The Departure Read online

  I found a roughly triangular gap in some turnbled stones. Definitely a cave. Once more I searched the ground. No tracks. I tried to see if any fur had been caught by the brambles, but now the rain was pouring in a torrent.

  I crept close to the cave opening. And I sniffed the air. The human sense of smell is pathetic compared to that of a dog or a wolf. Still, maybe I would be able to tell if something was living in the cave.

  Closer. . . closer, I crept. . .

  "Aaahhhh!"

  I jumped back. I fell. Had I screamed? No, I was confused. It was Karen's voice.

  "Ahh! Ahhh! Help me!"

  A trick!

  Maybe. Maybe not. I plowed back through the brush. I emerged, panting, scratched and

  56 muddy, in time to see the leopard leap from the tall rock down toward the helpless girl.

  TSEEEWWW!

  A Dracon beam sliced upward at the leopard.

  "Rrrraaww-rrrr!" the leopard screamed. But the Dracon beam had only grazed the big cat's shoulder. It hit the ground, rolled easily to its feet, and turned to attack again.

  Karen tried to steady the Dracon beam for a shot. But her bad ankle twisted and collapsed. She fell face-forward. The Dracon beam clattered over some rocks and landed in the mud.

  It landed within inches of the leopard.

  Everything was frozen. Karen, aghast that she'd dropped her weapon. Terrified.

  The leopard, unsure, watching, waiting, trying to assess.

  And me. Did I have time to morph? Would it just set the leopard off? Would it make him want to attack?

  "Karen," I said in a low voice. "Crawl toward me."

  "That thing. . . that thing will . . ."

  "Karen, listen to me. Crawl toward me."

  She was trembling. Barely able to pick her face up out of the mud. She kept her eyes glued to the leopard. Her green eyes seemed huge, shining out of the mud that covered her face.

  The leopard watched her with the intensity of

  57 a predator. Then it looked at me. It was unsure. Worried. It was seeing things it had never seen before.

  You could almost watch the cunning mind working behind those cold, yellow eyes: The smaller prey had used a weapon. But that weapon was gone now. Still, the hunter had to be cautious when the hunted could sting.

  And then, the leopard thought, there was this curious, second creature. The one whose scent was changing.

  «Karen,» I said. «Keep crawling this way. Don't rush. Don't stop, but don't jerk or rush in any way.»

  I don't know if Karen even noticed that she was no longer hearing my voice. She kept her gaze riveted on the leopard.

  "Ooof!" Her arm slipped and she rolled over in the mud.

  The leopard saw her bare white throat and made its decision.

  He leaped!

  I leaped! I landed first. I bristled, snarled, and raised the thick gray fur around my neck.

  The leopard saw my teeth and forgot about Karen's throat.

  No, no, the leopard thought, / don't need a fight with another predator. There will be plenty of time to kill the little, helpless one later.

  58 The leopard turned, and with infinite contempt, walked away into the darkness.

  And Karen picked her face up out of the mud and looked at me.

  "So," she said shakily. "I guess you are a werewolf, after all."

  59

  The cave was unoccupied. I found that out very quickly, using the wolf's senses.

  It took much longer to build a fire. I'd done it once before. Built a fire without matches, that is. It was in the Cretaceous Period, during a very bizarre episode in our lives as Animorphs.

  It had been hard to do then. It was harder to do now. The wood was wet and the grass I used for kindling was damp as well, although it dried out faster than the wood did.

  We had to keep the fire near the entrance of the cave, since it was very smoky at first. But eventually we got it going.

  We sat there, cross-legged, on hard stone and cold sand. We huddled as close to the fire as we

  60 could get. I had gone out, in wolf morph, and dragged as much wood as I could back to the cave. I hoped it would be enough to last the night. And fortunately, I had retrieved my clothes after the morphing.

  Night had fallen. The orange glow of the fire lit the low roof of the cave. But it didn't reach out into the dark woods beyond.

  "My parents will be totally frantic," I said.

  "Mine, too," Karen said.

  "I didn't know Yeerks had parents."

  Karen poked the fire with a stick, pushing an unburned bit of wood into the glowing center. "I see you've given up pretending. That's good. It gets boring after a while when someone sticks to an obvious lie. And yes, we have parents, although it's very different than it is with you humans."

  It was the first time she'd called me a human instead of an Andalite. I guess I looked surprised.

  "Yes, I know you're human. We don't know how to duplicate Andalite morphing technology, but we do understand parts of it. We know about the two-hour limit. And we know that you can't morph straight from one morph to another. You have to pass through your own, natural body first. You're human, all right. I guess you wouldn't

  61 want to tell me how you managed to acquire Andalite morphing technology?"

  I looked at her curious face. Her very human face. Her little girl face. I knew what lived inside her head. I knew she would deliver me up to Visser Three the first chance she got.

  If Marco or Rachel had been there beside me, I know what they'd have said: She can't be allowed to survive unless we can find a way to hold her for three days. That is when the Yeerk in her head would need to return to the Yeerk pool for nourishment. Tobias and Ax would have agreed. Jake, too, although it would have bothered him terribly.

  They would all have been right.

  "You're thinking about destroying me," Karen said.

  I hesitated a moment. Then I said, "Yes."

  She swallowed. "You thought about it before. Back at the river."

  I nodded. "But you seemed pretty confident then. You were trying to goad me. I should have known you had a Dracon beam weapon. You wanted me to morph and try to kill you. In mid-morph you'd have stunned me."

  Karen nodded. "That was the plan."

  "So why didn't you use the Dracon beam on the bear that was chasing you?"

  62 She laughed, a little embarrassed. "Pure panic, I'm afraid. That big bear came after me and I just forgot I had the weapon. Besides, you saw what a great shot I was with the leopard." She held up her hands. "I have little girl hands and little girl muscles. That Dracon beam is designed to be wielded by a Hork-Bajir. I could barely reach the trigger."

  "And now you have no weapons at all," I said.

  "No."

  "I could morph the wolf and make short work out of you."

  "But you won't."

  "Why won't I?" tasked.

  She shook her head slowly. "I don't know why."

  "Me neither," I said.

  For a while neither of us spoke. "There's plenty to drink," Karen said, nodding toward the rain that sheeted down across the cave entrance. "But we're going to get hungry."

  "I could catch us a rabbit or something," I said. "But it would mean leaving you here alone."

  "The leopard."

  I nodded. "It won't attack a wolf directly. But it sees you as a small, helpless, wounded creature. Perfect prey."

  "Yes, I suppose it does," she said bitterly. "I

  63 didn't want this body! I wanted a human body, but not a weak, innocent little child. This is what they assigned me."

  I noted the word "innocent." What a strange word for a Yeerk to use.

  "That's how it works? They tell you what body to infest?"

  She nodded. "Yeah. It's my third host. I started out with a Gedd host, like most of us coming up through the ranks. I was a Hork-Bajir for a while - boring duty, mostly, interspersed with terrifying battles. Then I was assigned to Earth and a human host. N
ow it's your turn."

  "My turn for what?"

  Karen gestured toward the fire and around the cave. "We're stuck here. No food. Nothing to do but talk. I tell you my life story, you tell me yours."

  "You could just be lying, making things up."

  "So could you. You humans are not always honest."

  I nodded. "That's true, I guess."

  "So tell me. How do you come to have Andalite morphing technology?"

  I shrugged. "It was given to me by a great Andalite warrior named Elfangor."

  Karen's face grew dark at the mention of that name. "Elfangor," she spat.

  "You've heard of him?"

  64 Karen nodded. "Part of the time I was a Hork-Bajir I was in Visser Three's personal guard. The Visser was obsessed with Elfangor. Something personal between the two of them. I don't know what. But he hated Elfangor."

  "I was there when Visser Three murdered him."

  "Murder? No, it wasn't murder. We're at war with the Andalites. There's no murder in war."

  "It was murder," I said. "Cold-blooded murder of a helpless person."

  Karen leaned forward, her face glowing from the fire. "And that Hork-Bajir whose throat you removed. Was he helpless, too?"

  I jumped up. "Don't you compare what your people do with what we do. You can't compare the attacker and the victim. You people started this war. And it's you invading my planet, not the other way around."

  Karen jumped up, wincing at the pain in her ankle. "We have a right to live!"

  "This isn't about you living!" I yelled. "It's about you enslaving other people."

  "It's what we are," she yelled back. "We're parasites, you humans are predators. How many pigs and cows and chickens and sheep do you kill each year to survive? You think being a predator is morally superior to being a parasite? At least the host bodies we take remain alive. We

  65 don't kill them, cut them into pieces, and grill them over a charcoal fire in our backyards."

  "We're not pigs," I said.

  "Oh yes,-you are," she said, her face distorted and twisted with contempt. "That's all you are to us. Oink, oink."

  66

  We took turns staying awake and watching the cave entrance. It was very weird, really. We were deadly enemies to each other. If Karen - or at least the Yeerk in her head - got the chance, she would run to Visser Three and give me up.

  The Visser would have me taken. He'd take me to the Yeerk pool that extended far beneath the school and the mall. Hork-Bajir would drag me out on the long steel pier. They would force my head under the lead-colored sludge.

  I would kick and scream, but it wouldn't matter. My head would go below the surface. And one of the Yeerk slugs that swam there would

  67 rush to my ear. It would flatten itself and squeeze itself in through my ear canal.

  The pain would be awful. But the pain would be nothing compared to the horror.

  The Yeerk would slither and squirm around my brain. It would flatten itself over the high parts and sink down into the cracks and crevices.

  And then it would open my mind like a book. It would see every memory. It would know every secret. It would know that I wet my bed once when I was six and that I was so embarrassed I threw the sheet away in the garbage. It would know that I checked the closet every night just in case someone was hiding there. It would know that I once cheated on a math quiz and felt so bad I deliberately failed the next quiz to make up. It would know that I cared for Jake.

  The Yeerk would open my eyes and turn them left and right. It would decide what to focus on.

  It would move my arms and my hands. It would decide what to pick up or put down.

  It would decide when I ate, when I slept, when I took a shower or washed my hair. It would dress me. It would talk to my mom and kiss my dad good night.

  And all the while, I would be able to see, to hear, to know exactly what was going on. As the Yeerk inside my brain betrayed my friends, I would know. When Rachel and Marco and Tobias

  68 and Ax and Jake were hunted down, one by one, and killed or enslaved, I would be standing there, giving advice to the Yeerks. I would be helping to destroy my friends.

  And I would be helpless.

  That's what Karen had planned for me. A living death. It's what the Yeerks had planned for the entire world. They would enslave all who were useful, and annihilate everything and everyone else.

  I poked the fire with a stick. Karen stirred in her sleep.

  It would be so easy ... I had the power. I had the power to destroy her before she destroyed me.

  I should do it.

  But I knew I wou ldn't. Not now. Not tonight. Not in cold blood. Life was sacred. Even the life of an enemy.

  But how about the lives of my friends? Weren't their lives even more sacred?

  Karen woke up. She yawned and looked around with that stupid-just-woke-up expression. "Is it time for me to take over?"

  "I guess so," I said. "We're low on wood, so don't build the fire too high. If you see anything, yell."

  I rolled onto my side facing away from her. I was sure I'd never sleep. But I did.

  69 I slept and I dreamed.

  ScreeEEEET! ScreeEEEEET! ScreeEEEET!

  Twenty human-Controllers stood waiting, armed with rifles and shotguns and automatic weapons.

  Behind them stood two dozen Hork-Bajir warriors.

  We were trapped. We'd sneaked into the building to retrieve the Pemalite crystal. The crystal would free the Chee from their programming. The programming that forbade them ever to harm a living creature.

  With the crystal, we could turn the powerful Chee into allies against the Yeerks.

  Erek the Chee stood just outside the building. I could see him through the plate glass. If we could find a way to give him the crystal, maybe he could help.

  And then in my dream, just as it had happened in reality, everything exploded into violence. Hork-Bajir leaped, slashing. And we fought.

  We fought and fought. And we lost ground, and lost ground, and lost. . .

  Until, far off, I seemed to hear shattering glass. And suddenly, there was Erek. The hologram that disguised him as a normal human kid was gone, too.

  He was his own true self: an android of metallic gray and pearl white.

  70 What happened next I have tried to forget. I had seen battles. This was no battle. This was slaughter.

  I woke up, crying, with an echo of Erek's bitter sobs in my head.

  "You were yelling in your sleep," Karen said.

  "Was I?"

  She laughed. "You were yelling, 'No! No!' That kind of thing. Bad dream, I guess?"

  "Bad memory," I said.

  "Sounded like a battle," she said. "From some of what you were saying. But hey, here you are alive, right? So you must have won."

  "Winning doesn't make it less terrible."

  She snorted derisively, like I'd made a joke. "Of course it does. Don't pretend with me. I know humans. I know that you love conquest as much as any Yeerk."

  "Not all of us."

  "Oh, I see. So you have morals. You feel bad when you destroy an enemy." She said it with heavy sarcasm.

  "Yes, I feel bad. Most humans do. Anyway, I do."

  "Lies," she said, yawning. "More human lies."

  "Karen?"

  "What?"

  71 "If that's all true, why have I let you live?" She looked at me, and I saw her green eyes

  flicker for just a moment as doubt entered her

  thoughts.

  She closed her eyes and did not answer.

  72

  It rained all through the night till four or five a.m. But when we stepped outside into the morning, the sun was coming up in a brilliant, clear blue sky.

  Water still dripped down from leaves and pine needles. The ground was still soft and mushy. The rocks glistened and sparkled.

  Karen pushed past me. She limped over to the spot where she'd dropped the Dracon beam. She began scrabbling around in the bushes on her hands and knee
s.

  "You took it! You came out here while I was asleep and took it!"

  I shook my head. "It was raining hard all

  73 night. We're on a slope. Maybe it was carried off down the hill. Or maybe the leopard took it."

  I meant that last part as a joke. But Karen's head jerked around toward me, her expression intense and fearful. "You think this is funny?"

  I shrugged. "You weren't going to use it on me, anyway," I said. "You don't need to."

  "That's not the problem," she said. "We are issued weapons. We aren't supposed to lose them. The punishment for losing them is ... is very painful. I shouldn't have been carrying it - I'm on an unauthorized mission. That will double my punishment."

  She looked very old, staring down hopelessly at the spot where the Dracon beam had fallen. It was easy to see that runoff from the rainstorm had rushed down across that area. The ground was smooth and cut with gullies.

  "Probably down in the river by now," I said. With her ankle, now swollen to three times its normal size, there was no way Karen could climb down there.

  Karen looked lost and confused. "I can't go back without it," she said. "It will mean facing Sub-Visser Nineteen."

  "Your boss?"

  "Yes. My commander. I don't suppose you'd help me look for it?"

  74 I shook my head. "No. Not a chance."

  Karen laughed bitterly. "Well, they'll go easy on me when I bring you in."

  "Maybe they'll give me to you," I said. "Make me your host body."

  "No thanks, I don't want any more young female human hosts. Too weak. Too emotional. Their heads too filled up with . . ." She broke off.

  I waited for her to say more. But she didn't. She just set her crutch and started walking with a determined, if painful step.

  I fell in behind her.

  Too emotional? Their heads too filled up with . . . With what?

  Was it possible the Yeerk inside Karen's head was bothered by Karen's thoughts? By her emotions?

  I felt a tingling sensation up and down the back of my neck. Was there another way to deal with Karen? Was it possible that the Yeerk felt some doubts about what it was doing? Was it even possible, or was I just grasping at straws?

  Could a Yeerk be turned around? Could a Yeerk be made to see that what it was doing was wrong?