Sorry for the longer delay than there has been. Here's an extra length chapter to end this book for you, and as in the real series, it's a cliffhanger.
Chapter Twelve
With the human-controllers about to search the entire area, we had to get out of there fast. But we had to do it in a way that wouldn't attract attention and would get us far enough away within the time that we had in morph. Plus there was the fact that Melissa only had a couple morphs.If we wanted to start a fight, there was almost no doubt we could take them, but everyone else on the grounds would be alerted. And if hiding out for three days here when they didn't know we were there would be hard, doing it when they were hunting us would have been impossible.
We watched them start to spread out, and Jake was quiet before hissing to Melissa. "Go small, the bug morph. Ca--" His throat caught for a moment. "Cassie got you a bug morph, right?" When Melissa nodded, Jake turned to Rachel and me. "While she's doing that, you both do your rat and mouse morphs. Melissa and I will hitch a ride on each of you." His urgent whisper grew more quiet as we heard the man crashing through the trees off to our left, and we all started to morph.
I felt the changes begin and scrunched down deeper against the dirt while the controllers continued to sweep the area. The first thing to change was my nose, which immediately shrank into a tiny pink dot. Then my ears ballooned out like dumbo's and perked up. So I had a little pink mouse nose and giant ears completely disproportionate to the rest of my body, which was mostly normal.
As soon as she saw that, Melissa had to cover her mouth to stop from giggling. Her silent laughter stopped however, as soon as she began her own morph. Her skin blackened and cracked like it was burnt, and she started to cry in surprise but I managed to get a hand up to cover her mouth. We both shrank at almost the same rate, and even as my hand began to shrivel into a much smaller paw, she got control of herself and nodded.
Black gossamer wings pried their way out of her back, and I quickly stuck my teeny rat tongue out at the girl and crossed my already beady eyes to make her focus on me instead of what was happening. Becoming a fly is never a happy process, but if Melissa could actually see herself, it would have been much worse. As it was, all she had to witness was her hands changing in front of her and the sound of her organs and bones grinding.
It was much easier to hide now that we were getting so small. The small ditch that was barely able to hold the four of us was suddenly more than large enough, and the leaves that moments ago had been smaller than my hand were now as big as a car. The noises of the searches grew louder as my hearing grew more accute, but I knew I was getting safer by the moment.
Thankfully, my own morph was one that I'd done before. I'd morphed the mouse along with Ax to sneak into this girl's party when she forgot to invite me. Only it turned out she didn't forget so much as refuse to since she held a grudge over something I was totally way less mature. As soon as they found out I wasn't coming, every other girl in our class blew the house down in a collective gasp of disappointment. Or maybe the veleek tore through the roof, I forget which exactly.
By then I was almost completely a mouse. There was only two things missing, and then I felt the odd sensation of my long tail swooshing out of my butt. That was one thing down, so the only thing missing were the mouse instincts, which-- RUUUUUUUUUNNN! FOR THE LOVE OF CHEESE, MICE BABES, AND ANNOYING SCREECHING OLD LADIES RUUUUUUUUUUUUUUN! FLEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! HIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII
DE! - Oh there they were.
The second the panicky mouse instincts kicked in, I nearly darted out into the open in my frantic attempt to run away from whatever I was running away from. Luckily I retained enough of my own senses to restrain that urge, and instead began to quickly sniff the air all around me like a hyperactive, well, mouse. There was another creature behind me, and I spun around to find Rachel in full rat morph. Her nose sniffed me quickly as I sniffed her. We circled a little warily. She was bigger than me, but was she an enemy I could run from?
<If you two are done?> Jake's voice cut in and I saw two miniscule houseflies sitting on an suv sized twig next to us. Sadly, my first instinct was to check if they were food, but I curtailed that quickly enough. Jake went on, sounding tense. <We need to get out of here before those guys fry you two. Come on, I'll take Marco. Melissa, you grab onto Rachel.> One of the flies shot off the twig into the air at his words and then came at me. The mouse brain screamed bloody murder at me for sitting still, and I knew Rachel had to feel similarly. But I stayed in place and flinched as Jake perched on my back, clinging to my fur with his little fly legs.
<All this rat wants to do is find something to eat and hide, preferrably at the same time.> Her voice sounded a little shaky, and I knew the fear of being caught wasn't helping the terrified prey instinct. But she stayed still and waited while the other fly took off from the twig. It overshot Rachel by a good two feet and then spun around in a complete three sixty in mid-air before shooting straight up into the air. The fly passed between two close branches and flipped around again before descending in a display of aeriel acrobatics that would make any trapeeze artist quit in shame. Finally, Melissa's voice came through. "Whoooooaaayeeaaahh! Holy crap, holy crap, jeeeeze!" The fly found the middle of Rachel's furry back and landed, as Melissa continued. "That's incredible, that's... the fly, it... it..."
"Flies?" I supplied, bemused. She was right though. They may be small and disgusting and not really get all that far in the long scheme of things, but for their relative size, nothing can dance through the air like a fly. Up, down, forward, backward, hovering, upside down, any direction you've thought of the fly can do. And it can go from one to another immediately, without a half seconds pause. The most advanced acrobatic flying machine man has ever built looks like a lumbering jetliner next to the fly.
Rachel and I moved to where we had stashed the bottle with David in it and began to nose it forward, rolling it along the ground while the ****roach inside remained silent. I had no idea what the boy was up to, but the longer he was quiet the more suspicious I got. He didn't even complain as he was jostled and tossed around inside.
<Don't worry about it, Melissa.> Rachel told her friend. <We know exactly how you feel. It's amazing how well those little bugs move. Now hold on tight.> She warned and then darted forward through the underbrush. I followed just behind her and we ran, avoiding the lumbering humans where we had to. They had weapons that could fry us in an instant, but the mouse and rat instincts working with our human brains made it easy to stay out of their sight. It was a little harder having to go slow enough that Jake to stick to my back, but we still managed it.
It took about forty minutes of flinching behind every tree and bush and hiding under any clump of grass that stuck up higher than the rest, but we finally made it to the edge of the main building. Rachel and I huddled against the wall while we panted and sniffed the air. Jake took off and flew up a bit. <I think we're near the service entrance into the kitchen. Let's see if we can get in that way.>
Under Jake's direction, we crept along the wall. Rachel pushed the bottle from the end, sliding rather than rolling it. As we moved, David finally broke his silence. <You know...> He said almost too casually. <I could easily call out for help from those humans. Or just yell 'rat!' and destroy your chances here.>
<You could.> Jake responded with forced calm. <But if you do that, we're just as likely to be squashed or captured as we are, if not moreso. You're already a bug under glass. I think if we had to get caught, knowing you're on that pier with us might make me feel at least a little bit better.>
<Maybe.> David's tone was annoyingly cryptic, and he fell silent again. I wasn't sure why he stayed quiet, or even why he had willingly gone into ****roach morph when Cassie's dad had been at best a minute away from the barn. Maybe he was just a coward at heart and wasn't willing to take the beating that Jake could have given him with that shovel before the man would have gotten there. Or maybe he wasn't ready to test that Jake would risk him getting away rather than testing Cassie's dad with the truth, or even taking him prisoner as well. Someone as crazy as David had already shown himself to be probably didn't think along the same lines that we did.
We hunkered down in the tall grass near the kitchen door where a black suited man stood on guard duty. It took almost ten minutes of waiting, and Jake was about to get cause a distraction when the door opened and one of the kitchen boys stumbled out carrying a pot of dirty grease. He almost dropped it and the security guy grabbed the other end and helped him lug the thing a few steps away around the side of the building. It was the only opening we needed, and Rachel and I darted up the little ramp, shoving the bottle along with us.
Just inside the doorway, the kitchen was a madhouse. People were walking every which way, and it was only going to be a matter of seconds before we were noticed. Luckily, the door a few feet away was open partway and we darted to it after knocking the bottle ahead of us. Then we slipped inside just as the back door opened and the kitchen boy came back.
Within, we found ourselves in something just over the size of a closet. White uniforms were hung up or folded on nearby shelves. Melissa and Jake flew up, buzzing to the top of the small room and then down again to check it out. <I think it's big enough for everyone...> Melissa reported after flying the length of it. <Barely. We could take the clothes anyway...>
<Great.> I responded and started to demorph. The process was slow, since we had to be careful not to squish each other or knock anything over and attract attention. Eventually though, we were four very cramped teenagers in a tiny closet space that somehow seemed a lot smaller now that we were full size. I grunted. "This is so not how Agent 47 does i-oww!" I hissed in pain, because someone's elbow had just dug into the side of my head. "Watch it, that's my ear you just gouged."
"Sorry." Melissa whispered and edged a little to the side. I could see her blush even in the very dim light, and was about to tell her it was fine when Jake started passing around white shirts and aprons.
It was tricky, but somehow the four of us managed to circus act our way through pulling on the new clothes. It involved a lot of hissed cursing and a few bruises, but we made it. After we were sorted, Jake put his hand on the knob. "Someone grab David and let's get out of here."
Melissa was next to him and nearest the side where the bottle was. She awkwardly leaned down and picked it up, then stayed like that for a long moment. Then she straightend up quickly and held the bottle up with a gasp. "He's gone!"
That made all three of us whip around and nearly kill each other in the close confines of the closet. Jake snatched the bottle and stared at it, then held it out for us to see. Sure enough, the lid was off and there was no sign of the ****roach. "Damn it!" Jake looked livid. "How the hell did he.... how... he must have... while we were changing."
"But..." Rachel shook her head. "How did he get the lid off?" She looked as confused as I felt.
"I don't know..." Jake tossed the bottle down. "But we have to find him. Now. Come on." He pushed the door open and the four of us stepped right out into the brightly lit kitchen. Luckily it was so busy no one noticed us. We scanned all along the floor as we moved quickly past the tables and sinks, but there was no sign of the little ****roach. Or the big ****roach, for that matter.
We slipped around a lunatic chef screaming at someone for adding too much pepper into his pan of somethingatini and found our way to the hall. Just down from there, one of the black suited security men disappeared through a set of double doors. We looked up and down the hall almost frantically, then snapped back around at the sound of a muffled cry. It wouldn't have carried much further to anyone else, but we heard it.
Immediately, Jake started to run that way, gesturing for us to follow. "Come on, if he acquires a secret service man, he could just have us all arrested." We sprinted after him to the doors and pushed through. I wasn't sure what we were going to say or do if what was in that room wasn't actually David, but we went anyway. The idea of how dangerous the kid would be with the authority of the secret service behind him was enough to propel all of us right through the door.
On the other side, we found some kind of general conference room. It was mostly taken up by a large oak table with high backed chairs all around it. The walls were lined with elaborate glass windows. On the other side of the room past the table and near the coffee machine, David stood with his hand on the security man's forehead. The guy was kneeling as though he had been forced there somehow. We all came up short as the door fell shut behind us.
"David..." Jake spoke through gritted teeth, as he stepped around to the right. I followed him as Rachel and Melissa moved to the left along the other side of the table. I tried to see what was holding the security man in place, but he just seemed to be kneeling there from the boy's hand touching him. Jake went on, obviously struggling to stay calm. "What do you think you're doing?"
"Educating you." The response from David was just as cryptic as he had been through all of this. I saw Rachel start to morph Grizzly since she and Melissa were both out of the kneeling man's line of sight, behind him. David obviously noticed and laughed. "Gonna sic your cousin on me now?" He turned to glare angrily at Rachel. "You couldn't finish me when I asked you. You were too much of a coward, and I'm not giving you another chance."
He called Rachel a nasty name, and she almost leapt across the table at him. Jake and I were moving on his other side, but then we all came up short. Something was happening to the security man. The skin of his forehead seemed fused to David's hand. The boy lifted his palm and more of the man's forehead swooshed up between his fingers. The guy screamed as his eyeballs were drawn up to the top of his skull. His entire body seemed to be being drawn up into the boy's palm. While the four of us stared in horror, the man's head was swallowed completely into the hand, and the rest of his body was following quickly.
"Wh-what are you doing?!" Melissa was the one who found her voice first. She sounded mortified and terrified at the same time. It's a feeling I know well. Her fingers clutched the edge of the table as she stared with the same terror and confusion we all felt just then.
"I'm acquiring him." David's voice was dark, and he whipped around to glare furiously at Rachel as the last of the man's body was absorbed into him. "Because you couldn't do your job! You couldn't do the one thing I ever asked you to!" Jake had made it around the table as David stayed focused on Rachel. "I begged you to end it and you didn't! Now Crayak owns me!"
Rachel's voice held no end of disgust and anger at the boy who had just murdered in front of us. "What.. the hell.... is a Crayak, you psychopath?" Fur kept rising on her skin, and I realized she was going all the way to grizzly this time.
David started to answer her when Jake leapt at his back. Almost impossibly fast, the boy whipped around. He morphed directly into the security man that he had just acquired and caught Jake's arm, whipping him around and slamming him down into the table. He'd gone from completely himself into full secret service morph in the time it took Jake to jump at him, and now he shoved his arm down hard against Jake's throat. "Little different with the shoe on the other foot, isn't it!?" Now he was the one holding Jake down.
Rachel was still morphing grizzly and I started to go gorilla, not that I knew how much good it would do against someone that could morph that fast. We didn't even know what kind of animals he already had, or what else he could do.
<Take him, Marco!> Almost, but not quite fully bear, Rachel lunged at the boy. Before she had crossed half the distance between them, an Andalite tail looped out from David's back and slashed her across the stomach three times in rapid succession. With a mighty crash, the bear fell into the table and smashed it, then lay still with a weak groan.
I took advantage of what I thought was David's distraction to try to grab his arm and lever it off of Jake by hurling him across the room. I got his arm all right, but then he morphed it around my grip into a giant pincer claw. It looked like a crab's claw, only much larger. Before I could pull back, it latched onto my arm and then tore through the ligament and muscle. There was a searing, unbelievable pain and a second later the claw cut right through my massive arm. I screamed out loud and in thought speak through the pain and then stared dumbly as it fell to the floor. I stood there, a one armed gorilla in shock for a second until David hit me with that same claw. The force of his blow worse than a truck and I was hurled backwards like a ragdoll, already falling into shock from the sudden loss of blood.
As I fell to the floor on the other side of the room, I could see Melissa frozen in shock, still fully human. I lay helplessly on the floor, bleeding out through what had once been my right arm. Rachel in bear morph was in worse shape than me, her heavy body heaving with her efforts to breath and stay conscious. Jake was pinned under David's arm, his face white as he fought against the lack of oxygen. He had been held in place against the table effortlessly while David had dispatched both Rachel and me as easily as he could have kicked aside a few kittens.
My vision was already going dark, filled with blotches I couldn't see through, and it was getting harder to keep my eyes open. <How....> I managed to get out, wanting to know how David could morph like that, how he was able to do everything he was doing.
"How?" David laughed, having removed the andalite tail and the giant claw. He looked like an ordinary thirty something year old fit man now, as he stared across the table at the paralyzed Melissa. "I told you how. I am Crayak's servant. I am the one animorph who saw beyond the war! I am the one of you who wasn't tricked by Jake's lies! I am the one human who Crayak cares enough about to grant me the power to do what I have to do! I am the one who is going to remove the yeerk infestation
and the animorphs at once. I am the one that He sent back to finish the work here."
There was a silence, and then in words that seemed to fill the room in a way that I was sure that I would never understand, just before the darkness fully claimed me, David pronounced. "I am The One."
To be continued in Book 21: The Threat.
My name is Jake...
