"Yes, my Visser! Yes!" The woman took off.

Fast.

Which left us standing around in the street, gaping at the Yeerk pool. And a lot of Controllers gaping at us.

"This isn't good," Marco said. "Word is going to travel very fast that Visser Three is here.

And someone is going to realize the truth."

"So what now?"

Jake wondered. "How long does the Ellimist want to leave us here?"

"Until we are convinced he's right," Tobias said.

"There must be something more he wants us to see," Cassie said. I glanced at Cassie. She looked puzzled.

I guess I expected her to look like, "See, I told you so, here's the future." But she seemed troubled. Like she couldn't make sense of something that was bothering her.

"What?" I asked her.

63 She shrugged. "Just a feeling. There's something deeper going on here. Something we don't get."

The Yeerk pool was a busy little place.

Controllers coming and going. The host bodies were shoved into cages, and dragged back out when it was time.

There was a steady procession along the six different piers, draining out and taking in Yeerks. Over it all loomed the EGS Tower, topped off by the glass dome.

"Why put a Yeerk pool here?" I wondered aloud. "I mean, there's all kinds of open areas.

Why go to the trouble of removing the buildings that were here? It's not like this is exactly a scenic location."

"I wonder what year it is?" Marco said. "Is this next year? Ten years from now? Twenty?"

I heard a low roar coming from the sky. A Yeerk Bug fighter swooped down low, took a turn around the EGS Tower, and settled toward the near side of the Yeerk pool.

I don't know why, but I felt drawn to that Bug fighter. Maybe it was some strange psychic urging. Maybe it was the Ellimist, making me go closer to see what he wanted to show me.

Wherever the urge came from, I found myself walking toward the Bug fighter.

"Hey!" Jake said. "What are you doing?"

"You guys stay back," I said.

"It's okay," Marco said, jerking his thumb at Ax. "We're with Visser Three here. Excuse me, I mean Visser One. And congrats on the big promotion, by the way."

Ax stepped out quickly in front of me, swaggering and acting the role of the great and terrible Visser.

As we drew closer to the pool, there was a crowd of Controllers, humans, Hork-Bajir, Taxxons, and a few odd species I had never seen. The crowd parted very quickly. No one wanted to accidentally annoy Visser One in any way.

We swaggered up to the Bug fighter like the bosses of all the world. Then the door of the Bug fighter opened.

I stopped. Ax stopped as well. The others crowded behind us.

My skin was tingling. My hair felt like it was standing on end. I knew something was about to happen.

Something awesome and terrible.

And then, they stepped from the Bug fighter.

A human and an Andalite.

64 I knew the Andalite. We had met before. I could feel the dark dread that emanated from him.

Visser Three. The real Visser Three.

Seeing Ax along with Visser Three, the crowd of Controllers immediately knew the difference. Visser Three has an Andalite body, but there is no mistaking him for anything other than a creature of pure evil.

"Well, well." Visser Three said to the person with him. "Right on schedule. Just as you said it would be. "

I stared at the human. She was a pretty young woman, maybe twenty or twenty-two years old.

She had blond hair, cut short. She wore no makeup. Her clothes were plain. I had stopped breathing. My heart had stopped beating. I tried to swallow but couldn't.

"Hello, Rachel," the woman said to me.

"Hello, Rachel," I replied.

65 CHAPTER 16

It was me. Me, as I would be in the future.

"I knew you were coming," the future Rachel said. "After all, I was you. Once I stood right where you stand now, and looked just like you look now, and saw myself as I am today."

She sounded perfectly calm. But her eyes flickered quickly to Ax, then back to me. Visser Three shook his head in amusement.

"If only I had known from the start that you were humans. For so long I believed you were Andalites. Until, at last, we caught you."

I felt strangely calm. I mean, considering what was happening. I was face-to-face with Visser Three - who was now Visser One. I was face-to-face with my own future.

"You're a Controller," I said to the older me.

"Of course," she said. She smiled. A cruel smile, not at all like me. "We won. You all led us on a nice chase, but in the end, we won. This planet is Yeerk territory. The human race has achieved its destiny as hosts for the Yeerk race."

"If you know so much, how did we come to be here? In the future?" Marco asked.

"An Ellimist has brought you here." Visser Three said. "In your own time, you face a choice. The Ellimist has brought you six humans . . . you five humans and one Andalite . . .

here to show you a future. To show you the future. Soon he will return you to your own time.

"

"What choice did we make?" I asked.

The older Rachel smiled her cruel smile. "The right one, obviously. Everything has worked out perfectly."

"Yeah?" Jake said defiantly. "Maybe not. The Ellimist brought us here to help us make a choice. So what if we go back to our own time and decide to accept the Ellimist's offer? Then Rachel won't be around to be turned into a Controller. She'll be with the rest of us on whatever planet the Ellimist takes us to."

I watched closely for any reaction by my older self. Nothing. Not a flicker. And yet, there was something. She was trying to hide something.

"You know what we decided. But still, here you are," I said. "So either you're here to change what I decided. Except... no, then it might change all of this. Or else you're here because your being here is what caused me to decide whatever I decided."

"Confusing, isn't it?" Visser Three sneered. "I don't know how the Ellimists keep it all straight."

"Let's leave," Cassie said suddenly. "I don't like this place, and I don't like these two . . .

creatures."

66 "But Cassie, I'm your best friend," my older self said mockingly.

"No, you're not. Maybe Rachel is still alive in there somewhere. But what you are is a Yeerk.

" Cassie started to turn away. As she did, she tripped. She fell against me. Suddenly the older Rachel was there. She grabbed me and held my arm steady so I didn't fall.

But to Ax it must have looked like she was lunging at me. His tail whipped forward in the blink of an eye.

Ax's quivering blade was pressed against the older Rachel's throat.

Her eyes went wide with fear. She shot a glance at Visser Three. And to my amazement, Visser Three seemed frozen. He was confused.

His main eyes narrowed. He looked from Ax, to the older Rachel, to me.

Suddenly I knew. "This wasn't in the script, was it?" I asked him. "This wasn't supposed to happen. Something has changed! It's Ax, isn't it? You said 'six humans" before. That's what you expected to find. That's what Rachel told you would happen. But the future has changed, hasn't it?

Something is different."

Visser Three glared at me, and now he dropped the pretense of politeness.

"Do you know what I did when I finally caught you and your little band of Animorphs? Do you know what I did? I gave each of you to a trusted lieutenant. And once you belonged to us, once you were MINE, I killed your bird friend here, and we roasted his body. " Visser Three leaned close to me. "He was tough and stringy, but we added a sauce you humans have. Barbecue, I believe it's called. And then your friend Tobias was delicious. You had a leg, as I recall. You ate it and laughed. "