A/N: ALL RIGHT. This requires some brief explanation. This is going to be a set of six AU one-shots (plus one non-AU one-shot). This first one is showing my age a bit. There was a book series released from 1996-2001 called Animorphs. It's pretty much Exactly What It Says On The Tin. They turned into animals. Basically, if you were a functioning child between the ages of, I don't know, 9 and 14, you knew what Animorphs was, and you read them, and you loved them. But most of you youngun's won't have read them, because you were in diapers and probably couldn't read your own name. (I mean, the first book was released the month my sister was born. She's turning 16 in a couple weeks. So.) I tried my best to explain everything you need to know in the fic itself, but I'm only human. Here's a very quick rundown: basically an alien ship crash lands on earth and is seen by five teenagers. The dying alien inside tells them earth is being invaded by slug aliens called Yeerks, which get inside your brain and control your body. There's virtually no way to tell if someone has a Yeerk in their brain or not, because they have access to all the host's memories and can act exactly like them. These teenagers are given the power to turn into animals to fight the Yeerks. Cue what winds up being surprisingly dark children's lit. The chapter title refers to a line from the first book. Fic is in first person (Stevie's POV), which I don't normally write in, but the Animorphs books are in first person so I felt it was necessary. Dialogue in «these» is thought-speak, which is basically telepathy. (In the books, thought-speak is denoted with less-than/greater-than symbols, but this site doesn't allow those in fics, so this is as close as I can get.)
There. That's everything you need to know to read this, really. If you get confused, wiki it or something. Or just read the books. That's an option too. (They're actually in the process of being re-released - the first six are out so far, I think. Perfect timing!)
Idiot Teenagers With A Death Wish
I wake up choking back a scream.
My hands fly to my face, groping blindly in the dark. They move over my skin - skin, soft and warm and slick with sweat, not scales or fur or feathers. I prod carefully at my eyes, pinch one cheek until it hurts to make sure I'm really awake. The other hand I tangle in my hair for a moment before reaching into the air above my head. Nothing. No antennae, no ears where they shouldn't be.
It's not until I climb out of bed and flick on the light and stand in front of my full-length mirror, though, that my heart rate starts to slowly return to normal and I'm able to get enough air to my lungs. It's just me, looking the same way I've always looked. Just me in an old t-shirt and sweatpants, curls hanging messily around my face. Ten fingers, ten toes, no wings. Fully human.
I force myself to turn the light back off - the last thing I need right now is someone noticing I'm awake at one in the morning and coming in to check up on me. I'd be hard-pressed to explain my nightmares to anyone in my family.
Nothlit.
The word is foreign. Alien, actually. Literally alien. It's the Andalite word for someone who remains in a morph for longer than the two-hour time limit. When that happens, you're stuck. Trapped. Forever. As a bird or an elephant or a lizard or a roach - whatever morph you've had the misfortune to stay in too long. Forced to live out the rest of your days eating roadkill or trapped in a zoo. And that's if you're lucky.
I've seen more horrors in the past few months than probably ninety-nine percent of the world's population has seen in a lifetime. I've come face to face with Hork-Bajir; a race of walking, talking razor blades that could easily (and have tried to) use those blades to cut every limb from my body. They were peaceful once - before they were enslaved, I've been told - but it's hard to remember that when you're fighting one. I've narrowly escaped being eaten by ten foot long, perpetually hungry centipedes (yeah, let that mental image sink in for a minute) called Taxxons more times than I want to try and count. Over and over I've been to places that are literally hell on earth - people caged, screaming, shrieking as if they're being tortured. Which they are. There's no other word for what it's like to be controlled by a Yeerk.
And yet for all that, it's the idea of being a nothlit that wakes me night after night, that makes me want to scream and scream and never stop. Tonight it was a fly. Last night, a squid. The night before that, my bulldog. Every night I wind up stuck in a body not my own, dead to my parents and my family for all intents and purposes, unable to even be of much help to my friends.
If it came to that, I'd rather be dead.
It takes me an hour to fall back asleep again.
Kevin pounds away on his drums, getting liberal with his usage of cymbal. With his keyboard turned all the way up, Nelson runs his fingers over the keys, picks out the chords to an old song of ours. They make no attempt to coordinate their warm-ups, as they might have in the old days. Both of them are tired, I can tell, and I wonder what kinds of nightmares have been keeping them up at night. Do they dream of being a nothlit, as I do? Or are their fears more violent and immediate? Visser Three with his endless arsenal of alien morphs, each more horrifying and deadly than the last. Having their heads shoved down into the molten gray sludge of a Yeerk pool so that some Yeerk slug can slither in through their ear and take control of their brain. Being locked in deadly battle with a Hork-Bajir, where one wrong move could result in their head separated from their shoulders.
I'll never know, I guess. We all have nightmares, but we don't usually talk much about them. It seems pointless most of the time, honestly; it's not what's in your head that can hurt you. At least, not for us. Better to focus on the things we can fight back against and leave the nightmares to the night.
Zander and I sit on the couch with Kacey. I lean back into him, let him wrap his arms around my waist and press a kiss to my temple. It's probably the only good thing to come out of this war so far. Why pretend things are anything other than what they are if we could be dead at any second?
"You're positive there's an entrance at Danny Mango's?" Kacey asks in a low voice. The noise Kevin and Nelson is making, along with the fact that the room is pretty soundproof to begin with, keeps anyone else from potentially overhearing our conversation. Band practice serves as not much more than a cover, now. We still perform - it'd be suspicious otherwise - but not like we used to. Really, we just take the bare minimum amount of gigs to justify still being a band.
"Of course I'm positive." I sigh and run a hand through my hair, leaning back into Zander a little. "Until a few weeks ago, we weren't supposed to let anyone use the bathrooms unless they were a paying customer. Then, suddenly, Danny Mango changes his mind, decides the bathrooms are open to everyone."
"I think it's safe to assume he's a Controller now," Zander adds.
"Now we've got a pretty steady stream of people coming in to use the bathrooms every time I'm working," I continue. "But I never see them leave. And yesterday, the vice-principal used it. He never left, either. And I was watching that bathroom like a hawk."
Kacey nods, satisfied. The vice-principal is one of our few identified Controllers. "Okay. Good. Then here's the plan."
It turns out to be a simple enough plan. All of us except Kevin morph roaches. (I suppress a shudder at the thought - roach morph is not one of my favorite morphs. Of course, no one else likes it either.) The four of us roaches hitch a ride on Kevin, who will walk us into the Danny Mango bathroom. Then he'll morph roach, too, and the five of us will wait for a Controller to come in. When one does, we'll follow them down to the Yeerk pool.
"Remember, this is just a reconnaissance mission," Kacey says. "All we want is to see if we can find out the location of one of the portable Kandrona machines. If we can destroy one of them, we'll cripple them. Badly."
On the Yeerk homeworld, their sun provides the Kandrona rays the Yeerks need to survive. Here on earth, as well as on the other planets the Yeerks have encroached upon, they have Kandrona machines set up to radiate those rays into the Yeerk pools, where the Yeerks have to return to feed every three days. If we manage to destroy the Kandrona machine, it'll put the Yeerk pool under the city out of commission until they can get a new one. In the meantime, a lot of Yeerks will starve.
"No rescues tomorrow," Kacey adds, looking directly at me.
"I know," I reply.
"That means, even if you hear or see Riley, you can't-"
"I know, Kacey," I snap.
Zander's arms tighten around me sympathetically. "Stevie-" he begins.
"You think I've forgotten how we got our butts handed to us last time?" I continue, ignoring Zander. "I'm not stupid. I'm not going to risk the entire war just for Riley."
Riley's my brother. The youngest of my brothers, just a year older than me. He's also a Controller. We tried to rescue him a couple months ago, after we found out. It didn't go well. And it was mostly my fault.
Kacey nods. She suddenly looks about a hundred years old and I feel my stomach twist guiltily. My fluffy, bubbly best friend has had the weight of the world on her shoulders for months now. We all have, but not like Kacey, who has been the one to assume control, because someone had to and she's always been a little bossy, you know? Only now instead of dictating dance moves or set lists she's making life or death decisions. She sends us into the fray time and time again, knowing that one of these days our luck isn't going to hold. Eventually, there's not going to be five of us anymore. And all I can do is snap at her.
"Sorry," I whisper. I could say that I'm tired, that I'm stressed, that I'm not quite feeling like myself, but those things are true of all of us and excuses won't help.
"It's okay," she says, but she's looking past me, a million miles away. "Go warm up. Send Kevin and Nelson over here."
Zander and I get up off the couch. As soon as they see us, Kevin and Nelson quit playing and join Kacey, who waits to fill them in until Zander's started playing some riffs on his guitar, cranking the volume on his amp as loud as it will go to cover her voice. I pluck out a few notes on my bass, trying to look interested in what I'm doing in case anyone happens to peek in through a window, but my heart isn't in it.
And I hate it. Hate this war for doing this to me.
Zander drives me home after practice. For a while, we don't talk, letting the radio fill the silence. I lay my head back against the cool leather of the seat and close my eyes.
"You didn't sleep well last night, did you." It's not a question. He keeps his voice low, under the volume of the music. It's incredibly unlikely that anyone is listening in, and it's not as if anyone outside the car could hear us, but some habits are hard to break.
"No," I admit
"The nothlit dreams again?"
"Yeah."
He reaches across the cup holders, taking my hand in his. "It's not going to happen to you."
"You don't know that."
I expect him to argue, to tell me I'm wrong, that everything is going to be okay. Instead, he just gives my hand a squeeze. "You're right, I don't," he admits. We stop at a red light, and he looks over at me. "But I do know that as long as I'm around, I'm not going to let anything happen to you."
In the old days, I would have teased him for such a cheesy, macho line. Now, it's just comforting. Even if it's a promise he can't possibly keep.
"Do you ever wish we hadn't cut through that abandoned construction site?" I ask, after a moment.
"You mean the abandoned construction site where we met Elfangor? The one where we found out that aliens were real? Where we became the only thing standing in the way of a complete takeover of earth? That abandoned construction site?" He lets out a mirthless laugh. "Every day, Stevie. I wish that every day." Absently, he lifts my hand, pressing the back of it to his lips. "It doesn't matter, though. Because we did. And now this is our fight until the Andalites come save us."
He doesn't voice the secret fear that we all have - that the Andalites won't come save us. That they'll lose to the Yeerks and we'll fall with them, or that they'll decide we're too far gone to save. That instead of liberating us from the Yeerks, they'll just wipe us out. It would be much quicker and less messy than a war. We wouldn't have the strength or technology to fight back if they decided to, anyway.
"I'm tired, Zander."
"I know. We're all tired." He sighs. "But hey, if we can figure out how to get at one of those Kandrona machines, we might be able to take a break for a while."
"Yeah." It's a lie, of course. If we can destroy a Kandrona machine, we'll immediately be on the offensive, trying to cripple the Yeerks further while they're already weak. They'll be dying off in droves without Kandrona rays; it's the best opportunity we'll ever get to strike at them. But it's a nice thought, the hope of rest. A nice idea to cling to.
We're both silent the rest of the ride.
"Where's Riley?" I ask my parents as we sit down to dinner. I try to adopt a casual tone. Like I don't care one way or the other.
My parents exchange a glance. "I think he said he had an important meeting of… what's that group he goes to again? That goody-two-shoes one? The Spreading or whatever?" my mom says around a mouthful of ham.
"The Sharing," my dad corrects her. "Said he couldn't miss it." My stomach clenches, because I know exactly what that means. Riley's Yeerk must need to feed tonight.
The Sharing. To most everyone else, it looks like a nice, family-friendly organization. Like the Boy Scouts, or Campfire, or something like that. They have barbeques and do community service and all that kind of thing. It's touted as being this warm, open, inviting place that's all about community values. About selflessly giving of yourself in order to further a greater good. About "sharing."
It's a sham. A Yeerk front. They use The Sharing to determine who would make good, voluntary hosts. Voluntary hosts are much easier on the Yeerks. Simpler to control. Involuntary hosts fight back, and sometimes, if a Yeerk's guard is down or the host is particularly strong, they can break through the Yeerk control for a moment. It can cause a lot of trouble if they do it at the right time. So the Yeerks try and take people willingly, when they can.
That doesn't mean they won't take involuntary hosts, though. Riley's involuntary. Maybe he started out voluntary, I don't know. But if he was at one point, he's not anymore. I saw him down there, the first time we went. Screaming in the cages with the rest of them while his Yeerk fed in the pool. Cursing. Threatening the guards.
I try my hardest not to think about the fact that he lives through that hell every three days. I'm glad, in a way, that his Yeerk is feeding tonight. It means I won't have to see him tomorrow when we go back down to the Yeerk pool.
"Stevie?"
I jolt out of my thoughts, trying to keep my face expressionless as I look at my parents, both of whom are looking at me worriedly.
"You okay? You seem a little out of it," my dad says.
"Just tired." I force a smile.
My mom gives me a mock-stern look. "Everything all right? That boyfriend of yours hasn't been keeping you up, has he?" she asks.
My dad and I simultaneously choke at the insinuation. "Sam!" he sputters.
"No!" I say, as soon as I manage to clear out my airway. "No, Zander has nothing to do with it. Just… bad dreams, I guess." I shrug like it's no big deal.
The murderous look drops off my dad's face. "Oh. Good. Well, not good," he backtracks hastily, "but you know what I mean."
Despite myself, I laugh. "Yeah, dad. I know what you mean."
"At least now I don't have to kill Zander," he says, brandishing the knife he's been using to cut his ham. "You know I'd get those nightmares for you if I could, though."
My mom snatches the knife away from him. "You'd never kill anything that way," she tells him, with a roll of her eyes. "You have to do it like this." She holds the knife carefully, making a few deft stabbing motions in the air before handing it back to my dad.
"Like this?" he asks, trying his best to imitate my mom's movements. She gets up, moving around behind him and grabbing his arm to guide his movements. "Hah!" he cries, jubilant, as he wields the knife. "Take that, Stevie's nightmares! And that! And that!"
If only it were that easy.
Nothing goes according to plan.
When Kevin walks into the bathroom, us in tow, he walks in on a human Controller opening the door to the Yeerk pool. His split-second, instantaneous reaction of surprise is enough for the Controller to recognize him as being a non-Controller. The man grabs him, pulling him through the door and into the sloping tunnel that leads to the underground Yeerk pool. and We bail off of Kevin's leg, huddling together against a wall of the tunnel as Kevin is dragged down into hell.
«Don't worry,» Kacey calls after him in thought-speak. Her anguish is palpable. «We're going to get into battle morphs and we'll be right down. Don't panic.» Kevin can't respond - thought-speak only works when you're in morph - so we can only hope he hears her.
Just like that, our reconnaissance mission becomes a rescue mission.
We demorph as quickly as possible, all of us keeping a nervous eye on the end of the tunnel we just came through as we make the horrifying transition out of our roach bodies. It looks like a solid wall, the door leading to the bathroom having sealed up, but we all know it could open again at any moment. If a Yeerk were to see us halfway through roach morph, well, we were in enough trouble as it was. Not only are we helpless in-between morphs, the Yeerks don't know we're human - they think we're renegade Andalites. We'd like to keep it that way.
"Battle morphs," Kacey says as the last of her antennae are sucked into her skull and disappear. The instruction is unnecessary. Nelson's already started, his arms thickening as coarse black fur sprouts and covers most of his body. Gorilla morph. I watch as a black and orange tail shoots out suddenly from the end of Kacey's spine. Closing my eyes, I call up an image of the elephant morph I acquired the other day, focusing on it, willing my body to change. I can feel my ears balloon out to either side of me and tusks shoot out of my face. My legs and arms swell up, bigger and bigger until I could swear they were going to pop - but of course, they don't. Thick grey hide covers every inch of my body.
About a third of the way through morph, something occurs to me. «Kacey?» I think, hoping that I'm far enough into the morph to use thought-speak.
«Yeah?» she responds.
«I'm not sure an eight and a half foot tall, six thousand pound elephant is going to fit in this hallway.»
She looks me over as she completes her tiger morph, teeth elongating as her ears slide up to the top of her head and take on a pointy, feline shape. «You're right. You'll have to morph as far as you can, then finish once we make it down into the cavern. Do you think you can do that?»
I take a few experimental steps forward. It's awkward to maneuver as a half-girl, half-elephant, but it's doable. «Yeah, I think so.»
«Good. Let's move.»
Nelson and Kacey move in front of me as we make our way down the hall, to try to obscure me from sight. Like a tiger and a gorilla are going to obscure an elephant from sight for very long. I lumber along behind them, my movements awkward compared to the fluid grace of Kacey's tiger or the easy strength of Nelson's gorilla.
«Here's the plan.» Kacey's voice sounds in my mind again, speaking quickly. «We go in. We make enough chaos for Kevin to get away and morph. We get out. If we stay too long, they'll get organized, so we have to get in and out as fast as we can. Forget the Kandrona, forget taking out Yeerks. This is about getting Kevin back.»
«Right.»
Zander swoops down over my head, perching on Nelson's shoulder. «I'll fly in ahead of you guys to see if I can see him. It'll be faster if we know where he is.»
«Hawk morph?» I say privately to Zander. «Not exactly a battle morph, is it?»
«You guys are going to need someone overhead. That place is huge. You won't be able to see very well from the ground.»
«You'll be a target.»
«And an eight and a half foot elephant won't be?»
«Touché.»
The shrieks and screams and cries get louder as we start to come to the end of the tunnel, as does the sloshing sound of the Yeerk pool. I can feel my stomach - though by now it's probably actually more the elephant's stomach than my own - twist, and I fight the urge to vomit. I'm not even sure elephants can vomit, and I don't want to find out.
Kacey stops about forty feet back from where the tunnel widens out into the cavern of the Yeerk pool. Because of the way the ground is sloped, we're still concealed from view for a few more feet. She looks back over her shoulder at us.
«Zander goes in first,» she instructs. «As soon as he gives the signal Nelson and I follow. Stevie, I'll let you know when it's okay to come in and finish morphing.»
I try to nod, but it's not an easy task with a trunk, tusks, and two huge elephant ears. «Got it,» I say instead.
There's a moment of hesitation. Then, «Guys, they may have already-» Kacey breaks off abruptly.
«Infested Kevin?» Zander continues for her, gently.
«Yeah. And if they did, we… I mean, we'll do what we can, but… that Yeerk is going to have access to everything. Our names, our knowledge, Kevin's morphs. If it comes down to it, we might have to….»
Nelson lets out something between a roar and a grunt. «Kevin would rather be dead than be a Yeerk slave.»
«We all would. But it may not come to that,» I point out. «Look, the longer we stand here the more likely that scenario becomes. Let's go.»
Zander spreads his wings. «I'll be back.» He launches his hawk body from Nelson's shoulder, flaps away down the tunnel and into the cavern. We edge a little further toward the Yeerk pool - thought-speak has limits, and if Zander's too far away we won't be able to hear him when he calls to us.
There's a tense moment of silence. Then, «I see him!» Zander's "voice" sounds far away, but it's still audible in our minds. «They've got him on the pier.» The infestation pier. It's almost a relief. It means they haven't taken him yet. «He's still a little ways back, so we've got time, but not mu- whoa!»
«Zander!» The cry comes from me before I can stop it.
«I'm okay. But they've seen me. Could really use some backup right about now!»
A growl comes from Kacey's tiger morph. «We're coming!» She bounds forward, Nelson lumbering after her. Seconds later, I hear her roar. The screaming and shrieking coming from the Yeerk pool amplifies.
«We've got them distracted!» Nelson tells me. «Get in here!»
I make my way into the cavern as quickly as I can - not an easy task, as I'm tripping over my sagging elephant skin with every step. But finally I emerge from the tunnel to find Kacey and Nelson commanding the attention of nearly everyone in the room, leaving me with an opening to finish morphing. I call up the elephant again, feel myself shoot up as a tiny, ropy tail sprouts out behind me. In all the chaos, no one notices me.
Well, except one guy.
About ten feet away from me is a human Controller, staring at me with an expression of shock and realization.
"Not Andalite bandits," he says. "Human."
The man takes a breath, opens his mouth to shout his discovery just as I finish morphing. It takes me less than a second to close the distance between us and to swing my massive trunk. I hit him square in the stomach and he goes flying, hitting the wall of the cavern with a dull thud. He lies very, very still.
He won't be telling anyone about us. I try not to think too hard about the fact that he won't be telling anyone anything anymore.
I turn as quickly as I can, bounding toward Kacey and Nelson. You wouldn't think to look at them, maybe, but elephants are fast. It takes me maybe ten seconds, tops, to cross a sizeable portion of the cavern. I trumpet my arrival into the fray, using one massive leg to crush a Hork-Bajir Controller who was lunging at Nelson. Nelson gives me a thumbs-up with one of his giant gorilla hands. It's an absurd sight, in the middle of a battle like this. If I had a human mouth, I probably would have laughed.
«Guys, Kevin's still on the infestation pier,» Zander warns.
«Zander, distract the guards on the pier! Stevie, get to Kevin!» Kacey shouts. «If you can get to him you can block him off so he can morph!»
«On it,» Zander and I say simultaneously. I see him go into a dive, aiming for one of the guards holding onto Kevin. The guard sees him too, dropping Kevin's arm to cover his face reflexively. Zander's wings flare out, talons reaching forward. He rakes the top of the Controller's head. The Controller screams, grabbing at the gashes. His hands come away bloody.
With only one guard left, Kevin makes a break for it. He slams an elbow into the stomach of the human Controller holding him, wrenching his arm out of his grasp. The Controller makes a grab for him but Zander's already managed to turn around and is diving again. He sinks razor-sharp talons into the Controller's outstretched hand.
Kevin! I barrel through the crowds on my way to the pier, knocking aside Controllers as if they were flies. Not much stops an elephant. Not much wants to try. A Taxxon tries to get out of my way, but in the chaos it's too slow and I trample it. It bursts and I'm put in mind of the time one of my brothers accidentally stomped a caterpillar. «Kevin, listen! When I get to you, duck behind one of my legs. I'll cover you while you morph. Then we'll get out of here.»
He isn't able to respond, of course, but he starts pushing his way toward me, so I know he heard. I swat at a pair of Controllers charging me. They tumble into the Yeerk pool with a splash, clearing a path for Kevin. I plant my feet firmly in place and trumpet a challenge as Kevin slips underneath me, crouching behind my back left leg. Not surprisingly, no one seems keen to take me on without a weapon. Even the Hork-Bajir hesitate. Most everyone backs off, forming a ring around me. Overhead, Zander screeches and divebombs people and generally makes a scene, keeping everyone's eyes trained upwards.
«Kevin's morphing, Kacey,» I tell her. She doesn't say anything, but I can feel her relief.
There's a sudden hiss. A flash of red light shoots over my head. Zander lets out a wordless shout in my mind.
«Zander!»
«They've got Dracon beams,» he says grimly.
Nelson groans. «Kevin, hurry!» Unfortunately, there's no rushing the morphing process.
Another beam of red. This one singes my ear. The elephant and I bellow in pain, but I force myself to keep still so that I don't accidentally trample Kevin underfoot. It's not easy. The elephant brain doesn't exactly want to stick around somewhere it's being shot at, and neither do I.
«Kevin!»
«I'm working on it,» he says. Obviously, he's far enough along that he can use thought-speak, which is reassuring.
The Controllers without Dracon beams are making a run for it now that the cavalry has arrived, so to speak. The Controllers with Dracon beams are advancing. They came in through a different entrance, so they're still a ways off, but considering they're shooting at us it doesn't make much of a difference how far off they are. They're being cautious, though. There's still Controllers around us, so they can't just shoot willy-nilly, and in any case they'd probably rather keep us alive if at all possible. Take us to Visser Three.
«I'm going to grab a Dracon beam,» Zander says.
«What?»
«I'm going to grab a Dracon beam,» he repeats patiently. «Shouldn't be hard if I try to steal it off a human. Humans have weak grips.»
«You'll be a target,» I point out.
«I make a much smaller target than any of you.»
«Do it,» Kacey says tersely.
There's a loud growl, and suddenly Kevin, in full wolf morph, jumps out from underneath me, bowling over a Controller who had the bad luck to be running past. «I'm done!»
«Great. Let's get out of here,» Nelson says.
I see Zander fly at a Controller, and a moment later he breaks away and gets altitude, clutching a Dracon beam in his talons. «I'll cover you guys. Keep them distracted while you make a break for it.»
«No. Absolutely not,» I say.
«Go. I'll be right behind you.»
I rear up on my hind legs, upset. «I'm not leaving you here!»
«Stevie! Go! Now!»
«Stevie, come on,» Kacey says, her tone pleading. «We have to get out of here.»
«But-»
There's another loud sizzle. Kacey jumps back as a Dracon beam narrowly misses her nose. It singes off the tips of a few of her whiskers and she roars.
Zander squeezes the trigger on the Dracon beam he's holding. He can't aim very well while flying and he can't fly very well while holding it, so the beam swings erratically, lancing through two Taxxons as if they were nothing. They don't even have time to make a sound. A human Controller takes aim at Zander, but the beam sears off two of his fingers and he screams and drops his weapon. «Go!» Zander shouts.
In his wolf morph, Kevin snaps at my feet. It's enough to get me moving back toward the tunnel we came in through. I bellow in rage and frustration and nearly mow down a couple of human Controllers who are still left in our part of the cavern. They dive out of the way just in time. I'm almost disappointed.
«Stevie, as soon as you hit the tunnel, start demorphing!» Kacey orders. «The rest of us will cover you!»
«Zander!» I call out one more time.
«I'll find you when I get out of here,» he promises. I wonder if this will be another promise he can't possibly keep.
And then I'm at the tunnel, shrinking down as my trunk recedes into my face. I squeeze my still-massive body into the opening. Kacey, Kevin, and Nelson are right behind me. I can hear the Controllers shouting as they realize that we're escaping, but by now we're too far away for any of them to catch up to us, and Zander swinging the Dracon beam around is making them cautious. They still try, though, so we move as quickly as we can, up through the tunnel, away from Zander.
It's almost infuriating how little trouble we have coming back the way we came.
We all morph to flies immediately after we get out of our battle morphs, except for Nelson - someone has to get our clothes and Kevin's car keys from the locker we rented out near the food court bathrooms, and after everything Nelson's probably a safer bet than Kevin right now. I'm so drained, emotionally and physically (morphing takes a lot out of you if you're doing it a couple times in rapid succession), that I don't even have the energy to be grossed out by the fly morph.
It's difficult to see or hear much of anything as a fly, even buzzing all around Nelson, but once we've all made it into Kevin's car, demorphed, and put our regular clothes on over our morphing outfits (except Kevin - his clothes were wrecked when he went wolf), he tells us that no one paid him much attention, even when he came out of the bathroom at Danny Mango's. The worst he got was a snide comment from a couple of Perfs about walking around the mall in spandex.
"Spandex always was a fashion don't," Kacey murmurs, more to herself than to anyone else in the car. Right. She had been the leader of the Perfs, once upon a time. It seemed like an alternate life, now. Like it was lived by a different Kacey. In a way, I guess it was.
Kevin drives us all home. For a while, the car is silent. He doesn't even bother to turn on the radio. None of us want to hear it, anyway.
I don't know what I expect. Screaming. Wailing. Gnashing of teeth. Whatever it is people do when they mourn. But there's nothing. Maybe we're all in shock. Maybe we're all just numb. Each of us knew, somewhere in the back of our minds, that it was bound to happen to one of us eventually. We'd been lucky too many times already. We couldn't be lucky forever.
Eventually, the silence gets to be too much. "We left him!" I growl suddenly, punching the seat in front of me. Nelson's seat. Everyone jumps at my outburst.
Next to me, Kacey reaches for my other hand. "Stevie…."
I snatch it away, clutching it to my chest. "You made us leave him!"
"I didn't make anyone do anything, Stevie. Zander was the one who told us to go." Kacey's voice is quiet, tired, and I know I should stop but I don't want to.
"Zander's not in charge! You're in charge! We shouldn't have left him, Kacey!" I punch Nelson's seat again, and then again, putting all the strength I have into it. My hand throbs. I ignore it.
Kacey sighs, pushing hair back out of her face. "I'm not in charge-" she starts to protest.
"You are, though! You are!" I feel tears pricking, hot and angry, at the corners of my eyes. "Dammit, Kacey, take some responsibility for once-"
"What was I supposed to do?" She's not raising her voice, and somehow that's making me even angrier. The old Kacey would have yelled back at me. We'd had some good shouting matches in the past. I want her to yell at me. I want an excuse to scream. But she's not giving me the satisfaction. "We couldn't risk the whole war just for Zander, Stevie!"
The way she throws my words from yesterday back at me feels like a slap in the face. "You did it for Kevin!" I accuse.
Up in the driver's seat, Kevin is clutching the steering wheel so tightly his knuckles are turning white. I feel a pang of guilt. Kacey looks away from me.
"If they had put a Yeerk in Kevin's head it would've been over," Nelson says quietly. "They would've known everything about us. That'd be it."
I can't argue with that, and I know it. Kevin could have wound up a Controller. The worst Zander can wind up now is dead. I punch Nelson's seat again, but all the energy's gone out of me. I just want to sleep, now. "He promised he'd come find me when he got out of there." My voice is so quiet even I can barely hear it.
"He could still make it out," Kacey says, and this time when she reaches for my hand I don't pull it away. "If anyone could, it's Zander."
"The Yeerk pool is a big place, and he can fly," Kevin adds, and I realize I'm surprised to actually hear his voice. It's been a long time since I've heard anything other than thought-speak from him. "If he can get away, he can hide."
We pull up in front of my house. Kacey squeezes my hand.
"He'll be okay, Stevie."
We both try to believe it.
Glass, or something like it. Above and below, and on all four sides of me. Trapping me. I reach out, but my arm is not an arm and my feathers brush against the glass. Eagle morph.
Zander? I call experimentally. Kacey? Nelson? Kevin? Nothing. There is silence in my mind. I flutter around the glass box experimentally, but there's not much room. Enough for me to demorph, maybe, but that's it. I tap at it with my beak, hoping to shatter it, but it's strong and thick and even my sharp eagle's beak can't chip at it; not without a lot of work, anyway.
The room I'm in is blank and chrome and sterile-looking. Like a hospital on a starship. And it's silent. Eerily so. Until the doors slide open and he enters, flanked by a dozen Hork-Bajir guards. Visser Three. The only Andalite Controller. I recoil from his presence, backing as far back in the box as I can and flaring my wings out. The tips brush each side of the box.
«I tire of games, Andalite,» he says, his thought-speak voice every bit as malevolent as I remember. Your time is short. «Demorph, and you will live. Your body will be given to one of my most trusted lieutenants. Or stay in morph and become a nothlit, and we will kill you.»
It's not much of a choice. He can't know we're humans. If the others are even still safe, that is. There's no way to know. But truth be told, if I have to die, I wish I could die in my own body.
I say nothing. Do nothing, except stare him down with my eagle's gaze. Visser Three is fierce. But so are eagles.
His two front eyes narrow. «Have it your way, Andalite.»
He swaggers forward until he's directly on the other side of the glass separating us. Even through the glass, I can practically feel the evil rolling off of him in waves. In a movement so quick even the eagle's eyes have a hard time tracking it, he whips his tail, the blade on the end slicing through the air and stopping a fraction of an inch from striking the box.
And then, inexplicably, he begins to tap on it.
Tap. Tap tap. Tap. Tap. Taptaptaptaptap….
I shoot awake, my head whipping around in the dark, heart racing a hundred miles an hour, ready to fight. But there's no Visser Three, even though I can still hear the tapping.
Tap tap tap tap tap.
As my eyes adjust to the dark, the red numbers of my alarm clock providing the only light in the room, I can just make out the shape of a bird perched outside my window, tapping insistently on the glass.
«Stevie. Window?»
Zander.
In my haste to get to the window I tangle in my sheets, nearly pitching head-first onto the floor. I finally free my legs and slide out of bed quietly, so as not to wake my parents. Ignoring the feel of the cold wood on my feet, I practically sprint the few feet to the window, hands shaking as I undo the latch and pull it open. A hawk hops through, fluttering over to perch on the back of my desk chair.
"Zander?" I whisper, his name catching in my throat and coming out almost like a sob.
«Yeah.»
I resist the urge to fling my arms around him. Hawks aren't exactly made for hugging, and while in morph the animal's instincts are always there. I'd only freak him out. So instead I just flick the light on and climb up onto the end of my bed, hugging my knees to my chest, staring at him, half-convinced I'm dreaming. "You made it."
«I promised I'd come find you, didn't I?»
"Yeah. But..." I chew my lip, searching for words. "How?" I finally manage to say. How are you here? How come you're not dead? is what I really mean. But I'm afraid that if I voice my fears they'll be true - that I'll still be dreaming, or hallucinating, or seeing a ghost.
«There was a lot of confusion when you guys took off. Half of them wanted to chase you down. The other half wanted to focus on me. In the confusion I dropped the Dracon beam and hid. In case you didn't notice, that place is huge. And they don't have any flying Controllers.»
Relief hits me like a wave. He survived. He made it. The thought makes me almost dizzy, and a ridiculous giggle bubbles past the lump in my throat and out of my mouth. I wonder briefly if this is what being hysterical feels like. "How did you get out?"
He shifts from one leg to the other and then back, almost as if he's uncomfortable. It's a strangely un-hawk-like move. «It quiets down down there once it gets late,» he says. «Controllers have to sleep too.»
It's a vague answer, but I'm so glad that he made it that I still can't entirely bring myself to believe it, that he's sitting here in front of me when I'd all but given him up as dead just a few hours ago, when I'd screamed at Kacey for leaving him behind because I was convinced we'd doomed him. "Zander, you can demorph," I tell him. "It's okay, my parents have been asleep for hours." I want him out of the hawk body. I want to be able to touch him; mess up the hair he was so particular about once upon a time, feel the body heat that tells me I'm not dreaming or hallucinating. I want to risk my dad's wrath and pull Zander into my bed and just sleep, because we're none of us invincible and who knows, really, how many nights we have left?
Zander doesn't move. Doesn't do much of anything except stare at me. «Stevie-» he says finally.
"And Riley's not here," I interrupt. "There's some overnight thing at The Sharing tonight and he's helping out."
«Stevie-» he begins again.
"Look, my parents aren't going to catch you in here, okay? We can move my desk in front of the door if you're that worried. Their room is all the way down the hall, and tomorrow's Saturday so my mom will be dead to the world until about noon unless someone says 'fried chicken' or something like that - though I guess you might not want to hear about fried chicken while you're in hawk morph-"
«Stevie, listen to me.» He's the one to interrupt me this time, and my mouth snaps shut, cutting off my rambling. «Listen to me,» he repeats. «You can't freak out, okay, Stevie? It's okay. I'm alive. That's what matters.»
He sounds like he's reassuring himself as much as he's reassuring me. "Zander, what-" I start, but then it hits me and I go cold. I know what's happened. Why he won't come out of morph. "Zander," I begin again, failing to keep the sudden quaking out of my voice, "how long were you down there?"
Zander fixes me with a steady gaze. «Too long, Stevie.» I want to press my hands over my ears, to block out the words I know are coming, but you can't block out thought-speak like that. «I didn't make it out in time.»
I shake my head slowly. Nothlit. "Did you try?"
«Try to what? Demorph? Of course I tried.»
"Well, try again!"
Harsh laughter sounds in my head. «Stevie, I was down there way longer than two hours.»
I jump to my feet, hands balled into fists at my sides, and pace around my room. "So, what, you're just going to lie down and take it? There has to be some way around it!"
«You're going to wake up your parents-»
"I don't care!" Angrily, I lash out, swinging blindly. I knock my cell phone off my nightstand and it hits the floor, popping open and sending the battery skidding across the floor to hit the leg of my desk.
Something about seeing my cell phone shatter makes me crumple to the ground, sitting down hard enough to feel a jolt of pain go up my tailbone. I cross my legs and double over, burying my face in my hands to cry, but no tears come.
There's the sound of the fluttering of wings, and then I hear the hawk's talons - Zander's talons - click quietly along the floor. When I look up, he's next to me. «It's going to be okay,» he says softly.
Shame floods me. I'm carrying on, shouting like a kid who hasn't gotten her way, when Zander's the one who's been irreparably damaged. Zander's the one who sacrificed everything so we could get away. And yet here he is, comforting me, when it should be other way around. "I'm sorry," I whisper.
For a while, we're both silent, sitting together on my bedroom floor.
«Every war has casualties,» Zander says eventually. «And I'm not dead. Not yet. I can still fight. Now more than ever.»
I stare down at my hands. "I guess I had been hoping… that things would go back to normal, someday. That we'd be normal teenagers again. Like, the Andalites would come, save our butts, wipe out the Yeerks, and we could just have our lives back. Go back to worrying about nothing but whether we had a gig lined up that weekend or what Molly had up her sleeve next. But now…." I make a helpless gesture.
«That was never going to happen, Stevie. Maybe if they'd shown up a week, two weeks after we got our morphing abilities. But it's too late for that. Even before… this. Normal teenagers think they're invincible. We've known we weren't for a long time now.»
I think about Kacey. Wonder when the last time I heard her laugh was. I think about how Kevin's gotten quieter and quieter and how Nelson's drifted away from Grace. It's been months since I've picked up my bass for anything other than a cover practice. I'd assumed we'd shake these things off once the Yeerks were gone. But Zander was now living proof that war doesn't work like that.
"Maybe the Andalites will know some way to… fix being a nothlit," I offer lamely. I know it can't be that easy. That it's probably impossible. Even the Andalites have to have limits.
But Zander doesn't argue, even though I know he has to be having the same thoughts I am. «Maybe.»
I look up, at the picture of the five of us from early in sophomore year - right after Kacey joined the band - that's hanging above my desk. The only place the people I once knew exist anymore.
"Zander," I say, realizing something. "What about your parents?"
There's a long stretch of silence, and I've just started to wonder if he's planning on answering when he says, «People disappear all the time, Stevie.»
That's when, finally, I cry.