The Attack

by K. A. Applegate

  The Attack

  Even the book morphs!

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  #1 The Invasion #2 The Visitor #3 The Encounter #4 The Message #5 The Predator #6 The Capture #7 The Stranger #8 The Alien #9 The Secret #10 The Android #1 1 The Forgotten #12 The Reaction #13 The Change #14 The Unknown #15 The Escape #16 The Warning #1 7 The Underground #18 The Decision #19 The Departure #20 The Discovery #21 The Threat #22 The Solution #23 The Pretender #24 The Suspicion #25 The Extreme

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  «MEGAMORPHS» #1 The Andalite's Gift #2 In the Time of Dinosaurs

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  The Hork-Bajir Chronicles

  Width1Width3Width2659Width3Width3331 ii ANIMORPHS

  THE ATTACK

  K.A. Applegate

  AN APPLE

  PAPERBACK

  SCHOLASTIC INC.

  New York Toronto London Auckland Sydney Mexico City New Delhi Hong Kong

  iii For Michael and Jake

  Cover illustration by David B. Mattingly

  If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as "unsold and destroyed" to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this "stripped book."

  No part of this publication may be reproduced in whole or in part, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 555 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.

  ISBN 0-590-76259-1

  Copyright © 1999 by Katherine Applegate. All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Inc. SCHOLASTIC, APPLE PAPERBACKS, ANIMORPHS and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.

  12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 19/901234/0Printed in the U.S.A. 40First Scholastic printing, February 1999

  iv PROLOGUE

  The dream came again. As real as it always

  was.

  The Yeerk was in my head once more. He was starved of Kandrona rays, weakening, failing. I was watching him die.

  The Yeerk cried in pain again and again. And the memory visions came floating up as clear as if they had all just happened.

  They were visions of the Yeerk's life. And the lingering memories he had stolen from his hosts. One of those hosts had been my own brother, Tom.

  I felt each of those minds in my own as the Yeerk gave up his life. I was the caretaker of those memories of despair.

  v At the end, the Yeerk was no longer in pain. He was beyond pain.

  I opened my eyes and looked at Cassie. It happened so naturally. I opened my eyes by my own will for the first time since I'd been infested.

  And then, for the first time in more than an hour, the Yeerk spoke. «So. You win . . . human.»

  The Yeerk shuddered. I could feel it as a physical spasm. My vision changed. And I felt something impossible to describe. I felt as if I were seeing through things. Into things. Like I could see the front and back and top and bottom and inside of everything all at once.

  It was as if I had slipped out of the normal world. Out of the real universe. I was in a different reality. I was peeking through a tear in a movie screen. On the surface, the three-dimensional movie - my world - played. Beyond it... something my mind could not comprehend.

  In my dream, my dream of memory, I felt the terror grow. I knew what was coming next. I writhed in my sleep, twisting my sheets around me. Wake up! Wake up!

  But I could not wake up. I never could, not till the dream was complete.

  And so I saw it again.

  A creature. Or a machine. Some combination of both. It had no arms. It sat still, as if it were

  vi bolted down, on a throne that was miles high. It could not move, and yet the power that flowed from it was like a hurricane of energy.

  Its head was a single eye. The eye turned slowly . . . left. . . right . . .

  I trembled. I prayed it would not look my way.

  And then it saw me.

  The eye, the bloodred eye, looked straight at me.

  Through me.

  It saw me.

  It SAW me!

  No! NO! I cried in silent terror. I tried to look away, but my eyelids were transparent, my head would not twist far enough to avoid its gaze.

  It spoke the single word it spoke only in my dreams.

  And now, at last, I could awaken, shaking in a sweat-soaked bed.

  Why? Why would this dream not go away? I'd had other nightmares, other awful memories of fear and violence that needed to be exorcized in my dreams.

  But they had each faded. While this dream came again and again.

  I got up and staggered into the bathroom. I snapped on the glaring fluorescent light. Then I stepped to the sink and looked at my face, my head.

  vii Yes, the Yeerk had died there, in that head, my head. It had been right then as the Yeerk disengaged and began to crawl out of me, right then as death closed its jaws around the Yeerk, that the eye had found me.

  It had seen me.

  And I had seen it. Then, and again in my nightmares. Again and again. And each time it spoke that single, voiceless word.

  "Soon."

  1

  My name is Jake.

  Who am I? Sometimes I wonder.

  I'm a kid, a middle-school kid, a kid with classes to attend and homework to do and friends to hang with and parents. I am just an average kid, at least on the surface. Normal. Boring, even.

  I'm not especially good at school. I do okay. I'm no great athlete. I'm not some kind of genius. Just a kid. If you saw me at the mall you wouldn't think there was anything remarkable about me.

  But there is.

  Swimming around in my blood is the DNA of

  2 dozens of animals. Birds, insects, mammals. The DNA floats there, encapsulated, waiting for my own mind to call it up.

  And when I do - when I ask the DNA to go to work - it does, in the most amazing and impossible way. It transforms me. It changes me into the animal. Into the bird or insect.

  I shrink or grow. I lose or gain strength. My limbs, my organs, my face, my eyes, all change. I become that creature.

  My own mind continues to function. I am still me, but the animal mind is in there with me, too. And it functions, too.

  So, anyway, about now you're thinking, Oh, he's psychotic. He's delusional. He should be in a rubber room with an IV dripping tranquilizers.

  I'm not crazy. It's real. It happens. Not just to me, but to my friends: Marco, my main man; Rachel, my cousin, the war goddess; Cassie, the girl I care about more than I do myself; Tobias, the friend I couldn't save from his own bizarre fate; and Ax, an Andalite, an alien.

  It's the Andalites who invented the morphing technology. Only they have it. Only they can take an otherwise normal creature and give him the power to become any creature.

  Yeah, now I'm talking about aliens. Crazy and crazier, right?

  But that part's true, too. Earth is being

  3 invaded. Not openly, not with Dracon beams blazing and quantum explosives going off. That would be counterproductive. That's how humans might do it: fast and hard and obvious.

  But the Yeerks aren't like us. They don't want our land or our resources. They don't want our pitiful, backward technology.

  They want us. Us. Or at least our bodies.

  They want our legs and hands. They want our ears and mouths. They
want our eyes.

  In their natural state, Yeerks are slugs who live in a liquid pool and absorb Kandrona rays for food. But evolution played an interesting trick with the Yeerks. Slowly, over the course of millennia, they grew to be a parasite species.

  They found the Gedds, another species on the Yeerk home world. And over time they learned to penetrate into the very brain of the Gedds.

  Gross? Weird? There's a species of wasp that lays its eggs in the living body of a caterpillar. When the wasps are born, they feed on the caterpillar. They eat the living caterpillar alive from the inside.

  That's on good old Earth. So what's weird?

  Anyway, the Yeerks expanded. From Gedds to Hork-BajirtoTaxxons to ... us.

  Now they are here. And now they are taking over human hosts, entering their brains, controlling them, rendering them utterly helpless.

  4 I know. I was a Controller. I'd still be a Controller, except that my friends saved me and starved the Yeerk to death.

  Not the first Yeerk death on my hands. Not the last.

  We fight this war almost alone, me and my friends. We've learned of a race of androids called the Chee who help us from time to time. We've learned that not all Yeerks agree with the policy of expansion throughout the universe. And we know that off in space, outnumbered, outgunned, are the Andalites, fighting to push back the Yeerk tide.

  But most days and nights, we are alone. Even with other people all around us, we are alone.

  Assembly. Not a pep rally, not a drug lecture, not a ceremony honoring anyone. This was different, and actually, fairly cool.

  The Lion King, the stage show, was in town. Some of the performers were there on the stage of our little auditorium to give a minishow.

  A lot of kids had groaned when it was announced. You know: It was a lot of "be quiet, sit still" time. Not to mention the fact that it seemed a little "young" for us.

  Me, I like quiet and still. Didn't used to. But now I guess any time I get to sit quietly, no running, no morphing, no terror, no screams, no horrible decisions and horrible aftermath ... I can

  5 handle sitting still and listening to music and watching big giraffes gallop around onstage.

  I was about fifteen rows back. Marco was in the row ahead of me to the left. I could see the side of his head, and he knew it, so he was amusing himself by twitching ears in time to the music.

  I didn't want to smile, but it was just so idiotic it was funny. Marco, naturally, was hoping I'd snort or giggle so he could turn around and shush me, full of righteous indignation.

  Cassie and Rachel were four rows behind me and to the right. I was pretty sure Cassie was asleep. Cassie lives an amazing life: school, the Wildlife Rehabilitation Clinic where she works helping injured animals, and of course, being one of us, which is a full-time job.

  Rachel had a kind of dreamy look on her face. You'd have thought she was enjoying the show. Only I noticed the guy sitting next to her was trying to hold her hand. And that dreamy look was Rachel wondering which of the guy's fingers she should break.

  I looked back at the show. It was a pretty good show. I heard a stifled yelp of pain coming from four rows back and to the right.

  That familiar "Circle of Life" song started up and Disney animals were cavorting and singing and the music was swelling and Marco's ears

  6 were going nuts and a wounded male voice was saying, "Jeez, you almost broke my finger!" and then it all stopped.

  All of it.

  Every sound. Silence.

  The music. Silence.

  The actors in their incredible costumes. Frozen.

  The auditorium full of kids. Dead still.

  The only things moving were Marco's ears.

  The only sound was Rachel saying, "Almost? Reach back over here again and I'll -"

  Frozen. Still. Motionless. Everything and everyone.

  Except the four of us.

  7

  Slowly, cautiously, I stood up.

  I looked at Rachel. "Wake Cassie up," I whispered.

  Rachel stood up and shoved Cassie's shoulder.

  "I'm awake, I'm awake," Cassie said, eyes snapping open. She yawned, then stopped in mid-yawn and forgot to close her mouth.

  "Well, this is unusual," Marco said. "Did someone hit the 'pause' button?"

  I was looking at the eerie spectacle of the stage players, frozen, some in mid-leap, just hanging in the air, when a blur of feathers simply appeared.

  The red-tailed hawk flared its wings, yelled

  8 «Aaah!» , banked hard right, saw me, saw all of us, and landed at the edge of the stage.

  «Is he here yet?» Tobias demanded, wrapping talons around the lip of the stage.

  I shook my head, confused. Who? Was who here yet?

  One of the "animals" onstage moved. Only it was not a Disney animal. It had the body of a blue deer, the upper torso of a boy, a mouthless face topped by two extra eyes on moveable stalks, and a tail that could snap and leave you counting in base five.

  Ax froze. Then he darted forward, moving away from the fake animals. Stalk eyes swiveling, tail arched, ready to strike.

  "It's okay, Ax," I said. "I think."

  «The Ellimist,» Tobias said.

  Marco nodded. "I don't know anyone else who can just stop time whenever he wants. Unless it's that new math teacher."

  "So where is he?" Rachel demanded.

  "Wherever he wants to be," Marco muttered darkly.

  We had encountered the creature - or creatures, who could tell? -called "the Ellimist" several times. He (she, it, they) was to humans and Andalites and Yeerks what humans were to ants.

  9 I felt like an ant right about then. Small and powerless, with a couple hundred kids frozen around me. It was like they'd been videotape one minute, a still photograph the next. It felt wrong to look at them. Like I was some kind of peeping Tom.

  I met Cassie's gaze. Her dark eyes were cautious, but not scared. The Ellimist had never hurt us. He'd helped us, always while pretending to do nothing. Or at least by living within his own incomprehensible set of rules.

  One of the kids stood up. I jumped about two feet in the air.

  It was this girl named Beth. No one else moved. Just Beth. She smiled at me, at us, and I knew right away.

  "Yes, it is I," Beth said.

  "The Ellimist?" Cassie asked.

  Beth nodded.

  "Where's the big voice and the quick-change bodies and all?" Rachel demanded.

  "I have chosen this form for a reason," the Ellimist said in the girl's voice. "I come today on a humble mission. I wanted a humble form. One that would not evoke feelings of dread or awe or reverence from you."

  He spread Beth's hands wide, palms up. He moved away, and I saw that the real Beth was

  10 still frozen in her seat. The Ellimist had not taken her body, just her image.

  After all, he wasn't a Yeerk.

  The Ellimist calmly walked through several rows of chairs and the bodies in them. Simply passed through them like they were air. He stood in the space between the front row and the stage. Down by Tobias. Ax came up behind him, moving with the unnatural, liquid grace Andalites have when they are preparing to fight.

  Andalites don't like the Ellimist. He's a figure from the scary stories they tell around camp-fires - or wherever.

  I gave Ax a little look, just a "take it easy" look. He relaxed about three hairs.

  "Okay, so you're just a regular girl," Rachel said sarcastically. "No big show, aside from the fact that you froze time and all."

  "This is as humble as I know how to be," the Ellimist said. "I come to-" he hesitated, "I come to tell you a story, and to see how you will choose to react."

  "Oh, good, a story," Marco said. "Is it a musical, too? Will there be any hakuna matata involved?"

  You have to understand: It's not that we weren't scared. We were scared. But we'd been scared by people who wanted to kill us. This was

  11 just "creeped out" scared. We ate "creeped out" for breakfa
st now.

  Beth's face smiled. She had braces.

  "I will tell you a story. You will tell me the ending."

  12

  The Ellimist looked down at the girl's hands. "Once we had hands. Not much different from these." He smiled. "But that was a long time ago. Almost a billion of your years.

  "We evolved as all living things do, some faster, some slower. We were among the first sentient species, but we evolved slowly. Still, given enough time, even slow change can become profound. Back when all Earth could boast were a few simple single-celled animals, we were beginning to watch the night sky and understand the movements of our own planet. We learned and we grew powerful. By the time worms first crawled in the mud of Earth, we were traveling in faster-than-light ships. And when the first dinosaurs

  13 walked we ... we had become much as I am today."

  "You'd become a girl with braces?" Marco said.

  The Ellimist looked surprised. He showed the braces in a grin.

  "The Andalites could do with some of the human sense of humor," the Ellimist said.

  Ax scuffed a front hoof against the stage floor, a gesture of annoyance.

  "And if the Yeerks had any sense of humor at all they wouldn't be the scourge they are," the Ellimist added.

  Marco looked more abashed than proud. The smart remark had just popped out of him. I don't think he'd consciously planned to poke fun at a being who could not only annihilate Marco, but all memory of him, his family, and his ancestors, going back through a thousand generations.

  The Ellimist continued. "We watched the rise of other species throughout the galaxy. Helped at times, when we could. We wanted companions. We wanted to learn. We imagined a galaxy filled with millions of sentient species, each with its own science and art, its own beauty.

  "But it wasn't to be that simple. Approximately a hundred million Earth years ago, we became aware of a new force in the galaxy. Not a species, an individual. He was a fugitive from

  14 another galaxy, chased out of that galaxy by a power even greater than he. Greater than me."

  "I thought you were all-powerful," Rachel said.

  The Ellimist smiled. "No. I seem so only from your limited perspective."

  I looked around the room. Time was stopped. Leaping dancers hung in midair. The dust particles in the air were standing still. A kid named Joey had been sneaking a Ho-Ho. Someone must have made him laugh because his mouth was open, smiling, and a piece of Ho-Ho was dangling off his lower lip. Dangling and never falling.