CHAPTER 22

The creature Visser Three had become did not tire.

We did.

I felt like I had been swimming forever. Half an hour into the chase, I was exhausted. We had been powering through the water at panic speed. Fighting every current. Fighting the terrible urge to rest as our tails weakened. Fighting the growing hunger.

WHUMP, WHUMP, WHUMP.

The mardrut never tired. It never weakened. It gained on us a foot at a time, bit by bit.

I could see it now. A huge purple and red mottled bag that undulated and oozed through the water. It was propelled by the three huge water sacs, firing one after another. Between those loud bursts, the hundreds of tiny tails that covered its entire surface thrashed and kept up momentum. WHUMP, WHUMP, WHUMP. Then he spoke. We had all heard that silent voice in our heads before. It was like hearing the most terrible curses. It was pure malice and hatred poured directly into our brains.

<I am coming for you, brave Andalite warriors,> Visser Three sneered. <I am coming for you.>

That voice churned my insides. I felt my own hatred flaring up to match his. The images Ax had painted—an Earth brown and empty and filled with nothing but the slaves of the Yeerks… .

I had lived my entire life without feeling hatred. It is a sickening feeling. It burns and burns, and sometimes you think it’s a fire that will never go out.

<I am coming for you. You will be mine. Shall I make you Controllers? Or shall I simply eat you? The time for me to decide draws near. You weaken. Your time runs short.>

WHUMP, WHUMP, WHUMP. We had all been exposed to Visser Three. Ax had not. He seemed to shudder, even in his shark body. The dead shark eyes showed no emotion, but his swimming became erratic.

<Ax,> I said to him. He did not answer. <Ax, we have heard his voice before. We’ve heard his threats. And we are still alive.>

<He will kill us,> Ax said. <He will kill us! He killed Elfangor!>

<Ax, hang in there. Don’t answer him. Don’t think about him. Just swim!>

But Ax’s fear was catching. He was right. We didn’t have enough time to make it to land without being trapped in our dolphin bodies. And we would never escape him, anyway. I glanced back.

He was only five body lengths away!

I demanded still more from my burning muscles, but there was nothing more to ask.

This is the end, Cassie, I told myself. This is the end.

I felt the terrible hatred surge in me again. But I didn’t want to end my life that way. I would not die with hate in my heart. That would be one victory I could deny Visser Three.

I let my mind drift, even as my shattered body struggled to go on. I felt my mind floating back. To the barn, and all the animals there. To my father, my mother. To Jake.

I remembered good things. Riding the high thermals with Tobias and the others with wings spread wide. Good days. Sitting at my grandmother’s feet as she told me the story of our family, of all the generations who had lived on and worked the farm.

And then a more recent memory surfaced. The whale. I remembered his huge, gentle silence filling my mind.

I could even hear his song.

Wait! I could hear his song. That wasn’t memory. I was hearing his plaintive, haunting song, reverberating through the water.

He was not far away.

I opened my mind and let my human consciousness slip away. I let go. I invited the dolphin mind—the mind that loved to play and loved to fight and loved the feeling of soaring out of the water right up into the air like a bird—to surface in my head.

I fired echolocating bursts, a thousand quick clicks compressed into a few seconds. And more than that, I cried for help.

It was foolish. It was ridiculous. But I cried out in a silent plea, like a child with a nightmare calling for her mother.

The monster is after me! The destroyer! The evil one!

Help me.

<We have used eighty percent of our time,> Ax managed to say.

<Twenty-four minutes left,> Marco gasped.

<It doesn’t matter. I’m done for,> Rachel admitted. <I can’t keep going. And he’s too close. It’s time to turn and fight.>

WHUMP, WHUMP, WHUMP. <We cannot possibly win,> Ax said. <We know,> Jake said. <But if I have to lose, I’d rather lose fighting than let him catch us one by one.> <That is a very Andalite thing to say,> Ax said. <We have a lot in common. I wish it had ended differently.>

<On the count of three,> Jake said.

<One.>

<Two.>

<Let’s go.>

We stopped. We turned to face the mardrut. <Jake?> I said. <I wanted to tell you …> <Yes. Me too, Cassie,> he said. WHUMP, WHUMP, WHUMP. The red and purple behemoth rushed at us. I shook with terror. But I was too tired to swim away.

Help me! I cried one last time. But I knew there was no one to help.

And then I let it all go …

… and said good-bye.