Rolling right along...
Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
Me no own,
So you no sue.
I didn't meet anyone's eyes. I couldn't. I stared at the floor.
"After Dib helped Zim out, some stuff happened. We went places, flew around the universe. We visited some planets in the Irk empire, and a couple elsewhere. Thwarted evil, that sort of thing. We got back just in time for the release of Vampire Piggy Hunter: Prologue a couple months ago," I said quietly.
Zim and Dib hadn't heard the whole story, either. They knew what happened after I came home, but I had never told them the story of how it happened.
"I was at the mall for the midnight release," I said. "The line was huge. There must have been 200 of us there."
I heard Dib stop breathing. The others seemed anxious, anticipating what came next.
"Then, I saw people start dropping towards the front of the line. Our experiences in space made me hold my breath. It was some sort of knockout gas. I didn't completely escape, but I came to for a sec while they were carrying us through the mall. That was the first time I saw Hork Bajir. One was dragging me by the back of my shirt. I was aware, but paralyzed," I said. Flashes of the mall swam in my head. "They dragged us to the dressing rooms in one of the stores, and then down into a huge cavern..."
Dib gulped. Everyone shifted thier weight, unsettled. So I wasn't the only one who had bad experiences in the Yeerk Pool.
"I saw them dragging people down, like an assembly line, dunking thier unconcious heads in water. For a minute, I thought they were drowning us. They lay the victims on cots. By the time I got to the front of the line, I could see the pool was filled with slugs. It looked like..." I paused. I pushed the image back out of my head. "You know what it looked like," I said, even more quietly.
I took a deep breath to steady myself. I still had nightmares about what came next... and now when I woke up and couldn't move? Sleep paralysis didn't just scare me anymore, it terrified the hell out of me.
"I passed out again before they got to me. When I came to..."
I chanced a glance up. Jake was looking intensely at me, not unkindly. He looked... empathetic? Dib was staring at the ground, pale and shaken. I knew he felt guilty for what happened to me. Despite myself, I reached for his hand. He started, staring at me, wide-eyed.
"Nobody could have prevented it," I said lowly, uncharacteristically comforting.
It could have been prevented. I could have not gone. I could have gone with Zim, who would have been able to get me out of there before the gas affected his own, more resistant immune system. I could have run when I saw people dropping, instead of just holding my breath.
Dib didn't need to hear that.
"Gaz, I'm so sorry," Cassie whispered, moving forward to put a hand on my arm. Instinctively, I jerked back before she could touch me.
"It gets worse," I muttered, trying to ignore the surprised and slightly hurt expression on the girl's face. She stepped back next to Jake, who lay a hand on her shoulder. I envied them. I wasn't sure if they were "out", but I'm pretty sure they liked each other.
"Woke up a while later. I couldn't move. I heard a cackle in my head, and for a minute I thought I was dreaming. Esplin 903 was laughing, walking me to home. As soon as I woke up, she started taunting me. She saw everything, and was going to take Dib, and use him, and take Zim. The Yeerks would kill for some of the technology that Irkens have, and she would be made a sub-visser at the very least if she brought him to the Yeerks," I said quietly.
"She wanted the glory. That's the only reason she didn't turn the information in as soon as she was in my head. She wanted the credit for leading Zim and Dib straight to Visser Three himself, without the beurocracy in between to soak up some of her recognition. At the time, Zim and Did didn't trust me with everything. They were right, honestly," I said to the frowns of the Animorphs.
"If they had trusted me to tell me that there was a bio-scan on the door of the house, Esplin 903 would have had to go to the Yeerks for backup, because she couldn't get into Zim's lab unnoticed," I said. "Zim and Dib wouldn't be here. It was mostly Zim's paranoia that paid off," I said with half of a laugh. I quickly sobered back up. It wasn't really funny.
"I fought the whole way there. She was going on about how they would be enslaved. Trapped, like I was. It... Dib may be annoying, but I wouldn't wish that helplessness on anyone. She kept me overnight, so as not to raise suspicions. I didn't sleep. I couldn't. My mind was awake, screaming to get out. I'm not used to being out of control. I do what I want, when i want, how I want. When Dib and Zim would fight, I was generally the one who wound up breaking it up, just because they were in my way. But I couldn't do anything. I couldn't even blink."
I choked on my words. "I was scared."
I could almost feel Dib's eyes widen. I didn't look at him, but I could feel how he shifted closer. I backed away a little.
"The next morning, Esplin 903 told Dib that Zim's silly robot visited me that night and took my Gameslave, and that we had to go get it or else. She was perfect. My tone of voice, the demand... There was no way to tell it wasn't me. She narrowed my eyes and clenched my fists and growled the way I would. Meanwhile, I'm screaming in my mind for her to leave my brother alone...
"I had never been so relieved to see those ridiculous garden gnomes of his take aim at me. The Yeerk only had my memories, so she made me growl and stalk up to the door. She thought they were still programmed to only target suspicious activity. Dib knew they had been outfitted with bio-scan technology after we got back from our travels. I didn't know how, but I knew... hoped that Zim would know it wasn't me." I shot the green alien a look. He was pretending to be engrossed in some data scrolling down on a nearby screen.
"I opened the door, and cables shot out of the ceiling to trap me. Dib was kind of shocked, but Zim emerged from the refrigerator with a laser gun in his hand. I mentally cheered as he pointed it at me. Dib freaked out, and nearly took him down for pointing a gun at his sister. He and the Yeerk argued. The Yeerk would have convinced him to let us go, if Zim didn't have the scanner screen swing down out of the ceiling to confirm that her DNA was foreign. Zim had heard of the Yeerks, but we had never guessed they were on Earth."
"You didn't come across any with your scanner-thingy?" Rachel interrupted. I shook my head.
"Scanning people we met wasn't exactly routine until after we found out about the Yeerk invasion," I pointed out. "It's not something you normally suspect of people." Rachel looked somewhat sheepish.
"They held me. Zim had the house take me down, deep into the lab. Even if I had escaped the cage, The Yeerk would have been lost for days before it could get out and tell anyone. Zim kept me there. He didn't let Dib near me. He didn't come near me, much, either. He had Minimoose bring me food. The Yeerk growled and snapped and never gave up her cover... Not until the Fugue began," I said darkly.
"My Yeerk... I wasn't her first host. She had eight before me. A Gedd, three Hork Bajir, and four other humans..." I felt slightly dizzy, the way I always did when the memories of those few hours came back to me. I felt the pain and horror of all of her previous hosts, and I could hear her own screams of agony.
"Zim brought Dib down to watch the slug crawl out of my ear. We all watched it shiver and die," I said. When that damned slug withered away, I cried. For the first time since I was five, I sobbed with relief and pain and fear. I wasn't going to tell them that.
I stopped to gather my words. "Ever since then, we've all been even more paranoid. Bio-scans on everyone we meet. Zim grows most of our food in the lab. I can't order from the same pizza place more than once a month. Tak—one of Zim's allies—made me this," I held up the pendant around my neck that toggled my hologram. "I couldn't be seen. I shouldn't be alive. To the Yeerks, I can't be alive. If they got hold of Zim or Dib, things could go downhill for humans really fast."
There was silence. I took a breath. "Well now you know," I said finally.
"I'm sorry."
My head snapped up. Who spoke? I caught Marco's eyes. He was the one who had initially been suspicious of me, back when we met at the clearing. He looked somewhat apologetic.
I hesitated, then shrugged.
"You had a right to be suspicious," I conceded. "We all have reasons to be suspicious," I added, glancing at Rachel. Her own cousin was a Yeerk. It would make anybody paranoid to know that.
I've heard enough," Jake said, straightening. "If you guys are satisfied, so are we. There's probably more to tell, but I trust that it will come out in time," he said, looking at his 'troops' as if daring anyone to object. I looked to Zim, who appeared slightly relieved. Dib nodded once. I shrugged.
"So," Rachel said, looking somewhat put-out, but otherwise down-to-business. "Yeerks. Army. What do we do?" Everyone looked at one another. Nothing came to mind.
Zim said something that I recognized as a very, very bad word.