"Agreed. Cassie? Keep an eye on them."
Cassie trained her acute wolf senses on the men. If they had even thought about trying anything tricky, she'd have known it before they did.
"Marco? Now it's your turn to open a door. Open that door." Marco raised his huge gorilla arms back over his head, preparing to swing them down with shattering force.
"Marco? Try the knob first."
"0h."
He opened the door. And I leaped through.
J. bounded into the room. It was dark, but my tiger's eyes could see through the gloom as easily as if it had been lit with stadium lights.
There seemed to be a sky overhead. Green, mostly, with vivid flashes of lightning. Scruffy plants grew from what seemed to be soil beneath my feet. And in the center of the room, perhaps fifteen feet across, was a shallow pond of liquid the color and consistency of molten lead.
There were two cages beside the pool. Ax was in one. He was halfway between his northern harrier morph and his own Andalite body. He was frozen stiff. Unmoving. Not even breathing, like some nightmare statue composed of gray feathers and a scorpion tail and talons and a mouth-less face.
In the other cage was Rachel. Still a bald eagle.
My tiger eyes were very good. My tiger ears were good, too. I heard no heartbeat from her. I saw no slight movement of her chest rising and falling with breathing.
I felt my heart stop beating for several long seconds. Dead. Both dead.
I'd been too late.
There was a man there, too. I recognized the face. Joe Bob Fenestre, the second richest man on earth. Head of Web Access America.
I recognized what he had in his hand, too: a Yeerk Dracon beam. He was not pointing it at me. He was pointing it at Ax.
Wrong again, Jake. This man was a Controller. Had to be.
Marco and Cassie came in behind me. After a few moments Tobias joined us. But Fenestre just kept staring at me.
At last he spoke. "So. Not Yeerks, after all. I'm to be destroyed by Andalites. Well, I suppose there is some honor in that, at least."
"Let my friends go," I said harshly.
He shrugged, "You can take them. I don't care. Killing Andalites is not my life anymore."
"Yeah? My friends are dead," I said.
He frowned. "Nonsense. Don't you recognize bio-stasis when you see it? They are simply frozen in time. I thought you Andalites were supposed to be so advanced when it comes to technology."
My heart quickened. Bio-stasis? What was that?
"Get them out of there," I said.
"Or what?" he mocked. "You'll kill me? You'll kill me anyway."
I was panting. My mind was racing madly. What game was this man playing?
How could I win? "Why would I kill you?"
"I'm a Yeerk," he said. "A Controller. Although my host and I are on very good terms. I made him rich. I wrote his famous Web browser. We've been partners all these years."
"Yeerks don't have partners," I said.
He laughed. "No," he drawled, "we don't." He looked at me with a sharp, shrewd look. "Who sent you after me? Have you made some kind of deal with my brother?"
"Your brother?"
"You are obviously Andalites," he said patiently. "No one else has your amazing morphing technology. But I have to ask myself, why would Andalites go to so much trouble to kill me? Me, of all Yeerks?"
I was totally confused. I hesitated.
"This is weird," Marco said, sending me a private thought-speak message.
"This guy is cornered," Cassie said. "He thinks he's toast. You can see it in his eyes. We need to find out more."
I paced a little. Tigers get restless just standing. Should I take a chance? Should I tell him at least some of the truth?
"We traced you here from the Web page. The one about Yeerks." He nodded. "Yes, but why come after. . . ?" His face lit up. "Of course!
You were looking for allies! You weren't sure, were you? You thought perhaps it was all real, that humans were forming a resistance to the Yeerk invasion of their planet! You came here to see if I was for you, or against you!"
Then he began to laugh. He laughed in that sick way people do when they're laughing but nothing is funny.
"Shall I tell you who and what I am, Andalite? Shall I?"
I didn't answer. I waited.
"My Yeerk designation is Esplin-Nine-Four-Double-Six. Note the 'double six.' Do you know what it means?"
"No."
"A 'double' designation means that I am a twin. That two Yeerks grew from the same grub.
When there are twins, one is considered the prime, and one the lesser. I am the lesser. My brother, my twin, is the prime. To him go the best assignments, the best hosts, the rank, the power, the glory.
And to me, only what I can take." He made a fist on the word "take." "In some cases, brothers can share. In some cases, twins can even become allies. But not with my brother. My brother is power mad. Or maybe just mad now. He left me nothing. He assigned me to a poor, unimportant human host. This Joe Bob Fenestre, a lowly programmer working in the bowels of a telephone company.
"Well, that wasn't good enough. I wanted more. And if I couldn't have it as a Yeerk, I'd have it as a human. I ended up making an alliance with my host. We were two of a kind. Two losers in the shadow of our betters.
I used Yeerk technical knowledge to make Fenestre rich. And in the process, I created Web Access America, which made me the greatest source of information on humans there was. I knew secrets my brother could only guess at."
"You sift E-mail. You spy on chat rooms." "You know human computer terminology," he said.
I swallowed hard. I'd been careless. I had sounded "human." Bluff it out. "We Andalites are a small, hunted band on this planet. Knowledge is survivals