Note: Some scenes are third person, when the focus is Serrure. All other scenes are first person, from Billy's POV, like in the Animorphs books.
Serrure drums his fingers against his thigh, the pressure and rhythm distracting him from the droning of his Government teacher.
Aliens are taking over the world, and they expect him to learn about the War of 1812.
Serrure hasn't been bored in months, and he isn't sure he can be happy about that. Before, Loki 645 would have distracted him with puns or a running commentary on his teacher's wardrobe. Now, Serrure is finally alone in his head.
It's a good thing. It's a wonderful thing.
Serrure just didn't expect to miss the company.
He turns his head to look over his shoulder. There's Cassie's seat, but of course it's empty now. The principal announced her disappearance over the morning announcements, and encouraged anyone with any information about her whereabouts to come to the front office to speak to the police. Of course none of the eight people who actually know where she is would ever fall for that.
Serrure remembers seeing the drawn, tear-streaked faces of her mother and step-father. He wonders whether the grief is real, or faked by yeerks dwelling inside their skulls. He wonders if Loki 645 would have grieved like that if Don disappeared. Ze had been starting to warm up to him by the end of-
Serrure shakes his head. The yeerk is gone, and good riddance.
"Serrure?" The teacher asks, pronouncing it in the guttural, American way rather than the French. "Did you have a question?"
"No m'am," he answers. He lowers his head and pretends to take notes.
It's my second full day with the yeerk riding along in my head, and everything's been going fine. Even the trip to the yeerk pool went off without a hitch, although I think I can still hear the screams when I close my eyes.
I tell myself that spending all that time down there will help me to memorize their defenses, that one day it will lead to us freeing all of the hosts kept in cages.
I tell myself a lot of things.
Right now I'm telling myself that I should really have done my math homework, because it doesn't look like Mrs. H will be buying any of my excuses this time. The tall, broad woman stands at the front of the classroom and tells us all to pass the homework forward. Even though I know I haven't done it, I dig in my backpack for the crumpled, empty worksheet in the vain hope that some of it will be filled in.
I spread it onto my desk, trying to flatten out the wrinkles at the very least. All it has written on it is my name. I am so screwed.
But-
My right hand darts out and takes up a pencil. It flashes across the page, filling in numbers and symbols almost as fast as my eyes can follow.
"Billy!" Mrs. H says sternly. "If you have not finished the assignment, that is your own fault. Pass forward whatever you have completed."
I force the hand to stop writing, and pass the paper to the girl who sits in front of me, who then adds it to her own and passes it on.
'What were you doing?' I demand to the yeerk in my head.
'Helping,' Loki 645 answers easily, with the mental equivalent of a shrug. 'I only made it to problem 6, but-'
'You can't just do that without asking.' My heart hammers in my chest. Maybe this was a terrible idea. If Loki can't even let go of control for two school days, how will we learn to work together for the foreseeable future?
'Very well,' Loki 645 agrees, clearly only humoring me, 'Next time I'll let you fail.'
'This is my body, Loki,' I remind zir. 'You're a passenger, not a copilot.'
The wave of emotion I feel from Loki makes it clear ze doesn't agree.
'It's incredibly hard to sit back and watch when your adrenal glands are acting up so much. If I wasn't familiar with human school from S- from my last host, I'd think it was an elaborate series of tortures.'
'You can help when I ask for it,' I repeat. 'Nothing else.'
'Fine.'
Maybe Loki would have said something else, some sarcastic comment or backhanded piece of advice, but then Mrs. H walks to the door and lets in a group of seniors- kids in Kate's grade.
"Is it Homecoming season already?" Greg mutters next to me. I ignore him, because he's an asshole.
"Class, your fellow students have taken time out of their own busy days to speak to you about the recent tragedy. I expect you to be on your best behavior."
We all chorus "Yes, Mrs. H," as unenthusiastically as we can get away with. Sometimes I suspect Mrs. H thinks we're kindergarten students instead of high school sophomores.
'You know, the yeerks approve of your school system,' Loki 645 mentions offhand, 'it does very well at preparing you all to take orders.'
I'm not sure whether to laugh at that. It seems safer not to encourage Loki.
"Hi, I'm Lucy, and we represent the Sharing," the leader of the seniors tells us, "We're a recreational and social group on campus. I'm sure you know that we lost one of our own recently: Cassie went missing two days ago. She was a part of the Sharing, but she was also a member of the school, and we at the Sharing wanted to reach out and offer our support to her friends and classmates during this rough time. We're offering grief counseling down at the rec center, but some people just need a distraction or a reason to keep active. Everyone is always welcome at the Sharing."
Lucy's fellow members echo her bright sunny smile, and I wonder if it looks creepy to anyone else. Maybe it's just me, because I know that the Sharing is a front for yeerk activity, and that every 'full' member has a slug lurking behind their eyes-
'Her yeerk is called Amora 529.'
-just like I do, actually.
I look away from Lucy and feel a bit sick. Of course the Sharing will be taking advantage of Cassie's 'disappearance'. I bet they're hoping to sniff out where she's hiding, too.
'It's very likely,' Loki 645 agrees.
'We have to tell the team.'
That night, Segurre sits at the kitchen table, homework spread out in front of him.
He scrawls a few numbers down, then erased them again. He probably should have paid more attention in math class these last few months, but nothing really felt like it mattered, at the time. How do you bring yourself to care about polynomials when your life is being controlled by an alien? How do you learn when you're scared all the time?
It doesn't matter, not really, not when the Earth might be under yeerk control by this time next year, but what if this is the thing that catches their attention? What if the math teacher is controlled by a yeerk? What if the principal notices Serrure's math grade slipping and wonders why Loki 645 has allowed Serrure to fail? What if they find out he's free?
Serrure puts the pencil down and takes a deep breath.
"Hey."
Serrure looks up. Don stands in front of him, leaning against the table for balance. He's smiling, and his blond hair is pulled back in a ponytail, which means he's probably just come back from classes himself.
"What's up?" his brother asks. "Anything I can do to help?"
Serrure shakes his head sadly, because while once he thought Don could do anything, he now knows better.
Don isn't fooled, and carefully lowers himself down into a chair. Don's left knee got crushed in a car accident years ago, and it will never have the mobility it once had. He uses a cane sometimes, but doesn't bother with it when he's at home.
Serrure has a thought.
"Actually…"
"Yeah, kid?" Don looks him straight in the eye, like he isn't just a scrawny 14-year old, like he's an equal, someone who matters.
"What do you do if you know something terrible is happening, and you're not strong enough to stop it?" Serrure knows that even this might be too much to tell Don, but what else is he supposed to do? Who else can he go to who won't want something from him?
Don leans back in his chair, giving Serrure's question the thought it deserves.
"That's a hard one. I guess… you accept that one person can't change the world alone, and do as much as you can anyway. Maybe you can't stop this terrible thing from happening, but maybe you don't have to do it alone?" Don raises his eyebrows at his little brother, and Serrure knows it's an opening to ask for Don's help. He can't know. He can't be closer to this than he already is. Serrure is pretty sure that Don isn't a yeerk host- Loki 645 would have been informed if there was another ally so close by. But if Don makes the wrong move or falls in with the wrong crowd, he could be infested any day.
"Thanks Don," Serrure says instead, smiling up at his brother as if nothing's wrong. As if hundreds of people aren't living out his personal hell as they speak.
"Not a problem."
I kept thinking about the Sharing and Cassie for the rest of the day. About how she's stuck living with Noh-Varr now, about how we can't even afford to get word to her parents that she's safe. They're probably already infested, now. (Was it even worth it?)
I don't want to let this go. I don't want to stand back and watch the yeerks take control of whatever is left of her life here.
'What else can we do?' Loki 645 asks curiously, but all I have are a bunch of disconnected ideas, not a solid plan. I send those thoughts to Loki anyway.
Ze sends back surprise and a quiet thoughtfulness.
'Got a better idea?' I ask zir.
'No,' Loki 645 admits, 'But I think I can supply some structure to yours.'
The seniors get out of school half an hour before we do, so I don't manage to grab Kate and Eli before they go home for the day. Instead, I catch Teddy's eye and pull him into the supply closet next to the nurse's office right after the last bell rings.
"I want to sabotage the Sharing's recruitment meeting tonight."
"Why do I get the feeling you haven't told the others?" Teddy asks.
"Probably because I haven't."
"Wonderful. Ok. At least let me grab America and Tommy before they go home-"
He ducks out into the hallway before I can tell him the rest of the plan, or suggest a better meeting place. Great. Because four teenagers hiding out in a closet isn't suspicious or anything.
'If we get caught, I have several excuses that sound much more believable than 'secretly fighting a guerilla war against aliens',' Loki 645 offers. I catch the gist of one of them floating around in my head, and I decide I don't want to know the rest.
We're in position, America reports several hours later. Her voice is loud and clear in my head, despite her body being twenty feet away and currently the size and shape of a cockroach. In my nervousness I almost glance toward her hiding place, but Loki 645 grabs control for the split-second it takes to stop me.
Those brownies smell awesome, my brother interjects. Hey Billy, snag one for me. Or- wait, would the yeerks poison the food? No one's that evil, are they? The technology that allows Tommy to speak in our minds while he's in the body of an insect actually makes his speech more intelligible than it usually is. I'm not sure it's actually possible to slur words telepathically.
Beside me, Teddy continues his conversation without pause.
There are about twenty-five kids at the Sharing info meeting, besides me and Teddy. Most of them are from Cassie's grade, but there are a few older kids scattered around, and also a few who I think are still in middle school. I shiver at the thought of someone so young becoming infested.
Teddy puts his arm around my shoulders, disguising my disgust as cold.
"Thank you all so much for coming," Lucy announces once the brownies are gone. "The Sharing is an open, supportive place where people from all walks of life can come together and live life to the fullest." I wonder if the infomercial-ness is a yeerk thing or a cult thing. "There are no obligations here tonight, we just wanted to give you all an opportunity to see what we're about here at the Sharing and allow you to decide whether we could be right for you." She smiles, all teeth.
'That yeerk is terrible at motivational speeches,' Loki 645 complains. 'I could do so much better than that.'
I imagine what would have happened if Serrure had invited the team to the Sharing before we found out it was a yeerk front. Loki 645 could have lured us into an ambush at any time.
"Our volunteers are passing out slips of paper," Lucy continues, undaunted. "It's a little game to help you get to know each other. Each square has a hobby or a characteristic written in it. Go around the room and talk to each other to find someone who fits into each box!" She hands a stack of unevenly-cut yellow construction paper to a group of seniors in green shirts.
A brunette I vaguely recognize from last year's Earth Science class smiles blandly at me and hands me a piece of paper and a cheap plastic pen- the kind you get at the dollar store in packs of 12.
I glance down at the words reflexively, despite the fact that no one will get the chance to finish the activity if everything goes as planned.
'Looking for the 'symbiotic yeerk host' square?' Loki 645 asks. 'I think you'll be disappointed.'
'That would be incredibly honest of them, if there was,' I respond, my eyes skimming over 'born outside the country', 'has an older sister', 'plays a sport', 'has green eyes', 'knows all the lyrics to Bohemian Rhapsody', and 'favorite color is yellow'.
"Who writes this shit?" Teddy whispers to me, apparently reading over his own paper.
Oooh, someone dropped a brownie! my brother's voice announces in my head. Mine! I'm not sure whether that's Tommy's usual impulsiveness speaking, or if the cockroach's instincts have gotten the better of him.
Don't you fucking dare, Tommy. STAY IN POSITION UNTIL THEY SIGNAL US! America yells back via thought-speech.
Teddy and I share an uneasy glance, but we can't respond telepathically while we aren't in morph. Teddy tried to explain to me once why he can't use thought-speech in human form, but to be honest we had just started dating and I was much more interested in staring at his mouth. Whoops.
'How you guys managed to avoid detection for so long, I'll never know,' Loki 645 sighs.
I ignore my yeerk's running commentary and refocus my mind on the mission. We're here to gauge how popular the Sharing is getting with the freshman class, how enthusiastic any of these kids are about joining. If they're just here for free food, we won't have to do much to dissuade them from coming back- America and Tommy running around the snack table as cockroaches will ensure that no one is tempted to come back to the Sharing for the free dessert.
On the other hand, if they're actually buying the whole 'unconditional acceptance, brotherhood of peoples' shtick, even a couple bugs won't keep them out of yeerk hands for long.
Teddy gives me one last squeeze on the arm, then wanders off to socialize. My gaze scans the crowded room, looking for someone who isn't already engaged in conversation.
I wander around the perimeter, and eventually end up at the snack table where a short girl in a knit hat is talking to- Serrure.
Shit.
Before I can sneak away (and how suspicious would that look, to the yeerk-controlled volunteers?), Serrure spots me.
He doesn't say anything, but his expression freezes. I can't read his face like I used to- when Loki 645 was in control, I got to know what every eyebrow twitch and every turn of the lip meant, but Serrure's face is different now.
'What do I do?' I ask Loki 645 frantically. Someone is going to notice this. Someone will notice that we aren't even supposed to know each other but we're freaking out and someone will question Serrure and figure out he doesn't have a yeerk and then-
'Fuck-' Loki curses, and takes control.
Our expression evens out into one of manufactured sympathy.
"Hi," my voice says to my former teammate. "You're Serrure, right? Were you a friend of Cassie's?"
Loki 645 holds out my hand to Serrure, who considers it as one might consider a rotting fish.
"Are," the girl Serrure is with corrects. "She's missing, not dead. We are her friends."
"Right, sorry," Loki replies in chagrin, withdrawing our hand. "I didn't catch your name."
"Molly." The girl is frowning at us, and I wonder if she's infested like Cassie and Serrure were.
'Probably not,' Loki answers, unasked. 'I don't remember her, and if you hadn't noticed, all of the Controllers are putting on their Friendly Faces today. This girl looks like she wants to shank you.'
'Controllers?'
'Yeerks controlling their hosts: Controllers,' Loki clarifies.
'Oh.'
"Hey, so do you have any of these boxes, or…?" I ask awkwardly, brandishing the paper. Molly scoffs and rolls her eyes, but reached out for the paper. As soon as I hand it to her, she begins folding it into a paper airplane.
Well, that's one person who isn't impressed with the Sharing's pitch.
Molly, Serrure and I manage to make a pretty efficient assembly line of paper airplanes, even with me and Serrure ignoring each other's existence. Molly takes this in stride, and provides a running commentary on the best way to fold paper airplanes for various uses.
"-if you want it to fly a long way in a straight line, but if you want it to fly around the corner and hit someone, you can fold it like this," Molly explains, taking another Sharing leaflet from the pile on the counter to demonstrate her technique.
I keep an ear open to the conversations happening around us, but it mostly has nothing to do with the Sharing itself. A couple of kids in the corner are talking about what Sean did to get detention last week, the girls next to us are trying to remember Cassie's last name, and I think there's a couple behind me who are making out, from the muffled noises I hear.
A hand settles on my shoulder, and I jump before Teddy's voice reassures me as to the hand's owner.
"A found a couple lonely freshmen, but most of these kids are here for the food, I think," Teddy whispers into my ear.
I nod and smile at him as if he's said something sweet.
"Yeah, me too."
Teddy gives me a questioning look, so I take it as my cue.
"Do you think they have any cookies left?" I ask him, in what I hope sounds like a hopeful voice.
Serrure gives me an odd look and glances over the snack table, well picked-over by hungry students.
"Maybe you could ask one of the volunteers," Teddy suggest helpfully, ignoring the obvious lack of food.
I turn and survey the room, making sure to note where the volunteers in neon t-shirts are. I lock eyes with one boy about my age and walk toward him. As I clear the snack table I swing my foot a little too wide and 'accidentally' kick the leg so that the whole table bounces a bit.
That's our cue! Tommy announces joyously.
About damn time, America agrees.
Cockroaches don't have great hearing, but they feel vibrations just fine.
Molly, the girl with the paper airplanes, screams in disgust as two American Cockroaches scuttle across the snack table, climbing over empty foil trays in search of crumbs.
'It is an intrinsically human reaction to gather and watch when someone screams,' Loki notes as a group of students crowd the table to see what it was that horrifies Molly so. A chorus of moans and squeals rises as one roach darts out of a bag of potato chips and into the box of plastic spoons.
One brave soul tries to make it through the crowd, brandishing a shoe, and I figure that we'd better arrange for the getaway before we find out if Tommy and America can survive as much as real roaches can.
"I'll kill them!" Teddy yells into the crowd before lunging at the table, missing a roach by several inches. He's just slamming his fists on the surface, but it looks and sounds very impressive, even if I'm sure he's being careful not to actually hit anything.
One roach darts behind a bottle of Pepsi. Teddy places one hand flat on the table next to the bottle to steady himself while the other smashes down near the chips.
It's simple slight of hand: direct attention with one hand, while the other-
A cockroach scurries from behind the soda bottle and into Teddy's long sleeve. I am, I hope, the only person looking.
'See, this is much better!' Loki 645 crows, 'subtlety, plausible deniability, I like this plan.'
'This was your plan,' I remind zir.
'You don't say.'
Kate and Eli are annoyed the next day when we fill them in on what they missed, but they agree that we need to be able to take opportunities as they come, not always wait for the whole group.
"You could have called," Eli points out.
Teddy mimes picking up a phone. "Oh, hi Eli's grandma. Can you put Eli on the phone? No, we just wanted his opinion of our plan to infiltrate an alien youth group meeting. He's busy, you say? I'll wait."
"What we need is a code," Tommy decides.
"This is going to be really stupid, I can already tell," America groans.
My team is snarking at each other, Cassie's parents are probably infested, and we're no closer to actually freeing more hosts or sending the yeerk packing. Still, it's not all bad. Serrure's in the clear with the Sharing, the freshman class are already spreading horror stories about last night's Sharing meeting, and we stopped another yeerk plan with zero casualties.
For a team of teenagers fighting against an alien invasion, I think we're doing pretty well.
