The Visitor

The second book in the Animorphs series follows Rachel, one of five teenagers waging a secret war against the Yeerks, parasitic alien slugs that burrow into human brains and enslave their hosts. A human controlled by a Yeerk is called a Controller. Rachel and her friends Jake (her cousin), Cassie (her best friend), Marco, and Tobias received the power to transform, or "morph," into any animal they touch from a dying Andalite prince named Elfangor. The Andalites are an alien race opposing the Yeerks, but their fleet is too far away to help Earth. The group witnessed Visser Three, the leader of the Yeerk invasion and the only Yeerk to have captured an Andalite body, murder the prince at a construction site. As the only Yeerk with an Andalite host, Visser Three is also the only one who can morph. The five teenagers, who call themselves "Animorphs," are Earth's only defense.

The story opens with the Animorphs soaring in bird morphs. When two teenagers on the ground begin shooting at them, the group uses human intelligence to dodge the bullets and ambush the hunters. Rachel snatches the rifle and drops it in the ocean. Afterward, they return to an abandoned church bell tower to demorph. Morphing carries a critical limitation: Anyone who stays in animal form for more than two hours becomes permanently trapped. Tobias exceeded this limit while escaping the underground Yeerk pool, a vast cave where humans are infested with Yeerk slugs, and is now a hawk forever.

Walking home, the group debates their next move. Jake reveals that their only known entrance to the Yeerk pool has been sealed and raises a new lead: Chapman, their assistant principal, a high-ranking Controller who runs The Sharing, a front organization that recruits humans to become Yeerk hosts. Jake suggests Rachel use her old friendship with Chapman's daughter, Melissa Chapman, to get close to him. Rachel resists exploiting a friend but reluctantly agrees.

At gymnastics class, Rachel tries to reconnect with Melissa, who has become withdrawn and distant. When Rachel presses, Melissa's eyes fill with sadness before she shuts down, raising Rachel's suspicion that Melissa may be a Controller. After class, a threatening stranger accosts Rachel on the street. She partially morphs into an African elephant, sprouting tusks and a trunk, and the man flees. As she reverses the morph, Chapman and Melissa pull up in their car and insist on driving her home. Rachel is terrified that Chapman, a Controller, may have witnessed the transformation.

Rachel tells her friends about Melissa and the stranger but conceals Chapman's involvement. Marco berates her for the reckless morphing. While debating how to spy on Chapman, Rachel notices a childhood photograph of herself and Melissa with a black-and-white cat named Fluffer McKitty and realizes she can morph into the cat to infiltrate Chapman's home.

That night, when Fluffer proves impossible to catch, Rachel morphs into a shrew to lure the cat down from a tree. The shrew's terror overwhelms her consciousness, and she loses control, bolting in blind panic. Tobias snatches her up in his talons, and his thought-speech, a form of telepathy the Animorphs use while in morph, breaks through the animal's panic. Marco and Jake eventually trap Fluffer, and Rachel acquires the cat's DNA. That night she wakes screaming from a nightmare about being the shrew.

Days later, Rachel morphs into Fluffer and enters the Chapman home through the cat door. Inside, the household feels deeply wrong: Chapman sits on the couch doing nothing, Ms. Chapman works in silence, and neither shows any warmth. When Chapman descends to a hidden basement room behind a steel door that opens with a palm scan, Rachel slips inside. A holographic projector activates, and Visser Three appears. He demands progress on locating the "Andalite bandits" and threatens Chapman with the Council of Thirteen, the ruling body of the Yeerk Empire.

Visser Three notices the cat and orders it killed. Rachel freezes, knowing any sign of comprehension would expose her, and simply meows. The Visser tests her by whipping his Andalite tail blade at her; Rachel's cat reflexes cause her to swipe at the holographic blade, which passes harmlessly through. Impressed, the Visser agrees to let the cat live but warns that Melissa will soon be taken. He then morphs his hologram into a Vanarx, a creature that hunts and devours Yeerk slugs, and shows Chapman a recording of one extracting a Yeerk from a screaming victim as a warning against failure.

After the Visser disconnects, Melissa comes downstairs asking for help with homework. Both parents dismiss her with hollow, mechanical words. Rachel follows Melissa upstairs and finds her sobbing, asking her cat what she did to make her parents stop loving her. Rachel purrs while Melissa cries, understanding at last that Melissa is not a Controller but a victim whose parents are physically present yet emotionally gone. Rachel resolves that fighting the Yeerks is about individual people like Melissa, not just abstract freedom. Tobias warns her the two-hour limit approaches, and she escapes with only 10 minutes to spare.

Rachel tells her friends what she learned but withholds the order to kill the cat. She insists on returning to find the Kandrona, a device that generates rays Yeerks must absorb every three days to survive. The Andalite prince identified it as the Yeerks' weak point. On her second infiltration, Jake secretly accompanies her as a flea, deposited on her back by Cassie. During the meeting, Visser Three mentions needing guards for the Kandrona, confirming it is a physical installation. Then Chapman accidentally kicks Rachel under the desk, exposing her. The Visser declares the cat is an Andalite spy, orders it seized, and commands that Melissa be brought and infested.

Rachel fights but is overpowered and caged. As Chapman carries the cage upstairs, he staggers: The real, human Chapman is fighting for control of his own body to prevent the Yeerk from taking his daughter. Ms. Chapman experiences the same rebellion. Outside, Rachel calls to Tobias, who chases the real Fluffer toward the house. The sight of two identical cats allows Chapman to claim the caged one is a stray, sparing Melissa from suspicion.

Chapman delivers Rachel to Visser Three at the construction site, surrounded by Hork-Bajir, seven-foot-tall aliens covered in bladed appendages, and Taxxons, giant centipede-like creatures with needle-toothed mouths. The Visser orders Melissa infested. The real Chapman, given a moment of bodily control, reveals that his wife was made a Controller first and threatened to have Melissa taken. Chapman voluntarily surrendered his freedom on the sole condition that Melissa be spared. He warns that if the agreement is broken, he will fight the Yeerk in his head forever, making the Controller useless. Visser Three relents, unwilling to risk a constant host rebellion.

Inside the Blade ship, Visser Three's battle-ax-shaped vessel, Jake morphs from flea to tiger. Marco and Cassie drive an earthmover toward the ship as a diversion while Rachel partially demorphs to unlock her cage. Jake leaps at Visser Three, knocking him down, and they both flee. Visser Three morphs into an enormous creature, 20 feet tall on three massive legs, and rampages through the site. A second earthmover slams into a beetle-shaped Bug fighter and destroys it. Tobias dives in, snatches Rachel in his talons, and carries her to safety. All five Animorphs survive, though barely.

At the next gymnastics class, Rachel places an anonymous note in Melissa's locker telling her that her father loves her more than he can ever show. The group takes stock of their small but meaningful victory: a destroyed Bug fighter, a rattled Visser Three, and their own survival. Tobias affirms there will be a next time. They will keep fighting until the Andalites return.