A week after the swimming pool incident, I was pacing in my bedroom. I was bored, and I was mad, and I was disappointed. Dumb Zenguh had flown off the dumb planet in his dumb spaceship, and it was killing me how helpless I was to do anything now. I didn't even want to go out and take my mind off things, because nothing sounded fun. Nothing we could do would help us stop this guy. Every day that went by, I just knew he was getting smarter, stronger, and harder to beat.

And all we could do was wait, assuming he came back at all.

As if that wasn't enough stress, I was terrified that every time I thought about myself, I would be accidentally turning into my Rachel morph. The change was so subtle that I would barely feel it when it happened. The only ways I could think of to test if I was in morph were to either thought-speak and wait for confirmation that someone had heard it, or else try to morph into something else.

I didn't know all the intricacies of how morphing worked. As useful as it could be to get all of Cassie's morphs, it couldn't be worth all of this stress and fear.

I hated to admit it, but I needed help. I couldn't do this on my own, and I wasn't even confident that my friends would be enough help. I knew what the price would be, but did I even have a choice? I walked out of my house and into the lawn.

Should I? Could I? I had to, right?

"Crayak!" I yelled, as loud as I could. A kid riding by on his bike looked at me like I was crazy. So did a neighbor raking her lawn. I should have looked around first. Oh well.

"Crayak!" I yelled again. The kid on the bike froze in place, as did the leaves blowing in the wind, and the neighbor raking them. A wall of flame swept across the neighborhood, until everything on the other side of the street was Crayak's horrible blazing eye.

"You could have just asked for me," Crayak boomed, sounding amused. "But I'm glad you didn't. I enjoyed watching you yell my name into the sky. Your neighbors think you're crazy now. They're fine, by the way, all this flame is just theatrics. If I destroyed your neighborhood this…inelegantly, I'd never hear the end of it from that ridiculous Ellimist."

I blushed and scowled at the same time. "I don't know how you work! I don't exactly have your phone number!" I said, frustrated. "So, what, then, you're always watching me?"

"What an ego!" Crayak laughed. "I can see the strands of time itself. I knew you'd be willing to talk right now. Your importance to me is confined to your ability to kill Jake. Have you changed your mind about that?"

"I need your help," I confessed.

"Oh? Whatever could the mighty Rachel need with my help?" Crayak asked smugly.

"I need to save the world," I started. "This Zenguh guy is getting stronger every minute, and I need to stop him."

"Why do you need to stop him?" asked Crayak. "He's the galaxy's problem now. All things considered, this is a win for us both."

"Us both?" I asked. "How does this help you?"

"For someone with as much power as myself, there isn't much excitement in the pursuit of goals," he rumbled. "If I want something, I just have it. Poof!"

As he said it, there was a puff of smoke next to me. It startled me, and I jumped.

"The fun, Rachel, is in the story," he continued. "I could wipe out the humans and the Yeerks with a mere thought, but then I would be bored. Imagine watching a scary movie. You yell at the screen, 'Don't go in there!', so the character doesn't, and the film ends. The characters survive, but you leave the theater unfulfilled."

I understood where Crayak was coming from. Should I feel bad about relating to this force of evil?

The giant burning eye sank down, like an adult kneeling down to explain something to a child. "Watching your war is interesting," he said. "Watching Zenguh absorb and destroy life across the galaxy is interesting, but I suppose that would have the opposite effect on you. I think it would eat away at you. That's another win for me."

I hated this. I couldn't let that monster of a Yeerk loose on the galaxy when I could have stopped him.

Crayak spoke again, and I could hear the terrible grin in his voice. "Would you like to see what he's doing?"

I hadn't considered that Crayak could show me that. I really didn't want to see the awful things that Zenguh was doing, but I couldn't say no to any information that might help me stop him.

All I could say to Crayak was, "Okay."

My surroundings were replaced with alien landscape after alien landscape, and I saw Zenguh enslave beings of all shapes and sizes in a wicked montage. I saw villages burning and dead bodies littering the ground.

"Stop!" I screamed. I was back in my yard, looking into Crayak's giant eye. "This is too much! What do I have to do to stop him?"

Crayak laughed, and the ground shook beneath my feet. I fell to my knees.

"There. That's a much better pose for groveling," he said.

"Okay!" I screamed. "I'll do it! I'll kill Jake! Just let me stop Zenguh!"

The ground stilled, and Crayak spoke again, calmly. "Oh Rachel. I told you before, I can see the threads of time. In almost every timeline that I can see, you don't kill Jake. In fact, in most of those timelines, you tell me that you'll kill Jake, and then you betray me. So, no, Rachel, I don't think I'll believe you this time."

The eye grew larger and burned even more intensely, as he continued.

"There is, however, something else you can do for me. I want to show you what a good team you and I can be. I need you, Rachel, to be the one to kill Zenguh. If you resolve yourself to do everything in your power to be the one who deals the killing blow, I will bring him back to Earth for you."

This was my chance! I had been willing to kill him before he left Earth, hadn't I?

The flames surrounded me, and all that remained was that booming voice.

"Do we have a deal?"