They used me to open doors.

"Jake, open this door," Marco would say. I'd

turn where he showed me, shove my massive bony face forward, and the door would explode in splinters.

Crrrr-UIMCH-Bang!

"We are trashing this man's home," Cassie said. "l sure hope he is a Controller after all this."

"He can afford to have his doors fixed," Marco said.

"That's not the point," Cassie said. Then, "Jake, open this door, please." Crrrr-UNCH-bang!

"Nothing," Tobias complained. "Nothing, nothing, nothing! Nothing in any of these rooms, and there may be a hundred rooms in this place."

"Tobias is right. We are out of time," Cassie said.

"This isn't the way to do it," I said. "We can't just search room-to-room. It could take hours. We need to figure this out. How do we find Ax and Rachel? Where would they be?"

"ln the last place we look," Marco grumbled. "0r at least . . . wait a minute! Wherever they are, they'll be guarded."

"Yes!" I said. "0f course. We just rampage till we see something well guarded."

"l'll head upstairs," Tobias said.

He zoomed away and up a large staircase. I

lumbered along into a vast open living room area. I stomped on through. I tried not to crush too much furniture, but I was big and half-blind, so I kept hearing the crunch of wood and the shatter of glass and pottery in my wake.

"Up here!" Tobias yelled.

Then, not as loud as before, but still loud enough . . . BLAM! BLAM!

"Tobias!"

"l'm okay! But I found an area with two big guys with big guns. It's upstairs."

I tried to turn around and head back to the stairs, but then Marco yelled.

"Uh-oh! Guys coming up behind us. Man, how many gunmen does this lunatic hire? Jake, we have to go through these guys to get back to the stairs!"

"l got guys on my tail!" Tobias yelled down from upstairs.

I spun around and wiped out a couch in the process. "This way?!"

"No, a little left!"

I turned and annihilated a coffee table. Then I charged. I couldn't tell the difference between the men and various pole lamps and bookcases, except when they moved. The blur drew my eye, and I smelled humans.

I lowered my head and charged.

Shotgun pellets stung but didn't penetrate beneath my outer skin.

POP! POP! POP! POP!

I was hit. I staggered. I felt the bullet from the handgun tear into my right shoulder. A second slug lodged in the bone of my face.

I hit the guy with the gun. I was mad. I lowered my horn and I tossed my head back. He went flying back over my shoulder.

"Ya-ah-AHHHHHH!"

The other man jumped aside. I think he was fumbling to reload his shotgun. I sideswiped him and knocked him into the wall. Then I was out of the room, back into the hallway, tearing along back to the staircase.

I was bleeding. And I was weakening on my right side. My right front leg was moving slower. The bullet in my face must have ricocheted off. I felt pain there, but not the heaviness I felt in my shoulder.

I came to the stairs and tried to charge straight up. But rhinos were never meant for climbing stairs. My legs wouldn't lift high enough. My weight and momentum were too much. The wooden stairs splintered.

BLAM! BLAM!

"Tobias! What's going on up there?"

"l'm leading these guys around in circles and they're blowing the crap out the wall and ceiling trying to shoot me."

"l can't make the stairs. We need more fire-power. Marco, Cassie, morph!

Tobias, keep it up. Keep leading 'em on."

A bird trapped in a house, being chased by two guys with shotguns. Had I just sentenced Tobias to death?

I started to demorph as fast as I could. But while my thought-speak was still functioning, something occurred to me. "Rachel! Ax! Can you guys hear me? Rachel! Ax!"

". . . unh . . . what?"

"Who is that?"

". . . unh ... it is me, Aximili," Ax said.

He sounded dazed. I wasn't surprised. "Ax! Demorph! Time's up!"

"But there are humans here watching me, Prince Jake." Another decision. "Just do it, Ax, we're coming for you! Do you -" My thought-speak went dead as I became more human than rhinoceros.

"Yes, Prince Ja -" Ax fell silent.

I was shrinking. My armored flesh became tender human skin. My face was flat and delicate. But my legs could handle stairs. I still heard the sounds of gunfire from upstairs. And the sad thing was, I was glad. As long as they

were still shooting, it meant Tobias wasn't dead yet.

Marco and Cassie were just becoming human again. They were three-foot-tall lumps of feathers and shrinking beaks and emerging skin.

One wrong move and Tobias was gone. Ax might be demorphing in front of people who might be Controllers. Rachel ... no one knew whether Rachel was even conscious and capable of demorphing. Or alive at all. And now the three of us were utterly vulnerable, weak, pathetic.

I just kept thinking: This wasn't even supposed to be a very dangerous mission. And now, we were as close to being wiped out as we'd ever been.

"Come on!" I said, slurring my words with a mouth that was not yet human. "No chime kleft!"

I started up the stairs, staggering on my shifting, changing legs. The joints weren't right. The toes weren't toes, and my ankles seemed to have no flexibility. But time was up. I dragged myself up those stairs, hoping desperately that I had not killed us all.

J. was human by the time I had reached the top of the stairs. But human isn't a great morph when you're thinking about going against guys with guns.

As I ran I saw, to my horror, something emerge from the flesh of my shoulder. About as big as a fingertip, smashed, the color of mud. It was the bullet that had lodged in my shoulder. By good luck it had ended up outside my body as it morphed into a smaller form.