The test animorphs 47, p.1
The Test (Animorphs 47), page 1
OCRed By Arpit Nathany
The author wishes to thank Ellen Geroux for her help in preparing this manuscript.
For Michael and Jake
Cover illustration by David B. Mattingly
Art Direction/Design by Karen Hudson/Ursula Albano My name is Tobias. Still a freak of nature. If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as "unsold and destroyed" to the Part human. Part bird. Confused? Don't worry, it publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any paygets better. ment for this "stripped book."
I am flying over the forest. The air is thick. A No part of this publication may be reproduced in whole or in part, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, storm is approaching. It is only early afternoon, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to but the sky is growing black as the front moves in Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 555 Broadway, on the city. A towering wall of rain, wind, and cuNew York, NY 10012. mulus clouds.
ISBN 0-439-11517-5
I had to find food before the storm. I was hunCopyright © 2000 by Katherine Applegate. gry. But then, I'm always looking for food. That's All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Inc. SCHOLASTIC, APPLE PAPERBACKS, ANIMORPHS and associated logos life for a bird of prey. Hunger.
are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc. A shrew stepped out from its burrow. It loi12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0 1 2 3 4 5/0
tered nervously, sniffing the moisture. We had the Printed in the U.S.A.
same thought, me and the shrew. Hunker down First Scholastic printing, July 2000
against nature's wrath, but fill your belly first. 1
I was higher on the food chain. I tucked into a persing terrified crows in all directions. If I were dive.
a true hawk, I'd have cleared out with the other My wings pressed tight to my body. Air whisbirds. Instead, I circled around and flapped tled past. Mountains, forest, and sky. All a blur, a toward the turbulence.
flashing streak. Everything but the shrew, shiftMy friends, the Animorphs, the ones who ing agitatedly, chomping on a seed . . .
fight the Yeerk invasion of Earth, say that since My talons struck, embedded, and squeezed.
my capture, I live too much of life in my head. Drained life instantly.
They must be right. I'd almost missed everyWonder what it's like? Dig your fingernails thing.
into a too-ripe peach. Rip sections off with your Not just the helicopter. The humans below, teeth. Gulp them without chewing. The kill is streaming across rough forest floor, the tires of something like that.
their ATV's scoring the soil. The searchlights I downed the shrew and lifted off.
streaking the trees in the daytime darkness, makI don't think about the kill anymore. I'm hawk ing rabbits and deer dart in alarm.
and human. I'll explain later. Just try to underI flew to the nearest ranger station. It was stand that the hawk must feed the human. It has ringed by squad cars and TV news vans. I swooped to happen.
down, closer to the action. Landed on a low I don't think about it anymore.
branch. A blond woman in a raincoat held a miThat's a lie. crophone close to her lips and swatted wind "You vile little bird! Do you realize what whipped hair away from her face.
you've done? Do you realize what you've become?
"Bobby Mclntire," she shouted above the You're trapped! You have to live out your life as a noise of the vehicles, "missing now for two full bird!"
days since he wandered away from his camping Her name was Taylor. My Yeerk torturer. Her party. Hope that he'll be found alive is fading. voice screeching. Bruising my ears. Tormenting But it's not just a race against time and the me after every kill. Other times, too. Still, after weather." Lightning struck the sky above her, all this time . . .
imparting urgency to her words. "Little Bobby
THWOK! THWOK! THWOK! THWOK!
is deaf and can't hear the desperate calls of A helicopter! Hovering low over the trees, disrescuers. Kelly King," she concluded, looking sky2
3
ward, "reporting live." She held a frozen, concerned assaulted with memories, images of all the times expression until the producer gave her the all clear.
I've been weak. Or think I might have been . . . Like my first time at the Yeerk pool.
"I will break you." It was Taylor's voice again, My mind flashed back to it now, to the scene whispering in my mind. "You can't win." at Yeerk Central, that echoing underground dome I set a course for the storm front. A strange with a sludgy pool churning at its core. The Yeerk thing to do, to turn toward the lightning. To fly pool. That's where the Yeerks do their dirtiest into the line of rain, the thunderclaps, the wind. dirty work, where parasitic, sluglike aliens dunk But it made me feel like Lindbergh over the your head in the muck and force one of their kind Atlantic. Fearless and strong. Maybe even a little heroic.
through your ear.
The Yeerks squeeze your brain and wring out I wanted those feelings.
your freedom. They control all thoughts and moveSee, it wasn't long ago that the Yeerks capments. They silence your howls and screams of tured me. A crazed and insane human-Controller grief until you are nothing but a slave. A stupid made my life a hell for several excruciating hours. puppet. An unwilling soldier of the Yeerk Empire. A I survived. I even thought the torture was over. I threat to all humanity.
didn't realize that torture doesn't end when you're freed.
But you've probably heard about all this by now. Right?
People think it does. People who've never
Tha-BOOM! Boom!
been through torture think that when the physA thunderclap roared and half brought me ical injuries heal, you're healed, too. They're wrong.
back to the present. The other half of me was still at the Yeerk pool that first, horrible time. Torture plays tricks on your mind. "You're weak Clinging to the rock face, praying for camouflage, and scared," it says. "You think you're in control?
searching the colossal cavern for a way to esHah!" it says. "Doubt yourself. Worry, and quescape. A way to get past Visser Three's men. tion, and fear," it tells you.
faintly.
Sometime during my capture, my mind was
How long since I'd morphed to red-tailed
4
5
hawk? An hour and fifty minutes? An hour and I let a fading thermal lift me into the atmosfifty-five?
phere.
How long?!
My name is Tobias. I'm a human. I'm a hawk. The others had escaped already. The other
If you want to find something in the forest, you'd Animorphs, I mean. They'd dodged the visser's do well to ask me.
fireball gauntlet. They'd slipped out to safety, There's nothing I don't see.
back through the janitor's closet, back into the school. Rachel, Cassie, Marco, Jake.
Had I missed the deadline? Had I been more than two hours in morph?
Couldn't have. Can't have. No. I'd be trapped forever. A bird.
Independent, free, alone.
Forever.
Images of the human life I'd led till then flooded my mind. The images were dark. My apathetic aunt. My alcoholic uncle. Then, something brighter, something powerful surged through my mind. Something else. Shoring me up. Drawing me in. A wave of. . . What? What had I felt then, at that moment, with the seconds ticking down? With the deadline chasing me . . . Weakness or strength?
"You'll never know," Taylor said. "You won't know who or what you are when I'm done with you."
Bobby Mclntire needed to be found.
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7
Quiet as a glider, my personal search plane swept huge, broad strokes above the trees. My friends, the other Animorphs — the other kids who knew the great Andalite warrior Elfangor, who'd been there as he died, and who'd accepted the Yeerk-fighting Andalite technology to become any animal they can touch — they were expecting me to show up at Cassie's barn. There was a meeting scheduled for after school. If I wanted to make it, I had to travel east.
I edged west, following the search party's tire tracks. Tracing the lines as they crossed and converged in a half-mile section of sparse tree cover. Tha-BOOM! Boom!
I was guessing that this was the last place the Thunderclaps. I let the warm air draw me up. boy was seen. Good place to start. I dove to fifty Three hundred feet. Higher. I could see through feet, skimming the treetops, looking for a sign, a the haze, from city's edge to the mountains. clue. Anything.
The national park is a very big place. You Nothing.
could hike for days and never see anyone. SpotA raindrop struck my wing. No, not yet! Three ting a boy from a helicopter would be like finding more drops hit me like BB's.
the needle in the haystack. And the haystack was A whistling gale pushed me back into the air about to get really wet.
and blew me away from the search party tracks. Binoculars, infrared goggles, and laser sights I flapped harder to fight the strengthening wind. flipped on. I don't mean to brag, but nature gave It was pushing me toward mudflats. Forcing me me excellent tools. I can see a hiker's broken toward a dried up stream.
shoelace. A robin's chicks.
The raindrops were starting to feel like warI can pick o ut deer poop. game paint pellets. I remember. My uncle took
"You vile little bird!" Taylor's voice, always me to do the paint-ball thing. I hated it, but it humming in my ear.
was one of the only things we'd done together. 8
9
Anyway, I was going to have to stop. The downout. Hork-Bajir? I wasn't practiced enough with pour was starting.
the blades not to lacerate the kid and I definitely Suddenly — a splash of red against brown. A couldn't let him see an alien.
sizzled the ground nearby. Not good.
worst part was the dead air. By the time I reached dead the next.
the ranger station, my body was burning ligaThen — a single footprint. A kid's footprint. ments for fuel.
party, inside and drying off. Getting ready for anA faint rustling of brush. Then, more moveother round of wet and nasty searching. Then I ment. I circled in to land. A dirt clod shot saw a guy who looked like he needed a miracle. straight up into the air, grazing my beak. He was sitting outside on a stump, letting the
to find it.
I touched down just feet from him. Didn't
I peered down at the kid. He was searching once think about the consequences.
wall. He stood in stagnant water a foot deep. And You can tell a lot about a person by the
a flash flood was on the way.
way they respond to a talking hawk. There's the
11
the-animal maneuver. Most people don't do too
well when their reality's challenged.
Then we crested the rise and I saw something But Bobby's dad was cool. I mean, he looked I didn't think was possible. Sheets of rain punkind of freaked at first. His eyes bugged out and ished the earth to our right and our left, but over he spun around frantically, looking for the Bobby's sinkhole . . . unbelievable. A corridor of prankster who was fooling with him. But once the rainless clouds with two ends of a weak rainbow initial surprise faded, he quickly regained his marking the borders.
composure.
I was sure my mind was making the scene up.
"Okay," he said. "Lead the way." It couldn't turn out this well. Nothing ever did. He probably thought he was nuts, but I don't Taylor wouldn't let it . . .
think it would have mattered whether he was
perched on a low branch and watched as three That kind of love . . . it made me feel . . . powerful rangers pulled him to safety. Watched strange.
as Bobby collapsed in his dad's arms, shaking, as I flew from tree to tree, a few hundred feet at joy replaced fear.
a time, waiting for Mr. Mclntire and three rangers Bobby's dad glanced up at me, gratitude in he'd convinced to come along. All the while I his eyes.
gave him directions in private thought-speak. At Ever have something work out so perfectly, least I could stay a good distance from the men, you feel you could fly? That's how I felt — and to keep it uncertain whether a hawk was really the cool thing was, I could actually do it. I could running the show.
actually fly.
I pictured Bobby in the pit, the torrential rain I took off down the swath of rainless sky
tunneling into channels, forming a raging artoward Cassie's barn. It felt so good. I played in royo. Racing like a hungry, deadly snake. A masthe air like a pilot at an air show, awed the audisive, silent snake that Bobby's deaf ears wouldn't ence with my death-defying stunts. I cut my enhear. gines, fell into a nosedive, ready to pull up just
"You will die, Andalite. "Taylor's hateful voice, seconds before I hit the ground.
droning in my head.
And then . . .
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13
A golden eagle, twice my size, screeching
toward me like a wrecking ball . . .
WHAM!
And all was blackness.
I never even had a chance.
This hawk's gonna feel that wing. Hero or not, when he wakes up, he'll hurt like crazy." My eyes snapped open. Through the links of my cage I spied the faces of two concerned, labcoated veterinarians. Both women. One brunette, one blond. The words University Clinic were stitched on their pockets.
"Do you think Superbird needs an epidural?" I tensed my extremities. Right wing not responding. A sore and twisted neck. That nasty golden eagle had banged me up pretty bad. The memory of the impact got my hawk heart pumping. Fear, territoriality, confusion.
"No, I gave him enough medication to keep him comfy till morning. Hey, look, he's awake. 14
15
Feeling better, Mr. Hawk?" the blond one said, This was bad. What was I thinking?
with the gentle condescension appropriate for My friends, they'd be looking for me, too. I'd wildlife who can't make it in the wild.
endangered our own security. By trying to fight I could have found both vets extremely annoyTaylor's ghost, I'd dragged my friends into danger. ing. But as it was, with an ugly vulture in the Stupid. Weak.
cage next to mine, and a prehistoric egret two I had to morph! Morph and get out before . . . doors down, I was actually glad to hear a human But no. I couldn't morph in front of the vets. voice.
And there were video cameras, mounted up in How much time had passed? What day was it?
the corners of the lab, recording everything.
"Seen the headlines?" the brunette asked Who'd get to me first?
me, as if in answer to my question.
"What's he doing? Flapping his wing? Hey, Sometimes, not always, if you ask questions he's gonna get hurt. Chloe, quick! We need to seyou want answers to, the universe will respond. date him."
It was the evening edition newspaper that she Sedate me?
held in her hands, and it confirmed that I'd been I fell back to the floor of the cage and lay moasleep way too long. "'Father Claims Hawk Led tionless.
Searchers to Lost Boy.'" She smiled at me, then No way would I be sedated.
summed it up.
Not with two groups looking for me. Two
"You da bird!"
groups I knew would take that headline very seriThe vets chuckled. They didn't know this was ously.
no laughing matter. They didn't understand . . . Group One: my friends.
It hit me, right at that moment. I'd messed up Group Two: my enemies.
big time. That headline . . . the kiss of death . . .
"Wait," the vet said. "Forget it. He calmed if the Yeerks found me first. . .
down. He's fine. I don't know what that was I was stupid. So stupid!
about."
Any time you get an animal doing unusual
"Okay, Superbird. Stay out of trouble. We'll stuff, you get Yeerks. To Yeerks, all animals are see you in the morning."
suspects, possible "Andalite bandits" disguised They were going away? They were leaving me in morph.
here!
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17
Why did everyone leave? Why . . .
They walked to the door, switched off the
main fluorescent overheads, deadbolted the door behind them.
