Animorphs Section > Animorphs Fan Fiction & Art
Animorphs: The Survivor
musicman88:
It's the story you all voted for, and I hope you enjoy it!
Chapter 1
My name is Jessie; at least that’s what everyone calls me. My full name is Jessica, but I like Jessie better. It’s shorter and easier to say.
I’m sure you’ve heard of me, but you might not remember exactly who I am. Don’t worry about it; sometimes even the other Animorphs forget I’m there as well. I’m pretty shy and quiet most of the time so I can’t really blame them I guess.
I was one of the last of the “Auxiliary” Animorphs to get the morphing power, and that was only really because James came up to me and asked me personally. I sort of had a little crush on him (who wouldn’t, right?) so I said yes to his offer to join without really thinking about it.
I knew that he’d never feel the same way about me though. I wasn’t the prettiest girl in the hospital or anywhere else for that matter by far. I guess you could’ve called me chubby but I always thought of myself as fat. I’m about 5’8’’ and weigh around 170 lbs. I have a decently thick set of glasses that made me look really nerdy and to top it all off I had started to get some acne all popping up over my face. Like I said, not the prettiest girl by far.
As for my life up until this point I can say that I never really knew my parents. They abandoned me for whatever reason when I was only a baby. I went through a whole slew of orphanages and foster homes for the next thirteen years or so; some of them being better than others. I was never really abused or anything like that, but I was really glad when I left a few of the places. And I only got to stay at the good homes for a few months or so before something made me move out. But nevertheless I tried to keep a positive attitude most of the time.
Then one day I began to feel a sharp pain in my stomach area. I had no idea my life was about to change.
The foster family I was staying with at the time was pretty poor, so they couldn’t afford to send me to a doctor. I continued to bear the pain until it eventually got so bad that I couldn’t even walk anymore. I felt bad about making them do it, but they eventually sent me to a doctor shortly before they dumped me back out into the public childcare system. The state of California paid for most of my tests in the hospital, but even the state could only afford the minimal testing required. Even so, it didn’t take much to find out what was wrong with me.
I had cancer. And it was terminal.
The doctors believed that it had started somewhere in my pancreas and had spread from there. By the time the pain started and I went to the hospital it had already spread to most of my internal organs. There was nothing they could do to save me short of a total organ transplant. People wait on lists for organs for decades sometimes, so there was no real hope that I would survive that much longer.
So I went back into the public childcare system and basically just waited to die. I had gotten some medicine from the hospital to relive the pain a bit, but other than that there was nothing else they could do. I thought I was destined to die a slow and painful death until I heard about a program from one of the counselors at the shelter I was currently staying at.
They told me that there was a chance, albeit a small chance, to apply for and receive aid from the state’s newest program for permanently injured and terminally ill children. I sent in the application not really thinking that I’d get anything from it, but to my complete surprise I was accepted as one of the twenty kids in the state to receive full aid. I was beyond thrilled and I thought that I might finally be able to be cured, but being so young I didn’t realize how bad a shape I was in. Once I heard the detail of what the plan was going to do I began to face facts and accept reality.
The aid wasn’t going to help cure me, but it was going to help send me to a specialized children’s hospital where I could receive some decent treatment for my cancer. Even though I realized that I wasn’t going to be cured getting sent to a good hospital sounded great too. So the next day I was immediately transferred to the Santa Barbara’s Children’s Hospital and began to settle in with my new roommates and friends.
I kept quiet most of the time because that’s what I always did, but even so I made a few friends and most of the others seemed really nice. The treatment I was getting here was far better than just the painkiller pills I got before too. You would’ve never noticed that I was sick unless I told you that something was wrong with me. All that along with the fact that I had a loving and caring “family” around me now made me realize that I was one of the luckiest girls on the face of the planet.
I had never stayed in one place for more than a few months so I never really had time to get to know everyone around me. But being in the same place for a few years now has allowed me to get attached to everyone here. A few come and go every now and then, but for the most part we’re one big happy family.
And right now we were waiting for a piece of our family to return. We had been in the middle of our own funeral ceremony for Ray when Tobias dropped in. He told everyone that Jake needed to see James and his lieutenants as soon as possible. We finished our ceremony quickly, much to our dismay, and then James, Collette, Craig, and Erica morphed into their respective bird morphs and took off.
That was more than a few hours ago and by now we were all starting to get worried. Most visits usually only took an hour or two since the Hork-Bajir valley wasn’t that far away really, but this visit was approaching the five hour mark. By now the sun had gone down and it was almost pitch black outside.
Everyone started to get worried after about three hours or so went by and after the fourth hour we all started to gather next to the window to wait for them. Julio was the only one lucky enough to have an owl morph so he volunteered to go out and perch on the roof to tell us if he saw them coming. For close to an hour he’d been sitting out in the cold night air with nothing to report, but eventually he surprised everyone by yelling, <I see them! They’re coming!>
Someone quickly rushed over to the window to open it as Julio quickly flew back in to demorph. Just about the time he finished a flock of red-tailed hawks flew in one by one through the window and settled gently on the floor where they began to demorph.
musicman88:
Chapter 2
James was the first one to demorph and everybody wasted no time in asking him questions. He just held up his hands and waited until the others demorphed and we were quiet before he started to speak.
“I know you must be wondering what took us so long,” he began, “but Jake had lots of people he needed to talk to. You see, Jake believes that he’s come up with his final plan; a plan that would finally destroy the Yeerks once and for all.”
A small mumbling from the group was enough to get James to stop and wait until everyone was quiet again.
“If this plan works,” he continued, “the Yeerk occupation of Earth will be over and the human race will finally be free. That being said, it won’t be an easy thing to accomplish. The Animorphs have been trying to do just that for more than three years and only now in completely desperate times do they think that they could pull it off.”
“What do we do?” shouted someone in the back of the group.
James just gave a sigh before he continued. “Jake’s plan isn’t anything simple. To take down an entire army when you only have a handful of people to do it is never simple. His plan requires a lot of things to go right while any one of them could go horribly wrong. He didn’t tell me all the details, but from what he told me I could see that he needed everyone to do their part and to do it well. If even one of us fails then the whole mission could be jeopardized. And if that happens, with the places everyone’s supposed to be in, there’s a good chance that no one will survive and the Yeerks will win.”
“Get to it already!” someone else shouted, “what are we supposed to do?” After waiting for almost five hours for them to get back we were all more than a bit antsy. But James just gave another sigh, looked back at his lieutenants for support, and then began again.
“We have a job to do that’s just as important as any other job out there. If we don’t get our job done properly then the rest of the Animorphs will be as good as dead.”
He gave a small pause and I swear I thought that someone was going to yell something else. But everyone stayed quiet as James continued. “We’re going to be the distraction.”
Instantly there were moans and groans from all of us, including me.
“A distraction?” someone yelled,
“That’s it?”
“We could do better than that!”
“We’ve proved ourselves battle worthy!”
“Let us take on Visser One!”
But James wasn’t fazed at all. He kept the same almost blank look on his face that he had ever since he demorphed. He waited until everyone had shouted what they wanted to shout before he began to speak again. “I haven’t even told you the best part yet,” he said sarcastically and almost emotionlessly, "just wait until you hear the details."
Everyone instantly got quiet as James began again. "We're going to team up with General Doubleday and lead a false attack again the Yeerk pool ship. We're supposed to meet him early tomorrow morning so we can go over our plan and how to react in a whole bunch of situations. Then, General Doubleday will gather up all his men and we'll begin to form our formation, to be discussed when we get there. Once we're in formation we'll essentially begin to "march" toward the Yeerk pool ship in our battle morphs with the army all around us. The hope is that they Yeerks will see us as enough of a threat so that they take the pool ship back up into orbit to protect it from us. That's our main objective; to get the pool ship to go back into orbit."
There was a dead silence in the room once James finished telling everyone the plan. I knew what I thought of it, and I was pretty sure that everyone else thought the same, but no one said anything for a long time. But finally someone was brave enough to speak up. And no one was surprised that it was Liam.
"That's the stupidest idea ever!" he said loudly. "How the hell does Jake think that this is going to work? The Yeerks are going to see us and send a single ship to fry us all. You've all seen what one of those things can do to a building let alone a group of people! A few shots and we'll all be dead. And as for getting the pool ship to leave you can forget about it. There's no way they'll feel threatened by us walking out in the open like that. They'll just think that we're target practice. This is suicide! We'll be walking on a death march!"
Leave it to Liam to be loud, blunt, and right. He summed everything up perfectly and afterwards he opened up a torrent of other responses from just about everyone other than James and his lieutenants. I even threw in an "Is Jake crazy?" as well. But James stood unfazed and just waited for the shouts and arguing to calm down. He had probably expected our response and I'd be shocked if he didn't feel the same way when he first heard Jake's plan for us. But after the shouting died down a bit it was obvious that he still had more to say.
"I know what it sounds like," James continued in his leaderly voice that I loved so much, "and I want all of you to know that I feel the same way about it as you do. You were probably wondering what was taking us so long, huh? Well, part of it was because Jake was busy talking to other people, but it took more time for me to understand his decision than anything else. If we get attacked from the ground then we'll have tanks and rockets and all that other stuff to protect us, but I know as well as all of you do that they're most likely going to attack from the sky. And the truth is that there's nothing we can do to stop them."
"But we all knew this would be dangerous when we signed up," he continued after a short break. "Jake told us what we might be in for and we all accepted it when we got the power to morph, like it or not. And you can see for yourself right outside the window what the war has turned into over the last few weeks. You've seen just how useless our normal weapons are against the Yeerk fighters. You've seen just how hopeless most of the people are and you can also see why they’ve lost all their hope. But now we just might have a way to end it; all of it. If Jake's plan works then it'll all be over. The Yeerks will be defeated and all the humans they've enslaved will go free. Isn't that worth taking the risk? Isn't that worth dying for?"
I had to admit that James certainly had a point; he always seemed to. We’d been only fighting in this war for a few weeks, but Jake and all the original Animorphs had been fighting it for years. I could only imagine what it felt like to them to finally see an end in sight because it even felt really good to me. But, there was still the whole issue of our dangerous diversion to be considered…
There was a whole bunch of mumbling after James finished his speech. Some of it was good, and some of it was bad, but it was clear that James was getting us all closer to joining him. But there was still one thing on my mind and on everybody’s mind really. And leave it to Liam to bring it up.
“Isn’t there any other way we could create a diversion?” he said quietly. Well, quietly for Liam anyway.
“That was my first thought too,” James replied, “but neither Jake nor I could think of anything better. To stop them from attacking us from the sky we’d need to be really close to something of importance to them; like say their pool ship. But getting close to something like that would be more dangerous than just simulating an attack on it. You can see the death zone they’ve created around it out the window, so nothing on the ground or in the air will make it close enough. The only other option left would be underground. And after what happened to the Yeerk pool involving the subway before all the subway tracks would be heavily guarded. We could always make our own tunnel but that’d take forever and we wouldn’t have the machinery or morphs to do it.”
There was an eerie silence that fell over the room after James said that. I think that everyone finally realized that we needed to do this but no one really wanted to. Almost as if James could read our minds he continued on.
“I know what the plan sounds like and I’m fully aware of all the risks. That’s why I’m not going to force any one of you to come along.”
Everybody’s head went from trying to avoid eye contact with James to instantly staring at him after that comment.
“It’s a very dangerous mission and if you don’t want to go for whatever reason then you don’t have to. But think about this for a second. We’re supposed to be the diversion. The idea is that Visser One is supposed to see all of the Animorphs marching towards the pool ship and think that all of us are trying to mount one last desperate attempt to win the war. He’s not supposed to suspect that the original Animorphs are actually on the pool ship when it takes off and not marching with us. Now, I don’t think he ever got a correct head count the last time we all met up, but if us four are the only ones there he’s going to get suspicious. And if he doesn’t take the pool ship back into orbit then we failed our mission and almost everyone is sure to die. If enough of you don’t volunteer to come then the entire mission might be doomed from the start.”
He took a break to look around at all of us who were back to staring at the floor. Then, he asked the most important question I’ve ever heard. “So, who’s coming with us?”
There was silence. Other than a few machines beeping and the people next to me breathing there was no sound. I knew what I needed to do, but I also knew what I wanted to do. It was a tough choice to make and I definitely wasn’t going to be the first one to speak up.
We all stood there in silence for what seemed like an eternity. Everyone knew they had to go along but no one was willing to say anything. When I looked over to James I could see that his emotionless face had turned into something else. I’m not sure we have an emotion to describe it, but it was a mix of fear, anger, and most of all disappointment. He looked as if he was about to walk away with his lieutenants and go sit in some isolated corner or something. But just as he was about to turn away we all heard a shuffling noise behind us. We all turned to look and were shocked by what we saw. It was Pedro.
I’d never seen him move at all in all the years he’s been here, but to mine and everyone else’s surprise he had managed to lift his arm up, albeit only a foot or so. But it was more than enough.
I turned back to James to see a great big smile on his face. “Thanks Pedro.” was all he said and was all he really needed to say. “Anyone else?”
There was a short silence before words finally broke through. “I…I…I..I……I’m…I’m in!” Timmy said with a whole lot of effort put in. And then the floodgates opened up.
One by one just about everybody raised their hands up and told James that they were in. His smile turned into an “I knew it” grin as just about everyone said that they were in. I say just about everyone because by the end Judy and I still hadn’t raised our hands.
I know that I really wanted to, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. It wasn’t because I was THAT incredibly shy or anything, it was just the fact that, well, our mission still sounded like a suicide mission to me. Like Pickett’s charge at the battle of Gettysburg. We had a small chance of succeeding and a very large chance of dying.
I shouldn’t have been all that scared about dying really since I had been dealing with it for the past few years. The doctors that originally tested me and gave me my prognosis said that I only had a few months to live, but here I stood a few years later. But now I was starting to feel a few of my symptoms start to kick back in even with all the medicine I was taking. I knew that death wasn’t all that far away from me, but it was harder to face it now than I thought it would be. Thinking about having to face it was one thing, but actually having to face it was completely different.
But I was thinking too negatively. What if Jake’s plan worked flawlessly and he was able to protect us from any Yeerk fighters firing on us? Death wasn’t guaranteed. We could all easily survive this without even having to raise a finger in combat. We just had to march and get the pool ship to go back into orbit. This could turn out to be one of the most boring things we’d ever done.
I wanted to raise my hand and I was just about to before James said, “Alright, that’s what I was hoping to hear. For those of you who haven’t decided on what to do yet you’ll have until tomorrow morning to do so. But right now we need to give everyone their medicine and get to sleep. We’re going to have a long day tomorrow.”
And with that the group started to break up and go their separate ways leaving me standing still in my original spot. But I quickly gathered myself up and went to get the medicine I needed to get. I had gotten what I really wanted; more time to decide. And I was going to use it as best I could.
musicman88:
Chapter 3
Ever since the nurses left we’ve had to get our own medication. The last one to leave left us a big sheet of paper with everybody’s name, all their medication, where to find it, and what it looked like in hopes that we’d be able to administer it to ourselves. But we had one rule about medication that we set up almost instantly; no one was supposed to get their own.
You may think that’s a silly rule, but it’s not. A lot of the medication we have to take, mostly the painkillers, can be addictive. And the last thing we need is for someone to start taking more and more of them. If someone was high on something when we went into battle they would be as good as dead. We all knew that, but sometimes things can happen. A lot of us have seen what drugs can do to someone first hand.
I had just arrived at the hospital when I met Billy. He had become addicted to his medicine and the nurses had just found out about it after he tried to steal some from right under their noses. In a desperate attempt to break his addiction they switched him to a different and weaker pain killer. It was a bad idea. While going through withdrawal he began to get crazy. He would tear up whatever he could get his hands on be it a magazine, his bed, or other people he came across. He began talking to himself while sitting alone in the corner and before long he was moved to another part of the hospital. He never came back. And that had always been my reminder to not overdose on any of my own drugs.
But anyway, I had to get the medicine for my roommate, Tricia. She has Marfan syndrome and she required a lot of different medicine, so it took me a bit to get it all together. But that gave me some time to think about what I was going to do tomorrow.
I was still torn after I had gotten all her medicine together, but I did come up with an idea. I’d ask James. If anyone could get me to go it’d be him. I really wanted to go with the rest of them, but I just couldn’t convince myself to do it. So after Trisha and I exchanged our medicine and I finished taking mine I got up the courage to walk over to James.
He was just finishing giving Pedro his medicine when I shyly walked over and asked, “Um, James, could I talk to you about something?”
He sounded really surprised when he said, “Um, yeah! Sure. Just give me a second to finish up here.”
Once he finished cleaning up after giving Pedro his medicine James turned around and said, “So, what’s up?”
“Um, could we talk somewhere a bit more private?” I said meekly. I didn’t really want to bring more people into this than I had to, and staying out here was surely going to do that.
“Um, yeah,” he responded sounding a bit nervous, “okay. Let’s go to the cleaning closet. Would that be private enough?”
“Yeah, that’ll do,” I said in response. So he gave me a small smile, turned around, and slowly began to lead me to the cleaning closet.
When we got there he opened up the door and let me go in first. He kept the door open long enough for me to find the light switch before he closed it and took a seat on an overturned bucket. I sat down on the edge of some boxes as he said, “This is about our mission tomorrow, right?”
“Yeah,” I said with a sigh. “I guess you noticed that I didn’t raise my hand.”
He nodded his head while saying, “Yeah, I noticed. But it’s okay if you don’t want to go. I don’t want to force you to do something you don’t want to.”
There was a moment of silence between us before I said, “But I do want to go. It’s just that I can’t convince myself to do it. I know that I should go and everyone else is going too. I saw that Judy came up to you already and probably said that she was coming along too, so I don’t want to be the only one left here. I feel like we’re sort of one big family and that we’ve all got to face this together. But I still can’t shake the fact that our mission sounds incredibly stupid and dangerous. I’m not sure what everyone else thinks, but I’m almost certain that they’ll send a single Yeerk fighter in to vaporize us all without ever even thinking about moving the pool ship. I just don’t know how to get over that part.”
James just looked at me for a second and thought. I knew it wasn’t an easy question, but I wasn’t quite expecting his response. “Jessie,” he began, “there really is no way of getting over that part. The only thing you can do is try not to think about it.”
“I can’t just not think about it,” I almost yelled back, “It’s there! It’s reality! How am I not supposed to think about it!”
I had said that with way more emotion than I intended to. But being put under the pressure and stress I was under now had a way of making your emotions come out more than usual.
“I’m sorry,” I said to James in a quieter tone, “I didn’t mean for it to come out like that.”
He just nodded his head and went back to staring at the floor while trying to think. But he quickly raised his head and said, “You know, this reminds me of the situation Jake and I were in when he first told me the news. I discussed it with Collette, Craig, and Erica for a bit before I finally had to take some time for myself to think about it. I made my way out to a small clearing in the woods and sat down on a fallen log. I’m not sure how long it was, but eventually I heard someone walk into my clearing and sit down next to me on the same log. It was Jake.”
“He and I talked for a bit,” James continued, “you know, just about whatever was on our minds, and my argument was very similar to yours. I knew that I should do what Jake was asking because he needed us in his plan, but I couldn’t overcome the fact that, to be blunt, it wasn’t very good. But in the course of talking to Jake he promised me one thing; that he’d do everything in his power to stop the Yeerks from firing on us. I didn’t know how he was going to do it, but I believed him. He’s been leading a small group of people that have been fighting the Yeerks for years now, so I think that he’d know a thing or two about getting them off someone’s tail. And, along with that, he’s only ever lost one person under his command during the entire war and that was just recently. In fact, you could probably argue that Ray wasn’t even really under his command. Jake isn’t the kind of person who would send someone off on a suicide mission if he knew there was no hope of them surviving. And that was enough to convince not only myself to go, but to ask everyone else if they were willing to go as well. I know his plan sounds bad, and in all actuality it might turn out that way, but I think that Jake has something planned to help us not get shot at. He’s come up with hundreds of plans before, so why wouldn’t he come up with something to help us now?”
There was a silence in the room when he finished. He was right. Jake wasn’t the type of person to send someone on a true suicide mission. Even with the short time I’ve known him, our training and a through battle or two, he seemed to know what to do and how to do it every time something came up. And not only that, he almost always thought of a better way of doing it than I did. Jake was an incredibly smart person and he knew how to handle his troops. He wouldn’t tell us to go do something if he wasn’t 100% sure he knew how to get us out if it, no matter how desperate things have become.
“You’re right,” I said after thinking it over for a bit, “Jake wouldn’t do that.”
I took another pause before saying, “Okay then, I guess I’m in too.”
His expression changed to a sort of worried look before he said, “Are you sure? If you really don’t want to do this then you don’t have to.”
“Yeah, I’m sure,” I said in response. “If you trust in Jake then there’s no reason I shouldn’t trust in him too.”
“Alright,” he said in a saddened tone, “If that’s what you want.”
I was about to get up and get out of the closet, but James’ tone made me stop for a second. “Is something wrong James?” I asked curiously. “It almost sounds like you don’t want me to go.”
He gave a sigh before he said, “No, that’s not it. If you want to go then you should be able to go. It’s just that…”
“What?” I asked before he really had a chance to finish.
“It’s just that…” he began again, “well, um… It’s just that I… um… MAN, this is harder than I thought it would be. It’s just that I don’t really want you to get hurt because I… um… kind of… well, I kind of like you. I mean, not just like you, but I really like you.”
I wasn’t sure what to think at that moment. Was he being serious? Did he really like me; as in love me? Was that what he was trying to say?
“Are you trying to say that, you, you like me?” I said back, not realizing how stupid I really sounded. “As in, really like me?”
He just nodded his head slowly as he softly said, “Yeah, that’s what I was trying to say.”
I was quite literally in shock. James likes me? How? Why? I know that I’ve had a crush on him for quite a while, but I never expected anything like that from him. He had so many other girls to choose from, why would he pick me out of all of them?
“If you don’t feel the same way about me then that’s fine,” he said snapping me out of my little daydream, “but I just wanted, no, I needed to tell you that before we left. Because, I mean, I don’t want to think about it, but what if one of us or maybe even both of us don’t come back? I… I don’t know. I’m sorry I brought it up.”
He almost got up to leave, but I still had a question of my own. “Why me?” I asked softly, still a bit in shock.
He sat back down and said, “To tell you the truth, honestly, I don’t know. It’s just this feeling I have around you. Whenever I see you I just… Ugh, I don’t know! I really don’t! I just know that I like to be around you. Whenever I see you I just… Wow, I’m screwing this up more than I thought was possible. I know that on the outside it seems like we’re two completely different people, but the more I think about it the more I can see that we’re the same. I mean, I guess I kind of envy your quiet life. You don’t have to make life-threatening decisions and be the one who leads everybody into danger. You know, I never really wanted to be the leader. If I could just sit back and let someone else do it then I would’ve, but the truth is that I’m the only one who would do it. If I didn’t lead everyone than who would?”
He gave a small pause before he continued. “I’m sorry; I got way off topic there. Look, what I want to say is that if you don’t like me back than it’s fine. I know I just kind of came out of left field with this, but it’s been bugging me for some time now. I’m sorry. I guess I’ll just go now.”
As he got up to leave for real this time I said, “Wait! James, I like you too.”
He turned around and gave me a smile. “Really?” he asked, “you’re not just saying that to make me feel better?”
“No!” I said back in response, “I really do like you. I began to like you soon after I moved in. It’s just that you’re strong, powerful, and willing to stand up for people when they need to be stood up for. After you stopped Andy from saying that I was only going to be a bed warmer for the next person to come in after me I, I, I began to really look up to you. And after a while I just grew to like you. It doesn’t matter to me if you want to be like that or not, it just matters that you can be. But I never thought that you’d like me back. I mean, there are so many other better girls to pick than me. For the longest time I thought you were interested in Collette.”
He gave a small laugh at that remark and said, “Collette? She’s a nice girl and all, but she can be a bit crazy at times. My life’s already crazy enough; I don’t need anymore craziness in it.”
I just smiled at him and he smiled back. But eventually he said, “Come on, I bet the others are wondering what we’re doing in here.”
He opened the door for me and I began to walk out, but I had a spur of the moment idea. Before I could convince myself that it wasn’t all that great of an idea, I acted. While I was walking out of the room and passing James, who was holding the door open for me, I quickly gave him a kiss. I pulled away to see a shocked expression on his now completely red face and I could guess that mine almost looked the same way. Without even saying anything to each other we both quickly turned and started to walk back to join the others.
Nateosaurus:
Awesomeness! I admit, I dont usually read ani fanfics, but this one is really cool.
musicman88:
Chapter 4
It wasn’t long before James told everyone that it was time to go to sleep. But the real moaning and groaning started when he told us what time we’d be waking up at. Ever since we became part of the Animorphs we’ve gotten use to strange sleeping schedules and running on less sleep, but it didn’t mean that we had to like it.
So, along with everyone else, I got dressed into my PJ’s and quickly crawled into bed. I tried to go to sleep, I really did, but I knew that after an hour or so of laying there and staring at the ceiling it just wasn’t going to happen. I had too much on my mind.
Even though James had convinced me to go along with Jake’s plan, I still couldn’t get what might end up happening to us out of my head. I played back scenario after scenario, some a lot worse than others, until I thought that there were no more, but then I always came up with something new.
And that was only part of it. If I wasn’t thinking about tomorrow then I was thinking about James. He had just told me that he loved me, so how was I not supposed to think about him? My thoughts about James ranged everywhere from us holding each other after we saw the Yeerk Pool Ship go back into orbit to what our kids might look like, and even some other stuff that I don’t want to mention…
Anyway, when I heard the loud alarm go off next to my bed both Tricia and I groggily reached over to smack it at almost the same time.
“Sleep well?” Tricia asked me with a huge yawn.
“Not really,” I said back with a yawn of my own. “You?”
“Same,” she said as she threw off her blanket and began to get up.
It looked like everybody including James felt the same way as we all assembled for our morning meeting. But he was somehow able to hide it better than the others.
The meeting was brief since we would be getting most of our information when we got to the army base. We basically just when over what flying formation we were supposed to be in before James gave the order for everyone to begin to morph.
Everyone had acquired Tobias as their first morph just so that they could have some wings, but a problem popped up with that really quickly. You see, hawks don’t exactly travel in flocks. It might work if we only had five or six people like the original Animorphs had, but there’s no way we were going to be able to fly anywhere with all the people we had. We’d have to be spaced out farther than thought-speak could go to stay relatively anonymous. And even then, when someone saw a bunch of hawks go by in a short time span they’d think that something was wrong. And if they were a controller they might know what was going on. And it didn’t help that the Yeerks were trigger happy when it came to red-tailed hawks, all thanks to Tobias of course.
So, to fix that problem Tobias brought us all a pidgin he’d caught to acquire. That way no one would be suspicious when they saw a flock of pidgins fly overhead. There was just one problem; I wasn’t there when Tobias brought the pidgin. I was in a completely different part of the hospital getting some treatment for the entire day. So, needless to say, I didn’t have a pidgin morph. Tobias said that he’d bring another one back for me to acquire another day, but he never got around to it. But it didn’t turn out to be that big of a problem really. James usually morphed a hawk so he could keep watch on everyone and on the surroundings as well, so when all of us were out flying it looked like a pair of hawks was chasing an unsuspecting flock of pidgins, something that normal hawk couples actually do. No one but a very experienced Ornithologist or Falconer would’ve noticed that we were two male hawks, and even then it would’ve been a miracle if they did.
So once all of us were finished morphing James lead the way out through the window with a flock of pidgins following him and me taking up the rear. And so off we began our flight towards the army base just as the sun was starting to rise in the sky. We were all hoping for the best, but we were expecting the worst.
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