I could see Rachel's towering gray bulk just a-head. The stairs were near. I saw Marco with Tom.
We were going to make it!
And then he stepped out daintily from a group of Hork-Bajir.
He seemed almost harmless in his Andalite body. A gentle half-deer, half-human-looking creature with bluish fur and an extra set of eyes on comical stalks.
Visser Three didn't look all that scary. Not compared to the Hork-Bajir, the Taxxons, or even our own Earth-animals.
But Visser Three had an Andalite body. He had an Andalite's power to morph. And he had been all over the universe acquiring the genetic patterns of monsters like nothing ever seen on Earth.
A Taxxon slithered up beside Visser Three and spoke. It was a weird, half-whistling sound. "Ssssweer trrreeesswew eeeesstrew."
Visser Three said nothing. He just looked at me with the vertical slits that were his eyes.
<This Taxxon fool says you are wild animals,> Visser Three said. <He wants to know if he and his brothers can eat you.> He laughed silently. <But I know you are not animals. I know who and what you are. So. Not all of you Andalites died when I burned your ship.>
It took me a couple of seconds to realize what he meant. Then it hit me. Of course! He thought we were Andalites. He'd guessed that we were morphs, not real animals. And he knew that the Andalites were the only species with morphing technology.
<I compliment you on getting this far. But it will accomplish nothing. Because now, my brave Andalite warriors, it is time. Time to die.>
He began to morph.
<I acquired this body on the fourth moon of the second planet of a dying star. Like it?> I realized I'd been wrong to be hopeful.
We were not going to make it.
From Visser Three's Andalite body, the creature grew. Tall as a tree, towering over even Rachel. Eight massive legs. Eight long, spindly arms, each ending in a three-fingered claw. And from the place where the top set of arms grew came the heads.
Heads. Plural. Eight of them. This creature had a thing for the number eight.
Even the Hork-Bajir-Controllers backed away. Even they didn't want to be near Visser Three when he morphed this way.
But the Taxxons edged in closer, crowding around their leader like a pack of hungry dogs looking for table scraps.
I was frozen in terror. Stunned. Even the tiger that was a part of me was confused and worried.
I had started to think that with our morphed bodies we could take on anything. But we couldn't take on this monster. Not and survive.
<Run!> I yelled to the others. <Up the stairs!>
Cassie nudged two of the humans from the cages and tossed back her head. They figured out what she wanted and climbed on her back. Then she galloped toward the stairs.
<Yes, run,> Visser Three crowed. <It makes a more challenging target.>
Then, Visser Three struck.
From one of the heads a round, spinning ball of flame erupted. A ball of flame that flew like a missile.
It skimmed through the air and splatted against the back of one of the women riding Cassie.
"Ahhhh!" She fell off, screaming and rolling around to put out the flames. Cassie kept going with only one rider. She reached the base of the stairs.
<Target practiced Visser Three laughed. He fired fireball after fireball, one head after another.
One singed my shoulder and flew past. One hit Rachel in the ear and made her scream in my head and trumpet in terror.
The air was full of fire.
<We have to get out of here!> Marco yelled.
<Yes, run! Run for the stairs!> I repeated. <Rachel! Get moving! Clear a path!>
A big swarm of us was heading for the stairs, but the Taxxons had closed in around us. Anyone that got away from Visser Three was swarmed over by the Taxxons.
I saw Tom out of the corner of my eye. He was swinging his fists at a pair of Taxxons that were circling around him. Tom couldn't hurt them, but he was trying just the same.
Rachel ran over and plowed into one of them, crushing him beneath her tree-trunk legs. Marco threw his arms around the second Taxxon and twisted till it split open, spilling its putrid guts all over the floor.
Rachel had hit the bottom few stairs and stopped. Elephant bodies are great for some things. But they are useless for climbing stairs.
<Morph back!> I told Rachel.
She began to shrink almost immediately, but there wasn't time to wait until the morphing was complete. Rachel started up the stairs as a shifting mass of gray and pink, part human, part elephant, staggering on weird, half-finished legs and dragging a shriveled trunk that made her pretty face into something awful to see.
We ran. But it was impossible.
By the time we had climbed a few dozen stairs, there were only a few free humans and two free Hork-Bajir with us. The rest had all been recaptured or burned.
A fireball exploded at my feet and I snarled. But still we retreated.
We were a hundred feet up the stairs when the last two freed Hork-Bajir were brought down by the Visser's fireballs. They fell in flames.
The Visser was climbing the stairs now, all alone. He was so big he barely fit on the stairs. I knew when we reached the point where the walls closed in around the stairs that we would be safe from Visser Three. Glancing up, I saw that Cassie was almost to safety above us, with one human rider.
The rest of us, along with Tom and a pitiful handful of freed humans, were bunched together.
Visser Three began pelting the staircase ahead of us with fire. We were trapped. Fire ahead. Visser Three himself behind.
"No," I heard a familiar voice say. "No, you filthy creep. You aren't going to win this time." It was Tom.
All alone, he charged at Visser Three, armed with nothing but his fists. One of the Visser's arms came down and swung at him.
<Tom!> I cried. My tiger body roared with all its might. But the sound was lost in the noise of crying humans and whistling Taxxons.
I saw Tom stagger from the Visser's blow.
I saw him fall from the edge of the stairs.
I went a little crazy.
I was on the Visser before I knew what was happening. On him, digging my claws into his flesh. I twisted up and behind one of his eight heads.
The tiger in me knew what to do. I sank my teeth into his neck and clamped my powerful jaws and held on.
Another head turned back and aimed a fireball at me. I dodged the first fireball. The second burned my flank. I jumped clear.
The Visser roared in pain. I roared in hatred.
And we ran, ran, ran up those stairs with a hundred nightmares on our heels.
We ran. Exhausted and burned and terrified, we ran.
Visser Three had made one mistake. He was too large in his morph to follow us much farther up the stairs.
I heard Visser Three yell something as we finally got away. He said, <I'll kill you all, Andalites. Run away, it doesn't matter! I'll kill you.>
Actually, I think it did matter. We hadn't exactly destroyed Visser Three, but we had come out of it alive, we Animorphs.
The final count was exactly one human freed — the woman who rode Cassie's back up out of that hellish pit.
And Cassie had gotten away clean. It had been the suspicious Controller policeman who had grabbed her. He was the only Controller to know her name, where she lived, and that she had been spying on The Sharing.
Cassie said we didn't have to worry about him anymore. She didn't want to talk about what had happened to him.
As for Tom… My brother.
Tom was not freed.
I was lying in my own bed, shaking and shivering and crying from the aftereffects of terror, when I heard him come home later that night.
He never knew that I was the tiger. He never knew how close I had come to freeing him. He was a Controller again. The Yeerk was in his head once more.
Cassie and Marco and Rachel and I had all made it up those stairs. We had emerged into the hallway of a school that would never seem the same to us again.
And Tobias? He survived, too.
It was almost morning when I was awakened from dead sleep by feathery beating on my window.
I opened it and Tobias flew in.
"You made it," I said. "Oh, man, you had me scared. I figured you were still trapped down there. I mean, I thought you could probably find somewhere to hide in that cavern, but I knew you'd been morphed for a long time. I was worried you wouldn't be able to morph back without getting caught. It's good to see you."
<Good to see you, too, Jake,> he said. <How are the others?>
"Alive," I said. "Alive. I guess that's all that counts." <Yes. That is all that matters.>
"Come on, Tobias," I said. "Morph back. You can stay here. I'll even let you have the bed. I could sleep on nails, I'm so tired."
He didn't say anything. And I guess in my heart I'd known it all along. I just didn't want to admit it.
"Come on, Tobias," I said again. "Morph back." <Jake… >
"Just come on, back to human now, dude. No more flying tonight."
<I hid in the cavern for a while,> he said. <They didn't see me. But I had to stay out of sight till I could get out. Jake… it took too long. Too long. More than two hours.>
I just stared at him. At his laser-focus eyes, at his wicked beak and sharp talons. And at his wings. At the broad, powerful wings that let him fly.
<I guess this is me from now on,> Tobias said.
I knew there were tears falling down my cheeks, but I didn't care anymore. <It's okay, Jake. Like you said, we're alive.>
I went to the window and looked up at the stars. Somewhere up there, around one of those cold, twinkling stars, was the Andalite home world. Somewhere up there was… hope.
<They'll come,> Tobias said. <The Andalites will come. And until then… >
I nodded and wiped away my tears. "Yeah," I said. "Until then, we fight."
