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  K. A. Applegate The Extreme (Animorphs No. 25) Converted from RTF

  The Extreme (Animorphs No. 25)

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  Begin Content

  The extreme

  Even the book morphs!

  Flip the pages

  and check it out!

  Look for other

  titles by K.A. Applegate:

  #1 The Invasion?MEGAMORPHS?

  #2 The Visitor#1 The Andalite's Gift

  #3 The Encounter#2 In the Time of Dinosaurs

  #4 The Message

  #5 The Predator

  #6 The Capture

  #7 The Stranger

  #8 The Alien

  #9The SecretThe Hork-Bajir Chronicles

  #10The Android

  #11The Forgotten

  #12The Reaction

  #13The Change

  #14The Unknown

  #15The Escape

  #16The Warning

  #17The Underground

  #18The Decision

  #19The Departure

  #20The Discovery

  #21The Threat

  #22The Solution

  #23The Pretender

  #24The Suspicion

  A. K APPLEGATE

  PAPERBACK

  SCHOLASTIC INC.

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

  The author wishes to thank Jeffrey Zuehlke for his help in preparing this manuscript.

  For Michael and Jake

  Cover illustration by David B. Mattingly

  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 0-590-76258-3

  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 39/9 0 1 2 3/0

  Printed in the U.S.A.40

  First Scholastic printing, January 1999

  1 My name is Marco.

  I doubt we've ever
met, but I'll bet you know somebody like me. Every class has a Marco. You know, the one who's the smartest, wittiest, most charming, coolest, and the best-looking.

  That's me.

  I can't tell you my last name. I can't tell you where I live, either, or anything specific about me that might help certain people find me.

  Believe me, I wish I could. Anonymity has its downside. Last week, for example, I wanted to run through the halls of my school screaming my name so everyone could hear. I wanted to hop on a cafeteria table and dance on somebody's Tater

  2 Tots until a hall monitor came to drag me away. I wanted to call an assembly so everyone could congratulate me.

  I'd gotten a date.

  And not just any date. A date with the most beautiful girl in our whole school. If not the whole world.

  Marian.

  Not only is Marian gorgeous, with long, black hair, deep, dark eyes, and dimples that make me want to cry every time she smiles. She's also nearly as smart, charming, and charismatic as I am.

  You can see we're a perfect couple. The only flaw I can find in her is that she doesn't seem to think my jokes are very funny.

  That, and her taste in music.

  You want to know the coolest thing of all about this date? Marian asked me out. I didn't have to do a thing. We were just leaving our music appreciation class together when Marian said to me:

  "Wow, Marco, you really seem to know a lot about classical music. And may I say, you are an unusually handsome, manly man. I want you, I want you now."

  Okay, that maybe a slight exaggeration. But she definitely said the part about me knowing a lot about music.

  3 "Either that, or I can scam teachers like no one else around," I said.

  Actually, I know next to nothing about classical music. But my dad's got a huge collection of classical CD's. Sometimes he'll hog the TV, watching documentaries about Mozart and Beethoven and other wild-eyed guys.

  "Well, I have tickets to Symphony Hall this Sunday afternoon," Marian said. "They're playing Beethoven's Third. It's my absolute favorite symphony. Do you want to come?"

  "Well, I'm more of a fan of his thirty-third," I said, hoping I wouldn't pass out at her feet. Marian had just asked me out on a date!

  Marian gave me a quizzical look. "His thirty-third? I don't get it. Were you making a joke?"

  "Of course! It's a joke, hah HAH!" I said, sounding only slightly hysterical. "I love Beethoven's Third. It's just so ..." I wasn't sure what to say. I'd never heard the thing before in my life. Marian looked at me eagerly, waiting for me to finish my sentence.

  "It's just so ..."

  "Beautiful?" Marian suggested.

  "Yes!" I replied. "That's a perfect word for it. Although I was leaning toward exquisite. Maybe even rapturous."

  "Oh, yes!" Marian cried. "It's all those things! So will you come?"

  4 "Sure," I squeaked.

  "Wonderful." Marian opened one of her notebooks and scribbled in it. She tore the sheet off and handed it to me. "Here's my number. Call me and we'll make plans."

  "Okay," I said, casually stuffing the sheet of paper into my pocket. I was going to have it framed as soon as I got home, but Marian didn't have to know that.

  "This is going to be so much fun." Marian sighed. She smiled and her dimples made my heart skip a half-dozen beats. Then she reached out with her beautiful hand and touched me on my arm. My whole body tingled.

  Either I had a major crush, or the cafeteria had served tainted meat again.

  "Talk to you," she said, walking away.

  "Uh-huh," I grunted.

  Now this sounds pretty cool, huh? I mean, what more could a guy want than to be asked out on a date by the most beautiful girl in his school, right? For any normal kid, living a normal life, this would be, like, the high point of his entire existence.

  Unfortunately, I'm not a normal kid. And I definitely do not lead a normal life.

  Sure, parts of it are normal. I go to school. Do homework when I feel like it. Eat dinner with my

  5 dad. Watch TV. Play video games with my best buddy, Jake, and kick his sorry butt.

  But there's another part of my life that's anything but normal. In fact, it's so bizarre, so insane, so absolutely out there that I wouldn't believe it myself if I weren't living it.

  You see, I'm sort of a superhero. No, not Batman, although that's a good guess, with that whole very cool, handsome billionaire Bruce Wayne thing. Not Spider-Man, either. But I do fly, stick to walls, and toss bad guys around like they're plastic action figures.

  Superheroes use their special powers to save the world. And that's what my five friends and I are doing.

  Saving the world. Not from clowns like Lex Luthor or the Joker. I wish our archenemies were as tame as a bunch of comic book supervillains.

  Instead, Rachel, Cassie, Tobias the Bird-boy, the Andalite Ax, my best friend Jake, and I are battling an entire race of aliens who are trying to conquer Earth.

  The Yeerks.

  For your sake, I hope you've never heard of them. Because almost the only people who do know about them are the ones who've become their slaves.

  6 The Yeerk invasion is a secret. But it's happening.

  Believe me, it's happening.

  The Yeerks are slimy gray slugs that slip into your ear and wind themselves in and around every crevice of your brain. Once they've done this, they own you. Control you. They've enslaved you.

  You become something we call a Controller. Someone with no free will. You can't scream for help, because the Yeerk controls what words come out of your mouth. You can't run, because the Yeerk controls how far and how fast your feet move. And you can't resist when the Yeerk in your head starts to recruit your family and friends into enslavement. Because you're a slave yourself.

  Pretty scary, huh? But maybe the scariest thing of all about this alien invasion is that you can't tell Controllers from normal people. They look normal. Talk normal. Act normal.

  For all you know, your parents may be Controllers. Maybe even your cute, loveable grandmother has designs on subduing the planet.

  So fighting this war - and it is a war - tends to make a guy kind of paranoid. You can't trust anybody.

  That's why I didn't tell you my name. And that's why, ever since we took a shortcut through

  7 an abandoned construction site one night, life, which I always want to find funny, has been mostly grim.

  It was in that construction site that we met the dying Andalite prince, Elfangor. It was there that he told us about the Yeerks. It was there that he gave us the nightmarish power to become any animal whose DNA we could acquire. Our one pitiful weapon.

  Ever since then, I have not been able to look at another human being without suspicion. No one. Not even Marian.

  And that's why, after experiencing those first few moments of joy after Marian asked me out, the suspicion began to seep into my brain. The gnawing little worm of doubt. What if she was one of them? What if sweet, perfect Marian, with those gorgeous dimples, was a Controller?

  Sure, I might not mind being Marian's slave, but being a Yeerk's slave is a different story.

  One date, I told myself. Then, before we decide to go steady, I can check her out.

  8 "So then what happened?" Cassie asked me in study hall the day after what had come to be called The Big Date.

  Study hall was being held in the school gym this week. They'd closed our usual classroom. Something about asbestos and lawsuits.

  So instead of studying silently for an hour, a bunch of kids were playing basketball and volleyball while the rest of us, me and Cassie included, sat on the bleachers and talked. It was a big improvement.

  "Well, after I failed in a bold attempt to escape during intermission, we went back in and the orchestra started to play. Again. And they played. And played. And I considered yelling

  9 'Fire!' just to get outta the place. And when I woke up everybody was gone, including Marian."

  Cassie laughed her gentle laugh. "Oh,
well," she said, flipping idly through a veterinary medicine magazine she'd pulled out of a folder. "It sounds like it was for the best."

  "What do you mean, it was for the best?" I cried. "It was a total disaster."

  "Yes. But it doesn't sound like Marian's your type."

  "But she's the most beautiful girl in the whole school," I replied. "How could she not be my type?" I gave Cassie the fish eye. "Wait a minute. Did you guys watch her?"

  "We are your friends, Marco," she said apologetically. "We had no choice."

  "You guys kept her under surveillance for the last three days?"

  "Well, it was mostly Tobias and Ax, since they don't have school. Anyway, she's not one of them. She never went near a ..." She lowered her voice to a whisper. "... Yeerk pool entrance."

  I wasn't sure how to react to that. Yeerks have to return to the hidden Yeerk pool every three days. Marian was okay. Now the question was: Was this good news or bad news? I'd blown my big chance. Was it better or worse that she was a normal girl?

  10 Something else bothered me. Jake had asked Cassie to tell me this. Obviously. It was a good choice. Typical Jake. He knew that Rachel would just ridicule me. He knew that if he talked to me himself it would seem like he was meddling. But Cassie had the gentle touch. The diplomatic skill to let me know, without making me mad, that they had watched my temporary girlfriend behind my back.

  Cassie was watching me, waiting for my reaction. And I was just loading up to deliver something scathing-yet-not-overly-cruel when a shadow fell over us. I looked up.

  "Hey, Marco. Hey, Cassie. What's up?"

  It was a kid my age. He was a little bit taller than I am - which, I'll admit, is how it is with most people. His warm, confident smile made you want to like him immediately.

  But I knew better. See, this particular likeable-looking kid wasn't a kid, and his smile wasn't a smile. Erek didn't attend our school. Erek didn't attend the human race.

  The kid standing in front of us wasn't entirely real. What Cassie and I and everyone else were looking at was a holographic projection. Underneath the projection was an android. An android that had been walking the earth for hundreds of thousands of years.

  Erek and his other android friends are called

  11 Chee. They were the companions of an ancient race called the Pemalites. The Pemalites may have been the most advanced species ever to exist in the history of the universe. So advanced they forgot all about primitive stuff like wars and worry and sadness.