There were about two dozen people gathered together around a couple of tiki torches. Most of them I didn't recognize beyond having seen them earlier at the beach party, but there were a few faces I knew. There was the vice-principal of our school, Mr. Chapman. Erek King, who somehow knew my parents. One of the neighbors who lived on my street - known to the rest of the neighborhood as "the crazy ferret lady" because she had a dozen pet ferrets and always brought one along in her handbag when she left the house. There was my history teacher, Mr. Pardue. And Jake's brother, Tom.

There was one man in a brown waistcoat and a fedora who was looking at an antique pocket watch.

"Oh, he's running late again," the man complained.

"If he hears you talking like that, he just might tear your head off," Chapman cautioned him. There was an outbreak of nervous laughter, which was quickly stifled.

"He's here!" someone said. I looked over to my left and saw three figures stumbling along the path through the sand dunes. Two of them were very obviously bodyguards for the third one - a middle-aged bald man in a depressing navy-blue suit. His grim, humorless face had probably never smiled once in his life. And somehow, he seemed to radiate an aura of pure evil. I recognized him immediately. And I was not happy to see him. In fact, just being near him was starting to make me very, very angry.

(Tobias, Jake?) I said in private thought-speech, (I know this guy. His name is Victor Trent.)

(Really? What's his deal, then?) Jake asked.

(He runs some sort of deep-sea research facility. Oh, man, if he's here...)

"You have news about the intruders at the Andalite's crash site?" The man's voice was harsh and strained, as though he was in a permanent state of annoyance and moderate constipation.

"Two witnesses were neutralized on-site," someone reported, "The bodies have been identified. Just homeless vagrants who chose the wrong place to sleep for the night. Not even useful to us as hosts. Their remains were promptly disintegrated."

So... a couple of innocent people had been murdered less than a hundred yards from where I'd been hiding from the Controllers, and I hadn't even known about it for two full days. Quite suddenly, my legs stopped working, and I collapsed down into the sand. I had to concentrate on remembering to breathe, too. I didn't feel scared, exactly. I was too shocked to feel scared. Mostly what I was feeling was just numbness. And a little bit guilty, too. If only I'd been there, I could've...

"We know a few others escaped the Hork-Bajir, though," Mr. Pardue said, "We estimate two or three more. Their identities remain unknown."

"One of them might be my host's brother," Tom said, "He and his companions have been known to travel through the construction site. I arranged for some of them to be here tonight, so we can either make them ours... or kill them."

"Killing them will be counterproductive," Chapman said, "Humans value the lives of their offspring, and will quickly take notice of dead or missing children. Moreover, if our Sharing organization becomes associated with dead children, the group's effectiveness at sourcing new hosts will be severely hampered. We should not jeopardize years of success over this. Instead, we should wait for these witnesses to reveal themselves. It is doubtful that they will remain quiet for long, and WHEN they do reveal themselves, we can send security teams to deal with them appropriately."

The scowl on Victor Trent's face deepened as he considered Chapman's words.

"Your logic," he finally said, "is acceptable. You will wait and listen. Any witnesses who reveal themselves will be seized for infestation."

Then he turned to face Tom.

"Oh, and Temrash- *ahem* - 'Tom', you have once again shown an excellent display of initiative. I foresee you being promoted to Subvisser very soon."

(I've heard enough,) Jake said, his voice somehow managing to sound weak and hollow through the thought-speech.

(Definitely,) I replied, (Time to get out of Dodge.)

Jake retreated back along the waters' edge. A few of the Controllers noticed, but they ignored him. I kept to the top of the dunes, silent and invisible, and pretending I couldn't still hear the Controllers' twisted conversation about casual murder.

I could hear more voices up ahead. Rachel and Cassie had strayed too close to the secret meeting and been spotted.

"Hey, you're not supposed to be back here! What are you doing?"

It was the cop we'd run into at the construction site last night.

"Oh, sorry, we were just... um..." Cassie was trying to come up with a plausible excuse and failing miserably. I sent a private thought-speech message their way and ran up to them.

"We were looking for my cat," Rachel said as she scooped me off the ground. "Sorry, I didn't realize we'd gotten so far over this way."

The cop glared at us. Rachel scratched between my ears. The cat's instincts took over for a moment, and I purred contentedly. I'm not sure if the cop really bought our act, but he didn't push the issue any further. Rachel and Cassie turned around and headed back towards the lifeguard stand.

All six of us were back in one spot, with Tobias - still in his hawk morph - keeping a careful lookout from the back of the chair. Jake and I demorphed as quickly as possible. Once again, I felt that powerful wave of nausea, but managed to keep it under control while I pulled my clothes back on.

"All right guys, what's the deal?" Marco asked, "What did you find out?"

"Tom's one of them," Jake blurted out, "He's a Controller."

"Oh, no," Rachel cried, burying her face in her hands. Somehow, up to that point I'd never quite realized that Tom was her cousin.

Jake looked straight at Marco. "I'm sorry, buddy. You were right. And Chapman's one, too."

(Lee, you said you recognized the bald guy?)

Everyone turned to look at me.

"His name is Victor Trent. He's got something to do with a deep-sea research facility. I think it was called Project Esplin. And he... kind of ruined my life."

I'd felt a growing sense of anger from the moment I spotted him that night, and now that I was actually talking about it, the anger was getting even stronger. The dizzy spell brought on by demorphing certainly didn't help. Honestly, it took every ounce of self-control I had not to start screaming right there.

"So, both of my parents worked for the geology department at the state university. A few months ago, there was some big fancy dinner for the department. I didn't even want to go, but Mom and Dad dragged me along. And he was there! He was at our table. Spent half the night talking to us, and then at some point he dragged them off to talk privately. Two weeks later, they said they'd accepted a job offer for that guy's company and we were going to be moving at the end of the month."

"If he's a Controller," Marco mused, "And he hired your parents for whatever this project is, then..."

"Then they're probably Controllers by now." I lay down in the sand, wishing the ground would just open up and swallow me and make the nightmare end.

"Why would the Yeerks go to all the trouble of recruiting a pair of geologists from another state just to make them into Controllers?" Rachel wondered.

"Well, that'll be a real fun conversation. 'Hi, Dad, I'm doing a report for my science class, and I was hoping you could help me understand why a bunch of maldito brain slugs from outer space need to know about rocks and minerals?' I just... oh, クソ地獄!"

Cassie grabbed my hand and squeezed it.

"Hey, we'll find a way to free your parents," she said. "And Tom, too. And all the others who've been taken."

"You really think so?"

"Yes. I've just got this feeling like we've been chosen for this."

"Seriously?"

"I don't know how to explain it. It's just something I KNOW, deep inside, the same way you know the difference between left and right."

"So who 'chose' us, and why?" Marco scoffed.

"I don't know about the 'who'. Maybe it's God or Buddha or some higher power. But as for the 'why', I really think it's because we have a chance of winning."

Maybe Cassie was right about this feeling of hers. And maybe she was just making it up on the spot to calm us down. And if she was, it was working, at least a little bit.

I stared up at the sky - into the black void of space. When I'd been younger, I'd loved looking up at the stars, wishing I could just fly right up there. Sometimes I'd even climb up on top of a boulder and jump off while trying to grab hold of the night sky. Maybe, if I got it just right, I'd finally get a handhold and be able to pull myself up higher and higher...

Well, somewhere out there was whatever planet the Yeerks had crawled off of. They'd reached out, grabbed hold of the stars, and pulled themselves all the way over to Earth. And now it was my problem to deal with. But somewhere out there was another star, the one that Elfangor had come from. Maybe more Andalites would come. I mean, at the very least they'd want to know why they hadn't heard from Elfangor's ship for a while, right? Or was it all just wishful thinking? The fact is, we didn't know anything about what this war looked like in the rest of the galaxy.

So that's the score right now. Our planet is under siege and only a handful of us are capable of doing something about it. Half of us have family who've been taken by the enemy. This is not going to be easy. But we'll fight anyway. Because if we don't, we lose for sure.