Their lives are controlled though their brains are left uninfested. Children are seen as weak and unworthy host bodies.

  "During this captivity," she continued,

  ; "they're pumped full of vitamin supplements so the host bodies will grow strong. They're run on treadmills so they'll be fit to fight and to produce. When instinct leads them to indulge in moments

  ] of uncontrolled, regular childhood, they are punished. If they try to educate themselves, they are punished. Yeerks want minds as powerless as possible. So they raise children in a joyless, lifeless world where they wait for the day of infestation. The EF fights to free them. When they are freed, which is far more seldom than I can bear to think, they come here."

  1 "These kids don't seem traumatized at all," I I said. "They seem completely normal."

  "We've been lucky that way. Very few have I been broken down beyond repair. This is a place I of joy. It helps that we don't talk about the wamps unless we must. We live simply. We teach I and cultivate. We hope."

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  115

  I smiled and knelt down to get closer to his level.

  "You want to see my painting?" he said. "My friends think I'm better at art than they are. The elders say I have a gift."

  "Well, then, I'd better have a look." Justice handed his canvas to me.

  C H A P T E R 23

  "What do you think?"

  The image was divided diagonally, from the lower left corner to upper right. Below that line was an expressionist nightmare. A dark, angular city. Jutting, steel-gray towers rising through a bloodred mist. A fog from which arms and screaming, agonized faces reached in vain for a sky they couldn't I walked over to the tree.

  see.

  "Are you from the EF?" A kid's voice. I looked Above the diagonal demarcation was a differdown at one of the lower, swooping branches and ent world. A cloudless, blue-skied landscape. In saw a blond, rosy-cheeked boy. Maybe eight or the sky hovered a hot-air balloon, stark-white, nine. He spoke like he hoped I was with the EF

  like a sun. Extending from the balloon's gondola, because that would make me a quasi-celebrity crossing over from the joyful sky to the dismal, and someone worth showing his artwork to. urban abyss was a rope.

  "Urn, I guess so," I said. "Yeah. I'm working A cord, thin as thread.

  with the EF. My name's Jake."

  On this rope were people, traveling upward,

  "My name's Justice. The elders insist on givpinned to the thread like clothes on a laundry ing us these funny 'concept' names. Like, that's line.

  Liberty over there." He pointed to a girl on a high And as they crossed the border between darkbranch. "And that's Storm." As he explained ness and light, faces stiff with frustration and this, he rolled his eyes a little, indicating that to rage softened. There were no smiles, but there him, all adults seem a bit goofy.

  were expressions of hope.

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  117

  "Do you like it, Jake?"

  grabbed hold of my arm, pulling me toward the

  "It's great," I said. He smiled. "You're really trunk of the massive tree.

  good at drawing. Is that how you got here? Did

  "You're gonna be late," he said. "I want you you escape up the rope?"

  to stay, but you're gonna be late." He pressed his

  "Not you too," he said with mild frustration. small hand on a depression in the thick, corru"The elders are always telling me I paint allegories, gated bark and a door appeared. It opened for me whatever they are! I'm working out my aggression and I let Justice push me through it, but then I and fears, they say. But I'm just painting what I turned back.

  want to."

  When I did, there was just the trunk of an

  "Okay."

  oak.

  "Do you get to fly Bug fighters?" No door, no free humans.

  "Nope."

  I was back in the city.

  "But you get to plan attacks, right? And lead In Bryant Park, awash in shadows from a

  rebels? And free slaves?"

  nearly full, rising moon. Gnarled branches on

  "I guess so."

  leafless trees spread like outstretched hands.

  "That's what I want to do. I'm gonna free all Hands warning of danger. Pleading with me to be the friends I had to leave behind. They're prisoncareful. ers and I'm gonna save them."

  Gravel crunched beneath my boots as I

  I wondered how I should answer, how I could crossed to the New York Public Library. My mind explain to him, without destroying his spirit. hummed with confusion as I tried to make sense

  "War doesn't always let you save the people you of the place I'd just been, the free humans I'd know," I said. "You might end up being assigned just met.

  to a mission that saves people far away from I'd decided a while back to give up analyzing here. People you don't know. Other people's what was happening to me and why. I'd figured friends."

  that sanity depended on accepting the reality I He shook his head.

  saw, this dream or nightmare or vision. But that

  "I'll save my friends first. Then I'll save other didn't mean there weren't times when all I wanted people's friends." He jumped suddenly and were answers — definite, concrete answers. 118

  119

  I listened for the sound of Orff footfalls. For to a halt next to a row of dark-stained wooden tathe feel of spying eyes tracking me. bles. And then a hundred lights switched on and Nothing. I'd lost them.

  splashed light across the surfaces of a hundred I'd done as Rachel had said.

  desks, illuminating a huge reading room.

  Up white marble steps.

  A strapping Andalite, coarse blue fur drawn

  "TSSEEERRR."

  tight over battle-ready muscles, swiveled graceful stalk eyes to rest on me. A raptor's cry cut the night. Then beating

 

  wings and the creaking of ancient bones.

  The thought-speak voice was mind-filling.

  "Tobias!"

  Gentle and tough. Wise, inspiring, terrifying. Feathers brushed my face as a hawk shot

  Familiar.

  past. So close this time! I blinked and . . . He looked just as he did the night his spaceGone! Absorbed by the night. craft crashed in the construction site. The night

  "Tobias?" There was no answer.

  my life changed forever.

  So I turned and opened the massive, brassBy comparison, my voice sounded puny and handled door. I raced up moonlit stairs, boots forlorn, swallowed up by the vaulted chamber. pounding in the vast emptiness.

  "Elfangor."

  A wood-paneled corridor led to the stacks, to endless rows of high, book-lined shelves. A gloomy, moody maze. A musty, unlived-in smell. Silent as a tomb.

  Reading obviously wasn't big with the Empire. I walked along the main corridor, looking down each aisle. Rachel said I'd know.

  I was in the beginning of the "E" section when I passed an aisle that seemed to extend farther than the rest. I turned into the book-lined tunnel, heart thumping, and began to run. Suddenly, the bookshelves ended. I skidded 120

  121

 

  "What I want is to go home."

  Elfangor was an awesome presence. I'd be lying to say he didn't intimidate me some. But I was a leader, too. I saw the fight for Earth as more mine now than his. I C H A P T E R 24

  wanted to be respectful of him, but in my view he'd made a giant mistake with the terrorist campaign. I had to call him on it.

  "No. I want to go home so I can keep all this from happening in the first place. If this is the future, I want to go back. I can stop the Yeerks The Andalite shifted on his hooves and trotwithout sacrificing my friends. Without botching the war, and bumbling into your brand of terrorted nearer, his stature breathtaking. He was powism and half-freedoms. I can stop them before erful and well-proportioned.

  we sacrifice the very things we're fighting for!"

  Elfangor laughed in my mind. yet there he stood. Could he be leader of the EF?

  "You don't have to give up your principles to Mastermind of a terrorist campaign against Yeerk win. Isn't there always an alternative to sacrifice control? I was incredulous, but, at this point, if you just keep your mind clear, and step back, anything seemed possible.

  and see it and . . ."

  "The EF is certainly a force to be reckoned

 

  with," I said.

  The repetition stung. How did he know I was

 

  head, rifling through my personal file of fears and

  "Action is the surest path to change. No mistakes . . .

  question there."

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  123

  Now I was angry.

  Of course.

  "It's all your fault," I said suddenly, surpris ing myself. "I always thought of you as a hero, My throat tightened. My skin tingled. What?

  Elfangor. A leader. But the truth is you couldn't My mind seized on his words, pulled and prodsee another way out. You sentenced us to hardded them. Turned and shook them. ship, pain, and suffering. We were kids. You Dead? Then how could I be free?!

  made us question every value we ever learned.

 
  Visser Three know that one of the notorious "An dalite bandits" had gone undetected for so long, The voice changed as he said my name. Sudright under his nose, Tom ended your life. Your denly, he didn't sound like Elfangor anymore. own brother. . . >

  The Andalite arrogance was gone, leaving only

  "But I'm here!"

  the voice of a man. A human. Familiar and unfaI looked down at my hand. Pink-tan flesh unmiliar. der the light of the reading lamp. Knuckles,

  the new nails, veins, bones. Alive. Real.

  voice said.
 

  You didn't ask to make the tough calls. Plan the What was this?

  missions. Decide how to use your small but loyal

 

  hours of calculations.>

  "Tobias."

  "No! No, no, no! I'm not a scientist!"

 
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  124

  the programming. Make it miss. Even a tenth of a percent will do the job. This is the decisive moment, do you understand? Use whatever means necessary.>

  "If I make the shot miss, the moon will explode and doom millions."

 
  God's sake, don't get stopped by details. Permanent Kandrona. Failure means an Earth that is at last irrevocably Yeerk.>

  "But what about Cassie? Marco has her!"

 

  "Couldn't you send someone else to save her?

  •1 couldn't accept it.

  One of your people?" I pleaded, indignant at his I ran out the same way I came in, as fast as dismissal of her life.

  my legs could carry me. Past row upon row of Tobias shrugged.

  books and cavernous marble library halls built for

 

  a different world.

  "I won't let her die!"

  I burst out into a muggy cloud of night air,

  walked beneath barren branches, dormant as I couldn't answer that.

  death. Now I raced past foliage rustling in the

  whirlwind currents from hovercraft overhead. He turned abruptly and walked across the

  Reality was all wrong.

  room.

  Cassie.

 

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  126

  I ran from Tobias. From Elfangor and Ax, from A flash of heat. The scorch of Dracon fire on friends who'd ceased to care.

  the bricks above my face.

  As leader of the Animorphs, I would put the Marco's men!

  mission first. The mission as a whole. But what Get away! I had to get above this nightmare was my mission?

  town! I tore at my synthetic orange skin and tried What made the world worth more? Sheer volto morph. ume? The future? The common good?

  The physical changes began. I hadn't lost the Detachment, you idiot.

  morphing power! Long human legs collapsed up The last battle we'd fought together. . . Marco into my rear. Elbows fused to my chest.

  and Rachel, inside... lose everyone or just A downy undercoat sprouted across my skin. two . . . a door closing . . . Securing their desStiff feathers shot outward from thinning arms. tiny .. .

  Hard cranial bones shifted, sculpting my heavy, Guilt tore at me with scratching, ripping claws. round human head into the falcon's sleek form. I'd set the example. I was to blame for

  I flapped as hard as I could. Struggling through Cassie's hardness and Tobias's indifference. wet air.

  I ran still faster. Down a dark, narrow backHelp Cassie, and I doom so many more. Kanstreet. The smell of Taxxon filth invaded every drona for eternity. Help Cassie and mankind's corner of the city. Sweat poured down my face, fate is sealed.

  mixing with burning, unstoppable tears.

  But I would have one more moment with

  "I'm sorry!" I shouted at the sky. Cassie by my side. We might make it. We could No one to hear.

  run.

  Tobias was wrong about war. What good is it if But where could we go? And with a Kandrona people are forgotten along the way? If one girl in sun, I couldn't even starve the Yeerk out of her one million girls is scarred and hardened. head . . .

  Changed forever. What good? Only Yeerks freely Every detail of the city surged into focus with give their own to see a job completed. I wasn't a raptor sight. And the mind. Simple, but keen. FoYeerk. cused on the task. No swells of emotion. No I wasn't.

  unanswered questions.

  TSEEEW!

  The tears were gone.

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  129

  Higher. Past walls of silver-green glass and rooftop landing pads. Glassed-in penthouses, beacons in the darkness, housed crowds of humans and Andalites gathered around sludgy pools. High-level Controllers cavorting and conspiring. The alien world's hot tub equivalent. The Yeerk pool.

  The air cooled and thinned as I rose higher C H A P T E R 26

  still, until at last, the menacing Yeerk New York looked safe and small. Air began to slip past my tired wings. I was an insignificant dot in the sky. One free soul above a city of slaves. Millions that were mine to save.

  Cassie.

  Justice would save his friends first.

  The lights of Yeerk and once-Andalite craft But Justice was a kid.

  flitted over streets like crimson fireflies. Brooklyn. Queens. The Bronx. The suburbs. The string of distant cities beyond. All of it glowed a telling red. The East Coast megalopolis, to the horizon and beyond.

  Yeerk. All of it. Yeerk.

  My telescopic falcon eyes found the silhouette of a man at a desk, high in a skyscraper. In the world I used to know, he could have been anyone. Working late. With a wife and a family. A dog. A home.

  Here he was a captive. One captive.

  One life.

  Two miles away was another building, not the 130

  131

  tallest, but one that stood out, with a pointed, row ledge a thousand feet from the ground, one shining peak. Brighter than all the structures of the giant gargoyles anchored just beneath her around it, with starbursts stacked to form a tall, feet! She was facing out, away from the building, elegant tip.

  her wrists strapped to the masonry wall, her face The Chrysler Building. Center of the invaders'

  strained as she fought to break free.

  command. Instrument of Yeerk domination.

 

  Cassie's prison.

  She twisted.

  A stunning yellow light electrified the massive

  Her desperate plea filled my peak. The needle rod planted at the top began to head.

  pulse.

  How could she answer in thought-speak? How Then suddenly, right before my eyes . . . the could she even see me? No time to wonder. giant metallic gargoyle eagles that jutted from The building was racing toward me. The green the corners of the spire's base seemed to ignite!

  beams were growing wider and wider, expanding The moon ray was energizing.

  toward Cassie's perch. They'd fry her! In seconds, An emerald-green glow was growing within

  she'd be toast.

  the eagles, emanating, gaining intensity.

  Shafts of green sprang from the eagle heads, she screamed. verging at the spire's needle tip!