A Place to Stand

by Bird of Poetry

The Earth is nothing but a charred ruin, thanks to Visser Four's meddling with the Time Matrix. It's up to the Animorphs to undo the damage. But once they have the power to change the course of time itself, what will they choose to do with it? Part 13 of the Dæmorphing series.

Prelude.

It began like a dream, where you're suddenly in a place without knowing how you got there.

Elfangor was fussing, picking invisible flecks of grass out of his gleaming fur. «Could you comb me again, Loren?»

He looked fine, but the combing would soothe him, so I rummaged through the shelves in our scoop. Tobias had used the comb last and hadn't cleaned it; a few of his electric blue hairs clung to the teeth. I plucked them out and set to work on Elfangor's darker fur. The comb passed through easily.

«I got a message from Tobias,» I said. «He and your brother are waiting for us near the Electorate. Tobias is practicing his speech. He keeps apologizing for how bad it's going to be, but I got another message from Aximili saying it was 'truly inspiring.'»

«Of course it is. He never got to see your planet, but… this matters to him very much. He's always eloquent about what matters to him.»

I could feel his muscles relax as I combed him with a steady rhythm. I stepped back and inspected him. «You look good, Elfangor. As good as you're going to get. Come on, we have to get in the flyer.»

Elfangor looked backward at me with his stalk eyes. «Yes. I suppose it doesn't matter how I look. We both know they'll never listen to me.»

«That's not true, Elfangor.» Jax longed, for the thousandth, the millionth, time to have physical form so he could reach out and soothe Elfangor. But the time when that could happen had passed long ago, so instead I touched my tail blade to his. «You have the observers from the Yeerk homeworld, the testimony from the voluntary Gedd hosts, Tobias…»

«The Electorate is accountable to the People. To the People, the Yeerks are nothing but vermin. Worse than vermin – slavers! No one will grieve when they are incinerated from orbit.»

«We will.» I had no love for Yeerks, and neither did Elfangor. But the genocide of millions of sentient beings, whatever they were, could not stand. The Andalites would do to the Yeerks what they had done to my planet over my dead body. «Just because you couldn't save the Earth doesn't mean you can't save the Yeerk homeworld.»

Elfangor twined his tail around mine. As a gesture of affection, it would never be the same as the caress of dæmon to dæmon. But I had still learned to love it for what it was. «It's not the Yeerks I'm really fighting to save. It's us. If we incinerate a defenseless planet just because we hate who lives there… then, as a people, we are truly lost.»

I.

(Loren)

Then, just as suddenly, I was in Cassie's barn with all of the other Animorphs. I had been back at home vacuuming before the… the vision came. Now I was here. I had two legs, not four. Jax was a warm weight in my arms. Elfangor was gone.

Suddenly, painfully, I wanted to go home. Not to my house, cramped and empty and full of adaptive devices I only pretended to need. I wanted to go home, to someone who would hug me and tell me everything would be all right. In another life, Elfangor would have done that for me. But in this life, I had no one.

The change in setting was so fast I had whiplash. Jax hissed Ellimist in my mind, until we saw the Drode, just as the vile thing had been on the submerged Pemalite ship. Crayak, not Ellimist.

"You!" Rachel seethed, she and her ferocious dæmon wheeling on the Drode. "What did you do?"

"So glad to have you back, Rachel," the Drode leered. "You know you're still my favorite Animorph."

"What was all that?" said Marco. "Some kind of hallucination?"

"No, no, no!" the Drode said. "It is glorious reality. The Earth has been incinerated to a crisp for, oh, five years now. Hork-Bajir and humans are extinct, along with all the other crawly critters Cassie loves so much."

"No, that was not reality," Cassie snapped. "That was sickening! What are you talking about?"

My face went hot and my gut went cold. I crumpled onto a hay bale and gathered Jax hard against my chest. I looked up at Ax and Tobias through tear-blurred eyes. Tobias was perched on Ax's shoulder. They both looked like they had been hit in the head. Ax swayed on his hooves like he might fall over.

"What did the rest of you see?" I whispered.

"Why, they saw what was left of the Earth, of course!" the Drode crowed. "I gave them the full panoramic view."

Abineng lowered his head and shifted his weight like he was about to charge. "Jake, let me take care of this little worm," he growled.

"Wait a second," said Marco. He and Diamanta, who was wrapped around his arms and shoulders as a python, were looking back and forth between me, Ax, and Tobias. "What did you see?"

«I…» said Tobias, then trailed off. A heavy silence fell, which the Drode seemed to enjoy. I tried to say something, but neither Jax nor I seemed to be able to produce words. Finally, Tobias managed to say, «The Andalites did it. The Yeerks took over the Earth, and the Andalites killed everything on Earth to stop the invasion once and for all. Just like they almost did to the Hork-Bajir. Just like they were about to do to the Yeerk homeworld, too…»

I buried my face in Jax's fur as the truth of it hit me. The Drode was right. It wasn't a hallucination. I knew what the Andalites were capable of, what Alloran-Semitur-Corass had done. I had just let myself believe that it was because they thought the Hork-Bajir were lesser, that they would never do it to us. But who was I trying to fool? If it came to it, the Andalites would rather destroy the Earth than fight millions, maybe billions, of human-Controllers. The knowledge made me sick. The Andalite military was ruthless, unbending – and in some alternate timeline, I had let myself run away with Elfangor and become one of them.

Jax nudged me, and I looked up to see that Ax had turned away from the group, tail sunk so low that his blade touched the floor. I had never seen an Andalite let his tail blade get dirty like that. Tobias had leaned in and rested his head on Ax's. My heart ached. Even with all the disillusionments of this war, Ax loved his people. I couldn't imagine what he must be feeling right now.

"If the Drode is right," Jax murmured in my ear, "if there's some kind of reality where this happened… that doesn't explain why you and Tobias were Andalites."

The other Animorphs had expressions with different flavors of surprise, though Jake and Marco were both calculating, too, in their own ways. Jake and Merlyse, shaped as a tall elegant crane, looked at each other as if to tune out the rest of the world, while Marco and Diamanta studied me, Ax, Tobias, and the Drode, piecing something together.

"What's this all about, Drode?" Jake said, finally, low and dangerous. Merlyse watched Abineng carefully, as if judging the odds that he could take the Drode down. From what I'd seen at Mike's Dæmon Defense, he just might.

"The Time Matrix."

And that was when the memories flooded in.

We'd gone to the Taxxon homeworld because of the Time Matrix. We'd escaped that doomed spaceship because of the Time Matrix. Elfangor, Esplin, and I had used it to create a mini-dimension. That was how I knew what the Andalite homeworld looked like. That was where I'd fought the Mortrons. That was how we'd ended up back on Earth. I had such fuzzy memories of my adolescence because I hadn't had one.

I had had so many gaps in my memory, even after Tobias dug most of them up, even after I fought so hard to get them back, and I hadn't even noticed. My attention just slid away from the gaps, like your eyes slide away from the Hork-Bajir valley when you fly over it.

This has the Ellimist's sticky fingerprints all over it, Jax growled, and helpless rage exploded in my chest.

«What?» said Ax, startled out of his misery, his stalk eyes turning back to stare at the Drode. «That's a myth! No such device ever existed.»

"It does exist," I said quietly.

Everyone turned to stare at me, except the Drode, who just crooned, "Ooh, did the Ellimist fix his little broken toy? Unless there's more memories he's still hiding from you."

«You've seen the Time Matrix?» said Ax, with the same tone of voice that a kid might use to ask if I'd seen the Headless Horseman or Bigfoot.

"Elfangor and I used it. A long time ago. Lord, we were so stupid. Who were we to wield such power? Who knows what we might have done?" My voice was shaking.

"What did you use it for?" Jake asked quietly.

"We skipped four years. We landed on Earth four years after I left, aged up as we ought to be, and made it so nobody knew we were gone. Just old enough to get married." I laughed. We were so impatient. "And Elfangor used it to make himself human. Not a nothlit, but truly human. With a dæmon, Hala Fala. He wanted Jaxom to have a dæmon lover, to love as we do." Jaxom was licking my face. I realized it was because my tears had finally overflowed the borders of my eyes. We remembered Hala Fala newly transmuted from her life as a Guide Tree, learning for the first time to fly. The Drode watched my tears with the look of a cat watching a bird drag its broken wing. "He hid it. Right around here, actually. Someone must have found it."

Jake traded a significant look with Marco. I could guess what they were thinking. They were wondering exactly how much Elfangor hadn't told them. They were right to wonder about that. He hadn't done well by these children he'd conscripted as his soldiers. Even after everything I could remember, everything I'd seen, I still hated him for it.

Tobias flew down and perched on a hay bale next to me. Ax moved toward me. They wanted to comfort me. It was sweet of them, but I looked away. The Drode would only see this as more weakness.

"Clever little puppet," the Drode said. "It was found by a lowly human-Controller, who uses the names John Berryman and Tiaundë. He's an actor. Not a very successful one. A lowly Controller whose Yeerk was, until he lost the battle for Leera, none other than Visser Four. And why did he lose the battle for Leera? Why, because of you. Ironic, eh?"

"What did he do with the Time Matrix?" Jake said.

"The Yeerk, the former Visser Four, has used the Time Matrix. He has traveled backward in time and is changing historical events. He's rewritten the past in an effort to bring about a Yeerk victory and give himself greater power. He failed, of course. In this new timeline, he's dead, along with every other Yeerk who left the homeworld, and even those left on their planet are about to be exterminated by the Andalites. Such delightful irony, don't you think?"

"And we're all dead?" said Cassie. "Everything on Earth?"

"Except for whatever flotsam and jetsam the Skrit Na picked up from your soggy little dirtball over the millennia." He sneered in my direction. "Like your friend Loren over here."

"If you like this brave new world so much," Abineng growled, "then why are you here?"

"Sadly, I am here to offer you the chance to undo it all." A too-wide grin stretched the Drode's dry, wrinkled face. "I want to help."

Which is when the Drode offered its bargain: the chance to undo it all, in exchange for one of our lives.

"If we do nothing we go back to that other reality, don't we?" Cassie said quietly. Quincy seemed to be holding himself very carefully still. "The Earth destroyed, everyone here dead except Loren and Tobias?"

The Drode just grinned and held up its wrist, which suddenly had an oversized watch on it. "You all have to decide. Two minutes. Ticktock, ticktock. Then all goes back to what it should be. Tick. Tock." Then it disappeared.

"Okay," Jake said. "Two minutes. Visser Four is running around the past messing up the present. He's already destroyed Earth – who knows what he'll do next? I don't think there's much question that we have to do this."

Marco and Cassie watched Jake solemnly, but I saw Quincy quietly fly over and whisper to Diamanta. I realized what they must be talking about. Both Marco and Cassie loved Jake very much, in their own ways, and from what Tobias and Ax had told me, Crayak hated Jake for what he'd done on the planet of the Iskoort, destroying his race of innocent killers, the Howlers. Jake would be Crayak's most likely target. They knew it, and it scared them.

"But what if Crayak doesn't pick Jake's life as the blood price?" Jax whispered in my ear, voice tight with fear. "What if he picks us? Or Ax or Tobias?"

I clutched at Jax. I couldn't die; Ax and Tobias needed me. And the thought of Crayak killing Ax or Tobias was too terrible to contemplate. If we didn't take the Drode's offer, Ax and Tobias would be alive and safe. That other world I'd seen was a world where Jax was just a ghost, but Elfangor was my loving husband, and Tobias had grown up with parents who loved him, and never had to sacrifice his innocence to endless war.

But Jax sent up a murmured prayer, begging Christ to protect our family, and I knew that this wasn't a choice at all. If I chose a world with my entire planet destroyed just because my family would be safe, then I was no Christian.

"Don't be stupid," Marco said. "This just could be an elaborate trap."

"And if it's not?" Rachel interrupted. "We can't risk it."

"And how exactly do we fix the past, anyway?" Marco went on, as if Rachel hadn't spoken. "How are we supposed to know what went wrong to turn the Earth into a planet-sized barbecue? Where did Visser Four go in galactic history? It's not like we're historians of this war. How do they measure dates in space anyway? And how do we know it isn't our own actions in the past that caused all this?"

«Time travel,» Tobias muttered. «Too much to get a human brain around. Too complex. Too many possibilities.» He was clearly unnerved by whatever he'd seen of his alternate self. I wanted to talk with Ax and Tobias, to try to understand. But there was no time.

Jake took the vote. It was unanimous. Marco and Cassie may have feared for Jake, but they knew what they had to do. I saw Diamanta loose a coil from Marco's arm and wrap it around Quincy instead, a significant look passing from a small beady eye to a slitted amber one.

"Okay, it's unanimous," Rachel was saying. "But not till I get a chance to pack some clothes, get some things, okay? In other words, you Drode piece of dog doo, not yet, okay? Not – "

I didn't get to hear the end of her sentence. All I heard was the rumble of thunder as lightning crackled across an acid-green sky.

II.

(Rachel)

"Not yet!"

My voice was only barely audible over the sound of booming thunder and some kind of awful slurp, like a giant drinking the last of a bowl of soup. Abineng yelled, "Look out!" but it was too late. Something had grabbed me around the waist and hoisted me into the air. I looked down. It was a giant, wet, red tongue, ten feet long, coming from a dark horned head in a burrow in the ground. And now it was dragging me downward.

Behind me, Cassie screamed. Abineng bellowed and charged toward the base of the monster's tongue, kicking up silvery dirt as he went. He gored the tongue with his horn, and the world lurched sickeningly as the monster shuddered and spasmed. Abineng brayed, jerked his horn free, and stabbed it through the tongue again. The tongue went limp, dropping me to the ground. My teeth rattled from the impact. The creature screeched in pain, slurped its tongue back in, and sank back into the ground.

As soon as my head settled down from pounding to muffled thumps, I wriggled to my feet, grabbing onto Abi's legs for support. My clothes were damp with slobber and I had smears of silver dust on my face and knees. I had a cami on under my shirt, so I took it off and used it to wipe the dust from my knees. There was no way I was getting slobber on my face, so I used the back of my hand to wipe the dust off my cheek.

Then Cassie was there, checking me over for injuries. Quincy settled on Abineng's shoulder and said, "You still have a smear of blood on the end of your horn," so Abi dipped his head again to wipe his horn clean in the dirt.

"You're frowning," Cassie said. "Does your head hurt?"

"Yeah. Think I knocked it when I hit the ground." I rubbed my forehead with the heel of my hand. "Where the hell are we, anyway? This isn't Earth."

"Definitely not. I have to breathe harder here to get enough air – did you notice? I think this planet's atmosphere has less oxygen than Earth's." And yes, now that I thought about it, both Cassie and I were breathing hard like we were running a race, and not just because of the sudden attack. Cassie tapped my temple gently with her fingertip. "You should morph, just in case it's a concussion. Eagle, maybe? We need to figure out where the others are, anyway. I can't see them anywhere."

"Not to mention Visser Four," I said. "You should morph too. We don't know when that thing is gonna get hungry again." Even with my thumping headache, my head felt clear. The chance to take out his anger had been good for Abi, his anger and frustration banked to a low smolder. Quincy's quiet presence on his shoulder might have helped too.

Abi and I closed our eyes and focused on the eagle. The painful pulse in my head kept breaking my concentration, but Abi held it together, and my chest deepened into the eagle's muscled breast, distorting my torso weirdly. Cassie was ahead of me, of course, already nearly eagle-sized.

When I was fully eagle, I spread my wings and caught the warm, sluggish breeze. It was a lot of work getting aloft, the air strangely dead despite the boom of a thunderstorm nearby, not to mention that the eagle, too, had to fight for every breath. Below me, I saw that the area around the monster's burrow was swept clean to bare dirt, but beyond its reach, there was spiky golden grass taller than Cassie's head, and thirty-foot-wide masses of tangled branches anchored to the ground with many small trunks.

Then I saw it: a purple tube-shaped thing coming out of the ground that I recognized. «That's a Vanarx,» I told Cassie. «A Yeerkbane. I saw it when I spied on the Chapmans, way back when. They lock onto Controllers' ears and suck out their Yeerks.»

«Does that mean we're on the Yeerk homeworld?» Cassie said, her voice hushed with awe. I could just imagine the biology textbook she was writing in her head right now.

Gross, was Abi's verdict. Whatever Cassie thinks, this place gives me the creeps.

«I guess so,» I said. «I wonder what Visser Four is doing here.»

It's probably not gross to him, Abi thought. He's probably thinking 'home sweet home,' right?

«Depends on whether this is before or after the Andalites came, I guess,» Cassie said. «We should keep an eye out for any sign of them.»

When we flew another, broader circle around the monster's burrow, I saw a Yeerk pool. I might not have recognized it if my bald eagle eyes hadn't caught their slug shapes moving beneath the surface. The liquid was much thinner than the sludge of the Yeerk pool, and the gray surface was streaked with yellow-green, like algae on a pond.

I wonder if we could find a way to destroy it, he muttered. Fewer enemies to fight in our time, right? Maybe we could prevent the war altogether. There's got to be some way to wipe it out. We could turn into sharks and just tear them all to shreds with our teeth. Wouldn't that feel so good?

It would. It would. I couldn't deny it. But… No. We can't do that. What would Cassie say? They aren't guilty of anything. They haven't invaded anyone's planet yet.

Look at that Gedd, Abi said. Don't you think it would thank us if we killed those Yeerks?

There was a Gedd wading through the pool. It was much more graceful in the sludge than on land, I noticed. And there was another one on the shore – and farther away, a flash of pale skin against a dark landscape. It was an adult man I didn't recognize, with a little tree shrew dæmon on his shoulder, walking toward the pool. It had to be Visser Four. The Drode had said he was an actor, and this man's dæmon was tiny, perfectly suited to hide in his clothes while another actor stood in for his character's dæmon on stage.

Abineng twitched our talons. «Let's go after him.»

«Wait,» said Cassie. «He might have a Dracon beam, or some other weapon the Drode didn't tell us about. You know he's probably trying to get one over on us. We should find the others for backup. They might need our help.»

That was true enough. They might not have realized yet that they were on the Yeerk homeworld. Visser Four is so close, though, Abineng thought. If we could finish this right now…

Who did I trust more? Cassie, or my own dæmon? In the end, there could only be one answer. Abi growled and fumed as we followed Cassie away.

As we flew outward, I saw another flash of color – the bright blue of Ax's fur. Marco was with him, Diamanta in macaw form flying as high above his head as she could manage. «Ax! Marco! Look up! It's Rachel and Cassie.»

Diamanta looked up at us, squawked, and settled down to Marco's shoulder. Ax said, «Rachel! Cassie! Be watchful. We are on the Yeerk homeworld. That lightning could start a deadly fire if it touches down. And once night falls, the clouds rain acid. We cannot be exposed when that happens.»

«Acid rain?» Cassie said. «Every night? Really?»

«Never mind that,» I said. «We saw Visser Four! He's heading toward a Yeerk pool. He's, uh…» Good grief. I didn't have the best sense of cardinal directions even in my hometown. On an alien planet, I didn't have an ice cube's chance in hell of getting them right. I looked around for some kind of landmark. The landscape looked mostly the same to me.

«You see that yellow crescent moon on the horizon? It's in that direction.» Thank God for Cassie.

«Should we not wait for instructions from Prince Jake first?»

Deep breaths, Abi. Deep breaths. «Okay. Sure. Let's find Jake and the others. But quickly, okay? Visser Four might be changing history right now.»

Marco and Ax got wings. We flew toward the pool, because it was as good a direction to look as any, and Marco pointed out that Ax might notice something about it we wouldn't.

«We should take cover in the branches near the pool,» Marco said. «Visser Four would definitely notice a bunch of Earth raptors flying around this place.»

«Definitely,» said Cassie, settling on some uneven, thorny branches just behind the last clumps of tall gold grass. When she landed, I could see her breast heave as she caught her breath. Flying was hard work breathing this thin air. «Ouch. The osprey does not like grabbing onto these. Anyway, yeah, I haven't seen anything in the air larger than a hummingbird. We stand out.»

Marco, Ax, and I landed in other twisty dark trees, more carefully after seeing Cassie flinch. It was a relief to sit for a moment and catch my breath; my head was spinning. Distantly, I heard Marco hiss, «Ax, what are you doing?»

«The former Visser Four is speaking to a Gedd-Controller. I cannot use the translator chip embedded in my brain to understand him unless I demorph. I will keep to cover.» A minute later, Ax sneered, «Hah. He is struggling with the language. Yeerk translation technology must be far inferior to ours. I can already make out what the Gedd-Controller is saying. 'The stars? What do you wish to tell me of the stars? Are you a creature sent down from the Void?'»

The Gedd spoke in a low, growling language, and Visser Four did his best to growl back. His handsome young face was flushed with the effort of gasping in the breath he needed to get the growls really going, and his dæmon's head scanned around warily. Ax translated, «'Yes, I am from the Void Above. There is a grave danger to the Great Pool coming from the Void. There are creatures that live among the stars that mean to harm the Great Pool. You must gather Controllers from as many pools as you can and destroy them.'»

«'What can we do to fight the children of the Void?' the Controller says. 'We cannot fight the lightning or the acid rain. If the Abyss is to open and send us fresh calamities, all we can do is bear them as best we can. For the Pool gives us the strength and patience and wisdom to do so.'»

Marco got it first. «He's trying to warn them. This is before the Andalites came, and he's trying to get the Yeerks to wage some kind of guerrilla war on them as soon as they get here. Would that even work? These Gedds look pretty Stone Age to me.»

There was another Gedd near the shore of the Pool watching and listening, holding a net made of twisted fibers. I thought I could see some kind of crude lean-to against a tangle-tree on the other side of the Pool. It was all the technology I could see.

«I doubt they could have any effect against Andalite warriors,» Ax sniffed. «But I suspect it does not matter. Visser Four seems to be unable to convince this Gedd-Controller that its people must gather against the coming threat.»

«I wonder if that's how the Earth ended up destroyed,» Cassie said. «Visser Four gives the Yeerks some kind of technology or information early, and by the time our time rolls around, the Yeerks and the Andalites have some kind of apocalyptic war.»

«Where is he keeping the Time Matrix?» I said. «What does a Time Matrix even look like?»

«I do not know,» Ax said.

«Then let's go after him,» I said. «He'll probably make a run for the Time Matrix, and then we'll know where it is. We can get there first.»

«What about Jake, Tobias, and Loren?» Cassie said.

Somewhere inside my head, Abi was stamping and tossing his horns. «They'll be fine. I'm going after him. Come back me up.»

«Rachel, wait!» Cassie said, but I'd already taken a deep breath and beat my wings. I wasn't as fast as I usually was in eagle morph, I noticed as I gained altitude, then dove toward Visser Four. And his host was an athletic man. He dodged my strike, ran for cover in the golden grass, and a Gedd-Controller threw a goddamn spear at me.

It clipped the edge of my wing, throwing off my flight. «Ow! What the hell!»

The Gedds hooted and growled, jumping from foot to foot.

«Follow him!» Marco said, soaring toward his retreating figure. «We need to get to the Time Matrix first!»

I couldn't keep up. I was still trying to recover altitude, but my clipped wing and my straining lungs just wouldn't stabilize.

«Rachel!» It was Jake. Where had he come from? «Is that you?»

«Don't worry about me!» I cried. «Visser Four is getting away!»

«I think I see him!» said Tobias. Where was he? I was too low to the ground to see.

I finally got high enough to get a view of the situation. A red-tailed hawk, a peregrine falcon, a prairie falcon, and two ospreys, converging on Visser Four overhead. Ax, running at full gallop after him, tiny cuts opening on his flanks from the spiky grass. Tobias pulled into a dive, talons outstretched. Visser Four himself was just visible through the tall grass, turning toward us, pulling a Dracon beam – «Watch out!» I shouted.

TSEEEEEEWWWW!

The red-tailed hawk vaporized into nothing.

«NO!» I screamed. «TOBIAS!» I looked for him in the empty space where he had been. Nothing but a stampede inside my head, hooves pounding and thirsty for blood. «Where's Visser Four? I'm going to TEAR HIM APART!»

But he had disappeared from view, and the world was dissolving around me.

Interlude.

«My name is Tobias-Sirinial-Litsom,» Tobias said in private thought-speak, glancing at the speech notes on his holopad with one stalk eye. «You have all heard of the Paths Sirinial, that ancient homeland where so many of our ancestors walked. I am as proud as any Andalite to bear that djesculi. My schwescor is Litsom, those dry and shady valleys where I walked my first steps. But my first name is one that no Andalite before me has ever borne. That's because I was named after a human, from the planet Earth, named Tobias. He was a kind man who helped my mother's family when it seemed they might fall apart. My mother's father was a veteran, his heart ravaged by war, and Tobias cared for him and kept him from abandoning his family duties.»

«Tobias is dead now. So is my mother's family. So is every human except my mother, and, in some ways, me. Our planet, called Earth, was deemed acceptable collateral damage in the war against the Yeerks by Andalite High Command. Now we declare that we have won this terrible war against them. But at what cost?»

Tobias breathed deeply, flaring his nostrils, and looked at me with his main eyes, vivid green like his father's. «How am I doing so far?»

«Very well,» I said, and as covertly as I could, sent a message assuring Loren as much.

«Don't you even try pretending, Aximili-outha,» said Tobias, turning his head so he watched me with only one stalk eye. «I know you're messaging my mother. I swear, you're like her personal spy.» He shifted to study me with his main eyes instead. «Do you think they'll listen to what I have to say?»

A year ago, I would have answered yes without further consideration. Despite my brother's suspicions and disloyalties, I always believed the best of the military I served. All of that had changed, however, when Andalite High Command killed six billion sentient beings in order to win the war against the Yeerks, leaving my nephew and my taf ratheen alone in the galaxy. These days, I was coming to be nearly as much of a rebel as Elfangor.

«The Electorate wishes to believe that they have chosen their military commanders well,» I said. «But I think even the common Andalite begins to suspect that they have not. You do not speak today to the ones who destroyed your mother's people. You speak to the Electorate, the voice of our People. They understand the pain of war. They understand family. That is the story you are telling them.» I offered my tail to twine with his. «You have always been good at telling the right story. Your mother saw that gift in you, and you have nurtured it well.»

Tobias wrapped his tail around mine. «I guess I should know that by now. You were such a stiff-necked loyalist as a kid, and I managed to convince you, Aximili-outha.»

«Oh, I am certain I must not have been so difficult. I already counted a bratty, flower-stealing, half-human mongrel as my beloved nephew, after all. The Electorate will only have to see the same in you.»

III.

(Ax)

The Yeerks' harsh world dissolved around us; in moments, we were all in a similar landscape, but different.

All of us except Tobias.

Rachel was still calling out for him, but I knew he would not answer. She had never seen a fellow soldier fall in battle. When the Dome separated from the GalaxyTree with only myself inside, I saw all my comrades-in-arms die in cold space. To me, it was not a distant nightmare possibility. I knew it could happen. I thought it had happened, once, when David attacked a red-tailed hawk he believed to be Tobias. This time, it was real.

Tobias had only just met his mother. He should have had more time with her.

But there was no time for my pain. We were still on the Yeerk homeworld, which I knew more about than any of the others. The former Visser Four was still at large with the Time Matrix, trying to change history.

My hearts clenched. What my people had done in the alternate timeline created by Visser Four was unspeakable. But in that timeline, Tobias was alive.

«Where is he?!» Rachel raged, the largest shape among the winged silhouettes circling overhead. «We have to find him and KILL HIM!»

No. I could not become like Rachel, with my reason lost to the void howling inside me. I scanned my surroundings. They looked more like the descriptions I had been given of the Yeerk homeworld than our last time jump had. The soil was dull gray and moist instead of silver and well-drained, the air was colder, and the grass brown and much shorter, though equally unpalatable.

And it was almost nightfall. With it would come the acid rain. I said, «We must acquire native morphs immediately.»

There was a moment of complete silence. Then Prince Jake said, «Why?»

«Because the acid rain will fall soon, and we have no morphs that can withstand it.»

Another silence that fell heavy like a stone. Prince Jake said, «I see a weird headless thing kind of shambling along. Will that work?»

«I do not recall this specific creature. But anything that lives on the Yeerk homeworld has some biological defense against the acid rain. It will do. Is it far, or can I run there?» I was the only one not in a bird morph.

«You can run there if you want. Let's go.» A pause. «There's also an Andalite military base. Fences, spaceships. There's nobody outside.»

«We must be in the days after my people arrived, but before Seerow's Kindness,» I said.

«Hey, Ax?» I felt Prince Jake's shift to private thought-speech. «I'm sorry.»

It felt good to run, even though my lungs burned with every breath. I needed the pulse and release of my muscles to empty my mind. I followed the loose formation of birds. The prairie falcon was at the back.

«Why?» said Loren, quietly, brokenly. «Why Tobias?»

I wished Loren wouldn't speak like this. I couldn't entertain these thoughts now. But Loren was no warrior. She could not push the feelings aside, as I did. «I do not know,» I said heavily. «In truth, I thought Prince Jake would be Crayak's price.» Not that that thought was easier to bear. «Loren, I will mourn with you at the proper time, but that time is not now. We have a mission. This is what Prince Jake asked when he asked you to obey his orders, no matter what. Whatever happens, the mission comes first.»

«I promised,» said Loren. «I didn't really mean it.»

«Then mean it now.»

My legs and flanks burned with a hundred tiny cuts from the saw-edged grass, speckling my fur with blood. I was grateful when the grass and tangled trees opened out into a clearing with a small Yeerk pool in the center, though its smell offended me. I could see the headless shambling creature Prince Jake had spoken of. Beyond the clearing, I saw the Andalite base, familiar on this alien world.

«I see Visser Four!» Cassie cried. «Near the base. He's injured. The acid rain will kill him!»

«Good,» Rachel snarled.

«We still don't know where the Time Matrix is,» said Marco. «If Visser Four dies, how will we find it? What does it even look like?»

«Loren?» I prompted. I sensed she did not wish to speak to anyone but me; however, we all needed to know what we were searching for.

«It's a smooth white sphere,» Loren said in a quiet monotone. «Six feet tall, maybe.»

«Okay, we'll keep an eye out,» said Prince Jake. «Cassie, you're the fastest morpher. And Ax, you don't need to demorph. The two of you acquire this thing, morph again, and get him to safety. The rest of us will catch up.»

Rachel bristled. «By themselves?»

«Visser Four is injured and about to get killed by acid rain. He's in a bad bargaining position and he knows it. Cassie and Ax will be fine.»

«Like Tobias was fine?!»

The conversation fell away. They must have switched to private thought-speech. I put it out of my mind and kept running. Cassie and the others landed near the creature; Prince Jake must have quieted Rachel's objections. As expected, Cassie was already fully human by the time I caught up with the rest of the group. It took me an embarrassingly long time to recover my breath, my nostrils flaring to haul in air.

"All right," said Cassie. "Let's approach it slowly and gently, see if it reacts. Be ready."

I followed Cassie toward the creature. It had smooth, thick skin, like an Earth whale, four thick walking limbs, and two smaller grasping limbs. Its hide hung in thick folds around its legs, protecting its underbelly. As we came closer, the creature stopped moving. Had it perceived our presence? How?

Cassie reached out and touched the beast's hide. It didn't react. I put my hand beside hers and concentrated on the strange animal. When we were done acquiring it, it stayed frozen, as if in terror. Earth animals did this too, sometimes. My human friends spoke of "a deer in the headlights."

«I will see you again soon,» I told Loren privately as Cassie and I began the change to our bird morphs. I was not looking forward to flying again. The harrier needed more oxygen to fly than I needed to run, and this atmosphere simply did not provide enough. But there was no better way to get to Visser Four quickly.

Taking off was the hardest part. Cassie couldn't quite suppress a cry of pain as she beat the first few strokes into the air, and less than a minute later, it was my turn to feel the same.

Below us, I saw no Andalites on the base. None were outside, and the compound itself had no windows. Above us, the sky darkened from the green of young leaves to the green of old rot. Thunder boomed, far too close for comfort.

Visser Four lay under the branches of one of the tangled trees with yellow leaves and deep red branches. I might have thought him dead if not for the rodent dæmon curled on his chest. As we drifted downward, I saw the blow to his head. «An Andalite did this,» I told Cassie. «With the flat of his blade.» My thought-voice shook with anger. How could an Andalite leave a vulnerable being out to die by dissolution in the acid rain?

«What are we going to do with him?» Cassie said.

«One of us can morph the creature. It has enough bulk to shelter a human under its belly. I can do it. I will not reveal myself as a human.»

«Does it even matter anymore whether he knows?»

It went against all of my instincts cultivated over the course of this war, but Cassie was right. «Then let us both morph. We will need the protection soon enough.»

We landed beside the unconscious Visser Four and demorphed. It was a relief not to be flying anymore. Cassie was human first, and reached out to wake him, but I said, «Wait. Let me have my blade ready, just in case.» My tail sprouted then, and I settled into a ready stance. Cassie seized the Visser's chin and shook it. He groaned. The dæmon on his chest stirred. She blinked beady black eyes.

"A human?" she said. "What are you doing here?"

I held my blade to Visser Four's throat and nodded to Cassie. She began the morph to the Yeerk creature. I said, «Tell us what happened.»

The human's eyes were open now too, the blue irises rimmed all around with white. "Humans," he whispered. "Not just that kid David. There were humans with the bandits the whole time." Then, unaccountably, he grinned. "Oh, that is awesome."

«Wait,» Cassie said. «Could Visser Four have jumped hosts? He must have known he couldn't have survived the acid rain like this.»

That would explain his behavior, but I preferred to be cautious. «What happened?» I insisted.

"Oh, right. Of course you wouldn't know the difference." The grin died. His eyes fixed on my blade, while his dæmon's watched Cassie's body melt and twist. "He's gone, you know. The Yeerk. An Andalite warrior out on patrol was coming back to the compound for shelter. He wasn't expecting an enemy armed with a Dracon beam. The Yeerk stunned him and infested him."

«No,» I breathed. An Andalite Controller, an Abomination, before Seerow's Kindness. With this terrible advantage, what more could the Visser do? I watched Cassie with my stalk eye. She was not done morphing yet. The sky was very dark. If the others were flying toward us, I could not see them. «Do you know where the Time Matrix is?»

"I know where it was," said John Berryman. "He may have moved it. But I'll show you. You have to stop him!"

«Ax, you need to morph,» Cassie said. She was closer to done, but she was still smaller than me. «This man isn't going to attack us, and the rain could start any moment.» I pulled my tail away from Berryman's throat and focused on the rubbery shape of the animal I'd acquired. My legs began to thicken, and my tail retracted into my spine. Cassie spoke again, this time to Berryman, her voice hesitant. «Mr. Berryman. I'm so sorry. Can you tell me where your parents met? When and where?»

My main eyes were gone by now, but I whipped my stalk eyes toward Cassie. It would not be the first time I thought her to be the most dangerous among us. Still, her cunning shocked me. Yes, if John Berryman never existed, Visser Four would not have him as a host, and he would not find the Time Matrix in the first place. It still felt like the basest arrogance to unwrite the entire existence of a sentient being.

"San Francisco," Berryman whispered. "The Japanese Tea Garden in Golden Gate Park. 1967. My father is also John. My mom is Theresa. Theresa Knowlton."

«Do you know where it is?» said Prince Jake urgently, from above us. «We're coming down.»

«Hurry,» I said tersely. I was mostly morphed. For the first time since arriving here, my breaths came easy, filling my body with all the oxygen it needed.

"It's all right," Berryman said. He held his dæmon against his cheek. "I understand. You can undo all of this. I – "

«ARGH!» A chorus of screams from above us. A moment later, the acid hit my still-Andalite fingers, my still-Andalite eyes. I screamed until I couldn't tell which were Cassie's and Berryman's and which were mine.

IV.

(Cassie)

The morph I was in couldn't see, exactly. It was covered in fine whiskers that could sense air currents and scents. So I felt, rather than saw, my friends plummet from the sky. And in my mind, I heard their screams.

I was screaming too. The only part left of me left was my hair, a strange black fuzz sitting near the headless front of my body. The smell of my hair dissolving in the acid rain overwhelmed the morph's keen senses. That was for the best. The smell of Berryman's flesh dissolving was even worse. The only blessing was that I didn't have eyes anymore.

I felt puffs of displaced air all around me as my friends hit the ground, hard. But the screams didn't end. Somehow, they weren't dead. «Demorph!» I screamed. Now that my human hair was gone, the rest of me wasn't burning. The rain prickled, but nothing worse than that. «Get under me and Ax, get human and morph this thing RIGHT NOW!»

«How are we alive?» Marco said. «We can't be alive right now. I felt my spine crack just now. I was dead!»

I felt someone crawl underneath me. «Who cares? Just morph!»

It felt like it took forever for the others to demorph. I spent the eternity thinking about Tobias, about John Berryman, how we were alive somehow and they weren't. But finally, finally, they were all morphed. All safe.

«I vote we finish this as soon as fucking possible,» Marco said shakily.

«Yeah,» said Rachel quietly. «Is Visser Four dead?»

«No,» I said. «That was his host. He's still out there somewhere. And he has an Andalite host.»

«Shit,» said Jake. «What about the Time Matrix?»

«He died before he could tell us,» I said.

«We'll look in the morning, then,» said Jake.

«How exactly are we alive right now?» Rachel asked.

«The rules of engagement,» Jake said. «Just like the Iskoort world. The price for our chance to fix this was a single life. No more, no less. Crayak's had his price. So the rest of us can't die.»

Loren and Ax said nothing. I ached inside. I wanted to say something, but I wasn't sure what. If my plan worked – if I unwrote John Berryman from the world – Tobias wouldn't be dead anymore. I wasn't ready to mourn him yet, even though Loren and Ax had already started.

Privately, I told Jake about what I'd done. The knowledge I had. He said, «I wouldn't have thought of that. On my own.»

«Good thing I did, huh?» I said bitterly.

«He spent years as a Controller, and then he died.»

«So that makes it okay to erase his entire life, does it? Better that he never existed at all? How is that our choice?»

«We made it our choice when we chose to fight. This isn't the first and it won't be the last.»

«I know. I just don't know how many more choices like this we can make.»

The night was a long purgatory. While we were in morph, we tried to sleep, breathing easy, the rain rolling harmlessly off our hides. Ax woke us up to demorph when we needed to. We took turns, demorphing and scurrying under one of the others for cover from the acid rain until the thick protective hide came back with the new morph. I slept very lightly, and Quincy talked me out of my nightmares, reminding me which ones were real.

I barely even noticed when the dawn finally came. Ax just said, «It is safe for us to demorph,» so I did.

Everything had burst into flowers. That was the strange thing. I felt completely gray inside, but the landscape was the opposite. Not only had all the plants survived the rain, they thrived. The spiky edges of the brown grass were lined with tiny glittering flowers, and the once-bare clearings had a fuzz of flat red flowers like moss.

I wish Aftran could have been here to see this, thought Quincy. There were so many reasons why we wished she were there.

When I demorphed, I saw the Yeerkish landscape in bloom. I also saw what was left of Berryman. I'm not going to talk about that.

«I believe I recall from my military history lessons,» said Ax, «that there were outposts beyond the military compounds. Smaller shelters the patrols could use at night to monitor the outer zones. They were rarely used before Seerow's Kindness, but when the Yeerks rose up they became a crucial military asset.»

«So you think the Visser may have gone to one of those,» said Jake, already sprouting feathers. The rest of us followed suit. I tried not to notice the dark circles under Loren's eyes.

«His host would know where to find them,» Ax said darkly.

We flew outward from the base. The shelter wasn't too far, flying. And it was definitely easy to spot from a distance. Visser Four had opened its doors. Gedd-Controllers were practicing firing Shredders at targets made from fallen branches. Other Gedd had lifted the hood of some kind of land transport and were studying its mechanical insides. More were rolling away huge crates of supplies on smooth logs.

«Seerow's Kindness,» Ax said. «He's doing it early. While the Andalite presence here is still very small.»

Listen, said Quincy. Do you hear that?

He wasn't talking about the sound of Shredder fire, or the growl of the Gedds' language. It was a sound so familiar that I almost let it fade into the background.

A group of Gedds, their gray faces painted red and their arms draped with chains of flowers, were listening to the radio. It was a news show, maybe the BBC. A voice with a fancy British accent talked about how the war in Vietnam affected crude oil prices. "Millions of people in the NATO countries have been affected by the rise in oil prices," the voice said. It came from a device held by one of the Gedd. The device also spoke in what I thought I recognized as Galard, an interplanetary trading language that many Gedd- and Hork-Bajir-Controllers spoke among each other.

With the Gedds, there was an Andalite, clad in a weapons belt and some flower chains of his own. «Did you hear that?» said the Andalite in public thought-speech. «The primitive weapons they use to wage their wars? How casually the human speaks of millions of people? Honored Council members, I can give you the ships you need. I can give you the weapons. All you need to do is conquer this primitive planet of billions, and you will have all the hosts you need to give every Yeerk on this planet a way out of the pool and into the stars! Never again will the Andalites keep you under their hooves!»

The Andalite wasn't an Andalite at all, of course. It was Visser Four. Somehow, he had won these Yeerks' trust. And he was aiming them straight toward the Earth.

«We need to take him down,» Marco said. «But we can't kill him. We need to know where the Time Matrix is. And those Gedds look like they're awfully happy to have some Shredders of their very own.»

TSEEEWWWW! Another target dissolved into nothingness.

«We need a distraction,» Jake said. «Keep the Gedds busy while we go after Visser Four.»

Oh my God, said Quincy. I have an idea.

When he told me, I felt the inside of my mind light like a flare in the woods. Oh, Quincy. If only Aftran were here to see this.

«Ax?» I said. «How are they listening to the radio from Earth right now? Is that one of those Z-space transponder thingies?»

«An older version of it, yes,» said Ax.

«I think Ax and I might be able to handle the distraction,» I said.

«What do you intend, Cassie?» asked Ax.

«Ax,» I said. «Do you remember the Z-space coordinates for the Iskoort homeworld?»

«Yes,» said Ax slowly. «I am not certain the Z-space technology of this time has the range to receive transmissions. The planet is very distant. But we can try.»

Aftran wasn't here, but I knew Yeerks the best, so the plan had to be mine. I remembered something about the Yeerkish creature we'd acquired: it had scars along its flanks that looked for all the world like knife or spear marks, like I sometimes saw on animals at the Wildlife Rehabilitation Center. «I think they're most likely to listen to me if I'm morphed as one of their native species. The Yeerks of this time can't know about the morphing technology, and if they think I'm some kind of nature spirit, an animal of their own world speaking to them, Visser Four will have a hard time convincing them I'm the enemy.»

«So you're going to march right up to them as that headless thing and tell them how to page those mall-crawling nutbags while the rest of us go after Visser Four?» Marco said. «You do know that's insane, right?»

«Oh yeah,» I said. «Definitely insane. But think about what happens if it works.»

For the first time since Tobias died, Loren spoke unprompted. «They see another way. Something different from what Visser Four is offering them.»

«We can do more than change the timeline back to the way it was,» I said. «We can make it better. Don't you see?»

«This is serious stuff, Cassie,» said Jake. «You're talking about changing the course of history. We can't know what's going to happen if we do this.»

«Visser Four's already changed it,» I said. «You saw what his changes did. We can fix this. We can fix everything.»

«Wow, Cassie, raise your expectations,» Rachel joked weakly. «You always aim so low.»

«Well, it'll definitely make a good distraction,» Jake said. «All right, everyone, take cover and morph. Cassie goes first, the rest of us move once the Gedd-Controllers are distracted.»

«Ax, make sure you stay in thought-speech range,» I said, landing behind a thicket of thorns and blood-red flowers. «There's no way I'll be able to get the coordinates right unless you dictate them to me. And you need to translate what they say. I don't speak Galard or Gedd.»

I couldn't believe I was doing this. Marco was right. I was insane. But I had to try. This way, if we couldn't get a hold of the Time Matrix, at least we could have a better future.

Ax was a reassuring presence at my back as I morphed back to the headless thing I'd been all night. It was a relief as soon as the tiny air-slits along its back opened and inhaled. Every Earth morph felt like it was breathing through a straw, no matter how hard I panted. Only now did I feel clear and strong inside. Sick, afraid, yes, but strong.

I walked out from behind cover. In the daylight, I found that this morph had light-sensitive divots all over its hide. That, plus my sense of smell and my sensitive whiskers, let me "see" the circle of Gedds listening to the radio. I could feel the pressure of dozens of Controllers turning their attention toward me. I said, «Hello, my honored pool-siblings. Will you allow me to speak to this device that brings us alien speech?»

I felt the whoosh in the air as Visser Four brought his tail up to fighting stance. «Andalite,» he hissed. «Honored Council, this is an Andalite creation! A trick!»

One of the flower-chain Gedds – the Council? – spoke in the growling language of the Gedd. Ax translated, «An Andalite creation? How can they make a… a grr'rnr speak?»

«I am not an Andalite trick,» I said. «I will not hurt you. Please, let me speak to the device. There is another planet beyond this one you need to hear about. A planet your friend with the Andalite host does not know.»

«Listen to how it speaks, in your heads, the way an Andalite does!» Visser Four said. He leapt forward, clear over the heads of the Gedd, landed beside me, and held his blade to my sensitive underbelly, which absorbed food much like the bottoms of an Andalite's hooves. «Tell your friends to come out from hiding, Andalite.»

«Not yet,» I said to my friends. «I can handle this.»

Several Gedds growled at Visser Four. Ax said, «They are upset with the Visser for breaking with the old ways. Many of them like his ideas of throwing off Andalite control and pursuing new hosts beyond this planet, but they still care about their traditions. I believe, from what they say, that the Gedd traditionally herd these grr'rnr. They are valuable to the Gedd. They are not to be harmed. That you can miraculously speak makes you even more valuable.»

The spear marks on the grr'rnr's flanks, Quincy said. They were from the Gedd, from being herded. I wonder what for?

There was a tense wait. Would Visser Four try to kill me and risk angering the allies he'd worked all night to bring to his side? Could he afford it? He hadn't convinced them to fly away on stolen spaceships and conquer the Earth. Not yet.

The blade hovered less than an inch from my belly, but it did not cut.

The Gedd holding the Z-space communicator tilted it toward me. It spoke. «It asks what you would like to say,» said Ax. «Repeat after me.»

I projected a series of numbers and pictures into the communicator, one by one, copying exactly what Ax gave me. The audio output crackled, then went dead. I held my breath. Would it be able to receive the transmission?

«Now it's time for the big moment here on Meet Your Partner!» said the familiar chipper thought-speak whine of an Iskoort. «Isk Floor-builder, grub of Story-exorcist, which Yoort will you choose?»

«Well, Entertainer-host of Ixbelc, Ndezhkek really helps me keep my paws steady when I'm out there repairing cracked floors, and I feel like they would really help me advance through the ranks of my guild. But Zkarlug is just such a sweetheart, and I feel like we really click, you know? So I'm going to have to pick Zkarlug.»

«Oh, Floor-builder, I'm so happy for you! Let's go on down to the Yoort pool and get Zkarlug set up all snug in your brain, shall we?»

And that, right there, was it. I heard/felt the Gedds rolling away crates stop rolling. The ones at target practice shushed each other, and the sound of Shredder fire fell away. The only sounds were growling murmurs as the Controllers listened, and talked about what they heard.

The Animorphs took their moment. They leaped out from cover and attacked Visser Four. Then a lot of things happened at once.

Visser Four's blade cut my underside. I screamed in thought-speech and staggered away. Gedd hands reached out to steady me. There were growls and screams and Shredder fire and the FWAPP of a tail blade, and there was so much moving air that my morph could make no sense of it. I wanted to help find the Time Matrix, but what could I do?

«He's headed back toward the base!» Rachel cried.

I could go after Visser Four, but what use would it be? There was no way this body could keep up with an Andalite, even if I wasn't bleeding freely from the cut to my belly. So I spoke to the Gedd-Controllers, because maybe what I said could make a difference.

«I understand,» I said. «Why you might want to follow him and conquer the humans. You resent the Andalites. You want to beat them. But you don't have to beat them. You have nothing to prove. Use the device. Listen to the Iskoort. Don't just react against the Andalites. Be the Yeerks who you want to – »

But before I could finish, the Yeerk homeworld dissolved into nothingness around me.

V.

(Loren)

Whumpf.

My hooves hit metal floor. I took a sharp breath, and sweet relief flooded my entire body. Oxygen! I gulped in air like a man in the desert gulps water.

Cassie and Ax were with me. Where the others were, I didn't know.

«Where are we?» said Cassie, already starting to demorph. «I can't see.»

«A spaceship,» said Ax. He found a terminal in the sleek chrome wall and danced his many fingers across the screen. «Andalite, with signs of Yeerk modification… it's been about five years since our last jump. And… oh.»

«What?» said Cassie.

«This fleet is perhaps forty percent smaller than the Yeerk fleet was by this point in our timeline.» Ax was animated. «Cassie, they call the rest of the fleet "defectors." They broke away from the Yeerk Empire. They're flying toward the Iskoort world.»

«But I thought it was too far away.»

«It is too far away to reach by Z-space travel without enormous energy drain. But it can be reached at sublight speeds. It will simply take them a very long time. Generations, perhaps, unless they have used cryo-storage. And the Yeerk Empire is left that much weaker.»

«Oh my God,» said Cassie. «It worked. Not the way I thought, but… it worked.»

They were so excited. They thought they were fixing time. I didn't think it ought to be in anyone's hands but the Holy Father's. And anyway, my universe could never be right so long as Tobias was dead.

«Where are the others?» said Cassie.

«The system has not registered any intruders as yet.»

«And what about – »

The world dissolved again. When it had some kind of shape again, we were in an Andalite spaceship. I recognized it by the grass in the floor, and the warm lighting. Ax and Cassie were still with me, thank God, but what was Visser Four doing –

«At this point I'm just getting a headache,» Marco complained. «What is he trying to do, shake us off? Check what else in the space-time continuum he managed to fuck up?»

Another spaceship. Not Andalite, probably. Now only Jake and Marco with me.

«This can't go on,» said Marco. «We need to get to the Time Matrix. It's the only way to fix this.»

«Fix this?» I said. «How?»

«You've used the Time Matrix before,» Jake said. «Do you know what we can do?»

«It was mostly Elfangor,» I protested.

«Still,» said Jake. «You changed time. You came back four years later and made it so no one noticed you were gone. Could you do it again?»

«Maybe,» I said. «What do you want me to do?»

Jake watched me with yellow tiger eyes. «Let's cross that bridge when we come to it. For now, let's demorph and get small. We probably don't want to wander around this spaceship as lions and tigers and bears.»

«Jake, please answer me,» I said. «Last jump, I was with Ax. He looked on the ship's computer. In this new timeline, the Yeerks split into factions. The same conquering faction we know, and one headed for the Iskoort world.»

Jake and Marco stared at me.

«The conquering Yeerks might not be on Earth,» I said. «Maybe they never made it there. Maybe we're all living our normal lives. All of us except Tobias. So tell me, Jake. What are you going to ask me to do?»

We were all silent a moment. Then Jake said, «If all the people enslaved and killed by the Yeerks are fine now, if my brother and Marco's mom are free, Tobias would consider that worth it. You have to know that, Loren.»

I did. But that doesn't mean we agree with him on that, Jax said mutinously.

We started demorphing. Marco said, «I feel like I've said this five times in the last two minutes, but where is everybody?»

«Not within thought-speak range,» said Jake. «I checked.» He flicked an ear. «Wait. I hear something.» Marco and I stopped mid-morph. «Someone's yelling. A Gedd.»

«Can you hear what they're saying?» said Marco. As a gorilla, his ears weren't nearly as good as Jake's. Neither were mine.

«Yes, but I can't understand. Let's go fly and I'll lead us toward where I heard it. Maybe we'll run into the others along the way, and Ax can translate.»

We demorphed and remorphed. I felt numb inside. When Jake asks us to use the Time Matrix, Jax wondered, will we be able to follow orders?

We have to. This decision can't just be ours. It would be the basest arrogance to follow our own heart's wish.

Nice words, said Jax. The priest would applaud you at confession. But can you actually do it?

To the fly's mind, all parts of the ship were equally boring. But I startled every time a Gedd-Controller passed by. It would have to notice a fly on board the ship. Spaceships didn't have flies. But both times it happened, there was no reaction, and we flew on.

« – when are the others going to show up? They need to hear this!» It was Rachel's thought-speech, just fading into focus at the edge of my range.

«Rachel! It's Jake, with Marco and Loren. Where are you?»

«Cockroaches on the bridge. Visser Four is here and he's freaking out because the Andalites basically have all the monomaniacal Empire Yeerks sewn up, and these are the only ones left in space. They defeated most of the Yeerk fleet in orbit around Earth. It's safe! Now can we kill this son of a bitch?»

«Killing him isn't important, Rachel. We need to find the Time Matrix.»

«How did he manage to convince them he was a Yeerk and not an Andalite spy?» said Marco. «How did he explain how he got here?»

«He has to know things no Andalite would know,» Jake said.

«We don't know,» Rachel said. «We got here after that part.»

We got to the bridge. There was a press of Gedd bodies in there, all gathered around the powerful form of a fully armed adult Andalite warrior. They were debating among themselves ferociously. No wonder Jake could hear it from across the ship.

«Quiet!» Visser Four roared. «Pool-siblings, the Andalites are coming for us! They have defeated our brethren, and now their ships are coming for us. We must stop, end cryo-storage, acquire hosts and ships, and fight back.»

«What?» said Cassie. «But they beat the Yeerk Empire already. These Yeerks aren't out to conquer anyone. They're just trying to get to the Iskoort world. They have to know that from the Empire's computers. Why would they come after these Yeerks?»

«He could be lying,» Rachel said, but she didn't sound like she believed it.

«I have seen what my people are capable of,» Ax said heavily. «They destroyed the Earth for the sake of a decisive victory against the Yeerks. Afterward, they debated killing the rest of them, even though they sat defenseless in the pools of their homeworld. I believe the Yeerks are the enemy. My people believe the Yeerks are scum. Enemies are to be defeated. Scum is to be wiped clean.»

«You really think the Andalites would do this,» Cassie whispered. «Do you, Loren?»

I remembered Alloran, our wounded, haughty prince, and the genocidal crimes he confessed. Maybe Alloran wasn't infested in this timeline. Even if he was, there were others like him, and clearly the Andalites would do nothing to stop such people. «Yes. I'm sorry, Ax, but you're right.»

I wanted to comfort him almost as much as I wanted his comfort in return. He hadn't just lost his nephew. He'd lost his faith in his own kind.

«I'd say he has a pretty good chance of convincing them,» said Marco, «if the Andalites are crazy enough to go after them when they just want to be left alone.»

«We can't keep running forever!» Visser Four thundered, in response to a Gedd who had just pointed at him and rattled off an angry speech. «Their ships are faster than ours! They will catch up to us, and we all know exactly what they will do.»

«Tobias was the most important figure standing against the majority in the Electorate,» said Ax, not bothering to keep his thought-speech private. He forced them out, like poison from a wound. «That is what I saw in the other timeline. Tobias practicing a speech before the Electorate to convince them genocide was not the answer. The People listened to him. But now he is no more, and I cannot say what they will do.»

«It's no surprise, is it?» I said to Ax privately. «Tobias brought you and me together. If he met the Andalites, he could have… Christ above, Ax, why did it have to be Tobias?»

Now there's a question, Jax thought. Why did it have to be Tobias? We all thought it would be Jake. Crayak hates him. So why did he choose Tobias instead?

Jake was trying to work out places where the Time Matrix might be, and Visser Four was pontificating at the Gedds some more, but I wasn't listening. Did he choose Tobias on purpose? Because of who he is? Because of the difference he could make?

Well, thought Jax, Crayak wants total genocide, right? The destruction of all Dust, and the beings that make it with their thoughts. The Andalites do just that. They think they have the right. And if they aren't stopped, they'll keep on doing it.

«My best guess is that he stored it in an emergency supplies closet,» said Ax. «It would be large enough, and it would not be locked, as crewmembers must have access to them even if all the ship's locking mechanisms fail.»

And who better to convince them there's a better way than Tobias? I thought. A child born of love between an Andalite and a member of a 'primitive' species?

«If they have not substantially changed the layout of this ship from the original Andalite design, then the nearest emergency supplies cache is this way.»

«Follow Ax, everyone!»

Oh, Lord, said Jax. We have to change it back. This isn't just for us. This is for everyone. In this timeline, what's to stop the Andalites once they've killed all the Yeerks? What will they do next? What will they become?

The sounds of the riled-up Gedd-Controllers receded down a corridor. But how do we convince Jake that this isn't for selfish reasons? We still don't really know him.

I have an idea. Jax called out in private thought-speech, «Cassie? Quincy?»

«Yes?»

«Cassie, we understand what you've tried to do, but we need to change the timeline back. The Andalites are genocidal. They're out of control. The six of us can't stop them. Crayak killed Tobias for a reason. Do you see?»

There was a pause. Then Cassie said softly, «Oh. Yes. Yes, I do. If only we could… no, I see. I'll talk to Jake.»

A minute later, Jake said to me and Cassie privately, «This whole time, I thought the Yeerks were Crayak's pawns in this game. But maybe the Andalites have been his pieces all along.»

«Not all of them,» I said. Not Ax. Not Elfangor.

«Do it,» he said. «Change it back. Cassie? Tell her.»

Cassie told me. My brain turned to static. Prevent Berryman's parents from meeting. Unmake him. Only Cassie would have thought of that. I could never forget how dangerous she was.

Jake said publicly, «Loren, Ax, do you know if we can operate the Time Matrix in morph?»

«No idea,» I said.

«You and Ax better demorph just to be sure. Someone has to open the closet door anyway.»

I thought about my body, that had held and given birth to Tobias. As soon as I had legs, Ax gestured for me to follow him, his arm still covered in a black carapace. There were flies buzzing in the air around us. I staggered forward, my eyes fractured into the hundred lenses of a fly's. I couldn't imagine what I must have looked like. Instead I focused on demorphing and moving forward at the same time. When Jax appeared, that made it easier. «This way,» Ax kept saying. «This way.» I could still hear the Gedds shouting what sounded like war cries.

I realized that I could hear more than one set of hooves clicking on the smooth floor. "Ax," I said, "is that – "

It was. Visser Four came into view down the long corridor, clear in the harsh ceiling lights. For a moment, he stopped and stared. «You are not the human child!»

For a moment I had no idea what he was talking about. Then Jax said, They think you're David. Remember?

My skin prickled with cold horror. Only Jake and Ax knew that I had pretended to be David for the Yeerks' benefit. Now everyone would figure it out. But all my panicked thoughts dissolved when Visser Four started running toward us full tilt.

«Oh,» said Cassie. «That's Visser Four. He's coming for us!»

«If that's not a sign that we're onto his hiding place,» said Marco, «I don't know what is. Ax, Loren, run!»

Ax could run faster than me, but he waited and ran behind me, putting himself between my vulnerable human body and Visser Four's tail blade. «I hope I do not have to fight him,» Ax told me as we ran.

"What do you mean?" Jax said. I was breathing too heavily to talk. We were leaving the flies behind.

«You don't know,» said Ax. «Of course you wouldn't. The Andalite Visser Four took as his host is Prince Seerow. Before he became a prince. Visser Four must have chosen that time and place on purpose so he could intercept Seerow.»

The irony didn't escape me. I didn't think Seerow would think so kindly of Yeerks now. He was fast, though – and gaining on us.

«Don't look back,» said Ax. «You're almost there. Next door to your left.» He had stopped and braced himself to block the corridor. To fight this full-grown warrior. Then again, Tobias had told me once Ax had held his own against Visser Three himself. Against all of Alloran's knowledge. I trusted in him and ran.

I skidded to a halt in front of the door to my left. «The child soldier,» Visser Four snarled. I could hear blade meet blade.

"Don't turn around," Jax said. I didn't, though my back prickled as if I had eyes there. The door opened to my touch, just as Ax had promised.

It stood there, inside, taller than me, alien and familiar. I reached out to touch its smooth white surface.

"I can't believe we're doing this," I said. "Making it so a man never was. That isn't for us to do. We're wielding a power meant for God alone."

"Or maybe it's the power that God needs us to have right now," said Jax.

"It's too much to ask Tobias," I whispered. "For him to change the future."

"I know," said Jax. "But he won't have to do it alone."

I opened my mind. I pictured the time and place. And my mind, and the Time Matrix, made it so.

Postlude.

The last of the vole meat slid down my throat, hot and satisfying. I let the tattered remains of its body fall to the forest floor, where the worms could have it. In the distance, I heard footsteps, one set human, one set heavy hooves. Loren and Ax coming to see me again, maybe. My beak and talons were still bloody. I flew to the stream to wash off. Not a very hawk thing to do, but it felt good.

I heard the footsteps come closer as I washed. The hooves weren't right for Ax's. Rachel, then with Abineng. Good, thought El. I've wanted to talk to them. Hear their side of the story.

And remind them we're still here, I thought. That we're not dead. She needs to know that.

I stayed on the rock by the stream, water dripping from my beak. Behind me, I heard Rachel and Abineng stop walking. I imagined her watching me. Finally, she said, "Taking a birdbath?"

I turned my head. Rachel had her hair wrapped up in a bun with two sticks. It made her neck look longer. Her eyes were sunken. She hadn't slept well.

«There's a nice flat rock next to mine,» I said. «Sit.»

Rachel sat cross-legged on the rock. Abineng stood behind her, his chin resting on the crown of her head. She stared into the gently flowing water, then looked at me. "Tobias, I wanted to say sorry. If I had just waited for the rest of you to show up – if I hadn't insisted on charging in after Visser Four – "

«Crayak would have found a way to kill me anyway,» I finished. «He had it in for me, Rachel. Loren explained it.»

"Because you have some kind of calling as a voice of reason keeping the Andalites from genocide?" She folded her arms. "How can we know that? Maybe Crayak just went with whoever died first."

«I remember what it was like. In that other timeline, when I was an Andalite. The People did listen to me, Rachel. I've never felt like that before. Like they would all want to hear what I had to say. That I could change people's minds with my words. It was incredible. If I could do that in another time, then I have to at least try to do it here.»

"You really think you have a destiny?"

«Yes. No. Maybe.» I couldn't put it into words.

El took over for me. «Not a destiny. There's always free choice involved. A possibility. A path that's open to me.»

"What's my path, then?" Rachel half-shouted. Color rose to her cheeks. "How am I supposed to change the future? Should I be, what, the greatest warrior who ever lived? I don't want that! How could you want this? To be Tobias, the great interstellar ambassador? Don't you just want to be Tobias?"

«I'm not some kind of great ambassador. I just want to have my family. All of it. Human and Andalite. I'll do whatever I have to do to make that happen.» I tilted my head to peer at Rachel. «That's what I want. That's what I'm fighting for. What do you want, Rachel?»

"I don't know," she whispered. "When we were on the Yeerk homeworld, all Abineng wanted was blood. That's how we ended up in that mess." Rachel lifted a hand toward me, then put it back down. She bit her lip. Uncertain. "I don't know what I want to fight for. Not yet. Can you… can you help?"

Oh, El thought. I've missed the inside of you, Rachel. I'm so glad you asked.

How would she react if you said that out loud? I wondered.

Not ready to find out, El replied.

So I just said, «Of course, Rachel. Whenever you need me.» And I focused on the Yoort DNA swimming in my blood. I didn't know how to change minds yet, not like the Tobias I'd been in another life. But I could start with this: I could change hers.