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had wanted to get close to her. He had gone to meetings. He'd played along with them, never
guessing the truth. All he had cared about was the girl.
He had stumbled, accidentally, into a secret leadership meeting. He thought the girl was seeing
another boy. But she was one of them.
He had followed her, wandered into the meet ing and seen Visser Three. Visser Three in his
Andalite body.
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I saw the Controllers grab a yelling, punching, kicking Tom. I saw as they tied him up. Carried
him through secret passageways to the great, underground Yeerk pool.
I saw him scream as he realized what was happening. I felt his fear. I felt his rage as the Yeerk
slug crawled into his ear and wrapped itself around his brain. I felt every ounce of his despair.
And like the Gedd and the Hork-Bajir, this human, my brother, became a part of me.
The Yeerk was no longer in pain. It was beyond pain.
I opened my eyes and looked at Cassie. It happened so naturally. I opened my eyes. By my own
will.
I don't know how she knew, but I guess she did. She nodded slightly and met my gaze.
For the first time in more than an hour, the Yeerk spoke.
The Yeerk shuddered. I could feel it. A physical spasm. My vision changed. I felt. . . it's hard to
describe. I felt as if I were seeing through things, into things. Like I could see the front and back
and top and bottom and inside of every thing all at once.
And then I saw it.
A creature. Or a machine. Some combination of both. It had no arms. It sat still, as if unable to
move, on a throne that was miles high.
Its head was a single eye. The eye turned slowly . . . left. . . right . . .
I trembled. I prayed it would not look my way.
And then it saw me.
The eye, the bloodred eye, looked straight at me.
It saw me.
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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