I scurried back to where David stood, looking in. We were nose to nose. Eye to eye.

  Tattoo came over to the cube. In his hand he held a plastic baggie. It was filled with rotted food. Methodically he began to poke pieces of moldy carrots and green meat through the airholes. Stinking, rotting garbage crawling with maggots.

  I shouted.

  David coaxed.

  Grease placed a chunk of fresh French bread next to David. A bunch of grapes.

  David went on, casually poking at the bread with his twitching nose. David looked at me and giggled. Yeah, I thought. Pure genius. But I said nothing. David didn’t seem to mind my silence.

 

  I answered swiftly.

  Why had I spoken?

  Given David more to use against me.

  - 45 -

 

  I think there’s something pretty dark down inside you, Rachel.

 

  I worry about you, Rachel. I don’t know what will happen to you if it all ends

  someday.

  I looked over at Cassie. She was crouched, silent. David had kept his word. He’d instructed Tattoo to open an airhole. Cassie could breathe. Was she breathing more easily because I was out of the way?

  Was David right? Would Jake and Marco, Ax, even Tobias, be relieved?

  Maybe they would. Maybe they wouldn’t admit it to one another. But secretly, deep down, maybe they’d be relieved.

  Whew. Rachel’s gone. At least that’s over!

  I am not some kind of nut!

  No! It was unfair! Unfair. Unfair. Unfair.

  Since the beginning I’d only done what had to be done. What nobody else had wanted to do.

  And was anybody grateful?

  Grateful for all the sacrifices I’d made?

  No.

 

  I tried to ignore him. I paced, sniffed, circled.

  But there was no escape.

  - 46 -

  Not from the cube.

  Not from his voice.

 
  could at least carve out a little kingdom for themselves.> In spite of myself, I was curious.

 

 

 

 

 

  All of a sudden, I realized that David wasn’t crazy.

  Well, maybe he was crazy, but his plan wasn’t.

  ———

  Chapter Fourteen

  The voice.

  I was smarter than any of you.

 

  - 47 -

  Le Cirque? I thought inanely. Ignoring the full import of David’s message. HumanDavid had been more of a Wendy’s kind of guy.

 

  David’s voice was—grand. Somehow compelling.

  Like he was one of those inspirational speakers big corporations hire. The ones who come in and pump up a flagging sales department into a slogan-induced frenzy of sell-sell-sell energy.

  Still, what he was saying did make some sense. Hadn’t I always been the one to preach “show no mercy”?

 

  Yes, yes. A leader has to be totally focused, totally without mercy, totally sure of her decisions….

 

  The voice. It was hypnotic.

  It made sense.

  It was seductive.

  It was reasonable.

  It spoke to me.

  < Right, Rachel?> he pressed gently.

  Jake doesn’t even know how to use his power.

  I heard myself agree.

  Then a crazy laugh, high and wild, broke the spell.

  And I realized it wasn’t David’s voice I’d been hearing. Not David’s voice that had manipulated me. That had cast its magic over me. It was another voice entirely.

  - 48 -

  I shot a look at the clock.

  What!

  I panicked.

  What happened?

  Where had the time gone?

  What had David done to me!

  And then there was a low humming sound. Very faint, but audible. And again, the dark, cavernous space was lit with an eerie red glow. Only now, the light source was visible.

  The light source was a large red eye.

  It hovered over the room from just under the vaulted ceiling. Peered down like a gigantic red spotlight.

  Cassie. Pounding on the wall of her cube. Shouting. I couldn’t hear her but I knew what she was saying.

  “Demorph, rachel. Demorph! Don’t get trapped. Don’t let them do this to you!”

  I stared at David.

  His nose and whiskers quivered.

  He didn’t look like a world ruler.

  He didn’t look like any kind of leader at all.

  He looked like a scared little rat.

  Some kid’s science-class pet.

  An exterminator’s dream.

  My brain kicked into overdrive.

 

  David cringed.

  he protested softly.

  - 49 -

  I stood up on my hind legs.

 

  David said quickly.

  I interrupted.

  David chittered and lay on his belly.

 

  David cried.

  I went on, my brain whirring.

  I looked over at Cassie.

  She was smiling. And then Cassie wasn’t Cassie. She became a creature we had encountered before.

  The Drode!

  An intergalactic trickster.

  Two legs. Body held forward and balanced by a stubby tail. Like a bird or a small dinosaur.

  Its hands were flimsy. Weak. Its head was vaguely human in shape. The eyes in that head, wide-set.

  Intelligent.

  Laughing.

  Cruel.

  The Drode.

  - 50 -

  The creature who’d once offered me a deal. Who’d called me “Rachel of the dark heart.”

  The Drode.

  Sidekick to the most powerful and malevolent force in the universe. A force that had vowed revenge when Jake doomed its childlike killers, the Howlers.

  A force that could be balanced only by the Ellimist. A being whose powers were equally comprehensive. Whose motives were seemingly good. But this was not the Ellimist. This was the force that had haunted Jake’s dreams. And now, I realized, mine, too.

 

  ———

  Chapter Fifteen

  The Drode laughed harder. Then…

  WHOOOMPPH!

  Came popping up out of the cube like a Jack-in-the-box.

  “You called my master’s name. Can it be that you need some help, Rachel? Rachel of the dark heart. Rachel the soon-to-be nothlit. Rachel the rat.”

  I demanded.

  David sniveled.

  I laughed.

  The Drode giggled.

 

 

  - 51 -

  The red eye that was Crayak pulsed and seemed to grow some sort of extension from below. A body of sorts? Or a machine? A little of both or neither. Then Crayak spoke.

  “I want to help you realize your full potential, Rachel. We have watched you. With interest and with growing admiration. Why are you content to follow when clearly you should lead?”

 

  “No. This is about you, Rachel. You could be so much more than you are.” It sighed.

  “What a waste it would be to see you finish out your days as a rat.”

  I lied.

  “We know you are brave.” Crayak’s tone was condescending. “But do no disappoint us by being a fool. Unless you want to become a nothlit, you need my help.”

  I countered.

  Crayak, the conglomerate of life and technology, chuckled. “What do you mean?”

 

  “Excellent, Rachel. You are a skeptic. A good quality in a strategist. And a leader. David? You’ve had your fun but Rachel got the best of you. I told you that if she guessed there was more here than what meets the eye, you had to tell her the truth. Tell her.>

  David admitted grudgingly.

  David’s rodent body fairly emanated rising panic. Hysteria. So did his voice.

 

  “I didn’t tell you to whine!” Crayak thundered angrily.

  - 52 -

  David turned to me.

  I asked.

 

  The thing that was Crayak bulged and shrank. Was it breathing? Did it need to breathe?

  “You see, Rachel,” it said, “this isn’t a nightmare. Or a bad dream. The reality is, Rachel, that you are, indeed, in rat morph. In a matter of minutes you will be trapped forever in the morph. You will live out your life as a rat with only this weak and sniveling would-be traitor as your companion.”

  In spite of myself I began to shake. The human and rat-me. Crayak went on, it’s voice low and powerful, like the rumble of thunder.

  “I can free you, Rachel. I can free you from the cube. I can free you from David. I can free you from the morph. But first, you must free yourself from yourself.”

  I looked at the clock.

  Twenty-two minutes!

  I shouted.

  The thing that called itself Crayak laughed. My heart thudded with the reverberations.

  “It is time you found out.”

  There was no sound. But it felt like there should have been a sound. A WHOOSH! or a SCHLOOOOP!

  Because in an instant everything was altered.

  The cube was gone and I was human again. I stood in the center of the cavernous chamber.

  David’s punks were trapped inside Cassie’s cube.

  Cassie? I hadn’t seen her since the Drode appeared.

  - 53 -

  Crayak had moved, somehow, to the far side of the room. Suddenly, from its bulk a muscled armlike thing extended.

  “Come with me, Rachel.”

  I don’t know why. But I reached out. And the distance between us magically shrank. I looked up. And in an instant, the distance between me and the thiry-foot roof disappeared.

  I looked down and saw a white speck scurrying into the corner for safety. David.

  “What is this?” I demanded. “I’m a giant now?”

  “Only if you need to be,” Crayak replied. “You are as strong as you need to be. As big as you need to be. As ruthless as you need to be. You’re not Rachel anymore. You’re Super-Rachel. Can’t you feel it? The raw power?”

  I could feel it. I could feel a strange and magnificent energy coursing up and down my arms and legs, like electrical currents.

  The energy was potent. Intoxicating. Familiar.

  I’d experienced it before.

  The energy was hate. Hate now enhanced with outrageous power. And the moral certainty that I was right. That everything I thought and everything I did was right right right!

  I felt like a god.

  There was nothing I couldn’t do. No one I couldn’t destroy. I stared at my hands. They weren’t just hands. Not just pink flesh and coursing blood and pulsing muscle. They were powerful machines, reinforced with gears and pulleys and wheels.

  I flexed my fingers. Steel claws extended from beneath my fingers. I flexed again and they retracted, disappearing into the flesh of my fingertips.

  “Yes, Rachel,” Crayak said. “There when you need it. Gone when you don’t.”

  I looked down. The floor was the usual distance away. I was normal-sized again. I heard the Drode giggle.

  “Think fast, Rachel.”

  - 54 -

  From the other side of the room, the Drode heaved what looked like a massive iron cube in my direction. It was big enough to flatten me like a bug. Reflexively, I reached out my arms.

  Every bizarre morphing sensation I had ever experienced was suddenly telescoped into a nanosecond.

  Every cell burst, shifted, flowed, exploded with energy! My body adapted to meet the needs of the moment.

  I was twenty feet tall with the strength of thirty Hork-Bajir. My hands were massive steel claws.

  I caught the cube easily. My “fingers” closed neatly around it as if it were a softball. Even the Drode looked slightly amazed.

  I dropped the cube with a thud and lifted my lip in a snarl. I felt my teeth click together. Upper and lower rows had become iron fangs that sparked as they gnashed against each other.

  “You!”

  The Drode turned to run.

  ———

  Chapter Sixteen

  But it was too late.

  I leaped, my long, strong legs propelling me across the huge room in one fluid motion.

  I was on it in a heartbeat.

  One hand closed over the Drode’s body. The other over its head. With the effort it would have taken a ten-year-old to peel a banana, I tore its head from its body.

  A flood of euphoria and adrenaline surged through me.

  No one could stop me!

  Nothing could resist me!

  - 55 -

  No army could defeat me!

  I was a superpredator. A superhero.

  I was free of any human weakness.

  Free of any fear.

  This is what Crayak had meant about freeing myself!

  Now I understood!

  “I am free!” I shouted gleefully. “I am free!”

 

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