I wanted so much to live. I wanted so much to stay and not leave. No answer would matter to me, but just the same, I wanted to know what I guess any dying person wants to know.

"Answer me this Ellimist: Did I...did I make a difference? My life and my...my death...was I worth it? Did my life really matter?"

"Yes." He said. "You were brave. You were strong. You were good. You mattered."

"Yeah, okay then. Okay then."

I wondered if -

I felt my thoughts diminish and my life slowly fade as I.... I saw through everything! I saw Tobias crying and Toby running into the bridge talking to them. I saw the Visser surrender and Tobias take my ashes. I saw Jake, alone, apart from the rest of the world sit, staring at my memorial. I saw Marco, laughing throwing parties, finally getting dates. I saw Cassie working for the white house, helping the Hork-bajir and meeting someone...his name was Ronnie. I saw Ax, or Prince Aximilli, as he was no called, on the ship, the blade ship where I was killed...he was examining a hair when everything exploded in a suddenly white flash and he was gone. Jake remained depressed but eventually got better, Marco still needed a reality check...and tobias.... tobias was living as a hawk, no one but Cassie and Toby ever heard from him, I wanted to reach out to him, to touch him. But all of this information was hitting me within a millisecond. I saw them name the ship, name it the Rachel. Yes I though happily. I would approve. I saw their journey through space, how Tobias was distant, Marco was unbelievably loud and then I saw The One, he had started off of me. He was a part of me. An evil that I thought no one could touch. When I died, he expanded, he took over everything he found, he was the rage that had built up inside of me. The hate, the anger, the intelligence, yet he was insane. Actually I shouldn't say he, I should mostly say it. Then, suddenly, as soon as Jake ordered to ram into the blade ship, it stopped, everything stopped and I found myself, in my human form, standing in a vast emptiness, pure white surrounded me.

I looked over myself, my wounds were gone, and they had suddenly vanished within seconds. My hair in place, I wasn't wearing a morphing outfit though, I was wearing something else, and a sort of strange gown that I could not make out where it came from yet it seemed familiar. I blinked and when my eyes opened I saw space all around me. I saw The Rachel, suspended in time, about to collide with the blade ship. It was suicide, they wouldn't live, even they knew it but it was the only thing that Jake could think of. I saw another way.

As soon as I thought of it…I was there. There inside of the very blade ship I was killed on. I looked at myself and my wounds were gone, I was back to normal and as healthy as I would be when I first demorph. But there was something different about me now…I looked different. From what I could see I had brown hair and dark blue eyes. Why was I different? Was this a trick of the Ellimist? No I though silently. The Ellimist wouldn't bring me back. It has to be something else… I looked around and saw "The One." It stood there, melding from one form to another, threatening Jake. I had time…I had time to save them, to stop Jake from ramming into the blade ship. I would use that time.

It suddenly stopped talking to them. It shivered as though it felt the presence of a ghost. I felt the rage, the anger bubbling up inside of me. I felt it all and wished to kill it, to kill the thing that would surely destroy all humans. But I didn't, I had to be careful, sneaky.

"You seem to have the chills." Marco smirked; I could hear his sarcasm from the speakers next to the view screen. I quietly stepped into view. There they were, Jake, Marco, Tobias and three people I didn't recognize. Jake was taller, and Marco…well Marco was still about the same height he was the last time I had seen him. Tobias looked older for a hawk; he must have been a middle-aged hawk by now. His razor sharp gaze caught mine as the creature turned to face me.

"You." He said accusingly as I smiled.

"Miss me?" I pulled the dracon beam out from behind my back and shot him in the head. He was knocked out, but I knew that he wouldn't be for long, he remembered me and from my current form. That was bad. Obviously whoever had brought me here didn't want them to recognize me.

The one melded and turned back into the now dead human controller. The rest of the controllers were dead also…their lives had been destroyed because of it…because of me, I wouldn't let that go on. Jake was looking at me on the view screen; he had a dumbfounded expression on his face. The rest of the crew walked up to the view screen; there were six of them…

"Uh…hi?" Jake said quietly, his voice had deepened and he now looked like an adult, probably in his early twenties.

"What year is it?" I asked him, "I need to know how long I was gone…on the blade ship I mean." I quickly recovered.

"Year 2005." He said. "How did you sneak up on it?" He asked. "That's my secret, may I beam aboard…with your permission and a guard of course. This ship gives me the creeps, too many things have happened." He agreed and in ten minutes someone named Jeanne and Marco came on the ship.

I walked over to them and tripped halfway to them. Not very graceful Rachel, I thought Marco laughed and Jeanne shushed him, with her weapon drawn. "Yeah, don't worry I'm fine." I said as I lifted myself up, face down on the floor. I froze in midair; there was a stain of blood on the floor. I had been in this very room, I had been killed here, the dry blood on the floor was human, and it was mine. Marco looked at me then at the floor.

"Were you one of the ones that killed her, are you morph capable?" He asked me quietly as I rose off of the floor.

I looked into his eyes, although he had grown and changed it was still Marco. "Yes, I saw her die, I am very sorry but I am not morph capable." I said, trying to hold onto my last ounce of strength restraining me from crying.

They brought me into the ship with guns pointed at me and did a sort of yeerk test. They held me captive for 3 days not giving me anything but food and water and an occasional bathroom break. I passed the test and then was allowed on the deck with the crew. They thought I knew everything about the yeerks, "The One" and what was going on so I tried to piece together things that I knew, things I had seen in my death, try to convince them that I knew what they thought I should know.

"The One is a being that was created off of someone…" I said trying to hide some of it back, I didn't want them to know that they were facing me times 100, with superpowers that would knock you out. The One was the part of me, which in the end accepted Crayak's offer for absolute power, Crayak didn't want anyone, not even the Ellimist about it, me so he created him in secret. In a place so far out in space that no one hardly went there.

Tobias looked at me with his intense gaze. Your holding things back, tell us everything you know. He said, he sounded hard. Different, as though he had forgotten how to speak or act human almost all together. For that I cried, tears rolled down my face and I tried to catch them but they had seen it.

"What's wrong?" Jake said, walking closer to me as he spoke. I didn't reply and just started talking about the one again; I decided that if they could defeat it, they needed everything.

"The One was created off of the part of the lost Animorph that had accepted Crayak's offer. In her last breath part of her had hoped, wished that she would live. That she would be able to once again fly with Tobias, or go to the mall, fight, anything. In a moment of weakness she gave up, she gave up all of her hope and her faith in herself…and her friends." I continued on as they started at me, not believing at first but then realizing that they knew it was true. "Rachel herself was not evil…" It sounded so weird talking about myself that way… "As the Ellimist once told her, she was a happy accident created by the human race to help itself in survival. He didn't place her there on earth, the great warrior wasn't one that was meant to fight, or live. Crayak helped in her creation, after she was born he knew that she would do great things for the Animorphs, help them tremendously, so he snuck around the rules and tweaked her anger, her rage. But just by a little, just so that she would love the battle, so that she would become addicted to it and he knew that was what would either lead her to kill Jake, or to get herself killed in battle." I talked on until I found myself remembering things, the things in my life that hadn't seemed so important… and realized now that that was all that mattered.

I stayed on the ship with them for months until we had run out of food supplies, when we ran out we went back to earth, back to the place that I thought I would never see again, Home.

Jake told us to stay in close contact until we could leave again, this time we would have more supplies. They trusted me now like I was one of them. I tried my hardest to contain my temper and my bossiness while on the ship so that they wouldn't suspect anything wrong. But Tobias suspected something, I knew that he would, he would figure out that I knew more to what I was saying even though I had told them almost everything, he could tell that there was something familiar about me. And oh how I wanted to tell him, to tell him everything, that I remembered and that I was back and he would never lose me again, but I knew deep down inside of myself that that was a mistake, that that would lead to the destruction of everything I knew and loved.

They got me a car, and a place to stay. I told them that I had been under yeerk control for so long that I couldn't remember my name, or where I had come from. It was a really bad lie but they seemed to buy it. I told them to call me Faith. I had always liked that name and thought it suitable for my position, the only thing that helped me believe I was actually here; living was my faith in my friends, and the meddling Ellimist.

I drove my car down to the memorial, it was a long drive but I didn't mind, I wished to see it and see myself, my own grave. I had learned that the president had given a speech at the service; I would have liked to see that, I did see it in a way but not in person. I stepped out of my car and walked over to the memorial. I looked at it and cried, only 16 years old, at that age the only things I was supposed to be thinking of were friends and boys. But no, I suffered a death where I died in battle, just a kid.

"Why'd you do it?" I asked myself as I sat down, facing the memorial, the sun was setting and there was a cool breeze blowing over me. "We were so young, only 13 when it started, and only 16 when it ended…" there was silence and the only sound heard for a long time was the gentle chirping of the birds in the trees. After three hours of just sitting there I got up and started to walk away. I looked up towards the sky where I thought I saw a red-tailed hawk catching a thermal, heading east, but then again it could have just been an illusion…