Author's note: ...only 111,000 words in, and r!Animorphs passes the Bechdel test! Woo!

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at dot com slash sabien, if you're interested; all proceeds going toward my pet project of building a rationality/worldsaving bootcamp for middle schoolers.

Chapter 16: Rachel

‹Check, please.›

‹In position. Ready to fire if necessary. Over.›

‹It's not going to be necessary. I'm not even three feet away, over.›

‹Neither of you do anything unless Rachel or Marco says, over.›

‹I can see you just fine, Rachel. Him, too. We're still good, over.›

The voices of Ax, Cassie, Jake, and Marco, indistinguishable except for inflection as they filtered through my own inner monologue. We'd settled on alphabetical order as the obvious shortcut any time there was an all-call.

‹Demorphing in thirty seconds. Over.›

I was in wasp morph, standing on the steel-tangle pile of a plush, velvet rug at the foot of a king-sized bed, trembling at the thunderous vibrations of the male Controller asleep and snoring above me. Cassie was somewhere nearby, her much-larger-and-more-terrifying tarantula hawk morph having just barely made it through the small hole we'd burned in the screen earlier in the day.

The others were all outside—Ax playing sniper from a distance with one of his Andalite shredders, Jake lurking in the copse of trees in the backyard, and Marco up above, keeping an eye on the situation with the stunning night vision of his barn owl morph. Garrett was back in the valley, taking care of Tidwell, and Tobias would be gone for at least a few more days, assuming he came back at all.

It's fine. Smooth sailing. No problem.

Wishing I could take a deep breath, I focused on my human form, feeling the changes begin almost immediately.

‹Ninety seconds,› I broadcast. ‹Over.›

‹Roger that, over.›

Luckily, the wasp's eyes were useless in the dark. I could still feel everything, though—the sudden sag as my hard, black carapace melted into soft, pink flesh. The shivering pops and cracks as my forelimbs split and shifted and swelled, four of them forming arms and legs while the other two withered and vanished. The strange itching sensation as my jawbone grew around my mandibles and my antennae split into a hundred thousand hairs.

‹Still good. No movement. Over.›

Tidwell had given us a list of Controllers—everyone he knew and recognized who had been in the Yeerk pool the last time he'd fed. It was short, since the Yeerks had switched to stunning the hosts as soon as the slugs dropped from their ears; Tidwell hadn't been able to mingle and talk the way he used to when they'd been held in cages.

But still. He'd recognized nearly a dozen of the people lying beside the pool before being knocked unconscious himself. Of that dozen, he'd known the addresses of two, and we'd been able to find three more online.

Of those five, only one lived alone in a house with no security system.

‹Still good, over.›

I was almost two feet long, a horrific toddler-sized chimera of human and insect, before my clothes began to return from Z-space, the skin repatterning itself and lifting up and away like a sunburn. For once, I didn't mind, because it also meant that the Dracon beam was coming back, emerging along with my fingers and palm as the last of the chitin disappeared from my arms.

‹Here goes,› I broadcast, just before my ability to thought-speak fell away.

Moving slowly enough that my muscles began to groan, I rolled up off the floor and into a kneeling position, keeping the Yeerk weapon pointed at the sleeping Controller the whole way. Giving a silent thanks to the ridiculously thick carpet, I duck-walked my way around the bed, inch by agonizing inch, until I was close enough to lay a single finger—light as a feather—on the exposed skin of his shoulder.

Focusing, I began to acquire him. His snoring changed, and I tensed, but it was only the usual trance, its relaxing effect doing something to ease the buzzsaw drone coming out of his gaping mouth. As my eyes adjusted to the gloom, I spotted Cassie, a spindly nightmare shape as big across as my palm, clinging to the wall above the headboard.

‹She's got him,› someone said. Probably Marco, relaying the situation to the others. ‹No sign he's waking up. Over.›

Tidwell had known the passwords for the pool entrance for four days into the future—passwords which the Yeerks almost certainly would have changed after our raid on the truck. Assuming that the new passwords had been set immediately, and that afterward the Yeerks would have reverted to their previous model of telling Controllers on their way out of the YMCA, then the man in the bed in front of me had gotten his last update some time between yesterday morning and yesterday evening—long enough ago that they would have had plenty of time to be encoded in the physical structures of his brain.

Which meant that I now had them, too—along with a body that everyone expected to see at the pool some time during the day after tomorrow.

In theory, Marco said, the Yeerks could have followed the connection—could have tracked who had been with Tidwell during his last pool visit, and upped the security around anyone who seemed particularly vulnerable.

But in practice, the Yeerks only had so many weapons, so many troops, so much attention to spare. They could mobilize in minutes, but they couldn't actively guard everyone, and even Controllers had to sleep at some point.

"This is the standard," Marco had said, as we prepared to leave the valley that afternoon. "Just like the truck—minimum risk, maximum power. We go where they aren't looking, we bring as much firepower as we can, and we maximize the chances of at least some of us getting out if things go wrong."

It was a calculated move. The man might have changed his feeding schedule, or the Yeerks might have done more than just change out one set of passwords for another. There was a chance we'd come out with basically nothing. But the odds of danger were even lower, meaning we were unlikely to lose anything other than a little time.

Still holding the Dracon beam steady, I quietly crept back around to the foot of the bed, where I'd be out of the Controller's line-of-sight if he awoke. With a smooth, silent motion, I rolled over onto my back, pointing the weapon up at the ceiling as I began to morph. I was no Cassie, but I managed to keep the process away from my arms until I was nearly halfway done, the cold black metal melting into the armor creeping its way upward from my elbows.

‹Okay,› I said, as soon as I could thought-speak. ‹Let's get out of here.›

‹Cassie. I'll cover you until you're clear, over.›

‹Counter that, says Jake. Cassie, Ax has it under control. Get out now; Rachel will finish up and follow. Over.›

‹Translation: Jake loves Cassie more than he loves Rachel. Over. Also, this was Ax speaking, over.›

‹Aximili speaking. I am being misrepresented, likely by Marco. Over.›

‹Jake here. Both of you cut the nonsense—they're not out yet.›

I waited for Marco's final jab—you forgot to say over, over—but it never came. A few seconds later, Cassie gave her personal all-clear, and as the final changes wound toward completion and my wings sputtered to life, I rose up from the carpet and followed. Five more minutes, and we were headed back toward the valley, pumping for altitude in the cold night air, each of us wearing the body of a different bird.

The whole thing had gone like clockwork—in and out in under half an hour, with no alarm and no reason to think the Yeerks would ever realize we'd been there. The part of me that itched for action was almost disappointed—had almost hoped the Controller would wake up and call for help, turning it into a fight.

But there would be plenty of fighting, soon enough. We'd chosen the battlefields for our last two missions, and as a result they'd been straightforward and easy, the complications with Illim and Tidwell notwithstanding. If we ran any more side quests, those would be easy, too.

All of that would change when we tried to take the pool. The Yeerks knew we were coming, sooner or later. They knew it was their weak point.

They would be ready.

They would be ready, and there would be blood.

"Nothing?" Marco asked, his tone incredulous.

I shook my head, and he swore, turning away to kick uselessly at a tuft of grass. Beside him, Jake dropped his head wearily into his hands, slowly rubbing at his temples as if fighting off a headache. On the other side of the circle, Ax stood still and alert, his main eyes watching me as his stalk eyes alternated between tracking Marco and scanning the rest of the clearing.

We were gathered around the firepit for what felt like the hundredth time—everybody except for Cassie, who was napping after having taken third shift watching Tidwell. The scruffy veteran was sitting on a log next to Garrett, still visibly digesting the experience of having watched a teenage girl transform into a middle-aged man and back again.

"He remembers the password that he gave last time," I clarified. "Remembers saying it out loud. 'Moonlight whistle cinnamon fourteen Odric.' Odric—that's the name of his Yeerk. But nobody ever told him to say it. The Yeerk just produced the words on the spot, and he didn't have access to them ahead of time."

The man I had acquired was named Greg Morales. He was an accountant for one of the financial firms downtown, and he'd been taken two weeks ago, during his annual checkup at the hospital. And for a brief time—long enough for me to dig through his memory to find out everything he knew about Yeerk security—there had been two copies of him, neither in control of its own fate.

‹The words seem consistent with basic generative cryptography,› Ax said cautiously. ‹Some rule, known to the Yeerk but unknown to the host, which allows the Yeerk to construct an appropriate set of responses based on relevant input.›

"But the hosts can't—what, I dunno—hear it?" Garrett asked.

‹The exchange is one-way,› Ax explained. ‹The Yeerk may access any part of the host's brain structure, whether physical or psychic. The same is not true in reverse. Only concepts which the parasite chooses to transmit are available to the host.›

"Why a rule?" Jake asked. He glanced at Marco, who was now standing outside of the circle, staring off toward the slope on the far side of the valley. "Why couldn't it just be a particular set of passwords, like before? Only this time, they're not letting the hosts hear them?"

‹Perhaps it could. The nature of communication in the pool is not well understood—I do not believe even Seerow was permitted to make observations of independent Yeerks in their natural state outside of the laboratory. I would expect there to be difficulty in coordinating information exchange of the sort that would allocate specific passwords to appropriate Yeerks, and they certainly would not have a single set. One common algorithm for generating correct responses has the benefit of being highly transferrable while also allowing for variety and uniqueness, making the system less vulnerable to external eavesdropping.›

He paused. ‹Eaves?› An image flashed into my head, of the join between a slanted roof and the wall supporting it, along with an impression of confusion.

"Let it go," Garrett advised in a soft murmur. "Words don't ever make sense."

"Long story short," I said, pulling us back on track. "We don't have the passwords, and we can't get them, which means we're back to square one. Right?"

There was silence as I looked around the circle.

"Okay," Jake said. "Options." He began raising fingers one at a time. "We can try morphing into known Controllers directly, and bluffing our way through. We can try morphing into chiggers or some other bug, and getting under a Controller's skin, and see if that bypasses the bio-filter. We can try taking the person at the desk, and unlocking the door ourselves. We can try a brute-force attack. We can try digging up from underneath—Ax figures that the shield only goes down about twenty feet, and we know the bottom is open. Or we could just give up, and go after the hospital."

"The desk option won't work," Tidwell said, his voice still hoarse and gravelly. He had slammed his chest against something hard during the crash, and had been speaking in whispers for the past couple of days to avoid worsening the pain. "They've got cameras on the front room, and if either the girl behind the desk or the guys behind the cameras smell anything fishy, they hit the panic button and the door in the shield disappears."

"Could we—I dunno—rewire the video somehow?"

He shook his head. "Doesn't work like it does in the movies."

"What about the Ch—"

Tidwell turned to look curiously at Garrett, who had broken off mid-sentence and was now staring at the patch of ground between his feet, his expression slightly stricken as his fists mangled the fabric of his t-shirt.

"And Ax says the bio-filters aren't likely to be fooled into thinking a human morph is a Controller," Jake said, his voice a hair louder than before. "For one, the fake Yeerk tissue has the same genetic makeup as the construct, and for another, there's not enough of it."

He shot another glance over at Marco, and I put it together—Marco was currently in his morph armor, which meant he was probably in the middle of giving Garrett a lecture on why Tidwell didn't need to know about the Chee's hologram technology.

Not that it would have worked, anyway. We maybe could have convinced Erek that forcibly acquiring someone wasn't violence, but I doubt we could have convinced him that our reasons for doing so weren't going to hurt anyone.

"For that matter, the chigger plan is probably out, too. If it can see through somebody's skull, it can catch an insect buried half a millimeter deep."

"So what do we—"

"Hang on," Marco interrupted, whirling around and striding back into the circle. "Hang on." He fixed Ax with his gaze, a look of urgent curiosity on his face. "Ax—the construct. If a Yeerk infested a construct, could it—would it be able to access the original mind? Could it read my thoughts, through the morph?"

Ax's upper third settled down onto the ground—a gesture we'd learned to understand meant deep thought, like a human putting a hand on her chin. ‹I am uncertain,› he said, after a long pause. ‹But my immediate suspicion is—no, it would not. There is insufficient neural mass for the false Yeerk tissue to perform full cognition. It would seem to be little more than a set of levers and sensors, controlled from without. There is no information stored there for the Yeerk to peruse.›

"What about control? Would the Yeerk be able to control the construct?"

Another long pause. I did a quick scan of the circle—Jake looking darkly intent, Tidwell off-balance, Garrett openly curious. ‹I believe so,› Ax answered cautiously. ‹The interference between Cassie-based morphs indicates that the unitary host-construct dependency is not perfect. But if it came to a struggle—I would expect the true Yeerk to dominate. That is what it evolved to do, after all.› He rose up into his usual centaur-stance, adding ‹I am only weakly confident, though.›

Marco's shoulders slumped fractionally, and he sighed. "Figures."

"What—"

"Stupid idea, anyway." He straightened again, looking around the circle. "I thought, since we can't morph Yeerk for some reason—what if we used a real one? What if one of us let Illim—you know—infest us. That'd get us through the bio-filter, probably. But if it can just control the construct—and besides, there's still the passwords—"

"Wait," Tidwell croaked. "You're just trying to get inside the shield? That's it, it doesn't matter after that?"

Marco frowned. "Jake?"

We hadn't yet reached any sort of final decision about what Tidwell was and was not to know. He knew we could morph, obviously, and he'd helped us identify some of the weirder stuff we'd stolen from the truck, at least by name. But we'd been careful not to say anything about the stockpiles of sodium that Marco and Ax had located using some circumspect internet searches and a few judicious phone calls. "Not exactly," Jake said slowly. "But if you have ideas…"

He gestured broadly at the rest of the circle.

"Well," Tidwell continued, his brow furrowed. "I don't know about sneaking. What I'm thinking, you'd have a lot of eyes on you, at least at first. But you'll be inside."

I watched with awe—and no small amount of envy—as Marco worked through the implications, starting with the fact that he wasn't holding three rocks, then gradually growing more and more certain as he flashed through a series of numbers, finally ending with a grim conclusion as he tried to move his feet and found himself blocked. It all happened in a matter of seconds, each individual thought like a frame in a movie, a page in a flipbook.

‹Rachel?› he asked, inside of our shared head.

Marco was smart.

‹Yeah.›

I felt him gather his resolve—actually felt it, as if it were my own body and I were steeling myself—felt the sudden stain of dread and his iron refusal to yield to it. ‹So, am I dead?› he asked, brusquely. ‹The real me?›

‹No.›

‹Then what—›

There was a rush of heat in his—our—face, as his mind went almost immediately there, and he backpedaled in furious embarrassment, his thoughts a whirl of self-recrimination and baleful resentment. ‹Having fun?› he asked, bitterly.

I didn't answer. Couldn't, really—the experience of Marco's consciousness was too distracting. It was hypnotic, mesmerizing—even as he formed words for my benefit, the rest of him was busy wrestling with itself, arguing back and forth as impressions and emotions churned beneath the surface.

There was confusion, as his brain continued to throw up guesses as to what was going on, and mortification that I had seen his first guess—that that had been his first guess—

There was anger at me, for the intrusion, coupled with accusations of hypocrisy as he remembered seriously considering this exact course of action—though of course, he'd been planning to morph Jake, not me—

There was shame as he realized that I could see his true opinion of me, and a surge of defensiveness as he marshaled his justifications. There was a sort of defiant hardening as he prepared himself to shrug off my hurt, my anticipated anger. And deep, deep down, so quiet I almost missed it, there was a tiny note of sad, shy insecurity—fear of my laughter, my scorn, that his opinion of me wouldn't hurt, that I was unassailable and wouldn't care, that being pretty and cool and athletic and popular actually were the things that mattered, and it made no difference if you were smart and right if you were also short and lonely and awkward—

—a wild, secret, narcissistic hope that I had morphed him in order to see his—

—a wave of self-loathing—

—what's going on with the war—

—fucking Rachel, if you're going to mindrape me, you might as well say something—

‹Sorry,› I broke in, a stone dropping into the stream of consciousness. ‹I just—›

It was electric—like the insane, universe-shattering moment when I had dissolved into the minds of Erek and Alloran and Visser Three. Only, instead of a single, incomprehensible lightning strike, this was a continuous current—a fascinating, captivating, steady magnetic pull. I had known Marco for years, but it wasn't until this moment that I'd realized what Marco was like.

‹I have a confession to make,› I said, before I could lose my nerve. ‹And I figured I'd try it out on you, first.›

"I already know," he said, a strange glint in his eyes, his expression cold and impenetrable.

It was the real Marco this time, sitting on the edge of the boulder, looking down at me. I'd gone searching for him as soon as I'd demorphed—had found him in what I now knew was his favorite spot in the valley.

"What? But—how—"

I broke off, an embarrassed flush spreading across my cheeks.

Of course.

Marco had my DNA, too.

"How long?" I asked, feeling a strange sense of distance as I looked up at him. I knew exactly how fast those thoughts ran—if he'd known all along, it meant that he'd already decided not to tell Jake and the others—

"As it happens, about half an hour," he said. He continued to hold my gaze, letting the silence stretch out, giving nothing away. Waiting.

—for me to try to explain?

—for me to beg him not to tell?

—for my apology?

But he would have already heard all of those. From the other Rachel, the copy of me that lived inside him somewhere. Would have already heard, and considered, and made up his mind.

Was this a test, then? To see if I was still stupid? Still not able to think things through? Not able, as the other Marco had put it, to get out of my own fucking head for a minute?

"We've both already had this conversation once," I said slowly. "So you already know that I know I screwed up. And I already know you think that's not enough."

Marco gave no answer, his expression still inscrutable. I knew what he was thinking, though, behind that rigidly controlled face—damn straight it's not enough. Cassie's parents are dead, and my Dad's a Controller, and NONE OF THAT WOULD HAVE HAPPENED IF YOU'D USED YOUR FUCKING BRAIN FOR ONE GODDAMN SECOND—

"And you don't care about anything I have to say," I continued, "because stupid people promising not to be stupid is—it's a promise they can't keep. Because they can't tell when they're about to be stupid. Not in time to stop."

He raised an eyebrow.

"So what this really boils down to is whether or not you think having me around helps us win. Whether you think I—whether you think I'm a liability. Whether telling Jake what I did will make us stronger or weaker, as a team—whether it's better for him to have the full picture, or not. Whether I've actually—what, grown? Updated?—on the way I do things, since three weeks ago."

"And?" he asked, after a long silence.

I took a deep breath. "And so I'm asking you for advice," I said. "I need a second opinion, and you're better at this stuff than me. What do you think I should do?"

The question hung in the air between us, thick and heavy and explosive. For nearly thirty seconds, Marco and I stared directly into each other's eyes, with me trying to imagine what he was imagining about me, and him doing—whatever it was his brain does. I couldn't even begin to guess.

"You know what the difference was, between that first night at the pool and these last two missions?" he asked suddenly.

I swallowed. "No," I answered honestly. "I mean, there's plenty—but I don't know which bit you think is important."

"We didn't act like that first mission was safe," he said. "It wasn't safe, and we knew it, and Jake went in anyway. And then I followed him, even though it was stupid, and then you went in afterward even though that was stupid."

I said nothing, because I didn't know what I was supposed to say.

"And it was because—because—because—" He broke off, shook his head, and started over. "Jake went in there mad. He didn't care if he got killed. He wasn't thinking. And then I followed him because—"

Again, a pause. Again, a restart, this time with a tight grimace. "I didn't care about anything except getting him out. I think, if I'd died doing it, I—it would have been okay. It would have been a good trade. I mean, not really, because God help us all if you guys had to run this little army without me, but—"

I nodded. I understood. "It would have felt okay," I said, my voice thrumming as if I were about to break into tears. "Like, it wouldn't have been right, but—but it would've been right."

"Worth it," Marco said, nodding back. "That's the thing, right? Some missions, they're worth it."

"Like Elfangor," I said, feeling my throat close up.

Maybe I would cry.

"Yeah," Marco said slowly.

I noticed—something. A sudden distance, maybe, as if Marco had been drawing closer and closer and then had turned around at the last second. As if we'd been doing a paired gymnastics routine, and one of us had stumbled.

Was it Elfangor? Had I said something wrong?

"And the thing is," Marco continued, "it hurts, sometimes, to think about which missions aren't worth it. Like my dad. My dad, who's already broken, who's been messed up ever since my mom died, he's been off in this private little nightmare world all alone, and I haven't been able to help, and now he's—"

He broke off for a third time, this time giving a nonchalant little shrug. "Whatever," he said, the emotion suddenly gone from his voice. "It's just shitty, you know? To realize that we could do it, probably, we could probably rescue my dad even though there's a Bug fighter up there over my house, but it wouldn't be worth the risk. Because right now, we're more important than my dad. Me, Jake, Cassie, Tobias." He made a strange face. "You. What we know, what we can do. You don't sacrifice your queen for a pawn."

Pressing both of his hands against the boulder, he leaned forward and slid off, dropping down to the ground, his feet crunching against the dead leaves and twigs. Straightening, he looked up at me—actually up, his head almost a foot lower than mine even with the gentle slope of the hill.

"You sacrifice your queen for a queen, though," he said. "What Tidwell came up with, this morning—I'm pretty sure I can turn it into a plan. A real plan, one that can actually work. But."

He tilted his head, his eyes narrowing slightly as he sized me up. "But it isn't safe. Not by a long shot. Way I figure it, we get something like a 50% chance of taking out the pool. Whole thing, top to bottom. Maybe we even manage to steal the shield while we're at it."

He paused for a single heartbeat, spoke the next words in a light and casual tone. "But we also get like a 90% chance of at least one of us dying. And from where I'm standing, the person we can most afford to lose is you."

"There's never going to be a better moment," I pointed out. "Right now, they don't know about Ax, they don't know about storing things in morph, they don't know about using thought-speak as a weapon, they don't know that there's a weakness in the bio-filter—"

"A possible weakness," Jake corrected, his voice tight. "If Marco's right. And that's assuming they don't gun you down at the door, or just stun you and put Illim in stasis right there—"

"It's already almost impossible," I said, cutting him off. "And it's only going to get worse as they figure more and more stuff out. They didn't even have codes a year ago—how do you think they came up with that password scheme? The more humans we let them take, the harder it's going to get to turn this thing around. This is worth it."

"Nothing's worth losing one of us. There are only seven of us, against all of them."

"Tobias is out there," Marco reminded him. "We have the blue box—we can recruit. We can't fight a war if we're not willing to take risks."

Jake didn't like it. Cassie really didn't like it. But together, Marco and I talked them down—talked them into it.

The rest of the day was a whirlwind of preparation. I wrote three letters—to Sara, Jordan, and my mom, explaining. I convinced Cassie to deliver them, if anything terrible happened.

"The Yeerks already know we're human," I said. "They're staking out our houses. It won't hurt anything."

She agreed, giving me a strange look as she took the three small scraps of paper. I had the feeling there was something she wasn't saying—maybe several somethings—but I didn't ask. There wasn't time.

Marco, Ax, and Garrett left to get the sodium at sundown, along with a handful of materials Tidwell had specified. He wasn't much of a demolitions expert, but he'd picked up a few tricks here and there, and he knew a way to create a slow-permeable membrane—to set up a kind of fuse, so that it would take the water a few minutes to soak through to the metal inside. With luck, that would give Garrett the time he needed to get out of the pool and get clear.

There was a painful half-hour where Jake insisted on having a stilted, uneven conversation that never quite got to the point. Eventually, I figured out what he wanted, and put it to him directly.

"You're trying to figure out if I'll let you acquire me, right? In case I die?"

I didn't think there was much of a chance that anybody would be able to resurrect me out of a temporary morph, but it didn't cost me anything, so I shrugged and let him do it. For a brief moment, I worried about him pulling the memory trick and digging through my head, but that wasn't really Jake's style. I went ahead and acquired him back, just to make the whole thing feel less awkward, but I didn't bother morphing into him. Jake wasn't like Marco—if he had something to say, he'd say it to your face.

I did go ahead and morph into Marco's body again—that night, in my hut, after everyone else went to sleep. I didn't unlock his consciousness, just played around with being a boy for a while. It was strange—I wasn't scared, exactly, but I was very, extremely, completely aware that it might be my last night on Earth. I didn't want to miss out on my last chance for a unique experience, though even in the dark my cheeks burned when I thought about what Marco would say if he ever found out.

If I did live—

No, I thought to myself. No hopes, no promises. The mission, first.

I hadn't realized just how much the guilt had been weighing on me—how different it would feel, to suddenly have a shot at redemption. Unable to sleep, I morphed into the barn owl—the same one Marco had used to keep watch on the mission the night before—and spiraled up into the sky.

It was a clear, beautiful night, with the sliver of moon outlining the mountains and the lights of the city sparkling and shimmering as the earth bled heat into the atmosphere. I drifted through the air for an hour, stopping to peer into the windows of my mom's house.

They were asleep—my mom in her room, my sisters in their bunk beds. Their faces were calm and relaxed, with no sign of the struggle that would be raging in each of their heads. There was no alien technology littering the house—no guns, no maps—just the tiny blinking light of a tracker on each wrist.

None of them would be at the pool tomorrow. I had made a point of keeping track of their feeding schedule, and they had all visited earlier, in the afternoon, right around the time that Marco and I had been morphing into each other.

I wanted to say goodbye—could feel the words forming in the back of my mind, the impulse to speak. But I ignored it. Never again.

The others were still gone when I returned to the valley. Demorphing, I rolled back into bed, mixing in a few hours of restless sleep with my tossing and turning.

And then it was morning. I awoke to the smell of bacon—courtesy of Erek—cooking on a pan over the campfire. Marco, Ax, Garrett, and Tidwell were off in a corner of the field, unpacking the chunks of sodium one by one and carefully sealing them up in foam containers. Jake was doing the cooking—he muttered something under his breath and didn't look me in the eye—which left Cassie to talk to as I ate my breakfast scramble.

"Are you okay with this?" I asked haltingly, after a minute of silence.

"With what?"

I shrugged. "If this works, a lot of people are going to die."

"I'm not some unrealistic hippie, you know."

I winced. "Sorry. I do know. I guess it's just—"

"What?"

It's just that we've got to keep your conscience alive, since none of the rest of us seem to have one. "Nothing," I said. "Sorry."

We each chewed quietly for a moment. Then Cassie spoke.

"I volunteered to beat you up," she said. "After you morph. When we have to make it look like you've been in a car accident."

I blinked. "Um," I said.

"Don't worry, I won't make it too bad. Can't have too many fresh cuts, after all, when you're supposed to have had three days to heal."

I didn't know what to say, so I said nothing. Cassie and I had been best friends for years, but in the past few weeks—

—since you got her parents killed—

—we hadn't really talked much at all.

Was it possible to drift apart that quickly? I certainly couldn't remember ever feeling quite this awkward around Cassie before.

But then again, our talks had usually been about horse tranquilizers, or Social Studies quizzes, or my occasional attempts to get her to dress in something other than overalls. We didn't exactly have a lot of practice with last-meals-before-execution, or what to do with the fate of the world.

"Cassie," I began. "Your parents—"

"Not your fault," she said, the words sounding practiced and tired. "If anybody's to blame, it's me. I could've stayed to fight for my mother. Could've knocked her out before she called in my dad. Could've made one of you go with me to the Gardens in the first place. Plenty of things I could have done different. Done better."

I winced again, my breakfast sitting like lead in my stomach. "We're going to make them pay," I said quietly.

"Oh, not you, too," Cassie grumbled. "Come on—do you really believe that killing a whole bunch of them makes up for them killing a whole bunch of us? Do you think it's going to make me feel any better at all?"

"Yes," I said, softening the word with a shrug. "I do. I think you don't want it to make you feel better, but I think it will. They're bad guys. You don't have to feel guilty about it."

She was quiet for a long moment. "No," she said. "I still do. Because it's not their fault. Don't you see? Their whole species—this is how they live. It's all they know. It's the only way they get to see, to hear, to smell, to taste. Elfangor—I asked him a little more about it, and he said, the first time they realized it wasn't the Gedds—that the Gedds weren't even intelligent, that it was those little slugs in the pools—"

She paused, and shook her head. "They're stuck in those pools their whole lives. Their whole lives, except the one or two lucky ones who manage to grab a passing, stupid animal. And then even then, they only get three days before they have to give up—let go and drop back into the pool to feed, and who knows when they'll get another chance? Some pools have a million Yeerks in them."

She fixed me with a steady, searching look. "You going to tell me that you wouldn't try to get out?" she asked. "That you wouldn't push back? Fight? Maybe even do a little enslaving? If nobody had ever told you about equality, and freedom, and justice?"

"Even if they hadn't heard of that stuff before," I pointed out, "they've heard of it now. They could stop. But they don't. They keep going, even though every single host is screaming."

"We kept going for hundreds of years," Cassie countered. "Hundreds of years of slavery. Built up all kinds of stories about how it was God's will, how it was the natural state of things, how—how—how the black man was inferior, how he was happier with all that responsibility taken off his shoulders." She took a deep, shuddering breath, and—not for the first time—I wondered about her family's history, and about why I felt like I couldn't ask.

"I don't want to write off a whole species, just because they're a couple of hundred years behind us on the learning curve," she said, her voice sounding firmer and more confident as she went on. "I don't want to write off a whole species just because they haven't figured it out in the two years since they discovered that there was anybody different out there at all."

"I don't, either," I said, wondering as I did whether it was true or not. "But I'm not willing to sacrifice our whole species while they figure it out."

She shrugged. "Problem is, it's not our species and their species. It's just people. Each and every individual person, each making their own choice. They think they can get what they want through slavery. You think you can get what you want by killing. I think—I don't know what I want, but it's not this."

She fell silent, and together we chewed our food, side by side in the corner of the little clearing. I watched her out of the corner of my eye, teetering on the edge of telling her—of confessing, of throwing myself on her mercy—

"Thing is," she said, so softly I could barely hear. "Maybe I'm glad they're gone. Because deep down, I think we haven't—I think things are going to get a lot worse."

Straightening, she looked down at me. "Good luck, Rachel," she said.

And then she turned and walked away.

When Illim took control, I didn't feel fear. I didn't feel anger. I didn't feel frustration or helplessness or relief.

Instead, I felt—taut. Like an arrow on the draw. A tiger, ready to spring. A boulder, just barely balanced at the top of a cliff.

There had been too much talk. I wanted to act, and the plan was finally, finally in motion.

"Illim," Jake said, his voice cold and formal. My eyes darted toward him without my input, and I felt a vague mental pressure as Illim scrambled around inside Aaron Tidwell's clone-copy brain and found nothing—no memories except the past ten minutes, during which a bear had gently battered his face and body.

"There was a malfunction in your stasis cylinder," Jake continued. "It occurred overnight, and we didn't notice it until now."

Lies, of course. Ax had carefully drained the power, using the sensors on the side to track the health of the slug within.

"You must already be starving."

"What is this?" Illim cried, using my voice—Tidwell's voice. "This body—what—"

"We have decided to spare your life, Yeerk," Jake said, allowing a hint of haughtiness to creep into his tone. "You are inside of a morph—one of our commandos, wearing a copy of your old host's body."

I felt the clawing-searching sensation again as Illim dug through Tidwell's mind, blocked at every turn by the morphing tech's control system—the protocols that were keeping the human brain dormant and obedient. "This body—it—"

"You are in control," Jake said simply. "Our commando couldn't take over if she tried." He nodded, and—as planned—I gave a mental heave, struggled to dislodge Illim's grip on our shared mind. There was a moment in which it almost seemed to work, and I felt Tidwell's right hand curl into a fist. But then the Yeerk buckled down, forcing me back into submission.

"The body has no memories because it is only ten minutes old. It is damaged to lend credibility to your story."

"What story?"

Jake shrugged. "Whatever story allows you to return to your pool. Our commando volunteered to deliver you there, as long as you make every effort to preserve the secret of her identity." He leaned in, his eyes somehow empty and soulless—looking nothing like Jake's at all. "You should note that you have absolutely no control over her morphing power," he added darkly. "She can demorph at will, and if she does—well." He smiled—a cold, mirthless twisting of the lips. "You get to see what Z-space is like, firsthand."

We had timed it as exactly as we could. By Ax's estimate, Illim had barely an hour left to live—if it refused to cooperate, or if it turned out our assumptions about control were wrong, Marco would stun me from behind and I would demorph after it died.

If it played along instead—

"You have about one hour to make your way back to the pool," Jake said. "To talk your way inside. I believe your passwords are out of date, and your superiors think you're either captured or dead. They'll be suspicious. You'll have to be quite convincing."

"Why—"

"Tick tock, Illim. Time's running out. Do you really want to spend the last minutes of your life asking irrelevant questions?"

He turned, stepping out of the way to reveal that the trail we were standing on ended just a few hundred feet away, emerging into a parking lot on the edge of town. There was a brief, horrible moment of hesitation, in which it seemed that Illim would stop and think and the whole house of cards would come tumbling down.

But then I felt my body shudder as a spasm of whatever pain the Yeerk was feeling tore through our head. We stumbled, and when we climbed back to our feet, we were running.

‹You,› Illim said, the voice echoing across my thoughts. ‹Are you there? Can you hear me?›

‹Yes,› I answered, as we burst out of the trees and into the sunlight.

‹Which way?›

Illim's voice was tight with fear and desperation, and I felt its control relax enough for me to point. Without a moment's hesitation, it spurred our body back into motion, our shoes slapping loudly as we ran down the asphalt.

‹You may want to slow down,› I cautioned. ‹We're several miles away, and you should pace yourself.›

‹No!› Illim shouted. ‹This body is a spare! You'll just regenerate it! If we don't make it to the pool, I will die!›

I could feel the results of the Yeerk's efforts—the way that blood pumped more freely, adrenaline trickling out in a steady stream, the heart and lungs working together at exactly maximum output.

‹Why?› it demanded, ‹Why are you doing this? If you wanted me to live, why not deliver me in the cylinder?›

‹The cylinder was completely broken,› I said. ‹It would've killed you to keep you in it. This was the only way.›

‹But why?› Illim shouted. ‹Why—ahhhhh—why did you not just kill me? Why this—this torture—›

‹Torture? I'm saving your life.›

‹You're after something! You're trying to—to infiltrate—to sabotage—›

‹Do you see any weapons?› I asked. ‹Notice anything that could pose even the tiniest threat to your stupid pool? I'm not like you. I'm trying to be nice.›

‹Others—hhggggrrrr, no—buried in my skin, my hair—insects—›

‹Bio-filter, remember?›

The conversation continued as we ran, Illim driving Tidwell's body harder than I thought possible as it searched for the motive, the lie. I stuck to the story, refusing to give detail, answering most of its questions with the mental equivalent of a shrug.

Occasionally, the hunger pangs would be so intense that they would cause us to trip, to stumble. Once, it happened just as we were crossing over a curb, and the resulting fall knocked out two of Tidwell's teeth and broke our nose. But the Yeerk simply shut down the pain signals and hoisted us to our feet, driving us forward even faster.

‹I need a phone—a comm—›

‹We're only three-quarters of a mile out. You might as well run—by the time they pinpoint your location, you could have already made it.›

‹Nnnnggggggggaauuhhh! How do I know that you—›

‹Fine. Don't believe me. Go ahead and die. In fact, why don't I demorph right n—›

‹No!›

We were getting closer—close enough that the streets were starting to fill with people, Controllers on their way to or from the pool. A few of them gaped at us as we ran by, blood streaming freely down Tidwell's face. "Illim!" the Yeerk cried out. "Emergency! Illim! Do not interfere!"

‹Got a good story planned?› I asked. ‹It would be a shame to keel over in the lobby.›

‹I was—tsssssssss! I was seized by Andalites! Held in the woods! I barely escaped—I don't know how!›

‹How will they know you're not an impostor?›

‹There are passwords, you idiot! And the bio-filter.›

‹And how do I know you won't betray me?›

‹I am dying! I don't have time for revenge games!›

Rounding a corner, I/we saw the low, squat façade of the YMCA, less than a quarter of a mile away. I felt Illim trying to squeeze another drop of speed out of Tidwell's body, but we were already running as fast as we could, his heart pumping dangerously fast, his breath a ragged whistle.

I didn't dare trying to thought-speak out loud, but I knew the others were there, somewhere—in the trees, or up above, Jake and Cassie and Marco, paralleling me on three sides. In a moment, they would peel off, so as not to alert the pool and make the irregular situation even more suspicious.

It was laughable—a dream, a hope, a hail-Mary—a terrible plan, made barely possible by the addition of two critical factors:

Illim wanted to live.

And I was willing to die.

"Help!" Tidwell's voice cried, as we neared the door. "Help! Cirrus, Socrates, particle, decibel, Visser! I'm dying!"

We reached for the handle, just barely avoiding a final tumble on the last stair, and yanked open the door. "Cirrus!" Illim repeated. "Socrates, particle, decibel, Visser! Let me in, I'm dying!"

Behind the desk, the young attendant's eyes had narrowed. She was already in motion, slapping a hand down on a hidden button behind the counter and drawing a gun as she rose smoothly to her feet.

"No!" Illim shouted, staggering to a halt, holding both of Tidwell's hands up in front. "Please! Cirrus, Socrates, particle, decibel, Visser! I'm part of the Bastion group—I was captured—escaped—please, I'm starving, I don't have much time—"

"Control," said the attendant, her voice steady. "Orders?"

Illim continued to beg as the attendant cocked her head, listening to something we couldn't hear. "Strip," she commanded, gesturing with the gun.

Exhausted, bleeding, barely able to stand—somehow, Illim managed to force Tidwell's limbs into motion, tugging our sweat-soaked clothes over our head and off of our sweaty legs. "Cirrus," it said weakly, turning in a circle, arms still raised. "Socrates, particle, decibel, Visser. I'm not an Andalite, I'm a Yeerk, please. The fugue—it's already started—"

The attendant's eyes widened, and something like sympathy flickered across her face. "Control," she said again. "Seems clear. Front door secure—I can see Urdash's squad through the glass—"

She broke off abruptly, again seeming to listen, and then nodded. "Roger." She pointed at the door. "Go!"

Illim didn't wait to be told twice. We darted forward as the attendant bent over the desk, keying in a code before pressing the buzzer. Ripping open the door, we stumbled inside and began to run again.

I could only catch glimpses as we lumbered down the hallway, Illim still firmly in control of our head and eyes. But from what I saw, the interior of the building had been completely rearranged. Where before there had been basketball courts and arts-and-crafts rooms, the doors now opened onto huge, bustling labs and manufactories, with dozens of small, orange, eight-limbed aliens skittering across tables and desks and piles of unfinished machinery. I caught a glimpse of what looked like a half-built Bug fighter, and then in the next room, a series of tall, cylindrical tanks filled with bubbling green liquid.

Reaching the stairwell, we half-ran, half-fell down the steps, passing another set of doors which opened onto a barracks room stuffed completely full of Hork-Bajir. Bursting through the door into the basement hallway, we ran straight into a squad of eight armed men wearing riot gear.

"Cirrus!" shouted Illim once again, Tidwell's voice going hoarse. "Socrates—"

"We know," snapped one of the men. "Explain."

"I can't," Illim groaned. "The fugue, the fugue—please, I have only minutes—"

The men exchanged glances, and a low keening groan tore its way out of Tidwell's throat as his limbs began to twitch. Sagging, we fell against one of the men and were lifted bodily by three others.

"To the bio-filter," the first man said.

Moving with smooth efficiency, the group carried us over to the pool entryway. It, too, had been changed, the doors built outward into the hallway and reinforced with thick, shiny metal. Sliding them open, the squad dumped us unceremoniously inside.

It was like an airlock, about six feet on a side, the walls covered in tiny holes and painted a dull, angry red. We sat motionless for maybe ten seconds, our chest heaving, until we heard a small chime and the inner set of doors swung open.

Should I demorph now?

No—Illim will notice, sound the alarm.

A second squad of men were waiting just inside, four of them with arms free while the other four stood further back, their weapons trained on the airlock. The first group heaved us up, dragging us over to the pier.

‹Almost free, Yeerk. Will you return the favor?›

It was the moment of truth. If they stunned me now, I might never wake up in time. If they killed me—

"This body," Illim gasped, as they held us horizontal, our head out over the water. "Don't stun it. I ran—the heart—I think you'll kill it, if you stun it."

And then, with a final surge of gratitude, I felt the Yeerk dislodge—a strange sensation, like a thousand tiny Band-Aids being pulled off every fiber of my mind. There was pain, in my ear—pain like a drill, and then I heard a tiny plop as the slug dropped out and vanished beneath the surface.

They dumped me on the side of the pool, a cut-string puppet, alongside all the unconscious prisoners. I felt weak—nauseous—my heart still hammering through my chest, my limbs as dull and heavy as lead. It was a good thing that the next phase of the plan didn't require me, because I couldn't have gotten up if my life depended on it.

All right. Easy part's over.

Forcing myself to focus, I began to demorph, straining with all my might to localize the change to just the tiniest patch of my body—the palm of my right hand. At first, nothing happened, and then came the familiar tingle, not just in my palm but across my whole right side—

—it'll be enough, let it be enough—

—and then—

—like a chorus of angels—

‹Garrett. Hello? Did we make it? Over.›

‹Rachel, are we in? Over.›

‹Yes,› I thought wearily, feeling the tiniest tickle as the pair of bugs launched themselves away from my palm, where they had emerged from Z-space. ‹We're in.›