The Test

by K. A. Applegate

  I finished acquiring the Taxxon’s DNA. And realized there was something inside me unlike anything I had ever known.

  Maybe it was just my own tormented mind at work. Or maybe it really was the DNA, screaming at me on some microscopic level. It was something terrible.

  Something dangerous.

  A tortured shudder moved the length of the Taxxon’s body, from head to tail and back again. He shook for one violent instant, then stopped.

  And I realized that he now lived only in Ax and me.

  Marco’s thought-speak greeted me at about three hundred feet. He was flying in, too, and was just as late as I was. It was dawn. We were both working hard to stay up in the cool air.

  he continued.

  Actually, breakfast was why I was late. This morning, the meadow had been unusually still. Not a field mouse anywhere. Kind of ominous, like they knew something I didn’t. Like they knew it was better to stay at home.

  I’d set out hungry, but along the way I’d spotted a gray squirrel. It was bigger than I like, but food is all I think about. In nature, in my world, hunger doesn’t just mean you’ll be crabby in the car on the way to Taco Bell. It carries undertones of death.

  I’d dived, silent and swift. With wide-open talons I snatched it, unsuspecting, from the power line it was making its way across. The squirrel was heavier than I’d guessed. It yanked on my legs, sent me tumbling for the ground. I held tight. I even regained control, feet above the ground, flapping like mad to stay aloft.

  But then, the squirrel’s teeth pierced my leg. Sharp pain from the incision shot to my brain. I released one talon and let go of my would-be breakfast.

  I called to Marco.

  I landed gently on a tree branch. Marco was already demorphing. The others had gathered a few feet away. All but Ax, who was hiding in the thick grass, keeping an eye on the pumping station.

  Jake had changed plans on Taylor at the last minute. He had to balance the danger of not having her accounted for as we dug with the risk of having our true identities discovered when we demorphed.

  So Jake had let Taylor know, by E-mail, that she couldn’t come within a mile of the dig or the pumping station before 8:00 A.M. If she did, the deal was off. When she did show up, she had to hang with us as we dug.

  She had agreed to Jake’s conditions with an eagerness I found disconcerting. I didn’t mention it to the others. I knew it was nerves.

  I could see the manhole cover next to where the others were standing. It was partly covered with sand and stuck out above the ground a few inches. This was a good place to work, with little chance of being seen. We weren’t far from the pumping station but were concealed by trees and brush on all sides. Taylor knew what she was doing.

  The sewer cap was in a cul-de-sac, on the side of a gravel road that hadn’t been paved. The concrete curbs were in place and the gravel was carefully compacted a few inches below, ready for a layer of asphalt. It had been this way for a while. The site was supposed to be a new industrial park. But local residents didn’t want the noise and the traffic, so construction had been temporarily stopped, leaving sewers and electricity, but little else.

  “Your left talon’s bleeding,” Rachel said.

  I didn’t answer at first. I didn’t feel like explaining. But Rachel’s concern was genuine. It wasn’t fair to blow her off.

  I answered.

  “You’re telling me,” Marco broke in. “I was looking in the toaster to see if my Pop-Tart was done and wham, the thing shot out and hit me in the eye.”

  I said, looking Rachel’s way.

  “Let me have a look,” Cassie said. She was still adamant about not going on this mission, but she wanted to know where we were digging.

  In case we didn’t come back.

  Cassie’s being there was a little awkward. Maybe least so for me, I don’t know. She wasn’t there to wish us luck. And although Jake always gives us the option, it’s really rare that one of us decides not to fight.

  “You should morph to fix the cut,” Jake said. “That thing’s going to get infected. So I guess you’ll go first.”

  I’d go first? That slammed me into the reality I’d been trying to avoid. I wasn’t looking forward to the work that lay ahead. Or to the creature I had to become.

  Ax came trotting out of the bushes and stopped next to Jake.

  Ax was wearing a Timex Triathlon timepiece around his front ankle. Rachel had picked it out for him. He feared that his internal clock might be thrown off by the power of the Taxxon morph. He and I were going to take turns wearing it while Andalite.

  He moved briskly to the manhole cover, stuck the tip of his tail blade in the small hole intended for the crowbar and, with one swift, fluid twist of his tail, sent the fifty-pound steel cap tumbling through the air. It landed with dull resonance inches from Jake’s feet.

  “Smooth,” Jake commented dryly. “You should work for the city.”

  I dropped from my perch to the edge of the hole. I could see that at the bottom of an eight-foot shaft was a cylindrical chamber.

  I said.

  I hopped over the edge of the hole into the darkness, falling slowly, with partially open wings. A real hawk would never drop into such a tight space. I could feel the raptor’s anxiety. I landed softly on the surface of the curved concrete.

  “Take it easy, Tobias,” Jake encouraged. “Nice and steady. If you have problems, we’re here.”

  Ax instructed.

  “I’m right here, Tobias,” Rachel called.

  “Be careful.” Cassie. “And … I’ll see you guys later.”

  “Tobias …” Jake began.

  I said, assuring myself as much as my friends.

  I closed my eyes and focused on the DNA I carried within me.

  The changes started immediately. Continued concentration wasn’t necessary. Once it began, the morph gained momentum on its own, like a rock dislodged from a hilltop.

  Hisssssss …

  I felt my bones disintegrating. No, melting. All the hard parts of my body — talons, beak, feather shafts — softened and liquefied. Usually when you morph, you feel the firm shape of new organs forming. This morph was exactly the opposite. Everything was dissolving, then congealing into one hideous continuum.

  I fell down on the cement as my legs melted away, only to be lifted up again as hundreds of cone-shaped appendages shot out of a soft, rapidly extending belly.

  I was taking on the shape of a worm. Long and formless.

  Crystal-clear hawk vision blurred. Think about driving into the rain without turning on the windshield wipers. Then this murky vision was traded for —

  Whoa! A thousand tiny fragments of my surroundings. Visual shards, like a kaleidoscope image with blurred edges.

  I knew that Taxxons had compound eyes, like flies. Each red eye is really a thousand smaller eyes, each scanning a small piece of the world. What I hadn’t known was that Taxxon brains aren’t quite sophisticated enough to put all the pieces together.

  The mouth formed last. The center of the Taxxon’s existence.

  The changes stopped.

  Then, all at once, I felt it coming. An unstoppable tidal wave riding up the shore.
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  Insane, insane hunger.

  Desperate, all-consuming hunger. Like nothing you can begin to imagine. It reared up, larger than any urge I had ever experienced. Blocking out everything else.

  Everything.

  I could smell the others. Up aboveground. I knew exactly where they stood. I heard vibrations. Their feet through the soil.

  I was over ten feet long. Long enough to crawl up and squirm through the hole. I pictured Marco. And the next thing I knew I imagined him in my mouth, his soft tan flesh, sawed up. Swallowed. And Jake. Bigger. And Ax …

  My worm body lunged for the hole. Before I could stop it. Before I could think. I didn’t know what was happening. The smell was so strong. The imagined taste so real. The Taxxon mind so in need!

  Noxious digestive acid poured from my mouth. My soft head pushed against the iron cover Marco and Jake had put partially back in place.

  I would devour them. Lunge and devour.

  Marco and Jake and Ax and …

  Rachel.

  My Taxxon body twitched. The thought of even more food excited it. But something … something way in the back of my mind, way deep in there, spoke out.

  Rachel?

  I stopped. I heard something. The tiny, insignificant voice of a kid. Tobias, the human in me, was struggling to make his presence known. Somewhere beneath the Taxxon’s evil and unimaginable power, the kid in me was ranting like a lunatic. Stop, he cried. Stop! Stop! Stop!

  I can’t say that I regained control. That would be a lie. Like saying that the captain of a sailboat can take control of a storm.

  But somehow I steered the enormous beast away from the other Animorphs. Somehow.

  It was impossible to stop the hunger, impossible to slow it down, but Ax had told me I could focus it on something else. Okay. I turned it to the job at hand.

  We had heard that the Taxxon was a great digger. But that’s not true. Not exactly. The Taxxon is great at one thing. Eating.

  Suddenly, ravenously, I began to devour the dirt beside the hole Taylor’s people had jack-hammered in the concrete pipe. I turned the full force of the Taxxon’s hunger on the dirt.

  I was inhaling soil like I hadn’t eaten in forty days. I bit off large chunks, coated them with digestive enzymes, and swallowed the sticky gobs. Bite after bite. After bite after bite. The Taxxon was insatiable.

  In no time at all I had excavated a body-sized chamber. Dirt walls grew up around me as I lunged and gobbled and swallowed and secreted.

  That’s right. Secreted. I was scarfing down pounds per second. I was the dump truck hauling away the excavated dirt. I was an all-in-one machine. Earthmover, waste disposal system. And that waste, that soil by-product, passed out of my Taxxon body as a thick, sludgy layer. A goo, that coated all surfaces of the tunnel that began to develop as I tried desperately to satisfy an unsatisfiable hunger.

  “Tobias? Ugh! Man, what’s that stench?” Jake’s voice reached me as a weak distraction, a vague disturbance. “Tobias, are you okay down there?”

  I ignored him. I just kept eating. Or digging. Just like an earthworm, passing dirt right through my system to extract the organic material. Except that unlike an earthworm, I had a ring of razor teeth to speed things up. Multiply an earthworm’s speed and size by about a million and you begin to get the picture.

  Except that with a Taxxon, there’s no hope of satisfying the hunger with dirt, not even momentarily. There aren’t enough nutrients in the soil. Just enough to smell, to trigger the urge to eat. Just enough to keep me wanting more.

  “Look at him move!” It was Marco’s voice. They were nearer now. They must have dropped into the sewer. “He can’t get no …” Marco gasped, probably from the stink of my secretion. “Satisfaction.” He gasped again.

  The longer I dug, the hungrier and more frantic I got. I didn’t learn until later that a Taxxon will dig, starved and exhausted, until he dies.

  Rachel called in thought-speak. She had already morphed. The others must be right behind her.

 

 

  Jake.

  The reminder of human flesh was more than I could resist.

  I sped backward, sloshing through the goo, racing toward the others. I flew out of the hole into the underground area. A slithering worm. Massive, starved, desperate.

  Jake cautioned.

  Marco agreed.

  My compound eyes filled with the broken blue form of an Andalite, the hulking masses of a gorilla and a grizzly bear, the sharp stripes of a tiger.

  No pink flesh! No soft pink flesh!

  I’d make do.

  The Andalite was nearest. I smelled the flesh under his fur, the muscles under his flesh. I was aware of his tail blade. It even triggered a danger alarm in the Taxxon mind. But the siren was faint, nearly insignificant. The tail blade could slash me in two, but I didn’t care. I might get a bite in first!

  Jake called.

  I rushed full speed at Ax. I’d body-slam him. Knock him to the ground. Lock my teeth in his skin and eat him whole!

  But then I saw something else. Something that made even the Taxxon stop. My legs froze.

  Taylor. Dressed in a tank top and soft, thin, cotton khakis.

  Her clothes would melt in my mouth. Her soft pink shoulders beckoned to be devoured.

  I heaved my bulk in her direction. Began to move toward her. Crawling. Slinking.

  “Just try, worm,” she hissed, aiming a Dracon beam at my head, “and I’ll fry you on setting six.”

  Ax objected, edging toward her.

  “Did I?” Taylor laughed. “Then try and stop me.” She turned back to me. “I’d love to have an excuse to finish you off.” Her voice wavered slightly, almost nervously. I continued inching toward her. “But then, if you’re the coward I know, you’d rather be stuck as a Taxxon nothlit than die with courage.”

  My Taxxon hunger fused with human hatred. I realized how much easier it would be to eat her than to fight the urge. How much easier it would be even to die than to face Yeerk-girl. This monster who haunted me day and night. With contempt. Arrogance. Power over me!

  Had it been like this at the Yeerk pool? Deep beneath the murderous hunger, my mind wondered. Had I overstayed the two-hour time limit so I wouldn’t have to face simple facts of life? Being a boy, living with foster parents, school, Rachel, Taylor …

  Marco grabbed me gently, attempting to stop me. I hissed and shook him off.

  Rachel called. But she didn’t block my path.

  Was I a coward?

  In the wild, there’s only life or death. You feed your belly or you die. Success is survival. Failure is death. It’s simple. There’s no middle ground. At least, not for very long.

  Was I a coward?

  I hated Taylor.

  Because she knew the answer to that question.

  Because she saw weakness in me. She saw it because she was weak herself. People recognize their own kind. She’d sold out to save face. Literally. She’d become a voluntary Controller and betrayed her own mother because she wanted to be pretty again.

  It was beyond sad. It was pathetic.

  Was I different, or was I just like her?

  I’d trapped myself. Why?

  I hated Taylor because she knew.

  I was going to destroy her.

  I rushed forward. Opened my mouth. Scrambled for her legs.

  Tseew!

  A bolt of Dracon fire knocked me down. Not strong enough to kill, but tough enough to paralyze the Taxxon body and keep me down long enough to regain control. And begin to demorph.

  I focused hard. The bloated worm began to disappear. I imagined the first signs of my familiar hawk body emerging from the pool of Taxxon slime. And then
I remembered …

  Taylor was watching this! She couldn’t see me go from Taxxon to bird. She couldn’t know I was a nothlit. She thought I was Andalite. A mighty Andalite.

  I’d already slipped once, at Borders. Not again.

  I focused harder and tried to do something that can’t really be done. Morph directly from Taxxon to Andalite. The instant my hawk parts emerged, I focused on remorphing them to Andalite. It was excruciating, exhausting. Probably not very convincing.

  Was she looking? Could she tell? Would she see what she shouldn’t see?

  The others were smart. Smarter than I was. Rachel and Marco had backed Taylor against a wall, blocking her view with their gigantic bodies. As I demorphed and remorphed, Jake kept guard and talked.

  Jake said firmly.

  “Yeah, well, it didn’t even work. What’s wrong with this beam?”

  Jake said to me privately.

  Rachel said coldly in private thought-speak.

  I said, finishing the morph to Andalite.

  Ax said as Taylor threw the Dracon beam to the floor. He moved behind Jake to give my Andalite fur a quick tail-blade trim.

 

  Marco answered angrily.

  Why was I making excuses for her? Why? I couldn’t make any more. She wasn’t my friend. She wasn’t my kind.

  We’d made a deal with the devil and the devil had just shown herself for what she was.