My name is Aaron DeKnight, and I couldn't believe it was really ending. I mean, after everything that had happened in the last two months and the close calls we had I never really believed that I was going to die. The Yeerk Pool was bad, the truck ship was a little too close, and Ax's dome at the bottom of the ocean was scary. This was just depressing. We were in a box on the Blade Ship. Visser Three's Blade Ship. It was the six of us: Jake, Rachel, Cassie, Tobias, Ax, and me. No doors, no windows. No escape.

I guess it was good that Marco didn't come with us today. His mom's two-year anniversary was tomorrow. It would have made it a lot harder on his dad if he would have to do it with out Marco. Especially since Jerry told me that Marco's dad had called him the other day to talk about coming back to work. To make things normal for him and Marco.

Good for Marco. We're still screwed. We were morphed for battle. Jake was a tiger, Rachel was an elephant, Cassie was a wolf, and I was a hyena. Ax and Tobias were themselves. Our morphs weren't going to be much help for us.

We had pretty much accepted our fate at this point. Sure, we tried to come up with some escape plans but we all really knew. This was it. I wondered if Marco would carry on without us. Would Marco do that? Be the Animorph. Maybe after Marco's dad took them back to their old life he would have the courage to fight on his own.

Maybe.

The Blade Ship pulled into the Mother Ship. Ax called it the Pool Ship. Just the sight of it made me went to give up. Just demorph and tell Visser Three to come and get me. The inside was just as ominous. Humans, Hork- Bajir, Taxxons, and other species I didn't know.

The funny thing was, even though I knew I was going to die, I part of me was happy. Excited. Not about dieing, but about all the new things I was seeing. The technology. The ships. The creatures. Whenever I see something new, my first impulse has always been the same. Investigate. I was twitching a little. Pacing slightly. My eyes kept moving from place to place, trying to take in all the sights. Maybe try to learn one last thing. Get one last piece of satisfaction.

That's when I noticed Visser Three approaching with some Hork-Bajir and a human. A woman that looked very familiar. I cocked my head to the side. A very canine look of confusion. She looked like someone. Almost like…

Jake? I asked in private thought-speech, Is that…

Yeah, Jake answered me, That's Marco's mom.

And Visser Three just called her Visser One? I asked. I wasn't really asking Jake as I was just questioning reality.

Yep, Jake said. There was a pause. I don't think Marco would want anyone to know.

I almost nodded, but then I realized that this was just private thought- speech. I wanted to ask Jake what the point was. We were just going to die anyways. Why didn't we just tell everyone? In retrospect, that would have been a bad move, seeing as it was Visser One who helped us escape the Blade Ship in order to make Visser Three look bad.

When we got back on Earth, and Jake and I got a chance to talk, we agreed to not tell anyone, including Marco. At least not yet. Yeah it was shitty of us, but this really wasn't the best time to tell Marco that his mom wasn't dead. He had just really accepted her death. He was just now going to get back to a normal life. Well, as normal a life as any part-time Animorph could ever hope to have. We would tell him, but just not yet.



We became Animorphs on October 2nd, 1998. That was about five months ago. I changed a lot since then, in more ways than the times I changed into animals. I'm still kind of a loner at school, but I had friends. I hung out with Marco and Jake in school mostly. It wasn't a good idea for the 5 Animorphs who go to school to be seen as some kind of close-knit group. But it was understandable for me to hang around with Marco, so it made sense that I would hang out with Jake too.

I had always been good friends with Marco, but I was really starting to like Jake. He was pretty cool. When I was younger I was always sort of jealous of him just because Marco would kind of blow me off for Jake. But now that I had given Jake a chance, he was really cool.

Rachel was in some of my advanced classes, so I always got a chance to talk to her. In Pre-Algebra, our teacher had moved all of the desks into groups of four. Marco, Rachel, Melissa Chapman, and I all sat together now. Cassie wasn't in any of my classes so besides Animorphs related things I didn't really ever talk to her. But when I did talk to Cassie, it was awesome. She wasn't in any advanced classes or anything, but Cassie was one of the smartest people I had ever met. She was smart on such a deeper level. There was a lot I wished I could learn from her.

Tobias was a little hard to talk to, even before he became a bird. I mean, I like him, but it's just hard. Like if you want to talk to him, you have to put effort into it. Of all the things that had happened to me since that night in the construction site, one of the things I was most grateful for was the chance to get to know Ax.

I mean, I was getting to know an alien. It was so amazing to talk to him about science and math and, well, I really sound nerdy now. But it was great, especially after Ax agreed to not keep any secrets from us. I think on some levels that I helped to boost Ax's opinion of mankind. He once told me that sometimes it's hard for him to understand how mankind could advance as far as they did in as short a time as they did it, but then when he talks to me he gets it. He said that once this war was over, I'd do great things off the battlefield. I wasn't sure where he was getting all this from. I wasn't even fourteen-years-old yet.

So anyway, that's where life had taken me by March seventh. A Sunday. I usually hate Sundays. Jerry always hogs the family room, but it doesn't even matter because there's nothing good on T.V. anyways. So Marco, Jake, and I had gone to this basketball court in our subdivision. We played some other kids on three on three. We won, mostly because Jake is awesome. On the way home Marco suggested going to a concert. Offspring was going to be there. Pop-punk at its most sold out. I was all over it. Jake took some more convincing but he eventually caved.

I should have seen it coming. I should have realized that nothing in my life ever goes right. But life is never as simple as I want it to be. Of course, simple would be boring, wouldn't it?

So anyway, it was at the concert that we discovered Erek King, the boy who had no smell and on top of that was passing out fliers for the Sharing. Because Erek had been friends with Marco and I when we were younger, Marco agreed to help us figure out what was up with Erek, and when we did find out what was going on, he agreed to help us get the Pemalite crystal. When we started investigating Erek, Marco told me about what Erek had done at his mother's funeral. I was proud of myself for keeping my face from giving away my realization. Erek knew. Jake and I had still not told Marco. We hadn't gotten around to it yet. Yeah, I know. We're assholes.

I decided that I should approach Erek about it. I stayed with Erek I little bit after everyone else left when we first met the Chee. No one thought it was weird because it was me, the geek. Of course I would want to learn more about the new robots.

"Erek," I said in his living room, after his "dad" had gone down to the Chee park, there's something I need to ask you. About Marco's mom."

I could see Erek's hologram tense a little. The program was amazing. I wanted nothing more then to look at the programming code. "There's something…I'm not sure if I should tell you…"

"His mom's Visser One," I said.

Erek looked a little surprised. "You guys have learned a lot."

I shrugged. "I guess. I guess you have to, you know."

Erek nodded. "Does Marco know?"

I shook my head. "No. Just me and Jake. We haven't had the um…chance to tell him."

"Are you sure that's a secret you have a right to keep from him?" Erek asked me.

I bit my lower lip a little. "We don't want to…I mean…" I didn't know how to explain it.

Erek smiled at me. "I think you should have faith in your friend."

Despite Erek's words, Jake and I still didn't tell Marco. It would be for another three months that we would tell him. And looking back on it, it wasn't under the best circumstances.

It was down in the Yeerks' underwater base. They were taking sharks and turning them into shock troops. Marco agreed to come along with us, because this was a serious mission if Visser One was suppose to be there.

Visser One. Great. We should have told Marco before we went. We didn't.

Marco, Ax, and I were being sent to get to the base's controls. Jake, Cassie, Rachel, and the now morph-capable Tobias were causing a distraction for us.

We knew that Visser One was here. Erek had told us that she would be here. Neither Jake nor I wanted to tell Marco, but it was time. Ax was a little bit in front of us when I pulled Marco back to talk to him.

"Marco," I said, "There's something I really have to tell you."

Marco could see the urgency in my eyes. "What?"

"It's…" I trailed off a little, trying to think of the right words. "It's something you're not going to like."

"Just tell me," Marco said.

I sighed. "It's about your mom Marco."

His expression got a lot more serious. "Tell me."

"She's Visser One," I told him.

A pause. A pause that lasted way too long. Marco looked at me like he was going to punch me. Honestly, I wouldn't have cared if he would have. "I don't believe you."

I didn't say anything. Marco just looked at me.

"How?" He asked.

"I don't know," I said honestly.

He started to say something, but his voice gave way to his emotion, and he had to wipe a tear out of his eye with his hand. He regained his composure.

"Just me and Jake know," I told Marco.

He nodded a little. "How long have you guys known?"

I took a breath. "Six months."

His eyes got wide with anger. "Fuck you," he said quietly.

"Marco," I began softly.

"Fuck you!" he screamed at me. "How couldn't you tell me? How couldn't you trust me? Fuck you, Aaron…"

"What's going on out there?" I woman's voice called from behind a door we were standing in front of. Marco's eyes went wide. It was her voice. I didn't remember it myself, but I could tell from Marco's face. I thought his expression alone would kill me itself.

"Come in here," Visser One called to us. Working on pure instinct, we walked into Visser One's office, pretending to be controllers. I tried to do most of the talking, but it was actually just nodding. Visser One did make it a point to correct Marco on controlling his host better.

A few days after the battle, Marco came over my house. No one was home. He saw me through the sliding glass doors and walked in. We hadn't talked much since what happened with Visser One. Jake hadn't talked to Marco either.

"Hey," I said with a half-smile, "Gummy Bear?" I said as I offered him the candy I was eating while doing homework.

"No thanks," he said as he sat down on a chair across from me. Marco got right down to business. "What you and Jake did was shitty."

I didn't say anything. What could I say?

"You had no right to keep that kind of information from me, especially for that long. I had a right to know, and you guys didn't have a right to decide what I could and couldn't know about my own mother."

I still didn't say anything. I was thinking sorry wouldn't really cover it.

"But I know that whatever reasons you guys thought you had for keeping it from me, they were probably good," Marco said. "At least, they were good in your minds at least."

"We never meant to hurt you Marco," I offered. "I'm sorry if we did."

"I know," Marco said. "And I also know that you of all people would know how I really feel. From this point on though, I'm in it as deep as you. I'm an Animorph full time. I'm going to save my mom."

I nodded.

"So," Marco said, "How about we ditch this homework and play a little N64?"

I smiled. "Good plan."