"BARK! BARK! BARK!"
I woke up with a start.
Homer was barking his head off. This was exactly why I hated when the dog slept in Jake's room, which was very close to my room.
I groaned and pulled the covers up over my head. "Jake, will you shut your dog up?!" I yelled.
Homer let out a whimpering cry, like he was in pain. And then silence.
I lowered the covers. Quiet as it was, that yelp was more alarming than the barking.
I sat up. Strained my ears - Total silence. Jake loved that dog. I knew he would never actually hurt him, but something had upset Homer. I looked at my alarm clock. It was long after midnight; so late it was almost early. But I was wide awake now.
Tem thought, [It's probably nothing, but . . .]
I finished, [. . . I agree. Let's just make sure.]
I got out of bed. Moving cautiously, I couldn't hear Homer, Jake, or my parents stirring as I walked down the hall. I knocked quietly on Jake's door.
"Jake," I said softly. "Everything okay in there?"
No response.
"I'm coming in," I said. I turned the doorknob.
Jake's bedroom was dark. But the window was wide open, and light from the streetlamp outside let me see just enough. The first thing I saw was a thick vine coming through the window, stretching towards the bed, and wrapping around my brother's still body.
"Jake!"
There was a second vine wrapped around Homer. The golden retriever was lying on his side, eyes closed.
Sorry Homer, but my brother was my first priority. I ran around the dog and yanked the covers off the bed. Jake's eyes were closed and his face was peaceful, like he was just sleeping normally. But that dark green vine from the window curled up and down around him, pinning his arms to his torso. The end of the tendril was slapped against his neck and cheek, slime glistening in the faint light.
I grabbed the vine and tried to pull it off him. But as soon as my hands touched it, my vision blurred. I grew lightheaded. And I sensed . . . something. It felt kind of like when Tem searched through my memories, but it wasn't the same. This was more forceful. Mechanical. Or maybe . . .
[Tom, what -]
Tem was confused. No, the plant was confused. Wait, what? Two of us? I was sleepy. My head drooped.
[No, don't sleep!] I told myself.
[Tom! Let go!] Tem cried.
Working together, Tem and I pulled my hands away from the plant. I staggered back and shook my head, trying to get my brain awake again.
[Okay . . . So . . . It's a plant that puts you to sleep when you touch it, or something?] Once I was able to focus again, I looked through Tem's memories of studying alien species, but couldn't find any quick answers. [You ever heard of that before?]
[You can't expect me to know every thing in the universe.]
I turned on the light to see better. Jake was breathing, and I checked his pulse too, careful not to touch the vine again. I could see Homer breathing deeply as well. They didn't seem to be hurt, but I couldn't wake them. I looked out the window to see where those vines came from - and realized the situation was so much worse.
The two vines were connected to other vines stretching from house to house like a giant green spiderweb. It didn't break into every house, but several, and the plant stretched across the sky of the neighborhood and out into the distance.
I stepped away from the window and looked back at my little brother. I leaned close to his peaceful face. "Jake, if you can hear me, I'm gonna fix this. I promise."
I turned off the light.
I hurried downstairs to the kitchen and dialed the phone. Waited impatiently through the rings. "Eva? Sorry to wake you, but we have an emergency."
.
Eva was actually last to arrive. Mr. Chapman, Mr. Tidwell, and I had gathered on Chapman's front lawn, bundled up in jackets and holding flashlights.
As Eva got out of her car, I said, "You know, it just occurred to me what a really good kid I am. Before tonight, I never even thought about stealing my mom's car and sneaking out in the middle of the night."
[That's not being good. That's just how much you love sleeping,] Tem said.
[It still counts,] I replied.
The vines hung over our heads, draping across streetlamps and telephone poles. It was like an enormous net covering the town.
"Where's Alison?" Eva asked.
"Here I am!" Alison Chapman came out of her house holding a thermos and a stack of plastic cups. "If we're having a crisis in the middle of the night, I figured I should brew some coffee."
"Ohh, God bless you." Eva eagerly thanked her. Alison passed around the cups and filled them all up - There were only four cups.
"Where's mine?" I asked.
"You're a teenager. Coffee'll stunt your growth," Alison said. "Oh, wait, maybe that's cigarettes?"
"Either way, I'm already the tallest one here. I don't think it's a problem." I took the thermos from her and took a big gulp.
"Did you check on your parents?" Eva asked me.
I lowered my eyes for a moment. "Same as Jake."
She nodded. "These vines weren't near my apartment or in the city. Whatever it is, it seems to be concentrated in the suburbs." She gestured up to the Chapmans' house, which had been ignored by the vines. "At least Melissa's okay."
"We don't know, actually," Mr. Chapman told her. "She's sleeping at a friend's house. Frankly, I'm scared to find out if it spread there yet."
"I don't think the plant's really hurting them," I told them. "It just keeps them asleep."
"We're not sure what this plant is doing. For all we know, it could be slowly eating them," Mr. Tidwell spoke up. I could tell it was Illim specifically speaking. Tidwell tried to be tactful, but Illim and his brutal honesty was always ready to remind us when the glass was half empty. "Tom, you touched it, but you got away. How exactly?"
"I almost didn't," I replied. "It tried to, like, plug into my brain, but I don't think it was expecting two of us at once. I think we confused it for a second. But I was lucky. I came real close to falling asleep."
"Very close," Tidwell the English teacher said like an automatic reflex. "You keep using 'real' as a synonym for 'very'. It's not."
"But it is a synonym for 'truly'," Chapman mentioned.
"Oh. Good point; never mind."
"Can we focus, please?" Eva asked. She looked back to me. "You 'confused' it? Did you sense some kind of intelligence?"
Tem and I tried to remember what we felt in that single second. "I'm not sure. It's alive, at least." Tem took control of my mouth to blurt out, "All plants are alive." I retook control and added, "What I mean is, it's not just a plant. It might be like an animal?"
"Whether it's intelligent or not, we need to get rid of it before dawn," Tidwell said. "When anyone not touching these vines wakes up and sees them, there's going to be a panic. Not to mention the people working the graveyard shift out in the city."
"And like Tom, they'll try to pull them off their loved ones and fall asleep themselves," Eva said.
"Right, let's get to the point. Show of hands," Alison said while raising her palm. "All in favor of just cutting up this Evil Ivy with Dracon beams?"
One by one, Eva raised her free hand, while the rest of us lifted our flashlights. I didn't like the idea of just destroying something without really knowing what it was, but we didn't really have any other options.
"Okay then." Chapman took another drink of his coffee, then carefully set the cup down on the grass. "Let's start with the closest branch, and see what happens."
We all set our coffee down. Then I turned off my flashlight and traded it for something else in my jacket pocket. A black metal tube, shaped exactly like another flashlight. We designed it that way on purpose for simplicity and camouflage. This was our basic Dracon beam.
I turned off the safety and changed it to the highest setting. With soldier-like unison, the five-slash-ten of us stood in a line and aimed our weapons at the vine wrapped around the closest streetlamp. "Fire!"
TSEEEW!
Five streaks of red light hit the thick, twisted vine. The section of plant glowed a bright green color - and did nothing else. We stopped firing. No damage.
Alison groaned. "Of course it's immune to energy weapons! Otherwise, that would be helpful!"
Chapman said, "Assuming these vines are offshoots of a single plant, they should lead back to one big stem. If we find the main body, we may be able to do something."
"One of us should go to the Yeerk ship," Tidwell said. "The sensors there can help."
"Hey, wait a second," I spoke up. "This is an alien plant, but it's a plant. So how'd it get here? Did it pilot a spaceship?!"
"Maybe a seed dropped from a passing ship and got caught in Earth's gravity," Eva suggested.
"Or maybe someone brought it here on purpose," Chapman realized. "It's not just the plant we have to worry about. There's another enemy here."
"We brought it here," a new voice said.
We all turned around. A figure walked down the street towards us, badly illuminated by streetlamps.
I noticed two things about it. First, a couple of the long vines wrapped around its torso and trailed on the ground behind it, before reaching up into the sky to join the rest of the web-like plant. Second, and even more disturbing, was the body itself. It wasn't quite human, just human-ish. The figure was like a giant china doll. Its face was almost convincing, but it flickered like a low quality film. Every other second I saw that its true head was blank white and the face was only projected onto it. It was like a plastic mannequin was being used as the screen for a drive-in theater.
Chapman scowled. "You again. I hoped you gave up."
"Never," the figure said with a faint and fake smile.
Eva looked at Chapman. "Chapman, do you know him?"
"It calls itself Quantum Kindred. It came to my office last week to cause trouble."
"Last week?" Eva narrowed her eyes. "And you didn't think to tell anyone?"
"He didn't tell you about us, because he didn't want you to know why we came." The Quantum Kindred spoke in a calm, flat tone that barely concealed its arrogance. "Hedrick and Iniss are keeping secrets from their supposed teammates."
"Who's Hedrick?" I asked.
"He's Hedrick," Alison pointed to Mr. Chapman.
"Your first name is Hedrick? Is that even a real name?"
Eva ignored us and sternly said, "Chapman, I want an explanation."
Chapman didn't look at Eva. He glared at the Quantum Kindred with a clenched jaw. Finally he said, "It was looking for the Time Matrix."
"Time Matrix?" I repeated. Tem hadn't heard of it either. "What's that?"
"An Andalite legend. It's basically a time machine. But it's just a myth, isn't it?" Eva asked, sounding unsure.
"It is so much more than a time machine," the Quantum Kindred said. "It's real. And Hedrick knows where it's hidden."
"Whoa! Hold on!" I stared at Chapman wide-eyed. "Is that true? On top of all the other alien stuff you've been involved in, you also have a time machine stashed somewhere?!"
He looked at me sharply. "No, I don't. No one does. That machine is too powerful, too dangerous, and too tempting for anyone to ever use, including us." He looked around the group. "I'm sorry for keeping secrets, but the fewer people who know about it, the safer the universe is."
Eva stared at Chapman. I don't think she liked being kept out of the loop. But then she nodded to herself; she understood his point. She turned her attention to the Quantum Kindred instead. "So you're here to try and force Chapman to reveal where the Time Matrix is?"
"We cannot search for the Time Matrix directly because it shields itself from detection. So we gave this body the ability to read minds, and searched for a person who had seen it before. Eventually, our search led us to Hedrick Chapman."
"I don't understand," Tidwell said. "If you can read his mind, then don't you already know where it is?"
"This body has limits, and Hedrick's resistance to our mental scans is . . . noteworthy. We know that he knows where it is, but we can't see any more than that. We need him to stop resisting us."
Chapman glanced at the vines above us for a second. "This plant. What is it exactly?"
"We wanted to be prepared for our next confrontation, so we searched the galaxy for the perfect weapon, and found this. As you've seen, it puts potential predators to sleep, and it's impervious to your Dracon weapons. So we bonded with it, placed it under our full control, and brought it to Earth through a rip in zero-space." The tendrils wrapped around its torso squirmed a bit, as if to show off their connection.
Chapman nodded. "So your plan is to put everyone in town to sleep and hold them hostage until I cooperate, is that it?"
"No," the Quantum Kindred said.
I think we were all confused by that. "No?" Chapman repeated.
"The townspeople are not our hostages. They will wake up unharmed and with no memory of what happened. We only put them to sleep to stop them from interfering . . . This is our real hostage." It looked over its shoulder with a nasty smile. "Come here, Melissa."
Chapman and Alison both flinched in a sudden terror.
From behind the car in the neighbor's driveway, Melissa Chapman slowly stood up and walked towards the Quantum Kindred.
Melissa was smaller than a lot of girls her age. She was short, thin, and pale. Right now, she looked more meek and fragile than ever.
Her parents tried to run towards her, but the Quantum Kindred held out a vine-covered arm to block her. At the same time, Tidwell grabbed the adults' hands. "You can't touch it, or it'll put you to sleep," he reminded them.
"Melissa, get away from that thing!" Alison cried out.
But the girl didn't move. "I'm sorry," she said quietly. "It got Rachel. It said if I came along, it would let her go." She sounded like she was trying not to cry.
"You keep so many secrets, Hedrick," the Quantum Kindred said. "You lie to your teammates. You lie to your own daughter. It's time to reveal what you know."
A vine shot out from the Quantum Kindred's arm and wrapped around Melissa.
"Let go of her!" Chapman shouted. I rushed over to help Tidwell hold him back. "Let go of my daughter!"
Melissa now looked more drowsy than scared, but she wasn't unconscious.
"We won't put her to sleep," the Quantum Kindred said. "We want her to hear this. Hedrick Chapman . . . Give us the Time Matrix. Or we will kill Melissa."
Melissa grew alert again, looking at it in terror.
"Why are you doing this?!" Alison shouted angrily. "What's the point of it all?!"
"The point is to obtain our freedom," it said loudly. "We will do ANYTHING it takes to escape our prison!"
"What's that supposed to mean?"
Eva was slowly stepping sideways towards her car. The Quantum Kindred must have noticed, but it ignored her as it spoke.
"Eons ago, we could move freely through time and space. We were originally a single person, but by traveling to the same moment again and again, we became an entire civilization. But the Ancient Races feared our power. And so they trapped us in a prison outside of the universe, reducing us to the form of a single person again."
Alison stared. "That's why you call yourself 'we'?! You're not a kindred at all! You're just a madman talking to himself!"
"The insults of lesser beings mean nothing to us," it said smugly.
"You said escape, but you're free now, aren't you?" Tidwell asked.
"No. This is an artificial body that took many ages to construct. We control it remotely and move it around the universe, but our true self remains trapped in the prison, unable to travel through time. That is why we need the Time Matrix, to break the barriers of the universe and allow our escape."
"And blow a giant hole in reality in the process," Chapman said.
"All that matters to us is ourself. We are a better race than you individuals, with your secrets and your conflicts. Reality is better served by our presence."
"Well, you can forget it," Chapman growled as we continued to hold him. "You need my help to find the Matrix. But if you kill my daughter, then I'll never help you!"
The Quantum Kindred asked in its terrible arrogance, "Would you really let it go that far?"
Melissa wobbled on her feet, half-asleep. A long vine stretched out and linked her to where the Quantum Kindred stood.
Before Chapman knew what to say next, we heard Eva shouting.
"Everyone, shoot it!"
We didn't look at her or question the order. We just trusted that she had a plan. Tidwell and I let go of Chapman and we all fired our four Dracon beams at the Quantum Kindred. Vines wrapped around its body to block the beams, and while it was distracted with that, Eva ran towards it carrying an axe.
"Yaah!" Eva swung the axe at the vine that stretched between Melissa and the Quantum Kindred, cutting through it in one chop. The severed end released Melissa and she fell to the ground. Chapman and Alison stopped firing and ran over to where Melissa fell.
"You keep an axe in your trunk?!" I yelled over the sound of the lasers.
"You said we had a plant problem, so I came prepared," she replied.
Tidwell and I kept firing. The vines protecting the Quantum Kindred were undamaged, but it staggered backwards from the force of the beams.
A couple of the vines suspended overhead lowered towards us. But Eva ran up and swung her axe around, chopping the vines before they could touch us.
Meanwhile, over by Melissa, the chopped vine that had held her was dissolving into ash. She was groggy, trying to push herself up while fighting off the effects of the plant. Her parents kneeled down next to her, checking her vitals, and holding her tenderly.
"I'm sorry, Melissa. I promise I will fix this," Chapman said.
"Darling," Alison looked at her husband with a rare serious expression, "it wants us to watch her get hurt. She's not safe where we can see her."
Chapman turned to me and shouted, "Tom! Get over here!"
I stopped firing and went over. Now only Tidwell was holding back the Quantum Kindred while Eva dealt with the vines. I didn't know how much good only one beam would do, but our Dracon beams wouldn't last long anyway while firing continuously at full power. I didn't know how we could stop that monster long-term.
"We'll hold it off. You and Melissa get out of here," Chapman ordered.
"Why me?" I asked. "Shouldn't I help you fight?"
"Don't argue, just get somewhere safe!"
"Stop treating me like the baby of the group!" Tem thought I shouldn't be arguing in the middle of a battle, but I was sick of their patronizing. "I'm younger than you, but Tem is the same age as the rest of the Yeerks. We can help -"
"Tom! Temrash" Alison shouted at us. "We're not dismissing you, you morons! This is the most important mission you will ever have for the rest of your life! Protect our daughter!"
I stared at her for a moment. Then I nodded firmly. "Right. Come on, Melissa." She was still dazed, but didn't resist as I pulled her to her feet and dragged her to the car.
The Chapmans fired at the Quantum Kindred again. They stopped with the continuous beams and switched to alternating quick blasts. "Here's the plan," Mr. Chapman called out. "I'll head to the ship, and use the sensors to find the main body of the plant - the root. You keep Quantum Kindred busy as long as you can, then when I tell you were the root is, destroy it!"
"Right!" the other three hosts replied together.
I helped Melissa into the passenger seat of my mom's car. Then I ran over into the driver's side, and drove off as fast as I could.
