Ax said, "There's only one reason to alter the physiology of these brains. To make it possible for the Yeerks to enter them. The natural shark brain is too small, too simplistic for the Yeerks to control. They are mutating the sharks to make them capable of being made into Controllers. They will need to add ear canals as well. So that the Yeerks can enter and leave the brain."
"A new version of Hork-Bajir," I said. "That's it! The Yeerks want water-going Hork-Bajir. They need dangerous, tough, deadly shock-troops that can go where Hork-Bajir can't: in the water. What better soldier than a s/7a/7r-Controller, if you need troops in an underwater environment?"
"Yes," Tobias agreed grimly. "And what worse nightmare for any peaceful species to face?"
"We have to find out more," Jake said. "lt's time to get out of the water and go look around in this place."
It was going to be hard and dangerous. We had to return to human form.
Then morph again. All in the water. Without being seen, or drowning.
I was relieved to be getting out of the shark morph. I hated sharks, I'd decided. I didn't want to be one anymore. Let alone a sort of super, self-aware, thinking shark.
I was happy when my legs reappeared. When my fins became hands, when my teeth ground and itched away and became the tiny, blunt, pitifully weak human teeth.
But I knew I'd never hold my breath clear into
a new morph. I poked my head above the surface and looked around with human eyes for the first time. The others popped up nearby. Tobias looked like a drowned rat. He stood on Rachel's head.
There was a dark ceiling high overhead. And I could hear machinery. But I saw no humans or Hork-Bajir or Taxxons standing around the dock. Maybe they were all busy back in that office room we'd seen through the portholes.
"Looks kind of empty," I whispered to Jake.
"Yeah. We'd better be careful, though. Morph here in the water. It won't be any problem for the fly, I don't think."
He was right. The water didn't bother the fly morph. Something else did.
I focused on the fly DNA within me, and I began to shrink. I had done the fly morph several times before, so I was prepared for the way the spiky legs grew out of my chest. The way all my internal organs melted away, replaced by simpler insect organs. The way my mouth and nose sprouted out to become a horrible, long proboscis.
I was in the water, breathing air from a bubble, when it began. I realized my head was exploding. And that was not just an expression.
"Aaaahhh! Aaaahhh!" I screamed. My head was still maybe two inches wide, almost entirely
fly, with only a few shreds of human left. But I stopped the morph instantly.
I stared around me with eyes more fly than human. The watery world was a shattered mirror of images. The fly's compound eyes saw with a thousand tiny, irregular, bewildering TV sets, each tuned to a slightly different channel. And because we were underwater, I saw even less than usual.
But then, by luck, Rachel drifted near. Just within range.
Seeing a morph is always horrifying. I mean, we get used to it, but it never stops being creepy beyond belief. And nothing is creepier than watching a human being turn into a fly. Trust me, that is enough fuel to keep you in nightmares the rest of your life.
But what I had just seen, floating past me in the water, was worse.
"Everyone, stop morphing! Stop now!" I yelled, just as the others all started groaning in agony.
"What is it?" Ax asked. "l am experiencing a terrible pain."
"l'm not surprised. Demorph! They put something in us."
"What are you talking about?" Rachel asked.
"l mean when the Yeerks drilled into us, they
left something inside! When we shrank to fly size, this thing, this whatever it is, was too big! Our fly bodies were smaller than the thing inside us. We'd have killed ourselves."
"What did it look like?" Tobias asked.
I surfaced again, human once more. "I couldn't tell. I just saw Rachel's head being all twisted and bulging from trying to shrink with this thing inside it!"
"Some kind of control device," Jake said. "I should have realized!
That's why we got drilled when the other sharks didn't. We didn't have the control device in our heads. The Yeerks are using it to control the sharks until all the treatments are done."
"That's what caused that surge of pleasure," Tobias said. "The Yeerks use that feeling to keep the sharks happy. To summon them and control them. Make them forget the pain of the brain mutation. It's tied to the underwater sounds they broadcasts
"So what do we do?" I asked.
"We get these things out of our heads!" Rachel yelled. "If we have to stomp every Yeerk in this facility!"
"Oh, good, the subtle approach," I sneered.
"Rachel may be right," Jake said. "We can't have this. Period. We cannot have Yeerk control
devices in our heads. We're underwater, with implants in our brains, and psychic Leeran aliens running around. This is seriously not cool."
"There may be hundreds of Controllers here," I pointed out. "We can't just get crazy and get away with it."
"No," Jake agreed. "But we need a distraction. Two teams: one to get to the controls of this place. The other to, as Marco said, get crazy and keep the Yeerks busy. Ax, Marco, and Tobias in the first group. Rachel, Cassie, and me to cause a distraction."
"Finally. We get to do something."
That was Rachel, of course.
Me, Ax, and Tobias. We couldn't morph anything small with the Yeerk control devices still implanted in our heads. Not bugs, anyway. So how we were supposed to go wandering around the underwater facility without being noticed?
"I think someone might notice a pair of wolves running around," I said.
"We need to go airborne. The bird heads are obviously big enough to allow for the control chips. After all, Tobias returned to his normal hawk body okay. Besides, people have a tendency not to look up."
A few minutes later, I was in osprey morph. Ax was a northern harrier.
Tobias was Tobias. And we were all wet.