It SAW me!

No! NO! I cried in silent terror. I looked away.

And when I opened my eyes again, all I saw was a weird glow.

The glow faded, little by little.

I was trembling.

"It's over, Jake," Cassie said.

84 I rose slowly to my feet. I moved my own legs. I was in control of myself again.

I looked down on the wooden floor of the shack.

A gray slug, not six inches long, lay there . . . still.

As we watched, it withered and shriveled and became nothing.

85 Chapter 22

Jake? Are you all right, sweetheart?" my mom asked me that night at dinner.

I looked up. I'd been staring at my food, I realized. Something with pasta and tuna fish.

"What?" I asked.

My mom and dad exchanged one of their "worried parent" looks. "Well, you're not eating. Don't you like it?"

I shrugged. "Sorry. It's fine. I was just . . . distracted."

My dad nodded. "It's just a change from the last two nights. You've been eating like you were trying to eat everything in the house."

"I was?"

Tom cocked an eyebrow at me. "What, now you're going to pretend it didn't happen? Last night you sat here and ate six pieces of chicken and kept yapping about how great it was. Then you ate a pie. A pie which was supposed to be for the four of us."

I hid a smile. Of course. Ax. The Andalite had played me for three days - two hours at a time. Ax was dangerous around food. The sense of taste was still totally amazing to him. When he was in human morph you didn't want to get between him and a bar of chocolate. Or a pie, I guess.

"You were a total pig," Tom said. "Chicken. Corn. Potatoes. Or, as you kept saying, 'Potatoes.

Toes. Tay-toes.' I thought you'd gone nuts."

And were you suspicious, Yeerk? I thought, looking at my brother. A new Yeerk was in Tom's head. Another arrogant master of the galaxy.

My brother was trapped in a small corner of his own mind, able to see and feel, but powerless to do a thing. I knew.

I didn't sleep much that night. I did not want the dreams to come. I feared terrible nightmares of the eye. The eye that had stared at me from a different universe.

But the only dream that came was a familiar one.

I was the tiger. My brother was the prey. But, in the end, I was my brother. And he was me.

On the news that night there was a small report on the closing of the new hospital. There was no explanation. But I knew what had happened. The Yeerks knew their plan was blown. They understood that we knew about it.

We had hurt them pretty badly.

86 But I knew better than to celebrate. Visser Three would be more determined than ever to stop us.

The next day I did something stupid. At least, Marco kept telling me it was stupid. But he didn't object very much. He understood.

We all met at Cassie's barn. And I used her dad's cellular phone to call Tom at home. I went partly into a wolf morph before I did. Just enough to make the smallest changes.

Enough to change the shape of my mouth and tongue and throat. So that my voice would sound very different.

He picked it up on the third ring. "Yeah?"

"I have a message," I said in a thick, twisted voice that did not sound at all like me.

"What?" Tom asked.

"Don't give up, Tom. Don't ever give up."

I hung up before he could say anything.

"Do you think Tom ... the real Tom . . . heard it?" Rachel asked.

"He heard," I answered.

I wondered if he would have the strength to hold on.

But I knew the answer. See, a part of my brother was in my own mind now. Along with echoes of a long-dead Hork-Bajir and a simple Gedd. And yes, even a bit of a Yeerk with dreams of glory.

Marco smiled his sardonic smile. "And is it true? Will we win?"

"This is a very complicated planet, Marco. That's what I hear, anyway. And it's a very strange universe. Anything could happen."

87