For Michael and Jake

  CONTENTS

  TITLE PAGE

  DEDICATION

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  A LETTER TO THE FANS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  COPYRIGHT

  My name is Rachel.

  I knew what was coming. I knew.

  I’d seen it in Jake’s eyes.

  And you know what? I was scared.

  I never thought I would be. Cassie thinks I’m fearless. Marco thinks I’m reckless. Tobias … well, Tobias loves me.

  I guess they all do, in different ways. Jake, too. But Jake had to do the right thing.

  I felt sorry for him, you know? He’s carried the weight so long. He’s made hard decisions. None as hard as this maybe. I didn’t blame him, not even for a minute.

  But I was scared.

  I guess no one wants to die. I guess everyone is scared when the time comes.

  We were so close. We were right there, right at the finish line, I’d already survived so many times when I shouldn’t have. It seemed unfair. To come this far, get this close …

  Jake gave me the job because he knew that only I could do it. Would do it. Ax might have, sure, but he was needed for his skills. Me, I’m not the computer genius. I’m the one you send when you need someone to be crazy, to do the hard thing.

  I don’t know whether I’m proud of that or not.

  I was Jake’s insurance policy. He thought maybe he wouldn’t have to use me. He hoped, anyway. But down deep he knew, and I knew, and we both hid the truth from the others because Cassie couldn’t let Jake make that decision, and Tobias couldn’t let me, and those two, by loving us, would have screwed every­thing up.

  It was a war, after all. A war we had to win.

  We hadn’t asked the Yeerks to come to Earth. They made that call on their own. They’re a parasitic species, not very big or impressive to look at, just these snail-like things that can enter your head through your ear. They have a capacity to anesthetize the inner ear enough to allow them to burrow through the soft tissue. It still hurts but not as much as it should.

  They dig their way straight to your brain and then flatten themselves out, spread themselves down into the crevices, tie directly into your synapses. They take control. Absolute control.

  They read your thoughts, they sense your emotions. What your eyes see, they see. What your tongue tastes, they taste. If your hand moves, it’s because they moved it. If you speak, it is the Yeerk who has spoken through you, made you into a ventriloquist’s dummy.

  Over the course of years they spread like a virus. Invisible. Undetectable.

  They are your teacher, your pastor, your best friend. They are the police officer, the TV newsman, the soldier. Anyone.

  Jake’s parents had recently been taken; they were human-Controllers — people controlled by Yeerks.

  Jake’s brother Tom, my cousin, had been a Controller for a long time. He was a powerful Yeerk. Jake still cared for him, still hoped somehow he could be saved.

  Jake had sent me away with Tom.

  I understood. I approved. If Jake hadn’t sent me I’d have gone anyway.

  Still, though, I was scared.

  I had power myself. We all did. The strange, unsettling power to absorb DNA from any living creature, to then alter our physical bodies to become that creature.

  I’ve been a whole zoo, you know. Everything from a fly to an elephant. Bat. Owl. I’ve flown, way up in the sky with eagle wings. I’ve flown up there with Tobias. Way up in the clouds. If there’s something better than that, well, I never found it.

  It’s not magic. Just technology. Of course technology always seems like magic at first. Haul a tenth-century knight into the modern age and show him your cell phone or your TV or your computer or your car. Magic.

  This technology came from the Andalites. The Andalites are enemies of the Yeerks, and I guess allies of ours, though right at the moment they were more likely to annihilate Earth than the Yeerks were. You know the old saying, “With friends like these, who needs enemies?”

  Anyway, it began with a chance meeting. An Andalite prince named Elfangor crashed his shot-up fighter in our path. Coincidence? No, history. And a helping hand from the Ellimist who of course never lends a helping hand.

  Elfangor died, but not before he told us what was happening and gave us the morphing technology.

  I’ve been a rat. A dolphin … oh, man, do they have fun. That rush when you’re zooming straight up through the water, when you see the ripply surface of the sea, when you blow through that barrier and soar through the air … And then, splash! And do it all over again.

  So, anyway, we decided we had to try and stop the Yeerks. Jake and Tobias and Cassie and Marco and Ax, who is Elfangor’s little brother, and me. We lived this secret life. We fought and mostly lost, but we survived. We frustrated the Yeerks. We ruined Visser Three’s life, though he still managed to be promoted to Visser One.

  Maybe we did too good a job frustrating the visser. The Yeerks grew tired of infiltration. Visser One had been craving open war. And when we blew up their ground-based Yeerk pool, the source of their food, the center of their lives, it was gloves off.

  So much the better as far as I was concerned. The time had come to settle things.

  The Yeerks obliterated our town to create a dead zone around their construction of a new Yeerk pool. They were in a hurry. Without a functioning pool they were getting hungry.

  But there was a worm gnawing at the Yeerk race. They had acquired morphing technology themselves — in part because of what Jake thought was Cassie’s betrayal.

  Cassie sees further than I do. Further than any of us. She sees deep. The girl cannot dress or accessorize to save her life, she’s a girl who wears manure-stained Wal-Mart jeans for crying out loud, but Cassie sees connections and possibilities that others don’t.

  She let Tom take the morphing cube. And that changed every­thing. Some Yeerks began to see a way out of their parasitic lives. The hunger-crazed Taxxons — a race held captive by the Yeerks — began to dream of a life without their Yeerk overlords. A revolution was brewing.

  At the same time, the Andalite fleet was closing in, ready to obliterate Earth as the only way to stop the Yeerk infestation. They had watched the Yeerks concentrate their forces on Earth. They were ready to bring down the curtain: Obliterate Earth and the Yeerk Empire would be gutted.

  Too bad about those creatures who got in the way. What were they called? Oh yeah, humans.

  But Tom betrayed his visser, betrayed the Yeerk race. Not for the sake of poor old humanity, but for his own ambition. He would escape with the morphing cube and with a hard core of faithful Yeerk supporters. He would abandon the Yeerk people to the Andalite vengeance, destroy the hated Animorphs, and if H. sapiens was annihilated, too, well …

  That’s where Jake saw his chance. Tom’s Yeerk is smart. Jake is smarter.

  Now Jake and the others had control of the Yeerk Pool ship. Tom had control of the visser’s own personal Blade ship.

  Tom — the Yeerk in Tom’s head — was closing in for his final act of betrayal: He would kill his master, Visser One, and doom his fellow Yeerks. He thought we were already dead.

  Surprise, Tom.

  My favorite morph was the grizzly bear. Seven feet tall standing erect. You cannot imagine the power, especially when united with human intelligence and knowledge. Compared to my grizzly morph a human being is like something made out of glued-together Popsicle sticks.

  How many times have I felt that change as muscle piles on muscle, as the thick brown fur covers me, as the rail spike claws grow from my fingers?

  The grizzly bear and I had been through a lot together.

  I would go to grizzly to kill Tom.

  I was a flea on Tom’s head. A flea can’t see much really, just an impression of light or dark. Not my favorite morph. But if you want to hide out, unnoticed, on a human body, you can’t beat the flea. And with practice you can learn to understand speech from the distant, distorted vibrations that reach your quivering antennae.

  My time was coming, and I had to find a place to demorph and remorph. I fired the spring-loaded legs and catapulted into the air.

  It took forever for me to fall. The first time you do it it scares the pee out of you. Falling and falling like that. Like you jumped off the moon and were falling to Earth.

  I hit the deck, a fall of thousands of times my own height. Flea didn’t care. Not even a bruise.

  A strained voice said, “That’s … that’s not a waste dump. They aren’t dumping waste! That’s the pool. The main pool. It’s been flushed.”

  There was an audible gasp from several voices. The human-Controllers and Hork-Bajir-Controllers who were Tom’s bridge crew.

  “Sensors showing … it’s our people. Sixteen thousand … maybe seventeen thousand.”

  Tom cut in harshly. “It saves us the trouble of killing them ourselves.” Then, in an undertone, “But why? Why would the visser flush … what does this mean? ”

  It means Jake’s alive, Tommy boy. You’ll figure it out in a minute, Yeerk. But I’m guessing it will be too late.

  Away from blood. That’s where I had to go. The flea’s senses were all attuned to the warm scent of blood. But that scent represented danger to me now, and I hopped away, each bounding leap the equivalent of a human jumping over the Grand Canyon. Try getting a flea morph to move away from blood. Amazing how much resistance you can get from a brain that’s about ten cells big.

  I felt shade. Absence of light. Distance from vibration. No scent of blood.

  Was I in a safe place? Surely not, but maybe safe enough.

  I began a slow, cautious demorph.

  I heard a yell.

  “The Pool ship is preparing to fire!”

  “Hard left!” Tom yelled.

  A moment later, Tom laughed. “The visser’s lost maneuvering ability. The Pool ship handles like a drunken Gedd at the best of times, and now look at it.”

  Someone else reported, “His Dracon cannon is powering down. I show his reserves at less than ten percent.”

  “Are they? Well, well,” Tom said. “Hail the visser. On screen.”

  I was halfway demorphed. I was a hideous creature made up of armored plates and prickly legs and human flesh spreading across me like a wave. The sickest imagination could not conjure up the true creepiness of a half-flea human. Human eyes, my own eyes, bulged from an insect face.

  I could see. Not well, confused, distorted, my visual cortex still more flea than human. I was still on the bridge of the Blade ship. I was actually crouched beneath an unoccupied control station. It was like hiding under a desk. Fortunately it was designed for a Hork-Bajir body, so there was some room.

  I saw the viewscreen light up. I saw Visser One’s Andalite face. It was different. There was a dull look in his usually aggressive eyes, a slackness in the normally tensed body.

  “You seem to be experiencing some engine trouble, Visser,” Tom gloated.

  I was completely demorphed now. There would be no room for me to morph all the way to grizzly and stay concealed. Every eye on the bridge was watching the screen, but a seven-foot bear looming up will definitely attract attention.

  I started the morph. If it turned out I wasn’t needed, well, then it would be fatally stupid of me. But I had no real doubt.

  Visser One said,

  “Oh, I doubt it. I think the Empire will have its hands full,” Tom said cheerfully. “The Andalite fleet is rather close by. It’s possible that I misled you on that point.”

  He was all but giggling.

  Then, the viewscreen widened out and he saw, and I saw, the lithe Bengal tiger standing near the visser.

  Tobias was there, too.

  Tom saw the tiger and knew it was Jake and knew in that split second that he had been outmaneuvered, outfought. He took a step back, like he’d been punched. “You’re not dead!” he cried.

  Visser One said dryly.

  Tom yelled, “Bring us around to target the Pool ship’s bridge. Do it! Now! Now! Bring us around!”

  At that moment I could have morphed all the way to elephant without being noticed. Tom’s panic was infectious. They all knew they’d been had.

  But they didn’t know how. Tom’s reaction was pure instinct: shoot. He’d forgotten that the Pool ship was helpless. The sight of Jake — who should be dead — standing there with the other Animorphs, standing there alive and apparently in control of the Pool ship … all Tom could think of was shooting.

  The danger was closer than that.

  Jake looked at me. Like he knew I was watching him.

  he said.

  Tobias said.

  I said.

  I was still not completely morphed when someone shrieked. “Animorph!”

  After all these years of the Yeerks thinking we were Andalites, always yelling “Andalite!” whenever they saw a morph. It was strangely gratifying that at last they knew who we were.

  I said,

  I did what I do better than anyone. What Jake counted on me to do.

  I attacked.

  I charged straight for Tom, on all fours, head down, an express train of muscle and fur, claws and teeth.

  I hit him with my lowered head and knocked him back into the viewscreen. Not enough to take Tom out, but I had to try and damage the ship.

  Tseeew!

  Someone fired a Dracon beam. I felt the searing pain in my right flank but it didn’t matter. I was in berserk mode. Pain was something that could be stored up for later. Right now I was an enraged bear. I slammed a shoulder left, slammed a shoulder right and felt crumpling metal.

  Tom yelled, “No shooting! You’ll destroy the bridge! Morph! Morph you idiots!”

  I swung a paw at him, and it should have been all over right then, but I missed. He dropped and I missed.

  I reared up to my full height and Tom rolled into a ball. He was down under my legs. I swiped his back and laid his spine open. But I didn’t stop him.

  He was through my legs and behind me and staggering toward the exit.

  I spun, dropped to all fours and bounded to cut him off. I reached the exit a split second before him and shouldered him aside in the process. He spun like a top and fell on his butt.

  I was in a clumsy stance so I just sort of dropped on him. It was like some WWF body slam, only I wasn’t faking it. He grunted and I saw blood gush from his nose and mouth.

  Too easy. My final battle. It couldn’t be this easy.

  I drew back, ready to go in and finish the job. But I had wasted too much time. There were others on the bridge. And I had overlooked the fact that we were no longer the only ones who could morph. Every member of Tom’s handpicked crew could morph, and I was surrounded now by a half dozen half-morphed beasts.

  Tom himself was starting to morph, but he wasn’t my main problem now.

 

  It was Jake. He was watching the fight from the Pool ship.

  I spun, slashed horizontally and something that may have been a half-morphed leopard crumpled like a Dixie cup.

  The main weapons station was right there, a sort of waist-high, freestanding lectern. I threw myself back into it and heard a nice crunch as it toppled.

  But that was more seconds lost while the Yeerks were completing their morphs. All but Tom. His scarred back was crusting over with reptilian scales, but he was nothing recognizable yet. And in any case, I had plenty to keep me busy.

  I faced two lionesses, a cape buffalo, and a polar bear. It was a whole zoo full of dangerous animals. The polar bear was my equal all by himself. The cape buffalo maybe as well. I could take either lioness, but the combination was going to be rough.

  For a wondrous, frozen moment we all waited, stared, breathed, tensed, expectant.

  I felt …

  I felt exalted.

  It was my moment. This was my place and my time and my own perfection.

  I was no longer afraid. Weird. If I’d had a mouth I’d have smiled.

  I said.

  No one moved.

  I asked.

  No answer.

  I said, almost laughing.

  I lunged, straight for the polar bear. Go for the main opponent first. Go for the danger. I barreled straight into him. It was a train crash. I slammed him, my shoulder into the side of his head.

  He had a bear morph. I was my bear morph.

  Experience is very helpful.

  The polar bear staggered. I extended my claws and in a move no real bear had ever learned, I drove them straight into him, like four daggers, right beneath the front right shoulder: the heart. I hit him again before the cape buffalo slammed me and knocked me, windless, rolling into the bulkhead.

  The buffalo backed up and came at me again, the wide, thick horns like a battering ram. But the beast’s hooves were designed for dirt and grass, not the slippery floor. He didn’t fall but he lost a lot of speed and momentum. He hit me in my exposed belly. It would have killed me if he’d been up to speed. Even so it crushed the last ounce of air from my lungs. I felt like someone had dropped a house on me.

  A lioness was on my face, clawing madly, like a crazed alley cat. The other one was trying to bite my neck — a waste of time. No one bites through a grizzly’s fur.

 

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