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  "I don't like it," Rachel said.

  "The question is, do we have any alternative?" Jake argued. "I mean, look, the kid is gonna wake up. I can't keep him knocked out. So

  94 it's down to this: We either make him one of us, or we leave him, right here, right now. In this alleyway. With parents who will be Controllers soon. With Visser Three knowing his name and looking for the blue box."

  "It's harsh," I said, "but I don't see this guy fitting in with us. We don't know him."

  «We didn't all know each other back when Elfangor used the box on us,» Tobias pointed out.

  "We didn't know you, Tobias," Rachel said. "But Cassie and I were already best friends. Cassie and Jake were, um . . . friends. Jake was my cousin. Marco was his best friend. There were connections. Aside from you. And Ax. With this David guy, no connections."

  It's weird, somehow, the way Rachel and I often end up on the same side. She likes Tobias more than me, and Cassie a lot more than me, but it's often the two of us together on big issues.

  "Big risk," Jake said thoughtfully. "If he works out, we're stronger. If he doesn't . . ."

  "Look, we have the box, right?" Cassie said. "The point is, maybe David here is just the first of many. I mean, we can use the box to create more and more Animorphs. Dozens. Hundreds. The more of us there are, the more we can hurt the Yeerks."

  95 That was a pretty good point. I hadn't thought of that. But she was right. It wasn't just about this one kid. It was about a long-term strategy.

  Rachel looked at me. "If you're in a war, you want more troops rather than less, right? Makes sense. Besides, we could be a little less cautious that way. With just us six we have to be careful."

  I could feel a rush of excitement at the idea. I mean, Rachel was right, too. We had to be so careful now. We couldn't afford to take some risks. With more Animorphs, we could try to let the whole world know what was happening. We could infiltrate the Letterman show and morph onstage and make people realize what we were saying was true. Or go to the President and show him our powers and then he'd have to listen to us.

  We could actually win the war, instead of just maintaining.

  And yet ...

  I spread my hands, pleading. "He names his cat Megadeth. He has a cobra named Spawn. What kind of a kid is that?"

  Cassie shrugged. "A kid with bad taste in music and good taste in comic books?"

  «l don't see we have a choice,» Tobias said. «But it's Jake's call.»

  "Yes, Prince Jake should decide," Ax agreed.

  96 "This is a big step," Jake said, shaking his head firmly. "If Erek is right, and he usually is, we are coming up against the toughest mission ever. The most important mission ever. I'm not going to make this decision on my own. Not this time. We do this by vote. Simple question: Do we make David one of us, yes or no?"

  «Yes,» Tobias said. «Can't just leave him to Visser Three.»

  "I vote yes," Cassie said. "We have to make a leap of faith here and hope it will work out."

  I snorted. I can't help it. It's my automatic reaction any time people start talking about "leaps of faith." Cassie smiled tolerantly at me.

  "I should not vote," Ax said. "I follow Prince Jake. Jay-kuh."

  Jake shook his head. "Nope. You are a part of the group, Ax. In battle, maybe there isn't time to vote on everything, but this is a democracy."

  "Then I vote no," Ax said.

  My eyebrows shot up. There were six of us altogether. This vote could still go my way.

  «Just out of curiosity, why, Ax-man?» Tobias asked.

  "We are not an army. We are a guerrilla group," he said. "Guerrilla, gorilla? The differences between the two words are very subtle. You humans should not make your words so ... But my point is, going from six members to seven will

  97 not make us much stronger, and it carries risk. Risssss-kuh."

  "If we're talking about having hundreds, maybe thousands of Animorphs eventually, don't we have to start somewhere?" Cassie asked.

  "Yes," Ax agreed. "But we should start with someone we understand. Not a stranger. We have this mission before us, to save the human leaders of your various countries. A seventh person might help us. But it might also make our team indecisive, uncertain."

  Jake looked at me.

  "I'm with Ax," I said. "Something about this guy doesn't feel right to me."

  "Two in favor, two against," Jake summarized. "Rachel?"

  Rachel would vote against. Then, even if Jake was for it, we'd have a tie. Jake would never go ahead if we had a tie vote. I was starting to feel relieved and guilty all at once. I didn't enjoy thinking about David's fate.

  "Let's do it," Rachel said.

  "What?" I yelped.

  "You heard me," Rachel said. "Ax makes a good point. One extra member just adds risk. But Cassie's right, too. We have to start somewhere, now that we have the box. What are we going to do, run an ad in the newspaper? 'Help wanted: danger, nightmares, big-time creepiness,

  98 no pay? Have you ever wanted to turn into a bug and fight brain-stealing aliens? Well, call 1-800-ANIMORPH.'"

  Cassie laughed. "The sad thing is, Rachel, you would actually respond to an ad like that."

  Rachel laughed. "Exactly. So you see the kind of people we'd get."

  It was up to Jake now.

  David moaned and moved his head. His eyes fluttered open.

  "Who are you?" he asked, blinking up at Jake, then looking around at the rest of us.

  Jake sighed. "We're the people who are going to totally change your world, David."

  99

  ?They are called Yeerks," Jake said.

  We were back in Cassie's barn, among the caged, wounded animals. Amidst the smells of hay, medicine, and animal poop. David was sitting on a bale of hay, rubbing his jaw. We were standing around him.

  "They are a parasitic race from another planet. They are not much more than gray slugs, really. But they enter your brain and reduce you to slavery. Those big, seven-foot-tall creatures that were in your house? Those are Hork-Bajir. They have Yeerks in their brains. An entire species already enslaved by the Yeerks."

  "And now they're after the human race," Cassie said. "There are thousands of humans

  100 who've been made into Controllers. That's what you call a creature who's controlled by a Yeerk."

  "My brother is one," Jake said.

  "And by now, David, so are your mother and your father," I said.

  Cassie shot me an angry, disapproving look. Jake obviously agreed with her.

  I shrugged. "He needs to know what's happening," I said. "He needs to know this isn't just some game."

  "What about my mom and dad?" David asked me directly.

  I sighed. "Look, it's all about that blue box you found. The Yeerks want it. The guy who turned into the big purple pile driver? That's Visser Three. He's the leader of the Yeerks here on Earth. He's running the invasion, okay? As you may have noticed, he wants the box. And he allowed your father, and your mom, too, I guess, to see the truth. To see him. And that's a no-no. The Yeerks don't want people knowing what's happening, not yet. So he's going to keep your mom and dad quiet. Plus, he's going to find out what they know about the box."

  David shook his head, not understanding. "Are you saying he'll torture them or something?"

  "Man," I muttered. Explaining everything was going to be hard. I walked over and stood right in

  101 front of David. "Listen to me. By now your parents have been taken to a secret, underground facility called a Yeerk pool. It's not a nice place. Picture a sludgy cesspool of a pond the color of molten lead. There are two steel piers leading out over the pond. Hork-Bajir warriors will drag your parents out to the end of one of those piers. They will -"

  "Marco!" Cassie said angrily.

  "They will drag them out to the end of that pier and they will kick their legs out from under them and force their heads down into the sludge. And while they are kicking and screaming and calling for help, a Yeerk slug will swim over
and it will squeeze into one ear. And it will flatten itself out and squeeze and burrow and dig its way into their skulls, where it will spread around and into their brains. And the Hork-Bajir will yank them up out of the sludge, and they will start to feel that they cannot control their own arms or legs. Cannot open their own mouths or move their own eyes. The Yeerk will open their memories like a person opening a book. They will be slaves. The most total slaves in all of history because even their own minds won't be theirs anymore. Are you getting the picture?"

  Throughout all this, David had just stared at me. But slowly, without me noticing at first, tears had begun to well up in his eyes, and

  1

  102 now I jerked myself away. I was panting. Feeling like . . .

  I could see it all happening in my imagination. As I'd been talking, it wasn't David's mother I was seeing, it was my own.

  Silence in the barn. Even the animals seemed quiet.

  "My mom is one," I said flatly. "She's a Controller."

  "There's a lot to tell you, David," Jake said quietly. "But Marco's right. You need to know this isn't a game. This is life and death. This is the future of the whole human race. It's too late to help your parents. And as of now, you have no home and you can't go back to school. You do, they'll find you. And it'll be you taking that long walk down the steel pier."

  I saw the expression in David's eyes darken further still. It's not every day someone tells you your life is over.

  "This is stupid," David said. "I mean . . . it's not right. Can't be. This is all some kind of trick."

  "You saw what went down at your house," Rachel said.

  "That could have been guys dressed up in costumes," David argued.

  "You saw Visser Three morph," Cassie pointed out.

  103 "What's a Kisser Three?"

  "Visser Three. With a 'v,"' Jake said. "The one who looked like a deer with a scorpion tail. You saw him morph into that purple pile-driver monster."

  David looked sullen. "It's all a trick."

  I shot a look at Rachel. She looked like she was already regretting her vote.

  "Ax," Jake said. "Demorph."

  Ax nodded his human head. "I would be glad to. It is very disturbing being without my tail. Diss-ter-BING."

  "David, watch Ax. Watch him closely."

  David stared as Ax began to change. Hooves began to grow on his feet. His arms became thinner and weaker. Extra fingers emerged on his hands. His lips were sealed together, and then faded to the color of the surrounding skin, and finally disappeared altogether. His front legs began to emerge, growing straight out of his chest.

  "Aaaahhh! Aaaahhh!" David cried. He jumped back, stumbled, and started to run.

  Rachel grabbed him. "It's okay, you'll get used to it," she said. She turned him around and pushed him back toward the hay bale he'd been sitting on.

  There was a slight slurping sound as Ax's tail began to appear. Ax fell forward on all fours. The stalks grew from the top of his head and then -

  104 pop! pop! - eyes appeared on the ends of the stalks.

  "See?" Jake said. "No trick. This is Aximili-Esgarrouth-lsthill. We call him 'Ax' for short. He's an Andalite. The Andalites are the good guys of the galaxy."

  "Mostly, anyway," I muttered.

  "Visser Three, who you saw in your room, has an Andalite body. But he's a Yeerk underneath it all. He has just stolen and enslaved an Andalite."

  David was shaking. I don't know how much he was absorbing. I felt like laughing. I mean, it was insane, of course. This poor kid is minding his own business one minute, and suddenly he's in the middle of...

  But come to think of it, that's just what had happened to all of us, back one night when we walked through an empty construction site.

  Back then I hadn't even wanted anything to do with being an Animorph. Jake hadn't wanted to be a leader. Cassie had just wanted to hug trees and take care of her animals. Tobias was a lost, messed-up kid looking for someone to care about him. A human kid.

  Rachel . . . well, I personally think Rachel was glad to see her life go this way. Rachel always was a warrior hiding inside a fashion queen.

  How would David deal with it all? Would

  105 he resist, like I had? Would he embrace it like Rachel?

  "There is one nice thing about all this," Cassie said. "There is a compensation for all the danger and all the fear."

  David looked at her, uncomprehending.

  "You know the wild animals who were fighting the Yeerks today? You know the birds who tried to steal the blue box before that?" I said. "Us. That was us. See, Visser Three and Ax aren't the only ones who can morph. So can we. And now that we have this," I lifted up the blue box, "so can you."

  "Any animal you can touch, you can become," Cassie said. "A dolphin, a skunk, a wolf."

  "An elephant or a grizzly bear," Rachel said.

  "A gorilla. A shark," I said.

  "A tiger, a fly, a cockroach," Jake said. "Any animal. Any size. But only for two hours at a time. You can never stay in morph for more than two hours."

  "Why?" David wondered.

  "Meet the final member of the Animorphs," I said. "David, my man, meet Tobias."

  106

  David spent the night at my house. I told my dad it was a sleepover. I gave him my bed and I used my sleeping bag and an air mattress. An air mattress that had lost all its air by two a.m.

  Which was a good thing, because I woke up when David was sneaking from the room. I found him starting to make a phone call from the hall phone.

  I put my finger down on the buttons before he could dial. "Ever heard of Caller ID?" I whispered.

  "I'm calling my mom and dad," he said fiercely.

  I nodded. "Okay. But not from here."

  We got dressed and crept past my dad's

  107 room and down the stairs. It was chilly outside and damp.

  "Come on," I said.

  "Where are we going?"

  "You want to call home, fine. We'll call. But from a pay phone. And then we'll see what happens."

  I led him down the street, hoping no cop would pass by and notice us. I wasn't used to roaming the streets late at night. At least not as a human. Normally, I'd be in morph.

  I took him down the dark, quiet subdivision streets, out through the gate, and along the boulevard to the 7-Eleven. There was a phone on the street side of the 7-Eleven parking lot.

  "Okay, now listen up," I said to David. "We do this my way. You can call. Tell your parents you're all right. Don't tell them who you're with. Don't tell them where you are. Got it?"

  He nodded. But I don't think he intended to listen to me. That was okay, because I wasn't going to leave him alone. My finger would be half an inch from the little lever, ready to kill the phone call if I even thought he was about to say anything wrong.

  David pumped in a quarter and started to dial. I grabbed his arm. "Before you do that, let me tell you exactly what's going to happen. Your mom and dad will sound totally normal. They'll

  108 tell you to come home. If you refuse, they'll ask where you are. Ask them what happened today at the house. Just that."

  David finished dialing.

  "Hello? Dad? It's me. It's me."

  I waited while he listened.

  "No, I'm not okay, I'm scared."

  Listening again.

  I silently mouthed the words "ask him."

  "Dad, what happened? I mean, those were aliens and all."

  David listened. His eyes turned to me. I could see the dull fear.

  "It was all a trick?" he echoed back. "It was guys from your work playing a trick?"

  I rolled my eyes. I'd expected some lame lie, but that was really lame.

  "Dad, I saw that, one alien turn into something else. That was real."

  Pause.

  "I'm okay, I'm-"

  Click! I stopped the call.

  David turned on me, furious. He looked eerie in the neon and fluorescent glow from the 7-Eleven.

  "What are
you doing?" he demanded.

  I grabbed his sleeve. "Come on. That's time enough."

  109 He shook me off. "Step off, Marco, you don't tell me what to do."

  "Listen, you idiot, in about two minutes a couple carloads of Yeerks are going to come screaming up looking for you. They'll trace the call."

  "My dad wouldn't do that."

  "No? Come with me. We can watch. We can see what happens."

  He came with me across the boulevard. There's a row of older buildings over there. The kind with deep, dark doorways. We slunk back into the shadows.

  I was wrong. It didn't take two minutes.

  Two Jeeps, windows darkened, came roaring down the street a minute and a half later. The long, sinister limousine was not far behind. Human-Controllers leaped from the Jeeps. No Hork-Bajir this time. Not out in the open.

  "See?"

  "That doesn't prove anything," David hissed.

  But then another car came squealing up. David's father and mother jumped out. They joined the others.

  His father began passing out photographs.

  "Your picture," I said.

  "They're guys from my dad's work," David said. "Other spies, like him."

  "What exactly does your dad do for a living?"

  110 "He works for the National Security Agency. So, see, he would be able to trace the call, and he'd have his work buds with him. He's just looking for me, that's all."

  His father and two of the other men dodged traffic and ran across the boulevard. Others spread out into the store and around the back, looking here and there.

  His father and the two men came down the sidewalk straight for us. We could hear their footsteps. We could hear his father's voice.

  "If we don't find that kid, Visser Three will make us wish we were dead," David's father said.

  I looked at David. I saw him sag. I was afraid he'd collapse.

  "He's coming this way," David said, his voice cracking. "He'll see us."

  «No, he won't,» I said in thought-speak.

  I guess David didn't notice that he hadn't really heard my voice. His father and the other two came closer.

  And then . . .

  PAH-LUMP, PAH-LUMP, PAH-LUMP, PAH-LUMP.

  There came the sound of something running. Something large.