"Haven't seen my boys like this in awhile!" Steve Berenson said as Tom and Jake walked in together. "Tom's been too busy with The Sharing," he observed. "Figured it was just things changing as he grew up, that I wasn't supposed to mess with it," he admitted.
"To put it very lightly, Dad, The Sharing is the problem," Tom responded in a whisper. "I discovered a dark secret behind the Boy Scout shit and Jake helped me get away. It's a very long story, one we need to tell Mom too while we're sitting down in private."
It was easy enough to find Jean Grundle Berenson. As a freelance writer, she worked from home. In fact, Jake and Tom had been lucky to find their father at this hour. He was a pediatrician, unwilling to rush through a room full of sick kids the way an office worker might be inclined to skip out on paperwork. He still was saddled with lots of pencil-pushing, though. In fact, some of Tom's impolite vocabulary came from his father's commentary on health insurance companies.
Tom had already said there weren't any Yeerk spy devices in the house. Jake and Tom headed for the basement, where passerby wouldn't notice anything suspicious where they might aboveground. Their basement didn't even have any windows at ground level.
"Visser Three would think Stalin was bush league," Tom said.
"But what if Stalin had Yeerk technology? Both bad bastards, just with different tools available," Jake countered. It was a far cry from hanging out with Marco arguing over whether Iron Man could beat Batman.
"Honey, Tom thinks The Sharing is a front for the mob or something," Dr. Berenson explained as they gathered in the basement. He understood his sons' serious demeanor. However, like the rest of humanity, he would have trouble grasping the severity of the situation. This force sunk even lower than humanity at its ugliest.
"Worse than the mafia. Hostile aliens," Tom said somberly.
Steve and Jean mulled this over during several minutes of silence.
"I'm afraid you're right," Jean said. "You're mature enough that you wouldn't make up and pass off something like that."
"And you don't have a history of mental conditions with perception," his father added.
"The Yeerks, they're called, and I have plenty of things to call them," Tom reported.
"What do they need The Sharing for?" Jean wondered.
"They're slugs that crawl inside someone's head to control their brain. They use The Sharing to talk people into that instead of taking them by force," Tom explained.
"And you fell for it? What's her name?" Steve wondered.
"Tiffany Smith. She was already infested," Tom admitted. So that wasn't just their father teasing. Tom was in a fragile state after his captivity and the joke with too much truth hadn't helped.
"Well, hot girls make guys do really stupid things," Jake pointed out. He knew that might help with their tension. Jake hoped that sort of thing wouldn't happen to him. Someone might imply that Jake was safe because Cassie supposedly wasn't pretty. Even if Marco or Tom did that, it would go over like a lead balloon, Jake thought. Cassandra Atkins was cute in her own way, and an incredibly kind person to anyone and anything.
"But they had to take me, kicking and screaming mind you. I had shown up at one of the full member meetings, and saw the truth." No wonder Tom had been so enraged by the sight of Visser Three, Jake realized.
"Now how'd you get out?" Steve wondered.
"That's where I come in," Jake tag-teamed. They were gradually bringing in the weirdness. Their parents still seemed to believe them. Jake and Tom were children, but still too old to believe overactive imaginations. Their mother, as a writer, might have an instinct for whether people were just storytelling.
Jake told about the Andalite fleet getting defeated in Earth orbit. "One of their fighter pilots crash-landed in that abandoned construction site."
"Going through there was even more dangerous than I thought," Jean observed.
"Let me guess, doing something like that, Marco was there with you," Steve piled on.
"And Cassie, Rachel and Tobias," Jake agreed, explaining that Elfangor told them as much as he could before the Yeerks came for him and gave them the power to morph.
"That seems rather useful," Steve said. "Especially since Cassie's family runs that wild animal shelter and her mom's a vet at The Gardens," he realized. Out of shock, he was barely able to retain his composure, but he was still gamely trying to speak clearly.
"So you turned into big animals to rescue your big brother," Jean guessed, correctly.
"Rachel was an elephant, not a bear," Jake pointed out to Tom.
"I had reasons for not thinking clearly," Tom said defensively.
"He was right that Cassie is a workhorse, though. Marco practices gorilla warfare, but I went for a tiger," Jake said right before beginning the morph and demonstrating the thoughtspeak that came with it.
Jean screamed; Jake supposed his father's medical experience kept him from being grossed out too. All of them except Cassie looked like hell during the process. So there would be one less thing to shock her parents with.
Jake reappeared in his thin T-shirt and skintight bike shorts, about all the clothing they could morph. This happened when using technology designed by and for a species with fur. Thoughtspeak was the Andalites' natural means of communication, but it made for wonderful technology. The morph and demorph definitely had convinced Jake and Tom's parents, after the conversation mostly had.
"But since these alien slugs control people's brains, how'd you get him to come with you?" Jean asked, attempting to plug a plot hole.
Tom was glad to explain the critical weakness created by the Yeerks' need for Kandrona rays. "So for a short time Yeerk victims become prisoners instead of mind control slaves," he explained, having learned the hard way. "And midget here decided to lead a prison break!" he said triumphantly.
"We can also morph small or otherwise innocuous creatures for spying purposes. That's the way we found out how and when to strike. 'Homer' took a stroll along the beach during a Sharing meeting," Jake said of morphing the family dog.
"That power is amazing. I'm sure that's not the end of it. What's the catch?" Jean said.
"If it's been more than two hours, you're stuck. Tobias is a hawk now. I was gonna roost him in the attic and bring him hamburger or something."
"Yeah, we gotta take care of our folks," Tom agreed. "Tell that to his no-good relatives."
"I'll tell the uncle here who doesn't care that he's with the aunt out east who doesn't care, and vice versa," Jake countered.
"Well, him and Tom will both be hiding out here," Steve observed.
"We were gonna assume the Yeerks lost track of me during the escape. I could camp in the basement. With Mom working from home, it won't be odd that the house is busy. Unfortunately, midget can't give me the morphing power just because he has it himself. Being a leopard would have been cool."
"They think we're Andalites that survived the space battle, considering the power to morph. They aren't looking for humans, and we better not give them the idea to," Jake declared. "It's not just The Sharing. Anyone might be a Controller who's acting normal," Jake warned.
"How'd your parents take it?" Marco asked as soon as they got settled at the barn.
"They believed the truth and understand the need to hide Tom," Jake reported. "But what next?" he worried.
"Well, we can't exactly ask President Flores-Rivera to borrow a few thousand Marines," Marco quipped. "No way, Alejandro."
Jake figured the Yeerks wouldn't have infiltrated that far up. Would they? he worried. Even if they really hadn't, how could they reach the White House without tipping off Controllers along the way? How could they get the President to believe? The stranger of such significance presented a far greater challenge than their own relatives.
"Probably should tell my mom too, especially to let her know what really happened to Tom," Rachel announced. Naomi Jackson was divorced from Dan Berenson. However, it had been relatively amicable. Amongst other things, she still thought of Tom and Jake as her nephews. Dan and Naomi had been driven apart by busy careers, him as a newscaster and her as a tax lawyer. She knew there were things worse than the IRS, but would learn how much worse.
"Jordan and Sara aren't hearing a damn thing," Rachel insisted on her sisters' behalf.
"Yeah, we're too young for this shit, let alone them. And besides, they might not be able to stay quiet," Marco pointed out on two fronts. Marco, Cassie and Tobias were all only children. Steve and Dan had a sister Ellen who now lived in another town with her husband and their four children. They were safe there; so were Jean's family in some other city. They'd definitely be left out of it.
For now, the Animorphs were still stalling until another Andalite fleet arrived. Their spirits were boosted by the result of this raid on the Yeerk Pool; it was not the end, not even the beginning of the end, but perhaps the end of the beginning.
