Most Omnipotent Leader! Catastrophe has stuck our ranks! The alien is full of bizarre lightless caverns and caustic fluids! Two of the weaker males have succumbed! But even though some of us are blinded, we are the boldest of the bold! We will march forward to the beating organ, stop it, and embark on our plan to conquer the universe!
— From the log of the Helmacron Females
I couldn’t see my friends by the time they arrived. The acid had splashed into my eyes, eaten away at the vulnerable eyeball, painfully blinding me. But I heard a clumsy flap, flap way overhead. Wings. Bat wings. The perfect morph for “seeing” in the dark.
<Stay away from the acid!> I shouted to them.
Tseeew!
Tseeew!
<And the Helmacrons.>
<Hey, that was close!> Cassie complained. <We’ve got to figure out a way to take the Helmacrons’ toys away.>
<What can you see?> I demanded.
<There’s only one way out,> Cassie reported. <We’re going to have to go back up the esophagus. You too, Rachel.>
Great. That meant I had to morph a bird or bat. That meant passing through my human form — and hoping I wasn’t burned alive in the process.
I braced myself for a new phase of pain.
<Okay, I’m going to morph out.>
<Rachel, try to do it as fast as you can,> Tobias said in private thought-speak.
I began to shrink. My trunk collapsed into my face with shocking, slamming force. I fought to keep my half-formed nose and mouth up in the air.
Vaguely, I was aware of the sound of Dracon beam blasts and my friends’ thought-speak voices. I tried to focus on them. Anything to distract me from the blistering agony.
<Prince Jake, I believe we have a problem,> Ax was saying. <I’m not sure we can go back the way we came. Some sort of circular muscle has closed off the passageway.>
<A sphincter!> Cassie, of course.
<So, we’ll tell Marco to open it,> Jake said.
<Think again. That muscle keeps food from traveling up the esophagus. It’s involuntary. Like breathing. Marco can’t control it.>
<We’re trapped?> Jake said.
<Trapped above a sloshing pool of acid,> Cassie confirmed.
<Something else,> Tobias said. <A couple of the Helmacrons aren’t moving.>
<Dead?> Jake asked.
<Digested.>
“Agggghhhh!” I yelled.
My leathery hide had smoothed, softened into human skin. Was I fully human? Must have been, because an intense agony hit me, made me gasp and swoon.
My skin was burning! And it felt like I was being rubbed with red-hot sandpaper. Eaten away by flame and acid. Tightening, as if it were shrinking away from the bone, shriveling into ash.
I gritted my teeth. Morph! I ordered myself. But my brain was foggy with pain. I couldn’t … concentrate. I was nauseous and sweaty and my heart was beating way too fast.
<Keep going, Rachel!> Cassie cried somewhere far, far away.
<I hear the humans over there!> one of the Helmacrons shouted.
Tseeew!
Tseeew!
Through the incredible pain seeped anger. I was starting to get incredibly ticked off. Marco slowly digesting me, Helmacrons shooting at me. No way was I dying here, like a piece of bacon in a frying pan. And that meant I couldn’t pass out. Had to morph.
Bat, bat, bat, I thought.
<Go, Rachel!> Jake called.
Then —
Tseeew!
<Agggghhhh!> Jake yelled.
KER-SPLASH!
<Watch out, they’re shooting at us!> Cassie shouted.
Tseeew!
<I have been hit!> Ax.
KER-SPLASH!
Tseeew!
<Cassie, watch out!> Tobias called.
KER-SPLASH!
Tseeew!
KER-SPLASH!
<Aaaaahhhhh!> Cassie yelled.
<Aaaaahhhhh!> Jake yelled.
<Aaaaahhhhh!> Tobias yelled.
<Aaaaahhhhh!> Ax yelled.
“What is going on?> I asked foggily. But I could see. They were demorphing. Cassie quickly. The other three more slowly.
<Don’t — > Cassie yelled as her human lips and teeth began to form. “Morph!”
“What!” I screamed wildly, kicking to keep my face above the acid, desperately chanting Bat, bat, bat in my head. “My skin is bubbling off!”
“Give me a second,” Cassie grunted in a strange, pain-filled voice. “Then, climb on my back.”
Cassie was growing. In the weird red half-light, it looked as if a rock were rising out of the churning liquid. And then the rock was twice my size. Then double that. Bigger and bigger.
Cassie was going humpback whale.
Our own personal aircraft carrier appearing out of the sea. Maybe not impervious to the acid, but tougher-skinned than a human.
Now fully human, Jake crawled onto Cassie’s still growing back. Then he leaned down and pulled me up, my raw skin screaming at his touch. I lay back, gasping. Tobias was back in hawk form. He took to the air, hovering over us. Ax’s hooves and weak Andalite arms weren’t much use on the slippery back of the whale, so Jake held on to him.
<I am beginning to think this mission was foolish,> Ax said, glancing with stalk eyes at the patch of burned fur on his hindquarters. <Marco’s body seems to be doing an excellent job of defending itself.>
<Against us,> Cassie said.
“Two more of the Helmacrons are dead?” I asked, lips and teeth and tongue about the only part of me not fried. “And excuse me while I try to morph and demorph to get whole,” I added.
“Yeah,” Jake answered, still panting. “Two more down.”
“Arrivederci and good-bye,” I said bitterly. And then the changes began. Didn’t matter what I became. So I chose grizzly. Just to feel like I hadn’t been totally defeated.
<Well, not dead, exactly,> Ax said now. <Remember, Visser Three told us the Helmacrons are fungible. Kill one, and his mind is absorbed by the rest of the species.>
<Whatever,> Jake said. <The good thing is they’re not shooting at us.>
Tseeew!
Tseeew!
<Ouch!> Cassie said. <The bad thing is that you’re wrong. And that I’m an awfully big target.>
<We’ve got to get out of here,> I said. Briefly bear and a little less horrified. <What’s the plan?>
<Capture the Helmacrons and leave,> Tobias stated, coming to land on the whale.
“Great,” Jake said. “How?”
<Attack,> I said.
“Attack with what?” Jake asked. “We tried. They’re armed. We’re not.”
<Morph shark?> Ax suggested.
“Could work.”
<Look out.> Tobias. <The Helmacrons are up to something.>
I squinted into the gloom. All I could see was a bright glow, like a welder’s flame. Time to demorph, get some better eyesight.
Tobias took off again, disappearing into the black. A moment later, he was back. <Looks like they’re trying to blast through the cavern with a Dracon beam.>
<You mean, blast through Marco’s stomach,> Cassie said.
<What’s on the other side of the stomach lining?> I asked, balancing precariously on her big, curved back through the demorph. <Where do they think they’re going?>
<Should be —> Cassie hesitated. <Um. A blood vessel?>
“Good.” Jake sounded relieved. “Then we have nothing to worry about. The Helmacrons wouldn’t go into a blood vessel. They’re not fish. They’d drown.”
<So they’re stuck.> Tobias.
“Stuck unless we ask Marco to throw up,” I said, gingerly running whole fingers up an intact arm.
Jake nodded. “Which means we’d be vomit, too. Maybe they’ll surrender once they realize they’re cornered.”
<Surrender is better than drowning or frying.>
<Hang on!> Tobias shouted. <One just went into the blood vessel!>
“What? No way!” Jake exclaimed.
“We need
to be closer!” I yelled.
Cassie powered her tail and flippers. The rest of us held on, fingers and talons anxiously gripping.
The Helmacrons were gathered around a long slice in Marco’s stomach. The slice had closed, the way a cut automatically does. But I could half-see the skin oozing a red liquid.
Blood.
What was happening to Marco? Was he experiencing intense pain? Lying in bed, at home or in a hospital, groaning, expecting a gruesome death?
Whatever, he had to be lonely. And scared. And extremely angry.
“Marco must have the worst case of heartburn in history,” Jake said. A joke. But Jake sounded worried, too.
The Helmacrons turned away from the opening to face us.
Tseeew!
<Agggghhhh!> Cassie shouted. <My eye!>
“Stop shooting!” Jake shouted at the Helmacrons. “We can get you out of here. Surrender now before any more of you die!”
<Brave and worthy Helmacrons do not surrender!> one of them yelled. <It is you who must capitulate to us! Grovel, humans!>
“Why?” Jake asked. “Without our help, you’ll never get out of this stomach alive. If you refuse to cooperate, you’re going to die here.”
“Neep! Neep! Neep!” <We will be victorious!> one of them shouted. <And when we rule the universe, we will not spare your lives! Not even so you may scrape our boots!>
The Helmacron stepped forward. He pulled apart the slice in Marco’s stomach. Began to wiggle in through the flaps of skin. Then —
SLLLLLUUUSSSH!
With an awful sucking sound, he disappeared.
<To victory!>
SLLLLLUUUSSSH!
Another Helmacron disappeared through the stomach lining.
<To glory!>
SLLLLLUUUSSSH!
Another, gone.
<To still the beating organ!>
SLLLLLUUUSSSH!
Another.
Now there were only five left. Four had already entered Marco’s bloodstream as calmly as I would step onto an escalator at the mall.
It was horrifying.
<What are they doing?> Cassie asked, trancelike.
I couldn’t look away. None of us could. We were exhausted, from the rapid-fire morphing, the acid bath painfest, the utter strangeness of being inside the human body.
We did nothing to stop the Helmacrons.
<Maybe it’s a kamikaze mission,> Tobias suggested. <Maybe they don’t care if they die as long as they kill Marco.>
“But they’re going to drown before they get to Marco’s heart!” I said.
“It’s suicide,” Jake agreed. “Pointless. Crazy. Doesn’t make any sense.”
<Nothing these beings do makes any sense,> Ax pointed out.
Two more Helmacrons wiggled through the cut. Only two were left in the stomach now.
<To the cowardly heart of the swollen alien!>
SLLLLLUUUSSSH!
That sound. I was going to hear it in my nightmares.
“Will it hurt Marco to have them in his bloodstream?” Jake asked suddenly.
<They should suffocate quickly,> Cassie said. <And then they should be broken down and washed out like any waste.>
SLLLLLUUUSSSH!
The last of the Helmacrons disappeared through the cut.
<Another possibility occurs to me,> Ax said.
“What possibility?” Jake demanded.
<Perhaps our basic assumption is incorrect.>
<What assumption?> Tobias said. <You go into an airless environment, you suffocate. Where’s the big debate?>
<The bloodstream isn’t airless,> Cassie said. <Blood contains oxygen. The main purpose of blood is to carry oxygen around the body.>
“Yeah, but you’d have to be a fish to breathe it,” Jake argued.
<You’d need specialized lungs.>
“How do we know Helmacrons aren’t fish?” I asked, knowing in a flash that we’d royally screwed up. “The Helmacron home world could be an aquarium somewhere in Iowa for all we know.”
<They walk on dry ground,> Tobias said.
“Maybe they’re, you know, those animals that can live in water and on land,” I suggested. “Like frogs. Or turtles.”
<Amphibians,> Cassie said.
<Or maybe they do not breathe at all,> Ax said.
“How can you be alive and not breathe?” I argued.
Ax blinked his main eyes at me. <Trees are alive and they do not actually breathe.>
“If Helmacrons don’t breathe, why do they have noses?” Jake.
<It is possible the organ has another use,> Ax said. <Although it is hard to imagine what it would be.>
“This from a boy who eats with his feet,” I said dryly.
Jake sighed. “Are you telling me the Helmacrons we just saw walk through a hole in Marco’s stomach aren’t dead?”
<They don’t really die,> Cassie said miserably. <Fungible, remember?>
“Whatever!” Jake bellowed. “Are you telling me we have to go after them?”
<The Helmacrons’ physiology is unusual,> Ax mused. <I observed that they were unusually buoyant in the stomach fluids. It is almost as if they are —>
“Cork,” I interrupted.
“Or mushrooms,” Cassie said.
Great. So, how do we go after a bunch of mushrooms?”
“Dolphins?” I suggested.
<Dolphins have to surface to breathe,> Cassie said. <And we won’t be able to surface in a vein. The only possible morph is shark.>
<I think so,> Cassie said uneasily. <I vaguely remember hearing some scientist interviewed on NPR once. She said plasma evolved from seawater. Plasma and seawater have the same basic properties.>
<The shark’s gonna be hard to control,> Tobias said. <We’re surrounded by blood, folks.>
“We have to try,” I said. “If Marco dies, so do we. We’ve got to stop the Helmacrons.”
Jake raised his eyebrows at me. “That didn’t sound too self-serving.”
“I don’t care if it did,” I said harshly. “We’ve got to survive. The Yeerks, remember? That whole save humanity bit? The Helmacrons aren’t the baddest aliens on Earth.?Just the most annoying. And remember,” I added, “we have no proof the Helmacrons aren’t working with the Yeerks this time. Or that they won’t decide to in the very near future. In which case, we are very ancient history.”
<Rachel is correct,> Ax said. <For all we know, Visser Three put the Helmacrons up to this foolish scheme. Perhaps it is simply a way of diverting our attention while something far more serious occurs in the outside world.>
Silence. If what Ax and I were saying was true, we were finished.
Okay, Rachel, block out the fear and deal with the Helmacrons. Now.
“Okay, we go shark,” Jake said. “But I want everyone concentrating on controlling the morph.”
One by one, we tumbled down off Cassie’s back.
“Agh.” I moaned as the acid hit my fresh, renewed skin.
I heard the others gasp and groan as they hit the liquid.
We began to morph, Cassie to demorph first. Almost immediately, my legs fused together right down the middle. I fought to stay afloat as my legs stretched out and out, forming a long, powerful tail.
Half-girl. Half-fish. Mermaid Rachel.
Then the teeth began to grow. Row after row of small but very sharp teeth. My eyes migrated down to my cheeks. My cheeks exploded outward, forming a dumbbell-shaped head. The pain of the acid bath drained away as the rough sandpaper skin of the shark grew over my own tender human flesh.
I was almost enjoying the morph. Liked the tough skin. Liked getting bigger.
Then the shark’s mind infiltrated my own.
And I completely lost control.
Blood!
So close!
Find the prey. Kill the prey!
I powered my tail, swam rapidly toward the overpowering smell. Sharks can smell one drop of blood in a
vast ocean reeking with life. But this smell! So rich, so strong.
I turned tightly. Poked my strange head into a tight opening and pushed through.
A narrow space. A few inches on one side. A few inches on the other. The shark didn’t care. Sharks have no fear.
And the smell! So much blood!
I swam with the current, crossing frantically from one side of the confining space to the other. The prey — where was it? I was confused. I should see the prey silhouetted against the sunlight above.
But there was no sunlight.
And the blood was everywhere!
Imagine a drug addict awash in a sea of drugs.
Ax anywhere near a Cinnabon.
The prey is here! the shark brain shouted. It’s everywhere! But … where?
The shark could hear a low thump, thump. The stomach gurgling. It could see walls sloping above, sloping below. Contracting and expanding ever so slightly.
The shark could sense the electricity given off by other living things. Could sense a strong, surrounding hum. And four more weaker pulses.
I twisted my head, spinning my entire body in the process.
There!
A shark surrounded by, immersed in, blood!
Prey.
I attacked!
Lunged with my huge mouth open. Clamped down, tore with my teeth, tossed my head.
<Aaaaahhhh!> something cried in my head. <Who’s biting me? Geez, a chunk of my tail is gone! Hey, I was using that!>
That voice — it sounded familiar. Jake. Jake! I’d attacked him!
Suddenly, I remembered who I was. Rachel. I struggled against the shark brain. Fought to regain control. Tobias had warned us. Stupidly, arrogantly, I’d thought he was being overly cautious.
I’d been wrong.
<Jake, you okay?> I asked. <I — I lost control.>
<Yeah, I’m okay. I’m having a hard time calming the shark’s mind, too,> Jake said. <The blood is driving it crazy.>
<Cassie? Tobias? Ax? You guys in the driver’s seat?>
<I’m cool,> Tobias said.
<I am in control.> Ax.
<We need to focus on something else,> Cassie said tensely. <Keep our own, human minds alert.>
We swam on. First Jake. Then Cassie, Ax, Tobias, and me. Concentrating on the goal — stop the Helmacrons — to avoid eating one another alive.
The current dragged us along the narrow tunnel of blood. A tunnel not completely dark, but extremely dim.