I must have kissed Eric for three minutes straight (no ironic puns intended).
Of course, it took some time for him to believe me. They certainly didn't take my word for it. Even as I detached myself from Jean's head and dropped to the ground, already beginning the morph back to human, they were skeptical. With good reason, I suppose – I had seen the number of mirror images that I had back at the Yeerk pool. It was strange and a little creepy to think about where my DNA might be swimming around at this point.
But morphing has very specific limitations, one of which being the inability to go straight from one morph to another. So I began to morph to Peregrine Falcon, the first morph my body had ever done (God, was that only two months ago?), although this was the first time I was performing the morph by my own will. The feather pattern barely appeared across my body before Eric was all over me, hugging me like… well, like a boy who'd gotten his lover back from the dead.
And so help me, I didn't even care what my brother might be thinking, watching his little sibling french kiss another boy. I hadn't dared to hope that I could ever hold him again, much less as a free human being.
"Heh," Eric remarked with a wide smirk, finally breaking contact. "So that's what it's like."
"Mmm?" I asked curiously, cocking an eyebrow.
Eric tapped the top of his head. "Kissing someone with a Yeerk in your brain," he said. "It was like… I dunno, like a three-way kiss or something. Weird, but great."
"You're a Controller?" I asked, surprised but oddly not even remotely disturbed by it anymore.
Eric offered a confirming nod, his smile widening. I had a sneaking suspicion that the look in the eyes was Eric's and the smile was the Yeerk's.
"And you don't think you should perhaps introduce me to who else I'm kissing?" I quipped, my own smile broadening.
"Ewell Five-Nine-Three of the Sulp Niar pool," Eric's Yeerk offered in greeting, dipping Eric's body into an exaggerated bow. Then Eric straightened the body and rolled his own eyes at his Yeerk's flippancy. It was strange, how there was no doubt in my mind who was doing what at any given time in there. I could just… tell, somehow.
Shamefully, it was only then that I recalled my own brother. "And I suppose you're Delvin Two-Two-Four?" I asked, bringing him into a tight, familial embrace.
Chance grinned, shaking his head. "Nope. No one in here but me."
"Hmph," some old man murmured, watching the scene from behind Eric and Chance. There were two Hork-Bajir there as well, and a woman in the process of coming out of a Taxxon morph. Or was it a Taxxon morphing to human? I wasn't sure.
"And…" I looked at him expectantly.
"And what?" Chance asked curiously.
I jerked my thumb back towards Eric. "No commentary? No telling me I'm gross, no witty joke, no reaction whatsoever?"
Chance smiled, putting his arm around me. "Chris, aliens are real. I was rounded onto a train, survived a massive explosion by riding in an alien spacecraft, watched people turn into animals and bug-aliens and a slug fall out of a woman's ear and turn into the brother I spent the last day mourning over. Compared to all that, where you choose to stick your tongue isn't even a blip on the radar." I felt a surge of affection for my older brother. We'd ripped on each other for years, of course, but the underlying assumption was always that we loved and cared for each other. Still, it was a rare moment to hear him actually confirm it.
But brothers don't really do mushy for any extended period of time, and I wasn't about to let his moment of weakness pass. "You mourned for me?" I asked incredulously, smirking.
Chance rolled his eyes. "I suppose I should be shocked that you could actually get anyone to kiss you," he teased, trying to regain the advantage.
I wasn't to be deterred. I turned to Eric. "Mourned?" I asked him.
It was Ewell who nodded Eric's head. "Cried like a baby," host and Controller said in unison.
It was a bit of a climb to get out of the crevice that Marbella Four-One-Three, the human-Controller with the Taxxon morph, had made for us. She was mildly insulted when I asked whether her natural form was human or Taxxon.
"As if a Taxxon could even handle morphing," she said with an air of distaste, like she wanted to spit on the ground. There was a certain cold ruthlessness to the way she said it, that made me think perhaps she was within her host involuntarily, but I let the thought pass for the moment. After all, she was working with us well enough.
The old man, Maylis Three-Nine-Eight, was definitely an involuntary Controller, or so he, himself, would claim with an almost tireless boredom as they climbed. "Evan Hoburn states that it has been one day, fourteen hours and twelve minutes and that I am still not welcome in his body."
"Why don't you just let him say it himself?" I asked, after hearing the bland declaration for the fourth or fifth time.
Maylis twisted Evan's lips into a sneer. "And rob him of his vindication? Never. Let the crotchety old fool whine about the merciless Yeerk." It seemed a contemptible statement, but there was something about the way the Yeerk said it, especially the strain he put on the word 'merciless' as he struggled with Evan's frail body to pull himself a little further up the trail. I found myself wondering how much of the pain he was deliberately shielding his host from, blocking the signals with his own nerve endings.
Eventually we made it to a half-destroyed stairwell, what was left of one of the collapsed Yeerk pool entrances. It curved up into the janitor's closet of a mostly intact elementary school.
"Hmph," Eric murmured, looking around at fingerpaintings hanging on the wall, most at least partially singed or covered in ash. "Nap time, cookies and milk and an alien invader wrapped around your brain. The Yeerks really sunk to some pretty deep lows." Then, oddly, "he" answered himself, Ewell speaking through his voice to all of us. "Yes, my people have done many contemptible things on this planet. Apologies seem insufficient."
"It's a start," Evan replied, his face looking surprised for a moment before Maylis re-asserted control, straightening it out. "What?" the Yeerk protested, looking at our collective stares.
"I don't think the floor over here is very stable," I pointed out, stepping along the edge of the corridor. "Careful."
Jek Tynith, the non-Controller Hork-Bajir in the group, grabbed a random piece of art off the wall. "Jek find map," he declared triumphantly, holding it out to me. "Sub-Visser want map?" he suggested helpfully.
I offered him a meek smile, taking the drawing. Indeed, it had crayon drawings of the school and two houses around it, with stick figure people coming and going. "Ahhh, yes. I see which way now. Thanks, Jek." Jek craned his head upward, beaming from the praise.
"We crawled in through the window in the boys' bathroom," Chance said, pointing down the hall to the left. "Or, well… 'window' probably isn't the word. 'Big gaping hole in the wall' probably covers it better."
Our every footstep made the structure groan in response, and several times, bits of the ceiling and the walls would fall in protest, but eventually we made our way to the hole and out into the early evening sky. We were directly due west from Ground Zero… putting the two Controller camps on either side of us. Already, they were beginning to merge, small convoys travelling from the northwest section travelled towards the command post I had left, in the southwest.
I sighed. This is the part I didn't want to think about. "Okay," I said, turning around and addressing the group. "We're going to need to get the Kandrona, before the Visser's Blade ship arrives. Get it to Yeerk resistance forces." I stepped right up to Jean, glaring at her in the eyes. "So… are you going to do this peacefully, or do I have to have them hold you down?"
Jean's only response was a glare of cold steel, and I wondered for a moment if perhaps she hated me more than she ever had any Yeerk. Then the cold irony that, very soon, I would know exactly how she felt, struck me, a thought that brought a sad kind of smile to my lips.
"What… why would we have to hold her?" Ewell asked, confused.
"Her agenda's not the same as ours," I explained to Eric's Yeerk. "She'd rather see every Yeerk on this planet starve than risk the Kandrona falling back into the hands of the conquest-hungry factions amongst your people." I gestured towards her. "The Yeerks think she's Visser Eighty-Three's host. It has to be her in command over there."
I could tell it was Eric, not Ewell, who got it, and replied incredulously, "You're going to re-infest her? Against her will?"
I nodded solemnly. "Only way."
"No it's not," Maylis/Evan pointed out. "You're morph-capable, you could simply acquire her."
"And do what with the original?" I asked incredulously, gesturing at the woman in front of me. I hated putting it like that, hated talking about her like she was just an object, a host body. But what I intended to do was as detestable to me as anyone else, and as much as I hated to admit it, talking about her like an object made it a little easier for me.
Besides, it pissed her off, and I was angry enough at her to consider that a bonus. "Who is it you think I'm going to run to, Chris?" She gestured at the desolation around us.
I shrugged. "All I know is, I don't want to see anyone else die," I said simply. "Yeerk, human, Hork-Bajir, anyone. And that's not your agenda. I know you're worried about what they could do to your son-"
"You don't know a thing, Chris," Jean protested angrily.
I shrugged, stating what I'd thought before. "Well, I suppose as soon as I'm in there I'll know a lot better." I started to morph to Yeerk.
The silence was dreadful. No one seemed to so much as breath as I went through the changes, as the smily coating covered my skin and the Yeerk antennae shot out of my ears before shifting upward on my body. As I started to shrink, I sent a thought speak message to Eric. «I need you to pick me up, put me in.»
Of course, Eric wasn't in morph, so he couldn't respond telepathically. And there was a delay of several seconds, enough that I started to wonder if perhaps his objections were stronger than I'd thought. But soon I felt the pressure of a hand wrapping itself around me, and I felt the impossible sensation of being lifted several thousand times my own height. And then, finally, the faint smell of neural activity in a canyon ahead, my Yeerk instincts drawn to it like a moth to a flame. I slid my way into the neural cavity and wrapped myself around a human brain, as I'd now done almost half a dozen times. Strange, how familiar the sensation had become. Familiar and… pleasant, warm.
I was unprepared for the assault of memory as it hit me. Jean waited until I was in that serene, comfortable moment of total control before hitting me not with a string of insults, or a retort, but a powerful rush of memory and emotion so real that I felt I was trapped in the moment.
I was sitting in a Lexus, screaming in the back of my own mind. My life had been upheaved, but I still didn't understand it all yet. I had been looking at lawn mowers just an hour earlier, whining to my husband about how our younger son never had time for us anymore, when my older son approached with one of the clerks, who assured me that there was a special mower on sale in the warehouse that would be perfect for us. Tom said he'd already seen it, and he was so eager, so… animated about it, that I couldn't refuse to at least take a look at it. It was so rare to see him happy about anything other than the Sharing.
The next thing I knew, someone had hit me over the head, and when I awoke, I found that I couldn't move my hands or legs. That someone… something… was moving them instead. My husband was already behind the driver's seat. Driving too fast, talking on Tom's cell phone. I was sure it was a dream – Steve never talked on the cell phone when he drove. He had just confiscated it from Tom on the way to the store, because he had let Tom drive and Tom was doing it.
"They've already been to the cousin's, Sub-Visser," I heard him say, handing the cell phone back towards Tom. "It had been ransacked, evacuated."
"Clever kids," Tom noted, a sneer in his voice that sounded far too malicious to be my little boy. "Well, we're one step ahead of them now, aren't we?"
«What on Earth is going on?» I wondered, still trying desperately to speak, finding myself unable to.
Then, oddly, I heard laughter of a sort. Laughter in my own head. «Not much, really,» a voice replied. «We're going to kill your son, that's all.»
Steve took the car on an erratic turn towards the right. We were pulling up to our street.
Suddenly, a bird dove past us! A big, pretty bird with a red tail.
"Andal…!" Tom started to shout, and then stopped, cutting himself off, correcting himself. "I mean, morphed human!"
I had no idea what that meant, but I felt an anger and rage boil up in me all the same. Anger I was sure was not my own. My finger pushed the button to lower the window, and I drew some kind of a weapon – a gun! – from my purse, aiming it at the bird.
Tssssseeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeew!
The neighbor's birdbath exploded, and the bird reeled, his flight erratic. Apparently I'd come very close to hitting him.
My hand took aim again, but Tom reached upward and slapped it out of my hand. "Stop, you fool!" he cursed. "You want the whole neighborhood to see alien ray guns going off?"
"YEERK! GET OUT OF ME!" Steve bellowed, suddenly slamming on the gas, going past our house, seemingly as far away as he could get us. I could make out Jake standing in the driveway, our travelling luggage stacked behind him, his old basketball rolling ominously down the drive and into the road, where an SUV nearly collided with it.
Suddenly Steve's face hardened and he jerked the wheel, spinning the car into a controlled stop. Gravel sprayed over the neighbor's yard. The car was now pointed directly at Jake.
Steve was staring angrily at our younger son, revving the engine. He intended to run our baby over!
But Jake was staring back just as angrily. Staring and… and shrinking. Feathers were beginning to sprout from his body, and his mouth seemed to be stretching out.
And I could hear his voice, in my head. His voice, strong, firm, barely a whisper, but that whisper contained more subtle strength than even I, his mother, his greatest cheerleader in life, had ever given him credit for. «This is for them,» the voice said. «For my real family. To give them hope and, finally, the truth. And for their Yeerk captors. To give them warning.»
And from somewhere inside of myself, in that strange place where the anger and the rage had come from, in the place that I was sure was the source of the puppetmaster pulling my strings, I felt pure, unbridled fear.
The memory ended, and after a moment, I regained my sense of self. I was Chris, a human in Yeerk morph, not Jean. Not Jean. She was simply the host body I was controlling.
But with the memory she had shared, she was reminding me. Reminding me that she wasn't just any human, and that there would be consequences for me, terrible consequences, when Jake discovered what I was putting her through.
At least I assumed that was the message. After that onslaught, I at least felt chastised enough not to go peeking at her thoughts to see for myself if that's what she meant. And of course, I was unable to hide my emotions from her – she could sense that she had shaken me. «Are you really sure they're worth it?» she asked me snidely.
«Do I?» I asked her. And then I answered her the only way I could – with a shared memory.
It was from just a week ago.
«Orkath, I'm scared,» I admitted. «Maybe I shouldn't room up with him this time.»
«It'll be better if you do,» Orkath comforted. «Even if it's bad… not knowing is hurting you more.» Out loud, he said, "Do me a favor, Ewell… when we go onto the pier, tell them you're morph-capable involuntary."
Eric… Ewell seemed shocked. "Sub-Visser?" he questioned. "I'm not morph-capable, I…"
Orkath held up my hand. "I know you're not, but I've been under a lot of stress lately and, between you and me, I need to batter my host a little bit. It'll be easier going through the next few days if he's whining and moaning about time spent with your host in the cage."
Eric's face looked grim as he nodded. "Yes, Sub-Visser," he acknowledged, falling into step beside us as we headed for the Yeerk pool entrance. Orkath started to steal glances at him, maybe because he still felt my attraction to Eric, or maybe because he was trying to be nice to me. I remembered how he used to tease me – it felt like so long ago – by looking at Eric briefly and then looking away just when I started to feel that romance excitement. Now, he was taking good, long, hard looks, and I couldn't have been more depressed, the uncertainty of how Eric was adjusting to life as a Controller eating away at me. «Stop, please,» I murmured, and Orkath quietly obeyed, turning my eyes back towards the stairs and the sludgy pool below.
The stares hadn't gone unnoticed, though. "Something wrong, Sub-Visser?" Eric/Ewell asked, trying not to sound intimidated.
Orkath said the first thing that came to his mind. "Not you, Ewell. I was thinking about the group your host is in… Civil Air Patrol, was it?"
"Yes, Sub-Visser," Ewell agreed. "Their squadron was mobilized briefly on the morning after the National Guard attacks, turning spectators away from the battle scenes."
Orkath nodded my head. "Do we have any people in command-level positions?"
Ewell shrugged. "My own host himself commands a flight of cadets, mostly non-Controllers. I believe a couple of the adults, the 'Senior members,' are also our people."
Orkath rubbed my chin as we stepped onto the infestation pier. "We may be able to use that to our advantage," he said. Walking up to the Hork-Bajir guards, he declared, "Morph-capable involuntary. Ramonite box seven."
«Well,» Orkath said, «Time to eat. I'm starving. Good luck with Eric.»
Perhaps because I understood it to be a religious phrase, I felt the urge to wish my Yeerk well as he left my body. «May the light of the Kandrona shine on you, Orkath One-Seven-Two.»
As he slipped out, the Yeerk replied, «And may the Lord be with you, Christopher Windward.»
I was still being respectful of Jean's thoughts, but I couldn't help but notice her emotions. And her view of the memory, her direct contact with my mind and feelings at the time, was undoubtedly all the reply she needed.
Still, I said it anyway. «Yeah, they're worth it.»