The separation animorphs.., p.8
The Separation (Animorphs 35), page 8
The dumb one lunged. Dug an elbow into me! I windmilled my arm, tore his blade loose, and slammed the side of his head with my own head. He didn't drop. I didn't drop. And now it was one-on-one mayhem!
Slash!
Slash!
142 Hork-Bajir blood was flying!
BrrrrEEEEET! BrrrrEEEET!
Old Gut-rip had definitely set off the alarm. And now the doomed fool was throwing the stupid bug boxes at me! Hah!
Slash! Slash! Slash! Slash!
Four bug boxes, four sliced in half by my su-pernaturally fast blades. My main antagonist saw this and worried. He hesitated.
He lunged. I lunged.
Crunch. I heard the sound of a bug squashed beneath my foot. I could only hope it wasn't Jake or Rachel. I wanted them to know I'd killed them. Slash! I ducked. Swiped up, caught my foe beneath the chin. Bye-bye chin!
Three of them! I'd taken three of them down! I was a goddess. Nothing could stop me! No one! Invincible!
And now, to find Jake and the pitiful creature who called herself Rachel. Suddenly, whooosh! The wall behind me slid up. Gut-rip staggered out. Out into a much brighter room beyond.
A dozen more Hork-Bajir waited, vibrating
143 with destructive energy. And in the middle of them, the one, the only, the most dangerous creature I had ever fought. Visser Three.
I looked up. It was hard at first to tell in the dim light, but then I realized it was true: The ceiling was coming nearer and nearer. And one wall was closing in as well.
144 than being slowly, inexorably, crushed?> Visser Three said softly.
145
JL was on the floor! Out of the box!
Huge, Hork-Bajir feet stomped all around me. But then, after a while, all was quiet. All but the sound of my twin's thought-speak voice raging at Visser Three.
Then, the terrible realization of Visser Three's threat: that I had escaped one box only to find myself trapped in another. Demorph! I told myself. But, no, morphing was horrible. And Rachel ... the other Rachel . . . might kill me. She had to be furious. What should I do? I was trapped, unable to decide. To demorph was terrifying, to stay in morph was terrifying. It was the ultimate horror 146 of the coward: I was caught between two frightening choices. Logically if both choices were terrifying, then it didn't matter. But it did! There was more at stake than fear. I had to find a way out! I had to survive!
Demorph, Rachel, you idiot! I berated myself. You pathetic coward. It was true. Without my other half, what was I? Someone too scared and weak to save myself, someone who could be trapped, helpless, paralyzed between alternatives.
The demorphing began. I don't even know when I started. I just did. And slowly, then more quickly, I began to emerge, to grow, to feel flesh on my returning bones.
"You," Mean Rachel grunted in disgust.
She had demorphed. She was human again.
"I came here to kill you. You and Jake," she said. "But as you can see, we have other problems."
She jerked her head up at the ceiling. It was slowly descending. The back wall was simultaneously moving forward. It would have been impossible in a normal room. But the Yeerks had the technology.
"J-J-Jake?" I managed to stammer as my lips and tongue and throat formed out of roach shell.
147 She shrugged. "Who knows. I stepped on a bug. Maybe that was him."
"Oh, my God!" I wailed.
"It's a war, he was a warrior, warriors die," Mean Rachel said dismissively. "The important thing is I'm in charge now."
"We shouldn't be human," I said softly, crying hot tears for Jake.
"Visser Three ..."
"I don't think he can see in here," she said. But she was doubtful. Obviously the thought had just occurred to her. But still, she was probably right. If Visser Three had visual contact with us he'd have come in by now, seeing us as humans. Mean Rachel was right. By accident.
"I'm gonna morph to grizzly bear," Mean Rachel said. "I'll kick butt!"
"But the walls are closing in," I moaned. "If you get bigger you'll just get squashed sooner."
She looked up at the ceiling. She bit her lip. Soon, very soon, there wouldn't be room for a bear. Soon after that there wouldn't be room for a human.
"If he wants to kill us, why doesn't he just kill us?" Mean Rachel demanded.
"He doesn't want to kill us," I said. I was sitting, eyes closed, hands over my head.
"Of course he wants to kill us, moron!"
"No. He wants our bodies. Only not our bod148 ies. He thinks we're Andalites. He wants us to surrender. Wants to break us so we'll let him take our Andalite bodies to use as hosts for Yeerks."
I could feel Mean Rachel staring at me. I cracked one eye to look at her. She was troubled.
"Yeah. That's it," she admitted. She hesitated. She looked like she was fighting something inside her own head. Then, "So ... so what do we do?" Both my eyes opened. Mean Rachel was asking me what to do? Asking me? Me?
"I'd kill them, but I can't get at them!" she yelled. I was amazed. It was insane. Mean Rachel, psycho-killer Rachel was asking me what to do. But when I even tried to think about it I couldn't. I mean, I could, but I couldn't think about me doing anything. I could see possibilities: The Visser thought there was only one of us. He wanted us alive. I could see possibilities, plans. But not for me!
However, I could think of Mean Rachel doing them.
149
Nice Rachel laughed with a mixture of defiance and fear. The fear was real.
The reaction was instantaneous.
Swoosh!
The wall slid out of view. Through my com150 pound fly eyes I could see thousands of tiny images of heavily armed Hork-Bajir. Thousands of images translated as dozens of actual Hork-Bajir. All were poised, ready.
So was Visser Three.
I felt the shudder of fear pass through my twin's Hork-Bajir morph. I fired my wings.
It was hard to make out the Visser visually in the shattered glass world of my compound eyes. But I could smell the difference between the Andalite body he had and the surrounding Hork-Bajir. I zipped like a rocket with a busted fin. I landed on a vertical surface. In shadow. And I crawled toward darkness on my six, tiny fly legs.
He hesitated.
There was a silence that lasted at least two full minutes.
I relayed this to Visser Three. Five minutes
152 later, we were outside, in the fresh night air. I flew out of his ear. The Visser backed away. We backed away.
I flew, Nice Rachel ran, and we put distance between ourselves and the foundry. She collapsed in a mess of tears and sobs - weird corning from a Hork-Bajir - when we reached a patch of shabby woods.
"Poor Jake. I can't believe . . ." Nice Rachel boo-hooed.
Nice Rachel jerked like someone had stuck a power line in her nose. "Jake?"
I saw what looked like a cockroach demorphing. Nice Rachel looked away, the gutless simp.
"What, were you just too scared to let us know
153 you were alive? We could have used some help back there! I'll kill you for that!"
"I wanted the two of you to find a way out," Jake said calmly as he became more human than roach. "You had to figure out that you need each other."
I barked out a laugh. "Me need her? Her? The wimp? The wuss? The simp?
The mall-crawling nitwit?"
"Yes," Jake said, almost fully human. "You had no plan, no clue. She came up with the plan. She's the one with the ability to think long-term. Without her you're nothing but rage and violence and yeah, courage."
"Rage is all you need!" I protested.
"Nice Rachel?" Jake said, turning to the twit. She nodded. "Yes. I know. I do need her. I can't... I can't do anything without her. I know she's crazy, but, you know, she makes me be able to be, like, strong and all."
"Of course you need me!" I yelled. "I'm me! But you? You're just you!"
"Mean Rachel," Jake said. "Without her, you're out of the Animorphs. Period. You can't join the Yeerks. You can't fight them alone. You want to be a warrior? You need to be able to plan, to have a healthy capacity for fear, and, by the way, a sense of duty."
154 "Doody," Nice Rachel said and giggled.
"Look, Ax has a plan. Both of you have to go along, or it won't work. May not work anyway. But Mean Rachel, if it wasn't for her, your other half, you'd have lost back there. She saved you, and you saved her, and you're both just huge pains in all our butts the way you are now, so do it, do it, just do it, or I swear I'll give you both to Visser Three." 155
-Lt was the barn. We were all there. None of the others had been ambushed. Their trucks had all been decoys.
The Anti-Morphing Ray had not been destroyed.
Tobias was perched in the rafters, silent, watching with his intense hawk eyes.
Erek the Chee was there, too. I did not know why. Perhaps he was, like, curious?
I looked at her. At the face that was identical to mine. At the eyes that were so different, so hot and wild and dangerous. She scared me. 156 I reached a trembling hand to lightly touch her bare shoulder. Mean Rachel rolled her eyes. "If this doesn't work, you're dead, Ax. Dead! Do you hear me?"
Mean Rachel looked at me with contempt in her half-smile. Then she reached for my shoulder and gripped it hard.
"Do you, Dr. Jekyll, take Ms. Hyde, to have and to hold -"
"Shut up, Marco, you're already on my list!" Mean Rachel snapped.
"Count of three," Cassie said. "One . . . two . . . threel" I began to acquire my twin. Her DNA flowed into me, as mine flowed into her. I felt the soft listlessness of the acquiring trance. Would this really work? I was acquiring her, she me, but I didn't feel any less like myself.
Erek moved swiftly, smoothly. He dropped his hologram and appeared as the slightly canine-looking android we knew as the real Erek. He placed one hand on me, one on Mean Rachel. Suddenly, I had a bad feeling about this.
"Sorry," Erek said. Then . . .
"AAAAARRRRGGGHHH!"
The pain was indescribable! Both halves of
157 me twitched and jerked and seized. Every nerve ending exploded with energy. I couldn't hear. Couldn't think. My eyes were blinded by a sizzling halo of light.
I tried to stand up. Too shaky. Cassie and Jake helped me up.
"Sorry about that," Erek said. "Ax said you needed a massive jolt of energy, and we didn't think you'd tolerate it voluntarily." I nodded, confused. I looked around. She was gone.
No, not gone.
"Are you okay?" Cassie asked.
Okay? I wanted to cry. I was me again. For whatever that was worth. The coward was in me. The killer, too. Human and animal.
"Rachel, do you want to sit down? Maybe talk?" Cassie asked.
"I ... I don't know. . ." I said.
"I'm here for you," Cassie said.
158 I looked up. Tobias. Half-human, half-predator. Our eyes met.
"Thanks, Cassie," I whispered. "But . . . Tobias?"
Don't miss
The darkness was complete.
Total.
And I heard nothing. No sound save my own irregular breathing. Sensation started to return and I realized I'd been stuffed into a box half my size. A straight-jacket that pinned my wings against my body. Jammed the vestigial Andalite tail up into my neck.
The hawk in me tensed every muscle. No room! In a panic, it pressed against the walls of the seamless box. Terrified. Confined. I fought to control the bird. But I was losing the struggle. The human me was frightened, too.
Rachel! Oh, Rachel. Could she escape this underground network? Somehow survive?
She would. Sure she would. She had to. She was Rachel, after all. Rachel!
Where was she? All I could think of was a paralyzed fly, helpless and vulnerable on the floor.
160 Someone would step on her. She wouldn't be able to get out of the way, and someone would kill her.
Better than the alternative. Life as a fly. Trapped, like me. But so not like me. I could see, soar . . .
And the plan? Rachel was supposed to have seen where they took me, then lead the others in. First prove the Anti-Morphing Ray didn't work, then, in the rescue, destroy the thing for good measure.
It was crazy! Inconceivable arrogance on our part. We had underestimated our foe. A fatal error.
Fatal.
The hawk brain, the animal part that still, even now, lived apart from me, untouched by human reason, began a low, defeated moan. A death moan. So hot in the box. Like an oven. Warmer, and warmer still. How much oxygen could there be? Were they trying to suffocate me? Was that it?
Interminable!
The only external input were the wobbles and bobs as the holder of the box hit me against his leg. The ride continued.
No space to morph or demorph.
161 fate. I bet Andalites don't even have a word for that tragedy.> That's it. Keep talking, Tobias. Keep talking. Stay sane. Hold on. Don't think . . .
Zeeewooozeeewooo.
All six walls of the box began to buzz. Vibrate. And then: Poosh!
Like a camera flash, steel walls vaporized. Dazzling light flooded my eyes. Blinded me. Rods and cones shot to hell. I saw nothing but white. I blinked a few times. Then, no. No, my eyes were adjusting. I was in another box. But a completely different kind. A cube of glass. Larger, maybe four feet square. Big enough for me to move about. Brightly illuminated, with several spotlights directed at me. I demorphed immediately. Back to hawk.
I blinked again. And as I rose to my feet, I realized I was suspended. The cube hung in the center of a much larger room. I strained to look beyond the glass. Though the glare from the lights to the dimness beyond.
"There's no way out." It was Taylor's voice. Sub-Visser Fifty-one. Cold and casual. "There's no point in looking around." She sat alone at a long table. Near the door of the large, gloomy, windowless room. To her right
162 and left, armed Hork-Bajir, standing at attention. Above, a network of steel beams and conduits, a daunting maze of wire.
