62 "Stay in morph," Jake snapped. "Don't let them know we're human."

"Let's charge them!" Rachel yelled.

"No! You can't even climb up that rock face. Don't be stupid!" Cassie called Tobias. "Tobias! You can get away!"

"I don't think so," he said. "No headwind. It would take me a couple of minutes to flap my way up out of here. They'd fry me before I got clear."

The reality settled over us. The despair.

"What are we going to do?" Cassie wailed.

"There has to be a way out! There has to be!" Rachel yelled.

"Not this time," I said grimly.

We were trapped. Outnumbered. Outsmarted.

Finished.

And that was when he came.

He looked so much like Ax. So much like Prince Elfangor. And yet, so totally different. The difference wasn't something you saw. It was something you felt.

A shadow on your soul. A darkness that blotted out the light of the sun. Evil. Destruction.

Not the impersonal, programmed destructiveness of the ants. This was warm-blooded, deliberate evil.

His body was an Andalite. He was the only Andalite-Controller in existence. The only Yeerk ever to infest an Andalite body. The only Yeerk with the Andalite power to morph.

Visser Three.

Visser Three, who had murdered the Andalite Prince Elfangor while we cowered in terror.

Visser Three, who even the Hork-Bajir and Taxxons feared.

"Well, well," he said, thought-speaking to us. "I have you at last, my brave Andalite bandits.

Fools. Do you think we never change our frequencies?"

"Yeerk!" Ax said in a silent voice loaded with hatred.

Visser Three's main eyes focused on Ax. "A little one," he said, surprised. "Are the Andalites now reduced to using their children to fight?"

63 Ax started to say something, but Jake snapped, "Shut up, Ax! None of us communicates with him. Give him nothing."

Ax fell silent, but he was practically vibrating with rage and hatred for the Yeerk Visser. It wasn't surprising. Visser Three had killed his brother.

But Jake was right. We couldn't get into a conversation with Visser Three. The rest of us still wanted to hide the fact that we were humans, not Andalites. We could too easily slip and reveal the truth.

Visser Three seemed to be enjoying his big moment. "What a colorful assortment of morphs," he said. "Earth has such wonderful animals, don't you agree? When we have enslaved the humans and made this planet over in our image, we will have to be sure and keep some of these forms alive. It would be entertaining to try some of these morphs myself."

None of us said anything. At least not any thing that was human. Jake did snarl, drawing his tiger lip back over his teeth.

"Especially you," Visser Three said to Jake. "That is a beautiful, deadly animal. I approve.

In fact, I was going to demand you demorph. But I have a better idea. You see, we have a guest aboard the mother ship. It will be entertaining to show you to Visser One as you are." I was sick with dread and fear. But not so afraid that I didn't notice a sneer in Visser Three's tone when he said "Visser One."

"Did you catch that?" Jake asked me in the thought-speak version of a whisper.

"Yeah. Visser Three doesn't like Visser One."

Visser Three must have given some signal, be cause at that moment his Blade ship appeared overhead, shimmering into view as it decloaked.

The Blade ship is far larger than the Bug fighters, and very different. It is jet-black. It's built like some kind of battle-ax from the middle ages, with two curved ax-head wings, and a long, diamond-pointed "handle" aimed forward.

"We're better off making a run for it!" Rachel said.

"lt would be suicide," I said. "As long as we're alive, there's hope."

"Yeah. Visser Three is taking us to the Yeerk mother ship to show off for his boss. Some hope."

But Rachel did nothing. And I did nothing. And we all just stood there, under the watchful eyes of a hundred Hork-Bajir.

They must have landed out of sight while we were busy watching the one Bug fighter.

Ax had used the wrong frequency. The Yeerks had figured out we were laying a trap. And our trap had become Visser Three's trap.

64 65 Chapter 16

A couple of dozen of the Hork-Bajir leaped down from the high wall of the quarry and sur rounded us. They kept their Dracon beams leveled at us as the Blade ship landed on the quarry floor.

"Go, obey farghurrash there horlitl" one of the Hork-Bajir said, in the strange mix of English and their own language that they use.

He pointed to the Blade ship. A door had opened in the side.

"I can't fit in there," Rachel said.

But as she approached the door, the door widened to her size. It stretched and grew as if the metal skin of the Blade ship were alive.

What a pathetic little crew we were, trooping inside the Blade ship. Weak and pathetic and stupid to imagine that we could ever have resisted the Yeerks.

Visser Three was right. We were fools.

This wasn't even my fight, I thought. Not really. This wasn't my time to die.

I guess I wanted to feel angry. But what I felt was numb, as I trooped into the Blade ship with the others. You know, like I wasn't really there, almost. I was past feeling anything, I guess. I just kept thinking, It's happening. It's finally really happening.

The next day was Sunday. My dad would go to my mom's grave. Alone.

It would be a while before he would admit that I, too, was gone.

Just like when my mom died - there would never be a body.

Just like my mom.

"This is not looking good," I said. I couldn't take the silence anymore.

"No. It isn't. But we're not dead yet," Jake answered.

"Yet. Why doesn't that make me happy?" I asked. I looked around at the others, all crammed into a windowless steel cube. Black, dimly lit steel walls on all six sides. No door. It was like a coffin."

"We look like some kind of circus," I said. "An elephant, a tiger, a gorilla, a wolf, and a freak of nature."

That got some halfhearted laughs from the others. I don't know why I was making jokes. I guess that's the way I am. When bad things happen, I tell jokes. But inside I felt sick. Like I had swallowed broken glass.

66 "Maybe we should just demorph," Cassie said. "Maybe if they realize we aren't Andalites, they'll let us go ."

She knew that was dumb, of course. But when you're scared, you start grabbing at anything.

You want to believe there's a way out.

The truth was, there were exactly two possibilities. Visser Three would kill us. Or Visser Three would turn us into Controllers. He would infest us with a Yeerk.

"We should stay in animal morph," Jake said. "I mean, the thing is, if Visser Three learns we are human, he may go after our families next. He may figure we told them something."

"Prince Jake is right," Ax said. "The Yeerks will not want to take any chances that other humans know of them."

It was true. I knew it was true. I guess I'd known it all along. But hearing it said, it made me want to crawl into a corner.

My dad. Cassie's parents. Rachel's mom and her sisters. Jake's parents. Maybe even Jake's brother, Tom, although he was one of them. Their lives were at risk, too.

Suddenly, a window opened in one of the walls. It just grew, the same way the door had before. Like the steel was alive. It formed a round porthole, large enough for all of us to see - even Rachel, who could only turn her massive head enough to look with one eye.