A/N: Okay, so there's no confusion later on, I got some of the descriptions and personality traits for Demeter and the other street kids from Can't Get There From Here, by Todd Strasser. (Examples: Demeter has vitiligo, Vertigo is an effeminate gay—though you don't see him until later chapters—and Mercury is Latino and a prostitute.) If you've never heard or read the book, you should. It's sad and depressing, but very deep and moving. (I LOVE MAGGOT!)
Summary: If you want the full summary, click my user name and check out my profile.
Disclaimer: I don't own any of the Animorphs or anything else of K A. Applegate's. I do, however, own Demeter, Vertigo, Hollow, Talon, Mercury, Meds, Pro Metheus, and a couple other OC's late in the story.
Warning: I'll probably change the rating later in the story, but the first chapter only contains some gore and language.
Chapter 1: The Empath"Everyone has a talent. What is rare is the courage to follow the talent to the dark place where it leads."—Erica Jong
"V-visser, I apologize on behalf of my staff, but we are un-unable to infest her," the man stuttered, the armpits and back of his blue shirt starting to darken with sweat. With fear and nervousness shimmering around him, I was amazed there wasn't an even darker stain in the crotch of his pants. "She has a n-natural aversion to us. Whenever the human feels panicked or agitated, her emotions are reflected back at the Yeerk. The Yeerk is unable to concentrate on movement or memories at the barrage of mental force."
The blue centaur—Visser Three—glanced at me with one of his oddly shaded eyes, like a ring of weathered copper. I shivered in my own cloud of fear and shame. I had been placed in a small cell, enough room to crouch or sit and shuffle a few feet from one set of bars to another. My ribs and collarbone poked out from my skin, stretched to ridiculous proportions, my hair hung in ragged, limp hoops, and I wore one of those pathetic hospital gowns that showed off your butt in an inappropriate manner. They'd pumped me full of medication to faze me and loosen my guard, but I'd puked most of it outside the cage.
Visser Three turned his steely gaze back on the bastard who'd once been my father, now a Screamer, while I surveyed the room for the umpteenth time. The walls, floor, and tables were all varying shades of white—egg white, cream, pearl, stark, off-white. The only hint of color besides the man, visser, and me was the puddle of yellow vomit. On the tables and hooked onto the walls were complicated, medical machines I'd never seen in my father's section of the hospital in our old life.
(Every host—involuntary, of course—screams or complains. Why couldn't you infest one human girl whose volume is set a bit higher?) Visser Three growled. His tail blade twitched from side to side similar to a feline's. (Are you losing your ability to control your hosts, Ilun 529?)
"N-no, V-visser," the man said, sweating profusely now.
The visser smirked with his eyes, as he lacked lips. I swallowed the lump crawling up my throat and squashed the butterflies in my stomach, and glared at him. I could sense the ominous waves of discontent flowing off him and who they were aimed at.
FWAPP! Tail blade pressed against the man's Adam's apple, the visser leered at him. (It must be completely embarrassing to even live after failing to achieve positive results of one single experiment.) The jagged edge sliced into flesh, a trickle of red flowing shortly.
I wanted to turn away or shut my eyes or yell at him to stop, but I was petrified, my muscles stiff and skin taunt across my cheekbones, a nonexistent scream rubbing my throat raw. Why did these people care so much about my disorder? It wasn't much from what I could tell.
"Vis—" The blade cleared the man's head from his shoulders, rolling until it thudded against a table leg. The body collapsed on the floor, a spurt of blood spraying the front of the visser's knees and hooves.
Visser Three chuckled. (I wonder if your blood is red as well. Or is it as mismatched as your skin?) It took me a moment to realize he was talking to me. (Red and blue, perhaps? Or some other combination?)
Without acknowledging the weary state of my body, a flash of energy burned through me and I grasped the bars of my cage, spitting in his direction. "What the fuck did you do that for? Why do you care so much about what I can do? You bag of shit! I hope you rot! Why did you care so much that you kill your own?!"
He was unperturbed at my outburst. (It doesn't matter anymore. You are a failed experiment.) His hooves clopped serenely across the floor, not even skidding in the blood. He leaned his face towards me. (And so I'll simply erase you.) I spat at his cheek, but he simply wiped it off and glanced at the saliva. (Strange liquids you primates produce.)
Overhead, a speaker crackled to life and a voice made up of awkward snarls and hisses spoke. The visser's eyes flared and he turned away reluctantly, towards the single white door leading into here. I sighed with relief, some frantic, microscopic tendril in me wanting to live, despite the hunger gnawing at my belly and the reek of blood permeating my senses.
(Kill her.)
Two burly, green seven-and-a-half foot tall lizards covered in blades entered, their auras quiet, solemn, and controlled. I wondered for a brief instant whether they cared nothing for life outside their own species, or, being professional executors, had grown numb to their work. That thought dissipated as sausage thick fingers opened the door to my cell and reached in. I scampered as far back as I could, but those massive digits seized my gown and yanked me out, my left leg slipping through buttery vomit.
A flicker of amusement flashed through one of them as I gripped the bars, the force of the other's pull on my gown dislocating my fingers one by one. The amused one cocked his head at me and—quick as a cobra's strike—his arm blades sliced cleanly across my own forearm. I screamed and, releasing the bars, thrashed wildly at him, receiving another set of ragged cuts along my arms.
The one now holding me around the waist securely leaned his bird-like head towards me, saying in a gravelly voice, "The more you fight, the less you'll notice it." Good God! My killer was trying to give me comforting advice!
"Why don't you just let me go?" I growled.
"I do not enjoy wasting host bodies, but sparing you will simply place Terro and I in your position," he said. "But…I'll make it fast and efficient, human. It will take half a second to break your neck." His massive hand grasped my neck, squeezing softly.
"Please, don't. I don't want to… Not yet… I didn't…" My words became a senseless babble, as I squirmed and kicked in his embrace. The pads of his fingers touched along my spinal column, testing to see which would snap easily in one crushing squeeze. My father's eyes—glazed, but mirror images of my own—watched me, almost reassuring with the strange peace of death, waiting…
Tseew! There were screams and red lances of light and shouts and next thing I knew, a new set of scaly arms cradled me, my head lolling and bouncing as the powerful legs worked like pistons, running frantically. Rivulets of scarlet blood dribbled from the deep wounds, pattering against that annoyingly, frustratingly pure white floor…
----
My head lolled and bounced still even as I emerged from the nightmare, the memory drifting away mockingly, leaving its horrifying, gruesome tinge on my mind. My eyes flicked open and my mouth opened to shout, but a dirty, heavily calloused hand clapped over it. Slowly, I registered the face above mine, brows furrowed and lips pursed in worry, and wrapped my arms around his waist.
"Better now? I'm amazed you didn't wake Hollow." He shook his head. "I swear she could sleep through a hurricane." Talon's usually narrowed eyes and eternal scowl broke into a relieved tiny lift of the corners of his lips, his breathing and aura as calming and rhythmic as an ocean breaking across a shore.
I withdrew my arms, remembering how Talon preferred only Hollow's contact. Hollow was currently curled up in a pile of stained and torn blankets, as comfy as a queen's bed, but far smellier and dirtier. "Yeah. I wish we could switch places at the moment."
"Hmph." That was the closest he ever got to a laugh. Talon turned his head at her, and a droplet of moisture fell from his chin onto the bridge of my nose. The slight tinge of coldness slashed away the rest of the fogginess of my mind and left it piercingly clear.
Now that the dregs of my dream had fallen away, I noticed that Talon's entire frame was soaked, his ebony skin, back leather jacket and boots, black jeans, black shirt, and fingerless gloves—also black—wet. Anyone else would've looked unkempt and pitiful, with onyx dreadlocks hanging limply, water sliding into the trenches of scars marring his face (every other area of skin, I knew, had similar markings), but the rain seemed to accentuate the muscles rolling across his chest and arms, the sharp cheekbones, the fluid grace in his every movement, achieved only by years of training and struggle.
The blood rose in my cheeks as Talon shot me an irritated glare, my emotions tangling with his aura. "You have got to stop that. Or at least keep it in check. And I'm not talking about your hormones."
I was about to respond with a sharp comment of my own, but the single door leading outside sprang inward, smashing against the wall, and letting in a splash of rain, the smell of Oriental food, and a flustered Mercury. Wearing only a short, flashy blue skirt, two-inch heels, and a dark hoodie with a hole in the elbow, my mind didn't wonder long.
Mascara running and lipstick smudged, black ringlets of hair frizzy and olive toned skin saturated, Mercury strode toward Talon and me with a well formed air of dignity, or whatever she used to replace it. Tossing the paper sack on the floor beside me, she shook herself like a dog and sneezed. "God, I hate the rain. My mother was el loco for jumping the damn border. At least Mexico was hot and dry."
"And had sweet tasting fecal matter, I mean, water," Talon said.
I ignored their bickering as it began to mount, tearing apart the bag like it was a Christmas present, and continued to do so with the white Chinese scribbled takeout boxes. Talon and Mercury had forgotten utensils again, so I simply dug my fingers into chicken chow mien and slurped it down. "Where's Vertigo?" He was the last member of our little street family.
"Off at Illusions with Robert," Mercury said dismissively.
"Thought he was with Mark," I said, not the least surprised. I squirted soy sauce onto a thick clump of white rice.
Mercury shrugged. "One's got a car and the other's got a tight ass." She unclasped the top of her purse, pulling out a box of Camel and a lighter and lit them. "Hell, if Mark danced on my side of the fence, I'd have snagged him too. Fucking lucky sodomite."
"Why aren't you out there tonight?" I asked, packing up what was left of my food and shoving it in Hollow's direction.
"I ain't doing business in the middle of a flood. You should see the streets," Mercury snapped. "And it's too dark in here. Where'd you put the candles, Dem?"
"They're on your right, Mercury."
We were all perfectly adapted to seeing in relative darkness, as cities provided too many lightless alleyways and street ends for my taste, but Mercury hated it. She grabbed three stumps and lit them in quick succession, their soft, mellow glow filling the room.
Besides a thin strip of gray peeking from under the door, the candles were the only light source, as Talon and Vertigo had spray painted the windows black. Scattered across the floor were heaps of blankets and sheets, salvaged from Dumpsters and collected outside Salvation Army and Goodwill, with the occasional pile of colorful, slim fitting clothes and facial accessories, belonging to Mercury and Vertigo. Against the wall opposite the windows were stacks of books, also found from Dumpster diving and snatched from stores, my Anne Rice, Alice Borchardt, Frank Perreti, and mythology texts set aside Talon's Hawthorne, Thoreau, Melville, and Poe. A stuffed Bengal tiger and crocodile sat guarding Hollow's sketchbook clutched to the pale girl's chest.
The room was one of many in the abandoned apartment building, as our area of town had slowly been consumed and owned by the drug addicts, dealers, prostitutes, and other species of hobo. This room was pretty decent, as it protected against the elements and a falsely secure zone of safety against the weirdoes and junkies outside, and the other rooms had broken windows, leaky roofs, and rodent leavings.
In truth, if any of the wackjobs ventured inside, Talon was pretty tough on his own. I knew even now he had about a dozen or so steel knives of every size, shape, thickness, and sharpness hidden on his person. A couple messed up human beings were nothing I guess if you had already faced bladed lizards and scythe swinging centaurs and needle toothed centipedes…
But that is his story, not mine, to tell.
As for me, my name is Demeter. No, it's not my real first, middle, or last name, but then, most people abandon their birth certified names when they hit the street, either to remain safe from the law for breaking it or to stay undetected by a threatening individual or group. Mine is the latter.
However, it takes more than a name change to stay hidden from my enemies, especially since I'm afflicted with leakoderma. My dad also had it, but he doesn't need to worry about it anymore. It's a condition where certain patches of skin have a natural amount of pigment and others lack any at all. So, basically, I'm covered in squares and triangles of mouse brown and ivory puzzle pieces, which genetics also thought to add further error by giving me curly, reddish-brown hair and hazel eyes. Obviously I'm not confused with any movie stars.
Right now, I had on a long-sleeved beige hoodie, dark blue jeans, sneakers, toboggan, thin scarf, and fingerless gloves like Talon. Whenever I went outside, I smeared dirt over my face; just so any confusion to my coloring could be explained away as street grime.
Yet, why go to all that precaution?
See, Earth is, no, was invaded by a parasitic species of slug called Yeerks that don't drink blood or feast in the intestines, but wrap around the brain and take control. They control every movement and word that a person speaks, rifle through a person's memories, while leaving the host's mind to scream and cry and beg in a corner, unable to control their limbs or lips or memories. The general name for them is Controllers.
I call them Screamers.
As my mind dwelled around that, the room seemed to dwindle in size and Mercury's cigarette smoke curled lazily in the air above us, coiling and shifting in shapeless spirals. The musty odor of my clothing and the perfume bathing Mercury's body seemed to battle for dominance in my nostrils. Talon and her rapid remarks to each other and the seething tide of emotions crashed around me, along with words and images kept mostly in their heads.
"You alright, Patches?" Talon asked.
I growled at the annoying nickname, instantly correcting, "Demeter."
"Yes, Goddess," he conceded mockingly.
I climbed to my feet and rubbed my temples, breathing deeply. "I need to take a walk. That stupid dream screwed with my head more than I thought it would."
Mercury raised an eyebrow. "Did it deal with you-know-who? Your blue, furry nightmare or one of Meds's stakeouts?"
"Visser Three," I said, glancing up at the ceiling, shadows playing across it like naughty sprites.
"Never met the guy, but you two have me shaking in my stilettos," she said, shivering for dramatic effect. "Then again, I doubt he can compare to Talon when someone touches his Asian flower."
"You know, I had to take out many females as well as males in my time as one of V-Three's guard," Talon said offhandedly.
"Is that a threat?" Mercury tsked. "Thought you were above hitting ladies."
"I never hit a woman of my own free will, but who said you were one?" he replied, ignoring the fact that Mercury's endowments were curvier than Hollow or I could ever hope to achieve naturally. He ducked a swing of her purse. "Either way, I'm not against sticking you out in the rain and barricading the door."
Mercury let out a squeak of disbelief and snuck behind me.
Finally roused by the chatter, Hollow let out an almost purring yawn and cocked her delicately shaped head at us. "Yummm…I smell Canton." She smirked with her almost colorless lips and almond shaped eyes, reaching greedily for the food and eating in much the same manner as I did. I smiled to myself, as Hollow's easily stirred sense of happiness washed over me, like a pleasant, warm breeze.
In the flame's now sparse light, now guttering as the stems sank into wax, Hollow appeared equally exotic, beautiful, and weird. She had been born with thin, nearly transparent skin, which left a network of blue veins visible on her arms, legs, torso, and neck. Her midnight hair was highlighted with streaks of red, green, and blue, matching her tie-dyed shirt and bandana.
"Talon, you're so sweet," Hollow said in her muffled breath. She slinked over to his side and sat down beside him, leaning her head against his shoulder. "Always bringing home the sausage."
"Bacon," Mercury corrected.
"Same animal," Hollow said, her gaze sliding across us in turn. She gagged at the twin puffs of smoke exhaled from Mercury's nostrils. "Smelly cigarettes. Those smokes you love to inhale so much will kill you quickly. Rotten your lungs. Poison your brain."
"Hmph. I think we should put up an antismoking sign," Talon commented.
"And I think I should use that crooked mouth of yours for an ashtray," Mercury said, taking one last drag and putting the butt out in the puddle that had gathered around her feet. She started squeezing water from her skirt. "I really liked this one too. Damn rain probably ruined it."
"Don't be so upset. I love the rain. The wind and water and darkness," Hollow said, grabbing her sketchbook and flicking through it. She smirked at Talon. "Reminds me of you. See?" She tapped a drawing with Talon's solemn, stormy face on it. "Anyone want to go for a walk?"
Mercury had begun sifting through a pile of skirts with all of the shades of the rainbow and each no longer than my first knuckle held against my thigh. "Have you been skipping out on your medication again? The streets are flooded and you can barely see your hand in front of your face." She held an orange-and-red miniskirt against her hips.
"Those pills just make my art look flat and lifeless." She pouted slightly, tracing her finger over picture-Talon's stern eyes. She had done pictures of all of us, including Meds and Pro Metheus. Her chaotic emotions shifted into a gloomier state, and then soared upwards once more. "Unless I gobble them all at once, but Dem starts acting funny too." She smiled. "Dem, don't you want to walk in the rain? No one'll be out there and I'll be really happy."
I laughed. Anyone who became as enthusiastic and childishly joyful as Hollow was almost a drug to me. "Tempting."
"If you're going to running out there in the muck, take these," Talon grumbled, handing each of us a strangely colored bladed knife, the shade of yellowed bone and jagged at the edges. I didn't ask about it, but merely pocketed the knife.
Hollow gripped my hand and dashed outside with the urgency of a dog chasing a cat.
Mercury hadn't been exaggerating by much. My feet kept stepping into three inch deep water on the sidewalk, as there was a steady stream coursing on the road, wind buffeted me from all sides and I could only make out the buildings and things closest to me, except during flashes of lightning, followed by booms of thunder. Normally, I would've hurried back inside, but Hollow's aura was affecting me, like caffeine and sugar, and I caught myself wanting to scale up one of the fire escapes on each building and ride out the storm closest to the clouds above. Thankfully, I kept that in check.
Hollow became electrified by the rain and thunder, twirling and skipping over the puddles, the blue of her veins almost glowing with each crack of lightning. Grinning like a mischievous imp, she kicked at one of the puddles and splattered me.
With the storm and Hollow's thoughts to occupy me, my mind was as calm as it usually was in my dreams, but recently those were under fire as well. Raindrops pattering against the pavement and wind whistling ahead of us filled my ears, allowing me to slip back into my own thoughts.
Most human beings don't know about the Yeerks, unless they've already been captured and made into slaves. I was never a Controller, or at least not long enough that it mattered. I wasn't a Controller when I began to notice their presence around me.
I had inherited leakoderma from my father, but my mother had passed down a mental talent known as "empathy". An empath is a person who can read other people's emotions and even influence them, though lately in the last year, I've begun to pick up on thoughts as well. I never really understood it, as my mother died of cardiac arrest when I was five and my father always thought psi-talents were just the works of science fiction and fantasy, rather than a science of their own. I mean, there are recorded events of pyrokinesis, telekinesis, precognition, and retrocognition, but no one puts enough effort in believing them.
It was three years ago, at the age of thirteen when I began to hear the screams. I was walking home alone as I usually did, my mind swamped with homework and other trivial matters, when I heard it: a wordless scream, full of sorrow and anger and bitterness and helplessness.
As weeks passed, I heard more and more of the Screamers, as I called them. My grades steadily dropped as I began to lose focus in school and my friends drifted away, aggravated at my aloofness and growing need of solitude. I would snap at any comment directed at me—good or bad—and if the screams got noisy and crowded enough in a single area, I would flip out and stomp away, throwing back screams of my own.
My erratic displays of behavior—as the school counselor once called them—had me expelled from school and often brought home in a police cruiser for freaking out in public. However, my dad tried to blow it off as a phase. It wasn't until my birthday, when my few family members and hard core BFF's came to support and cheer me, that he noticed something was a bit off. Right in the middle of "Happy Birthday to You", the Screamers attacked full force and I tried to rid myself of them by trying to cut my head open with a kitchen knife. My cousin Edward had to wrestle it off me and my aunt called the paramedics, as I'd sliced my forehead enough that it was pouring blood down my face.
So, at the age of fourteen, I was committed to a rehabilitation center. I stayed there for about three months, but I don't remember much except being strapped down onto a rock hard mattress like off The Exorcist, trays of nondescript food, and enough pills to send Hollow off the deep end. I remember enjoying the company of anorexics and bulimics and drug abusers and suicidal/homicidal patients, simply because I didn't hear my Screamers. It was only when the doctors walked into my room that the Screamers throttled me, and I desperately tried to tune them out, wondering if my sanity was already past its limits. The Screamers began to have individual voices: Please, let me go, please… I have a family! You leave them alone filth…. Just a finger. Let me control a finger… I'll give you money, anything…
Finally, my fifth doctor decided to suggest a youth help center that was part of a broader organization designed to help the community, people, and the environment, called the Sharing. I remained skeptical, as the man was the loudest Screamer of them all so far, but my father, his skin ashy and nearly green with long nights of worrying, his eyes sunken into wrinkled craters, leapt at the suggestion.
A week later, my mind dangerously numb with large doses of Prozac, Ritalin, and other controversial substances, my father and I walked through the entrance of a two-story complex owned by the Sharing. Almost at once my head felt as though it would explode with the concentrated amount of Screamers and I joined them, wrestling against the security guards' hold as they dragged me deeper into the place, my father tailing behind us. I snarled and punched and kicked and clawed and spat, but to no avail, as they led me into a shadowed room with a steel pool in the corner, filled with gray, sludgy liquid and small bodies that I at first thought were fish or eels, but realized were slugs.
They took my father first before he could let the situation sink in, two of the four men tackling him to the floor and dragging him to the pool, dunking his head into the water. One of the slugs crawled into his ear and he began to twitch and moan, until I heard him screaming with the security guards holding us. They released him, calmly standing as he watched his only daughter being pulled towards the bowl and having her entire head and neck plunged into the sludge.
What are you?
I am a Yeerk and you are now my host, human. My name is Iril 782 and you shall serve as a means of motivation and communication for me.
Are you what causes the screaming?
The…oh, yes. You can sense us, can't you? Even Visser Three has heard a word or two about you in the last few weeks. We're all very curious.
Why?
Well, think about it. We could use you to sniff out the resistance and find out any military and technological secrets of the Andalites. Well, actually, I would. You are just a means to an end and your brain needs more…focus, perhaps.
I didn't understand much of what he was saying, but I could sense the loss of control over my arms and legs, the way my lips refused to obey me, even my need to breathe was given over to Iril 782. The slug sank deeper into my brain and I felt the stored notebook of my memories broken into. The Yeerk was turning me into a Screamer!
So, I did. I screamed and unleashed months of terror and fear and insanity, so strong I saw the guards and my father stagger under the blow. The Yeerk twitched and writhed in my skull, until he choose to flee and plopped back into his pool. For a microsecond, I thought my troubles were over.
Until I met Visser Three himself, a creature who seemed like a discarded character from the Grims Brothers' fairy tales. He could morph into any hideous, monstrous beast, armed with a deadly tail blade in his own form, and backed by his own guard, including Talon at the time. He gave me one cursory glance and for nine months I was put through tests and experiments, but no matter how many times I was infested, I was able to repel the Yeerks' control over me.
Which led to my would-be execution.
However, during the time I'd been held, one of the Yeerks, Irey 951, a vital part of the resistance, caught word of me. He staged my escape and sent two of the group's Hork-Bajir, as well as a newly freed Talon, to retrieve me. The Hork-Bajir had abandoned us for a separate path midway, and Talon took me to the very apartment that I now shared with him, Hollow, Mercury, and Vertigo. It was two days later I learned of the Hork-Bajir's capturing.
Talon still hasn't told me what happened to them.
On that first night, Irey 951—or Meds, as I later found out his plans—bandaged my bleeding arms and explained the situation to me. I had a hard time believing he was a Controller, but the fact that I felt two presences in his head confirmed it and he told me about the resistance, about his shared ownership of body with Richard Hendrick.
"Why did you save me?" I asked on the third day. "You lost two—no, four—of your people in exchange for one scrawny fifteen-year-old."
"Most of the resistance doesn't have host bodies. I'd say the ones who do only range at thirty-five percent, so it's harder to know whether to trust new members with the limited surveillance. You could check their minds for suspicious activity, tell us if they are actually…Screamers?" Meds said.
"Don't forget the Carrion. Some of the humans and Hork-Bajir sold out their species like the Taxxons," Talon growled. "They'll be harder to detect."
"What would you do with them?" I asked.
"That's my end of the job," Talon assured. "Clean up crew." He actually grinned, a very scary expression that held only malicious intentions.
"There is one other thing," Meds said. "One of our members—neither a Yeerk, nor a former Controller—is required to compromise with the Andalites and gain a portion of power over the Yeerks, having no prejudice against either." His strangely serene, balanced aura softened around him. "However, when he was…born, he had one disability that still needs to be cured."
"Disability?"
For the last year, I've been both a spy and teacher, while Talon—and now to some extent, Mercury—have worked to silence those who don't pass inspection…
Hollow's icy, white hand grabbed mine, pulling me from my thoughts. Her milk chocolate eyes were wide, intently focused on something, and her usually erratic aura was taunt with worry and tainted with fear. She raised a finger to her lips.
For a solid minute, all I heard were the tap-dancing of rain and whoosh of gusts of wind, and had it been anyone else, I would've thought they'd imagined something in the night. Except with Hollow, for all her strange personality, she was extremely perceptive of things, whether in people or her environment. One of the reasons she'd survived the streets long before Talon met her was ability to pick up the slightest disturbances.
The Asian girl swayed like a willow tree where she stood, turning her on her heel and shifting her head at each direction. She stopped and gripped my upper arm. "A bunch of people are fighting." She turned to me. "Can you hear it, too, Dem?" She pointed to the streets ahead of us.
I shrugged and started to concentrate. Gangs often took out their wars between each other around the warehouses, mostly because the police weren't likely to be cruising near there. Running into a brawl between the Crypts and Bloods, or some other tattooed losers, wasn't big on any sane person's agenda. Lowering the shields around my mind that Meds had helped me build to keep the oncoming messages of Screamers out for the sake of my own sanity, I almost keeled over at the sudden onslaught of hostility and ferocity and adrenaline pouring into me. Definitely a fight, but…
"What is it?" Hollow asked, supporting me up with her thin skinned arms.
"Screamers. A bunch of them. Humans and Hork-Bajir," I said, wiping moisture off my forehead, a mixture of sweat and rain. "And something else. Familiar." And just as I said it, voices flooded my mind, desperate and exhausted.
(Rachel, there are two of them to your left.)
(Got it!)
(Guys, there's no way we can win this. Look at Ax and Cassie.)
(Don't be such a wimp, Marco.)
(Everyone, Marco's right. We have to separate and get out of here. There's no way we'll reach the Yeerk pool entrance now. Cassie, Marco, you two take that alleyway and demorph and remorph osprey. Tobias, watch over them. Ax, you go down that street to the left. Rachel and I will hold off anyone going your way.)
(Yes!)
(Rachel, you seriously need help. C'mon, Cassie. Tobias, keep watch.)
(Prince Jake--)
(No buts, Ax! Go!)
"That was really clear. It's a lot more silent and vague most of the time… Wait a moment!" I said. "Andalites!"
"Dem, I heard it too. Am I an empath, too?" Hollow asked. "Let's go help them."
"Hey, wait!" I shouted, but Hollow had a mission and sped off. I grumbled a few curses and headed after her.
Well, there's chappie one, yo. Oh, God, over 5,000 words. My fingers are SORE! (starts weeping) I still have College Algebra homework. Blech!
I hope you guys enjoyed it. Please R and R.