The Extreme Read online

  Unfortunately, the rest of the universe wasn't so elevated. An evil race called Howlers attacked the Pemalites and destroyed their home world. Some survivors fled to Earth, but before they escaped, their alien attackers infected them with a disease that eventually killed them all.

  The Chee, being androids, weren't affected by the disease. To honor the spirits of their former companions and creators, they infused the essence of the Pemalites into the bodies of wolves.

  Now you know why your dog is always in such a good mood.

  And since the Pemalites created the Chee in their own image, the Chee are pretty friendly themselves. In fact, they're pacifists, sworn - and programmed - never to harm another soul.

  Still, they hate the Yeerks and help us out whenever they can.

  "Uh-oh," I said, still feeling a bit cranky over the possibility that Tobias had been watching Marian through her bedroom window.

  And I hadn't.

  12 " 'Uh-oh'? Nice welcome," Erek said, sitting down between us. "Would you mind if we talk in private?"

  "I repeat: uh-oh."

  The air around us began to glow. The sounds of the gym - kids talking, the bouncing of the basketball, the squeak of sneakers on the court - disappeared. We could see everything happening in the gym, but it was as if we were looking out from inside a Saran Wrap bubble.

  "I have extended my holographic projection to include the three of us," Erek explained. The Erek we were looking at now was a steel-and-ivory android that looked an awful lot like a dog, maybe a greyhound, standing on his hind legs. "Everyone else in the gym sees and hears the three of us talking about last night's game."

  "Well, if that's all you want to talk about, why all the secrecy?" I said brightly.

  Erek smiled grimly. Not brightly. I felt the sense of another "uh-oh" growing inside me.

  "What is it, Erek?" Cassie said.

  "Our sources tell us the Yeerks have been trying to develop a way to broadcast Kandrona rays using human satellite technology," Erek told us. "They seem to have found some place on this planet isolated enough to allow them to erect a satellite station without interference. If they're

  13 successful, they could turn every backyard swimming pool in the world into a Yeerk pool."

  I felt sick to my stomach. "That is definitely not good."

  Kandrona rays are what the Yeerks consume. Their food. They absorb it when they're in the Yeerk pool. It's their Achilles heel. They need the rays to survive.

  Every three days when Yeerks go down to the Yeerk pool, they slide out of their host's brain and take a Kandrona bath. Meanwhile, most of the hosts, the ones who don't want to be slaves, scream and cry and struggle and beg to be set free.

  I've been to the Yeerk pool. It's a bad place.

  We've imagined destroying the Yeerk pool. It would be a huge blow to the Yeerks. And we would if we could, but the place is about the size of a football stadium, with better defenses than the White House, the Pentagon, and Fort Knox put together. We just don't have the firepower.

  "You know, Erek," I said, "nothing personal, but sometimes I'm not so sure I like you. You're nothing but trouble."

  Erek grinned his steel-and-ivory dog grin. "Sure you're not just cranky over blowing The Big Date?"

  I shot Cassie an outraged look.

  14 She winced. "Okay, so the Chee helped us out. It's not easy to watch someone for three days."

  "Swell. Is there anyone, anywhere who doesn't know that I crashed and burned on The Big Date?"

  "She wasn't your type, anyway," Erek said. "She had taste in music."

  "Oh, so you're a big Beethoven fan?"

  Erek nodded his android head. "I was the maestro's valet for quite a few years. He was an awful person, but he made music my masters would have wept to hear."

  15 We met after school in Cassie's barn - aka the Wildlife Rehabilitation Clinic - to discuss the situation. Cassie's parents are veterinarians. While her dad runs the clinic, her mom runs the vet staff at The Gardens, an amusement park and zoo. Cassie helps out at the clinic, giving suppositories to cranky skunks and stuff. And let's face it: A wildlife clinic definitely comes in handy when we need to acquire a new morph.

  The get-together was like opening night of the local freak show. Four kids who regularly become fur balls. Erek, the ancient Android. Tobias, the red-tailed hawk, keeping a lookout from the rafters. Ax, the Andalite, in his human morph.

  Ax's human morph is a combination of DNA

  16 from me, Jake, Rachel, and Cassie. Together we make one disturbingly beautiful person.

  Ax is the only Andalite on Earth. In fact, he's Prince Elfangor's younger brother. Ax was in his human morph because, well, let me put it this way: Cassie's mom and dad are about the coolest parents you'll ever find, but if they were to walk in and find their daughter shooting the breeze with a blue-furred, half-humanoid, half-deerlike creature with a mean scorpion tail, no mouth and four eyes, including a pair that sat on swiveling stalks atop its head ... they would definitely freak.

  "Do you know any more details?" Rachel asked Erek.

  Rachel is your basic psycho-babe. And I mean that in a nice way. She's a tall, willowy, supermodelesque blond. You might think she was a mall-rat airhead - until you called her an airhead. Then, after she removed your left kidney, you'd realize your mistake.

  Rachel's a great person to have on your side in a fight. The only problem I have with her is that she's always looking for a fight.

  "Details? I'm afraid not," Erek replied. "We've infiltrated much of the Yeerk force, but we don't have access to everything."

  "Nothing at all about the location of the facility?" Jake asked.

  17 "No. Just that Visser Three will be visiting it very soon. We do know this: We've discovered the location of the Visser's new feeding pasture. It's close enough for you to fly there in bird morph. A Bug fighter is going to pick him up there tomorrow afternoon to go off and inspect this site."

  Jake got his "Jake look." The sort of weary, worried expression he gets when he's faced with some decision that may result in all of us ending up dead.

  Jake, who is Rachel's cousin, is our sort-of leader. Not because he asked to be. It's probably because he'd never ask to be. You know - he's one of those tiresomely dutiful, levelheaded guys. If you met Jake, you'd understand why we turn to him. Call it charisma. Something about Jake commands respect.

  Not from me, of course. He's been my best friend forever. I was with him when he was nine and ate an entire pie on a bet and ended up blowing blueberries for an hour.

  Jake looked around at all of us. Not exactly asking for a vote, but obviously wanting to hear from us.

  "So, no problem, right?" Tobias said. "We fly out to Visser Three's feeding place and when the Bug fighter arrives, we hitch a ride."

  "That appears to be our only option."

  18 "Shun. Shunn," Ax confirmed. Andalites don't have mouths. They communicate in thought-speak. So whenever Ax does his human morph, he's fascinated by the sounds he makes.

  By the way, he's the only one who's fascinated.

  I held up my hand like I wanted to ask a question in class. "I'm not allowed to hitchhike. Especially not with evil alien parasites. My dad is very definite about that."

  Jake managed a brief laugh. Rachel gave me her "what are you, a moron?" look.

  "It doesn't sound like my idea of a good time, either," Cassie said. "But if it's true the Yeerks are building a system that will turn any body of water into a Yeerk pool, we have to do everything we can to stop them."

  I groaned. I can usually count on Cassie to be rational.

  "Okay," I said. "I'll be there, but I promise to complain the entire time."

  "Do we need to take a formal vote?" Jake asked.

  "No way am I going to miss out on this," Rachel said.

  Big surprise there.

  "No, no, no votes," I said. "Jake decides. Then if it goes bad we can all blame him."

  19 "I'm there," Tobias said. "But aren't we o
verlooking a key detail?"

  "What's that?" said Jake.

  "I mean, it's not a problem for me. But you guys can't just disappear for a few days. This place could be in, I don't know, Nepal for all we know."

  "Nepal?" I echoed.

  "That is a bit of a problem," Jake said.

  "Perhaps I can provide a solution," Erek replied.

  I held up my hand again. "Is it okay if I say 'uh-oh' again?"

  20 "I mean, I just know I'm going to come back to a closet full of soggy comics," I said. "I can tell by the look in Erek's eyes he's a bathtub reader."

  Erek's solution had been to have himself and three of his Chee friends program their holograms to look like each of us. Little did my dad know that he'd be sharing his cornflakes with an android who'd been on Earth since before the first flake was created.

  It was the next morning and we were all in our various bird-of-prey morphs - Tobias as red-tailed hawk, Jake in his peregrine falcon morph, Rachel in bald eagle morph, Cassie and me in our osprey morphs, and Ax in his northern harrier morph - flying toward certain doom.

  21 Again.

  We were on our way to Visser Three's newest secret feeding pasture. Erek had given us directions and wished us luck. "Good luck taking on the most dangerous creature in the galaxy. I gotta go oil my elbow joints. Let me know if you survive, we'll get together, do lunch. Ciao."

  Okay, maybe that's not exactly what he said. But it's okay to resent a person who's going to be safe while you're going to be screaming and running for your life. Don't you think?

  I've mentioned that I complain occasionally. Or constantly. Sorry, but any smart person knows there's plenty to complain about in life. And there are definitely a lot of things to complain about when it comes to being an Animorph.

  However, flying is not one of them.

  I mean, talk about fun! Talk about freedom! It's everything you've imagined and more.

  We were following a highway out of town toward the forest that surrounded some nearby mountains. It was an absolutely perfect day for flying - sunny, warm, and so clear you could see for miles. The surface of the highway absorbed the sun's warmth, creating some really nice thermals, which are pockets of rising warm air.

  We were spread pretty far apart. In the animal kingdom, birds of prey just don't hang together. Each of us took turns flying over the highway,

  22 catching a thermal and letting it lift us in the air like an invisible elevator. Then we'd coast for a while, slowly drifting downward in the direction we wanted to go. We hardly had to flap our wings at all.

  "Hey, guys, I think I found it," Tobias called out. "See that clearing in the middle of those trees?"

  I scanned my super osprey eyes ahead, toward the line of trees half a mile off the road. Sure enough, just beyond was a big meadow, maybe about two blocks wide. And galloping around in that meadow was a blue-furred, four-eyed, scorpion-tailed Andalite. He looked like he could have been Ax's father.

  He wasn't. He was the leader of the Yeerk invasion of Earth. The only Yeerk ever to have gotten control of an Andalite body - and of the Andalite morphing technology. The only Yeerk who can morph.

  Visser Three.

  Remember I told you about Ax's brother, Elfangor? The Andalite who gave us our pow ers? Well, the Visser didn't just murder him.

  He ate him.

  Visser Three morphed into some bizarre, giant alien and chomped him down like a piece of sushi. I saw it happen. We all did.

  23 Now you know why I have an incredible urge to pee on myself whenever we come near this guy.

  The Visser wasn't alone in his meadow. Despite his fearsome power, the Visser is never without a few bodyguards. We counted half a dozen human-Controllers disguised as state cops. And in the tree line lurked a pair of Hork-Bajir, the bladed shock troops of the Yeerk Empire.

  "Okay," Jake said. "Each of us is going to land in those trees, one at a time at least a thousand feet apart, in at least five-minute intervals. Rachel, you go first, then Cassie. Each of you keep an eye on those who land after you, so you can find them as easily as possible once you remorph. Tobias, you're last. Stay up top and keep a lookout until we've all landed."

  "Let's do it," said Rachel.

  I sighed. "The three words I hate most."

  24 I spilled the air from my wings and slipped through the trees. I landed silently on the ground, my laser-focus eyes locked on Visser Three all the way. If he showed any signs of noticing any one of us landing, we were going to take off without a second thought. That was the plan.

  The Visser trotted through the grass, feeding through his hooves like any ordinary Andalite would do. The Hork-Bajir and human-Controllers looked outward, like Secret Service agents around the President.

  I watched him closely to see if he noticed as we came in for our staggered landings. Nothing unusual. No sign his guards had seen us.

  25 I flitted through the tree branches. Stopping, flying, stopping again. Till I was just a hundred feet or so from the Visser. Then I dropped to the ground, found cover behind a huge elm tree, and began to demorph.

  Even though I've done it dozens of times now, morphing never fails to freak me out. I mean, talk about unnatural. It doesn't hurt, but it's still just creepy.

  An itchiness washed over me as my feathers turned soft and ran together, transforming themselves back into skin. My wings, now pale flesh like a plucked chicken's, began to shrink and disappear into my shoulder blades. I could feel the bones in my legs creaking as they stretched out to their normal length and grew heavy.

  SPLOOT! Suddenly, fingers. I could feel them twitching, but they were attached to my shoulders! Ugh. My arms sprouted out of my torso like plants growing out of the ground in time-lapse photography, pushing the fingers and hands out before them, reaching their usual length in a few seconds.

  I was fully human now, dressed in ugly black cycling pants and a tight, white T-shirt. We've never figured out how to morph clothes, other than skintight stuff. Forget shoes. It's probably not even possible. Andalites invented morphing

  26 technology. And since they don't wear clothes, morphing "artificial skin," as Ax says, isn't an issue for them.

  I crouched there in the dirt for a few minutes, catching my breath before morphing again. This morph was nowhere near as fun as an osprey. In fact, it was downright gross.

  I concentrated. I envisioned myself as a fly.

  SCHLOOP! My arms and legs shriveled back into my body with a sound like the one you make when you suck a spaghetti noodle into your mouth. Good thing I was crouching when I'd started or I'd have crashed to the ground.

  Very annoying. No legs or arms. Unfortunately, every morph is different every time. You never know exactly how things will happen.

  Then I began to shrink. The trees around me became taller and taller as I became tinier and tinier. The leaves on the ground next to me looked as big as parking lots. I was fly-size now, but my body was still more human than insect.

  I was not an attractive creature right then. Marian would not have asked me out.

  My limbless torso began to divide itself into three parts. Six tiny, hairy legs shot out of my sides. An itchy spot on my back suddenly sprouted tiny gossamer wings.

  All that remained of the morph was the part I dreaded most. Suddenly my two eyes began to

  27 pop. The two eyes became four. Then sixteen. Then two hundred fifty-six. And so on. I saw the world through thousands of tiny, fuzzy TV screens, facing in all directions. Compound eyes. A long tube sprouted out of my face, a proboscis that flies use to cover their garbage with saliva before they chow down.

  If I morph to fly a million more times, I will never get over the sheer grossness of it.

  We wasted about half an hour hooking up together. Six flies with senses designed to find dog poop. Not easy, but we eventually assembled into a sort of hideous squadron.

  We took off. A nervous, disgruntled, testy little squadron of flies on a mission to intercept the cruelest creature on Ea
rth.

  Just another fun day of being an Animorph.

  28 "How long until the Visser's dust-off flight arrives?" Jake asked Ax.

  "Five of your minutes," Ax said. One of the many nice things about having Ax around is that he has a sort of built-in clock that allows him to keep track of the time.

  On the other hand ... "Ax, I really think you can just deal with the fact that they aren't our minutes. They are everyone's minutes."

  Ax ignored me.

  "Let's get this over with," Rachel replied.

  "Okay," Jake said. "Remember, if anything goes wrong, don't look back. Get out of there as fast as you can. Ax? What's the best way to sneak up on an Andalite?"

  29 "From beneath."

  "Okay, you heard him," Jake said. "We buzz the grass, try to intersect him, come up beneath him, grab some Andalite stomach fur. Any questions?"

  "Nah, why would there be questions?" I said. "I mean, it's all so simple and easy and normal. What could possibly go wrong?"

  "Was that an example of human sarcasm?" Ax asked.

  "Ax, it's sarcasm for anyone, not just for humans."

  "Let's get this over with," Tobias grumbled. "Lousy fly eyes. I hate this."

  We kept low, down where a fly likes to fly. Down low where it can smell the rotting food and the animal feces and other wonderful, tasty things.

  We skimmed the wild grass tops. It was like flying at treetop level except that these trees were impossibly tall, willowy stalks that bent with every chance breeze.

  We buzzed our crazy fly wings and bobbled and weaved and wallowed toward a vague blob of blue fur and bad attitude. Visser Three was still running, but slowing down. He was moving at an angle from us. We'd intersect in a very few minutes. Less, if he ...

  Turned!

  30 "Yah! There he is!" Cassie yelped. "Quick, or we lose him!"

  I cut a wild turn. A pair of flies zipped in front of me. Impossible to tell who. The chase was on!

  Galumph, galumph, galumph. The Visser trotted, pursued by six panicked flies.