Converted to E-Book by:

  Rumeth

  1.22 PM

  My name is Jake. I can't tell you my last name, or where I'm from. That would just help the Yeerks. They'd love to find me and my friends. They'd love to know who we are, even what we are.

  Knowing my last name isn't important for you. What you need to know is that everything I'll tell you here is true. It's real. It's actually happening. Right now.

  The Yeerks are among us. The Yeerks are us. They're a parasitic species. They live inside the bodies of other beings. They take over your mind and body. Controllers. That's what you call a creature that is ruled by a Yeerk. A Controller. Something that looks human, acts human, sounds human, but whose mind is Yeerk. They are everywhere. They can be anyone. Think of the one person in the whole world that you trust the most. Think of that one special per son. And now realize, believe, accept the fact that they might not be the person you think they are. Deal with the reality that behind those friendly, loving eyes lives a gray slug. That's what a Yeerk looks like in its natural state. Just a gray slug. They enter your head, squeezing through the ear canal, and flatten themselves out to envelop your brain.

  You know all those nooks and crannies in brains? You've probably seen pictures in school. Well, the Yeerk forms itself into those nooks and crannies and it ties into your mind. You wake up and you want to scream, but you can't. You can't scream. You can't move your eyes or raise your finger or make yourself walk.

  The Yeerk controls you. You're still alive. You can still see what's happening. Your eyes move and focus, but you're not moving them. You can still hear your own mouth speaking and using your voice. You can feel it when the Yeerk opens up your memories and looks through them. You can hear the Yeerk laughing at you as it pries into your every secret.

  I know. Been there. For a few days, I was Controller. The Yeerks are here, all right. Their mother ship is parked in high orbit right now. It's hidden from human radar, but it's there. And the Yeerk super-evil leader, Visser Three, is there, too. We are being invaded. We are being enslaved. We are losing our own planet. And we don't even know it. My friends and I fight the Yeerks. But we're just five kids. Well, five kids and one Andalite. Yes, we have some amazing powers, but we're still desperately weak and outnumbered compared to the force of the Yeerk invasion. We are the only humans resisting the Yeerks. We may be the only hope that Earth has. We have a lot on our shoulders. Which is why I really, really, really did not see why I had to have more suffering piled on. Wasn't I under enough stress? Life wasn't bad enough? We had to have . . . square dancing? Square dancing! The horror! The CD player was blasting out screamingcat fiddle music. Which, in my opinion, is possibly the worst music ever created.

  The lights in the classroom seemed blazingly bright compared to the dark gray clouds outside. The teacher was standing off to the side. She was wearing that smug, satisfied look teachers sometimes get when they know they are grinding the students" last nerves.

  "Now promenade left! Bow to your partner, do-si-do!" the stereo drill-instructor yelled.

  I promenaded, which consists of walking like a BIG HONKING

  GOOBER around in a circle. And then I bowed. A strange, jerky sort of movement.

  And finally, my least favorite thing: I did a do-si-do. Or as the shrieking, yammering voice on the CD said, do-si-Doooo!

  "You call that do-si-do?" Rachel sneered as I high-stepped backward around her.

  "Don't mess with me, Rachel," I warned.

  "Smile, Jake. Big smile!" Rachel said. "We are happy while dancing. Happy!" She was so totally enjoying torturing me.

  Rachel is my cousin. She's an Animorph, too.

  "Now swing your partner back to the left and promenade!"

  "Promenade this," I muttered darkly. I grabbed Rachel to swing her. I was considering swinging her into the nearest wall. But although Rachel may look like some dippy Clueless type, she's a lot closer to being Xena: Warrior Princess. In other words, I'm just a little scared of Rachel. I've seen her in lots of battles. You just really don't want to make her too mad. You really, really

  don't.

  "Excellent swing," Rachel mocked me. "Now you're getting into it. I can just picture you in a string tie, cowboy boots, maybe a bright red-checked western shirt

  "Don't push it, Rachel," I warned again. Then the worst possible thing happened. As I was "promenading" yet again, I heard Rachel

  yell.

  "Hey, Cassie! Come by to watch?!" My heart sank. Cassie is another member of our team. She's also someone I really kind of like. If you know what I mean. And I really didn't want her watching me as I stomped clumsily around the circle. The sight of me, big old Jake, galumphing around in time to fiddle music was guaranteed to destroy any affection Cassie had for me. I mean, I was making myself sick. I could just imagine how I looked to Cassie. I met Cassie's gaze. She was standing in the doorway of the classroom. And she was laughing. She was laughing with her entire body. She was in convulsions.

  I was so relieved. See, I was afraid I'd get a pity look. Instead, she was cracking up. Tears were rolling down her cheeks as I "do-si-doed" right in front of her.

  "You find this funny? Me, trying to dance?" Cassie couldn't talk. She was laughing too hard. She just nodded. What could I do? I started laughing, too. There wasn't anything else to do.

  Oh, maybe one other thing. I grabbed Cassie's hands and pulled her into the circle. Rachel backed away, letting Cassie take her place in the pattern.

  Cassie stopped laughing.

  "No way!" she said, alarmed.

  "Let's see you do-si-do," I said.

  I grabbed her and swung her, and in a breathless voice she whispered, "I just came by to tell you something. Tobias wants us. Right after school lets out. It's something big." I took a deep breath. Suddenly, I wasn't in the mood to laugh anymore. Tobias wouldn't say "something big" unless it was something big.

  And "something big" meant something bad these days. Cassie and I had to obey the music and separate then, but a few seconds later, we rejoined in the pattern, bowing to each other.

  "I guess square dancing doesn't seem so bad now, huh?" Cassie asked me.

  "Yeah, right. It would take more than the danger of sudden death to make square dancing okay," I said. "A lot more." I did some more promenading. I did some more bowing. I did some more do-si-doing.

  But my thoughts were already running ahead, wondering what Tobias had seen. And just how much of a mess it would end up being.Then . . .

  FLASH!

  I fell!

  I fell down and down through the green, green trees! A branch. I snatched at it with my hand and swung and released, then flew through the air and caught another branch. I wrapped my tail around the branch and turned to look back. Monkeys were swinging toward me through the high treetops of the jungle. I was giddy.

  It was a rush!

  It was . . .

  FLASH!

  Cassie was smiling, and looking a little strangely at me. The music was done. The class was breaking up.

  "Are you okay?" Cassie asked me.

  "Yeah. Yeah," I said, shaking off the weird vision.

  "Daydreaming?" Cassie asked me.

  "I guess so," I said.

  "I wonder what Tobias wants. Do you have any idea?" I was too weirded out to really respond. One second I'd been square dancing. The next second I'd been swinging through the trees. And both moments had been real.

  3:08 P.m.

  What do you think?" Marco asked me.

  "Personally, I figure Tobias found some really good roadkill, and he wants us to share."

  "Yeah, that's probably it," I said tolerantly. Marco's approach to everything is to joke about it. Especially when he's worried.

  After school we all went our separate ways. Cassie to her home, Rachel to hers. We all knew Tobias had some serious reason to talk to us. We were all afraid it was trouble of some kind.

  But I had something extra to worry about. The hallucination, or vision, or whatever it was I'd had was too real to just forget. Everyone daydreams. This was no daydream. I was in the jungle. Period. It was for just a few seconds, but it was definitely real.

  But like I said, priority number one was figureing out what was bugging Tobias. So Marco and I walked home together because that's what we usually did. And it is very important for us to act normal. We don't want to draw attention. So we try and be like we always were. Like we were before the night that changed our lives forever.

  We'd been walking home from the mall at night. We took a shortcut through an abandoned construction site. A really stupid, irresponsible thing to do. But it turned out it wasn't ax murderers or kidnappers we had to worry about. Before that night we'd all known each other, but we weren't a group. We had just happened to hook up at the mall. It was an accident or fate or something. Take your pick.

  Anyway, the five of us ended up walking together as we were leaving the mall. And in a dark, spooky construction site, with empty, half-finished buildings all around us, we saw the spaceship land. It was an Andalite fighter. It was badly damaged. Up in orbit, the Andalites had come out on the wrong end of a fight with the Yeerks.

  The Andalite pilot of the fighter was named Elfangor. Prince Elfangor. He was dying. He was the one who told us about the Yeerks. Life changed that night. Life went from being just the daily stuff any normal kid has to deal with, to knowing a secret that made you want to sit down and cry. It was Prince Elfangor who gave us the power to morph. It was all he co
uld do to help us. It was the only weapon he could give us. The power to morph. To become any animal we could touch and

  "acquire." A great and awful power. A power that has given me some serious nightmares. I've seen things since that night at the con struction site. Things I wish I'd never seen. And I've done things I wish I couldn't remember.

  "Hey," Marco said, interrupting my thoughts. "Speaking of Bird-boy. Up there. Is that anyone we know?"

  I followed the direction he was looking. It was a dark afternoon and the sky just kept getting darker. It was filling up with rain clouds the color of steel wool. And there, silhouetted against the clouds, was a large bird.

  Even from a distance you could tell it was a bird of prey.

  "Could be. I can't tell," I said. "If it's Tobias he'll spot us."

  Tobias is in hawk morph. Permanently. See, there's a nasty little hook buried inside the morphing power: Stay in morph for more than two hours, and you stay in morph forever. Tobias has the soul and mind of a human. But his body is the body of a red-tailed hawk.

  "He's coming closer," Marco said.

  "Yeah." I had mixed feelings. Tobias is one of us. A friend. More than a friend. He's risked his life for me many times. But I sensed he was bringing bad news. And I really didn't want to hear bad news.

  I heard his thought-speak voice in my head.

  "See? Figured it was him," Marco said.

  We couldn't answer Tobias. He was still too high up to hear us speak, even with his excellent hawk hearing. And you can only make thought-speak when you're in morph. Or if you happen to be an Andalite.

  Tobias said. He sounded

  tense,

  impatient,

  excited.

  Not

  that

  he

  really

  "sounded" at all. But his thought-speak in my head carried tension. I looked at Marco. He sighed.

  "My dad should still be at work. We can use my house," he said. "We're almost there." We headed straight for Marco's house. We live in the same subdivision, just a couple of blocks away from each other. Most of the kids in our school live there, including Rachel. Cassie lives out on her farm a little ways down the road.

  Tobias said.

  "This has "big trouble" written all over it," I muttered. "In huge red neon letters," Marco agreed. We reached Marco's house and went in. Marco checked to make sure we were alone. "Dad!

  Dad, you home? Anyone home? Hey, Dad, I'm going to change all the settings on your stereo!" Marco winked at me. "If he's home, that'll make him come running."

  There was no reply. Just a quiet house. We ran up the carpeted stairs to Marco's room. We ran past framed pictures of Marco and his dad and his mother, who everyone thought as dead. Marco opened his bedroom window as wide s it would go. The breeze was cool and damp. It as going to rain. And I hate rain. Let's get this over with," I said. I kicked off y shoes and removed everything but my morphing suit. Marco did the same. focused my mind on a bird. It was a peregrine falcon. The DNA of that falcon was part of me. And, thanks to the Andalite morphing technology, I could trade that DNA for my own.

  I focused my mind and the change began.

  Feather patterns appeared on my skin as if some invisible person had drawn them there.

  The not-terribly-clean floor of Marco's room came rushing up at me as I shrank, dwindling down like a fast-burning candle. It was like falling and falling without ever quite hitting the ground.

  Or in this case, hitting a dirty white sock.

  "Oh, man," I said. "Marco, you could at least not leave dirty gym socks around."

  "Hey, I've seen your room," Marco said. "You still have some of your old baby diapers lying around."

  He started to say more, but that's when his human tongue shriveled down to become a tiny bird tongue. So all he said was "Craww hee hrrar."

  Whatever that meant.

  The dirty gym sock went from being the size of a sock to being the size of a blanket. The only good thing was that falcons don't have much of a sense of smell. I was grateful for that. My lips became hard as fingernails and began to press outward, forming a sharp, down-curved beak. It was weird and disturbing because I could actually see the beak grow, like some humongous nose.

  My feet were gone, replaced by talons that could open up a prey animal like a can opener on a can of cat food.

  My bones made grinding, squishy noises as my skull shrank. My arm

  bones

  became

  hollow

  and

  other

  bones

  disappeared

  altogether.

  Then the patterns of feathers on my skin grew threedimensional. It was eerie to watch --like my skin was chapping really badly. Like skin was peeling up at an incredible rate, and each peel of skin formed a feather. Gray feathers, mostly.

  I glared at Marco with my incredible Force-10 falcon vision. He glared back with the eyes of an osprey. I said.

  I flapped my wings twice and hopped up to the windowsill.

  Marco said. He sounded a little resentful. Like it was my fault. He hopped up to the sill beside me.

  I said it knowing it would

  make him mad.
  "protect" me. Hah!>

  I opened my wings wide, kicked off from the windowsill, and dropped straight for the grass in Marco's backyard. This is always terrifying. See, you know you're a bird and all, but in your mind you're still a human. And jumping out of windows scares humans. I was ten, twelve feet off the ground, with nothing but lawn to catch me if for some reason my wings didn't work. But then my wings caught the air. I felt the pressure of the air pushing up beneath me. I flapped hard, one, two, three, four, and shot for ward. Forward and upward. I flapped and flapped, working hard to get al titude in the cool air. Flapping is hard. Just be cause you're a bird doesn't mean flapping is easy. Marco and I had just managed to climb maybe fifty feet when Tobias came zooming up alongside us, zipping around like he'd been born a bird.

  he said.

  I asked, maybe a little too grouchily. Tobias laughed. he said.

 

  Marco demanded.
  What, is there a sale on gourmet birdseed?>

  Tobias said.

  Lt's hard to be worried when you're flying. You feel so powerful, floating high above the heads of all the little people below you. People are so slow. They walk in little lines along side walks, always stuck moving in two dimensions: left-right, forward-back. A bird moves in three dimensions and has a lot more going on when he's flying. There's the air temperature, the speed of wind gusts, the steadiness of the breeze crosswinds and thermals and humidity.

  Your wings and tail are constantly adjusting --extending your wingtips, spreading or narrowing your tail, altering the angle of attack.

  Fortunately, the falcon's brain handles all of that. Because let's face it, as a human, I know basically nothing about flying.

  All I know is it's the coolest thing in the entire world. Marco and I flew along with Tobias till we spotted two other big birds of prey rising up toward us: Rachel and Cassie.

  Tobias advised.

  He was right. Falcons, hawks, and eagles don't exactly fly in flocks together. And with the intense vision of our bird morphs, we could see whatever we were supposed to see from a quarter of a

  mile away.

  I wanted to get altitude because I was struggling with the dead air around me. I had the narrowest wings of the group. I was brutally fast in a killing dive, much faster than the others. But at the business of endlessly riding wisps of breeze I was weak.