I do not own Animorphs. I am not making money from this. Tell me if you think I should. J

I looked over at Ronnie. He had a concerned look on his face. It was my birthday, the big 2-1, and I didn't look like I was enjoying myself.

"Come on Cass, what is it?" Ronnie asked me. "Is it the restaurant? I didn't know they had deer heads hanging off the wall."

I laughed in spite of myself. "No, it's not that, Ronnie. This is all very lovely, but . . ."

"What Cass?"

"It'll be two years in three weeks."

"I see." Ronnie said with that annoyed look on his face like anything he did, short of becoming the great Jake Berenson, would be wrong.

"Ronnie . . ."

"It's okay, Cassie. I understand." Ronnie said still sounding peeved. "Even though his actions were officially denounced by every government, Human and Andalite, he's still a hero. The Great Jake Berenson. I just don't see why he had to drag those two soldiers."

"Well, six has always been the magic number."

"It started with six and ended in five."

That killed any good mood I had. Ronnie saw the look on my face and immediately gave a heart-felt apology, but I wasn't listening anymore. It was more than Rachel that died that day.

Jara Hamee and many other free Hork-Bajir died before the war was over.

Tom Berenson, Jake's brother.

The Auxiliary Animorphs. James, Collette, Tuan or "Timmy" as he liked to be called, Kelly, Craig, Tricia, and eleven others. Actually Ray died earlier, but what did it matter? We had talked eighteen disabled children into fighting the Yeerks, and they all died.

And suddenly my mind flashed to another Animorph. Unlike James and his group, he became an Animorph against his will. Because he had no choice, and then he tried to betray us, and ended up a rat.

David.

I thought of all of our sins in the past and wished I could change it all.

Three weeks later, almost every news station around the world announced it. It wasn't ever a head liner, but it still found its way to some part of the front page.

Three Animorphs Still Missing After Two Years.

Three Animorphs Declared Legally Dead

They recanted what they believed to have happened two years ago. Prince Aximili's disappearance in the far reaches of space. The great Jake Berenson and his old comrades, Marco McCabe and Tobias van Gore, along with two soldiers, Antonio Santorelli and Jeanne Gerard, and some unknown Andalite, stole some Yeerk ship and disappeared.

I became the sole surviving Animorph. A memorial was already scheduled to be built. They chose to build it where it all began. The construction site, where we first met Elfangor, in our hometown. California, New Jersey. Marco always thought it funny that our town was called California and didn't have a single palm tree.

I remained in my home in Montana. I moved here, because I was working a lot with the Hork-Bajir Colony. I still fly a lot to California (the state, not my hometown). Not lately though. Ever since my birthday, my relationship with Ronnie has been on the rocks. We still work together, but it has been kinda strained. We've gone out once since then and . . . well the tension was there. I haven't spoken to him in a few days.

One day I got a call from my publicist. She said that the memorial they were building hit a snag, and the head of the project wanted to meet with me.

"What's his name?" I asked, not really caring. I had no interest of going back to my hometown, and seeing statues of people I cared about, who are now gone.

"A . . uh . . ." my publicist fumbled about trying to find his name. "Mr. Erek King."

I drove my rental car from my parents' house. They were delighted to see me, but they were worried about me returning to the construction site. They offered to accompany me. I said no. When I arrived at the site, I was immediately greeted by a lot of reporters. One reporter, while asking me questions, seemed to discreetly help me get through the sea of paparazzi. Another Chee. I made it to Erek's office without any more harrassment.

"Hey, Erek." I said.

"Cassie." Erek replied, he was older now of course. A man of twenty-one, but he was really older than the Pyramids. Underneath the hologram of a normal human being was a steel and ivory android. The Chee.

"So what's this snag?"

"It's something you should see."

Erek directed me to one of the more-completed buildings. This one had walls so it offered some privacy. Their was a hole in the middle of the floor, I wasn't sure why. There was also a large structure about six feet tall. Spherical. I couldn't quite make it out because it was covered up with a tarp. Erek's hologram shimmered. I could see his real steel and ivory body.

"I'm extending a hologram around us. Any prying eyes will see me uncovering a statue of Jake and you looking weepy. I hope that's all right."

"That's okay, Erek."

"This is what I really need to show you." Erek said as he uncovered the tarp.

It was a shimmering, featureless globe. Off-white, almost dull. Yet, I recognized it as the deadliest weapon ever.

"The Time Matrix!"

"You know what it is?"

"After the war in Leera, the former Visser Four came to Earth. Somehow he found the Time Matrix. He went back in time and started changing history. The Ellimist and Crayak had us chase after him and fix it. I remember . . . vaguely, one memory in particular. My family owned slaves. Jake was different. Like a Junior Nazi. Rachel wasn't even there. It was horrible, but we changed it so that Visser Four never came to Earth, and the Time Matrix remained where it was. It was here the whole time?!"

"Yeah."

"What if Elfangor knew? What if he knew that he ran out of time just yards away from the device that would give him all the time in the world."

"He did know."

That definitely got me. "What?"

"How do you think we knew about you?" Erek said mysteriously. He put the tarp over the Time Matrix and he was Erek once again. He escorted me to his office and locked the door. There he pulled a small alien-looking device from a lock box. It looked kind of like a pizza cutter, only the handle was very large and the disc part was smaller.

"What is it?" I asked Erek.

"Listen." He turned off his hologram and inserted the disc part into his head. From his body came a sound that was not his voice.

"I am Elfangor.

"I am an Andalite Prince. And I am about to die.

"My fighter is damaged. I have crash-landed on the surface of the planet called Earth. I believe that my Dome Ship has been destroyed. I fear my little brother Aximili is already dead.

"We did not expect the Yeerks to be here in such force. We made a mistake. We underestimated the Yeerks. Not for the first time. We would have defeated their Pool ship and its fighters. But there was a Blade Ship in orbit as well.

"The Blade Ship of Visser Three. WHERRER-WHERRER-WHERR!" I realized that Erek was fast forwarding.

"This is my hirac delest – my final statement. I have formed the mental link to the thought-speak transponder in my fighter's computer. I will record my memories before the Yeerks annihilate all trace of me. WHERRER-WHERRER-WHERR!

"Visser Three thinks he has won our long, private war. But I've left a little surprise behind.

"I have given the morphing power to five human youths." Erek stopped the recording here and his hologram flickered on again.

"There you have it." He said. "After we heard about the death of Elfangor, many of our people went and to find any evidence before the Yeerks could destroy it. He found this."

I was flabbergasted. He had this whole time and he never told us. "Why didn't you tell us?"

"Because it contained the location of the Time Matrix."

"What does that have to do with you?!"

"Did you know the Ellimist created my masters? Just like Crayak created their destroyers."

Again, I was floored. I haven't heard secrets like this since the war was over.

"The Time Matrix was an accident. All that is left of the Ellimist's physical body. It can't be destroyed. Only hidden. The Ellimist trusted my masters with it. To hide it from the universe. Then the Howlers came. According to the memories I downloaded on the Iskoort Home World, we were the first conquest. Lucky us. He fled to Earth with the Time Matrix. My masters prohibited us to use the Time Matrix to save them. We only to hide it on this planet.

"I mentioned that I helped build the pyramids, remember? Well, while I was building it, I and a bunch of my people hid the Time Matrix under one, and until we found Elfangor's hirac delest, we were clueless to the fact that it had been stolen by Skrit Na in 1976."

"Elfangor was involved."

Erek nodded his head. "Would you like to hear the whole story?"

I nodded, Erek played the whole thing, and for what seemed like an eternity, I listened. Elfangor's involvement with Arbron, the Andalite-turned-Taxxon who led the rebel Taxxons, Hedrick Chapman, my middle school's vice-principal and later my high school's principal, Loren, Tobias's mother and Elfangor's true love, a yeerk named Sub-Visser Seven who would become Visser One, and the disgraced Andalite War-Prince, Alloran-Semitur-Corrass, who would become the host to Visser One. The Ellimist was also involved, as was a device known as the Time Matrix. Elfangor and Visser One fought over it. Elfangor and Loren used it to return to Earth, and then Elfangor buried it in a forest. After that first failed battle, Elfangor went back for it, only to discover the forest had become an abandoned construction site. That's when he found five human children and gave them the morphing power. It just now occurred to me how that single act changed the universe. Because of the five of us plus Ax, we had saved the Hork-Bajir, the Taxxons, the Leerans, the Humans, and even many Yeerks.

Still how many more could have been saved!

"Now you know." Erek said finally, switching his hologram back on.

"Why are you showing it to me now?" I asked the millennia-old android.

"I took this job just in case the Time Matrix turned up." Erek said. "Now that it has turned up, I brought you here just in case you wanted to do something with it."

"Like what?"

Erek looked sad now. "I feel guilty. I feel like I contributed to Rachel's death."

"More than Rachel died that day."

"Do you want to change it?"

"I would like nothing more than to change it."

Erek led me back to the Time Matrix and projected his hologram.

"How are you going to change things?"

A simple question with no simple an answer. I tried to remember all of my experiences with time-travel. The Sario Rip that landed us in Dinoland. Our experience tracking Visser Four through history, the memories of a distorted world still ringing in my head. There was something else. Something about if we never met Elfangor. A vague notion. Must have been a dream. The time the Ellimist showed us the future. A future where the Yeerks won, and Rachel encountered a thirty-year-old version of herself. A controller.

Funny. Now, the Yeerks lost and Rachel will never be thirty.

I also remembered the Ellimist. He never jumped into the time stream, only stuck his finger in it. Visser Four jumped in with both feet and totally screwed things up. No, I cannot directly change things. I have to do "an Ellimist." Do the least possible thing and let it make all the difference. But what?

I felt something on my foot. I looked down and it was a black rat. I shooed it away.

"Sorry." Erek said. "The whole place had a huge infestation problem."

I wasn't sorry. All at once the solution came to me. I wondered if even now the Ellimist was sticking his finger in the time stream, encouraging me to do the same. "I've got it."

I know me. I know I would say what I needed to say. The right thing.

I placed my hands on the Time Matrix and all at once I was no longer at the Construction site. I would change things. By God, I will. I hope that by saving one, I can save many.

It was a long shot. He was definitely the one least likely, but I had faith. One life.

David.