The Invasion
PrologueMy name is Shanker. Daniel Shanker. I’m pretty tall, 19 years old and an engineering student at McMaster University in Hamilton Ontario. It was summer and I was sitting in my room in Toronto goofing off on my computer. I signed off RAF and closed the screen of my laptop. My girlfriend wanted me to come over for dinner and my dad took the car. It wasn’t a far walk, about 20 minutes at my normal pace, but it was raining, and I really didn’t feel like walking in the rain. I stepped out of my house and locked my door, still standing under the overhang for my front porch, and ran. I figured if I could keep running for about 10 minutes, I’d probably get to her house with minimal amount of wetness. After 2 I stopped and was out of breath. The rain started to pound harder, I could barely see the street in front of me.
“Why didn’t I bring an umbrella?” I asked myself, wiping the water away from my eyes. “Because that just would have made sense.” I answered myself. I ran past the front of a car and he blared his horns as I passed by, not the smartest thing I’ve done, but hey I'm a daredevil.
Suddenly the rain stopped. So did the traffic. I looked around and could still see rain drops hanging in mid-air all around me. The cars were still on the road, they just weren’t moving. I looked closer at one of the cars, the window was open and the guy had tossed a cigarette out. It was floating about 30 centimetres above the ground the guy was completely still, his face frozen in a look of displeasure.
“What the hell is going on!” I yelled up at the sky.
“Don’t you know?” a voice said from behind me. I turned around and saw an old man standing in front of me. “It’s what you thought of when you were a child, what you wished for as you spent nights reading ourc books. Daniel, I am the Ellimist
“Get out” I said jokingly, I moved over to him and touched his shoulder, my hand passed through him. I pinched myself in the arm
“Okay Shanker, you can wake up now.”
“This is true Daniel, it is not a dream. You know how the story of the Animorphs ends. It is all true, though in an alternate dimension. Unfortunately Crayak has created a being called the One which you had glimpsed at the end of the story. The One has the ability to transcend dimensions. It is only a matter of time before it comes and destroys this one.”
“Why are you telling me all this?”
“Because Crayak and I have made a deal, and you can stop the One.”
“Why me?”
“If you choose to accept my deal, you will take the place of the Animorphs.”
“Why me Ellimist?”
“Choose now.”
“What will happen to everyone here if I accept? Will they just cease to exist? Will they die?” will they forget me, I added silently, holding back a tear.
“You will be returned to this moment when the war is over, nobody will even realize that you were gone. You and the others that I brought will be the only ones that remember the events that unfolded. However, if you were to die there, there would be nothing I could do.”
I breathed a large breath. “I accept, but I want a ****load of money given to my family for this.”
I thought I almost saw a grin spread across his old face before he turned into a bright blue light and the entire world faded into nothingness.
The world reshaped itself in front of me and I was sitting in a large room. The room was completely empty except for 5 chairs each occupied by me and 4 other people I recognized but had never met.
“And Danial makes five,” the 16 year old girl sitting beside me said, “I guess that’s everyone, welcome to the aniroom”
“Care to explain Angie?” I said to Anna. She motioned to the people sitting beside me.
“The Ellimist took us all to replace the Animorphs Shanker, weren’t you listening?” a 19 year old girl with an Australian accent said.
“Claire, I know that much, but I meant why us?” I said back.
“Isn’t it obvious?” the guy beside Claire said, “It’s just like Estelore was saying a few seconds before Shanker got here, we were picked because we’re awesome.”
“Duff, that’s not what I was saying,” Estelore said to him, “what I was saying was that we were chosen because we-”
Everything went dark.
