ANIMORPHS #27: THE EXPOSED

hi hello and welcome back to animorphs weekly, the only commitment i’m not afraid of. we are officially at the halfway mark!!! can you believe?? i can’t!!

wanna read a book?

THEY THOUGHT THEY’D SEEN IT ALL. THEY WERE WRONG. . . .

the they in this instance is me! each week i truly come into these books expecting a normal field trip, forgetting that applegate is unafraid of plucking my deepest fears straight from my psyche and placing them onto a group of tweens. i have so many questions. all variations on “why squid” are most of them. what business do the animorphs have in the deep ocean!!!!!! applegate!!!!

it’s a rachel book!

SUMMARY

rachel is currently tall, blonde, and trying to do a forward roll on a balance beam, three things i know nothing about. she talks a little about the yeerk invasion and her place within it, and then right out of the gate starts to do some self-reflecting. she worries, sometimes, that her enthusiasm for fighting will soon overcome her enthusiasm for literally anything else. she uses the phrase “addicted to defeating the yeerk invaders,” and tbh? she might be right to be worried.

a guy named t.t calls her name from across the gymnastics studio, shattering her concentration. rachel starts to wobble. t.t assures her - he’ll catch her! but this is rachel we’re talking about. she literally smacks his arms out of the way as she falls to the mat below.

“so, i guess this means you’re falling for me, huh?” he asked, grinning. “want to go to a movie or something?”

rachel thinks he’s cute. better than that, he’s human. she thinks about how they could go see a movie and get pizza afterwards without him needing to demorph into a red-tailed hawk before the two hour time limit. yoinks! still, she pushes off the mat and shuts him down, storming away before he can get a retort in.

i didn’t like the way i was feeling. i didn’t like that i had reacted. i didn’t like the moment of hesitation, the moment when i considered the fact that i was the only girl in school whose … i guess “boyfriend was … how should i put it … a bird.

there really is no other way to put it!

rachel is many things. disloyal is not one of them. if she and tobias are “going,” (applegate’s word), then she’s not going to go on a date with anyone else! she leaves the gymnastics studio. that didn’t make her feel normal, but maybe shopping will. she heads towards the mall. there, she runs into cassie — a nice surprise, considering cassie is usually only at the mall with rachel. but cassie was out shopping for her mom’s birthday, and it’s quite lucky they ran into each other. because you know who else is at the mall?

ancient erek

he’s standing in front of the gap, and his hologram keeps flickering.

been there!

rachel and cassie leap into action. they approach ancient erek, and are like, hey dude! what’s up? other than your holographic programming going in and out in the middle of a very busy mall? ancient erek doesn’t know what’s happening to him, but he knows its bad. they are in the middle of a crowded mall, so rachel grabs ancient erek’s arm and drags him into a store where he won’t look out of place — spencer’s gifts!

rachel and cassie drag — literally, he cannot move — ancient erek into a corner of spencer’s under the strobe lights. rachel fudges a price tag to make it look like he costs $5000. (“actually,” ancient erek says, “my approximate value in current us dollars would be well into the billions,” so at least his sense of humor’s still intact.) rachel tells cassie to guard ancient erek while she steps away and calls jake. cassie’s like, what do i do if a controller sees him and knows what he is?

“protect yourself,” i said. i met erek’s frozen gaze. “you’re number one, cassie. push comes to shove, give up erek.”

dark! but. uh. true to form. rachel’s number one priority is cassie’s well-being.

she bops over to a payphone (christ) and calls jake’s house. of course, big brother tom answers. she asks for jake, who quickly comes to the phone, and she’s like omg JAKE where ARE YOU you were supposed to meet me and cassie in front of spencer’s like thirty minutes ago!!! jake, thankfully, is quick on the uptake. he’s like ah sorry, marco and i were shooting hoops! we’ll be there soon. rachel hangs up the pay phone, hits the gap to get a disguise for ancient erek, and returns to spencer’s. the store clerk approaches them — this android is not licensed merchandise, and he is going to call security!!!

jake and marco arrive — jake in his normal form, and marco in gorilla. he’s wearing a sandwich board, on which is written “king kong vs gudzilla” (not a typo!) in magic marker. good enough! marco taps the clerk on the head and knocks him out. quickly, they dress ancient erek. there’s a few jokes about rachel buying him designer underwear, and some debate about which plastic mask to pluck off the spencer’s gifts wall. finally, a well-dressed bill clinton gets hoisted by a gorilla out of the mall.

fortunately, there was a big sale on at the department store, so not that many people noticed.

at least, that was my explanation then.

i love nothing more than an ominous chapter ending

they catch a bus to ancient erek’s neighborhood. an empty bus. the animorphs paranoia is starting to seep in. it is pretty weird that ancient erek was exposed as an android in a mall, but nobody tried to stop them on the way out. the bus was empty, and now ancient erek’s neighborhood is also eerily quiet. jake tells rachel that when he and marco arrived at the mall, there were electrician’s trucks everywhere, and they were talking about the surveillance cameras going dead. pretty weird, especially considering the dressing room in the gap is an entrance to the yeerk pool.

“are we being protected or set up?” cassie asked.

always the question

tobias arrives — he spotted them getting off the bus! no one’s been following them, according to his hawk eyes. they fill him in: ancient erek’s on the fritz, and no one really knows why. but i’m sure they’re about to find out. they step inside ancient erek’s house to find mr. king, ancient erek’s “dad",” frozen on the couch.

“so it’s not just erek,” i said.

“no,” mr. king said without moving. “all the chee have been immobilized. holographic emitters down. motor centers down. logic centers, speech synthesizers, and chee-net all functioning normally.”

chee-net, for those of you curious cats, is inter-chee communication!

marco demorphs and they start asking questions. what could possibly have affected all the chee like this? oh, of course. the ship! the pemalite ship they buried in a deep ocean canyon thousands of years ago when they first arrived on earth! the chee-net connects through the ship’s onboard computer, and is the only way to disable their systems. but the ship is 15,000 feet below the surface. the pressure would “crush a human to the size of a guinea pig.”

it is reversible, but it’s a dangerous mission to get down there. also dangerous? being a paralyzed android. most are safe and out of sight, but there are two in immediate danger. one works as a janitor in a maximum security nuclear plant. he’s locked himself in the safe the facility uses to store radioactive material, but when the shift change happens at 10:00 PM, he’ll be discovered and exposed. the other chee is named lourdes. she’s homeless — chee need access to all levels of life — and has been sleeping in an abandoned warehouse. half the warehouse is being used to fence stolen goods, and they think the fence might be a controller. the real issue is the chee got word that the warehouse is going to be raided by the cops in twenty, and at least one human-controller is on the swat team assigned to the sweep. which is definitely bad news bears, because the yeerks cannot get their hands on chee tech.

mr. king does tell the animorphs that he can’t ask them to rescue lourdes — but they’re the animorphs, and rushing headfirst into danger to do the right thing is sort of their whole bag.

“so let me get this straight,” marco said. “we have to rescue a paralyzed chee from a stolen goods warehouse before the controllers get her. then we have to dive down to the bottom of the ocean, find the pemalite ship, somehow get inside it and turn off the signal before ten o’clock tonight so the yeerks don’t get the chee in the safe at the nuclear waste facility. is that pretty much it? or do we have to discover the fountain of youth and come up with a low-fat cookie that tastes as good as mrs. fields, too?”

“there’s one more thing,” erek said. “the pemalite’s ship’s signal will have been picked up by orbiting yeerk spacecraft. they may already be down there waiting for you.”

awesome!

no breaks for the animorphs! sure, they saved an entire race by outsmarting an omnipotent demongod using the power of love last week, but that doesn’t mean they get to kick back now!

as soon as ancient erek gives them the landmarks to guide them to the warehouse, the animorphs are out of there. tobias goes to find ax while jake, marco, cassie, and rachel book it towards the warehouse. they land and morph — jake in rhino, cassie in wolf, marco in gorilla, rachel in elephant — and start to charge towards the warehouse. and then the cops arrive. jake gives the order: marco’s in charge of grabbing the chee and getting out of there, and the rest will cover him.

it goes about as well as a group of four animals charging into a police raid on an abandoned warehouse can go. there’s a lot of gunfire and confusion. it’s dark. some people have knives! rachel hears a high-pitched yelp from inside — cassie! she’s been shot! wasting no time, rachel barges in. it’s chaos. marco gets stabbed. jake gets corralled outside and is surrounded by cop cars. cassie found lourdes, but she got shot in the back and can’t move her legs — and she can’t demorph around all these people. rachel’s big mad now (literally! she’s an elephant!) and she moves to her first priority: cassie. rachel stomps through the warehouse. she smashes into the crawl space beneath and keeps going, literally plowing through broken wood and rusty nails, and then she finds the guy who shot cassie.

he aims his gun right at her head, calls her an andalite, and pulls the trigger.

he gets her right above the eye. but she’s an elephant, so she just picks him up with her trunk and throws him out the window. it turns out that man is strake, the fence/controller the cops are here for. rachel can hear the cops identify him outside. she also hears them talk about the vet from the gardens wildlife park coming down to deal with all these animals.

some vet from the gardens’ wildlife park? i thought. oh, great. cassie’s mother was the vet from the gardens!

rachel calls out to marco for help. tobias arrives, then, distracting the cops long enough for marco to slip away. rachel finds cassie, laying over lourdes’ lap. they’re both drenched in blood! this is a kid’s book! rachel gingerly lifts cassie out of lourdes’s lap with her trunk, and then passes her carefully to marco, who is also profusely bleeding. he fills her in on what’s happening out front — jake got away and is coming around the back, because tobias snatched a gun and started flying in circles. ax is here, too!

rachel takes lourdes, and the four of them start to move out back. they come face to face with a cop — the controller cop mr. king warned them about. he lifts his gun and shoots them again, and then marco and cassie fall into the crawl space.

rachel is stunned. the controller-cop demands she hand over the chee, but she isn’t paying him any attention. she calls out to marco and cassie in thought-speak and gets no response. she looks into the crawl space. she can see them, crumpled below, covered in more blood.

rachel sees red. she lifts lourdes high in the air, prepared to use the chee as a bludgeoning weapon, when a small black-and-white creature comes skittering in from behind the controller-cop. a skunk. specifically, ax as a skunk. ax sprays the controller-cop and then gives the go-ahead. rachel slams lourdes down onto the controller, smashing him through the floor into the crawl space below. he twitches, but is still breathing, something rachel isn’t sure if she’s happy about.

yoinks

tobias flies in through the window. cassie’s mom is here and she’s got tranquilizer darts! they need to get out of there! rachel can’t leave, though. not until she retrieves marco and cassie. she reaches into the crawl space with her trunk and pulls marco out first. he cracks a joke, nearly unconscious, and rachel almost cries. she puts him on her back, and then reaches in again for cassie. she is unconscious, but her heart is still beating. she tells marco to hold onto cassie, and then a bleeding elephant carrying an android, a near-dead gorilla, and a near-dead wolf follow a little skunk out of the ravaged warehouse.

rachel blasts through a wall. the outside is still chaos. tobias starts flying around with his stolen gun, trying to distract cassie’s mom from getting a clear shot on rachel. ax pulls his spray stunt again, clearing the crowd long enough for the animorphs to put some distance between them and all the guns. lourdes suggest they split up — there’s a junkyard on the left, and an abandoned parking deck on the right. tobias guides jake to the right, and lourdes directs rachel to the left. no one is doing good. marco’s slipping, cassie’s crying out for rachel, and rachel is starting to feel all that blood loss. she manages to get them into the junkyard, and then she collapses.

everyone does manage to demorph in time, though, and they hide lourdes at her instruction in the junkyard. they can’t go back to cassie’s barn, in case her parents catch them, so they meet in tobias’s meadow instead. the first problem, which should have been an easy in-and-out mission, is over now. it’s time to think about the second: diving far beneath the ocean into depths none of their morphs can manage before 10:00 pm tonight. things are tense, to say the least.

rachel says if they don’t find a morph that can handle the pressure, it’ll be suicide. jake tells her she’s overreacting — and then immediately apologizes. it’s not going to be suicide, he says, because they aren’t going to go unless they can find a morph suited to the sea. they toss ideas around, none of them good, and then cassie has a blast of inspiration.

there’s a good bit here in which cassie shouts calamari, rachel thinks she’s talking about snails, ax tells a story of how he stepped on and then ate a snail once, and then cassie just shouts SQUID! i like these banter moments because it’s always a good reminder that they are just a bunch of kids trying to save the world. none of them know the actual word for squid — tobias points out that calamari is octopus — and there’s a lot of debate on which tv show featured a giant squid. by the end, they’re absolutely delirious with laughter, which is a nice feeling.

and then they think about how to acquire a giant squid, and the laughter dies down.

there are no giant squids in captivity! (i did google this - we’ve never held a live giant squid in captivity in all of recorded human history. isn’t that wild? the ocean is a hellmouth we are forbidden from exploring and i think it should stay that way.) the only creature that eats giant squid are the sperm whale, and there are no sperm whales in captivity, either. so. there’s no way to get the dna of either the sperm whale or the giant squid, which means there’s no way to get down to the pemalite ship before 10:00 pm. or ever.

the animorphs part ways: tobias and ax back into the woods, jake and marco to ancient erek’s to deliver the bad news, cassie and rachel to their respective homes. it’s a major bummer. the animorphs have never failed a mission before they’ve even gotten started.

on her way home, rachel hears some adults gossiping about the gorilla at the mall — and the news van that had arrived shortly after the gorilla disappeared. rachel’s paranoia kicks in and she practically jogs home. she calls jake’s house. no answer. she calls marco’s house. no answer. either they’re fine, or they got ambushed at ancient erek’s house. rachel, her sisters, and her mom watch a news story on the gorilla at the mall. everyone seems to believe it to be a harmless college kid prank. those college kids!

another news story begins.

“the entire town is trying to save a fifty-nine-foot whale that beachehd itself on the coastline less than fifteen minutes ago,” the anchorwoman chirped. “this is the first marine mammal stranding in the town’s history. let’s go live to the scene.”

rachel is in disbelief. she asks her mom what kind of whale it is. of course, it’s a sperm whale. rachel stands up from her chair. this cannot be a coincidence. someone out there wants them in the ocean, and wants them bad enough to beach a whale to do it. she calls cassie and tells her — in their little animorphs code, of course, because phones are the devil’s plaything — and then she tells her mom she’s going to cassie’s.

my mother barely looked up from her paperwork.

sometimes having a busy mom is a good thing.

:/

rachel morphs bald eagle behind her house. her first stop is ancient erek’s house, to make sure marco and jake didn’t walk into an ambush. she sees both of them leave ancient erek’s house unharmed, and lets them know about the whale and the plan to meet at cassie’s barn. jake has to go home first, but marco starts to morph behind someone’s house. rachel goes to find tobias, who tells her he’ll find ax. he also points out that this is sort of bullshit — they need a sperm whale and one suddenly washes up on the beach? something fishy is going on.

they all land as birds in a tree in cassie’s backyard. no point in morphing in and out - they’re going to have to fly to the beach anyway. jake arrives last with an update: everyone’s favorite intramural volleyball team, The Sharing, is going to be at the beach. they’re volunteering to help so they can look good in front of the camera crews. everyone’s on the same page: they’re definitely being manipulated. but the question still remains as to who’s pulling the strings. not the yeerks — they couldn’t get a live whale to beach itself. and it’s not the ellimist, either — this isn’t really his style. but there’s not a lot of time to sit around and discuss. the beached whale, cassie says, is slowly suffocating to death. they’ve got to get to the shore.

once at the beach, marco and jake talk about their time with ancient erek and mr. king. the pemalite ship is accomodating to any life form, since the pemalites considered everyone a friend. all someone has to do is touch one of the interface panels, and the ship analyzes the life-form and adjusts the environment accordingly. also, the access code to the main computer is six.

i sighed. you know, i’m sure the pemalites were wonderful people and all, but using a single-digit security code? i mean, good grief. what a bunch of idiots.

they trusted, cassie said simply.

they’re dead, i said, just as simply.

both true!

they land behind some dunes and demorph. of course, they can’t all go onto the beach and acquire the whale. that would be suspicious. two of them will acquire the whale, so they can go find the squid, and the rest will be dolphin backup. jake plucks some grass. time to draw straws. rachel exchanges a look with tobias. reluctantly, he helps her cheat, and tells her which straw is short. of course, it’s a double-edged sword. tobias picks the other short straw. even though he hates the water, he’s not going to let rachel go alone. she has a minor guilt crisis. jake lays out a plan: cassie and rachel will go to the whale, since cassie’s a well-known animal lover, and tobias will zip in and zip out as fast as he can.

before rachel can head down to the beach, jake grabs her arm and pulls her aside.

“don’t you ever do that again,” he said, far angrier than i’d suspected. “it’s your fault tobias is going. remember that next time you decide to make fools of the rest of us.”

ah, the complex relationship between a leader and a warrior. who are also family! which i think allows for a little more frustration and annoyance to color everything. and also probably a heightened sense of responsibility for each other.

cassie and rachel head down to the beach. they join a line of people splashing water onto the whale in buckets, which is doing basically nothing. it is one of the largest animals in the world. a bucket of water is a spray of spit. rachel acquires the dna — “feeling presumptuous and small and silly” while she does so — and then she branches off, returning to marco and jake and ax. they’re already in seagull morph, so she starts to join them. good thing, too — tobias gets stuck to the whale and starts to draw attention from assistant principal controller chapman. of course he’s there!

immediately, the seagulls start to create a diversion. rachel steals a pretzel, marco poops on assistant principal controller chapman’s head, and then rachel slams into tobias, effectively knocking him loose from the whale. a rock flies past, missing tobias by a feather. who threw it? who else. big brother tom, with a killer arm and hatred in his eyes.

yoinks

the animorphs fly out over the ocean. rachel feels similarly to me about it: it is an intimidating, awe-inspiring, frightening place. it is merciless and neutral about our existence.

there’s nothing you can say to the ocean. no mercy to be begged. no deals to be made. if we were weak or careless or stupid, it would smother us, crush us, bury us forever in miles of black, black water.

metal

they land out in the middle of the ocean, according to the chee’s directions, and begin to morph from seagull to human/andalite/hawk to dolphin and whale. the morph is wild. rachel just gets really big first, but stays human, which is a Sight to See. but then she gets the hang of it, and she feels fearless (taylor’s version). and why wouldn’t she? the ocean is home to a sperm whale.

now it’s time to find a giant squid

and…bring it to the surface?

rachel and tobias dive under the waves. they talk a little bit about killer squids and their many tentacles (and beaks!) and then tobias is like, so. what’s new?

i blurted out the only new thing i could think of. well, a guy named t.t asked me to go to the movies with him.

WHAT? what made me say that?

oh, rachel

i love this! i love this. i love this very incredibly awkward conversation happening between two kids who like each other juxtaposed with the fact that they’re sperm whales diving to find a giant squid. it’s so ya. tobias asks what t.t stands for, rachel says she doesn’t care, tobias says she probably should since she’s going out with him, rachel reveals she’s not going out with him, tobias asks why, rachel asks why he’s interested, tobias says he isn’t he’s just making conversation, and then rachel changes the subject. how are they going to catch the squid?

they split up, swimming around in the darkness of the ocean, looking for a giant squid and any sign of the pemalite ship. but, of course, whales need air. rachel starts to panic. i don’t know off the top of my head if applegate has ever specifically stated that rachel’s claustrophobic, but she always has a really difficult time in spaces that feel cloying and small and dark (like the moles and the ants). even though the ocean is miles and miles, she can’t see anything, and the pressure gets to her. she and tobias start to swim to the surface, and rachel freaks out.

we’d been down too long. we’d never reach the sky again. we were going to die in darkness, to sink and sink back to the cold, lightless, lifeless ocean floor.

buried alive in water.

hey kids could you lighten up back there

this book started with a police raid

but of course, this is still a children’s book and i don’t think we’re going to really lose an animorph until we’re at LEAST in the late 40s, so rachel and tobias emerge back into the open air. the dolphins are nowhere around, but they have been swimming in the ocean, so it’s not a huge surprise. reluctantly, they dive back down and split up. minutes later, rachel finds a giant squid — and far away, just barely within thought-speak radius, tobias finds the pemalite ship.

rachel gets suckered by the squid’s tentacles! it starts ripping away chunks of her flesh! the ocean is a nightmare hellscape! it’s also fucking gigantic. its head is the size of a school bus. she, again, feels like she’s drowning. and then tobias arrives! his echolocation clicks stun the squid long enough for rachel to break away. he tells her to swim to the surface for air, and she does so, devastated to leave him behind. as she swims towards the surface, cassie reaches out to her in thought-speak, and it’s through cassie’s encouragement that rachel is able to make it to the surface. everyone’s like where’s tobias??? rachel’s like down below! i have to go help him!

thanks, but no help necessary, tobias said.

tobias!

of course. just me and my squid. hah! hawk or whale, there is no prey i can’t take down. coming up. look out above.

rachel bites off a few of the squid’s arms, and then she and tobias hold it steady while everyone else acquires the morph. once rachel and tobias have acquired the dna, rachel remorphs whale and drags the squid a safe distance away. and then it’s time to morph squid. they have about two hours before the 10:00 pm cutoff. awesome.

the squid morph is just as horrifying as you’re imagining it to be. choice phrases include: “my internal organs were slithering away,” “sploot! sploot!”, and “my head imploded. just suddenly sagged, as my skull melted away.”

awesome!

time is not on their side. as always, as ever. but it’s more dangerous now. there is a point of no return: either they find the pemalite ship, or they turn back and abandon the mission. they can’t demorph underwater or they’ll get crushed, and they don’t really want to get stuck in giant squid morph forever. tobias has trouble relocating the pemalite ship — it’s dark underwater, okay, and squids don’t have echolocation — but that problem is solved by another. they animorphs spot a string of lights: eight yeerk ships, heading straight for the pemalite ship. follow that dolphin!

in a canyon, they find the pemalite ship. it looks like a cartoon dog! that is not a bit! the pemalites designed their ship to look like a cartoon pemalite. because they had a good sense of humor. the yeerk ships are still above the animorphs, so the squids slither forward and find the environmental adaptation panel ancient erek told them about. and yes, in fact, once jake presses his squidly little tentacle against the panel, the ship adjusts and offers them a decompression chamber big enough to fit six squid.

once inside the pemalite ship, each animorph is encased in their own little personal bubble of water. and that isn’t where the wonder stops. the interior of the pemalite ship is “a world of magic.”

lush green-and-purple grass carpeted the floor, forming patterns: swirls, checkerboards, picasso-like abstracts and van gogh flowers. trees and bushes in crayola colors grew in thickets and hushed groves. a sparkling river meandered through the center of the ship, cascading down into a gentle waterfall and a rippling lake below.

everywhere there were inexplicable, brightly colored, gaily lit machines that could only be toys of some sorts. beside us, wafting through the air, were things like long, feathered snakes. projected on the arched ceiling, far overhead, were patterns of clouds and skies like nothing on earth.

do y’all ever sit and mourn the reality in which humanity decided to chase joy instead of money

of course, the yeerks are closing in, so there’s no time to sit and play. the animorphs find the bridge — a giant tree with multicolored lights and panels — and punch in the security code. a very friendly voice greets them and is like, many thanks, friend! when you are finished with your business, consider joining us for a meal or a game! it’s very disney. ax begins to tap some buttons, and then the friendly voice announces that all normal chee functions have been restored.

and then … chee destruct sequence has been activated. are you sure this is what you want? all chee within range will self-destruct in fifteen minutes.

reader when i tell you i gasped

everyone starts freaking out! and then the hull of the ship becomes transparent. through the glass, they can see the inky blackness of the ocean, and the eight bug fighters waiting for them. and in the lead ship, in the front viewport, sits an evil andalite face.

SOUND THE ALARM / FINISH YOUR DRINK

VISSER THREE HAS ARRIVED

and then

y’all this book is about to get so fucked up and weird

(about to? hasn’t it been? yes!!)

the yeerks begin to back up their bug fighters to the outer hull, moving into the decompression chamber. the animorphs can’t morph out of squid because the yeerks are too close for comfort. and then!

“oh, dilemma! oh, drama! oh, the tension and excitement of it all!”

the voice was new. not thought-speak. high, shrill, grating.

the puppetmaster, rachel is quick to say. the one who orchestrated it all. a creature steps out from behind one of the trees in the pemalite ship. it moves on two legs and walks like a bird. it has a vaguely human-shaped head, intelligent and laughing eyes, and its entirely wrinkled “like your thumb after a long bath.” it then clocks each and every one of them:

• jake, the reluctant leader, jake the oh-so-tiresomely decent one. a sanctimonious killer: my least favorite kind

• marco the funny one! how’s mommy, marco? is she alive or is she dead? does she scream with the yeerk in her head?

• cassie, the hypocrite, ‘i don’t believe in violence until i do’

• aximili, the pitiful, pale shadow of his dead brother

• tobias. ah, yes, tobias. the boy not really so trapped as a bird, eh, but too gutless to resume life as a human

• rachel. my very favorite animorph

the creature introduces himself as the drode, a word in its language that means “wildcard.” jake figures it out quickly: crayak sent the drode. in response, the drode asks jake if he’s killed his big brother yet. this is a children’s book! yes. crayak sent the drode as payback for the animorphs’s victory with the iskroot. crayak doesn’t like any of the animorphs — except rachel, because she has potential.

yoinks!

the drode delivers a delightful villain monologue. it hasn’t broken any of the rules established by crayak and the ellimist, but it has created problems and opportunities. but, of course, it cannot stay to chat! the yeerks are here. tobias says it is killing them, by putting them in an impossible situation, but the drode says there’s always a way left. but if they don’t find it, well. not the drode’s problem.

it disappears behind a tree, and the decompression chamber continues to fill with hork-bajir and taxxons. and, of course, visser three. what are they going to do?

ink! cassie yelled.

of course! they fill their little water bubbles with ink so as to cloud the yeerks’ view, and then they demorph. ax and tobias are out first, since they only need to demorph, and the rest follow suit as quickly as they can. it’s a bloodbath. a hork-bajir manages to snatch tobias out of the air. rachel rips a taxxon apart with her grizzly hands. a tiger shreds a hork-bajir, ax cuts off a few arms, and a blade gets sunk into rachel’s hip. she staggers into a hork-bajir. everyone is injured and the animorphs are losing.

the drode steps back out from behind the tree and tries to strike a deal with rachel: kill jake, and crayak will take her under his wing. as if. she lunges for the drode, but it easily sidesteps her, sending her careening into a pair of hork-bajir. and then, faster than any other creature on the ship, a blur of steel and ivory steps towards the control panel.

ancient erek!!!!!!!!

he punches a few buttons and the pemalite ship’s “hostility containment program” is activated. everyone (except for ancient erek and the drode) freezes. ancient erek rescues tobias, and the drode approaches rachel one final time.

“if you ever find yourself desperate, rachel. at an end. in need. remember this: your cousin’s life is your passport to salvation in the arms of crayak.”

then it was gone.

the pemalite ship packs the yeerk army back onto their bug fighters. ancient erek escorts the animorphs out of the ship, and then moves it to a depth only an android could reach. all the kids return home and get grounded. rachel decides to keep the drode’s offer to herself — jake’s got enough on his plate to worry about, and rachel knows she would never, ever take his life.

the next day, rachel goes for a jog on the beach. t.t. approaches again, and asks her out one more time. she says no, he calls her a bad word, and tobias arrives on the scene. they exchange some jokes, and then rachel tells tobias she’s going to morph so she can fly around with him for a bit.

“keep an eye out for me.”

i always will, he said.

aw

REVIEW

4.5/5. a fascinating new character introduction right in the eleventh hour is such an applegate move. we got to learn more about the pemalites, my favorite extinct species. and an absolutely juicy offer was laid on the table. y’all remember the first time the ellimist arrived, and the animorphs got a glimpse of a future where rachel was working for visser three? every day we move closer and closer to that reality. she has the haircut now. and the in. just something to think about.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

• what eldritch horror do you believe lives in the ocean?

PREDICTIONS

• marco’s mom

• tobias’s mom (is she dead? she might be dead.)

• well the drode is for sure going to come back and fuck some shit up!!!

that’s all i have for you this week, folks! drink some water and take a lap. tell your friends you appreciate them and you’d never take their life in exchange for safety in the arms of a giant one-eyed monster. til next time!