Marco and Jake decide to use dog morphs to attend an outdoor concert when they run into Erek King, a former classmate, who is handing out flyers for The Sharing. They notice that he has no scent of his own, just those that he picked up off other people and things. When Marco and Jake bring this up in a meeting with the other Animorphs, they decide to tail Erek and try to find out what is going on. While Marco and Tobias are following Erek home the next day in bird morph they watch Erek get chased by bullies until he trips and stumbles into the street. He gets broadsided by a bus and for a split second Erek looks like a robot instead of a human.

Marco calls Jake but Tom answers the phone instead and invites Marco and his dad to a Sharing event at a lake. Marco is furious that the Yeerks are after his dad and vents to Jake, but calms down enough to set up a meeting with the other Animorphs. They meet in the woods and Marco and Tobias tell about what they saw. Ax theorizes that Erek is an android projecting a hologram and the bus probably overloaded the power supply. They decide to attend the lake event to spy on Erek, using a morph with different vision to see past the hologram. The morph turns out to be wolf spider. Marco and Ax morph spider, while Jake morphs fly and Tobias, Rachel, and Cassie wait as backup, and they find Erek, who is defiantly not human. As they are about to leave, a crow swallows Marco, who screams loud enough for all the Controllers in the area to hear and dimorphs to escape. He lands in the tree line as human and Erek finds him, but rather than turn him in he leads the other Controllers astray and tells Marco to bring his friends to Erek’s house. Erek promises that he is an ally.

The Animorphs go to the King house, leaving Rachel and Tobias outside as backup, and Erek and his ‘dad’ lead them to an underground park full of dogs and androids and tell them everything. They are the Chee, androids created by an ancient, extinct, peace-loving race called the Pemalites. Pemalites were massacred by the Howlers, and a few Chee and Pemalites escaped to Earth where the Chee combined the peaceful, fun-loving essence of the dying Pemalites with wolves, creating dogs. Erek and a few of the Chee wish to help the Animorphs fight the Yeerks, but their Pemalite creators hard-wired them against violence of any kind. To change this programming, the Chee need a Pemalite crystal which the Yeerks have recently acquired and are trying to use to take over every computer system on Earth. The Animorphs agree to help them by getting the crystal, Marco with a bit more enthusiasm than normal because the company using the crystal, Matcom, is also employing his dad, therefore making him a target for the Yeerks.

The crystal in the Matcom building is protected by a completely dark room strung with wires and pressure sensitive floors. The least amount of light or motion will set off an alarm. So they morph bats. Before they have a chance to hammer all the details out of their plan, the mission is moved up a few days when Erek discovers Yeerk plans to add even more security. The Animorphs sneak into the ventilation system as insects, get chased by a rat, nearly burned by the furnace, and eventually make it to the High Security Room where they morph bats and dodge wires until they find crystal. At that point, however, they realize that they have no means to remove the crystal; they have no hands to carry it and can’t keep in their mouth without it impairing their ability to use echolocation. They go to battle morphs instead, preparing to fight their way out of the building. Just before escaping the building they run into twenty armed human-Controllers and two dozen Hork-Bajir warriors. The humans don’t use weapons for fear of hitting the crystal, which Marco is holding, so they send in the Hork-Bajir. They fight, and Marco is fatally wounded but he manages to get the crystal to Erek, who is waiting just outside the glass wall of the building, before dying. Erek rewrote his programming, brutally destroyed every Controller in the building, and got the Animorphs away and shocked Marco’s heart into beating again. Erek, distraught over what he’d done and the knowledge that memories of the carnage would be with him forever, changed his programming back and gave the Animorphs the crystal.

A few days later Marco and Jake meet on the beach. Jake plays Frisbee with Homer and Marco tells him that Erek gave him a secure phone number they can use to contact the Chee. The Chee promise to continue resisting the Yeerks, though in a non-violent way. Marco still has the crystal, which he shows to Jake but Homer and a few other dogs take it and drop in the ocean. Marco and Jake let them, then continue playing Frisbee.


Back to the Top

Plot points –

1. Marco and Jake sneak into a concert as dogs and discover a human named Erek King who has no scent

2. The Animorphs follow Erek at a Sharing even, Marco and Ax as wolf spiders, and discover he is not human, but an android

3. Marco is swallowed by a crow and demorphs to survive; Erek finds him and tell Marco that he is an ally and invited him to his house

4. At the King house, Marco, Jake, Cassie, and Ax learn the story of the Chee and their extinct creators, the Pemalites

5. Erek proposes a plan that will let the Chee, hardwired for non-violence, fight with the Animorphs; he wants them to steal a Pemalite crystal the Yeerks have so that he can rewrite his programming

6. The Animorphs agree to help and start to make plans, then are forced into the mission a few days too early when Erek discovers the Yeerks’ plans to add even more security

7. The Animorphs use bat morphs to reach the crystal, but are forced to use battle morphs to escape the building; the meet human and Hork-Bajir guards and are outnumbered and out-powered until the dying Marco gets the stolen Pemalite crystal to Erek

8. Erek rewrites his programming and brutally destroys all the Controllers and saves the Animorphs

9. Horrified by his actions, Erek changes his programming back and returns the crystal saying that he cannot fight as they fight in this war

10. A few days later on the beach, Marco and Jake talk, and Jake’s dog Homer takes the crystal and drops it in the ocean


Back to the Top

First morphs –

Marco – Irish setter, wolf spider, bat

Jake – bat

Rachel – bat

Cassie – bat

Ax – wolf spider, bat


Back to the Top

-Random Facts-

Marco’s stylist is named Charise

Rachel shakes her head when frustrated

The school Erek transferred is called Truman

Erek attended Marco’s mother’s funeral; he looked angry at the time

The curve of Ax’s tail usually places his tail blade ‘somewhere above his sloping shoulders’

Charlotte’s Web was one of Cassie’s favorite books

Excess mass when morphing a smaller animal is stored in Zero-space

Jenny is another Chee, a friend of Erek’s

Pemalite home world had two sons; one small and red, the other large and a deep gold

‘Chee’ means ‘friend’ in the language of the Pemalites

Chee-lonos is another Chee, also called ‘Maria’ she does not approve of trying to fight the Yeerks

Yeerks acquired the Pemalite crystal from a Dayang trader

Andalites can tell cardinal directions without the aid of an instrument



Something wrong with the summary? Find an error? Have a random fact? Contact Us about it!

Back to the Top