I now saw the world through tiger's eyes. The night was brighter. And I heard with tiger's ears.

Ears that caught any sound that might be made by a predator.

The tiger sniffed the air. But the breeze was slight, and carried no warnings.

"What a wonderful animal this is, this tiger," the Yeerk said. "Excellent senses. Fast and silent and deadly."

The forest was dark and quiet, but for the rustling of leaves in the trees above. Absolute silence, as the tiger crept away. No sound as the tiger melted into the shadows. And Rachel still slept.

Soon the shack could no longer be seen. The beam of Rachel's flashlight was swallowed by black night.

But the Yeerk was uncertain now. He did not know where we were. He did not know which way to go.

And then ... a sound. A smell.

Humans!

72 "What are humans doing here?" He opened my memory. He searched my brain for an explanation. I had none. "Your own thoughts tell me it is wrong. It is very late. Humans, this deep in the forest?"

The Yeerk moved away from the human scent. They might be hunters. They might be park rangers. Those were the possibilities he had pulled from my own brain.

The Yeerk sent the tiger body into a loping run. But after just ten minutes, the tiger tired and he had to slow down. Tigers are not distance runners.

"Which way?" the Yeerk wondered.

And then . . . once again. Human scent. Human sounds.

I looked through the tiger's eyes and saw nothing. The Yeerk once more turned from the human scent.

The Yeerk searched my memory. "South. I must go south. But which way is south? Anything else will send me deeper into the forest."

"I guess you're lost," I said. The first thing I had said to the Yeerk in a long time.

"Shut up, slave. Once the sun rises in the morning I will know the way to go."

"Two hours in a morph," I reminded him. "lf I'm stuck in tiger morph, then this body will be useless to you. Visser Three will want my body morph-capable."

"Don't tell me what Visser Three wants," the Yeerk said.

But the Yeerk knew time was passing. He had to morph back to my normal human shape.

Moments later, I was watching the world through human senses. The night vision was less acute.

The ears heard too little. The human nose could scarcely smell a thing.

The Yeerk walked, pushing on as fast as my human body could move with no shoes.

"In a hurry to go nowhere?" I asked.

"I know where I'm going," the Yeerk snapped. Then he stopped. "Hah! I should have thought of it. Of course! The falcon morph. I will simply fly away."

I watched like it was a TV program. Like I was far away from my own body. I watched with interest as the body shrank. As wings sprouted. As talons appeared. As - WHAM!

The half-bird, half-human body went rolling, end over end across the ground.

73 "What?" the Yeerk demanded. "What hit me?"

He looked around frantically. But falcon eyes are for daytime hunting. They are stunningly good in sunlight. In the dark, they are nothing special.

The Yeerk continued to morph. Falcon feathers grew, the wings became more fully formed.

WHAM!

A shadow within shadows. A sense of something dark that disappeared before the Yeerk could turn the falcon's head. From far away I realized the falcon body had been injured. There was a deep, bloody gash in the right shoulder.

The Yeerk was beginning to be afraid.

WHAM!

A hammer blow! A ripping of flesh and ten don.

The invisible enemy had struck again. The falcon would not be able to take wing. Not now. The falcon was crippled. Disabled by a silent, invisible enemy.

And then I felt hope come alive in me again.

Because even as the Yeerk, crying in pain, demorphed and returned to human form, I saw the enemy.

It landed on a branch. It was outlined against faint moonlight and infrequent stars. The two little tufts on its head inspired its name.

"The great horned owl," I said to the Yeerk.

"I can read your every thought, you don't need to tell me what it is," the Yeerk snapped.

"Oh, but I enjoy telling you. It's a great horned owl. It flies without making a sound. Tobias watches them hunt sometimes. Tobias says they can hear a mouse burp from a hundred yards away. He says they can see a bug blink on a coal-black night." I laughed silently in my corner of my own brain. I laughed at the Yeerk. "As far as that owl is concerned, you might as well have a spotlight on you."

Then, to my amazement, Cassie's thought- speak was in my head. A voiceless voice that seemed to belong in a different life.

"Sorry I had to hurt you, Jake. But it was necessary. We realized the Yeerk would try morphing.

So we were ready. Rachel only pretended to sleep. We wanted this Yeerk of yours to make his escape when we were most ready for him. So you hang in, Jake. The forest is full of your friends."

74 The humans the tiger had smelled. ... My friends.

Then I felt it again. The sensation that filled me with a grim sort of pleasure. I felt the Yeerk's fear.

It was good to know that he was afraid.

It was very good.

75 Chapter 19

I could feel the Yeerk opening my memory like a book again. He was checking through the list of all the morphs I had ever done.

Dog. Fish. Flea. Seagull. Dolphin. Ant. Wolf.

I knew what he must be thinking. Which could he use to evade the watchful owl in the tree above us? The owl who saw through the night like it was day, and heard the sounds no human could hear.

"She can't stay in owl morph forever," the Yeerk said. "She has a two-hour time limit. Just as I do."

"But of course there's Rachel and Marco and Ax. You don't know how many of them are here.

You don't know where they are or what they are."

"Can the owl watch a flea? I doubt it. Or an ant?" The Yeerk smirked.

"True. But how far can a flea travel in the two-hour time limit? Twenty yards? Thirty? Then you have to demorph and my friends will have no trouble finding you."

"Shut up!" he yelled, losing patience.

I reveled in his anger. It meant he was scared. It also meant something else. I could not control my arms or legs. I could not even keep my mind closed from him. But he could not stop my thoughts. He could not stop me from talking to him.

And I had the power to annoy him. To distract him when he should be focused on escaping.

"You think you can harass me?" he said, reading my thoughts as soon as I had them. "You overestimate yourself."

"You underestimate us, Yeerk. You thought you'd just morph and walk away. You guessed wrong. And your three days is less than two and a half already. Tick tock, Yeerk. Tick tock."

"Let's see whether your owl friend can handle a wolf as easily as she handled the falcon." He began morphing. The wolf form was one I had enjoyed. Wolves are not subject to much fear.

And their instincts are easily manipulated. Not like ants. Or the lizard that was one of my earliest morphs.

I watched as my body sprouted gray fur. As my face bulged out to become a long snout. As my ears slid up the side of my head to rest on top.

"I see our owl friend is keeping her distance" the Yeerk said. "l thought as much." 76 He set out at a fast trot. Unlike tigers, wolves are long-distance travelers. They can cover amazing distances at a run. And worse, the wolf brain seemed to have some interior sense of direction. It knew which way was deeper into woods, and which way led to the city.

We ran through woods, through a night as dark as night can be. Clouds hung low over the forest, allowing only the palest glow from the moon.