Author's note: New job! (sort of) New house! (not even sort of) Thanksgiving! These are not excuses for me missing an update, but they ARE explanations. I have real reason to believe that the next two updates will go out on time (i.e. by Wednesday the 16th, and then probably before Christmas), but after that, this cycle will be complete and I may need a longer break before starting up again. I sort of apologize for all the cliffhangers, but not REALLY—you gotta set up dominoes before you can knock them down.

As always, I am abjectly grateful for feedback of any kind, especially feedback posted here as reviews or as comments over on r/rational. We're starting to get to the point where most of the Animorphs' weapons and hacks and advantages are apparent, and readers can begin making confident predictions about what they're going to be able to accomplish with them.

Chapter 11: Tobias

Cold like knives, even through the thick blubber of the sperm whale's body—water so cold it should have been ice.

‹We're not afraid.›

Darkness blacker than the inside of a grave, darkness somehow close, rather than distant—like the rest of the universe had disappeared, leaving only nothingness.

‹We're not afraid because if we let ourselves get too scared we might not be able to do what needs to be done.›

Pressure so great that even the whale was claustrophobic, the weight of a truck pressing down on each and every inch of my body, squeezing tighter and tighter as it tried to crush me down to a point, a speck, a singularity.

‹And we aren't the type of people who back down. We're the type of people who do the right thing, even if it's hard.›

I had never been so afraid.

Not when my mom walked out on me. Not when I'd run away from Oak Landing and spent a week on the street. Not even on the night Elfangor had died, when we'd gotten our first glimpse of the horror to come. Always, always, always, there had been a way out, or a way to fight back, or a place to hide.

‹Right now, the right thing is to rescue Elfangor's brother.›

Garrett's voice floated through the nightmare, unspooling in my thoughts.

‹Because the world's in trouble, and he might be able to help us save it.›

My words, reflected back at me. My own reassurances, only half-sincere, sounding so much stronger coming from the heart of Garrett's steely certainty.

‹And even if he can't, or if we can't find him, we'll just do the next thing, and the next, and the next. We'll keep on trying until we figure out a way.›

We hung in the infinite blackness, two tiny spots of warmth and life, using the sperm whale's echolocation to stay within thought-speak range of one another as we circled, searching. We were at least a mile and a half below the surface, deep enough that the used-up air in our lungs felt like it was slowly turning to diamonds.

‹We're not afraid,› Garrett began again, his inflection unchanged, starting the loop for what felt like the hundredth time.

It was our third trip into the abyss. Our third try, since reaching the point where the distress beacon seemed to be coming from absolutely straight down. We'd spent a day and a half on a cargo ship that was going in mostly the right direction, and had gone overboard with a small buoy and some rope once it seemed like we weren't getting any closer. We'd come the rest of the way as whales, demorphing in shifts, stopping every few hours to confirm our direction.

‹We're not afraid because if we let ourselves get too scared we might not be able to do what needs to be done.›

It had been hell. The waves in this part of the ocean were nearly fifteen feet high, and it was cold enough that frost would form on my hair in the brief seconds between morphs. We were getting better at staying out of the water—as one of us began to demorph, the other would rise up beneath him, forming a kind of island—but every now and then a rogue wave would crash over us and we'd spend a harrowing minute or two just trying not to drown.

‹And we aren't the type of people who back down.›

At first, it had been the mission that held me together, kept me going. Rescuing a fallen warrior, defeating the Yeerks, saving the world. Fate of humanity on our shoulders, and all that. Those were the words I'd used to bolster Garrett, to hold back his panic the first time he'd sucked down a lungful of sea foam. They were the words that had first carried me down into the darkness.

‹We're the type of people who do the right thing, even if it's hard.›

But as the rest of the world faded away, so did the sense that any of that mattered. I wanted to care—wanted to believe that what I was doing was the right thing, that it would make a difference.

But all I felt was fear. Fear, and an overwhelming desire to escape. To give up, go home, find another way. That little voice, whispering in my head—what's humanity ever done for you, that you should be out here risking death to save it?

‹Right now, the right thing is to rescue Elfangor's brother.›

It was Garrett who stopped me, then. Not on purpose. Not by trying. It's just—I'd said those words to him, and he'd believed them, you know? Taken them to heart, turned them into armor. They'd actually worked.

For him.

Because he trusted me.

I couldn't take that away from him, couldn't bring myself to pull the rug out from under him when we were a thousand miles away from home on a mission I'd created.

‹Because the world's in trouble, and he just might be able to help us save it.›

So I'd put on a brave face, pretended to be convinced as we dove, down and down and down into the blackness until even the whale could go no further, the sea floor impossibly far away. I'd maintained my composure as we searched, resurfaced, came up with a new plan and tried again. I'd kept up the act through our second round of demorphing, as we checked on the beacon and noticed that the current had pushed us so that the signal was no longer coming from directly below.

‹And even if he can't, or if we can't find him, we'll just do the next thing, and the next, and the next.›

And when we'd realized that it wasn't working, that we'd have to try something truly dangerous—

That's when I'd almost lost it. When I'd found myself clinging to Garrett's mantra for dear life, wishing I believed it so hard that I almost actually did.

‹We'll keep on trying until we figure out a way.›

I turned uselessly in the darkness, pulling my fins against the liquid midnight, feeling a soft ribbon of warmth on my face as I passed through the trail of my own blood.

"Anything small is a deathwish," Cassie had said, that first afternoon in the barn. "Nowhere to demorph if you run into trouble. It's got to be a sperm whale or a giant squid, and I don't know how we'd get either one."

We'd gotten the whale, whether through dumb luck or divine intervention or some crazy plot I still didn't understand. But it was the squid that went deeper—all the way to the bottom.

There were whales that came up from the black, bleeding from sucker scars, with squid body parts sloshing around in their bellies.

There were others that didn't come up at all.

‹We're not afraid.›

Only I was, deep down in my bones—a gnawing, clawing fear that made me afraid that even my thought-speak would come out unsteady. It was like being buried alive, or like being paralyzed—like one of those nightmares where you're unable to move as you watch the monster closing in.

It had been Garrett's idea to try wounding one of the whale bodies, to see if the blood would attract a squid where our random zigzagging had not. We'd considered doing rock-paper-scissors, until we'd realized that would mean we'd both have to be demorphed at the same time in fifteen-foot waves.

And until I'd realized that I couldn't stick a tail blade into Garrett. Not even to save the world. Not when I could just tell him to cut me, instead.

‹We're not afraid because if we let ourselves get too scared we might not be able to do what needs to be done.›

I fired off an echolocation burst—a sort of click, shockingly loud—and the echoes that came back formed a picture in my head.

Nothing. Just me and Garrett, suspended in infinite emptiness.

‹And we aren't the type of people who back down.›

You sneered at Marco and Rachel because they weren't paying enough attention to the big picture.

‹We're the type of people who do the right thing, even if it's hard.›

You flat-out insulted Jake for giving in to his emotions.

‹Right now, the right thing is to rescue Elfangor's brother.›

And after he faced down three juniors for you, when he didn't even know you.

It was bizarrely irrelevant—six months in the past and a thousand miles removed. But somehow it helped, mixing together with Garrett's litany to form just enough glue to hold me together.

‹Because the world's in trouble, and he just might be able to help us save it.›

I fired off another click, let out a fraction of a breath, the bubbles hissing and crackling as they divided and subdivided, crawling upward, vanishing into nothingness. Turning once again, I began to make my way back toward Garrett, the only other object in my universe.

‹And even if he can't, or if we can't find him, we'll just do the next thing, and the next, and the next. We'll keep on trying until—›

‹Garrett,› I said, cutting him off.

‹Yeah?›

‹How many times have you said all that stuff?›

‹This morph?›

‹Yeah.›

‹One hundred and twelve. Almost. You didn't let me finish.›

I did the rough calculation in my head. He was pretty regular, running through the entire thing about three times every four minutes. ‹So we've got about forty-five minutes left,› I said.

‹My time limit's a hundred and—›

‹A hundred and fifty-seven, right. I remember. But we should go up together, just like last time.›

Garrett didn't say anything. I'd have bet ten dollars he was trying to figure out whether not being scared meant he was supposed to fight to stay down below while I went up and refreshed my clock. I took advantage of the silence to drift past him, firing off another echolocation click. The image bounced back—there was a school of small fish swirling a few hundred yards in the distance, and absolutely nothing else.

Finally, Garrett spoke. ‹What happens if we can't get a squid?› he asked quietly.

‹We can keep this up for a while,› I pointed out. ‹I mean, it took us two and a half days to get here. We might as well try for at least a whole day before we give up.›

‹I don't like this,› Garrett said bluntly. ‹I know you said we're not supposed to be scared, but I'm scared. I'm scared and I'm cold and I'm tired and I'm scared and I want to go back to—›

‹Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, come on,› I said gently, stopping him before he could spiral out of control. ‹I'm right here with you, okay? We're—we've got this.›

‹You're scared too,› he shot back. ‹And you don't want to be here, either.›

I started to object, felt the words catch in my thoughts, ended up saying nothing.

He trusts you. That doesn't mean he's blind.

I had lied to Garrett—real, outright lies—exactly twice in the whole three years we'd known each other. Both times had been for his own good, and they'd still both felt like betrayal. Lying to him wasn't like lying to anyone else. He didn't have any defenses against it. He knew his view of the world was broken, knew that his brain came up with the wrong answer half the time, and so he either trusted you or he didn't—no middle ground.

Which means that if I told him something, he'd just—take it. Take it in, believe it, make it a part of his universe.

I could convince him he was wrong. That I was brave, that I wanted to be there, that the mission felt just as important to me now as it had back when we were both safe on dry land.

But I didn't want to. Not for what it would cost.

‹You're right,› I said finally. ‹I'm scared, too. I've never been more scared in my life. I don't want to be here. I don't want to die down here.›

‹So why don't we just leave?›

I clicked again, found him in the darkness, brushed one of his fins with mine. ‹Because everything we said before is still true,› I said. ‹Because I do want to stop them. The Yeerks. And this—I think this is how we have to do it.›

‹Doesn't feel like saving the world,› Garrett said. ‹Feels like—like—like—›

‹I know,› I said, my own fear ebbing a little as the arguments began to take hold, as I said the words and forced myself to believe them. ‹But there's nobody else, right? I mean literally nobody else. Jake won't do it, and if there were other Andalites out there, they'd have found him by now. We're his only hope. And we—we're the kind of people who don't back down.›

I paused, waiting.

Come on, buddy.

‹We're the type of people who do the right thing,› Garrett said dully.

‹Even if it's hard,› I said, packing as much confidence as I could into my tone.

‹Even if it's hard.›

‹Right now, the right thing is exactly what we're already doing. There's two of us—we can handle ourselves as long as we watch each other's back. And if we want to stop the Yeerks, this is the place to be.›

There was another long pause. ‹Yeah,› said Garrett. ‹Maybe.›

I reached out with my fin again, brushed it gently against his, and turned outward once more, facing the darkness.

I couldn't blame him for being skeptical. I'd almost lost my grip on the connection myself—that saving the world meant beating the Yeerks, which meant gathering intel and allies, which meant rescuing Elfangor's brother, which meant acquiring a truly deep-water morph, which meant trapping a giant squid, which somehow translated into hanging out in pitch black water a mile beneath the surface of the ocean with a ten-foot gash down my side, waiting for a monster to come along and try to eat me.

There were a lot of steps between A and B. A lot of jumps that the emotional half of my brain didn't fully buy. It sounded true, but it didn't feel true.

Or rather, it had felt a lot truer three days ago, when we'd been focused on what could go right instead of what could go wrong.

‹Tobias?›

I threw another click and turned back toward Garrett, swimming once more through the trail of my own blood. ‹Yeah?› I called out.

‹Tobias, come back.›

I started to reply, then stopped short, an icicle of fear piercing through my confused, cobbled-together courage.

‹I hear it, too,› I said, my thought-speak instinctively dropping to a whisper. ‹I'm coming.›

It was a kind of whooshing sound, somewhere in the empty blackness beyond my friend—a soft, distant pulse, with just the barest hint of a gurgle behind it. Somewhere underneath the layer of my control, I felt the whale brain awaken, felt it come alive with predatory interest even as the human part of me began to come apart.

Run leave hide go get out get up go up to the light the light the surface get away from it run—

A chorus, an avalanche, a flood of voices as nearly every part of my mind and soul united in sudden, urgent agreement. This wasn't where I wanted to die. This wasn't a fight I needed to pick. Every lingering doubt, every unanswered question, all the other possible plans I'd only half-imagined—in that moment, they were all outlined in bold, clear and sharp and undeniable, all pointing in the same direction.

Leave!

Only—

When I tried—

I couldn't—

It was like something in my mind had turned to stone—some part of me that wasn't quite able to drive me forward, but was absolutely adamant that I would not go back. I pushed at it, frantic—scrabbled at it, threw myself against it and from the depths of my panic shouted why—

Garrett.

He can leave WITH you, asshole! He's RIGHT THERE!

Only that wasn't it. Not quite.

‹Tobias,› Garrett called out again, fear edging his thought-speak, and in that instant a memory flashed across my mind, a memory made of everything I hated about the world.

We made a promise, I'd said.

I'm just saying. If you'd broken it. If you hadn't come back. You could've—I wouldn't have blamed you.

Garrett, thinking I had left him behind at Oak Landing, and telling himself it wasn't betrayal.

It was a tiny thing, really.

Just faith.

Just trust.

Just one sad little orphan kid who had no reason to believe that the universe would ever be fair—that there was any such thing as justice or kindness or honor. A kid who would stay or go depending on what I did, who was looking to me to show him what the world was made of.

If it had just been Elfangor's brother, I wouldn't have had the courage. But I had something else to protect—something I had never put my finger on until that exact moment.

‹Don't think,› I said sharply, surging past him in the inky water. ‹Drop into the whale. Feel it—it isn't afraid.›

‹Tobias, I don't think I can—›

‹Let go, Garrett,› I repeated, and then I took my own advice, wrapping myself in the whale's supreme confidence.

Okay. Let's hunt.

I could still feel my own fear, the desire for air and light and safety. But it was different now, smaller and easier to deal with. It was as if it had been drawing its power from my own indecision—from the possibility that I might decide to run—and now that the door had finally shut, it was just a quiet, irrelevant voice.

‹Hang back,› I said. ‹Stay right here, don't move. If it figures out that there are two of us, it might run, and I don't know if we're fast enough to catch it.›

‹But—›

‹I'll be fine. Wait until it's too late—until we're tangled up—and then you'll be the cavalry. Okay?›

‹What if you go out of range?›

‹You can still hear me. Swim slow—quiet.›

The sound of the squid was noticeably clearer already, somewhat higher in the water than we were and heading almost straight across the "horizon," from left to right. Putting on a burst of speed, I pulled ahead and turned parallel to its course, leading it by what my whale brain told me was something like a mile.

‹What are you doing?› Garrett asked. The fear had disappeared from his voice once again, and somewhere in my soul I pumped a victorious fist into the air.

‹It's too far away. I need to cross in front of it, give it a chance to smell the blood.›

Flexing against the cold, I tried to pull the long, thin gash on my flank open wider, encouraging more blood to spill into the water. I slowed my pace, letting both fins move in a sluggish, erratic pattern.

Come on. Easy prey. Come and get it.

A long minute passed. I slowed down a little more, trying to make plenty of noise in the water. Behind me, I heard a change in the pulsing pattern as the squid paused, then picked up speed. I fired off a click—still too distant to "see" anything—and thrashed a little, hoping to seal the deal.

‹It's heading right for you,› Garrett said quietly. ‹It just zipped past me. Didn't even slow down.›

‹Good,› I said. ‹Stay back a little longer.›

‹It's big, Tobias.›

I felt another little spike of fear, felt it disappear in the wash of the whale's frustration. The whale wanted to move—to turn and hunt, not to feign weakness.

But I was firmly in control, and I slowed my body's pace even further, letting my tail drag listlessly in the water. ‹How big?› I asked.

‹I couldn't see it. Big.›

Turn and face it? Or pretend to run?

The whooshing was much louder now. Stalling in the water, I turned and let out another click, receiving a snapshot in return.

Horror—horror so thick that even the whale's predatory enthusiasm dimmed.

It was enormous—its main body more than half as long as my own, and its tentacles a writhing mass even larger still. I fired off three more clicks in rapid succession to get a sense of its speed.

Fast.

I began to swim again, curving back toward Garrett, hearing the swish and gurgle as the squid changed course to match. ‹Five more seconds,› I said. ‹It's coming in pretty—AAARRRGGHHHH!›

‹TOBIAS!›

Pain. Pain like hot knives digging into my flesh, pain like being torn in half. With chilling, alien intelligence, the squid had reached out with its two longest tentacles and gone straight for the wound in my side, peeling back layers of already-weakened flesh. I thrashed wildly, trying to get away, and only made it worse, my own motion ripping an entire section of muscle away from my ribs.

‹NO!›

I twisted in the water, dragging the squid along behind me, and managed to close my jaws over two of its tentacles just as two others lanced into my face, one of them pressing down over my eye. It pulled away, taking the eyelid with it, only to be replaced an instant later by two more. Yet another tentacle hammered at my back, its suckers shredding the skin and blubber like a chainsaw.

I could feel myself shutting down already, waves of pain and shock crashing into my brain, fracturing my thoughts. The squid was everywhere—above, below, in my eyes, in my mouth. The water around me was thick and hot with blood, and even as I caught another tentacle in my mouth and bit it off, I could tell it wouldn't be enough.

I beat feebly at the water with my fins, hoping to strike something breakable. Most of the air had escaped from my lungs, and an inner darkness began to descend as oxygen deprivation took its course.

No—wait—you—

‹EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE›

Suddenly, the squid spasmed, every tentacle retracting in a defensive reflex.

‹EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE›

It was—not thought-speak, exactly. Something deeper, louder, more primal—a wordless mental siren more piercing than the loudest shriek. It smashed into me like a shock wave, erasing every thought, every feeling, every order I might have sent to my failing limbs. I fell limp in the water, felt the squid's grip loosen.

‹EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE›

A vast presence, like an airplane flying too close overhead. Something swept past me in the water, slamming into the squid with the force of a freight train. Two of the tentacles tore away from me, taking slivers of flesh with them. A third remained, tearing away from the squid instead.

‹EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEeeeeaauh›

Almost as suddenly as it had begun, the scream tapered and died, replaced by confusion and noise. I could hear thrashing—feel the waves of pressure as the water churned violently around me—track the voice in my head as it shouted nonsense. Time passed in immeasurable surges, seconds indistinguishable from centuries.

‹Tobias! Up, now!›

I didn't move, didn't reply. I'd forgotten how to reply—forgotten that movement was a thing I was capable of doing.

Something slammed into me from below, driving me upward. ‹Tobias!› the voice screamed again. ‹I can't do this by myself!›

I could feel the movement of water against my face, the sensation of swimming. Somewhere deep inside the whale, instinct stirred, begging to be unleashed, to take control, to do something—

But I didn't know how to let go.

‹TOBIAS!›

Around me, the cold began to recede, replaced by a pleasant warmth. My one working eye began to register color—first the darkest midnight blue, then navy, and then, with shocking speed, the royal blue of twilight.

I could see.

Me.

I.

With a convulsive effort, I dragged myself awake, pushed back against my confusion. ‹Garrett?› I called out.

‹Tobias! Swim! Now, up, demorph!›

His tone was sharp and commanding like I'd never heard it, and I responded without question, marshaling my ruined body. What didn't hurt was terrifyingly numb, and I could barely manage a rhythm with my tail as my empty lungs screamed in protest, but I did what I could. As I took control, I felt the pressure beneath my belly vanish, Garrett slipping out from under me to continue his own arduous climb.

Two thousand feet—one thousand—five hundred—closer and closer, fighting against blackout the whole way, and finally we broke the surface, my whale body literally coming to pieces as I sucked in a huge, gasping breath.

‹Demorph!›

Again, I didn't ask questions, just focused as hard as I could. I was halfway through the change before enough of my own nerves had returned to give me a reliable sense of my own body. Just in time, too—the waves were still over ten feet high, and as most of my mass vanished back into whatever dimension it had come from, I found myself desperately treading water.

"Garrett?" I called out, trying to keep my head above the surface.

‹Here,› came the exhausted reply, though without any sense of direction attached.

I turned in a circle, craning my neck as a swell carried me up and then back down again. "Where?" I shouted.

There was a pop-hiss, and a geyser spout appeared a few dozen yards to my right. Holding my breath, I ducked below the surface and opened my eyes.

The water around me was pink with blood and bits of gore, most of it freefloating but some of it leaking from the hundreds of welts and sucker wounds on the sperm whale floating quietly beside me. Two of the squid's tentacles were still wrapped around the whale's body, emerging from the shattered blob of jelly cradled gently in its mouth.

‹Acquire it,› Garrett said, his tone flat.

He swam toward me, breaking the surface, and I climbed up onto his back, reaching out to place my palm on one of the columns of flesh. Closing my eyes, I focused, feeling the transfer as the squid's DNA became a part of me.

‹Keep it in the trance as long as you can.›

Beneath me, the flesh of the whale began to shift and melt, the suckers tearing away as Garrett shrank out from under them. Taking in another breath, I wrapped my arms around the limp tentacle, maintaining my focus to keep the monster from waking back up. A minute or so later, and Garrett was treading water beside me, his own hand small and pale as it pressed up against the mottled pink flesh next to mine.

"Want to go bird for a while?" I asked. "Catch our breath?"

"No," he said curtly. "Keep acquiring it."

"What—"

"Just keep it from waking up."

As I watched, Garrett began to swell again, the now-familiar pattern of the sperm whale's skin emerging like a rash. He leaned away from me, filling his lungs and disappearing below the waves.

‹Move,› he commanded, sixty seconds later.

I moved.

Beside me, the squid began to stir, its last two tentacles waving feebly in the swells. For a single, nerve-wracking moment, I thought it might still have enough energy to lash out, and then a mountain emerged from the water, Garrett's mouth gaping open large enough to swallow a car.

It took maybe two minutes for him to eat what was left of the squid, two minutes in which neither of us said a word. When he was finished, he dove down under the surface again, rising up beneath me like a living island.

‹Now you can go bird,› he said.

"What about—"

‹No flying.›

Darkness?

What darkness?

All around us was a world of light, traced out in impossibly faint swirls and streaks, the currents themselves glowing like something out of Pocahontas or Fern Gully. Near the bottom, I could see the blues and purples of deep-sea fish, the Christmas-light lures of predators, but even in the upper darkness, the water glowed with life.

‹Pretty,› Garrett had said, and then he'd fallen silent, tracing patterns in the black with his tentacles, his enormous eyes following the motes of light as they flared and vanished.

It wasn't just pretty. Everything that moved—every living thing that plied the depths—they all left trails and patterns behind them. There must have been something in the water, some microscopic algae or bacteria that glowed briefly when disturbed. It was incredibly subtle, dimmer than the dimmest star—but the squid's eyes could see it.

More than once, we'd spotted a sperm whale or another squid in the distance by the glow they created as they churned through the water. It was an unbelievable adaptation, and a totally unexpected bonus as we drifted across the seafloor, avoiding anything and everything that looked like trouble.

It also helped with the search. There were islands of light, warm pockets near hydrothermal vents where everything sparkled and glowed, but in between was utter black, layered over a mishmash of mud, rock, and alien vegetation. By stirring the water with our fins, we could get a sort of contour map even in the deepest, darkest places.

By my guess, we were about two and a half miles down. After our first dive as squids, I'd done some rough sketches on Garrett's back, using the Andalite tail to carve shallow, painless scratches in the sperm whale's thick skin. At two and a half miles, I figured we could be at most a quarter of a mile off while still thinking we were right above the beacon—any more than that, and we would be able to tell that the angle of the signal wasn't quite up-and-down.

But that still left a pretty wide patch of ocean floor to cover. A quarter mile radius meant half a mile across, which meant something like fifty or sixty city blocks. Not to mention that we knew a straight dive wasn't actually taking us straight down—we were trying to adjust for the current, but there was no way to tell, underwater, whether we'd gone too far or not enough.

And so we were on our sixth trip down to the seafloor—our ninth dive, in total. Almost eighteen hours underwater, with basically nothing but five-minute breaks in between.

‹Hold still. I think I hear something.›

Instantly, I ceased my regular pulsing, let the squid body's tentacles drift loose. ‹On the floor?› I asked, coming smoothly to a halt. ‹Or in the water?›

‹In the water.› Above me, Garrett shot upwards, the faintest of neon trails marking his movements. Leveling off, he began turning in a tight circle, scanning the darkness.

‹It's a whale,› he said, after a long moment. ‹Up above, near the pressure limit. We should be fine.›

I waited, motionless, as he drifted back down. ‹You sure?› I asked. ‹We could head in the other direction.›

‹No, it's fine,› he said. ‹Let's keep looking.›

We fanned out again, crawling our way along the seafloor, occasionally poking or prodding at something with our tentacles. Once in a while, some strange creature would burst forth, but always to flee, never to attack. Down here, we were at the absolute top of the food chain, the deep-sea version of a Tyrannosaurus Rex.

That hadn't stopped Garrett, of course. For the first few hours after the attack—minus the ten minutes when we'd first encountered the lights—he'd been completely unreasonable. Hypervigilant and overprotective, he'd insisted that we avoid every possible danger, twice forcing us back up to the surface after only a couple of minutes.

I hadn't fought back particularly hard. The incident with the squid had been almost too quick to be traumatizing—not even two minutes had passed before Garrett intervened, and the combination of shock and demorphing had erased pretty much all of the damage, both psychic and physical.

But that didn't change the fact that I'd been completely confident right up until the moment everything had fallen apart, or the fact that Garrett had quite literally saved my life. His nervous fear was probably just as much of an overreaction as my arrogance had been, but it was the sort of overreaction that was unlikely to get either one of us killed.

Once he'd seen that I was on board—that I was really listening, not just humoring him, and that I wasn't going to take any stupid risks—he'd relaxed a little, and the search process had sped up.

Which was a good thing, because as far as I could tell, we might have been searching the same tiny patch over and over again.

‹You're sure this is a different place?› I asked as we drifted over a vent oasis packed with tube worms and lit by the glow of lantern fish.

‹Yes.›

I watched as he waved his tentacles over a flat patch of mud, stirring up motes and revealing the harder floor beneath. ‹Any idea how much ground we've covered?› I asked tentatively.

‹I dunno,› he said. ‹Maybe…fifteen Oak Landings? Including the playground?›

So, something like thirty blocks. Half of the search zone, assuming we were in the right place to begin with.

‹How do you keep track like that?› I asked. ‹I mean, is it—automatic? Like the numbers thing?›

‹Sort of.› He floated up and over a ridge and back out into the deep, and I followed, turning slightly to cover an adjacent swath of ground. ‹It's like—I dunno. It's like drawing on paper? In pen? Like I'm making a map. And when I go to put something on the map, if it's already there, if it looks exactly like something I've already drawn, then obviously we've been there before.›

‹Yeah, but how can you tell?› I said, unable to keep the envy out of my voice. ‹It's all pretty much the same.›

‹You have to look at the parts that matter,› he said simply. ‹Not the plants or the mud. The rocks, the vents, the hills.›

‹But they're all the same.›

‹Not to me.›

I was quiet for a long moment. At first, we'd talked almost constantly, but at some point over the past eighteen hours we'd gotten used to long pauses between thoughts.

‹Can you tell where there are holes?› I asked finally. ‹Like, do you know where we still have to check?›

‹Some of it. Some parts of the map haven't connected yet. But right now we're kind of cutting across this big hole in the middle. Once we get to the part we've already seen before, we'll want to go—›

He hesitated. ‹Left, I think. Unless we're drifting.›

We fell silent again and continued onward, pulsing our way through the psychedelic darkness. Two more times, Garrett called a halt to check on a sound, once changing course in response. Inch by inch, we carved up the territory, looking for anything out of the ordinary.

‹Tobias?› Garrett asked, as we passed out of yet another vent.

‹Yeah?›

‹What happens if we beat the Yeerks?›

‹What do you mean?›

‹If we win. Starve them out of everybody's heads and blow up the pool and all that. Say we even take out whatever mothership is up in orbit. What then?›

I swept my tentacles left and right in the darkness, lighting up a field of rough, volcanic boulders. ‹I guess—›

I broke off. I guess we just go back to our regular lives, I'd started to say.

Only that didn't make any sense. There were aliens. Aliens with ray guns and telepathic technology, aliens with faster-than-light travel. Morphing technology alone was the kind of thing that would radically change the world, forever, and that wasn't even counting all the other advancements we could probably get out of studying it.

‹I guess we can't really know until we get there,› I said.

Beside me, Garrett stopped, his squid body falling unnaturally still in the water. ‹But that's stupid,› he said, a hint of anger creeping into his voice. ‹We have to make plans, right?›

‹I don't think we can,› I pointed out. ‹I mean, so many things are going to be different that all of our regular guesses are going to be way off, you know? Like how people thought we'd have flying cars, but that phones would still have wires attached to them and stuff.›

‹But that's not going to matter!› Garrett shouted, the anger suddenly fanning into flame. ‹How are we going to stop the rest of them?›

‹What?› I asked, wrong-footed.

‹The rest of them! On their homeworld, and out there in the galaxy! How does killing one bunch of them here make any difference at all? Won't they just come back?›

,- ,- ,- ,- ,- ,- ,- ,- ,- ,- ,- ,- ,- ,- ,- ,- ,- ,- ,- ,- ,- ,- ,- ,- ,- ,- ,- ,- ,- ,- ,- ,- ,- ,- ,- ,- ,- ,- ,- ,- ,- ,- ,- ,- ,- ,- ,- ,- ,- ,- ,- ,- ,- ,- ,- ,- ,- ,- ,- ,- ,-

‹Is that it?› Garrett asked.

‹It has to be,› I said.

Reaching out, I brushed away the thin layer of silt that had settled across the smooth, curved surface. I could sense a constant vibration through my tentacle, a technologic hum like fluorescent lights. A cold, steely smell flooded the squid's nostrils, with a touch of ozone like an old electric train set.

‹It's definitely alive,› I reported. ‹Or—on. Powered. Whatever.›

We did it. Twenty fucking hours under the sea, and we found it. I tried to rein in my excitement, to remind myself that we were—at best—halfway there, but it didn't work.

I was touching an alien spaceship. Sometimes, you've just got to let yourself freak out.

‹There's no light,› Garrett pointed out.

‹Maybe because it's an escape pod?› I reached out with all of my tentacles, wrapping my suckers around the edges as I gently lifted it up and off of the seafloor.

‹Aren't escape pods supposed to be super findable?› Garrett asked.

‹Not when they're in hostile territory.›

I moved the pod away from the underwater embankment where it had been half-buried. It was heavy, but fairly easy to move, its overall shape streamlined and clean, sharply tapered at one end like an almond or an egg. It couldn't have been more than three or four feet wide, and less than ten feet long—about the size of a really big couch, or a really small car.

‹Can you lift it? Like, up to the surface?›

I swam upward experimentally, hauling the pod behind me. ‹Not quite,› I said. ‹I think the two of us can get it together, though. And once we get it up high enough, we can use the whale again.›

‹And then?›

I let go of the pod, watched the gentle tracings of bioluminescence as it settled back into the muck at the bottom of the ocean.

‹Then we find ourselves a desert island.›

"Okay, let's go over it one more time."

"He doesn't know his brother's dead. That's going to be the first big shock. And from what Elfangor told us, giving technology to aliens is a no-no, so he's not going to be happy about that, either. And it seems like the distress beacon was maybe tuned to Elfangor and only Elfangor, so he might just think we're holding Elfangor captive, or he might think we're Yeerks."

I turned to look at the pod, lying in the sand at the edge of the water, the foam washing up and past it with each crashing wave. The sun was setting, but there was still enough light to see that the pod was the deepest, flattest black—as black as the water we'd pulled it from, absorbing every last photon. It seemed to be all one piece, with three exceptions—two small holes near the wider end, which we thought might be thrusters, and one white patch in the center with seven exactly equal sides.

It didn't exactly say push me, but it was pretty close.

"And if things go south?"

"I find Jake at 209 Aspen Avenue, or Marco at the house we visited before we left, and I tell them everything. If I can't find them, I go to Canada, or I fight by myself."

"You go to C—"

"Or I fight by myself. If you're dead, you don't get to tell me what to do."

I didn't push it. Garrett was already angry that I'd put my foot down about being the one to open the pod, and that I'd ordered him to stay safely out of the way in a small, durable morph.

But it was the right move. You didn't commit all of your forces to a single risky move unless you had to, and in this case, we didn't have to. We had no idea how Elfangor's brother was going to react, and there was no point in us both dying if first contact went badly, as it very well might. His brother had tried to glass the planet, after all.

Garrett had tried to pull some bullshit about being more expendable, but I'd shut him down hard. We were both equally valuable, and I'd actually talked to Elfangor. I'd been the last one to leave him, at the end. Of the two of us, I was obviously the right choice for what was bound to be a tense conversation.

Besides, he'd already saved my life once this trip. The least he could do was let me return the favor.

I took a deep breath, held it, let it halfway out. "Fine," I said. "You report back to the others, and then you do whatever the hell you want. Just as long as you make it off this island alive." I fixed him with a steady look, arranging my face into a serious expression even though I knew it would make no difference. "That's a rule."

"It's a rule," Garrett agreed, each word sounding like a curse.

"Then let's do this."

There was no hesitation, this time—no half-hearted mantras, no complicated chains of reasoning. Whatever fears and doubts Garrett might have, he wasn't giving in to them. And my own priorities were clear—had remained clear since falling into place in the moments before the attack.

Garrett's faith in humanity wasn't worth dying for. Not when the rest of the world was at stake. But if I had to die either way, I was sure as hell going to try and pay for it on my way out.

Beside me, I heard the usual squelching as Garrett's organs began to shift and change. Turning, I focused on the pod, and on the alien who'd put me on the path to finding it.

Let him be alive, I whispered, to no one in particular. For Elfangor's sake. Let him have this one thing.

I fell forward onto my hands, blue fur spreading in waves across my skin, two legs and a tail emerging from the base of my spine.

‹You ready?› I asked Garrett, a minute and a half later.

‹Yeah,› he answered. I watched with my stalk eyes as he scuttled off to one side, burying himself halfway under the sand. ‹All set.›

‹ELFANGOR. BROTHER. HELP ME.›

Gathering my resolve, I stepped forward, raising my Andalite hand and spreading my seven fingers.

‹Tobias,› Garrett said, just before my palm made contact.

I waited.

‹I just—›

Waited.

‹Well. Thanks.›

‹Oh, shut up,› I shot back, feigning nonchalance. ‹It's going to be fine.›

‹ELFANGOR. BROTHER. HELP—›

Leaning forward, I covered the final inch, my hand seeming to sink into the hard white surface. I felt a tingle, sensed movement beneath my fingers, and pulled my hand away as the patch turned black and disappeared.

Nothing else happened.

‹Tobias, what—›

‹Shhh. Wait.›

Seconds ticked by, stretching out into a minute, then two.

‹Is the signal still—›

‹No, it stopped.›

Slowly, carefully, I reached out again, placing my hand in the spot where the patch had previously been.

Still nothing.

‹Hello?› I called out, cautiously.

There was no answer.

‹Do you think it's—›

Without vibration, without sound, without any kind of warning at all, the black pod suddenly leapt into the air, scattering sand and water as it rocketed skyward. I staggered backward, craning upward with all four eyes, watching as it shrank to the size of a quarter, of a pebble, of a speck. In seconds, it was gone, lost in the fading twilight.

For a long moment, I stood motionless—stunned. With all of the contingency plans we'd thought of, all of the ways things might go wrong, neither one of us had even considered that.

Beside me, the sand shifted, Garrett's body slowly rising as he emerged from morph. ‹Well, what are we supposed to do now?› he asked.

I had no answer.