My name is Tom. Just Tom. I can't just go around giving out my last name, or not around here. Three months ago, I wouldn't have considered myself to be all that important, except maybe as a host body to my awful Yeerk. But things have changed since then. I'm no longer an involuntary Controller, but a member of the Peace Movement, a host body and friend to Aftran Nine-Four-Two of the Hett Simplatt Pool. Since I wasn't officially assigned to her, and the empire claims that she's dead, it would be kind of fatal if this information got out. Not just for me, but for my kid brother, his friends, and the planet as a whole.

If you're reading this and understanding it, you already know about the Yeerks. I already told my story about how Aftran became my Yeerk that you can read here. No offense, but I don't want to delve into all of that again here. Mostly because I've already told that story, and don't want to tell the same story twice.

Aftran's been with me for three months. The first half of that was a trial period, a way to see if I could actually have a normal life with a Yeerk in my head. It was that, or fake my death and live with the Hork-Bajir. Aftran wasn't exactly a necessary evil, but she was an unknown, and after being an involuntary Controller to two horrible Yeerks in the span of over two years, I was pretty skeptical about what having a "nice" Yeerk in my head would entail. Good thing Jake and I laid out the rules to Aftran before I let her into my head. But, looking back, it was probably better for me than for her. Knowing her as well as I do now, she would have done everything I asked her even if it wasn't spelled out as part of a deal to let her into my head.

It wasn't easy, in the beginning. I was still trying to recover from the two Yeerks who felt it was their calling in life to break me as a host. Cruelness, from a Yeerk, I understood. Kindness felt-well, alien.

It took time. Patience, on her end, I'm sure. Of course, Aftran was decent and kind to my from the start, and a lot more gentle with me than either of the other two had been. She didn't mind my honesty, didn't punish me, or threaten to. Her main goal, it felt, was making sure I got better.

With that in mind, I don't remember when, exactly, I went from seeing Aftran as an ally to a friend. Or, when I went from accepting my new situation as the best of two possible less-than-horrible, yet clearly less-than-ideal, options to-if not exactly a long term solution, at least something that was decent.

After all, in the beginning of this new reality, this new normal, the fact that Jake trusted her meant that it was okay for me to do so. Granted, I knew that he wouldn't let Aftran in his head under any circumstances short of saving either of their lives, and maybe, not even for hers. There are allies, and then there are friends. Aftran was an ally. Maybe, Cassie saw her as a friend-okay, Cassie definitely saw her as a friend, but the others didn't. I couldn't blame them, entirely. They had been fighting the Yeerks for almost two years, by now. There had to be some rule that when you fight against an entire race of people, you had to ignore the idea that there were individuals who didn't adhere to the standards of the group you were fighting against. If everyone, or mostly everyone, in a race was evil, then it was perfectly acceptable to kill civilians. And besides, were there really Yeerk civilians? Sure, maybe the ones who were just swimming around in the Yeerk Pool, the ones without hosts. But, even then, they were still potential enemies. The Yeerk Empire kept a strong hold on its people, telling them that all races were beneath them, just a bunch of host bodies to be infested so that Yeerks could take their rightful place as rulers of the universe.

For the first couple of weeks after Aftran became my Yeerk, I wondered whether it was worse to be an involuntary host (like myself) or like my brother, or even one of his friends. They weren't personally infested, but they must have felt like the weight of the planet was on their shoulders. It was, too. At least, until the Andalites came back to fight the Yeerks. That's what Jake told me. Keep the Yeerks from doing as much damage as possible until the Andalite military came in and fought them off. Jake and the others were defense. The Andantes, they were the offense.

And here I'd been, for the past two and a half years, barely even existing as an involuntary host, believing that the only ones who knew what it was like were those in my exact situation. Ones who were hardly in the position to provide any kind of support, except maybe emotional support, every three days in the cages.

So, yeah. It was, in the beginning, difficult to see Aftran as much more than an ally. Someone who would take up residence in my head, give me more freedom than my other Yeerks had-which had been exactly none-and try to be a source of understanding while still a Yeerk. Moreover, it wasn't like she'd been a civilian. Aftran had taken involuntary hosts before, including a small kid who was probably still traumatized by the whole experience, and didn't see much that was wrong with it until Cassie came along and tried to show her why her actions had been wrong.

Not that, as Aftran had told me and as I would have guessed on my own, she'd known all along. I mean, if you were a Yeerk and lucky enough to receive only voluntary hosts, then sure, you could probably buy the empire's logic. Other species were weaker, and wanted to be controlled by Yeerks. You could probably make that argument for the Taxxon's, except for the fact that no one who didn't have a Hork-Bajir or Andalite body didn't want to stand within ten feet of a well fed Taxxon, much less a hungry one. Even Yeerks couldn't do much to control their hunger. I figured that if they had been involuntary, the Yeerks wouldn't have utilized the resources to take them. Class 1.5-able to be infested, but their bodies were way more trouble than they were worth.

Anyway, I'm rambling. What I mean is that, at some point, Aftran became more than an ally to me. Part of it, probably, was the proximity to her, and the fact that we knew we had to be honest with each other. We kind of depended on each other-or at least, each other's cooperation-to remain alive. Safe from the empire. Besides, based on what Jake and Cassie had told me before I agreed to let Aftran in my head, she'd be way kinder than Temrash or Gariss had ever been.

So, yeah. We'd been allies, at first. Sharing a body, with Aftran giving me control whenever she didn't need it for Sharing meetings or trips to the Yeerk Pool. It felt a little strange, at first, being able to move and speak without her doing it for me. I knew that some Yeerks with voluntary hosts gave them some control, even when they were still there. Or, well, had heard of it, from Temrash. He'd tried to bribe me with it, to stop fighting him, in the beginning. But by the time I would have considered accepting a deal from that jerk, I was too broken to fight, and he hadn't been the type to do anything for a host unless there was something in it for him. So, maybe, he'd been bluffing the whole time. But Aftran confirmed it-well, as much as she could.

(The Peace Movement isn't just about only enslaving hosts that don't mind it, Tom,) she'd told me, about a week into our alliance. (It's about sharing control. Sharing a body.)

Still. There was a big difference between what maybe a hundred Yeerks-most of them who didn't have hosts-believed about infestation, and what those who actually had voluntary hosts thought. On the other hand, humans were voluntary for a reason. Sure, there were some who would have been content to give up everything to their Yeerk with the exception of a couple of hours every three days. I imagined that they thought their lives were so bad that if someone else wanted to live it, even a parasitic alien, then they were happy to be just an observer. All the same, I had trouble believing that all of them were like that. The Sharing's official statistics for voluntary humans was close to 50%. Either they were just that good at picking people who had horrible lives, or some felt that there was something in it for them. I figured that their Yeerks had to give them some level of control. Even an hour or so a day. Enough so that they didn't feel like a complete slave, like they actually had a say in the matter.

Probably, their Yeerks didn't emotionally abuse them, either.

So, like I said, I couldn't tell you exactly when I stopped seeing Aftran as a necessary ally and, instead, as a friend. I know it happened after I agreed, officially, to let her remain in my head until the war ended.

Otherwise, I wouldn't have missed her so much when she had to leave my head for four days. For Grandpa G's funeral.