17 - The Underground

K.A. Applegate

My name is Rachel.

You want to know my last name? Too bad. I don't give out my last name.

No offense. I'm not trying to be difficult or "too cool." I'm just being careful.

Here's the situation. Earth, our little blue and green planet, the one with the fluffy white clouds and all, is under attack.

It's not under attack like in some World War II documentary or something. Or like in Star Wars. It's more subtle than that. Not a lot of explosions and ray guns or whatever. In most wars, I guess what people are after is control of land or territory. Or at least they want to ram some idea down some other person's throat.

In this war, our enemies don't care about land. They don't care about ideology. They don't want to take over our capital city and raise some flag or whatever. They want us. They want our physical bodies.

They are called Yeerks. They are a race of parasitic slugs. Like tapeworms or something. They need to live in the bodies of other creatures. Otherwise they're just these gray slugs who slosh around helplessly in a Yeerk pool.

But unlike a tapeworm or something, Yeerks don't live in your intestines. They don't infest your stomach. It's your brain they infest.

They enter through your ear. They can squeeze and flatten themselves out to fit into very small spaces. They enter your ear and then your brain.

They squeeze and ooze down into all the little gullies and ridges and folds of your brain. And then they interface with your brain. They control you. Totally, absolutely.

They can open your memories anytime they want. You have no privacy.

None. No secrets. None. No escape. None. They are inside your dreams and thoughts and whims and wishes and desires.

Your brain becomes theirs. They own it. They lift your arms and bend your waist. They aim your eyes and focus on what they want to see. They eat for you. They go to the bathroom for you.

And because they have total access to your every single thought, they can pass for you. Flawlessly. They can be you, while always remaining themselves. Your friends will never know. Your mother and father will never know. You will be alone, trapped, helpless, paralyzed in your own body. Unable to make the simplest decision for yourself. Unable to stop yourself when you betray the ones you love. Unable to warn those whom the Yeerks target next.

A Controller. That's what we call a person who has been taken over by a Yeerk. A human-Controller. Although other species around the galaxy have already fallen to the Yeerks.

The Hork-Bajir are enslaved. The Gedds. The Taxxons, although those vile, evil worms did it voluntarily. And we've learned the Yeerks are moving against a race called the Leerans.

And they are moving against Earth, where people live their normal lives never knowing. I guess it's like having cancer or something. You never know the tumor is growing inside you till it's too late.

So now you know why I'm cautious. Why we hide our true identities.

And who are we? We are Animorphs. Five kids given the power to morph into any animal we can touch. Five kids who just had the bad luck to be there when the Andalite prince Elfangor landed

his damaged ship. Five of us and Elfangor's little brother, the Andalite Aximili-Esgarrouth-lsthill.

We call him Ax.

"Who is this Schwarzenegger?" Ax demanded. "l have heard Marco use his name before."

"Ah-nuld?" Marco demanded. "Who iss Ah-nuld? Ah-nuld iss der man, zat's who Ah-nuld iss."

"What man?"

"The man," Marco explained, explaining nothing.

We were walking through the woods. It was a nice afternoon and school was out for the day. We'd had a half day due to some teacher conference.

I don't know what the teachers were conferring about, but it was fine by me. The sun was out. The clouds were fluffy and light, with big sweeps of blue in between. The breeze was warm but not hot. Sitting in school on a day like that would have been a crime.

And since we didn't have anything important to deal with, we were conspiring together to do the thing we were never supposed to do: use our powers for personal, selfish reasons.

But it was tricky, see, because we knew Jake, my cousin and our sort-of leader, might get all tense and righteous on us. Not that he's that way at all. He isn't. But he's very responsible. Someone has to be, and it sure isn't me.

Still, if he decided to go along with this basically silly idea, we'd do it. If he decided to be against it, we might not do it. Or else Marco and I would do it and not tell Jake.

The trick was to present it the right way.

"See, Jake?" Marco said. "You see how totally, pathetically ignorant Ax is when it comes to really important human cultural stuff? Good grief!

It makes you want to cry! He knows nothing. Nothing! He's been on Earth for months and yet, has he experienced any really important human culture? No. And it's a travesty. A crime. A pity. A shame. It's a -"

"Oh, shu-u-ut up already," Jake interrupted in exasperation. "Let me get this straight. There's a new Planet Hollywood opening in town. And you and Rachel have decided you want to go, but you can't get tickets. So you want to fly there in morph. You want to use our powers for a totally selfish purpose. Is that it, basically?"

I shook my head. "No. Absolutely not. We want to do this for Ax. He needs to be exposed to culture. Me, I don't care." I grinned, unable to lie all that well.

"It's an entertainment event!" Marco cried. "A major, major event.

Stars! Famous people! Millionaires! Babes! A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for the Ax-man to see Bruce and Demi."

Cassie giggled out loud, then tried to look serious. Tobias, the remaining member of our group, was about a hundred feet above us, floating on a nice warm current of air. He was watching out for any intruders who might get close enough to notice that we were walking around with an An-dalite.

In case you've never seen an Andalite, and of course you haven't, they look like a strong blue deer with a mouth less face, with two extra eyes mounted on stalks, weak, human-looking arms, and a vicious scorpionlike tail.

So you can see why we'd want Tobias aloft to keep an eye open. A hawk's eye, no less, which meant no one was going to be sneaking up on us.

Jake nodded at Marco, totally unimpressed. He cocked a skeptical eyebrow at me. "And you figure the human culture Ax needs to be exposed to is Bruce Willis playing a harmonica? Come on, spill it. Why are you into this, Rachel?"