I Saw What Should Be Valued Above All Else...
Summary: What did Jake choose? Cassie or the world? This starts with the first page or so of the original (page 139 of #41:The Familiar), and ends with the final part. The start and end of the book-taken-portion will be marked with italics.
Marco towered above, triumphant. Eyes fixed on the holograms. Fists clenched.
A scream!
Cassie! Hurled through the opening, into the red night!
BAAAM!
He struggled, resisted. Tried to choke me. Cut off my air.
BAAAM!
I smashed him again. His kicking slowed. His grip loosened.
He dropped to the floor, his green hearts spitting blood through severed vessels.
I looked at the window. Cassie.
And then, somehow, crazily...a hand reached up. Three fingers gripped the ledge. Cassie's hand. She wasn't gone! But in seconds she would tumble to her sixty-storey death, a splattered heap for Taxxons to lick up.
In seconds the moon ray would fire, shooting from the Chrysler Building cannon with perfect aim and precision.
Cassie's hand.
The large, red button standing out on Marco's control panel, shielded behind glass. The word ABORT etched on the cover.
"Save the world. Or Cassie. One or the other. Not both." Tobias's words echoed in my mind as time seemed to slow down, my brain working at a suddenly sluggish pace, pushed to the limit by the things that had happened. Rachel. Almost dead, due to my negligence and complacency. Marco, once my best friend, now my worst enemy, all his plans, strategies and the like used on the other side. Ax, a controller. How could it be? How were the Andalites captured? I knew that they would have all killed themselves with their tails long before the Yeerk could have a chance to control them...how? Tobias too. Another who had ceased to care, in the desperate struggle against Yeerk total domination, had become more like the Yeerks than anything else. They only needed me for what I was. Not who I was. Wasn't everybody?
Cassie. Once my pillar of support, the only spark of humanity in the ruthlessness I was forced to go through as the leader of the Animorphs, the one who helped me believe that somehow, all the sacrifices we made, everything we did, was worthwhile. Now, she had been twisted, by the Yeerk in her head, into an instrument of ruthless brutality. Another casualty. How many more? If I cared to cast my eye from the building, I would see thousands, millions in this slavery.
Time was running out. Always my greatest enemy, it's ever tightening hands never failing to force me to make a decision, some that I didn't want to make. Like the one that caused all this. If only I had decided not to go do that mission...But once again, it was challenging me. Taunting me, to escape once more from it's ever tightening fist. A final test. Could I pass?
In the few desperate seconds I had left, I formulated a plan. One that proved Tobias wrong. One that could do both. At a cost.
0:00:05
0:00:04
I leaped...shattering through the glass with a massive tiger paw, pressing the SELF-DESTRUCT button instead of the ABORT one. A mandatory addition to all Yeerk technology, in case the EF or the 'Andalite bandits' came to wreak havoc. All would be destroyed, including the intruder. The effect was instantaenous. The entire Yeerk force present burst into an uproar, and Marco, no, Visser Two, was trying rather fruitlessly to control them.
I glanced over at Cassie. Still there. For how long? How long could that three fingers last? In that fraction of a second, I made my decision. To do what I had to do. I pounced, and at that very moment, the three fingers precariously holding Cassie to the ledge released. As if some greater being had orchestrated the operation all along, I just managed to catch the falling Cassie in my paws. Turning my self so that my back would face the ground so far away, I saw, for a fleeting moment, Cassie's face. Smiling and happy, kind and wise, like the person I knew once. And as I fell, I knew I was finally atoning for my mistake.
INTERESTING CHOICE.
All was blackness when I heard the voice.
A strange voice. Old and young. Male and female. Echoing in my mind like distant thought-speak.
It was not the Ellimist. No. It was a voice I'd never heard.
THEY HAVE STRANGELY SEGMENTED MINDS: CONSCIOUS, UNCONSCIOUS, AND AN ABILITY TO RECONCILE BOTH.THEY WILL BEAR MORE STUDY, THESE HUMANS...
A bird's song.
Bright sun on my face. Warmth.
I opened my eyes.
A wooden desk with a computer on it. Star Wars Episode I poster tacked to the wall. School-books heaped on the floor. Dirty clothes falling from the closet. Worn gym shoes. Reading light. Cotton sheets.
Downstairs, the smell of fresh waffles cooking. Dad. A woman talking about a doubles game. Mom.
My room. My house. My...
I leaped out of bed.
The Schwarzenegger thing was history. My hand was my hand again. I brushed my chin. No sandpaper. Just smooth.
I grabbed for the phone. I dialed the number. Pounded the keypads. My body ached in muscles I didn't know I had.
Brrrr-ing.
Come on. Pick up.
Brrrr-ing.
Answer!
I wanted to hear a girl's voice. Deep and young. Cheerful and wise.
My heart pounded.
Bright sun washed my body. I moved a hand over my chest and felt...
My badge! I yanked it off.
I looked.
My fingers clutched air. I opened my fist. Nothing.
Images still flashed through my face.
Dead Hork-Bajir towering above me.
Orffs manacling my wrists.
David.
A mind-blowing explosion.
The Howler.
The strangely beautiful singing of children.
The stench of those condemned to death.
A Mylar sheath beating with the wind.
The scarred faces and mangled bodies of old friends.
Elfangor.
Lightning. Rain. Slipping...
Brr...
"Hello?"
Time stopped.
Everything got extremely quiet. Except for the pounding of my heart.
I knew now. I'd made a choice. I knew what I was made off. My limitations and priorities.
"It's Jake," I said.
No response.
"It's Jake," I said again, voice quaking like I'd never talked to her before.
As if this were the first call I'd ever made. The only call that ever mattered.
"Cassie, I just wanted to ask what I should have asked you yesterday. Are you okay?"
Summary: What did Jake choose? Cassie or the world? This starts with the first page or so of the original (page 139 of #41:The Familiar), and ends with the final part. The start and end of the book-taken-portion will be marked with italics.
Marco towered above, triumphant. Eyes fixed on the holograms. Fists clenched.
A scream!
Cassie! Hurled through the opening, into the red night!
BAAAM!
He struggled, resisted. Tried to choke me. Cut off my air.
BAAAM!
I smashed him again. His kicking slowed. His grip loosened.
He dropped to the floor, his green hearts spitting blood through severed vessels.
I looked at the window. Cassie.
And then, somehow, crazily...a hand reached up. Three fingers gripped the ledge. Cassie's hand. She wasn't gone! But in seconds she would tumble to her sixty-storey death, a splattered heap for Taxxons to lick up.
In seconds the moon ray would fire, shooting from the Chrysler Building cannon with perfect aim and precision.
Cassie's hand.
The large, red button standing out on Marco's control panel, shielded behind glass. The word ABORT etched on the cover.
"Save the world. Or Cassie. One or the other. Not both." Tobias's words echoed in my mind as time seemed to slow down, my brain working at a suddenly sluggish pace, pushed to the limit by the things that had happened. Rachel. Almost dead, due to my negligence and complacency. Marco, once my best friend, now my worst enemy, all his plans, strategies and the like used on the other side. Ax, a controller. How could it be? How were the Andalites captured? I knew that they would have all killed themselves with their tails long before the Yeerk could have a chance to control them...how? Tobias too. Another who had ceased to care, in the desperate struggle against Yeerk total domination, had become more like the Yeerks than anything else. They only needed me for what I was. Not who I was. Wasn't everybody?
Cassie. Once my pillar of support, the only spark of humanity in the ruthlessness I was forced to go through as the leader of the Animorphs, the one who helped me believe that somehow, all the sacrifices we made, everything we did, was worthwhile. Now, she had been twisted, by the Yeerk in her head, into an instrument of ruthless brutality. Another casualty. How many more? If I cared to cast my eye from the building, I would see thousands, millions in this slavery.
Time was running out. Always my greatest enemy, it's ever tightening hands never failing to force me to make a decision, some that I didn't want to make. Like the one that caused all this. If only I had decided not to go do that mission...But once again, it was challenging me. Taunting me, to escape once more from it's ever tightening fist. A final test. Could I pass?
In the few desperate seconds I had left, I formulated a plan. One that proved Tobias wrong. One that could do both. At a cost.
0:00:05
0:00:04
I leaped...shattering through the glass with a massive tiger paw, pressing the SELF-DESTRUCT button instead of the ABORT one. A mandatory addition to all Yeerk technology, in case the EF or the 'Andalite bandits' came to wreak havoc. All would be destroyed, including the intruder. The effect was instantaenous. The entire Yeerk force present burst into an uproar, and Marco, no, Visser Two, was trying rather fruitlessly to control them.
I glanced over at Cassie. Still there. For how long? How long could that three fingers last? In that fraction of a second, I made my decision. To do what I had to do. I pounced, and at that very moment, the three fingers precariously holding Cassie to the ledge released. As if some greater being had orchestrated the operation all along, I just managed to catch the falling Cassie in my paws. Turning my self so that my back would face the ground so far away, I saw, for a fleeting moment, Cassie's face. Smiling and happy, kind and wise, like the person I knew once. And as I fell, I knew I was finally atoning for my mistake.
INTERESTING CHOICE.
All was blackness when I heard the voice.
A strange voice. Old and young. Male and female. Echoing in my mind like distant thought-speak.
It was not the Ellimist. No. It was a voice I'd never heard.
THEY HAVE STRANGELY SEGMENTED MINDS: CONSCIOUS, UNCONSCIOUS, AND AN ABILITY TO RECONCILE BOTH.THEY WILL BEAR MORE STUDY, THESE HUMANS...
A bird's song.
Bright sun on my face. Warmth.
I opened my eyes.
A wooden desk with a computer on it. Star Wars Episode I poster tacked to the wall. School-books heaped on the floor. Dirty clothes falling from the closet. Worn gym shoes. Reading light. Cotton sheets.
Downstairs, the smell of fresh waffles cooking. Dad. A woman talking about a doubles game. Mom.
My room. My house. My...
I leaped out of bed.
The Schwarzenegger thing was history. My hand was my hand again. I brushed my chin. No sandpaper. Just smooth.
I grabbed for the phone. I dialed the number. Pounded the keypads. My body ached in muscles I didn't know I had.
Brrrr-ing.
Come on. Pick up.
Brrrr-ing.
Answer!
I wanted to hear a girl's voice. Deep and young. Cheerful and wise.
My heart pounded.
Bright sun washed my body. I moved a hand over my chest and felt...
My badge! I yanked it off.
I looked.
My fingers clutched air. I opened my fist. Nothing.
Images still flashed through my face.
Dead Hork-Bajir towering above me.
Orffs manacling my wrists.
David.
A mind-blowing explosion.
The Howler.
The strangely beautiful singing of children.
The stench of those condemned to death.
A Mylar sheath beating with the wind.
The scarred faces and mangled bodies of old friends.
Elfangor.
Lightning. Rain. Slipping...
Brr...
"Hello?"
Time stopped.
Everything got extremely quiet. Except for the pounding of my heart.
I knew now. I'd made a choice. I knew what I was made off. My limitations and priorities.
"It's Jake," I said.
No response.
"It's Jake," I said again, voice quaking like I'd never talked to her before.
As if this were the first call I'd ever made. The only call that ever mattered.
"Cassie, I just wanted to ask what I should have asked you yesterday. Are you okay?"