of his now-strained humor. «Rachel would approve. But how?»

  I landed on the ground at the base of the tree. «You guys get ready. I'm hoping Mr. Fenestre built that place with high ceilings and wide hallways^

  I demorphed as quickly as I could. I stayed in human form for only a few seconds, then focused my thoughts on the rhinoceros.

  It is unbelievably tiring to morph rapidly like that. You feel like your body is running on one half-dead double-A battery. But I could be tired later, not now.

  The first change was my skin. It went from delicate human of the pink variety, to something like inch-thick leather that's been out in the sun for ten years. It thickened and rippled all over. I

  107 was still human, but gray and massive. It was like wearing living armor.

  My legs thickened and shortened. My fingers withered away. Only the fingernails remained and they became hard and big as irons. I fell forward onto all fours, a growing mass of gray, like molten steel bubbling and reforming.

  I felt my ears crawl up the side of my head. They elongated, then curled to form open tubes.

  And then, last of all, my face. My entire face simply began to stretch. Out and out and out. The bones of my face and skull grew, multiplied, thickened. It was as if some busy crew of engineers were rebuilding my face, always saying, "We need more here, more support there, more armor, more strength."

  My head was gigantic!

  «What the ... what are you m
orphing?!» Marco asked.

  And then, growing from the far end of my monstrously big head, the horns began to emerge.

  A smaller one toward the back that grew, then stopped. And the larger horn. The one that grew and grew and grew. My eyesight was dim and badly focused, but I could see the horn sprout. Up and up it went. Thicker, larger, longer.

  «0h,» Marco said. «That's what you're mor-phing.»

  109 «How much time?» I asked.

  «Maybe ten minutes,» Tobias said.

  I felt the rhino's mind emerge beneath my own human consciousness. It was not what I'd expected. This mind was not violent. In fact, the dominant instinct seemed to be simple hunger. The rhino wanted to graze.

  But beneath that placid herbivore consciousness there was something else. Not aggression, but defensiveness. Not fear, but concern. The rhino had to be careful, lest it was challenged by another rhinoceros.

  The incredibly dim and almost useless eyes searched for a shape vaguely like its own. The ears twisted and turned, aiming at each new sound, looking for the sounds of another rhino. The excellent nose sniffed the air.

  No challengers. No enemies. Just some birds. The rhino was calm.

  I would have to supply the aggression. Which was fine, because I had plenty. I had to save Rachel and Ax. And I had to do it right now.

  «0kay, you guys stay with me, but stay back. Wait till I've cleared away defenses before you advance. Now, let's see what this horn can do.»

  108

  My new body moved surprisingly well. I felt almost like I was tiptoeing. But I was a tiptoeing giant.

  I trotted out from beneath the cover of the trees. I knew the gate of Fenestre's compound was right across the street. But I could not see the gate. I couldn't see anything beyond maybe thirty yards, and then, only if it moved. In order to see, I had to look first with one eye, then the other, because the two eyes were too far apart, with too much massive jaw and snout and horn separating them. It was like having your eyes in different rooms.

  «You guys will have to aim me,» I said.