Tobias flew with me to The Gardens. I wanted to be alone, really, but Tobias is a hundred times more experienced than any of us in the air. He knew the winds and clouds and thermals. He could help me fly faster.
We'd had less than an hour and a half. By the time we were flying above the animal habitats of The Gardens, we would have less than an hour.
Half an hour to get back. That left half an hour to do what I had come to do, and to rescue Rachel and Ax back at the mansion.
There was no time to waste.
"Are you going to tell me what we're here for?" Tobias grumbled.
"Right down there," I said.
Below us was an outdoor habitat of mixed grasses, a muddy wallow, and a water hole. Four shapes were visible in the habitat. Four large shapes that looked like fugitives from the age of dinosaurs.
"Rhinos?" Tobias asked incredulously.
"Yeah. I need a morph that can go straight through those fences, through the doors, and take a couple of bullets if need be. You have a better idea?"
"Nope. Not me. But how are you going to get close enough to acquire one of those things?"
"Two of the rhinos are off at the far end of the habitat. The crowds may not able to see them all that well."
"You're just going to go right in?"
"There's no time for anything else."
"0h, man. Look, at least let me provide a distractions I hesitated. Tobias was waiting for me to say yes or no. What if I was wrong? Again? Still, I could use a distraction. "Yeah, okay. But don't get hurt. You hear? Do not get hurt."
Tobias peeled off and I floated down, down, like going down a spiral staircase. I aimed right for the broad back of the biggest rhinoceros. I flared my wings, reached out with my talons, and landed as gently as I could.
The big beast barely twitched.
I stood there, balanced on his back, my talons holding lightly to the thick old gray leather. So far, so good. But you can't acquire new DNA when you're in a morph. I had to be human to do it. And that was going to be tricky.
I looked off toward the high railing where people were watching the rhinos meander. With my falcon vision, they seemed shockingly close. I could see the color of their eyes. I could see a loose button on one guy's shirt. Of course, they
only had human eyes. They couldn't see nearly as well as I could.
It doesn't matter, I told myself grimly. No time to worry. Do it.
I began to demorph. On the rhino's back. My falcon feathers began to melt and run together, confusing their neat geometric patterns. My talons grew less sharp, thicker, clumsier, with extra toes beginning to grow. I heard a deep, internal grinding sound as my human bones began to stretch out of the hollow bird bones.
I was already twice as heavy on the rhinoceros's back. Would he throw me off and trample me? No time to worry. Would the people notice what was happening? No time to worry. I had to trust Tobias.
And that's when I saw him swoop down from the sky and snatch a cotton candy from a little girl's hand as easily as he snatched mice from the grass.
Swooop! And off he went with the bright pink fluff ball. The girl yelled, the people around all gaped and laughed and pointed. Tobias began to put on an aerial display worthy of the Blue Angels at an air show.
No one was watching me as my lumpy human shape emerged from the sleek falcon's body. But I was still on the back of the rhino. On the back of a two-thousand-pound behemoth with a three-foot-long horn.
The rhino moved! But he was just ambling over to greener grass.
I continued to demorph. Then, all of a sudden, the rhino noticed.
"Ffmraha!" he snorted. He broke into a trot. I had no hands yet. No talons anymore, either. I rolled off and lay face down in the dust.
Come on, Jake, morph!
The rhinoceros towered above me. It was like lying down on the ground beside a truck. He blinked one eye at me. And then he lowered his massive horn.
Sniff. Sniff.
That face, that horn, hovered inches from me, as the rhinoceros sniffed me and I prayed he wouldn't impale me. He was growing more agitated. He was upset by what he was watching. No surprise. It would have upset me, too, watching a boy squirm and mutate his way out of a bird.
And then I had a hand. I stuck it out, half-blind, and touched the horn.
I wrapped my still-emerging fingers halfway round it, and I focused with all my mind.
When you acquire animals, they go into a sort of trance. Except sometimes they don't. And if
this was one of those times, the rhino would trample me and use me for target practice with his horn.
I focused on the beast. I focused and felt him become a part of me.
We raced back from The Gardens. I was exhausted. Tobias was exhausted. We had no choice. Time was running out.
The wind had shifted. It wasn't in our faces, but it was strong from the south and we were flying west. We kept having to fight our way back on course.
Marco and Cassie were waiting in the trees across the road from Fenestre's front gate. Their time in morph was short, too. As short as Rachel's and Ax's time.
"Marco! Cassie!" I yelled down. "Anything happen?"
"Yeah, the clock kept ticking," Marco said.
"We noticed one thing," Cassie said. "Thank goodness for these eyes. We saw you were right not to try and sneak inside in some kind of insect morph. There's a band of poison around each door. And some kind of bug zapper in the windows. That must be what shocked Rachel. I think Mr. Fenestre has some psychological problems."
"He can afford them," Marco said. "Now what are we doing to get Rachel and Ax out of there?"
"l'm going to knock down the fences, kick in the door, and stomp anything or anyone that gets in my way," I said.
"Cool." Marco laughed with a touch of his now-strained humor. "Rachel would approve. But how?"