Author's Note: All author's notes besides this one are recommended reading but will be found on Sinister Shadow's forum in order not to inflate my word count. You may want to read the chapters first. (( and )) indicate thoughtspeak.

This chapter is dedicated to bb47 and supersaiyanandilite (sic) for giving me an excuse to write this.

Chapter 1

My name is Tobias.

Yes, that Tobias.

If anyone's reading, or hearing, or just plain knowing this, then whoever it is might be surprised. Or happy to know I survived another of the incidents that make up my life. Or even disappointed for the same reason.

I'm not exactly writing this down. There's no pencil or paper where I am. But the story as I remember it still happened. And since it happened, somehow the universe remembers it. And so if you're hearing this for the first time, know that it wasn't really the first. And I hope it won't be the last.

I was on a spaceship. A stolen spaceship. There was enough room for me to hover over the control panel and stare out at a Blade ship. On that ship, I knew, was something beyond my comprehension. A force that knew no boundaries of good or evil, treating murderers and heroes the same.

Of course, so many of us were both.

My friend-my shorm Ax had been enslaved to that mind. As had a Yeerk I'd never met, but already had made an impression of. It was easier to think that way, of course, with all Yeerks as brutal monsters. I knew this wasn't the case, of course. I'd been jaded: seen too much to hold onto immature concepts.

We were all on edge, waiting for the computer to follow to Jake's command. In a way, the suspense was worse than the actual act of crashing into the looming bulk would be. I-and presumably the others-was convinced it was a delay, that there would be a lag before we would accelerate and be thrown back to the other end of the ship. We waited…and waited…

The Blade ship slowly turned its cumbersome weapons systems at our engine.

"Does anybody know what's going on?" Jake panicked feverishly.

"Oh, now he asks," Marco joked under his breath. Vintage Marco. He'd started the war cynical enough to come through it as himself, or at least the version of himself I remembered. Jake had lost all traces of the kid who'd pulled me out of a toilet…or had he?

"If I may venture a suggestion-" Menderash spoke tentatively.

"Yes?" Jake almost pounced on the poor guy.

"perhaps disabling the auxiliary power functions also shut off voice control?"

"So all we'd have to do is activate it manually?" Jeanne reasoned.

Menderash nodded.

"Where's the button?" Santorelli asked.

Jake pointed to it, his hand only slightly less pale than his face.

But with hawk eyes, I could tell that his grimly set expression was almost a sneer. He knew exactly what he was going into. He knew exactly how small his odds were. And he was doing it.

He'd always been Rachel's cousin. He could have been as reckless as she had. And now, the chance was finally his.

I wanted him to know that I didn't blame him for doing what he had done. For making the toughest call of all…except maybe this one.

Jake had been forced into the role of leader. We-Rachel, Marco, Cassie, and I-had forced him, even if it was easier to blame it on Ax. We all had needed someone to spearhead the defense of Earth against the Yeerks. To take advantage of their rift. To plot a way to end the war once and for all…

and he had needed bait.

Maybe he'd gotten the wrong interpretation, that I was still bitter at him for sending Rachel to her death. Well…I might have been. But what I was really bitter about, and why, nobody could really understand. Least of all me. Cassie might have had an outside chance.

What we'd lost, we'd lost before Rachel attacked Tom on the Blade ship. I can't define it, I can't explain it, but there was a chance-just a chance-that it was coming back.

Of course, I couldn't put all of that into words. So I did the only thing I could think of. I relaxed my wings and perched on the button.

I didn't get a chance to see Jake's reaction in the split-second before the turbulence knocked me off balance. Marco and Jeanne were thrusted to the back: amazingly, the others managed to stay upright. Our engines were fried even before the impact.

We'd hit them in the engine zone as well, so they wouldn't do much better than us without some major repairs. But at the moment we weren't concentrating on that. We were fixated on the fact that they'd been so unprepared for Jake's drastic hit that we'd actually broken through the hull of their ship, and could board it if we were insane enough to. Doing that, however, would require some difficult maneuvering to approach at the correct angle, and we weren't in the best of shape ourselves. Santorelli and Jeanne looked really drained. Menderash might have, although it was hard to tell as he never showed much expression with his face.

So it was (a horrendous parody of) Ax who made it through the doorway first, flanked by fellow mental slaves. I couldn't help myself: I turned away at the sight of the grotesque hole in his face. I kept my eyes open, though; being a hawk, they were some of my most powerful tools.

He bowed. ((Prince Jake.))

"Menderash, set the shredders to stun," Jake said while looking at Ax.

((That won't be necessary.)) I turned back-a bad move-to see the outer edge of his "mouth" move up. A smirk.

"Oh, that is so wrong," Marco closed his eyes in revulsion.

"You're right," Jake shrugged agreeably. "So how about you let us do what we're here to do." Menderash offered Jake a shredder, but he shook his head. "That won't matter with these creeps. Okay…Marco, Jeanne, go into the Blade ship and see if you can disable some of their computer systems. Try not to hurt anyone."

This would be a new war, I realized at that moment. Here, maiming and killing would be pointless. It would be fought in our minds, and of course our ships.

Marco and Jeanne met with no resistance as they passed Ax and the others. They climbed into the Blade ship and began searching for a terminal.

((Do you really think that I need the ship to function?)) The One taunted.

Jake didn't respond. That must have taken guts, as well as fast thinking to realize any answer would hurt his position more than it helped.

I couldn't tell what happened next, but Jake clenched his eyes shut and brushed one of his hands to the side jerkily. "Tobias, don't look, dude," he managed to say, his muscles twitching.

I didn't, although there didn't seem to be much to see before he collapsed on the floor, panting.

((You remain strong for your friends. I respect that.)) A frail Andalite hand moved to Ax's chin in a surprisingly human gesture. Another ploy to get to us? ((I did not mean for this to be difficult.))

Jake pulled himself up for a second while Santorelli fell to his knees, off-balance. "How…" he whispered, shocked.

((See?)) The One continued. Whatever he did next was private to Santorelli. Our shipmate rose, tentatively, and smiled at Jake. "Perhaps watching your friends go first will weaken your resolve."

That, I knew, was wrong. It would only toughen him. But instead of wondering how much tougher he could get without becoming cold to the world-the universe, I selfishly worried how long I could hold out.

My guesses were not encouraging.

((What about Marco and Jeanne?)) I said, trying to change the subject somewhat.

Jake shook his head. "They're okay for now. He'll only take them if I can see it."

((So should we evacuate this area?)) Menderash suggested. Not a bad idea, actually. Unfortunately, it was the last one he came up with. He teetered, his center of gravity falling forward until he hit the floor.

((What are you doing?)) I asked, stunned. Not even Santorelli's temptation had been that weird.

((He is looking for his tail blade.)) The One adopted that perverse smile again.

Finally, Menderash wrenched open the shredder hatch, forgetting the fact that he had dropped one on the floor only moments ago after offering it to Jake. Whatever was happening to his mind, sanity wasn't worth very much.

He cranked it up to the highest setting. Jake knocked it away. "We don't need that against them."

Menderash, his mind blurred by tormenting visions, picked up the one he had first offered to Jake, set it at a middling-high section, aimed haphazardly, and fired twice.

Once was all it took. He crashed to the floor of the ship, blood protruding from a hole in his chest.

In a classic display of bad timing, Marco and Jeanne chose that moment to charge in. "I think it's gonna blow!" Marco warned.

"What is?" "Santorelli" asked, without betraying to Marco his current identity.

"The Blade ship."

"I still do not believe they would have the self-destruct coding so visible." Jeanne typed at our own mainframe.

Marco noticed Menderash. "What the…"

"Jeanne, disengage The Rachel," Jake barely moved his lips.

"Already there." She continued inputting commands.

The One, as Santorelli and Ax, walked into the Blade ship. (("Run away. I can wait. I'm never out of time.")) The combination of voices made it sound like a fugue.

We blasted off. For a second I thought we had it made, that the four of us would make it out of there okay. But then I saw Marco looking woozy, and Jake struggling to breath.

"The..." he gestured vaguely. I spotted it immediately. Menderash's lifeless hand was holding the door open.

Jeanne's motion toward the door could be described best perhaps as "controlled free-fall". She kicked his hand out of the crack it was stuck in. But as she did so, the vacuum that claimed his body sucked her leg out as well. Bleeding profusely, she yanked the stump out so the door would close and our air would not dissipate into space.

"Morph!" Marco urged her.

She might have shaken her head blearily, it was hard to tell. But she certainly didn't morph.

Marco tested the joystick. "Our engine's out."

A third of our crew was dead. One was now a part of this "One".

And half of the Animorphs, the defenders of Earth, drifted out through space.