Edriss 562
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Edriss 562 is a fictional character from the sci-fi book series Animorphs. She is a Yeerk that controls Marco's mother Eva. For most of the series, her rank is Visser One. She is the subject of the novel Visser, which describes her rise to and dramatic fall from power. She is the highest ranking of all the Yeerks in their military, and is only surpassed in importance by the Council of Thirteen.
[edit] Before Animorphs
Edriss 562 first received information on the humans when she saw Loren and Chapman. At the time, she was Sub-Visser 409, and was a Hork-Bajir. The Yeerks were looking for a Class Five species, reasonably intelligent but defenseless and numerous. The Hork-Bajirs had been good shock troops, but the Andalites killed most of the population in an effort to deny the Yeerks hosts. Edriss believes that humans are the ideal Class Five species, but her superiors refused to listen to her, and instead demoted her down to a Taxxon. Instead, she hijacks a ship and brings along Essam to pilot it.
They travel to the planet Earth, first landing in a desert in Iraq. The year is 1991, and the United States and her allies are fighting Iraq in the Gulf War. It is here that Edriss infests the first human host on Earth, an Iraqi soldier. She eventually disposes of the host and returns to her Hork-Bajir host. Edriss watches the battle for a few minutes and sees the clear superiority of the U.S. forces. Essam states that it would be easiest to infest the Iraqis, but Edriss says that it would be a waste of time, and believes that infesting the most powerful nation, the United States, would be more worthwhile. They fly up and begin searching for a place to land.
They land in Hollywood, based on the fact that it is the community mentioned the most in all the transmissions they pick up (along with "Washington DeeCee", New York and "Ellay"). This time, both Edriss and Essam infest human hosts, and destroy their original Hork-Bajir hosts. Edriss acquires a host named Jenny Lines, an unemployed actor and drug addict, while Essam acquires a host named Lowenstein, a TV producer. They begin to learn about the human culture. Later, at a pool party Edriss spots Allison Kim, a scientist. Deciding that she is a better host, she takes her down into the deep end and pulls her underwater. She transfers hosts and drowns Jenny Lines. Essam also takes another host named Hildy Gervais, taking all of Lowenstein's money before vaporising him.
They are at this point cut off from the Yeerk Empire, living as humans. It is at this point that Edriss and Essam fall in love, and they have twin children who they name Darwin and Madra. Eventually their ship's Kandrona generator begins to wear out and they know that they can never be accepted back into the Empire having had human children. In order to placate her superiors Edriss 562 reports her findings and states that she has found an ideal Class Five species with a population of five billion people.
Edriss begins leaving Allison Kim periodically to infest a man named Lore David Altman (formerly known as Lawrence Alter) who she chose for his charisma. She creates The Sharing, a front organization for a slow infiltration of Earth with Lore as its founder and leader. A man named Richard becomes the first voluntary Controller, and Edriss and Essam send the video tape to prove that a slow infiltration could and would work.
Shortly after the success of the Sharing, Edriss informs Essam that she will kill Allison and take on the body of Lore David Altman full-time. However, Essam refuses to comply and tells Edriss that he has chosen to die rather than carry out the rest of the mission, which he calls despicable. Essam starves to death from Kandrona starvation; at the point of death the Yeerk begins to crawl out of Gervais's ear and Edriss pulls it out the rest of the way - this causes bits of Essam's body to remain stuck to some of Hildy's nerves, rendering him insane. Darwin and Madra are at a hospital at the time, sick with a fever - Edriss decides to abandon them there so they'll be adopted. Allison Kim manages to escape from being murdered by Edriss, but Edriss knows she'll try to come to the hospital for the children and kills her.
Edriss then kills Altman so that he would be revered as the founder of the Sharing. She infests her last host, a woman named Eva (Marco's mother), and fakes her own death so that she can finally leave Earth and rejoin the Empire.
[edit] Animorphs
She first appeared in Animorphs The Predator (#5), after her rival Visser Three captured the Animorphs. She freed them in order to make her archrival, Visser Three seem incompetent. During this book, Marco (in morph) discovers that his mother is still alive. Marco, who had thought of quitting the Animorphs, is now prepared to fight all the way until he frees his mother.
Her next appearance was in The Escape (#15), where she commands an underwater facility to infest hammerhead sharks so that she can more effectively invade the Leeran home world. Her project fails when both Visser Three and the Animorphs thwart her plans. A Leeran-Controller tries to tell her that Marco, in gorilla morph, is human, but she misunderstands, thinking the Leeran is saying that the animal is human. After she explains that it's only a similar animal to a human, the Leeran attempts to clarify, but is killed by Marco before he can explain.
One of Edriss 562's most prominent appearances was in The Reunion (#30), who at that time had been demoted to Sub-Visser rank due to her failure in the project destined to create shark-Controllers for use on planet Leera. She makes a deal with the Animorphs in order to eliminate her rival Visser Three once and for all. The Animorphs, posing as ruthless Andalites, have offered to expose the free Hork-Bajir colony in order to discredit Visser Three. The Animorphs trick both her and Visser Three by leading them to a massive hologram (projected by Erek the Chee) portraying dying Hork-Bajir. The Vissers then turn on each other. Visser One, after learning that her host's son was one of the "bandits", appears to fall to her death.
In The Proposal (#35), Marco's father remarries a woman named Nora Robinnette. At the end of the novel, Marco receives a phone call from Visser One. This was an event later described in the book Visser. She appears as the central character in that novel, on trial for treason by several means, including incompetence, sympathy with a subject species, and needless killing of hosts. The book chronicles her explanation to the Council of Thirteen (including their speaker, her former mentor Garoff, who she came to suspect may be the Emperor) how she began her invasion of Earth and why she believes a slow inflitration of Earth would be more desirable to open war.
It is revealed that part of the reason she would not prefer to risk open war is due to the presence on Earth of two children, born of her host Allison Kim and conceived during her control of Allison. She fails to keep this hidden from the Council. Both she and Visser Three are condemned to death by Kandrona starvation; however, both sentences are suspended on the condition that they solidify the Yeerks' power on a planet. Visser Three is charged with Earth, while Visser One is charged with defending the Anati homeworld from the Andalites.
After failing to secure the Anati home world for the Yeerks, she returned to Earth in book 45 to be questioned and executed. She frantically escapes from Eva's body during the Animorphs' attempt to rescue her. Eva fails to crush the slug, but it is eventually stomped on by Marco, ending Visser One's life. As a result, Visser Three takes over as Visser One, and begins to wage open war on the humans.
