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each of us.
42
Cassie smiled sadly. "If you guys vote to stay, I will, too."
Jake reached out and took her hand. "Mr. Ellimist, I guess you have your answer."
Instantly, we were back in our roach bodies.
IF YOU LIVE, I WILL ASK ONCE MORE.
IF YOU LIVE.
43
Chapter 12
The red whip of the Taxxon's tongue held me glued down, helpless!
Jake yelled in my head.
I didn't need to be told twice.
Through the fear, I focused my mind on my own human body. Suddenly all around me went
dark.
Jake yelled.
A gush of stinging liquid, like a tidal wave, washed me from the sticky tongue. I tumbled
blind and terrified through hot, viscous goo. But at the same time I could feel that I was
growing. My roach antennae brushed against something very close to me. Another
cockroach. But bigger than it should have been.
Cassie yelled.
I yelled back.
Everything was closing in around me. The bodies of the others were shoved against mine as
we all grew out of our roach morphs. I felt the gut of the Taxxon spasming as it tried to deal
with this deadly growing meal.
My human lungs were growing back, and as they grew they began to need air. I was
suffocating! My body was not as durable as the roach form.
I heard Marco cry.
Jake said.
Ax said.
Jake said.
The darkness around us split open suddenly. I caught a glimpse of Ax's scythe-like Andalite
tail slicing the Taxxon open from the inside.
Air! Air rushed in. Stinking, foul, vile air, but air.
We exploded from the inside of the Taxxon, wrapped in its guts, covered with green-blue
slime.
We were not fully human yet, still some awful melding of human and bug, but we were
finishing our demorphing as fast as we ever had.
Air!
44
I sucked it into my still-forming lungs.
The Taxxon lay ruined and reeking all around us. The room full of human-Controllers eating
dinner was no longer frozen by the Ellimist.
Now they were frozen by sheer disbelief. "Let's bail!" I yelled. "Before they can think about
it."
We ran. Slipping and slithering through the Taxxon's guts, still forming the last of our fingers
and toes, we tore out of there.
"Get them!" a human voice yelled. "Get them, you fools, or Visser Three will chew your
bones!"
Suddenly, with a roar, the human-Controllers surged up out of their chairs.
A Hork-Bajir near the door moved swiftly to cut us off. Ax swung his tail with blinding
speed. It hit the Hork-Bajir in his shoulder.
"Head for the dropshaft!" Marco cried as he led the way from the room.
"Everyone but Ax, if you can morph again, do it!" Jake yelled as we raced for the dropshaft.
"We need firepower!"
I didn't need to be told. The only one of us who had any kind of natural ability to fight was
Ax. I was already trying to focus my mind on the bear that I had made a part of me.
Part of me knew it was foolish. I should morph the elephant, or a wolf. I knew both of those
morphs, I could handle them. But I also knew the elephant might not fit in the dropshaft. And
I wanted power.
"Whumpf!"
Something hit me and I went sprawling across the dirt.
A man stood over me. A grown man! He had slammed into me. For some reason, this
outraged me.
What kind of a creep would hit a girl half his size?
Of course I knew the answer. I knew the man was not really a man at all, but a Controller.
The Yeerk in his head didn't know or care about chivalry.
The man bent over me and began to put his hands around my throat. Suddenly, he only had
one hand.
"Aaarrrgghhh!" he cried, falling back.
"Thanks, Ax," I said.
he said.
45
I looked past him. The others had all reached the dropshaft, a hundred feet away. Between
the two of us and them was a small army of human- Controllers and Hork-Bajir.
As I watched, Marco, and then Cassie, were swept up the dropshaft. Only Jake was still
standing there. He looked back at us with an expression of horror.
"Jake, get OUT of here!" I screamed. "We'll be okay!"
Several of the Controllers began closing in on Jake. But most of them only had eyes for Ax.
They could see that he was an Andalite - the deadly enemy of all Yeerks. I don't know what
they thought I was, still dripping with Taxxon goo.
Suddenly, a pair of Hork-Bajir warriors rushed at us. Their bladed arms slashed the air. They
came at us like a pair of chainsaws on high speed.
Ax struck!
But the Hork-Bajir were too fast.
There was a deep gash down Ax's flank.
He struck again and again, his scorpion tail almost invisible. The human-Controllers stayed
prudently back, as much afraid of getting sliced and diced by the angry Hork-Bajir as by Ax.
But more Hork-Bajir were rushing up, and Ax was losing ground.
Then... I realized I was no longer afraid. A deep confidence had welled up inside of me. Utter
confidence. Utter fearlessness. I realized I was no longer standing erect. I was on all fours.
When I looked down I expected to see my two hands splayed on the dirt. Instead I saw
massive paws. Coarse, dark brown fur. Black claws, each like the point of a pickax. I had
become the bear. It was his confidence I felt. It was his total lack of fear.
I was an animal that had never, in a thousand generations of grizzly bears, known an instant
of real fear.
Suddenly, I felt a terrible pain in my shoulder. One of the Hork-Bajir had slashed me. I glared
with nearsighted eyes and saw nothing but a tall blur. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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