Strike!

  Talons grabbed.

  Scrabbling, slipping . . .

  The truck lurched hard. I lost my grip, rolled over on my back, blown back along the top of the truck's box.

  My talons slashed, desperate, looking for a

  121 hold where there was only slick, featureless steel.

 

  Tick!

  A talon grabbed! A tiny hole, a screw hole. One nail of one talon snagged in that tiny hole.

  I saw Jake, latched on to the strap up ahead of me. The others? All gone, by now.

  I wanted to cry. Wanted to just sob and weep and boo hoo. I was shaking. My feathers were quivering. My mind was sinking fast, sinking into dark despair.

 

 

 

  I couldn't be hearing him right. Was he crazy?

  he said. I focused on his thought-speak voice. I tried to shut out everything else. I began to demorph. Better to be human than owl. Just one problem: my talon. At any moment it might turn into a toe. A toe would not hold on. I would go rolling off the edge of the truck onto the street to be crushed by -

 

 

  122 I began to change. To grow. I mean, I understood what Jake was going for. I understood that he figured my human skin would help hold me to the steel.

  He was right. As skin replaced feathers I began to stick better. I kept my eyes pressed tightly closed.

  "Rachel. You're done demorphing," Jake said in his human voice.

  "Good," I whispered. The truck swerved. I slapped my hands down on the metal, trying to hold on.

  "Okay, now you have to morph again."

  "What?"

  "Roach. Cockroach."

  "No! No way! Never! No no no no no no no . . ." 123

  "Rachel!"

  "No no no no no . . ."

  "Rachel! There's a tunnel up ahead. This truck is too tall. The tunnel is too low. If you're still human when you get there you'll be scraped off." My mind was reeling. You know, you see that phrase in books: My mind was reeling and you think, Whoa, what's that about? But I can tell you: My mind was reeling.

  It was totally impossible. I had to choose between being killed by a tunnel, or turning into a cockroach?

  What kind of world is it when you have to

  124 make choices like that? A bad world, that's what. Bad, bad, very bad.

  "Listen, just close your eyes like before," Jake urged. "Come on, hurry!

  It's the only way to stay alive."

  It did occur to me that maybe Jake was lying. Maybe he was only telling me this in order to get me to do what he wanted. But how could I know?

  How could I possibly know?

  I squeezed my eyes shut and kept myself pressed as closely as I could to the cold steel box of the truck.

  Roach? I had done it before. I'd morphed to cockroach lots of times. Lots of times. Nothing to be afraid of. Nothing to worry about. Except for the fact that I would be turning into a cockroach!

  "Eyes closed, Rachel. Eyes closed."

  It was so strange. Not the morphing. I mean, yes, the morphing, but that's not what I meant. What was strange was that you know you can be scared of something, then you go ahead and do it, so the next time you're not as scared? Like the fear wears off, becomes weaker?

  That's the normal way for things to be. Only it wasn't that way for me. I had now morphed to owl. And I had demorphed. So it should be easier for me now, right? Plus, I'd done it, like, hundreds of times: bear, fly, whale, flea ... I had all

  125 those memories, perfectly preserved. I knew . . . I mean, I knew that had been me doing all those things. So why should I be so scared?

  But I was. The fear was untouched. Undimin-ished. Not one iota less powerful. It was like the part of my brain that was capable of thinking, Hey, that wasn't really so bad, was just gone.

  It was. It was in my twin.

  The thought made me very sad. It meant that I was never going to be able to get brave again. Never. Like there was some kind of fear-coping organ and mine had been surgically removed.

  I was trembling. Shaking. Teeth chattering. Until I had no teeth. Until I had no flesh to tremble.

  I was aware that I was shrinking. I could tell because my palms were dragging across the steel as hands and feet all became much closer. But I kept my eyes shut and told myself it wasn't happening to me. Wasn't me. Someone else. Not me.

  Then, the two legs erupted from my chest.

  I yelled. Only I didn't, because now I didn't have a mouth. I tried to make a yell but I no longer had lungs. No throat. No vocal chords. No tongue or lips. All gone!

  I screamed in thought-speak.

  Jake kept saying.
  126 Hurry. Keep morphing. There's time, but don't stop!> I kept morphing. Only I wasn't even there anymore. My mind was off, faraway. Off in a warm, cozy place with a big comforter pulled up to my chin and my eyes closed and . . .

  The cockroach feelers activated. I was flooded with sensations. Smells!

  Vibrations!

  My eyes weren't closed anymore.

  Jake said. I guess he said it about a hundred times before, at long last, my panicked mind came floating down to Earth again and I heard him.

  I whispered.

  He didn't answer.

  So. He had lied. That's Jake: The mission comes before anything. I didn't want to see, feel, hear, but I had no choice. Roach sight is almost nonexistent, just vague shapes floating in shadow. But hearing and "smell" were pretty good. And I could not turn them off. So I was aware that the truck was slowing down now. And I felt it when the truck passed from cool outside air to much, much warmer air. In the distance I saw a huge, dull glow. And I felt vibrations that my roach brain interpreted as vast, low-pitched sounds. 127 Then, I felt the difference in pitch as the truck headed downhill.

  Jake said, sounding worried. The truck stopped.

  There was a smell . . .

  Gas!

  Jake said.

  And I was gone.

  128

  J. woke up.

  I tried to open my eyes. No eyes. No vision. My antennae brushed something above me, sending a tingle through my body. I was in roach morph! Oh, God. Oh, God, I was in roach morph! I ran. Panic. Fired my six legs and ran. A wall! Left. RUN!

  A wall! I was in a corner. Turn around. Other way! RUN! Wall! NO, no, no! Not walls. A box! I was in a box!

  129 In a box! An inch taller than me, an inch wider, an inch longer. A box! Trapped!

  Jake said.

  Demorph! I screamed to myself. Demorph!

  I began to change, to grow, but instantly I felt the awful, unyielding pressure. Walls all around me!

  Jake yelled.

  I could barely stand to listen. I morphed back, but the panic, the terror!

  Oh, God, they had me! At long last, they had me! Trapped. As a roach! As a cockroach!

  I started screaming. I kept screaming. Screaming and screaming and screaming.

  130 EH.

  Mean Rachel

  y eyes snapped open. I saw rafters. I saw a stall around me. Someone had rolled up a blanket and put it under my head. Another blanket was laid over me.

  "Aaarrrgghhh!" I yelled and jerked up off the ground. I was awake, up, and mad within a split second.

  "Knock me out? Knock ME out? I'll kill you! I'll kill you all!" The animals in their cages shrank back from me. As well they should. That does it, I thought. Now they all die! I don't need any of them anymore. Especially not

  131 that simpering, mewling, uptalking nitwit double of mine. But how to get them? Had to follow them. That was the first thing. Had to follow them. But how? How? I didn't even know how long they'd been gone. I could have been under for minutes or hours.

  I slammed outside into the evening air and scanned the sky. A hawk! No, just a crow.

  How was I supposed to find them? The lights were on in Cassie's house. Did her parents know she was gone? No. No. Of course not. The Chee. That's how we'd done it in the past. The Chee would send one of their androids over, armed with a hologram that would perfectly duplicate Cassie. So "Cassie" was probably in there right now having dinner. I was hungry.

  I could kill something and eat it!

  Focus!

  It had been one thing following them to the BRI. I'd been able to see them then. This was harder. How was I supposed to track them through the sky?

  Wait, maybe they weren't too far gone, yet. That was it! Take to the air and hope to get lucky! Good plan.

  Moments later I was in owl morph and pushing for all the altitude that low-altitude bird

  132 could give me. I scanned the skies ahead, behind, left, right, up, down, NOTHING! Out over the interstate I flew. The car headlights were painful, the taillights lurid. Too bright!

  Had to go after them. Had to hunt them down and kill them! Now! Right now! But... but I couldn't find them!

 

  I could feel the rage frenzy coming on. I was losing control. My wings were trembling. My talons were clutching compulsively at the air. I wanted to scream and scream and find something, anything, to kill, kill,

  KILL!

  Then, I spotted the truck. The truck with something that could only be a girl morphing to cockroach.

  Nice Rachel! I crowed to myself. Jake and my twin, both together! Perfect!

  But the truck was moving away at a pretty rapid speed. Too fast for me to catch. All I could do was watch helplessly as it veered down a circular off-ramp, then turned onto a smaller four-lane road. The turn around the off-ramp gave me a few seconds to play catch-up. But then the truck was off again and pulling away fast. In five minutes it would be out of sight.

  Once it was out of sight I would have to think, think about what it had done, think of a

  133 plan. No! No, I had to maintain contact. It was the only way.

  I cried. Then, at the very limit of my sight I saw brake lights blaze. The truck was slowing. I pushed my wings for all they were worth. I flew as fast as an owl has ever flown. I was practically delirious with the wondrous images that filled my head: Jake and Nice Rachel, both as cockroaches. Hah! Killing them would be almost too easy. I could ... I could eat them! Yeah, that was it! I could eat them, ah hah hah HAH!

  Or maybe I would rip off their legs and leave them helpless on their backs to ... no, wait. That wouldn't work, would it? But why? Some reason. They ... I strained my mind, trying to figure out what it was that was bothering me about that scenario.

  I pull off their legs. Okay. That was good. Then, I put them on their backs so they can't roll over. And then . . .

  I would eat them! Yeah! Swallow them in one big bite!

  But even that made me feel uncomfortable. Like I was overlooking something. Frustration was building now. It was a physical thing, like a pot coming to a boil in my guts. And the more it boiled, the less I could focus, the 134 more it boiled, the less I could focus, the more . . .

 

  The truck was slowing. Turning down a side road at right angles to me. I could keep up, now! Barely. The truck approached a vast, rusty fantasy of steel. A foundry? Where they made steel or something? Maybe. It glowed a deep orange in the night.

  The truck entered a doorway. Gone from sight!

  I could eat them. One big bite.

  The frustration! I felt like I wanted to claw my own brain open. Not working. My brain was not working. Now, what? And then, what?

 

  That was easy enough. Down I went. Catch them. Kill them. Yeah, yeah. That soothed me a little. Don't worry about the details. Down and down and down. I swept through the huge, open doorway. 135

  lo! No! No! No! No!>

 

 

 

  Moaning. A moaning cry came from deep down inside me. A soundless sound, a voiceless, pitiful mewling. My brain . . . gone. Thinking . . . impossible.

  Just terror. Animal terror.

 

  <0ooooh, ooooh, oooooh.>

  136

  <0ooooh, oooooh, ooooooh.>

 

  <0oooh, oooooh, ooooh.>

  <0kay, look, I can't see much, okay, just like you. But I don't think we're the only ones. I think I see other. . . containers. You know, like the ones we were in. I think what happened is the Yeerks hit the truck with nerve gas and just grabbed everything that fell out. You know? Bugs of whatever kind. Not just us.>

  <0ooooh, oooooh, oooooh.>

 
  Can you look and see, Rachel? I know roach eyes are pretty lame, but see if you can make any sense of the shadows and movements. It may help. Rachel? Rachel?>

  I couldn't. Couldn't look. Think. Just scream and scream. Scream.

  SCREAM! SCREAM! SCREAM!

 

  I fell silent.

  137 Silent. Waiting. Feeling the terror stalking me, feeling it tickle up beside me, feeling its cold hand reaching right through me. Trapped! A roach in a clear, plastic matchbox. No way to de-morph. No way out. Trapped!

 

 

 

 

 

  I moaned. I knew why they were counting down.

 

  Counting down. Trapped. The rest of my life as a roach! Not a hawk like Tobias, a cockroach! No! No! NONONONONO!

  138 Say? Say? My feverish mind grabbed on to that thought. I could talk to them! I could beg them to let me go, let me go, let me go.

  Jake said.

  I began to scream in open thought-speak.

 

  Suddenly, movement!

  They were coming for me! The Hork-Bajir! Yes, they would let me out, let me out and I would tell them anything.

  WHAM!

  My box was snatched up.

  Fwit!

  I flew through the air.

  Then, slice]

  I fell through the air.

  139

  Turned out I didn't need some big plan. I saw Hork-Bajir, I morphed to Hork-Bajir and joined them. Hah! All I had to do was march along like they told me.

  The room was gloomy, lit only by faint, greenish luminescence that seemed to glow from the walls.

  There were a dozen pedestals. On each pedestal a small, glass box. And in each glass box a bug or other small animal. Roach, ant, snail, beetle, fly. Weird. Like some kind of insane collector had gone to a lot of trouble to capture and display some rare animals that were not at all rare.

  140 One thing was for sure: Jake and my idiot twin were two of those bugs. And they were dead meat!

  I laughed. Silently, of course. The Yeerks thought they were going to kill Jake and the other Rachel. Hah! I was going to kill them! No one was going to deprive me of that.

  I was in Hork-Bajir morph. Not any different than the other three Hork-Bajir in the claustrophobic little room. Except that those three didn't know who I was. They didn't know what danger they were in. Me against three? I had the benefit of surprise. Besides, I was me. ME!

  "Boring, huh?" I said to a big old Hork-Bajir beside me. He glared at me. Probably a little thrown off by my use of correct English. Hork-Bajir mouths and brains don't handle English all that well, so they use a mix of languages: their own, and ours, and Yeerkish, of course, and Galard, and I didn't care, because he was eyeballing me, and I was enjoying the moment of suspense, the point where time slowed down to a crawl as I prepared to attack!

  He said something about how it wouldn't be boring once Visser Three arrived, and as soon as he'd garbled out the last word, I struck!

  141 Right wrist blade to his throat!

  Ah HAH!

  He slumped, looking surprised.

  The second Hork-Bajir just stood there, puzzled, but number three was a smart Yeerk. He knew right away. He leaped at me. Too late!

  I had a foot up, cocked, as I leaned my weight back on my tail, waited for him to rush me, STRIKE!

  "RrrrAAAARRRGG!" he bellowed in pain.

 

I said in thought-speak as I mocked the slow one. And then I swung. But even though he was dumb as dirt, he was quick. He dodged. I slammed into a pedestal and knocked it, like a domino, into more pedestals that fell over, sending their little bug boxes skittering.

  The Hork-Bajir who I'd gut-taloned was up, holding his insides with one hand and fumbling for an alarm switch with the other. BrrrrrEEEEET! BrrrrrEEEEET!

 

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