"Marco? That is not your mother. Not anymore. That is not her."

"Jake? It's my mom. Look, it's her."

"No, it isn't, Marco. Not anymore. They have her. She's one of them. One of them!"

"Why, Visser One," Visser Three sneered, "you seem to have frightened the humanoid one."

"It is called a gorilla," Visser One said coldly. "If you are going to be in charge of Earth, Visser Three, you should at least learn something about the planet."

"And take a human host body, like you did? No, I think not. Human bodies are weak. I much prefer this Andalite host."

My mother looked at him and curled her lip. "I took a human host and learned about the planet and the humans. And because of that I was able to begin the invasion that you have now endangered with your criminal incompetence!"

Visser Three's deadly Andalite tail twitched, as if he was going to stab my mom . . . Visser One. The red troops tensed up. The gold troops let their hands edge toward their weapons.

"Ooookay," Rachel said. "l think we were right. These two definitely don't like each other." 71 She didn't know, I realized slowly. Rachel didn't know. But she had never met my mother.

Neither had Cassie or Tobias. And Jake had kept our talk private.

Visser Three slowly relaxed. "You would like to provoke me, Visser One," he said. "But the fact is that I destroyed the Andalite force. I shot down their dome ship. I killed Prince Elfangor myself and heard his dying screams. And now I have eliminated this last, pathetic rabble of Andalites."

My mom . . . Visser One . . . just smiled. "You want to be Visser One? You think you can take my title? We shall see. The Council of Thirteen does not like Vissers who make mistakes. And you have made mistakes. Be careful of your own ambition."

She snapped her fingers, and every one of the soldiers in gold turned. Then she walked away, followed by her gold-uniformed troops.

That was not my mother. At least not the creature who called herself Visser One.

Visser One was the Yeerk inside my mother's brain.

But the sickening thing is, you see, that the host mind is still alive. It is still aware.

Somewhere inside that head, behind those painfully familiar eyes, my mother still lived.

"Take it easy, Marco," Jake said. "I know how it is. I know how much you want to do some thing. But now is not the time. They'd cut us down before we got two steps."

"I know," I said dully. I hated myself for not trying, but I knew there was nothing I could do.

I had to hide inside my morph. Never let my mother know it was me. Never let her know . . .

Slowly, heavily, I stood up. I felt weak. A very strange feeling for a gorilla.

I think right then, if I had been in any other morph I would have just surrendered and let the animal mind take over. Let instinct rule, and wash away my human emotion.

But the gorilla was too much like a human. Its instincts were gentle. Like humans, it was a creature with emotions. It could not protect me from the pain.

"Don't tell the others, Jake," I said. "You're the only one who recognized her."

"Okay, Marco."

"You can't even tell Cassie, okay?"

"It's okay, man. You are my oldest and best friend. You know that. No one will ever know from me."

Visser Three still stared at us. I think he wasn't sure what to do next.

"Six Andalites," he said. "Six Andalite bodies that could be used by my most loyal lieu tenants."

72 Ax exploded. "And then there would be others like you, you filth! Other Andalite-Controllers. More unnatural abominations like your vile self!" Visser Three cocked his head thoughtfully. "Why are you the only one who speaks? You're right of course: Why would I allow anyone to acquire Andalite morphing powers? But you are a child. Why do the others remain silent? And why do you all still hide in your morphs?

Curious. Very curious."

He seemed to think it over for a minute. Would he realize the truth? Would he figure out that the reason we remained silent was so he wouldn't guess that we were human? Would he figure out that's why we stayed in morph?

He seemed to shrug.

"Take them back to a holding cell. Triple the guard. If there is the slightest trouble, kill them 73 Chapter 18

They marched us down a hallway. Rachel, still in her huge elephant body, filled the hallway like our ant bodies had filled the tunnels in the sand. Tobias rode on my shoulder, unable to fly in the cramped space.

The place we ended up was just like the bare, black-steel prison we'd been held in on the Blade ship. But this time no window appeared.

There was dim light that seemed to radiate from the ceiling. But nothing else at all.

I slumped down in a corner.

"What's our time look like, Ax?" Jake asked.

"You have only thirty percent of your time left."

"Thirty-six minutes," Jake translated.

"Thirty-six minutes and I'll spend the rest of my life as an elephant," Rachel said. "Not that the 'rest of my life' is likely to be much time."

For a while everyone talked about various plans for escape. It was all just talk. We knew we were trapped. We knew it was over. We were aboard the Yeerk mother ship. It was huge. If we had a week to learn our way around, we'd still have been lost in its maze.

There were hundreds, probably thousands of armed Yeerks - Hork-Bajir, Taxxons, and a few other shapes we'd never seen before, and of course, humans.

Like my mother.

My mother - Visser One. Most powerful of the Vissers.

When had it happened? Had the Yeerks taken her much earlier? Had she already been a Controller for those last years when she was with us?

When she had come to my bedroom to say good night, had that been a Yeerk slug, just playing a part, like an actor?

When I tried to fake sick to get out of school, had it been a Yeerk who saw through my story and kidded and joked me into admitting it?

Was it a Yeerk, handing out the presents on Christmas morning? A Yeerk, singing in the church choir? A Yeerk, pulling the puppet strings of my mother's body when she dragged me through J. C. Penney's and made me buy school clothes I didn't really like?

Was it a Yeerk I used to find making out with my dad like a teenager when they didn't think I saw them?

All of it an act? All of it fake? For how many years?

How much of what I'd thought was my mother, had been . . . one of them?

74 One thing was sure. Her death had been faked. The so-called drowning accident. No body recovered.

But the body had been recovered, hadn't it? The Yeerks' mission had been accomplished. The invasion of Earth had been started. Visser One was leaving Earth in the hands of Visser Three. And so she had to disappear and not leave any one asking questions.

"There has to be something we can do!" Rachel was saying.

Ax said, "My people have a saying - grace is the acceptance of the inevitable."

"Yeah?" I said suddenly. "Well, I don't accept. That's what they want. They want the entire human race to lie down and accept the inevitable."

Jake turned his big, yellow tiger eyes on me. I saw Tobias's eternally fierce glare.

I stood up.

"I have a saying for you. I got it from a fortune cookie. Fall down seven times, get up eight.' You know what that means? That means you don't ever just lie there. You always get up.

You always come back for more. You never surrender. Maybe you die, but you never surrender."

They were all looking at me now. Through the eyes of a wolf and a hawk and the big, sad eyes of an elephant.