Текст книги "Animorphs - 12 - The Reaction"

Автор книги: Katherine Alice Applegate

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"Crocodile," Cassie said. "Not alligator."

"You guys get out of here. I'll take care of Visser Three," I said, sounding much braver than I felt. "It's my fault we're in this mess."

"Yeah, right, Rachel," Jake said.

Then he began rapid-fire orders. "Spread out. Thirty feet apart. Keep moving so he doesn't get an easy target. Marco? We could use your help down here. And for future reference, I don't give a rat's butt if it's a crocodile or an alligator, so long as it can fight."

I drifted up to the surface, showing just my nostrils and my eyes above water. I breathed out and refilled my lungs with fresh air.

The dolphins did the same, blowing out through the holes in the backs of their heads and sucking in fresh air.

In the few seconds before I dived again, I saw Jeremy Jason standing on the back of the boat. He had a huge, fierce grin on his face. He was pointing and laughing like a fan at a boxing match.

Something he yelled drifted to me on the breeze.

"Is he awesome, or what?!"

He was referring to Visser Three. He had just watched the Visser shed his human form, meld into his stolen Andalite body, then morph into a fearsome beast from some far-distant planet. And his reaction to it all was admiration.

I felt cold fury. What kind of a human being would sell out his own species?

Enjoy the show while you can, I sneered silently. It may not end the way you expect.

I sank back beneath the choppy waves, down and down. And then I saw it.

Him. Visser Three.

It was a bizarre morph. Like nothing on Earth, that's for sure. It looked like a vast, bright yellow stingray. Like a living pancake, flat and oblong. It sort of flew through the water by slowly flapping its sides. There were two stalk-mounted eyes on top, and two long, trailing antennae below.

All along its back it had spears. They were lined up flat. You know how a fighter jet has missiles tucked up under the wings? That's how it held the spears, only they were on top. But all neatly in a row, facing forward.

The spears – there must have been twenty of them – were each as long as a broom handle and just about as thick. They had irregular striping, yellow and green and bits of blue. It was probably camouflage back on the home planet of the Lebtin javelin fish. But here, in Earth's oceans, it seemed gaudy and too bright.

It flew through the water. Faster than my crocodile could ever have moved. But faster, too, than the dolphins or the shark.

"Fast," Jake said.

"Yep," I agreed.

"Probably not all that agile, though," he suggested.

"No. It will be slow in a turn."

"I've changed my mind," Ax said. "l do not think I want to see a Lebtin javelin fish."

I glanced left. Ax was holding position there. Beyond him was Jake.

Cassie was on my right. The javelin fish was now just a hundred feet away. I could only pray I wouldn't suddenly start morphing again.

Then . . .

The javelin fish – Visser Three – began to swell up. It seemed to inflate like a balloon. It slowed . . . slowed . . .

SHOOOOOOP!

A spear fired from the javelin fish's mouth! Like a rocket, it lanced through the water. I didn't have time to even think about dodging it.

"AHHHHHHH!"

The spear went through my tail, near the base. Pain shot up my spine.

Blood billowed into the water around me. My blood!

I looked down. The spear was still there, piercing my scales. All I could do was stare at it.

It seemed ridiculous. It was just stuck right through me!

"Rachel!"

"Hah-HAH!" Visser Three exulted. "It works! I just acquired this morph, and look how well it performs!"

I looked at Visser Three. One of the spears stored on his back rolled neatly into a flap. Then he began to swell again, ready to fire another spear.

"Look out! Move! Move!" Jake howled in our heads.

But I couldn't move. My tail was paralyzed. I wanted to charge the alien creature, but I could barely move at all.

SHOOOOOOP!

The second spear flew straight for Cassie. But her dolphin was too fast.

She kicked hard and the spear missed by millimeters.

No, she had been hit! I could see the cut across her back where the spear had opened the flesh.

"I'm okay, I'm okay!" she cried.

She'd been lucky. A split-second slower and she would have been impaled.

The javelin fish was still rushing at us. I rolled onto my back, pale belly up. "Jake! Back off. Get out of here. It's too fast! You have to split up and hope you lose him!"

"I'm not leaving you!"

"You have to. I'll play dead. And if he comes close enough . . ."

He hesitated, but only for a second longer. "Split up! Run for it!"

"I'm not leaving Rachel!" Cassie cried.

"Cassie, you have to," I said. "Now! Get out of here or we'll all be dead!" Visser Three flew toward us, gliding swiftly through the water. I saw a new spear roll into the flap. He began to swell, sucking in the water he used to propel the spear.

"He's getting ready again. You guys, GET OUTOFHERE!"

Cassie and Jake and Ax all wheeled sharply away, each heading off in a different direction.

SHOOOOOOP!

The spear raced after Ax! He was a hundred feet away and moving at full shark speed. But the spear gained swiftly.

"Now, Ax! Now!" I yelled.

He swerved right, and the spear blew past.

"Thank you, Rachel," Ax said.

The Visser hesitated. "Ah, splitting up, eh? Well, that will only affect the order in which I kill each of you. What have ! heard the human children say? Ah yes, eeny, meeny, miney, moo."

I almost said, "It's moe, you jerk. Moe, not moo."

But I had slightly more sense than that. I just lay there, hanging in the water, belly-up, looking dead and trying not to feel the pain from the spear in my tail.

Go after Cassie, I begged silently. Go for Cassie, you disgusting creature.

If the Visser went after Ax, he would pass too far from me to reach. The same if he chased Jake. Only Cassie would bring him near me.

Visser Three flapped his water wings.

I grinned a crocodile grin.

He came closer, closer, then he slowed and began to swell. Larger and larger he grew, like an overfilled balloon. And closer and closer he came.

Ten feet. . . five . . . two . . . twelve inches . . .

Close enough.

I jerked every muscle in my powerful crocodile body. My head thrust forward. My jaws opened wide.

And I bit down.

I definitely bit down.

Did you know a crocodile has the most powerful jaws in the animal kingdom? Did you know they can practically crush rocks with their jaws?

I clamped that long, toothy crocodile jaw down on the left wing of the Visser's javelin fish. And then . . .

POOOOMPFF!

SPWOOOOSH!

It was like biting into a water balloon. The inflated javelin fish exploded. All the water it had sucked in to fire its next spear went blasting out through the hole I made.

And that Lebtin javelin fish learned a whole new way to fly. It squirted wildly through the water, blasted up through the surface, arced through the air like a sick dolphin, and landed far away with a loud, satisfying splash.

And the whole time, we heard Visser Three's thought-speak voice crying, "Ahhhhhhhhhhh!"

I relaxed a little then, although relaxing just made me notice the pain in my tail. A dolphin came nosing up to me.

"Hey, it's me, Marco. I'm here to save the day!"

I actually laughed. "Just in time, Marco. Just in time."

"Allergy," Ax said. "You acquired some animal you're allergic to. It happens sometimes."

"This out-of-control morphing is an allergy? I have an allergy? To what?"

"What was the last animal you acquired?" Cassie asked. Then she answered her own question. "The crocodile. You must be allergic to crocodiles,"

We were in the safety of the woods out beyond Cassie's farm. It was a little area we went to fairly often for privacy. Ax needed to morph back to his own body. And Tobias . . . well, Tobias needed to hunt dinner before it got dark.

As we all talked, Tobias waited in an overhead

branch. We were on the edge of a small, grassy meadow. A meadow full of mice.

Tobias kept his laser vision focused on the tall grass of the meadow.

The others were all glaring at me. Except Cassie, of course, who was just shaking her head. She felt she'd made a mistake letting me keep my secret.

"You're saying because I acquired that crocodile I lost control of my morphing powers?"

"Not all control. Just some. It's . . . it's like when you humans suddenly make violent exhalations through your nostrils and shout, "Achoo!""

"Sneezing. You're saying I've been sneezing."

"Hah!" Tobias said. He opened his wings and swooped out across the grass, just a few feet above the ground. He flared suddenly, raked his talons forward, and for a few seconds disappeared from sight.

"And another mouse bites the dust," Marco commented.

"Yes, Rachel," Ax said. "You've been having an allergic reaction to the crocodile DNA."

"So what do I do? Is there some medicine I can take or something?"

"No medicine. At least none that humans could create. But there is a process. Something that happens naturally in these cases. At least it happens to Andalites. It's called hereth illint."

"That sounds poetic," Cassie said.

"A literal translation would be something like "burping DNA.""

"Now that's poetry," Marco said, laughing.

"Since we have no mouths we don't have phrases like "spitting out" or "vomiting up." Hereth is what we say instead."

Even Jake smiled. "How does Rachel do it? This process?" he asked Ax.

"The offending DNA will eventually be expelled from your system. You can't control when it happens. You just have to be careful, especially since this crocodile is a dangerous creature."

"Sounds easy enough," I said. "I'm always careful."

"It isn't easy. See, you basically have to morph the animal while you retain your own body. You have to create a whole, living animal out of the excess matter floating in Zero-space."

I looked at Ax. "Excuse me?"

"Until the hereth illint begins, you can control some of the symptoms by remaining very calm and unemotional. The out-of-control morphing in the water happened when you were upset or emotional."

I shrugged. "I was mad because that jerk Jeremy Jason McTraitor was betraying his fans. Not to mention his entire species, yeah."

"And you said a similar thing happened when

you were in Chapman's office, where you were afraid."

I nodded. "Uh-huh. I mean, not like afraid afraid. Just sort of nervous afraid."

"And the first time? When you morphed inside your house? What emotion were you feeling then?"

"Nothing." I kept my face blank.

"What were you doing when it started?" Jake asked me.

"I don't remember," I lied.

Cassie cocked an eyebrow at me. "Rachel, you were pulling up pictures of Jeremy Jason off the Internet."

"So?" I demanded. "That's not something emotional!"

"It was l-o-o-o-v-e," Marco crowed, drawing the word out. "The deadly, dangerous emotion of puppy love. Rachel was overcome by attraction! By desire! By intense, uncontrollable Tiger Beat passion! And it -"

He was interrupted by the fact that I tried to grab him and choke him.

But he dodged behind Ax.

"It turned her into a wild animal!" Marco yapped on. "Several wild animals, actually. She became the alligator of l-o-o-o-v-e!"

"It's crocodile," Jake said, smirking in a most un-Jakelike way.

And then, suddenly, I realized a feather pattern began to appear on my skin. Bald eagle feathers. I groaned.

"You see?" Ax said, noticing the beginning of the morph. "Passions and emotions set off the allergic reaction. You must try to eliminate the emotions."

"How about if I just eliminate Marco?" I growled.

"It's so perfect," Marco said. "Mighty Xena has a weakness: human emotion. She's a victim of l-o-o-o-v-e."

Jake grabbed Marco's arm and squeezed tight. "Marco, if you make her mad, she'll morph. And if she starts morphing, she might end up in full grizzly bear. Do you really want Rachel mad at you and in grizzly bear morph?"

Marco hesitated. He glanced at me. He bit his lip. "I get your point, Jake. I think I'll just go watch Tobias eat his mouse."

I was halfway feathered by the time I was able to reverse the morph. It took that long to calm down.

"Ax, tell Rachel whatever you can about this hereth thing. Get her prepared. And Rachel, until you are better, keep a very low profile. As in don't go to school. And forget about this TV show you were going to do with Jeremy Jason. Visser Three knows we're on to Jeremy Jason. The Visser will

make him a Controller immediately. Actor boy has seen too much.

They're probably infesting him right now."

"But we still have to stop him! We can't have him speaking for The Sharing. We could grab him, keep him locked up somewhere for three days till the Yeerk in his head dies."

"I know we have to stop him, and we will. We'll just have to figure out some other way to get at him."

"He's probably going to start endorsing The Sharing on the Barry and Cindy Sue Show. Then he'll leave town," I argued. "It's our last chance.

They'll be on guard now. They'll be watching for us. We'll never get near that stupid yacht again. That show may be our last shot at him!"

Jake nodded. "Could be. Could be we can't pull this off. Could be we'll have to forget about it." The good-humored smile evaporated. He gave me a cold look. "Maybe you should have thought about all that, Rachel.

You're the one who blew the mission today. You're the one who let Visser Three know we were on to Jeremy Jason. Next time maybe you'll let the rest of us know when you're not in shape to handle a mission."

I would have argued ... if I could have. But everything he was saying was true.

I glanced at Cassie. She was looking down at the ground, embarrassed. Ax made a point of

aiming all four of his eyes away, like he was watching something fascinating far off in the distance.

I couldn't see Tobias. He was still out in the tall grass. But he must have overheard because he whispered to me, "Hey, don't worry about it, Rachel. It's okay."

"No. It's not," I whispered.

Okay, yes, I had screwed up. But I was determined to fix the problem.

So I basically lied.

The next day I told Jake and Cassie that it had happened. The hereth ill int. I told them it had happened in great detail. I went on and on about how weird it was. I was very convincing. And they fell for it.

Of course, if I'd tried to fool Ax it wouldn't have worked. Because see, I didn't really know what was going to happen during this DNA burping.

None of us had really understood Ax when he'd explained it. Once he starts in about Zero-space, we all just kind of glaze over.

But if I had tried to trick Ax, he would have

asked the one question neither Jake nor Cassie thought to ask: What did you do with the extra crocodile?

Anyway, when ! saw Jake the next day in school and told him it was all over, he believed me. Even Cassie believed me because I told her in a hurried whisper as we changed classes. I think if I'd had to look her right in the face, she would have known I was lying.

I had no choice. I had to make it to the Barry and Cindy Sue Show. One way or another, whatever it took, we had to stop Jeremy Jason from endorsing The Sharing on that show.

See, I knew I was okay. Because all I had to do was to control my emotions. Just stay unemotional, and I wouldn't go into uncontrolled morphs. And I'm good at handling emotion.

Except anger, maybe. I have a small problem with anger.

But who was going to make me mad on a stupid TV show? It would be fine.

Fine.

Uh-huh.

After school I took a taxi again to my dad's hotel. I had the taxi pass by my house. Work crews were already there, ripping out the shattered remains of our kitchen and my bedroom. They had one of those super-sized Dumpsters out front, full of plasterboard and two-by-fours.

"Did you hear what happened to that place?"

the taxi driver asked me. "House just fell apart. I tell you, the way they build things nowadays."

To my surprise my dad was actually at the hotel, waiting for me.

"About time!" he said, a little frantically as soon as I walked in the room. "The show goes live at five o'clock! It's almost three! Where have you been?"

"School."

"Oh. Yeah. School. Come on, come on. Fortunately, we can walk to the studio and avoid traffic. It's just down the street. Five minutes."

Choosing an outfit took very little time: I only had about three things salvaged from the wreck of my bedroom. I quickly called Cassie to tell her to hurry, too. She was supposed to meet me at the studio.

She wasn't home, which probably meant she was already waiting for me.

That was the plan. Cassie would be with me. The others would try to get into the studio in innocent-looking morphs. But we knew the Yeerks would be watching the place. They'd probably have some of their people in the audience. And for all any of us knew, Barry or Cindy Sue themselves might be Controllers.

"Are you nervous?" my dad asked as we hustled rapidly down the street.

"Not really," I said.

"Nationwide, live TV broadcast? Millions of

people watching? Coast-to-coast? And you're not nervous?"

"Now I am," I muttered. I suppressed the nervousness. I couldn't afford to feel anything. I just had to get through this without feeling any extreme emotion. I could do that.

We blew past the receptionist at the studio, my dad in the lead, looking like Mr. Big Time, and me double-stepping to keep up. Cassie was waiting in the lobby and got swept up with us.

"How you doing?" she asked me.

I shrugged. "Great."

"Really?"

"Yep."

"Nervous?"

"No."

"Excited?"

"No."

"Scared."

"Definitely not."

She leaned close and whispered. "Do we have a plan? I mean, what exactly are we doing about Jeremy Jason?"

I shrugged. "We're stopping him."

"How?"

I grinned. "We're improvising."

"Uh-oh."

Suddenly, a llama came tearing past. Its

dainty hooves skittered crazily on the waxed linoleum. It turned a corner and was gone.

"What the. . ." my dad said.

"Cool," Cassie said. Her eyes lit up the way they do when she sees any animal. "It's a llama. They're really neat animals, you know. They-"

Suddenly two people dressed in khaki raced up and shoved past us. They turned the corner after the llama and were gone.

The three of us just stood there staring at each other. Then a third person, a woman with a clipboard, ran up breathlessly. "Did you see a llama?"

I pointed. "That way."

"Hey, what's the deal?" my dad asked.

The woman shook her head like the world was coming to an end. "Bart Jacobs's on the show with his animals. The llama made a run for it.

Smart animal."

"Bart Jacobs?" The name sounded familiar. "Isn't he that guy who takes animals on the talk shows?"

Cassie made a disapproving look. "That's him, all right. I hate seeing wild animals dragged into studios and treated like -"

"Well. If there are no more wild animals," my dad interrupted, "we have to keep moving." He started off again and we fell into step behind

him. He swept us in his wake toward the makeup room. The door was open. A woman with weird hair and black lipstick looked at my dad and gave a little leer. Then she looked at me and Cassie, like she was trying to figure out what to do with our faces.

"She's the one," my father said, pointing at me. "Rachel, meet Tai. Tai, my daughter Rachel. She's on the show."

"The skin is beautiful," Tai said. "But I think we want more body in the hair." She grabbed a handful of my hair and sort of threw it disdainfully. "What do you use on your hair?"

I told her the brand. She sneered. My dad took off to schmooze with some people he knew. And Tai shoved me into a barbershop-style chair, whipped a sheet over me, and began doing things with brushes.

I hate being shoved around like that.

It really kind of made me mad.

"This hair! This hair!" Tai complained. Then she yanked. Way too hard.

I hate being yanked.

Suddenly, Tai backed away. "What is happening to your hair? It's . . .

it's turning gray!"

I looked past her to the mirror. I saw two things. I saw Cassie's horrified expression. And I saw my hair turning gray. Gray and shaggy.

Like a wolf.

It was happening! I'd gotten mad at Tai and I was morphing. Into a wolf! I shot a desperate glance at Cassie. Cassie acted instantly.

"Look!" she cried. "Out in the hallway! It's ... urn ... it's Kevin Costner! And Tom Cruise, too!"

Tai screamed, "Where? Where?" dropped her brush and ran for the door.

I focused. Calm . . . calm . . . no emotion . . .

But Cassie wasn't helping. At all. "You lied! To me! Again! You didn't do that hereth illint thing at all! You're still allergic!"

"I'm trying to be calm, Cassie," I warned. "I'm trying to demorph."

"You can't do this stupid show while you're still this way!"

"I'm doing the show. It's the only way! I'm not letting this creep . . .

now look! You're just making me upset!"

The gray fur was beginning to grow on the back of my arms and hands. I shut my eyes. No anger. No anger. No anger.

"I didn't see Kevin Costner out there," Tai said suspiciously when she returned.

"I was sure that was him," Cassie said. "Sorry."

"Now what was going on with your hair?" Tai asked, staring baffled at my now-normal head.

"Dm ... not enough conditioning?" I suggested.

And that's when I suffered my second emotional jolt. Because that's when the cutest boy on the planet walked into the makeup room.

"Jeremy Jason," I heard Cassie whisper in awestruck tones.

No emotion . . . no emotion . . . , I told myself.

But you have no idea just how massively cute he was up close like that.

And then he smiled at Cassie, and gave her a little half-hug. Like he'd probably done with a million fans before.

I saw Cassie's knees buckle. She actually wobbled.

"Hi, I'm Jeremy Jason McCole," he said to me. "Are you on the show, too?"

"Yes," I said, trying to sound like a robot. "Yes, I am on the show, too."

I didn't get up from the makeup chair. And I didn't shake his hand.

Because I have to tell you the truth: Even knowing what he was now, even knowing what kind of person he was, even knowing that inside his head there lived an evil gray Yeerk slug, if he'd hugged me like he had Cassie, I would have morphed.

I would have morphed big time.

?Hey," Jeremy Jason said, giving me his famous squinty, skeptical look.

"Don't I know you from somewhere?"

I shook my head. "No. Definitely not."

"Yeah, yeah. You're the girl who fell into the crocodile pit after that kid. You're on the show today, huh?"

"That's not all she did," Cassie rushed to say. "She also had her house fall in on her."

I sent Cassie a "What are you doing?" look. Like having a house fall on me would make Jeremy Jason think better of me? Like that would impress him?

Cassie made a helpless, confused, giddy look and shrugged. She kept staring at Jeremy Jason

with this slightly weird grin. Of course, to be honest, I probably had the identical slightly weird grin.

Jeremy Jason flashed his smile. Then he said, "Look, Disaster Girl, or whatever you are, how about if you and your friend stumble on out of here? I need to get made up. And I don't need an audience."

That took care of the weird grins. Tai looked fiercely at me and jerked her head toward the door.

Outside in the hallway we found the llama. It was standing there, minding its own business.

"'Disaster Girl'?" I repeated. "Excuse me?"

"'Stumble on out of here'?" Cassie said.

We both looked at the llama.

"If you're waiting to get made up, you can forget it," I told the llama.

"You're not a big enough star."

"Maybe not, but I will be someday," the llama said.

"Yahah!" Cassie and I yelped. You'd think we, of all people, would be prepared for strange things like talking llamas. But it caught us totally by surprise.

"Marco?" I hissed.

"Who else would be this cute? Check out this fur. Check out this little llama smile on my little llama face."

"What are you doing?"

"Jake's somewhere around here in cockroach morph. Ax is here in fly morph. I came that way, too. But then I saw this llama wandering around loose. So I thought, hey, why be a bug?"

"Where's the real llama?" Cassie whispered.

"Don't worry. I put him in an empty dressing room. By the way, I saw the schedule. Bart Jacobs and various animals of his, including yours truly, go on first, then the Wussy Wonder, and finally you, Rachel."

Cassie cocked an eyebrow at me. I deliberately didn't look at her. I knew what she wanted me to do.

"Fine, /'//tell him," Cassie said. "Marco, Rachel may have slightly exaggerated when she said she was okay. You'd better warn Jake."

"She didn't burp the croc?"

"Nope."

"I'm fine as long as I don't get excited," I said defensively.

"You know, Rachel, I'm supposed to be the irresponsible one," Marco said.

Cassie was biting her lip thoughtfully. "It's too late for Rachel just to cancel. But we need a backup, just in case. No matter what happens, we can't have people seeing Rachel morph."

"What can you do? If she morphs suddenly -"

"Well," Cassie interrupted, "the important thing is that there always be a Rachel. See? I can't believe what I'm even thinking, and it totally gives me the willies, but Rachel? I think we need a copy of you."

"Morph Rachel?" Marco trilled. "I'll do it! I'll do it!"

"When pigs fly," I said.

Marco shot a llama look to his left. "Uh-oh. Looks like I'm busted." The two khaki-clad trainers appeared at the end of the hallway. They crept up slowly. Marco waited patiently till they caught him, slipped a rope around his neck, and led him away.

"See you guys later," Marco called back. "Break a leg. Not literally.

That's just what we show biz people say to mean "good luck." I'm going to be on tee-vee-ee. I'm going to be on tee-vee-ee."

Cassie laid her hand on my arm.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

"Don't worry, I'll never use your morph for anything bad," Cassie said solemnly. And then I started getting dreamy and drifty as she acquired my DNA.

"Don't do it unless you have to," I said. "It gives me the willies. I mean, jeez." I shuddered. And then, I felt my face beginning to bulge out.

"Rachel!"

"I'm cool. I'm cool," I said. I took a deep breath and let go of the grossed-out feeling I'd had about being morphed. The allergic morph stopped and my face returned to normal.

"Hey! You! The Falling Girl! Come on!"

The clipboard woman came rushing past and grabbed my arm, pulling me down the hall.

"Okay, listen up because we're desperately late. You go on in the last segment. I'll tell you when to go. You walk across the stage to Barry.

He'll shake your hand. Then Cindy Sue will shake your hand, unless she's in a snit. Then you sit. Don't worry about which camera to look at, just look at Barry and Cindy Sue. Barry and Cindy Sue will ask you about all this alligator stuff -"

"Crocodile," I corrected.

"You tell them your little story. If Barry does this with his hand, that means speed up. If he does this with his hand, it means wrap it up because we're done. Got it? Good. Nothing to worry about."

She stopped suddenly and stared at Cassie. "Who are you?"

"I'm Falling Girl's partner, Dropping Chick," Cassie said.

Clipboard woman stared at her.

"She's my friend," I said. "You know, for moral support."

"Yeah, whatever. Come on. Our greenroom

can't be used. We had some band on the show last week and they trashed the place." She was still yanking me along by my arm, which would have made me mad. Except that I couldn't get mad. Or sad. Or anything, without setting off an allergic reaction.

Clipboard woman planted Cassie and me on two tall stools. We were in a dark corner, up against a cinder block wall covered in wires and cables and switches.

Bart Jacobs, the animal guy, was sitting on an identical stool. He was smoking a cigarette and talking to one of his animal handlers.

Lined up against the cinder block wall were half a dozen cages filled with Bart Jacobs's animals. A lion cub. A baby elephant. A python. A golden eagle.

From our gloomy corner we could see out onto the familiar Barry and Cindy Sue set. It was made up to look like a living room, with comfy-looking chairs clustered in the center. Facing the chairs were the cameras – one on each side and one right in the middle.

Beyond the brilliant light of the set was a studio audience. Not that I could see them. They were in darkness, and the lights on the set blinded me for anything else.

Then, in a rush, Barry himself came blowing

past. "Hello, everyone, we're looking for a great show today. Hope you're all really up. Up! Up! Energy! Keep that energy high! See you out there!"

Ten seconds later, Cindy Sue swept by in a wave of perfume, followed by a man who was trying to comb Cindy Sue's hair as she walked.

She flashed a fake smile at me and a disdainful look at Bart Jacobs.

The animal guy leaned close to me, took his cigarette out of his mouth and said, "She's never forgiven me for one of my little beasties wetting on her dress."

From out beyond the lights I heard the welcoming roar of the audience. I saw my dad standing on the far side of the set, talking to clipboard woman. He saw me and flashed a smile and a wink.

I was not nervous. I was not scared. No emotion. No emotion. It was the only way. I could do it. I could.

Barry and Cindy Sue were chatting out on stage. Then Jeremy Jason came blowing past like a small thunderstorm. He looked mad. I heard him mutter to a frightened-looking man, "What do you mean the greenroom is closed? You can't keep me standing around! I'm Jeremy Jason McCole!"

Of course, he was probably not really Jeremy Jason McCole anymore.

He was probably a Controller, I reminded myself. Right now, the real Jeremy Jason was caged in a corner of his own mind. He was watching helplessly as the Yeerk controlled his every movement, his every action, his every word.

Was it beginning to occur to the vain, ambitious jerk that he had been tricked? Had he realized yet that there is no such thing as partnership with a Yeerk?

The Yeerk is master. The human host is a slave. Period. And when the infestation is voluntary, the human slave is even weaker. Even less able to resist.

It made me sick to think of it. Jeremy Jason had asked for it. He'd let himself be tricked. Still, it made me sick . . .

Wait a minute. I did feel sick.

, no, I pleaded silently. Not now.

I looked at Cassie. "Cassie? I don't think I'm going to make it."

"What do you mean? Look, if you're scared or whatever, you just have to control the emotion."