The Escape

by K. A. Applegate

  It was on the TV news and everything. CNN even sent a camera crew.

  On Monday I handed in five pages of pure, total babble as a book report. I wrote it on the bus. On Thursday I got it back. D-minus. The teacher

  90 wrote, "Nice try, Marco. Do it over, and this time try reading the book."

  What can I say? Some teachers buy it. Some don't.

  We had decided we couldn't go back to the Royal Island facility until the weekend. Sneaking out at night was risky. If one of us got caught and grounded, we'd be out of business for a while.

  I had stopped worrying what the others thought about my running from the sharks. I felt like my actions at the aquarium balanced that out. And I kind of felt like I'd gotten past my fear of sharks. More or less. I mean it's never a good idea to get casual about sharks.

  Instead of obsessing over being scared of sharks, I found I was obsessing about the shark DNA inside me. I wanted to morph that shark. I wanted to be it. I wanted to know what it felt like to be so relentless, so unafraid. So totally without emotion.

  Twice I dreamed about it. Both times in the dream I was a shark, only I still had my own face. And both times someone was doing something terrible. I can't remember what, I just remember thinking, Oh, man, that's awful. But in my dream I was a shark, and so whatever the terrible thing was, I was safe.

  I wish I could remember what the terrible

  91 thing was. I think maybe it was someone being killed. A woman's voice kept saying, "Help me, help me." I remember that much. But it was confusing because sometimes the voice would start yelling, "Help him, help him."

  After school Thursday, I hung around for a while. I went to the gym. I went to the pool. To my surprise, it was empty. The swim team was somewhere else, I guess. Maybe off shaving their legs and heads. I don't know.

  The pool is indoors. It smells of chlorine and mildew. It's one of those places that makes you think about athlete's foot, you know? It's white tile around the sides and dark blue on the bottom. There's a high board and a springboard. There are windows high up on one wall of the room, but mostly the light is fluorescent. There are lights like car high beams in the water itself. But still, it all manages to be gloomy, no matter how many lights are on.

  I knew what I was going to do. And I knew it was stupid. But I knew if I didn't do it here, I'd do it in some even stupider place. Like my bathtub at home.

  I went to my gym locker and changed into my gym shorts. Then I went back and checked the pool once more. No one. No one in the bleachers. No one in the water. Not a ripple.

  92 I jumped in, feet first, around the eight-foot marker. I bobbed back up to the surface and said, "This is insane, Marco."

  To which I answered, "So I'll be careful."

  To which I countered, "You're talking to yourself, do you know that?"

  "Oh, shut up," I said.

  I began to do what I had been wanting to do since Sunday. I began to focus my mind on the shark. I saw it in my memory. Saw it chasing me down that plastic tunnel.

  I pictured the moment when I touched the shark's sandpaper skin and brought it under the acquiring spell. And then, slowly, I felt the changes begin.

  It started with the squishy sound of my own bones dissolving. See, sharks don't have bones. Just cartilage.

  I could hear my bones. The bones in my arm s. The bones in my legs. My hip bones, and even my spine, were all starting to dissolve.

  I could see down through the water, down to my feet. They shimmered against the deep blue background. They began to elongate. The toes stretched out and out, till each toe was a foot long. My calves followed them, stretching like Gumby. It was a total shock when I realized I was touching the bottom of the pool.

  Something was happening to my back. I felt

  93 something growing there, getting larger. It was building itself out of my melting bones.

  I reached behind me with my still-human fingers and touched something triangular. I was growing a dorsal fin!

  I felt the inside of my mouth itching. Itching amazingly, almost like teething pain.

  Shark's teeth were filling my mouth.

  Then . , .

  "Hey, wuss, get outta the pool!"

  There was a loud splash, then another. I spun around. Two heads coming toward me. Two sets of powerful arms churning the water.

  Drake and Woo. Two total jerks. Two abject, total bullies. They were also great divers for the school team. At least Drake was. Woo was a complete burnout. He had the I.Q. of cheese.

  "Get out of the pool, punk!" Woo said.

  "Don't make us kick your butt, Marco-roni," Drake added.

  I should have been afraid of them. But I was only afraid they might dive beneath the surface. If they went down there they'd see that I wasn't exactly normal. But from the surface they'd probably just think my ultra-long legs and toes were a distortion.

  I started to reverse the morph. I'd been an idiot! I'd left myself open for something like this. Jake would kill me. If he found out. I demorphed

  93

  ^pl^^

  94 as fast as I could. I felt my toes lose contact with the pool bottom.

  Then Woo lay back in the water, raised one leg, and kicked me square in the chest with his foot.

  I didn't see it coming. Couldn't dodge the blow.

  "Ooomph!" The air burst from my lungs. I clutched at my chest.

  "Told you to step off," Drake said. "Now we're going to have to stomp you for not having any respect. Unless you want to get your skinny hinder out of the pool."

  Drake was giving me a chance to get away. All I had to do was turn around and leave. That was it.

  "Yeah, run home to your mommy, Marco-roni," Woo said.

  "He can't," Drake said, with a touch of normal humanity in his voice. "His mom's dead."

  "Oh, boo hoo," Woo sneered. "Oh, boo hoo, boo hoo." He made a little gesture like he was wiping tears out of his eyes. "His mother probably just ran off with some dude."

  All I had to do was walk away. And all I did was to stare at Woo's throat.

  I could see the arteries there. The ones that were pulsating on either side of Woo's Adam's apple.

  95 "What are you looking at?" Woo demanded. "You're dead, man, eyeballing me like that."

  But I noticed that Woo didn't move toward me. I wanted him to move toward me. I wanted him to.

  "What's the matter with his eyes?" Drake asked. "Look at his eyes, man."

  "Marco?" It was Jake's voice.

  I saw the expression on Woo's face change. He was looking past me now. I heard footsteps on the tile.

  "What's up, Marco?" Jake asked, trying to sound casual.

  "Ah, isn't that sweet?" Drake said. "Big Jake is here to rescue little Marco-roni."

  I swung my heard fiercely toward Jake. I grimaced, baring my teeth. "I thon't neeth you help."

  The shark's teeth that filled my mouth distorted my speech. I saw Jake's eyes flare in surprise. Then wary concern.

  "Let it go, Marco," Jake said.

  I turned back toward Woo. I could still see the pulsing blood just below the skin of Woo's neck. It would be so easy . . .

  "He dithed my mom," I said.

  "He's not the one responsible for your mother," Jake said. "Don't punish him for the sins of someone else."

  96 I don't know what the two bullies thought of this exchange. I just know they stayed silent. Woo's eyes kept darting from me to Jake. He was confused and worried. Bullies aren't used to hearing their victims talking and acting like they have all the power. Or maybe he didn't like the way I was still staring at his neck.

  "Save it for the real bad guys, Marco," Jake said.

  I let the rest of my shark morph go. I felt the itching in my mouth as my normal teeth replaced the killing shark teeth.

  I climbed out of the pool.

  "What's the matter with you?" Jake demanded once we were out of there.

  I shrugged and forced a smile. "Not a thing, Jake. I guess Woo just looked a little l
ike a fish to me. He look like a fish to you? He does to me."

  Not even slightly funny. But it was the best I could do. Jake gave me a long look.

  "Maybe you'd better sit out this next mission, Marco."

  I laughed. "Jake, you'd have to kill me to keep me away from that island."

  97 Zlaturday morning, we flew out to the same narrow beach on Royan Island. Now that we knew for sure that the Yeerks were there, just under the water, we were very careful.

  But Jake still had time to pull me aside over by a scraggly, twisted tree and ask me if I was all right.

  "Sure. Why wouldn't I be all right?"

  "Because if you were all right, you'd be busy telling everyone how insane this is and how we're all gonna die. You're weirding everyone out, being so tense."

  I just stared at him. "You're telling me it's more relaxing for everyone if I act like we're all going to die?"

  98 "It's what they expect from you," Jake said.

  "Well, I'll try harder to be entertaining," I said sarcastically.

  Jake rolled his eyes. Then he took a quick, cautious glance around. The others were all down on the sand, trying not to notice that Jake and I were having some big heart-to-heart.

  Great. Rachel probably thought I was scared and Jake had to give me a pep talk. I still stung from that crack of hers about my being scared of sharks.

  "Look, Marco, we're going into a possible battle down there," Jake said, jerking his head toward the water. "Maybe it's time you told the others what's going on with you."

  "Nothing is going on with me."

  "Marco, your mother is down there."

  I flinched. I had been trying really hard not to think about that fact. "How is it going to help the others if I tell them maybe I have my own problems going on here?"

  Jake looked surprised. "Marco, I wasn't thinking about it helping the others. I thought it might help you."

  I shook my head violently. "No. It doesn't help me to have people pitying me. You know? I went through like a year of pity after my mom died. After she supposedly died. I don't like pity.

  99 Pity makes you feel small and weak. I'd rather have someone hate me than pity me."

  Jake sighed. "No one hates you."

  "But they would pity me."

  Jake didn't have an answer to that.

  "Hey, are we doing this?" Rachel called over to us. "Or are you two going to stand there all day yapping?"

  "We are doing this," I said forcefully. "But I'll tell you right now, this whole thing is insane. Insane! Morphing sharks to infiltrate some underwater Yeerk complex? What has happened to our lives?"

  As Jake and I walked back to the others I muttered, "Happy now?"

  "Okay," Jake said to everyone. "Ready?"

  "I've been ready," Rachel grumbled.

  "Everyone remember, this is a new morph," Cassie pointed out. "New instincts to deal with. Be prepared."

  See, when you first morph an animal, that animal consciousness can run right over your human mind. It can seize control. And you can't always tell which morphs will be bad. Probably the worst ever were ants.

  We waded into the water. All except Tobias, who once again rode on Rachel's shoulder. Four humans, a bird, and an Andalite.

  100 "We're a scruffy, weird-looking bunch, aren't we?" I said.

  "And short," Rachel said with a sweetly poisoned smile. "Or at least some of us are."

  "We'll all have the same-sized dorsal fin in a few minutes, Mighty Xena," I said to her.

  Rachel laughed. She pretends to hate it when I call her Xena: Warrior Princess. But I know she's flattered by it.

  "Hey, Tobias," I said. "You realize there are no mice underwater, right?"

  See, I was doing my job. Playing my part within the group. Teasing. Joking. Exaggerating. That was my role. Like Jake had pointed out: A Marco not making jokes just worries people.

  I waded into the surf. It was rougher than it had been the week before. Two and three foot waves were crashing and boiling around me. The sky was darker, grayer.

  I tried to put all my problems out of my mind. I tried to wash away the image of my mother. I remembered her two different ways. As the mom I'd always known. And now, as Visser One, the Controller who had arranged to let us escape from captivity in the Yeerk Pool ship, just to embarrass her nemesis, Visser Three.

  I tried to shove both images aside. But as I felt the morph begin, I thought, I'm coming to

  101 save you, Mom. And I also thought, I'm coming to destroy you, Visser One.

  The morph began differently than it had during my partial morph in the pool. This time it was my skin that changed first.

  Dolphins have skin like gray rubber or latex. Sharks have skin like fine-grained sandpaper. Shark skin can leave human skin bloody just by rubbing against it. It's actually made up of millions of denticles. Those are tiny, mutated teeth. Sharks are coated with tiny teeth.

  As I watched, my tanned arms turned gray. My legs turned gray. My chest and shoulders, all gray.

  My feet were twisting together weirdly, as if they were a pair of straws I was braiding. When a wave rolled into me, I lost balance and went backward into the water.

  My hand scraped along the bottom. When I looked at it, I realized I'd cut myself on a shell. A few drops of my own blood dribbled into the saltwater.

  But I had other things to worry about. Besides, when I demorphed, the cut would be gone.

  When I tried to stand back up, I realized my legs were gone. I had a tail now, made of gracefully swooping triangles.

  Everything on a shark is triangles. Two elon-

  102 gated, joined triangles make the tail. Triangles form the dorsal fins. And hard white serrated triangles fill the mouth with the weapons of destruction.

  I used my arms to windmill the water and keep my head up. In flashes between waves I saw the others. A hideous Rachel, with a shark mouth and blond hair; an awesome Ax, with Andalite stalk eyes rising from the bulging hammer's head; Tobias, with feathers melting into gray sandpaper. Not even Cassie could make this morph pretty.

  I felt the teeth growing, replacing my own pathetic human teeth. And at the same time, my eyes were moving. They were rotating out to the sides of my head. I lost the ability to focus and kept trying to aim my eyes, to see in three dimensions like I can normally. But my eyes were moving too fast, too far. All I could see was a blur of water and eerie faces.

  The hammerhead didn't grow out of the side of my head. It grew out of the front. Like pillars of flesh were growing beneath my eyeballs, then taking those eyes out to the side.

  My arms shriveled and became sharp fins. I was entirely underwater now. Just in time, my lungs collapsed into nothing and slits like open wounds formed where my neck had been.

  103 I had gills. And shark's teeth. And I had shark's eyes.

  But I still had not felt the shark's mind. Not until I was completely in the water and began to move. Only then did I feel the shark's mind, its instincts, come bubbling up through my own human awareness.

  It was the movement that set it off. See, sharks cannot be still. If a shark stops moving, he dies. A shark is movement. Restless, relentless, eternal movement.

  I felt my fear leave me.

  I felt my anger leave as well.

  My every emotion and feeling simply lifted away. And I was glad. Because now I was clear. Now I saw the world with perfect simplicity. Perfect understanding.

  The world, you see, is nothing but prey. And I was nothing but hunger. There was nothing else. No mother or father, no fear or joy, no worry.

  Hunger. Prey. Hunger. Prey.

  I turned away from the shore and swam out to sea. And then, I stopped. The last vestiges of my human mind were swept aside.

  The shark sensed blood.

  104

  Sharks had been swimming Earth's oceans for hundreds of millions of years already when the ancestors of Homo sapiens were still trying to figure out how to peel a banana.

  People will tell you, "
Oh, you don't need to be afraid of sharks. They have more reason to fear humans than humans have to fear sharks."

  True. Humans kill far more sharks than sharks kill humans. Will that fact make you feel any better if a shark chomps you in two at the waist? Probably not.

  Sharks are killing machines. Mostly they kill fish. In some parts of the world they kill seals. They kill dolphins. They kill whales, when they

  105 can manage it. And they kill humans. At least some species do: the great white, the tiger shark . . . and the hammerhead.

  This was the killing machine I had become. Utterly without fear. Utterly without emotion. A mind with no room for anything else but killing. There was nothing playful, like you'd find with a lion. Nothing in the shark that cared about family or children. No sense of belonging. Just a solitary creature of sharp, cutting triangles. A restless, ever-moving thing, ever questing after blood.

  A mind as cold, as sharp, as deadly as a polished-steel knife blade. That was the mind that gathered my confused human consciousness up and swept it along in the endless search for something to kill and eat.

  The shark turned toward the scent of blood. My long tail pushed lazily at the water. My hammerhead worked like a diving plane to let me turn this way and that. My vision was surprisingly good. Almost as good as human vision.

  I could hear. And I could feel other senses that were unlike anything human. When fish passed close by, I felt a tingling from their electrical current. And at some deep, hard-to-grasp level, I realized I could sense the very magnetic field of planet Earth. I knew north and south without knowing the words.

  106 But mostly, I could smell. I could smell the water as I sucked it in, relentlessly sampling. And right now, I could smell blood.

  I was aware of the others nearby. I knew they were sharks like me. But I didn't care. I was on the trail of blood.

  I followed the scent of the blood. No more than a few drops of blood, a thin, wispy trail diluted in billions of gallons of surging seawater, but I smelled it.

  I followed the scent through the water. If the scent was stronger in my left nostril, I veered left. If it was stronger on my right, I veered right. It would lead me to prey. It would lead me to food. The blood trail had come from very close by! I could sense it, and a cold excitement seized me.