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  Noted a honeybee winging its way toward the greenhouse.

  Waited.

  Maybe I’d offended the guy somehow. I hadn’t meant to but sometimes my mouth gets in the way of sentiment.

  The silence was awful.

  And then, suddenly, his voice came booming out at me. Strong and energetic and quivering with something that sounded a lot like pride.

 

  The author wishes to thank Gina Gascone for her help in preparing this manuscript.

  Whummph!

  BAAAM!

  I slammed the Hork-Bajir into the concrete. Pinned him against the subbasement wall with two massive tiger paws.

  His red eyes burned with hatred. His face was a twisted horror as he pushed back, desperate to free his tail blade from behind his body.

  I strained to reach the scarred, saddle-leather flesh of his neck. To rip out the throat.

  By the way, I’m Jake.

  Can’t tell you much more than that. Like my last name or where I live. I can’t even tell you where I go to school. Here’s what I can tell you: Earth is being invaded by parasitic slugs called Yeerks. Still with me? Pretty hard to believe, huh? See, humans seem to be their latest preference in host bodies. They take thousands a day. Make them into slaves. They just squeeze into your ear canal. Wrap themselves around your brain. Tap into your memories and dreams. And then they take over. You can’t even decide when to blink. No control at all. It’s like your skull becomes a prison. And you’re trapped in your own head. No way out.

  My friends Marco, Rachel, Cassie, Tobias, an alien kid we call Ax, and I are the only active resistance. So now you’re asking yourself, “How are six kids preventing the total takeover of Earth?” Well, we were given the power to turn into any animal we touch. To actually acquire the animal’s DNA. To morph. The Andalite technology was a gift to us from Ax’s older brother, Elfangor. After he crash-landed, and before he was murdered.

  So anyway, we’re the only ones fighting back. We managed to slow the Yeerks down a little. But it was getting harder to keep up the fight. Harder to keep it together.

  “Hhhhhrrroooowwwwrrrr!” I roared.

  He faltered and I lunged forward. Missed! His tail broke free and he slashed!

  And carved a hole in my underbelly!

  I watched, stunned and helpless. Those were my guts, spilling from my body! I froze up for one instant too long. He pushed me down onto pipes that …

  Tsssssssssss!

 

  My fur was smoking, my flesh scalded!

  Adrenaline cracked through my chest like a whip. I was up again, face-to-face with a Yeerk-infested Hork-Bajir.

  I had one more chance with this guy. This was it. And suddenly the vividness of the scene seemed to recede.

  Don’t get me wrong. My guts were still spilling out of my belly. Exhaustion still pressed on my shoulders like a granite slab. But I was in a new zone. It was him or me.

  Claws bared, teeth flashing, I leaped.

  WHAM!

  Heaved him into the wall.

  WHAM!

  Plowed him into the concrete. His skull hit hard.

  WHAM!

  His tail dropped. His eyes went lazy, then rolled up into his head. He groaned weakly and slid down the wall.

  We were three floors underground, in the dark, dank subbasement of a downtown high-rise. Pipes and ducts ran close overhead. You could hear cries and growls from floor to ceiling and wall to wall. I wheeled around. And only then did I see how insanely bad things were.

  We were completely outnumbered.

  Cassie was one against two. Marco one on four.

  I had to help them!

  But I’d drawn a living barrier. Five battle-hardened Hork-Bajir, holding their blades like cocky gunslingers, were closing in on me like the walls of a collapsing room.

  Just beyond the Hork-Bajir was what looked like — what I hoped was an exit. A steel accordion door thirty feet away, opposite the stairs.

  I yelled, but the other screams and cries and crashes drowned out my words.

  My best friend, Marco. Every quaking syllable told me he was at the end of his strength.

  I caught a glimpse of Rachel, hobbling toward the sound of shock troops pouring down the stairs. Her voice cracked. Blood gushed from gashes around her eyes, blinding her. She slashed her grizzly bear paws wildly.

 

  Three Hork-Bajir struck. Ran her across the room like a football-tackling dummy.

  “TSEEER!”

  Tobias swooped and plunged, talons first. One Hork-Bajir fell off, clutching his eyes. Cassie clamped on to another’s heel and yanked her steel-trap jaws from side to side.

  Rachel was still helpless.

  I backed up nervously. I was surrounded, closed off from the others by the approaching Hork-Bajir barricade. My butt hit the concrete wall.

  I reared up and roared. Seven hundred pounds of ripping claws and slicing teeth. Fluid strength. Mercurial speed. The male Siberian tiger. The biggest cat in the world.

  But my roar echoed back unmasked. I heard false confidence. I detected despair.

  “Ghafrash nyut!” said a voice like gravel. “Die!”

  The nearest Hork-Bajir lunged, blades flashing.

  Mouth open, I leaped. My fangs sank in deep, past the armor of skin. Into the meat.

  He jerked back and fell under my weight. I rolled off and slammed to the floor. My right ear! Still stuck to his wrist blade! Sliced off!

  Two more were on me. I’d forgotten any thought of victory. Now it was simply a mindless struggle. A blade embedded in my left hind leg … Focus, Jake. Survive.

  FWAAP!

  A tail blade cleaved the air above me. Blue fur.

  It was Ax.

  Fwaap, fwaap, fwaap!

  Two assailants slumped and crumpled to the floor. A third screamed and cradled his knees.

 

  Movement.

  I cried.

  Ax ducked. The bladed body of a Hork-Bajir whistled through the air.

  Then there was a fierce metallic crash and hiss.

  Pssssssssshhhhhtttttt!

  A cracked steam pipe! An explosion of steam! Pressurized fog billowed across the floor. It enveloped the room, everyone and everything. Confusion took over.

  Now or never.

  I ordered. It was impossible to see more than an inch ahead. The scalding cloud burned my skin and eyes and throat. Choking on steam, bodychecking Hork-Bajir, I ran for the parking garage door and slammed my bloody mass on the weight-sensitive panel. The door began to creak open, inching up at first, then rising rapidly. Six inches, twelve inches, eighteen.

  Cassie squeezed out through the opening. Then Ax. Tobias.

  It was Rachel’s voice. Raving like someone possessed.

  Marco roared.

 

  He was breathless, but insistent.

  A Hork-Bajir emerged from the steam cloud, saw me, and broke into a run. Time was definitely not on my side today.

  Lose everyone, or lose two?

  I dropped and rolled under the door, sprang up and broke the glass box that housed the emergency close switch. Engaged the switch.

  What alternative did I have? What choice?

  The door ground to a halt, hesitated, then changed directions, descending like a slow but certain guillotine. Cassie’s wolf eyes fixed on me.

 

  About the A
uthor

  The Animorphs series, written by Katherine (K. A.) Applegate with her husband, Michael Grant, has sold millions of copies worldwide, and alerted the world to the presence of the Yeerks. Katherine and Michael are also the authors of the bestselling Remnants and Everworld series. On her own, Katherine is the author of Home of the Brave, Crenshaw, Wishtree, and the Newbery Medal–winning The One and Only Ivan. Michael is the author of the Gone and Front Lines series.

  The invasion has begun.

  Catch up on Newbery Medal–winner K. A. Applegate’s world-conquering series.

  #1: The Invasion

  #2: The Visitor

  #3: The Encounter

  #4: The Message

  #5: The Predator

  #6: The Capture

  #7: The Stranger

  #8: The Alien

  #9: The Secret

  #10: The Android

  #11: The Forgotten

  #12: The Reaction

  #13: The Change

  #14: The Unknown

  #15: The Escape

  #16: The Warning

  #17: The Underground

  #18: The Decision

  #19: The Departure

  #20: The Discovery

  #21: The Threat

  #22: The Solution

  #23: The Pretender

  #24: The Suspicion

  #25: The Extreme

  #26: The Attack

  #27: The Exposed

  #28: The Experiment

  #29: The Sickness

  #30: The Reunion

  #31: The Conspiracy

  #32: The Separation

  #33: The Illusion

  #34: The Prophecy

  #35: The Proposal

  #36: The Mutation

  #37: The Weakness

  #38: The Arrival

  #39: The Hidden

  #40: The Other

  #41: The Familiar

  #42: The Journey

  #43: The Test

  #44: The Unexpected

  #45: The Revelation

  #46: The Deception

  #47: The Resistance

  #48: The Return

  #49: The Diversion

  #50: The Ultimate

  #51: The Absolute

  #52: The Sacrifice

  #53: The Answer

  #54: The Beginning

  Text copyright © 2000 by Katherine Applegate

  Cover illustration by David B. Mattingly

  Art Direction/Design by Karen Hudson/Ursula Albano

  All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Inc. SCHOLASTIC, ANIMORPHS, and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  e-ISBN 978-1-338-21771-1

  First edition, April 2000