Chapter 1: The Seventh

No. Every fiber of my being protested against it. It simply could not be, and therefore was not, real. My mind resisted the very idea so much that simply thinking about it made my head spin. No. No. No no no no no NO! And I opened my eyes and was greeted by the bright light of the late morning sun. I felt a pronounced feeling f dread, because although my mind rejected it, in my heart I knew it was true. That night was not a dream. I couldn’t ignore it any longer, and my life was now, and forever would be, changed completely…

***

My name is Aaron. For the safety of certain others, those closest to me, I cannot tell you much more. I’m in the middle of a war, and my enemies are beyond anything you can imagine. So in order to keep myself, my family, my friends, and everyone else alive and free, including you, you cannot know who I am. What I will tell you is the truth, as unbelievable as you may find it. Whether or not you believe me is up to you. I was there when it all started for us, and even I am only just beginning to believe it. It doesn’t change that it is the truth, and it is terrifying. I was serious when I said I was in the middle of a war. In fact, so are you. You just don’t know it. So is your family, and your friends, just like mine. Every human being is in the war, because the winner of this war wins the human race. This war isn’t the kind you’re used to. The kind you’re used to involves bullets and tanks and soldiers fighting each other head on in all out live-or-die combat until a winner is determined. Most importantly, your kind of war is against other humans. So my war? My war is against another type of enemy entirely. One that can’t use guns or bombs or even a stick to fight me. One that I could crush under my foot without more effort than it required to lift and lower my leg. One that is more deadly than anything on our little blue planet. My enemy is the Yeerks.

The Yeerks are a parasitic alien race that has come to Earth in order to make us their slaves. I said before that I could crush them under my foot, and I wasn’t lying. The Yeerks themselves are nothing more than alien slugs. They’re blind and deaf, and they are completely helpless in this form. What makes them so dangerous is that they have the ability to crawl into the body of a larger, stronger creature and take over its brain. Once they get inside your brain, they know everything about you. They have access to all of your memories, so they can pass themselves on as a normal human being. And you would barely notice the difference. They’ve already conquered the Taxxons and Hork-Bajir. And now they seek to conquer us. So why haven’t you heard about this in the news? Why aren’t we mobilizing the military? Because we don’t know. The Yeerks got the Taxxons to submit themselves willingly, and they took over the Hork-Bajir home world through violent invasion, but this time they’re trying a new tactic. They’re taking human hosts, one by one, in secret.