The Predator (10 page)
Authors: K. A. Applegate
But then I realized the truth. No. Human-Controllers. Yeerks. No different from the Hork-Bajir.
There was a slight shudder as the Blade ship came to a halt.
I did the math.
I saw Jake extend his claws, as if he were thinking about using them. He glanced at where the door had once been, like he was measuring the distance. I knew that he was listening to the tiger in his head.
Then he seemed to relax.
Cassie sidled up next to him and nuzzled him with her wolf’s muzzle.
I guess it should have been funny. The wolf and the tiger, sharing a tender moment. But all it did was make me a little jealous. They had each other.
Through the window we could see a lot of Hork-Bajir and Taxxons and humans running around, racing to get somewhere. They were lining up. And now, I noticed, there were distinct kinds of uniforms, one red and black, the other gold and black. The brown uniforms were all around the edges, like they were less important.
Suddenly, without warning, the window stretched open into a large, arched doorway. Fetid air rushed in, smelling of oil and chemicals and something else.
A ramp rose up from the steel floor outside to meet us. We were standing like a display at the top of the ramp. All around, filling this side of the docking bay, were uniformed Hork-Bajir, Taxxons, and humans. Most were in red and black. Perhaps two hundred creatures, standing in stiff rows, arranged by species.
About a quarter of the total were in gold and black. There were more humans in this group, but also some unusually massive Hork-Bajir.
Ax said.
Far at the back of the rows of alien troops, there was a movement. A party of creatures walking to the front.
Visser Three was at the center, followed by two big Hork-Bajir in red.
And just to his left was a human. A human woman with dark hair and very dark eyes.
That was when I stopped breathing. Because I knew. Even before I could see her face clearly. I knew.
They marched up to the bottom of the ramp. A dozen soldiers leveled Dracon beams at us, just in case we wanted any trouble.
Then, in thought-speak that all could hear, Visser Three turned to the woman beside him.
Visser One nodded. She looked up at us with those dark brown, human eyes.
Eyes I knew. Eyes I remembered.
The same eyes that watched me sleep every night from the framed picture beside my bed.
My mother.
Visser One.
21
I
sat down. Very suddenly. I’m sure it looked funny. A big, hairy gorilla simply falling down.
I would have laughed if I’d seen it.
My mother. Not dead.
Alive!
I wanted to yell, “Mom! Mom! It’s me, Marco!”
But Jake was in my head, a loud, urgent whisper.
So I wasn’t just imagining it. Jake had recognized her, too.
My mother … alive.
My mom.
I could hear Jake. I could. But it seemed to come from far off. He didn’t understand. It was my
mom.
My mom!
her.>
“It is called a gorilla,” Visser One said coldly. “If you are going to be in charge of Earth, Visser Three, you should at least learn something about the planet.”
My mother looked at him and curled her lip. “I took a human host and learned about the planet and the humans. And because of that I was able to begin
the invasion that you have now endangered with your criminal incompetence!”
Visser Three’s deadly Andalite tail twitched, as if he was going to stab my mom … Visser One. The red troops tensed up. The gold troops let their hands edge toward their weapons.
She didn’t know, I realized slowly. Rachel didn’t know. But she had never met my mother. Neither had Cassie or Tobias. And Jake had kept our talk private.
Visser Three slowly relaxed.
to provoke me, Visser One,> he said.
My mom … Visser One … just smiled. “You want to be Visser One? You think you can take my title? We shall see. The Council of Thirteen does not like Vissers who make mistakes. And you have made mistakes. Be careful of your own ambition.”
She snapped her fingers, and every one of the soldiers in gold turned. Then she walked away, followed by her gold-uniformed troops.
That was not my mother. At least not the creature who called herself Visser One.
Visser One was the Yeerk inside my mother’s brain.
But the sickening thing is, you see, that the host mind is still alive. It is still aware. Somewhere inside that head, behind those painfully familiar eyes, my mother still lived.
I said dully. I hated myself for not trying, but I knew there was nothing I could do. I had to hide inside my morph. Never let my mother know it was me. Never let her know …
Slowly, heavily, I stood up. I felt weak. A very strange feeling for a gorilla.
I think right then, if I had been in any other morph I would have just surrendered and let the animal mind take over. Let instinct rule, and wash away my human emotion.
But the gorilla was too much like a human. Its instincts were gentle. Like humans, it was a creature with emotions. It could not protect me from the pain.
Visser Three still stared at us. I think he wasn’t sure what to do next.
Ax exploded.
Visser Three cocked his head thoughtfully.
He seemed to think it over for a minute. Would he realize the truth? Would he figure out that the reason we remained silent was so he wouldn’t guess that we were human? Would he figure out that’s why we stayed in morph?
He seemed to shrug.
22
T
hey marched us down a hallway. Rachel, still in her huge elephant body, filled the hallway like our ant bodies had filled the tunnels in the sand. Tobias rode on my shoulder, unable to fly in the cramped space.
The place we ended up was just like the bare, black-steel prison we’d been held in on the Blade ship. But this time no window appeared.
There was dim light that seemed to radiate from the ceiling. But nothing else at all.
I slumped down in a corner.
For a while everyone talked about various plans for escape. It was all just talk. We knew we were trapped. We knew it was over. We were aboard the Yeerk mother ship. It was huge. If we had a week to learn our way around, we’d still have been lost in its maze.
There were hundreds, probably thousands of armed Yeerks — Hork-Bajir, Taxxons, and a few other shapes we’d never seen before, and of course, humans.
Like my mother.
My mother—Visser One. Most powerful of the Vissers.
When had it happened? Had the Yeerks taken her much earlier? Had she already been a Controller for those last years when she was with us?
When she had come to my bedroom to say good night, had that been a Yeerk slug, just playing a part, like an actor?
When I tried to fake sick to get out of school, had it been a Yeerk who saw through my story and kidded and joked me into admitting it?
Was it a Yeerk, handing out the presents on
Christmas morning? A Yeerk, singing in the church choir? A Yeerk, pulling the puppet strings of my mother’s body when she dragged me through JCPenney and made me buy school clothes I didn’t really like?
Was it a Yeerk I used to find making out with my dad like a teenager when they didn’t think I saw them?
All of it an act? All of it fake? For how many years?
How much of what I’d thought was my mother had been … one of
them?
One thing was sure. Her death had been faked. The so-called drowning accident. No body recovered.
But the body
had
been recovered, hadn’t it? The Yeerks’ mission had been accomplished. The invasion of Earth had been started. Visser One was leaving Earth in the hands of Visser Three. And so she had to disappear and not leave anyone asking questions.
we can do!> Rachel was saying.
Ax said,
That’s what
they
want. They want the entire human race to lie down and accept the inevitable.>
Jake turned his big, yellow tiger eyes on me. I saw Tobias’s eternally fierce glare.
I stood up.
They were all looking at me now. Through the eyes of a wolf and a hawk and the big, sad eyes of an elephant.
Cassie was shocked.
The door opened. It simply appeared silently in the wall.
Standing there were three Hork-Bajir. They were wearing gold uniforms.
Lying on the floor were four other Hork-Bajir. They were each uniformed in red. They were either dead or unconscious.
The lead Hork-Bajir, a huge creature maybe eight feet tall with head blades that were more than a foot long, eyed us.
He spoke. It was surprising, because he did not speak the usual strange mishmash of languages the Hork-Bajir used. This one sounded like he’d been educated at Harvard.
“This hallway goes on in that direction for a hundred feet.” He pointed to his left. “Then comes a guard station, where there will be two Hork-Bajir and a Taxxon. From there, four hallways. Take the one
farthest to your left. Follow it to a dropshaft. Take the dropshaft down fifteen decks. Directly ahead you will see escape pods.”
He looked at Rachel. “You are too large in that morph to fit in the escape pod. You will need to demorph when you get there. The pod is programmed to return you to the planet in the same area where you were seized. The pod will then self-destruct. Do you understand?”