PAPERBACK

SCHOLASTIC I N C .

New York Toronto London Auckland Sydney

Mexico City New Delhi Hong Kong

For Scott Bremner

And for Michael and Jake

<They're going after the elementary school,> Tobias said.

<They're going after everything,> I answered.

<Why are they doing this? It makes no sense,> Tobias said. <It's not just brutal; it's stupid. Pointless destruction.> The nearest Bug fighter swooped low and

slow. It fired its Dracon beams and the two-story gym exploded into charred stucco and twisted steel beams.

It drifted almost casually above the tired old low-slung classrooms and fired again, dragging the beam end-to-end along the buildings.

<They're sending a message,> I said. <Mess with us and this is what we do.>

We had destroyed the Yeerk pool. The Yeerk More Bug fighters than I'd ever seen in one pool was now the world's biggest sinkhole. It place. Maybe fifty of the things. They blasted looked like a crater. It was a crater, with half the schools; they blasted businesses; they blasted mall in ruins on one slope, jumbled bits of homes and churches. The shock waves would fast-food restaurants, streetlights, ripped up reach us, echoes of destruction. Pillars of smoke concrete, cars, skinny trees, all tumbled rose high in the air. Fires, some blazing and roartogether at the bottom. The water of the Yeerk ing, others smoldering sullenly, created thermal pool, looking like molten lead, soaked up updrafts that were bread and butter to three through the dirt. An Exxon sign lay halfmismatched birds of prey. We soared easily, efsubmerged in it. A couple of dozen empty onefortlessly. We had the best possible seats for the liter soda bottles drifted around like someone's show. With raptor eyes we could see every idea of toy boats.

sickening detail. We could not miss a shot, could How many Yeerks had died? Certainly thounot fail to see lovingly tended gardens, prized sands. Maybe tens of thousands. How many homes, businesses, cars, burn as quickly and Hork-Bajir? How many Taxxons?

brightly as match heads.

Humans?

The refugees people who had been our

We had tried to warn people, but the devastaneighbors, friends, classmates the shocked, tion had been too complete, had come too scared, lost refugees fled on foot, carrying what suddenly.

they could, running between stalled cars. Over<It's not a message, Big Jake,> Marco said. passes were all down, traffic lights all off, bridges

<The Yeerks know now that we'll do whatever we were collapsed: Nothing with four wheels was have to do, they know it's all-out war. We blew up moving.

their only on-planet food supply. We're way past A news helicopter was perhaps five miles off, sending messages. Look: They're drawing a circle. no doubt filming and sending the pictures out

live. The Yeerks could easily shoot down the Marco was a hundred feet higher up than me. copter. They were letting it film. Maybe even He was in osprey morph, I was in falcon, Tobias piloting the craft themselves. They wanted was himself: a red-tailed hawk.

the world to see the violence. They wanted

<Marco's right,> Tobias said. <They're makhumans ing a big circle.>

to be afraid. The infiltration phase of the war was They were racing straight toward us. Straight over, over. From now on the Yeerks would be as toward the Bug fighters.

subtle as sledgehammers.

<It's suicide,> Marco said.

I caught a rush of warm air, the thermal enWe watched, helpless to do anything. We had ergy released by a burning supermarket, and I spent the morning watching helplessly.

soared higher, up and up. I could see what Marco The F-16's came straight in. Two of the Bug and Tobias had understood: The Yeerks were fighters broke off from torching civilian buildings creating a circle of annihilation. The collapsed and turned lazily to meet the attack.

Yeerk pool was the center. They were burning, Missiles flew from the F-16's and the jets blackening everything in a radius of two miles. broke away. Two Dracon beams fired and the misThat would be virtually all of what had been siles were destroyed in midflight.

our home town.

The Bug fighters accelerated, easily caught the And I had done it. I had given the order to dejets, and fired again. Three of the four exploded. stroy the Yeerk pool. All of this was a result. There were no parachutes. No possibility of paraBut why? That was what bothered me. This chutes. The fourth jet rocketed low, leveled off wasn't the time for moaning over the destruction, seeming inches from the scorched ground and or even for second-guessing myself. I was done hit afterburners.

with that. Why? Why were the Yeerks doing this?

The Bug fighters let him go: They had nothing

<Maybe they think we're down there,> Tobias to fear.

suggested.

No, that wasn't quite true. The Yeerks were I noticed something in the far distance, south scared, just not of jets. This circle of destruction of where we were. More smoke. And with my falwas evidence of fear. They were creating a barrier con's eyes I could just barely make out hints of of sorts: not a wall, but a desert of ash and cinder still more Bug fighters. They looked like a cloud so that an enemy wouldn't be able to get close, of gnats.

unseen.

Tobias yelled. <Hey! Jets!>

It gave me a grim satisfaction. The Yeerks I followed the direction of his gaze, and sure were scared of us. But what were they protectenough, there they were: a flight of four F-16's. ing? The ruins of the Yeerk pool?

<The helicopter!> Marco yelled.

<The Pool ship,> Marco whispered reverently. The Yeerks had decided that show time was

<The mother of all targets. I would give both of over. They torched the news copter. A twirling my arms to see that thing burn.> Then he cinder fell to Earth.

laughed harshly. <You know what this means,

<Something's going to happen,> I said. don't you?>

<And there it is,> Tobias said, as always more

<They're getting hungry,> I said. <They're observant in the air than any of us.

getting very hungry.>

It was as big as a sports arena. It moved slowly, cumbersome in atmosphere. It was designed for space, not, like the Bug fighters, to be comfortable in air.

The Pool ship looked like a fat, swollen, threelegged spider. I'd seen it before, up in orbit, high above planet Earth.

The Pool ship: home of the Yeerk invasion force, base of the Bug fighters. It was a space-going Yeerk pool, well-defended,

dangerous, but essentially a portable barracks, a giant mess hall that served up hearty doses of Kandrona rays, the sustenance that a Yeerk must have every three days or die.

The Bug fighters rose to greet their mother, swarming around the Pool ship, bristling, daring anyone to attack.

The Pool ship waddled down out of the sky, shouldering through the clouds. And gently, delicately, ever-so-tentatively, it rested its bulk on terra firma.

I've fought them for more than three years. I was just thirteen when I started. I'm sixteen now, though that fact, like so many facts, has been deliberately obscured in the secret accounts we've kept.

I'm a sixteen-year-old kid named Jake Berenson, and I am the leader of the Animorphs. In the past it's been hard for me to say that, to take on the title of leader. In the past I've questioned myself. Wondered whether I was right, wondered whether what I did was good, wondered whether I had any right to make lifeand-death decisions. I've felt sorry for myself at My name is Jake.

times. Maybe anyone would, in my spot.

But I had to put all that aside now. I had put My name is Jake Berenson. The days of seit all aside. Not because I was suddenly concrecy, of lurking in the shadows are over. The vinced that I deserved the power, was worthy of Yeerks know my name. They know my height, it. That wasn't it. I knew better than to get too weight, eye color, Social Security number, and caught up in the myth of Mighty Jake the Yeerk Killer.

favorite foods. At long last they know the word I had given up soul-searching because I realAnimorph, Marco's word for us. ized now that it was simply too late. Way past too My brother Tom is one of them, a humanlate. The battle had become a war. And I was, for Controller. He has been for a long time. He's better or worse, the only leader we had. been elevated to security chief for all Yeerk From here on out the second-guessing, the leforces on Earth. gitimate doubts, and the self-indulgent whining, My parents, my mom and dad, are Controllers they were over. Save them for my old age in the now, too. Host bodies for Yeerks.

unlikely event that I ever had an old age. They know it all now, the Yeerks do. All our names. All our deeds.

We were all still alive, Cassie, Marco, Rachel, 8

Tobias, and me. We'd been formed into a group conquest, frustrated his plans, driven him to ever by accident. A chance encounter in an abanwilder schemes. We had forced his hand, in the doned construction site with a dying Andalite end, I guess.

prince named Elfangor. He had given the five of Now the war of subversion was over. Visser us the Andalite power to morph, to become any Three was promoted to Visser One and all his animal we could touch. Later Elfangor's brother most brutal instincts were unleashed.

Ax had joined us.

In this new, open war, we had scored some We were just kids. But in some ways we were impressive victories. We had destroyed the Yeerk the ideal guerrilla fighters. The morphing power pool. And we helped to motivate at least partial let us fly and dig and crawl, sense, hide, and and spotty efforts by the military to respond to fight with far more than human power. Our youth the Yeerk threat. Marco's mom was free of her made us the least likely of suspects.

Yeerk slave master, free of the violent, dangerous The Yeerks had carried on a subversive war of creature who had been the very Yeerk who launched infiltration for more than a decade. They had first the invasion of Earth — Visser One. That Visser discovered our planet back at the time of the One was dead and his human host now worked Gulf War. For various reasons their then Visser with us. We had used the morphing cube to make One had fashioned a plan to slowly infiltrate hunew Animorphs, to increase our numbers. man society, infest hundreds, then thousands, But we had taken hits, too: We had all been eventually millions of humans with the Yeerk pardriven from our homes. We had lost all vestiges asite, and when it was too late to stop them, of a normal life. We now hid with the free Horkseize sudden control of the planet. Only then Bajir in a valley deep in the mountains. would the Yeerks finalize an almost bloodless And we had lost the morphing cube. The

conquest.

Yeerks had it. My brother Tom had taken it, and, But that visser moved on and was replaced in when I might have stopped him — Cassie had let command of Earth by the evil creature we had him and it go.

long known as Visser Three. Visser Three was a With that act, Cassie had surrendered our less subtle enemy. Less adept at subversion. A edge, our one great advantage: that we alone had brute. We had fought him, lost, won, but above the power to morph.

all survived. And, in surviving, we had slowed his The Andalite technology was now in Yeerk 10

hands, and we had already seen that Yeerks were And that was the other reason why I would alusing it just as we had used it: to capture all the low myself no more second-guessing. A leader amazing powers to be found in the animal who shows weakness invites disaster.

kingdom.

We flew back to the Hork-Bajir camp. And as The six of us, Marco, Rachel, Tobias, Ax, we flew I thought. Not about how my orders to Cassie, and I, had stayed together through imdestroy the Yeerk pool had resulted in the literal possibly bad times, through every defeat, every obliteration of the city, but about how, how, how I close call, every mind-twisting weirdness, every could destroy the Pool ship.

horror. None of us had ever turned against the And about that distant pillar of smoke away to others. There had never been a betrayal. the south.

Cassie let Tom take the morphing cube. PerThere had to be a way to take out the Pool haps she had done so because to her the alternaship. Destroy that ship and the war might be tive was worse: She feared for me, for my soul I won. It was the target I could not possibly resist. guess, if I was forced to kill my own brother. A fact that would be known by my brother Not good enough. Not for me. All that counted Tom, and my parents, and by their ruler, Visser now was that we win, and Cassie, maybe for the One.

most decent of motives, had hurt us badly. I loved Cassie. Always had. Still did. But there was this thing between us now. And I could never trust her again. She had put my personal well-being ahead of winning a war we absolutely could not lose. And, I knew, that her decision might have come in part from my own

self-doubts, my own inability to throw off moral ambigu ity.

If I had been stronger . . . if I had been as strong as I should be, maybe Cassie would not have made her fatal mistake. I saw that clearly now. Too late for either of us.

We stood around a small fire. It was chilly. Fog had a tendency to form in this deep valley, sometimes so thick we could barely see our hands in front of our faces. It wasn't that bad now, but it was still cold.

"It's too dangerous," Cassie's dad said. He was sipping a cup of what passed for coffee here in our rough-and-ready camp.

"This is a job for the military now," Rachel's mom argued. "You kids have done enough. The secret is out: Leave it to the people who should be protecting this country. I mean, we paid enough in taxes to support the military; well, now let's see what we got for all that money." It's too dangerous." That was Eva, Marco's We were in a council of war. I was getting so I mom. The woman who had been host body to the hated these meetings. Too many voices, too first Visser One. "Visser One will know that you many opinions. So many opinions sometimes know. He'll know you're coming. He can't let you that it seemed the consensus would always come destroy a Pool ship — that's the only large-scale down on the side of doing nothing.

food supply the Yeerks have. The Blade ship can But we were guests among the free Hork-Bajir. only service so many. Lose a Pool ship? The This was their valley, their trees, the only home Council of Thirteen would have Visser One exethey had. We'd come running to them with our cuted."

families in tow when we needed a place to hide. Marco shook his head. "He'll think we're So at the very least I had to listen to Toby, the cocky after taking out the Yeerk pool. Maybe he'll young female Hork-Bajir seer. And only a fool underestimate us."

would dismiss Eva's input: None of us knew the

"No," Eva said flatly. "He'll never underestiYeerks half as well. And of course, there were my mate you again. That's over."

fellow Animorphs.

But added to all that we had Marco's dad; Just do it. Just do it, and if that doesn't work do Rachel's mom; James, the representative of our it harder and meaner.

new, adjunct Animorphs; Tobias's mom; both of

"It seems a waste to simply blow it up," Toby Cassie's parents, who only cared about making said, speaking for the first time. The Hork-Bajir sure no one got hurt . . . too many people with are a fearsome-looking, but basically peaceful too many agendas. But I still didn't know how to race that, left alone, would live in the trees eattell adults, my friends' parents no less, to be ing bark and caring for the forest. Toby is one of a quiet and let me do my job.

rare Hork-Bajir mutation: a seer. A sort of I tried not to show my impatience, but these HorkBajir intellectual and leader. She leads the days I'm not so good at that. Cassie was watching free Hork-Bajir, a small but growing band of Horkme. We're not as close anymore, but she still Bajir who have been liberated from their parasitic knows me.

masters.

She said, "Look folks, we're going to try. I

"What do you mean?" I asked Toby. don't think the question is really 'whether' but

"There are hundreds of captive Hork-Bajir

'how.'"

aboard the Pool ship," Toby said. "If we could

"No one has decided any such thing," Rachel's free at least a portion of them . . . and of course mom said angrily. "My daughter is not going to there are the ship's massive weapons systems. be dragged into some suicidal undertaking like Imagine controlling aH that power." this."

"Take it?" Marco yelped. "Steal the Pool Rachel laughed. Rachel's not a person who'll ship!"

be one way with her friends and another way with Rachel jabbed a finger at Toby. "This is my her family. There's only one version of Rachel. " girl," she said.

Mom, if we go, I go. If we don't go, I still go. Rachel's "girl" was nearly six and a half feet Visser One parks his Pool ship right out in the tall, and looked an awful lot like a kid's notion of open and we're not going to ram it down his a goblin. Not to mention the fact that she was nonexistent throat? Hah! I'm with Marco: Blow it armed with razor-sharp blades growing from up. Blow it up real good."

wrists and elbows and forehead.

I hid a grin. Rachel is the original Nike girl:

<it is the approach Visser One would not expect,> Ax opined cautiously. <It is, of course, 17

possible. It is not like stealing a Bug fighter. There was nothing to be done now. I couldn't Every system on board the Pool ship is e n go running after Cassie. The insult had been decrypted, and the codes will probably change livered. There was no taking it back now. hourly. It might take me an hour to break any one I s a i d , "As m u c h as I hate to admit i t , sequence, and if I am a minute late it will roll Rachel's mom is partly right: This isn't just our over and I will be starting back at the beginning. fight anymore. Three pilots died today. Probably An hour to get you into navigation, for example, if Air National Guard. It shows that there are miliI am lucky. And another hour to gain access to tary forces out there that could help." weapons systems.>

"All due respect," Marco said, "those pilots And then everyone started talking at once, ardidn't do much good." guing, posturing, scoring debating points.

"If we're going after the Pool ship we need a

"Okay," I said holding up my hands for calm. " diversion," I said. "We'll need a great big diverThat's enough, folks, thanks for coming." sion. I want tanks and jets and soldiers. And I

"You don't just dismiss us!" Rachel's mom want us — some of us at least — to be right out yelled.

there in front with them. I want Visser One to be

"Sure he does, Mom," Rachel said cheerfully. " dead sure we're trying to either blow up his preI need Rachel, Marco, Tobias, Ax, Toby, cious ship or get inside it."

James, and Eva," I said.

"And we will b e , right?" James asked. "I I hadn't meant to exclude Cassie. I really mean, one or the other, right?"

hadn't. But it was too late. She looked like I'd hit I shook my head. "Visser One will consider her. She blinked and turned quickly away, covering the possibility that we're using the attack as a the moment with aimless chatter to her parents. cover. He's slow but he's not a complete idiot. Tobias gave me a dirty look. And if you think a He'll figure one of three things: First, the attack red-tailed hawk's gaze is always a dirty look, is the real thing. Second, the attack is a cover for you're close to being right. Still, I knew Tobias the next attack. Third, the attack is a cover for us was mad at me. Everyone was. Everyone but to infiltrate the ship and destroy it from inside. James who was excited to be included, and Eva Any of those three options he does the same who hadn't really caught what was going on with

'thing: lifts the ship off and amuses himself blastme and Cassie. 18

ing everything in sight with the Pool ship's big Dracon cannon."

"Okay," Toby said. "I give up: How is he going to be wrong?"

"When the diversion comes, we'll already be on board the Pool ship, working on breaking those access codes," I said. "The diversion won't be to cover us getting on. It'll be to cover the fact that we're already there."

It sounded good. Sounded like I had a plan. I didn't.

I pulled Tobias and Marco aside after the council of war.

"Tobias? Did you notice that pillar of smoke off to the south of where we were?" Tobias glared at me. <What you did to Cassie was beyond wrong.>

I squirmed. "I don't have time for that, Tobias."

<Cassie is one of us,> he said.

"Did you see the smoke or not?!" I demanded.

<Yeah.>

"Then I need you to go find out exactly where it'

s coming from. Now. I mean, if you can spare the time from busting me."

Tobias didn't answer. He just spread his that with Cassie. It was . . . stuff happens somewings and flapped till he cleared the trees and times."

then caught a tailwind out of sight.

"Uh-huh. I better get going."

Marco gave me a fish-eyed look, but he didn't say anything.

In twenty-four hours I had two of the three answers I was looking for. Marco did not find the

"Marco, we need to know who is currently in Chee. He did find what he hoped and believed charge of military forces in this area." Marco thought that over. "It's not going to be was the man in charge of military forces arrayed just one guy. You'll have an air force general, a against the Yeerks.

marine, an army guy."

"He's an army general. Three star. His name I nodded. "Yeah. But the Pentagon will have is Sam Doubleday. He's fifty-four years old. His given someone the weight, you know? Someone headquarters is fifty miles from here, though. In is going to be in overall command. I mean, if they the hills, some kind of nuclear shelter in a haven't done that at least . . . they can't be that hollowed out mountain."

sorry, can they? I want you to get me a name and

"Good. At least he's not dumb enough to be a location. Grab Ax. Use him to creep Pentagon right here where the Yeerks can't help but kill computers or whatever it takes. I need the person him."

who can give orders and have them followed in The second piece of information was more inthis area." triguing.

"How about the Chee? They'd be able to help

<They're building a new Yeerk pool,> Tobias us out."

reported. <Not so much a cave like the old one. I shrugged. "Where are the Chee? That's the More like they're digging a small lake and going problem. Those Bug fighters smoked the King to let it be open. Taxxons are all over the place, house. I don't think it would have damaged their like maggots on a piece of roadki II.> underground complex, but with the house gone I could see that Marco was preparing some how do we make contact?"

witty remark on the fact that Tobias was

"Guess that's two problems for me and Ax," unusually familiar with roadkill. I shot him a Marco said.

look and he sighed, letting it go.

"Yeah." I hung my head. "I didn't mean to do A second Yeerk pool being built at a frantic 22

pace. That made sense. Once it was finished the Yeerks would remove the Pool ship back to safety in orbit. Taxxons were natural tunnelers, faster and more effective than anything Caterpillar made. It was like having a few hundred giant sentient earthworms at work.

"Okay," I said. "Let's go see this general."

<Who goes?> Tobias asked pointedly.

"Animorphs," I said. But of course I knew what he was asking. "All of us. I'll have James's people come in to watch the camp here. The rest of us, the six of us, we go to see the general. Wait, ask James to come, too. He can use the exThey called it ATF-1. Alien Task Force One. perience."

Their headquarters was a concrete-and-steel

<Well, you'll need to go ask Cassie yourself,> pit carved into a mountain. It was a sort of minorTobias said primly. league version of the big nuclear war fighting fa"Marco: Let everyone know. Everyone." I cility in Colorado. It had the look of a place that avoided looking at Tobias. Not often do I feel like has just been brought out of mothballs. There a coward, but I felt like one right then. were cobwebs hiding in the upper corners of the rooms. Dust was still being wiped from the sort of clunky computers and monochrome monitors you'd see in a video about the early days of the space race.

Inside the mountain were hundreds of soldiers and airmen, but mostly armed, it seemed, with clipboards and Palm Pilots. They wore the exactly ironed uniforms of bureaucrat-soldiers. 24

Outside the gaping mouth of The Hole, it was middle of a large map of the city. The map a different picture. Men were in firing positions on showed a circle surrounding the former Yeerk the tumbled, rocky slopes. Coming in as birds of pool. I guessed it was derived from satellite prey again, we spotted machine-gun nests, tank photos of what was left of my home town. emplacements, an artillery park well-camouflaged I demorphed.

in the trees down the valley. Helicopters flew con"What the . ." stant patrols.

"General!" someone yelped.

Razor wire was going up everywhere. Soldiers

"MP's! MP's, on the double."

were laying minefields on both sides of the only

"Draw your weapons!"

road.

"Don't shoot!"

Security was very tight — it took us no time There was a flurry of running men and cockat all to penetrate it. The general's men were ing weapons and lots of shouting. I'd had quite looking for giant bug-eyed monsters from outer an impact. Not a surprise. I was changing from a space. Not dragonflies.

two-inch-long insect to a nearly six-foot-tall teenWe zoomed around the underground headager. quarters, locating storage vaults, some fairly imMy compound eyes grew huge, larger by far pressive underground barracks, food-and-water than my dragonfly body, before they bubbled up storage, electronics, so on.

like overcooked marshmallows, melted, shrank, I located the general by watching the flow of and finally re-formed into my own human eyes. uniforms. Lieutenants talked to captains, Of course they were human eyes staring out of captains to majors, majors to colonels. My a dragonfly's face.

dragonfly eyes were good enough for me to spot The morphing process has never been the

colonels' bars. In time, the various colonels led kind of neat, smooth, fluid thing you see in a me to the general.

computer-animated special effect. It's messier He was in a map-walled conference room. I'd and weirder. Things grow or shrink at different have smiled if I had a mouth. It was like speeds. Parts of one form linger long after the something right out of a war movie: maps and others have morphed. Ax could explain it, if you phones and guys chomping cigars.

had an hour to listen.

I landed on the conference table, right in the What the general saw was a creature with hu26

man eyes and a twitching insect proboscis and They threw me in, not at all gently.

gossamer wings and a largely human body. I was a prisoner.

I was probably lucky he didn't just order me Three minutes later, I demorphed in front of to be shot. There were a dozen rifles and pistols General Doubleday again.

aimed at me by the time I completed my

He had me tackled once more, handcuffed, de-morph.

shackled, my mouth duct-taped. I was carried,

"General Doubleday," I said. "My name is hog-tied, from the room and thrown back in the Jake."

cell. In the cell I was chained to the cot.

"Get him!"

Three minutes later, I demorphed in front of Three big, burly MP's were on me before I General Doubleday.

could yell. They knocked me onto my back,

"General, why don't you stop being stupid twisted me over on my face, and slapped

and listen?" I said.

handcuffs on me.

He stopped being stupid. But not until the

" G e n e r a l , this is a m i s t a k e , " I y e l l e d . " fourth time I demorphed in front of him. And Mistake, is it? Sure as death you're one of them, then, at last, he narrowed his eyes and looked at

" he said.

me and said, "All right, Mr. Alien, what have you

"No, sir, I'm not," I grated with my cheek got to say to me?"

pressed hard onto a pencil and a crumpled map.

"First: I'm not an alien. I'm a human with ac"But chances are some of the people in this cess to alien morphing technology. Second: I room are."

know how to hurt the Yeerks in a way that they

"Let me shoot him," a major cried. Either a won't be able to brush off, but I'll need your help Controller or an idiot.

to provide a diversion."

"Shoot him? Have you lost your senses, MaThe general looked amused. "My help, huh?

jor? This is a potentially valuable prisoner. You need my help? See the stars on my shoulder Get my G-2 down here! Take him away, lock him there, son? I'm a major general, U.S. Army. up."

You're a kid who can turn into a bug. I take my I sighed. The MP's hustled me from the room, orders from the chain of command, and that ain't down a hallway to a bare, overlit room furnished you."

with a chair and a sink and a cot and a steel door It was a nice try, but I've been intimidated by with a feeding slot in it.

the best. After you stand up to the likes of The MP ignored him and looked instead to Andalites, Visser One, and Crayak, you don't the colonel. Two other officers drew weapons. quiver just because some guy has stars on One drew a bead on the general. The other stood his shoulders.

ready, covering the rest of the room.

"The chain of command is almost certainly

"I'd rather take him alive — the visser would infiltrated by Yeerks," I said. "So is this base. be sure to reward us," the colonel mused. "On the Probably even this room. You don't know if the other hand, if we let him escape, we're dead." orders you get are legitimate or not. You don't He gave me a hard look. "Better safe than dead know if the orders you give out are going to be of Kandrona starvation. Shoot him." obeyed. Your power extends only as far as the

"Now," I said.

first Controller in your staff."

From beneath the conference table a great, The general's face was growing redder the shaggy, gray-coated wolf exploded out and more I talked. But, like I say, you want scary?

upward. Cassie's jaw closed around the MP's Visser One has a tendency to morph into huge, throat and carried him down to the ground. murdering alien beasts. Red face? Not even in A wolf's jaws are made for breaking the marthe game. row out of bones. Those long, yellowed teeth dig"Get out of my headquarters," Doubleday ging into your throat, ready with a twitch to said.

sever at least two major arteries, definitely get

"He can't leave here alive," said a middleyour attention. aged colonel who looked strangely like a Baldwin Then the entire table went flying. It was a big, brother.

thick, mahogany thing, must have weighed five The Baldwin colonel nodded to one of the hundred pounds. But a gorilla is a strong animal. MP's. The MP drew his sidearm and chambered Marco gave one of the Controllers a gorilla a round.

love tap that slammed him against the wall.

"Holster that weapon, soldier," the general But perhaps most surprising to everyone were snapped.

two low-ranking soldiers who calmly drew The MP leveled the gun at me.

concealed weapons and pointed them at the

"I said holster that weapon!" the general Controllers. Continuing to hold the weapons roared.

Rachel and Ax demorphed.

The three Controllers were handcuffed and led away.

"You see my point, General," I said. He nodded. He smoothed his ruffled hair. He pulled a cigar out of his pocket. "All right, son. Let's talk."