Chapter 20

I couldn't sleep, of course. Not for lack of being tired or wanting to sleep; I don't think I had more than a few hours of sleep the past two nights. It wasn't because of my empty stomach either, although that wasn't helping.

I just couldn't stop thinking about Cassie. How we'd almost lost her to the Yeerks through sheer dumb luck, and how she ended up betting her life to save mine later. How I still hadn't told her how I really felt, despite us literally having been inside each other's heads. How her parents really could have been made Controllers that day for all we knew, and what that would do to her.

I gave up and morphed falcon around two AM. I knew I had to be careful about morphing around my brother, Tom, because he's a Controller. But I just didn't care enough. I had to go see Cassie.

With my falcon eyes, I could tell from a mile away that the light in her room was still on. So, like me, she was probably still awake.

The next thing I noticed was that her curtains weren't drawn, and that her window was open. Had she left in bird morph, too?

That had me really worried for a few minutes. I felt like she'd at least have turned the lights off if she'd done that, unless she was in a hurry. What if her parents had been made Controllers, and they were onto her? The Yeerks could have been chasing her for hours already!

But things weren't that dire. When I finally got close enough to get the right angle through the window, I saw that she was just sitting on the side of her bed.

She was crying, though.

≺Cassie?≻

Talking to her startled her in a bad way at first, but then she jumped over to the window to look around for me. I could already see her pupils dilate to adjust to the darkness by then, but she didn't see me until right before I landed on her window frame.

She immediately grabbed me, pushing me between her arms, stomach, chest, and chin. She squished me so hard that it hurt, but I forced my bird-of-prey mind not to struggle.

"Jake, I'm so scared…" she said shakily, sending tears into my feathers.

≺A-are your parents –≻

"What if they saw or recorded me on some surveillance feed? What if Visser One escapes? I keep jumping at every sound I hear, they could be coming for me, like when they were looking for Rachel and Jordan… I'm so glad you're here…"

All rationality faded away, seeing and hearing her like that. I silenced that nagging voice in the back of my head, the one that was telling me that I'd have to be back in bed before morning. That was a problem for later. Now there was just Cassie.

So I demorphed. As soon as I had arms to speak of, I put them around her. She never let go of me as I grew.

She talked to me about all the things that were troubling her. I didn't say much, I just listened. And there was a lot to listen to.

How unsafe she felt, even in her own home, having been dragged away from there by police Controllers two times now. Especially after having been out of morph in plain sight of Visser One and two of her lead Hork-Bajir. How stupid she felt for still feeling that way now that Visser One was locked up and those Hork-Bajir and their Yeerks were dead.

How she just couldn't get Visser Three's brief but horrifying torture session out of her head. How close Jessica had actually come to telling Visser Three everything he wanted to know in just those few minutes. How she knew that she wouldn't have lasted any longer.

How bad she felt about almost dying or getting caught while she and her parents were on such bad terms. How weak she felt about having such a hard time dealing with them in the first place, when her family was supposedly the only one that hadn't been directly affected by the Yeerks. How she felt like she had to hide those feelings from us because of that, but was so utterly failing to do so.

How much it bothered her that most Yeerks aren't evil. That some, like Ekfis four and Aftran nine-four-two, would even go as far as giving their freedom and lives to do good. Yet we often end up having to kill them anyway.

Not to mention their hosts. If the Yeerks still had some say in the matter, their hosts definitely didn't. Aside from the Taxxons, none of them chose to partake in the war, to be enslaved. Yet we have to fight and sometimes kill them just the same.

How Jessica had practically begged her to kill her while they were in that cell, because she was restrained to the point of not being able to kill herself. How she'd all but agreed to do it in the end.

How terrified she was of who she felt like she was turning into, slowly but surely being desensitized by all that death. But at the same time, how guilty she felt about trying to leave the group for that reason two months ago, essentially saying that we'd have to do the hard work for her. She'd avoided that conversation topic throughout those two months, but apparently it had never been far from her mind.

Even how scared she was of what would happen to the animals in the Wildlife Rehabilitation Clinic if she and her parents would become Controllers. Leave it to Cassie to worry about wild animals just as much as she worries about herself, her family, and her friends. And still she worries that she's too insensitive.

And finally, how scared she was of something happening to me.

I kissed her. Just like that. It was like there was no other response possible to hearing all that.

We fell silent for a minute or so, still holding on to each other tightly. I eventually broke the silence.

"You did kiss me after that explosion, didn't you?"

"Of course I did… I thought it was going to be my last chance… I didn't want to die without having done that."

Then someone knocked on Cassie's bedroom door. It was so abrupt and unexpected that we almost lost our balance together as we turned to look.

"Hide!" Cassie hissed at me, and pushed me down onto the ground by her bed. But the door opened before I could crawl underneath it.

Both of Cassie's parents were standing in the door frame. They looked more worried and heartbroken than I'd ever seen them before. I think they'd even been crying.

They saw me for sure, but they didn't seem surprised that I was there. Nor did they look like they were about to throw a fit for me being alone with Cassie in the middle of the night, while both of us were only wearing our morphing outfits.

They awkwardly walked in and sat on the edge of the bed by us, looking at each other to try to work out where to begin.

Did they overhear us? How much? What do we do now? Yell 'this isn't what it looks like?'

I looked at Cassie. She was trembling, but was completely frozen otherwise. She looked almost as terrified as she had in that cell, just before I'd infested her.

I took her hand. She squeezed.

Cassie's dad spoke first.

"Honey, I… I don't know what Yeerks or Controllers or Taxxons are, but… After hearing all that, I feel like they don't have anything to do with drugs."