Your name is Dareer 612. You are a legitimate businessman. Er, businessyeerk. What is going down tonight is a totally legitimate business deal.

Of course, one person’s totally legitimate business deal is another person’s criminal enterprise. But those are the breaks. Nobody said that business was easy, just that it was lucrative.

“Mason’s late,” somebody says.

“Shut it,” you reply, almost automatically. You know he’s late, and you don’t need anybody interrupting your train of thought while you consider the possibilities. The police may have found something out, or INTERPOL. Or Mason squealed on you, or had been setting you up from the beginning. Or, you know, maybe he’s just late.

You check your watch. Six minutes and twelve seconds. You don’t appreciate that.

The smell of salt from the nearby sea is almost overwhelming. You love salt. It tastes good and the sea is safety. You are just two feet away from the edge of the dock right now, and so long as you stay that close there is nothing that you need to worry about.

You can’t say the same for your host, of course, but what can you do? That’s the point of hazard pay.

“How’s the fog machine?” Sutton asks. The rain makes it hard to see too far, but you have sensors to compensate and a jammer to mess with anyone else’s attempt at compensation. Assuming, of course, that anyone is trying to compensate.

But everything appears to be running smoothly, according to Sutton’s jammer. There’s nothing that you could do to block a sufficiently-powerful counterattack but your tech is advanced enough that you would at least know that it was happening.

In some respects this operation has been made more dangerous by staging it at the waterfront. Somebody could set up an ambush here if they wanted to and not a soul would be disturbed. Not like carrying out an exchange at the local McDonald’s. But the local McDonald’s is missing something important: a large body of water. Police and snipers aim for the center mass, not the head. You’ve survived two shootouts by dropping your injured host body into the water and swimming away to a predetermined pick-up point. Your car is tough enough to withstand anything that you could reasonably expect to come up against in these circumstances, but for that brief period that you are outside of it you want to be as safe as possible.

It is another three minutes and four seconds before Mason finally arrives. His car pulls up in reverse and stops just short of the dock’s edge, exactly as he was instructed to do. Your people pat him down and scan him for bugs before he’s allowed to talk.

“Mister Fish,” he begins, addressing Sutton. “I’m sorry for being late.”

“Can it,” Sutton says. “Open the trunk. My man Mister Owl will take a look at your goods, if you don’t mind.”

He’s referring to you. At no point have you ever made yourself out to be the boss. Your organization is mostly decentralized, with a handful of subordinates who know who to talk to when the need arises. Your cells operate without any knowledge of each other. Sutton here thinks that your host is in charge, everyone else here thinks that Sutton is in charge, and your host thinks that you are here to represent a very clever member of the Russian Mafia.

There are people who are aware of you as a spider sitting at the center of a vast network. They call you Sylvester Timo, Elizabeth Belonwu, Matheus Martins, Snow Dog, or any one of a hundred other names. Sometimes they have even connected a few of those names together. You are the Yakuza, you are the Sons of Satan, you are the Triads, you are the Irish Mob, or you are none of these. The authorities don’t know what to do with you.

Nobody has figured out the full extent of what you are doing. Nobody suspects that you are a Yeerk. What you are doing has precedent in pre-Invasion history, after all. Your species simply gives you a talent for it that no human has ever had.

Mason pops the trunk for you and moves away to make space for your inspection. There is a suitcase there, and inside the suitcase is something very special and very valuable. Not to mention illegal, but that was a given, wasn’t it?

As far as Sutton and the others are concerned, this host body of yours was once infested by a Yeerk engineer. This is not too far from the truth, though you were closer to a quartermaster than an engineer. Either way, you know your supplies and you know how to tend to them.

Dracon crystals are a Category II Controlled Substance under the Dimona Treaty, but that doesn’t stop the illicit harvesting and trade of Yeerk weaponry. Most of it was seized in the days following the war, but not all, and there remains a healthy profit margin for anyone willing to get into the business of smuggling them. There are only two problems: most people don’t know how to adapt dracon crystals to anything that hasn’t been designed to use them already, and there is precious little of it left in circulation. You personally control thirty-percent of what remains, which if you are going to be honest with yourself says much more about the limited supply than it does about the vastness of your resources, though it does say something about that as well.

But these crystals are going to change all of that. When you first heard about them you didn’t allow yourself to believe it. It was too good to be true, but four independent investigations all confirmed it. There must be other Yeerks who know what they are, but few people have your network of contacts.

It is the pale salmon-colored veining in them that tipped you off. To everyone else who’s heard of them, these are just weird dracon crystals. So far they have failed to reach the ear of anyone else who would know what they really are: seed crystals. Under the proper environmental conditions, certain crystal masses are capable of growing. Seed crystals were too useful to be used in most equipment, where they might be destroyed, and so it had been easy for the Andalites to locate and seize them all before the humans even learned their purpose.

Or so you had thought.

“Yes. I think that these will serve our purposes, even with the impurities,” you announce. Mason takes his money from Sutton, and then you are allowed to remove the small suitcase and close the trunk. It had been established by Mason’s organization that the crystals worked, but oddities— impurities, as you had labeled them from the start of your negotiations— could reasonably be expected to be bad. It was difficult but not impossible to actually get them to lower the asking price.

You hand the suitcase off to someone else and then, while no-one is looking, you pocket the small pouch that had been placed beneath some rubbish in the trunk. It will be good to have more seed crystals if possible, but ultimately you only need a little bit. But if this operation goes haywire in the next few minutes then you need to be able to sacrifice the greater portion in order to save some. You can always grow more seed crystals, after all.

But all of your careful backup plans turn out to be unnecessary. Everything goes off without a hitch, and five hours later you have divided your acquisition and sent them off to various locations where they will be under tight security and, of course, the proper growing conditions.

In five years you will have enough seed crystal mass to double the world supply of dracon crystals in six months. In ten years you will be able to outfit anyone, anywhere. None of the other games are going to matter to you anymore. Drugs, gambling, prostitution— your fingers are in every pie, but none of it is going to matter for much longer.

You have eight pounds of dracon seed crystals. You aren’t just going to corner the market. You are going to be the market.

Eight years later, your focus is still on growing seed crystals. It takes longer and is more difficult, but it also increases your future production. You continued to purchase dracon crystals whenever it was possible and relied on your other sources of income to fuel these and other ventures. Other seed crystals appeared twice, and in both cases you chose to turn your efforts toward destroying them and silencing anyone who was connected. Your supply was great enough that the higher priority was making sure no-one knew about seed crystals at all.

It was all good while it lasted, but eventually you hit a snag. In retrospect, you were a little too clever in some ways and not enough in other ways. They picked you out from your pattern of sticking to the docks. They were able to slowly put together a picture from that, and then it was only a matter of time before you were snagged.

In the future, you will be sticking to making deals at fast food restaurants. In the future. But for now, you have another matter to deal with.

The room is well-lit, never mind rumors of brutality and abuse. They are treating you well. They have to treat you well. You don’t think that this woman gets why, though.

“Special Agent Kozlar,” she says, and then, in a slightly different tone, “Special Agent Gottwald Three-Oh-Nine.” It’s when that voice is used that you detect a special tone of disgust. To Kozlar, you’re just another arms dealer. To Gottwald 309 you’re something much worse.

“Howdy, ladies. I’d offer to shake your hands but, ah…” You raise them, displaying your cuffs.

“Just lady, if you would.”

“Ah. You’re one of those, what do you call them, singletons or something? Unities?” You shrug, then smile. “I prefer a personal identity, if it’s all the same to you.” And now you can truly have one, at long last. This Chee-style body of yours was expensive— for somebody else— but you rather like not having a voice in your head, or being a voice in someone else’s.

“Gottwald Three-Oh-Nine hasn’t taken a gendered identity.”

“Interesting, for one who took a human name.”

“Dareer Six-One-Two, I am not sure that you understand your predicament. This is not the time to be debating about my partner’s na—”

“Partner.” You snort. “You crack me up.”

“You use a lot of human idioms for a Yeerk who laughs at this sort of thing.”

You sink back into your seat. “You don’t have to think about what to say, how to move your hands, you don’t have to think about how to blend in. And I did it right, didn’t I? It took a Yeerk to think that I was one too.”

They snarl. Or Gottwald 309 snarls, maybe. You think that you can tell the difference.

“Right. I forgot, I’m a, what did you call me, a terrorist? Alright. Slam me with the charges. You’re supposed to get some sort of plea deal or something out of me?”

“That isn’t my job.”

“Forgive me for not watching enough of your human legal dramas to know how this works.”

“Go to hell.” Kozlar-and-Gottwald spread a stack of papers across the table between you. “This is not a plea deal. We do not do plea deals. This is an interrogation and you—” They twitch in the characteristic manner of a host trying to hold back a Yeerk who isn’t willing to override its partner. Apparently they’re having a bit of an argument. Gottwald 309 must be blowing its top.

You go back to inspecting your fingernails again. Pristine as always— this model is self-cleaning— but you find it to be a handy way of displaying boredom.

“Look, do you want to play a game of chess or something?” you ask. “Or maybe checkers. Yeah. I don’t think we’ll have time for chess.” You look up at them. “I just don’t want you to waste your time with this. I respect you— I really do— and I don’t know if I’ll be able to sleep at night if I let you waste your time like this.” You put your hands over your chest, where a heart would be in a real human host, to emphasize your sincerity. Or lack thereof, anyway.

“They are going to stick you in a tank for the rest of your life,” one of them snarls. Gottwald 309, you’re pretty sure. “You won’t see anything ever again. You will never have another body. And when they stick you in there, I am going to laugh.” Yeah, it’s Gottwald 309. “It’s Yeerks like you who are giving a bad name to our people. You’re going to set us back by a decade.”

“Right.” You resist the urge to roll your eyes. You’re still in business. You’re still a professional. “You, uh, want me to tell you about what our people think about me? Look at this body. You think that the Chee sold it to me? You think I stole it? Go and see if there’s anyone complaining that this body was stolen. This came from the Pools.” You gesture to your would-be interrogators. “I’ve given millions to the Pools. My favorite is the Mannheim Pool, but there is also a special place in my hemocoel for the more financially-strapped Pools.”

“They can’t be expected to know what you’re doing.”

“You’re right. Not everyone can be so understanding of our situation. Some can be so… idealistic. That’s why I liked Mannheim.” You smile. “Look, I’m not sure how much more time we have, so do you want to play a game?”

“You’re in here until I say that it’s time for you to leave.”

You shake your head. “Let me explain this to you: your boss cannot afford to stick me in that tank. Literally, if you want to factor in opportunity costs. I am your ticket to the stars.”

“What do you mean?”

You rest a couple of fingers against your head. “Did you forget about the long war? Nothing’s changed. Do you— do either of you— think that the Andalites want you off-world? They’re making a lot of talk about not giving this planet technology that it can’t handle, but it’s all an attempt at containment. And some of the human governments know it. Like this one.”

“What do you mean? Why would they… want to contain us?” That’s Kozlar. You’re almost certain of it; you fancy that you can detect Gottwald 309 getting all pensive behind those eyes. It might even see where you’re about to go with this.

“Humans are what we used to call a Class Five species. Not sure if you know that, Gottwald Three-Oh-Nine. You seem young to me. Postbellum spawning, I would guess. But what makes you a Class Five is, in part, your numbers. Most species don’t get this numerous before they begin to found off-world colonies. Once upon a time the Andalites could have stood against you, but a few generations of warfare have really cut into their population. They need time to recover, because right now you outnumber them three to one.

“They’re hoping that you’ll eventually slow your population growth enough, maybe even shrink it down, but that won’t happen if you get off of this rock. There’s no incentive at that point. You breed faster than them and you mature faster than them. We were going to win the war in your bodies, and we still can. We’ll just be symbionts when we do it.”

“We’re not fighting a war against the Andalites,” Kozlar says.

“We’re all competing for resources, honey. If the Andalites can’t control you then you’re a threat. They can’t handle not being top dog. Kind of like your country, to be honest. But you have to pretend to be cooperate with them. They killed the Hork-Bajir homeworld, after all; maybe they’ll do it again. Alloran’s dead and the Andalites have condemned it but still, nobody wants to take that risk.”

“We know where the seed crystals are. We can get off-world now.”

“Not right now, you can’t. You don’t have the technological base for it. But you will. And then you’ll need dracon crystals. Gram for gram, they’re more powerful and more efficient than plutonium. They aren’t just for weapons, you know. You could power cities with them— or colony ships. But they can’t be seen to dealing with this, or the Andalites will demand that they hand over the seed crystals like they did the first time. So they are going to keep this on the down-low, and then if the Andalites ever do find out they’ll point at me and say, hey, we’re trying to nab the bastard, he’s just too good for us. Worst case, I have to pretend to die, and I keep this going under a few other names after my stockpile is quote-unquote ‘lost and/or stolen’ by other organizations.”

You straighten a crease in your sleeve. “So let me tell you how this is going to go. Right now, your boss and his boss and maybe even the President, they’re all chatting. They’re figuring out what I already have: I can be indispensable to you. And they’re going to make me an offer I can’t, and don’t want, to refuse: I give them a cut of my product, and I get off scot-free.”

There’s a knock on the door.

“I would suggest agreeing to keep mum on all this,” you say. “There’s no telling how desperate they will be to keep this deal quiet.”

Kozlar-and-Gottwald glare at you before they open the door. Someone steps through. He looks fancy. “Thank you, both of you. You’ve done a good job. I’ll take it from here.”

There’s anger there on their shared face. Disbelief, too. The wonderful light of dawning realization. “But sir—”

“You need to meet with Tolson. Your work here is done.” He passes them and takes a seat where they had been a minute before. “Deputy Director Rudolf Chandler.

“Charmed.”

He makes a little tent with his hands in front of his face. Whatever Kozlar-and-Gottwald may think, he doesn’t like this any better than they do. He’s just better at swallowing his misgivings. “We need to talk about some things, Dareer.”

“Of course.”

Your name is Dareer 612, and the future is yours.