My name is Andrew. I'm not going to give you my last name. Not because of the Yeerks. I'm already a Controller. Just because I want to write my story, and keep what little privacy I still have. Which, given that I'm a Controller, is probably highly ironic, but what can you do? It's not like I can do anything about the Yeerk in my head, and what he sees.

Like most people, I became a Controller by going to one too many Sharing meetings and agreeing to sign up for full membership. They don't exactly kick you out if you say you're not going to stay as a full member-except they sort of do. There's a time limit for this type of thing.

As soon as they started talking about aliens, I tried to bolt. Because either they were telling the truth and I didn't want to turn over my life to an alien slug, or they weren't telling the truth and this whole Sharing thing was a cult.

I didn't make it very far-like as far as the next room-when they grabbed me and dragged me to the Yeerk Pool.

There were others, like me, who hadn't agreed to become Controllers that day. They got taken, too.

Some of them pled, said they wouldn't tell anyone what they had heard. Others seemed resigned. And others, like me, tried to fight. Escape.

'Course, we all met up with the same fate.

The humans who had been dragging me turned me over to these bladed monsters that I later learned were Hork-Bajir. They grabbed me, tearing at my clothes with their blades in an attempt to restrain me.

Yeah, I fought the bladed monsters.

I lost, obviously.

They pushed my head under the water. I was choking, drowning. I had my eyes closed at the last minute, so I didn't see the slug enter my head.

I felt it, though. There was this sharp pain as the slug began to enter my ear, but it disappeared immediately. I wondered if I was going to be deaf in one ear by the time the slug had finished wrapping its way around my brain.

That only made me more angry, and I tried thrashing. But, soon, I couldn't do that. The slug seized control of my brain, wrapping its slimy body around whatever areas controlled motion.

Some people say it's slow at first. That it's just the arms, then the legs, and all the way up to not even being able to blink your eye. That's all true. I experienced that later, after countless trips to the Yeerk Pool.

But right then, all I was aware of was not being able to breathe, and then, not being able to move.

(GET OUT GET OUT GET OUT!) I screamed.

The Yeerk didn't answer, or not right away. He held my body still, and then the guards let him stand. Even helped him to stand.

He spat out a bunch of water that I had gotten in my mouth. Disgusting tasting stuff. He inhaled and then exhaled rapidly, trying to get enough air back into my lungs.

"This one resisted," one of the guards explained, as though my Yeerk couldn't hear my screams.

"Evidently," my voice said. Then, facing the guards, he added, "In the future, act with more restraint. I don't want my body body damaged permanently."

(Oh, no?) I taunted, sure that he could hear me. (I'll give you permanent damage, you alien jerk!)

He let out a sigh in my head as he walked me away from the pool. (You'll try, I'm sure,) he said, his tone sounding amused. (But you'll be little more than a cumbersome voice in my head.) Another pause, and then, he added, (My name is Nordis Seven-Three-Two.)

I didn't bother responding, just tried to fight for control. To do anything at all. Even blink my eyes. But, I realized soon enough, that not only could I not do anything, I couldn't even feel my body. Not like I normally could, anyway.

Not that I had given much thought to it before.

The slug accessed my memory. Not everything, as I learned later. Just to find out who I was. My name, where I lived, that kind of thing.

(STOP IT!) I screamed.

To my surprise, he did. The images in my mind stopped. Naturally, I tried fighting for control, and failed even to do as much as blink my eyes.

(Look, Andrew,) the slug told me, (you can keep attempting to resist me, or you can accept defeat. You'll only wear yourself out if you keep fighting.)

The odd thing was, even back then, the slug sounded almost sympathetic. Like he knew that even though he had full control over my body and my mind (well, at least my memories-he couldn't control my thoughts), he didn't really want to be my enemy. Didn't want me to hate him.

Not that I paid much attention to this. I spent most of the following two and a half days alternating between fighting for control and screaming at him to get out of my head.

If I'd had been married already or still lived with my parents, maybe I could have hoped that if I got control at the right moment, I could have managed to shout a warning to them. As it was, I lived alone (except for a pet goldfish) and didn't have many friends outside of work. Oh, and as for my job? I worked from home, so I couldn't exactly issue a warning to my coworkers.

Yeah, I had virtually no life. But hey, that's why I had joined The Sharing. Because I wanted to try to get one.

Little did I know about the alien slug invasion.

Nordis, for his part, mostly tried to ignore me. I guessed that it could have been worse. A lot of Yeerks tortured their hosts when they "misbehaved" as badly as I did. But Nordis must have figured I'd get tired of fighting and screaming at him.

He wasn't wrong, exactly. It only took me three weeks to figure out I was draining myself of energy whenever I resisted, and given that I had succeeded exactly zero times in gaining control, it didn't take a genius to figure out that I was only hurting myself.

After I stopped fighting, Nordis attempted, in his own weird alien way, to make things easier for me. For example, he never actually gave me control, but during the beginning, his hold on my brain was so tight that I could barely feel anything going on outside my head. Like, when we ate food, I couldn't even taste it. So, not only was I a prisoner, it was like I was in a sensory deprivation tank inside my mind. But, like I said, once I stopped fighting, he sort of rewarded me by letting me feel life outside my head. Oh, not as much as if he wasn't there, but it felt like a lot.

Also, Nordis never used my memories as a way of torturing me. So, that was something else.

I guessed that we reached a sort of unspoken alliance around the six month part. I didn't talk to him unless I had to, and he pretty much left me alone. Also, when we went to the Yeerk Pool, he'd made it clear from the beginning that no matter what I did to try and escape, the Hork-Bajir guards were not to physically injure me. Sure, he probably did it mostly for himself, since he'd feel any pain they caused me after he slithered back into my head. But, still. It was something.

Probably, things would have continued like that until the end of the war. Me just existing in my head, wanting to be free, but also aware that I had it better than a lot of involuntary hosts. Because my family wasn't at risk, and my Yeerk didn't deliberately try to hurt me.

Were it not for an operation that went horribly wrong.