You don’t know who springs up first. But suddenly, you can’t contain the terror any longer, and you all take off. Running as fast as you ever knew you could run.
“Split up!” Jake yells, and you veer away from the others.
You know the construction site pretty well. The prince had said that Hork-Bajir don’t see very well in the dark, so you hug the shadows. You can hear one of them behind you, his blades whistling through the air. He is very fast.
You stumble over a piece of rusted equipment. The Hork-Bajir is close, closer. He can’t see you, but he can hear you. You stop. You press yourself flat against the wall behind you. A chunk of the wall falls off, and you catch it in your cupped palm.
You break out into a sweat, imagining the sound it would have made had it hit the ground. How the Hork-Bajir would turn, how his blades would flash in the air before tearing you apart….
Wait. It’s a trick you’ve seen a million times in movies and on TV. Would he fall for it?
Then again, do Hork-Bajir watch TV?
You grasp the stone in your fist. With your best effort, you draw back and fire the thing like a fastball, way off to the right. You hear the soft clunk as it falls.
The Hork-Bajir whips his horned head around and takes off after the sound, bounding like a kangaroo.
You run in the opposite direction. Your lungs are on fire, but you keep going. You vault over cinder blocks and debris, you swing over half-built walls. You get to your mountain bike and swing one leg over.
And then you really fly.
You wake up the next morning feeling groggy. It was a dream, of course. A totally freaky dream that felt totally real. The worst nightmare you ever had. If you told your mom about it, she’d probably suggest counseling.
You can hear the vacuum going outside your door, and you feel better. Vacuuming is so … normal. How can people go on vacuuming when horrible alien slugs are invading their brains?
You peek outside the door. Your mom is vacuuming and your little sister runs out in a pink dress.
“How’s this?” Lexie asks.
“Fine,” Mom says, without even looking.
You remember that Lexie’s birthday party is that day. That reassures you, too. Yesterday, a six-year-old’s birthday party would have been lame. Today, you think it’s just about the coolest thing in the world. Because it’s normal.
Your mom sees you. “Can you keep an eye on things here?” she asks. “I have to go to the store and pick up the cake.”
“You’re picking up the cake?” you ask. Your mom never buys a store-bought cake for birthdays. She’s a city planner and works constantly, but she also has this thing about home-baked cakes.
“Emily is coming over to help, and after the party we’re going to a meeting tonight,” Mom tells you. “Can you baby-sit?”
“Sure,” you say on the way to the kitchen. Baby-sitting beats dodging aliens, you think.
Not that you dodged an alien with killer blades coming out of their wrists and elbows last night. No way. It was a dream.
You chomp away on cereal, but it tastes like sawdust. You keep hearing Prince Elfangor’s dying scream. You remember those dagger teeth and what they did to him….
The spoon clatters in the bowl as your stomach heaves. You bend over, your face buried in your knees, and take a deep breath. That’s when Marco walks into your kitchen.
“Really, you don’t have to bow,” he says. “A simple ‘Lord Marco’ will do.”
“Very funny,” you say. “I felt kind of dizzy for a minute.”
Marco slings one leg over a kitchen chair. “It isn’t every day you see an alien prince turned into McFood,” he says.
“So it wasn’t a bad dream,” you mutter.
“Not only that, it gets worse,” Marco tells you. “While you’ve been snoring, we’ve been morphing.”
You stare at him. “No way.”
“Way,” he says, tossing his longish hair behind his shoulder. “I have been designated by our fearless leader, Jake, to recruit you. So far today, Tobias has turned into a cat, Jake into the family dog, and Cassie into a truly awesome horse.”
“I don’t believe you,” you say.
“Yeah, I didn’t want to believe it, either,” Marco says, shrugging. “Considering that I’d like to remain alive long enough to get into an R-rated movie. But apparently, everything that Prince Elfa-diddle told us is true. Which means we’re all in big trouble.”
“You mean there might be Controllers around?” you whisper.
“Closer than you think,” Marco says, reaching for a banana. “Like Jake’s brother. When I told Jake I thought Tom was a Controller, he went postal. I have the jaw to prove it.” Marco rubbed his chin. “But it’s the little things you notice. Tom just hasn’t been acting like Tom. And he goes to this meeting called The Sharing. It sounds totally bogus, but we’re all going tonight. Jake says you should come, too.”
“At least it will get me out of baby-sitting,” you say.
Marco peels the banana and begins to eat. Suddenly, he bends his knees and lopes around the kitchen, making monkey noises. You stare at him.
“Just kidding,” he says, grinning. “I don’t have a monkey morph yet. Just want you to stay on your toes.”
Marco leaves, and you start thinking about what he said about Controllers. If Jake’s brother Tom could be one, so could someone in your family.
What about Mom?
She bought a cake for your sister’s birthday. Sure, it wouldn’t sound like a big deal to most people. But you know how weird it is. She hardly noticed Lexie’s party dress. Plus, didn’t she say something about going to a meeting?
What if Mom is a Controller?
And if she is, how can you find out?
You decide to try your first morph and attend your sister’s birthday party under cover.
You have three choices. You choose:
A
