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  Animorphs Volume 09

  The secret

  K.A. Applegate

  *Converted to EBook by Dace K

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  Chapter One

  My name is Cassie.

  I can't tell you my last name. I wish I could. It's kind of a nice last name. And I can't tell you where I live or the true names of my friends. Why? Because the enemy never stops looking for us.

  The enemy. The Yeerks. They're everywhere.

  The Yeerks: a parasitic species from a far-distant planet. All they are is little gray slugs, really. I've seen them in their natural state. They look like big snails without the shell. You could squash one under your foot and it would be helpless to stop you. But the Yeerks don't live out their lives as slugs. Like I said, they are parasites. See, they enter the head of another species, flatten themselves out, and wrap themselves around the brain. And then they take control.

  That's what we call a Controller. A human who isn't exactly human anymore. Or a member of any species that is controlled by the Yeerk in its head.

  Maybe you think what I've just told you sounds crazy. I guess if I were you, I'd think it was pretty insane. But sometimes even the craziest things happen to be true. The Yeerks are here. Everywhere. If you think you don't know someone who is a Controller, you're probably wrong.

  The school bus driver, the police officer in the patrol car, the minister in the pulpit, the newsman on TV, the rock star in the music video, the person who smiles at you when you ride by on your bike --any one of them might be a Controller.

  Your teacher, your friend, your sister, your mother and father. Any of them. All of them. And you'll never know. Until it's too late.

  Until it is too late for planet Earth.

  We fight them. But we're just a handful of kids --Jake, Rachel, Marco, Tobias, Ax, and me. We have some special powers, but we know we can't win this alone. We fight in the hope that someday --someday soon --the Andalites will return and help us. It was an Andalite prince named Elfangor who gave us our powers. He was dying. He was desperate. He wanted to do something to help doomed humanity.

  He gave us the power to morph. To absorb the DNA of any animal we could touch. To become that animal.

  So we fight the Yeerks and all their Controllers. The human-Controllers who may once have been our friends and relations. The evil, cannibalistic Taxxon-Controllers, those huge centipedes with their open, gnashing mouths and foul smell. And the deadly, dangerous, but formerly good creatures called Hork-Bajir --the enslaved foot soldiers of the Yeerk empire. 3

  And we fight Visser Three. Leader of the Yeerk invasion of Earth. The only AndaliteController in existence. The only Yeerk who, like us, has the power to morph. The murderer of Elfangor. A killer. A destroyer. The creature who would make slaves of all humans and destroy our planet.

  Unless someone stops him. Unless we stop him.

  Five ordinary kids and a young Andalite we call Ax, against all the might of the Yeerk empire.

  We call ourselves Animorphs.

  We're only supposed to use our power for fighting the Yeerks. But there are times when it comes in handy for other things.

  My best friend Rachel and I were at school, in the dark and gloomy science lab. The final bell had rung and kids were tearing out of there at top speed, running for the buses or their parents' cars.

  You know how it is --when the school day is over you just want out of there. But I had been messing up in school lately. See, I have kind of a busy life. My dad runs the Wildlife Rehabilitation Clinic in our barn. I help out there, taking care of injured or sick animals. Plus the whole Animorph thing takes up a lot of time.

  Anyway, I had to do a makeup project for science class. I built a maze for a rat I'd named Courtney. I mean, I figured an animal project would be easy for me. I've been more animals than a lot of kids have seen.

  Courtney was supposed to find her way through the cardboard maze to the end, where I had placed some tasty seeds and nuts. Then I would make notes on her progress. How hard could that be?

  Rachel stared at me. She tapped her foot impatiently. She looked down at her watch. Then she looked up at the clock on the wall.

  "You know, school's been out for ten minutes, and here I am, still at school. This can't be right. It's unnatural."

  "Why can't she figure out the maze?" I wondered out loud. "What's the problem?"

  "A stupid rat? Er, I mean, maybe you have a not very smart rat. That could be the subject of your paper --"My Dumb Rat.""

  "What is the problem with you?" I demanded, ignoring Rachel and talking directly to the rat. I took Courtney from her cage and stuck her in the high-walled maze. "Smell the nuts. Smell the nuts and then find your way through the maze."

  Courtney looked up at me and twitched her nose.

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  "That's not an answer," I said. "I need this grade. I am not going to try and explain a D to my parents just because you can't get it together."

  "A D!" Rachel echoed. "You're looking at a D? No way."

  "Rachel, why do you think I'm here? Because I'm trying to go from an A to an A plus? Yes. I am looking at a D. And I can't bring my parents a D. That would mean weeks of them going,

  'Where did we go wrong? We must be failing as parents. We have to spend more time with Cassie, helping her every night with her homework.'"

  Rachel shuddered at the absolute horror of that scenario.

  "Hey," Rachel said. "Morph the rat. Maybe you can see what his ... her... its problem is."

  "I could do that," I said slowly. "But see, if Jake found out... You know the rule-. No morphing except when necessary."

  Rachel shrugged. "It's necessary that I get out of here. It's necessary that you don't get a bad grade.

  Look at that --two necessities at once!"

  I probably shouldn't have let her talk me into it. Except, actually, I'd already been considering it. That's the great thing about Rachel --she's always willing to help talk you into doing something you probably shouldn't do.

  "You have to do it, too," I said.

  "Why? Why do I have to morph a rat?"

  "Remember the time you wanted to scare that guy with the elephants? Wasn't I there for you then? Besides, we can't leave till I try to figure this out." Rachel rolled her eyes. "Ooookay. That made absolutely no sense, but I'll do it anyway. Let's just get it over with."

  Acquiring an animal's DNA isn't very complicated. All you do is touch it, and focus your mind on the animal. The animal gets kind of sleepy, kind of dopey. In a minute it's all over, and a new DNA pattern is swimming around inside you.

  "I have the feeling this is a stupid idea," Rachel said. I was piling up books to make steps so we could climb into the maze once we morphed.

  "Well, it was your idea, Rachel."

  "Oh, yeah. My idea. Like I'm the one who cares how the rat handles a maze. Let's get this over with before someone decides to check in on us," she said. Already, she was beginning to change.

  I focused my thoughts, forming a mental picture of the rat. And then ... I felt the change 5

  begin.

  I was shrinking. Shrinking very fast. For a human, I'm not very big. In fact, I'm kind of short. But I was a lot bigger than a rat, so it was a pretty big change in size. My T-shirt and my jeans were suddenly very loose.

  I looked at Rachel. Huge long whiskers were growing out of her still-human mouth. The side of the cabinets beside me grew higher and higher. They had originally been maybe three feet high. Soon they seemed as tall as a three-story building. The grain in the wood looked like huge swirling patterns, like strange paintings the size of murals. The one-foot squares of tan and green linoleum seemed to double and triple and quadruple in size, until each was as big as a parking space. As I shrank, my clothes folded and billowed down over me like a collapsed circus tent.

  My skin turned a sort of pinkish-gray, then suddenly sprouted white fur. My legs were shriveling. My arms were shriveling. My face bulged like a zit about to pop. My nose poked way out, farther and farther. My face became pointed.

  And then, the rat's senses replaced my own.

  On came the ears, like someone had thrown a switch. On came the nose. And on came the rat's instincts, bubbling up in my human mind and carrying their messages of fear and hunger and more fear.

  Rachel commented. 6

  Chapter TWO

  The rat's eyes weren't any better than my own. In fact, they weren't quite as good. Like lots of animals I've been, the eyes were better at seeing movement than at seeing colors and shapes. Nothing was moving, so my vision was kind of, I don't know . . . kind of dull. I could see Rachel well enough, though. We were made from the same rat's DNA, so were basically the same rat. I could see her long, naked pink tail. That tail is the reason people hate rats, but think squirrels are cute.

  That, plus the fact that rats have been known to nibble on humans from time to time. The rat's hearing was excellent, but it was its sense of smell that was really amazing. I twitched my little rat nose and the whole world sent me messages. I smelled the chemicals in the cabinets. I smelled the lingering aromas of hundreds of different kids who had passed through the room that day. I even smelled the seeds and nuts in the maze, up on the table.

  I felt the rat's brain beginning to surge more strongly up beneath my own. The rat instincts were coming out. Fear. Not the sharp sudden fear a human might feel. It was the eternal fear of a small animal in a world of great big pred ators.

  And the hunger. The hunger of a tiny animal who will spend its entire life, every single minute of its life, searching for its next meal.

  But there was also the intelligence.

  When you morph an animal, its instincts come through. You don't get its memories, usually, but you do get its instincts. Its basic abilities are there.

  This rat was very nervous. It was afraid of being out in the open. It wanted to be next to the wall so that enemies would have a harder time attacking it. I

  decided that wasn't a bad instinct.

  I asked Rachel in thought-speak.

  she agreed.

  The little rat legs powered up and we took off. Not fast, really, but it seemed fast because I was so low to the ground. My nose was just a quarter of an inch above the linoleum. As I waddle-walked along I saw huge walls looming over me --the sides of the lab tables. And I saw sparse forests of trees --actually the legs of chairs.

  I scooted along the corner of the wall with Rachel right behind me.

  Rachel said. Then I saw the table where my maze was set up. The real Courtney was up there. I checked out the area.

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  Rachel said. The rat body was amazingly good at climbing and scampering up to the tabletop. You wouldn't think that squat body and those stubby little legs would be good for climbing, but I really do believe that rat could have gone just about anywhere it wanted to go. I saw the pile of books I'd left as a sort of stairway up the outer wall of the maze. And now that I was rat-sized, that wall really was a wall. It looked about nine feet high.

  Rachel said. I scampered quickly up over the books. The pictures on the front of my science book looked like huge mosaics made of colored tiles.

  I reached the top and gazed down into the maze. I knew I could jump down in there, down into those long hallways, but at that moment I was afraid. It was odd, but the idea of running into the real Courtney made me nervous. I've always felt a little funny about using animals'

  bodies. It makes me feel a little guilty somehow.

  But I had a job to do. I had to figure out why Courtney couldn't find the nuts. She should be able

  to smell them . . .

 

  Rachel asked.

 

 

  I said.

  I looked around, puzzled. Then I noticed the breeze. I aimed my rat eyes upward. There, a million miles up, as far away as the moon, was a ceiling fan.

  If I'd had lips, I would have smiled.

 

 

  I was feeling pretty satisfied with my insight when two things happened at once. First, Courtney --the real Courtney --came zooming around the corner of the maze. The second thing was that I heard a loud crash, a roar of loud laughter, and the rushing approach of footsteps.

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  Courtney froze and stared at me. I stared at her. Then I looked back at Rachel. Rachel was frozen, same as me.

  "HEY, LOOK! RATS!" an impossibly loud voice shouted. A boy, I was sure of that. I didn't recognize the specific voice, but I recognized the tone. He was looking for trouble.

  "GROSS!" another voice shouted. "SOMEONE SHOULD EXTERMINATE 'EM. I HATE

  RATS!"

  Two of them. Two guys playing around. Two jerks looking for something to break or destroy.

  Two very, very big creatures compared to us tiny rats.

  Sudden shadows! Vibrations. Huge movements!

  WHAM!

  The table shook like it was hit by a massive earthquake!

  WHAM! THUD!

  A shadow, moving fast, descending on me. I jumped!

  THUD!

  The tabletop jumped from the impact of the boy's hand slamming down near me. I felt the maze being lifted. It tilted wildly up on its side. I could see the entire maze, now a wall instead of a floor.

  Courtney fell out of the maze onto the table. Now there were three of us, trapped on the tabletop.

  "HERE! A BROOM!"

  Rachel yelled.

  I cried.

  THWACK!

  Something the size of a pine tree slapped the surface of the table. It was a broom handle. The handle swept across the table, coming right at us, a wooden log half my own height. I jumped. Rats don't look like jumpers, but when they have to, they can. Up! Over the broom handle, Rachel right beside me. I saw Courtney haul in the other direction.

  Run! Run! Run! Rachel and I moved out at top rat speed.

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  The edge of the table!

  It was like standing on the edge of a four-story building. It looked like a very, very long way down.

  Then, a shadow! A disturbance in the airflow! No time to look! No time to think!

 

 

  We leaped from the edge of the table just as the broom handle slammed down in the very spot where we'd been standing.

  The fall seemed to take forever. It was like skydiving. The linoleum tiles looked like some strange farmlands far beneath me.

  I hit the floor hard. My legs didn't catch the impact. They were too short. My big furry belly took the blow. But it knocked the wind out of me.

  As my mind cleared, I realized the guys were no longer after me and Rachel. They had Courtney in a corner. They were jabbing at her with the broom handle.

  I said.

 

  Rachel said. That, of course, is classic Rachel. We were each about a foot long, counting our tail. So naturally, she thought we should attack some guys the size of Godzilla. But you know what? I was tired of running, too. And I couldn't let poor Courtney get killed. She was more than just a science project. Now she was sort of a sister rat. I aimed right for the leg of the nearest guy. It was the size of a redwood, except that this redwood was blue. Baggy blue denim.

  I asked Rachel.

  she said.

  We motored our tiny rat feet and shot forward. Faster, faster, as fast as we could go. Which, happily, turned out to be fairly fast.

  Up the pants leg! I saw a flash of skin above the socks. I went for it. My tiny clawed feet grabbed onto that white gym sock and went straight up.

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  It was like going into a tunnel. The rough denim of the jeans scraped along my head and back. The pink flesh curved away beneath me. I dug my claws, front and back, into the skin and hairs of that huge leg, and shot wildly up the back of his leg.

  "AAAAAAHHHHHH!"

  Suddenly, the boy was no longer interested in Courtney.

  "AAAAAAHHHHHH! IT'S ON ME! IT'S ON ME! GET IT OFF! GET IT OFF MEEEEE!"

  "NOOOO! OH! OH! OH!" the other boy screamed, as Rachel attacked.

  I cried, as the leg was thrown wildly back and forth. I slammed against the denim wall. I was slammed back against the curved pink skin. I scrambled wildly to hold on as the boy screamed and ran and shook his leg like a lunatic.

  "AAAAAHHH! AAAAAAHHH! AAAAAHHHH!"

  Out of the science lab we tore. Out into the hallway, with the two guys screaming the whole way.

  I turned myself around, with great difficulty, and aimed downward. Out I shot. Out of the pants leg to freedom.

  The last I saw of the two guys, they were still running in sheer panic. I never did see Courtney again. I guess she found a place to live in the school walls. At least I'd figured out why she wouldn't go through the maze. Rachel and I found a safe place to demorph. Then we went to her house and gave her little sister a home perm. Business as usual.

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  Chapter Three

  That evening, everyone came over. We usually hook up at the Wildlife Rehabilitation Clinic. Also known as my barn.

  I guess we all get together once or twice a week. More often when there's a "mission" of some kind. I was surprised when Jake called to say we should get together because it had only been a couple of days since the last meeting. And as far as I knew, nothing serious had been planned.

 

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