A N

  A P P L E

  PAPERBACK

  SCHOLASTIC INC.

  New York Toronto London Auckland Sydney

  Mexico City New Delhi Hong Kong

  For Scott Bremner

  And for Michael and Jake

  Tobias said.

  I answered.

  Tobias said. The nearest Bug fighter swooped low and

  slow. It fired its Dracon beams and the two-story gym exploded into charred stucco and twisted steel beams.

  It drifted almost casually above the tired old low-slung classrooms and fired again, dragging the beam end-to-end along the buildings.

  I said.

  1

  We had destroyed the Yeerk pool. The Yeerk More Bug fighters than I'd ever seen in one pool was now the world's biggest sinkhole. It place. Maybe fifty of the things. They blasted looked like a crater. It was a crater, with half the schools; they blasted businesses; they blasted mall in ruins on one slope, jumbled bits of homes and churches. The shock waves would fast-food restaurants, streetlights, ripped up reach us, echoes of destruction. Pillars of smoke concrete, cars, skinny trees, all tumbled rose high in the air. Fires, some blazing and roartogether at the bottom. The water of the Yeerk ing, others smoldering sullenly, created thermal pool, looking like molten lead, soaked up updrafts that were bread and butter to three through the dirt. An Exxon sign lay halfmismatched birds of prey. We soared easily, efsubmerged in it. A couple of dozen empty onefortlessly. We had the best possible seats for the liter soda bottles drifted around like someone's show. With raptor eyes we could see every idea of toy boats.

  sickening detail. We could not miss a shot, could How many Yeerks had died? Certainly thounot fail to see lovingly tended gardens, prized sands. Maybe tens of thousands. How many homes, businesses, cars, burn as quickly and Hork-Bajir? How many Taxxons?

  brightly as match heads.

  Humans?

  The refugees

  people who had been our

  We had tried to warn people, but the devastaneighbors, friends, classmates the shocked, tion had been too complete, had come too scared, lost refugees fled on foot, carrying what suddenly.

  they could, running between stalled cars. Over Marco said. passes were all down, traffic lights all off, bridges

 
  their only on-planet food supply. We're way past A news helicopter was perhaps five miles off, sending messages. Look: They're drawing a circle. no doubt filming and sending the pictures out

  >

  live. The Yeerks could easily shoot down the Marco was a hundred feet higher up than me. copter. They were letting it film. Maybe even He was in osprey morph, I was in falcon, Tobias piloting the craft themselves. They wanted was himself: a red-tailed hawk.

  the world to see the violence. They wanted

  Tobias said.

  3

  2

  to be afraid. The infiltration phase of the war was They were racing straight toward us. Straight over, over. From now on the Yeerks would be as toward the Bug fighters.

  subtle as sledgehammers.

  Marco said.

  I caught a rush of warm air, the thermal enWe watched, helpless to do anything. We had ergy released by a burning supermarket, and I spent the morning watching helplessly.

  soared higher, up and up. I could see what Marco The F-16's came straight in. Two of the Bug and Tobias had understood: The Yeerks were fighters broke off from torching civilian buildings creating a circle of annihilation. The collapsed and turned lazily to meet the attack.

  Yeerk pool was the center. They were burning, Missiles flew from the F-16's and the jets blackening everything in a radius of two miles. broke away. Two Dracon beams fired and the misThat would be virtually all of what had been siles were destroyed in midflight.

  our home town.

  The Bug fighters accelerated, easily caught the And I had done it. I had given the order to dejets, and fired again. Three of the four exploded. stroy the Yeerk pool. All of this was a result. There were no parachutes. No possibility of paraBut why? That was what bothered me. This chutes. The fourth jet rocketed low, leveled off wasn't the time for moaning over the destruction, seeming inches from the scorched ground and or even for second-guessing myself. I was done hit afterburners.

  with that. Why? Why were the Yeerks doing this?

  The Bug fighters let him go: They had nothing

  Tobias to fear.

  suggested.

  No, that wasn't quite true. The Yeerks were I noticed something in the far distance, south scared, just not of jets. This circle of destruction of where we were. More smoke. And with my falwas evidence of fear. They were creating a barrier con's eyes I could just barely make out hints of of sorts: not a wall, but a desert of ash and cinder still more Bug fighters. They looked like a cloud so that an enemy wouldn't be able to get close, of gnats.

  unseen.

  Tobias yelled.

  It gave me a grim satisfaction. The Yeerks I followed the direction of his gaze, and sure were scared of us. But what were they protectenough, there they were: a flight of four F-16's. ing? The ruins of the Yeerk pool?

  4

  5

  Marco yelled.

  Marco whispered reverently. The Yeerks had decided that show time was

  Then he cinder fell to Earth.

  laughed harshly.
  I said. don't you?>

  Tobias said, as always more

  I said.
  getting very hungry.>

  It was as big as a sports arena. It moved slowly, cumbersome in atmosphere. It was designed for space, not, like the Bug fighters, to be comfortable in air.

  The Pool ship looked like a fat, swollen, threelegged spider. I'd seen it before, up in orbit, high above planet Earth.

  The Pool ship: home of the Yeerk invasion force, base of the Bug fighters. It was a space-going Yeerk pool, well-defended, dangerous, but essentially a portable barracks, a giant mess hall that served up hearty doses of Kandrona rays, the sustenance that a Yeerk must have every three days or die.

  The Bug fighters rose to greet their mother, swarming around the Pool ship, bristling, daring anyone to attack.

  The Pool ship waddled down out of the sky, shouldering through the clouds. And gently, delicately, ever-so-tentatively, it rested its bulk on terra firma.

  7

  6

  I've fought them for more than three years. I was just thirteen when I started. I'm sixteen now, though that fact, like so many facts, has been deliberately obscured in the secret accounts we've kept.

  I'm a sixteen-year-old kid named Jake Berenson, and I am the leader of the Animorphs. In the past it's been hard for me to say that, to take on the title of leader. In the past I've questioned myself. Wondered whether I was right, wondered whether what I did was good, wondered whether I had any right to make lifeand-death decisions. I've felt sorry for myself at My name is Jake.

  times. Maybe anyone would, in my spot.

  But I had to put all that aside now. I had put My name is Jake Berenson. The days of seit all aside. Not because I was suddenly concrecy, of lurking in the shadows are over. The vinced that I deserved the power, was worthy of Yeerks know my name. They know my height, it. That wasn't it. I knew better than to get too weight, eye color, Social Security number, and caught up in the myth of Mighty Jake the Yeerk favorite foods. At long last they know the word Killer.

  I had given up soul-searching because I realAnimorph, Marco's word for us. My brother Tom is one of them, a humanized now that it was simply too late. Way past too Controller. He has been for a long time. He's late. The battle had become a war. And I was, for been elevated to security chief for all Yeerk better or worse, the only leader we had.

  forces on Earth.

  From here on out the second-guessing, the leMy parents, my mom and dad, are Controllers gitimate doubts, and the self-indulgent whining, now, too. Host bodies for Yeerks.

  they were over. Save them for my old age in the They know it all now, the Yeerks do. All our unlikely event that I ever had an old age. names. All our deeds.

  We were all still alive, Cassie, Marco, Rachel, 8

  9

  Tobias, and me. We'd been formed into a group conquest, frustrated his plans, driven him to ever by accident. A chance encounter in an abanwilder schemes. We had forced his hand, in the doned construction site with a dying Andalite end, I guess.

  prince named Elfangor. He had given the five of Now the war of subversion was over. Visser us the Andalite power to morph, to become any Three was promoted to Visser One and all his animal we could touch. Later Elfangor's brother most brutal instincts were unleashed.

  Ax had joined us.

  In this new, open war, we had score d some We were just kids. But in some ways we were impressive victories. We had destroyed the Yeerk the ideal guerrilla fighters. The morphing power pool. And we helped to motivate at least partial let us fly and dig and crawl, sense, hide, and and spotty efforts by the military to respond to fight with far more than human power. Our youth the Yeerk threat. Marco's mom was free of her made us the least likely of suspects.

  Yeerk slave master, free of the violent, dangerous The Yeerks had carried on a subversive war of creature who had been the very Yeerk who launched infiltration for more than a decade. They had first the invasion of Earth — Visser One. That Visser discovered our planet back at the time of the One was dead and his human host now worked Gulf War. For various reasons their then Visser with us. We had used the morphing cube to make One had fashioned a plan to slowly infiltrate hunew Animorphs, to increase our numbers. man society, infest hundreds, then thousands, But we had taken hits, too: We had all been eventually millions of humans with the Yeerk pardriven from our homes. We had lost all vestiges asite, and when it was too late to stop them, of a normal life. We now hid with the free Horkseize sudden control of the planet. Only then Bajir in a valley deep in the mountains.

  would the Yeerks finalize an almost bloodless And we had lost the morphing cube. The

  conquest.

  Yeerks had it. My brother Tom had taken it, and, But that visser moved on and was replaced in when I might have stopped him — Cassie had let command of Earth by the evil creature we had him and it go.

  long known as Visser Three. Visser Three was a With that act, Cassie had surrendered our less subtle enemy. Less adept at subversion. A edge, our one great advantage: that we alone had brute. We had fought him, lost, won, but above the power to morph.

  all survived. And, in surviving, we had slowed his The Andalite technology was now in Yeerk

  10

  11

  hands, and we had already seen that Yeerks were And that was the other reason why I would alusing it just as we had used it: to capture all the low myself no more second-guessing. A leader amazing powers to be found in the animal who shows weakness invites disaster.

  kingdom.

  We flew back to the Hork-Bajir camp. And as The six of us, Marco, Rachel, Tobias, Ax, we flew I thought. Not about how my orders to Cassie, and I, had stayed together through imdestroy the Yeerk pool had resulted in the literal possibly bad times, through every defeat, every obliteration of the city, but about how, how, how I close call, every mind-twisting weirdness, every could destroy the Pool ship.

  horror. None of us had ever turned against the And about that distant pillar of smoke away to others. There had never been a betrayal.

  the south.

  Cassie let Tom take the morphing cube. PerThere had to be a way to take out the Pool haps she had done so because to her the alternaship. Destroy that ship and the war might be tive was worse: She feared for me, for my soul I won. It was the target I could not possibly resist. guess, if I was forced to kill my own brother. A fact that would be known by my brother

  Not good enough. Not for me. All that counted Tom, and my parents, and by their ruler, Visser now was that we win, and Cassie, maybe for the One.

  most decent of motives, had hurt us badly. I loved Cassie. Always had. Still did. But there was this thing between us now. And I could never trust her again. She had put my personal well-being ahead of winning a war we absolutely could not lose. And, I knew, that her decision might have come in part from my own self-doubts, my own inability to throw off moral ambigu ity.

  If I had been stronger . . . if I had been as strong as I should be, maybe Cassie would not have made her fatal mistake. I saw that clearly now. Too late for either of us.

  13

  12

  We stood around a small fire. It was chilly. Fog had a tendency to form in this deep valley, sometimes so thick we could barely see our hands in front of our faces. It wasn't that bad now, but it was still cold.

  "It's too dangerous," Cassie's dad said. He was sipping a cup of what passed for coffee here in our rough-and-ready camp.

  "This is a job for the military now," Rachel's mom argued. "You kids have done enough. The secret is out: Leave it to the people who should be protecting this country. I mean, we paid enough in taxes to support the military; well, now let's see what we got for all that money." It's too dangerous." That was Eva, Marco's We were in a council of war. I was getting so I mom. The woman who had been host body to the hated these meetings. Too many voices, too first Visser One. "Visser One will know that you many opinions. So many opinions sometimes know. He'll know you're coming. He can't let you that it seemed the consensus would always come destroy a Pool ship — that's the only large-scale down on the side of doing nothing.

  food supply the Yeerks have. The Blade ship can But we were guests among the free Hork-Bajir. only service so many. Lose a Pool ship? The This was their valley, their trees, the only home Council of Thirteen would have Visser One exethey had. We'd come running to them with our cuted."

  families in tow when we needed a place to hide. Marco shook his head. "He'll think we're So at the very least I had to listen to Toby, the cocky after taking out the Yeerk pool. Maybe he'll young female Hork-Bajir seer. And only a fool underestimate us."

  would dismiss Eva's input: None of us knew the

  "No," Eva said flatly. "He'll never underestiYeerks half as well. And of course, there were my mate you again. That's over."

  fellow Animorphs.

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  15

  But added to all that we had Marco's dad; Just do it. Just do it, and if that doesn't work do Rachel's mom; James, the representative of our it harder and meaner.

  new, adjunct Animorphs; Tobias's mom; both of

  "It seems a waste to simply blow it up," Toby Cassie's parents, who only cared about making said, speaking for the first time. The Hork-Bajir sure no one got hurt . . . too many people with are a fearsome-looking, but basically peaceful too many agendas. But I still didn't know how to race that, left alone, would live in the trees eattell adults, my friends' parents no less, to be ing bark and caring for the forest. Toby is one of a quiet and let me do my job.

  rare Hork-Bajir mutation: a seer. A sort of I tried not to show my impatience, but these HorkBajir intellectual and leader. She leads the days I'm not so good at that. Cassie was watching free Hork-Bajir, a small but growing band of Horkme. We're not as close anymore, but she still Bajir who have been liberated from their parasitic knows me.

  masters.

  She said, "Look folks, we're going to try. I

  "What do you mean?" I asked Toby. don't think the question is really 'whether' but

  "There are hundreds of captive Hork-Bajir

  'how.'"

  aboard the Pool ship," Toby said. "If we could

  "No one has decided any such thing," Rachel's free at least a portion of them . . . and of course mom said angrily. "My daughter is not going to there are the ship's massive weapons systems. be dragged into some suicidal undertaking like Imagine controlling aH that power."

  this."

  "Take it?" Marco yelped. "Steal the Pool Rachel laughed. Rachel's not a person who'll ship!"

  be one way with her friends and another way with Rachel jabbed a finger at Toby. "This is my her family. There's only one version of Rachel. " girl," she said.

  Mom, if we go, I go. If we don't go, I still go. Rachel's "girl" was nearly six and a half feet Visser One parks his Pool ship right out in the tall, and looked an awful lot like a kid's notion of open and we're not going to ram it down his a goblin. Not to mention the fact that she was nonexistent throat? Hah! I'm with Marco: Blow it armed with razor-sharp blades growing from up. Blow it up real good."

  wrists and elbows and forehead.

  I hid a grin. Rachel is the original Nike girl:

  Ax opined cautiously.
  16

  possible. It is not like stealing a Bug fighter. There was nothing to be done now. I couldn't Every system on board the Pool ship is engo running after Cassie. The insult had been decrypted, and the codes will probably change livered. There was no taking it back now. hourly. It might take me an hour to break any one I said, "As much as I hate to admit it, sequence, and if I am a minute late it will roll Rachel's mom is partly right: This isn't just our over and I will be starting back at the beginning. fight anymore. Three pilots died today. Probably An hour to get you into navigation, for example, if Air National Guard. It shows that there are miliI am lucky. And another hour to gain access to tary forces out there that could help." weapons systems.>

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