I drove towards the city. I didn't have a destination any more specific than that. I was just gonna keep driving until I couldn't see those vines overhead anymore.
If this Evil Ivy, as Alison named it, was all a single plant, it was impossibly large. It was a gigantic net dropped on top of the suburbs. Some of the vines hung so low they banged the roof of the car as I drove. It felt claustrophobic.
Tem and I didn't know how to stop this plant or the Quantum Kindred at all, never mind doing it before dawn. Anxiety was eating away at us. But we had no choice but to put our full trust in our teammates. Our only job was keeping Melissa out of danger.
Melissa wasn't drowsy anymore. "Tom?"
"You should put your seat belt on," I told her, although in the rush I hadn't put on my seat belt either.
She ignored me and asked, "Where are you taking me?"
"As far away from these vines as I can," I answered without looking at her. I was speeding, at least by residential area standards, so I kept my eyes on the road.
I turned a corner - and hit the brakes. The road ahead was blocked by a mess of extra-low vines acting as a fence.
[If I floor it maybe we can break through,] I thought.
[I'd rather not risk getting stuck,] Tem replied. [Or dragging the vines along with us.]
[Fine.] I did a U-turn and looked for another route.
Melissa was silent for a few moments. I was expecting her to ask something like 'what's going on?' or 'was that a real alien?'. But instead she said, "Tom, let me out."
"What? No. It's not safe here," I told her.
"I don't need your help. Stop driving and let me out," she said more forcefully.
[Uh, why, exactly?] Tem wondered.
Out loud I said, "Your parents are counting on me to keep you safe, and I'm not gonna let them down. So just relax, okay?"
Now she asked, "Then tell me what's going on. That thing - Quantum Kindred - it said something about breaking the universe? Do you people deal with things like this all the time?"
"That's . . ." I frowned. "You're having a very strange dream, Melissa. Don't worry about it."
[Seriously?] Tem asked.
[There is no good cover story and I don't have time to think of one,] I mentally replied.
"Tell me the truth," she demanded.
I didn't reply. I just focused on driving fast. What the hell could I say?
Melissa reached for her door handle. I immediately pressed the auto-lock button, sealing her in. She unlocked the door, so I locked it again.
"Melissa, relax! I'm the good guy in this dream," I insisted. "I'm taking you away from the monsters."
"I don't believe you!" she said angrily. It was a pretty dramatic reversal from the scared, fragile demeanor she had with the Quantum Kindred. And frankly, I wasn't in the mood to deal with it. "Either you let me out, or you start telling the truth!" she demanded.
"Or what?" I challenged.
This was the wrong thing to say.
After a second of angry glaring, Melissa reached over and pulled hard on the steering wheel.
"HEY!"
The car turned sharply, throwing me off balance, bumping hard as we drove over the curb. I immediately slammed on the brakes. The car screeched to a stop, terrifyingly close to crashing into a telephone pole, which would have been especially disastrous considering I had been speeding.
"ARE YOU CRAZY?!" I screamed at her.
"I saw the alien at the Sharing!" she shouted back.
I stared. "What?"
"I came back to look for something, and I heard you all talking behind the door. I Iistened in, and I heard what you were saying about Yeerks and hosts." Melissa was becoming less confident, more desperate and panicky. "So then I opened the door to peek inside, and I saw that thing come out of my dad's ear! And that woman freaked out, and you guys drugged her! And then you wiped her memory!" She gave a quick breath of a hysteric laugh. "And then you started joking around like it was no big deal!"
I stammered. "O-Okay, that sounds bad, but - but it wasn't . . ."
Melissa wasn't smiling anymore. "And now there's a plant monster trying to kill me, and I don't know if I can trust my own parents! What they did at the meeting . . . Was that even real?!"
She stared at me, scared and confused. And honestly, Tem and I didn't feel much better.
"Was it real?" she repeated. "Are there really aliens hiding inside my mom and dad's brains?"
I felt helpless. I empathized with Melissa, and I wanted to explain. But this was Mr. and Ms. Chapman's secret, not just mine. ". . . I can't talk about it."
She moved to open the car door.
I grabbed her arm to stop her. "Okay! Okay! Yes, it's true! It's all true. We work with aliens. We are half-alien. And, yes, I know what we did to that woman looks bad. But you gotta understand. The Yeerks are a small group of refugees who are helpless without host bodies. And Earth is a dangerous, xenophobic planet. We only did that to her to protect ourselves. I swear, we're not the bad guys here."
"Yeah, you kept saying Yeerks are peaceful," she replied. "But Quantum Kindred said it wouldn't hurt me, and look how that turned out."
"Fine. Maybe I can't prove that you can trust us," I admitted. "But we were the ones who got you away from Quantum Kindred. That's got to be a point in our favor, right?"
She looked up at me nervously. "Are you going to wipe my memory now?"
I shook my head. "No." I chose to be completely honest. "Even if we wanted to, we can't erase memories from that many hours ago."
"I didn't even know aliens were real, and now . . . My own parents . . ." she said in a tone that broke my heart. "Were they always like that?"
"No. Just a few months."
"Oh, of course," she nodded. "When the Sharing started."
"Give or take a few weeks."
"There are aliens hiding inside my mom and dad," she repeated, like she was shell-shocked. "They were watching me. Having dinner with me. Listening to everything I said to them. And I never even knew they were there."
[Your family's going to have this reaction when they learn about me, aren't they?] Tem wondered.
I didn't answer him. But, of course, he knew what I was thinking.
"The Yeerks, Iniss and Niss, they may not be your parents, but they still like you, Melissa," I told her. "They want you to be safe. And your real mom and dad didn't go anywhere, you know. They weren't brainwashed or replaced by pod people. Being a Yeerk-host is more like . . . having an invisible friend whispering in your ear. It's not that bad."
"If it's not that bad, why didn't they just tell me?" she asked.
"Because of this," I gestured at her. "They were afraid you'd have this exact reaction."
"Afraid?" she said incredulously. "What am I gonna do? Ground them?"
"Maybe they were afraid you'd stop loving them."
Melissa didn't respond.
And she didn't have time to respond. The car jerked suddenly, tilting forward. We'd stayed here too long. I shifted gears into reverse and slammed the gas pedal, but we didn't move. Looking out the windows, I saw more vines lowering towards the car.
"Dapsen!" I realized a second too late that I shouldn't have been cursing in front of Melissa. I realized a second after that I cursed in Yeerk language and she wouldn't understand anyway. I turned off the ignition and shouted, "Get out and run!"
Melissa and I rushed out of our respective sides. A thick bundle of vines had gotten underneath the car while we were talking. It lifted the back end only an inch into the air, but it was enough to make the wheels useless. Melissa barely got a few steps before a vine reached up and tripped her. Another lowered from the sky to wrap her torso.
"No!" I tried to run to her, but fell flat on the ground. A vine wrapped tightly around my ankle. I clawed at the ground, trying to drag myself forward. "Melissa!"
An image like static appeared nearby. Yet another vine dropped from the enclosing plant net above and connected to the static. It became the Quantum Kindred.
[It can teleport,] I thought. [That is so not fair!]
It smiled down at me as the plant continued to slither and wrap up my body. "It was a waste of effort," it said. "Even if you got away from our plant, it would only slow us down."
That was frustratingly true. This wasn't even the Quantum Kindred's real body; that was stuck in a prison outside of normal space. This was just a remote-controlled doll it could teleport to where it needed. And if it could teleport, there was no way our teammates could stall it for long.
"Look on the bright side." The Quantum Kindred leaned down towards my face. "The Andalites are coming."
Tem's terror sent an involuntary shudder through my body. "What?"
"They're on their way to Earth right now. But you won't need to worry about such trivial things once we have the Time Matrix."
My arms were pinned to my sides. The vines lifted Melissa and I helplessly into the air.
.
I later learned, while Melissa and I had been doing all that, the others had their own hassle.
Eva, Tidwell, and Alison were chopping down as many vines as they could. Anything cut away from the main body dissolved into ash, but the plant grew to replace them too fast.
Chapman had raced to the Yeerk ship buried in the woods and accessed its computers. He used the sensors to find the most likely origin point of the plant. He called Eva to tell her it was at the very edge of the residential district.
Eva spoke into her cell phone as she drove. "I see it, Chapman!"
The three hosts got out of the car. Every last vine in the suburb led back to one, single stem as thick as a tree. But the stem wasn't attached to the ground. It was sticking out of a shining white portal about seven feet in the air.
"Is that a zero-rip?" Tidwell wondered. A zero-rip was a theoretical hole in physical space, as opposed to a Sario rip that tore through both space and time. It was a portal that connected two different parts of the universe.
"It didn't bring the whole plant here," Eva realized. "It created a zero-rip and pulled a single branch through. The root is probably on the other side of the galaxy."
"Doesn't matter. Let's chop it up," Alison said.
They all grabbed the weapons Eva brought in her trunk. Eva swung her axe high over her head and struck the stem. Tidwell jumped up and hit it with a butcher's knife. Alison had bolt cutters to give her reach, but could only make little slices. As they chipped away at the stem bit by bit, the plant grew back to repair the damage. They couldn't make any progress.
Eva took a break from chopping and spoke into her cell phone again. "Chapman, you better get over here. It's too thick, and it heals faster than the three of us can cut it."
Alison stared up at the plant. And she thought about her daughter.
The Quantum Kindred was trying to kill Melissa. The only ways to save her were either stopping the Quantum Kindred by force, or giving up the Time Matrix.
Alison knew what she had to do.
"Eva, I have a plan. Give me your keys," she said.
Eva handed her keys over. "Where are you going?"
As Alison rushed to the car she said, "To the construction site by the mall!"
"What? Why?!"
Alison didn't answer. She drove away as fast as she could.
.
Chapman ran out of the woods towards his car. Then he stopped in his tracks.
The Quantum Kindred stood before him. The vines attached to its back stretched out behind him and far into the distance. Melissa and I stood on either side of it, vines wrapped tightly around us like straitjackets.
"I'm sorry," I said, too ashamed to say any more. Chapman gave me and Tem one job, and we let him down.
Chapman didn't reply. He looked at Melissa. Then at the Quantum Kindred.
"You've given us a lot of frustration, Hedrick Chapman." It smiled with its fake flickering face. "But that's okay. You'll give us what we want now."
Chapman kept his expression neutral. "If I tell you where the Time Matrix is -"
"That's not enough. You shield your thoughts too well, so we wouldn't know if you're lying. You must stop shielding them. You must willingly surrender all knowledge in your mind." It held out its hand. "Touch this artificial body, and allow it to connect your mind directly to ours. That is the only thing that will ensure your daughter's life."
Melissa spoke up. "If you find this Time Matrix thing, what exactly are you gonna do with it?"
It grinned with pure mania. "Before we were sealed in the prison, it took centuries of looping through time to populate a single moment. The Time Matrix will let us do more than escape - It will let us break the natural laws of time and space! The universe will be filled with an infinity of US! We will finally become the master race!" It stared at Chapman. "Now do you understand how badly we want it, Hedrick?! Do you understand how much we are willing to hurt your daughter for it?!"
Chapman continued to keep his expression neutral, but I could tell it was a struggle.
Melissa stared at her captor for a moment. Then she looked at Chapman and said, "Let him kill me, dad!"
"What?!" All of us looked at her. Even the Quantum Kindred seemed caught off guard a bit.
"He's just gonna kill me anyway once he gets what he wants," Melissa said, "along with half the universe. If I'm gonna die, I wanna die protecting reality from him!"
She was scared and on the verge of crying, but she still said it with such conviction. I had no idea the first time I met her, back in that car ride that felt like a lifetime ago, but that young and tiny girl was secretly a badass. No wonder Rachel was friends with her.
The Quantum Kindred smiled. "Such a brave girl." It looked at Chapman. "But you're the parent. It's your choice. Do you really want her blood on your conscience?"
The vine lifted Melissa up. Her feet dangled helplessly above the ground. And then the vine squeezed. Tighter and tighter. She groaned in pain. Her ribs would probably bruise soon.
I was sick of being helpless. I tried to run over to Melissa, but my own vine pulled be back. I twisted and struggled with my arms, but I just couldn't break through.
"What's it going to be?" the Quantum Kindred asked him.
Chapman's lip trembled. "Let her go first, and we'll talk."
"No deals."
The vine lifted Melissa high into the air, over our heads - and then slammed her into the ground like a ragdoll.
"AAHHH!" she screamed in pain.
"NO!" Chapman also screamed in pain.
I struggled futilely against my vine, Tem and me cursing inside my head.
The vine lifted her high again.
"STOP! You win!" Chapman cried out, his expression desperate and despairing. "You win. I'll do it. Anything. Just stop hurting her. Please."
The vine lowered her down slowly and laid Melissa on the ground gently.
"Very good." The Quantum Kindred grinned madly and held out its arms. "Now, come to us. Show us everything you know!"
Chapman stepped towards it slowly.
[No!] Tem screamed inside my head. [Chapman, don't!]
I should have agreed. I should have cried out 'no Chapman, don't do it, don't sacrifice the universe for just one person'. But I couldn't bring myself to say it. I couldn't say 'let that innocent bystander child die'. All I could do was clench my jaw, pull against the vine, and hate my own uselessness.
Chapman extended his arms towards the Quantum Kindred's arms.
"No . . ." Melissa cried out weakly.
They grabbed each other's wrists.
The Quantum Kindred grinned in victory. Chapman's expression was of sadness and surrender . . .
But then it changed to a scowl. He gripped the Quantum Kindred's forearms so tightly his knuckles turned white. The look of rage on Chapman's face was so intense it scared me. "Did you really think this would work?" he growled. "You obviously don't have children."
After a moment, the Quantum Kindred stopped smiling. Its fake expression grew concerned. Something was happening in their minds I couldn't see. "What are you doing?"
Chapman shouted in its face. "You threatened my daughter!"
"What -" It coughed. "- You -" It coughed more.
"YOU! HURT! MY! DAUGHTER!"
The Quantum Kindred spat black foam out of its white face. The vines attached to its back spasmed and trembled, along with the vines holding me and Melissa - the entire plant was reacting. The porcelain doll fell to its knees, though Chapman kept a tight grip on its arms. "What have you done to us?!"
"Exactly what you asked. I opened my mind to you," Chapman answered. "But not to give you information. I'm sending you my emotions. Everything I felt when I watched you hurt Melissa - All of my love for her, and all of my hate for you - All of that pain is going through your fake body, straight to wherever you are in that prison, directly into the brain of the real you! How does it feel?!"
"It hurts . . ." It was spitting up black bile, leaking black snot, and crying black tears.
"I barely got started," Chapman said. "All of that fear, and stress, and panic! That pit in every parent's stomach where they think, 'Oh my God, if anything happens to that child, I will die!' - THAT is what I'm sending you! And there's no way someone as self-absorbed as you could handle all that!"
"Stop it!" It tried to pull away from Chapman. "Let go of us!"
"Let go of my DAUGHTER!"
The Quantum Kindred screamed like it was stabbed with a red-hot poker.
The vine uncoiled and released Melissa. The vine around me fell away too. The entire plant was withering up like it was sick, and it probably released everybody it was attached to in the whole neighborhood.
Chapman let go and ran to Melissa. The Quantum Kindred collasped on the ground, curling up in pain and continuing to scream. Its image was flickering worse than ever, cycling through static, normal, sick, blank doll, and even sicker. The plant stayed connected to its back, but it spasmed violently.
Melissa got to her feet and hugged her dad tightly, and he hugged her back. I stood in front of them, guarding them against our weakened enemy on the ground.
The broken doll stopped screaming and glared past me, up at Chapman. Chapman glared back while continuing to hold his daughter.
"I warned you to give up and go home," Chapman said firmly. "After what you did to Melissa, staying in your prison is the only way you'll be safe from me."
Its pain switched to anger. It yelled. It slammed its fists on the ground over and over. It was having an all-out tantrum like a toddler.
And then the vines shot towards us. We jumped back, and their tips dug into the ground like spears.
The Quantum Kindred rose to its feet. It wobbled unsteadily. It was weakened, damaged, but not dead. "I'm sick of you!" It was so angry it forgot to call itself 'we'. "I will destroy you! I'll destroy this entire city, and find the Time Matrix by digging through the ashes!"
The vines pulled out of the ground and pointed at us menacingly. The three-slash-five of us stared back, prepared for a fight.
But the Quantum Kindred suddenly stopped. It turned away like it noticed something far in the distance. "No!"
.
I later learned, at that moment, Eva and Tidwell were still trying to cut through the main stem. They stopped when they heard a rumbling sound coming towards them. "What's that?" Tidwell asked.
Eva turned to look, and burst out laughing.
A dark yellow excavator was rolling down the street. It was an impressive construction machine with a long arm ending in a bucket with sharp teeth.
Alison was in the driver's seat. "Hang on, Melissa. Mommy's on the way."
The excavator reached the plant with unexpected speed. Alison rapidly worked the levers to move the giant arm where she needed. The arm raised up - and then rushed down like a monstrous axe.
The bucket tore all the way through the thick stem in one strike. The half of the stem that led towards the houses convulsed, sucking up the vines before it dried up, withered, and began dissolving into ash. The other half of the stem retreated through the portal, back to where the rest of its body waited. Without the plant forcing it open, the shining white portal sealed close and disappeared.
.
"NO!" The Quantum Kindred screamed. "NOOOOOO!"
The vines detached from its back and pulled away. All the vines fell on the ground, dead, instantly beginning to dissolve.
In a burst of static, the Quantum Kindred teleported away.
.
It reappeared where Alison and the others were. It glared up in rage at the woman in the construction machine.
"You lower life forms can't beat me!" it shouted. "You can stop my plant! You could even destroy this artificial body! But I will NEVER -"
Alison pulled more levers. The excavator's shovel rose up and slammed down onto the Quantum Kindred, shattering it like a cheap vase. The broken pieces sparkled with other-dimensional circuitry and fluid. The pieces glowed and twitched for a few seconds, and then stopped. It was just junk now.
Eva and Tidwell stared up at Alison. "What?" Alison asked. "It said we could destroy it."
.
The next morning.
Well, I say morning, but it was closer to noon really.
I groggily walked downstairs. I trudged to the kitchen to make a late breakfast. Jake was there, making an early lunch.
"It lives," he smirked. "I was starting to think you'd never wake up."
"It's Sunday. Get off my back," I said bitterly.
Jake stopped smiling. "What's wrong?"
"I had really bad insomnia. It took forever to fall alseep," I lied effortlessly.
It wasn't actually dawn by the time I finally got my mom's car home, but the sky was starting to get lighter. Without the Evil Ivy keeping my family asleep, I had to be extra quiet and careful when I snuck back inside the house. The fact that mom and dad weren't waiting to pounce and ground me probably meant I got away with it.
"How'd you sleep?" I asked.
He shrugged. "I slept fine." As an afterthought he said, "I had a weird dream though."
"That's good," I mumbled quietly. "Just keep thinking that."
.
The Evil Ivy had dissolved so quickly there wasn't a trace of it left. Any brief glimpses people had before falling asleep were chalked up to bad dreams. As far as we could tell, no one in the city suspected it was ever there.
The Quantum Kindred was gone. Its true body was still alive in wherever that prison was, but it took eons to remotely build that first doll. We wouldn't see another one in our lifetimes. And that's assuming the damage Chapman dealt to it hadn't just finished it off by now.
It kept claiming to be superior to us mortals. And yet it couldn't stomach something as common as a parent's concern for their child. I loved the irony in that.
Later that afternoon, we met up at the Yeerk ship. The big metal room with the pool and computers - and a set of black swivel chairs with dark red cushions. Very sleek and comfy. Alison chose well.
Melissa was there, getting all her questions answered.
"And this is the pool, where the rest of the Yeerks live," her dad showed her as calmly as he could. "There's a terminal inside that the Yeerks use to access the computer. And we use this keyboard to communicate with them."
"You could send them a message if you like," her mom offered.
"I wouldn't know what to say," Melissa said quietly.
Her mom and dad had hoped to keep the danger and strangeness of their lifestyle away from their daughter, but it found her anyway. It was an awful lot for Melissa to take in. Not only the existence of aliens, and not even that her parents were alien investigators, but that they were half-alien symbionts themselves. But Melissa seemed to be handling it pretty well, even if she wasn't embracing it with open arms. I suppose the same could be said for her parents, adjusting to letting their daughter in on the secret.
But it was easier now than it would have been before last night. If there was one good thing that came out of last night, it was that Melissa had absolute proof of how much her mom and dad loved her, Yeerks or no Yeerks.
If there was a second good thing, it was that I now knew Mr. Chapman's embarrassing first name. That's a petty thing to enjoy, but Tem didn't judge.
"So," Melissa spoke up hesitantly, "there are a lot of Yeerks in the pool. And you guys really need volunteers to be their hosts. And I know I'm in on the secret now . . ."
Tem and I listened closely. Hopefully.
"But is it still okay, if I don't become a host?"
Tem's and my spirits sagged a little. But Alison grabbed her daughter's hands and said, "Of course it's okay, sweetie. It's your choice. No one else can make you."
"It's just, this is all so new," Melissa said shyly, as if she needed an excuse. "I'm not ready to think about that yet."
"Melissa," Chapman told her, "even if you did want to become a host - which we're not asking you to - you're still so young. Before sharing your life with someone else, it's better to grow up first, and really understand who you are."
"But Tom did it, and he's still a kid," she mentioned.
"Not compared to you," I shot back.
"He's an exception," Eva spoke up. She grinned at me. "An exceptional kid."
I frowned at her.
Then I said, "I guess it's good that at least one person in the group isn't a host. It might come in handy if we ever come across another telepathic bomb."
"Don't even think that!" Alison cried. "She's not fighting with us. She's not getting involved in anything dangerous again."
"But it's not all dangerous, right?" Melissa asked. "There are fun aliens too, aren't there?"
"Sure," I replied. "We contact all kinds of people. I love hanging out here."
Mr. and Ms. Chapman gave me a look. They thought I was gonna be a bad influence on their daughter. Maybe they were right.
Tem and I tried to keep our spirits up. But as Melissa and her family kept talking, deep down, our thoughts kept going back to what Quantum Kindred told us last night.
The Andalites are coming. They're on their way to Earth right now.
Was that true, or was it just bluffing to make us nervous?
I really didn't know.
.
Author's Notes: Without apologizing, this whole arc was stolen from the "Nightvisiting" episode of Doctor Who spin-off "Class". The Quantum Kindred was sort of based off of the Kin, from Doctor Who short story "Nothing O'Clock". This arc was supposed to be a simple adventure, but it bloated to fill 4 chapters. It's long and complex and I'm not really happy with it. What do you think?
