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Chapter 8
Alloran and I simply stood there for a while.
"What?" I sneered. "Now that you've got me, you don't know what to do? Or have you gotten soft?"
Alloran laughed and cut my throat. It went right through.
YOU CAN'T DIE. That was what the Ellimist had said. The creep. Yet, I guess that now I was grateful to the jerk.
I turned and laughed. Alloran looked at me in astonishment. He started backing away. An idea. Thank God, an actual idea! "You don't enjoy your life, do you?" I asked.
{Why should I tell you?}
"Because, unlike you, I can't die. I'm already dead, remember?"
{No.}
"And let me guess. You decided to help the Crayak because none of the Andalites wanted to have anything to do with you and none of the Yeerks wanted to mess with you and laugh at you, right?"
{Yes.}
"Oh, brother."
I couldn't kill a basket case. I just couldn't kill a psycho. This guy needed help, and I could only think of one way.
"Ellimist?" I asked sadly. More or less sadly. I'd be glad to have this done with.
In a flash, he was there. Serious. Now he looked like Jake's dad. I rolled my eyes. "Think of something original," I joked.
He didn't say anything. YOU WANTED TO SPEAK TO ME?
"Yeah. Alloran needs help."
HOW SO?
"Well, years ago, you gave the choice to take them to a planet like they're own. You were probably bluffing, I know, but could you do for Alloran what you did for the Hork-Bajir?"
The Ellimist thought. I BELIEVE SOMETHING CAN BE ARRANGED.
"Good. Thanks."
Before they disappeared, Alloran called to me, {They're coming. They're beginning a new attack. They've gone back with the Time Matrix before we came here. They'll strike tomorrow.}
After they left, I sat there for a long time. Eventually, the others came. They didn't say anything to me, but Hardy patted my shoulder at one time, and David sat with me.
What was I supposed to do with the Yeerks? I mean, wasn't going to give them hosts. But I didn't want to kill them. Then again, I couldn't let them die a slow, painful death of Kandrona starvation.
"The Hork-Bajir are waking up," David told me quietly.
I got up and walked towards them, keeping the Dracon beam on them. The guys let me. One of the Hork-Bajir started talking.
"What did he say?" I asked Ax.
{He just swore that he'd kill you.}
I nodded. "Can he understand me?"
{I think so.}
"Good. Listen. I've destroyed the Kandrona, and I just found a bunch of your little friends taking a dip in a vat of Yeerk pool stuff or whatever. I'm not going to kill them, then again, I'm not going to let the die of Kandrona starvation. This is the first ship of many, I know, but the next Kandrona will be here too late. So I'm giving you the choice."
Everybody was looking at me. The guys were looking at me like I was insane, which I think I agreed with. Tobias's face was perfectly blank except for when I said "choice". David looked like he supported me but still thought I was insane. The Hork-Bajir looked confused.
"You cannot have hosts," I said. "But I'm not going to let those Yeerks die of Kandrona starvation. You get to choose what happens to them."
After a long time, one said, "Fire." The other nodded in agreement.
Ax looked at me. {They said 'fire'.}
I nodded. "Thank you, Ax. And thank you," I said to the Hork-Bajir. "Would you like to go with them?"
They looked at each other and then looked down at the floor. "Kandrona starvation bad," the first said. "Fire better."
{Kandrona starvation bad. Fire better,} Ax translated.
"Um, Ax? I think we've got it," Marco told him.
{Sorry. I was not aware they were speaking in your language.}
"Our language," Marco corrected. "It's your language too when you're here."
{Your language,} Ax repeated.
Marco rolled his eyes. "Hopeless."
I smiled a bit. Not much had changed after all. "Jake, Cassie, you two look for the Time Matrix. The rest of us will collect some firewood."
"The Time Matrix? It's here?" Cassie asked. "It's been missing for years!"
"Yeah, that's how time got screwed up in the first place, if I don't miss my guess. Which means that's how time got messed up in the first place. And we need the Time Matrix if David and I are going to go back to our own time.
We went outside and gathered all the dry, good wood we could find. Jake and Cassie found the Time Matrix in a room towards the back.
"Ready?" David asked me. We closed the door.
"Yeah." I shot at the tank. It burst open and liquid flooded across the floor. David and I fought against it.
The water seeped out through the floor bit by bit until there was nothing left but a bunch of Yeerks on the floor. We opened the door, and Rachel brought the two Yeerks that had been in the Hork-Bajir's heads and set them down gently on the ground. "Are you sure you want to do this?" she asked me.
I nodded but didn't say anything. They knew that I didn't want to kill them. That was enough.
We shoved the wood into the room and the guys, along with the two Hork-Bajir, backed out. I was the only one left. I aimed the Dracon beam at a piece of wood. "As I said before, God forgive me." I fired. A spark caught. That caused a chain reaction.
I left.
"Well, you're still here," Tobias said, stating the obvious when I got out. He was in human morph, with his arm around Rachel.
"There's still one thing we have to do."
Chapter 9
I flew back home without saying a thing. The guys asked me what I was going to do, made guesses, joked.
I don't think they were very clear on what I was going to do until I reached Cassie's house and got the blue box.
"I just want to say that I'm sorry. You know, for whatever might happen. Because I mean, I'll let you decide, but you'll need help now. No offense or anything, but you're too old to do this on your own." I looked at the seven kids, trying to figure out what their gifts were across the room. I looked back at them. "Can they?"
They looked at each other. "I guess they have to," Jake finally said flatly.
"We'll teach them," Cassie agreed.
Marco spoke up. "Rachel can't teach them. The kids would be suicidal."
Rachel threw a pillow at him.
Tobias said, "Is this what you were sent here to do?"
"No," David answered. "We weren't allowed to tell you who we were or what we were doing. The rules of some guy named the Ellimist. But Cat has a point. You need fighters."
They nodded.
"Kids? Could you come here for a second?"
The kids cam over and looked at the cube.
"Is that a present?"
"Who's it for?"
They were old enough. And they were like their parents. Hopefully, this would be the right thing to do.
"This is your Christmas present," I told them. "But it comes with a price. You have to fight with it."
"Cool," said a girl who looked a lot like Rachel. Marco buried his face in his hands. Rachel tried to hide a smile.
"You can't tell anyone, either."
"Why not?" said a boy; he looked the least bit like Jake.
"Because it's dangerous. Your parents will explain the rest to you. And Ax will help. And Marco will be around. Doing something."
"Hey!" Marco snapped.
The kids giggled.
"Do you want to accept this gift? You can't stay in morph for more than two hours, though, or else you'll be stuck like that. Forever."
"Uh-uh. Daddy got stuck and he's human. Sometimes," the little girl objected.
"Yes, but he couldn't morph for a very long time. Do you accept the gift?"
"I'm in," the girl said fiercely.
I looked at Marco. He stuck his tongue out, tilted his head, and pretended to be holding an imaginary rope that hung around his neck. Rachel pushed him off the couch.
One by one, the other kids joined, until all of them had the power.
"Merry Christmas," I told them.
And then David and I were gone.
Chapter 10
For a split second, I saw what Elfangor had seen. The lines of all of our lives, meeting. But this time, there was another line. David. Further on, our lines kept twisting together, and more lines branched out from ours, running to meet Jake's and Cassie's and Rachel's and Tobias's, Ax's and Marco's. I saw another line meet Marco's, but then I was distracted.
The Ellimist was standing in front of me.
GOOD JOB.
I didn't say anything. The weight of doing what I had done to those Yeerks, and then done to those kids was weighing heavily on me.
DON'T WORRY ABOUT THE YEERKS. I MADE SURE THEY NEVER EXISTED. SO THEY NEVER DIED.
So he was messing around with time himself. Who knew how much of what I had seen would actually happen? "What will happen now?"
EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENED WITH YOU. YOUR CHILDREN WILL GROW UP, THE BLADE SHIP WILL RETURN, AND YOU AND YOUR CHILDREN WILL FIGHT.
"Will we win?" I asked.
DEPENDS. NO ONE REALLY KNOWS THE FUTURE ANYMORE.
"I'll tell the others to hide the Time Matrix a bit better."
GOOD IDEA. GOOD BYE.
"Wait!" I shouted. Of course, once again, it was too late. I hate it when he does that, I thought.
And then I realized something.
I was alive.
Chapter 11
"What happened to her?" Cassie asked anxiously.
{I don't know. I think it was a shark. It came out of nowhere.}
I looked down at myself. My legs, stomach, and about half of my insides were missing. I began to demorph.
"Thank God," Cassie said. "She's demorphing."
"Poor thing," Rachel said in the background.
{You would not believe the day I had.}
{We know,} Tobias told me.
"Trust me, you don't know," I said as my mouth appeared. "First of all, where's the Time Matrix?"
I heard a loud noise like a door being opened suddenly.
David looked around at the others. They stared at him in surprise. He saw me and ran towards me, nearly knocking me over in a bear hug. The Time Matrix was floating right behind him.
Marco regained his voice first. "David! What are you doing here?"
David backed off and dug his hands in his pockets. He looked around at them shyly.
"This is going to take a lot of explaining," I said.
"I'll say," Jake agreed.
And we started explaining the whole story. We included the parts about their kids receiving the power, about how Hardy was in some odd way my brother.
Then Erek came. "You know," he said, looking at me and David, "my memory's messed up completely, but I think I remember something about you two in the future. And you," he pointed at David," got so drunk you passed out."
David laughed a bit nervously. We'd left that part out when we had told the others the story.
"So, basically, you went and fixed time, and you left us here?" Rachel asked.
"It's not like we had a choice," I told her.
Jake looked at David. "And you helped?"
David nodded. He was nervous again.
Suddenly, the Ellimist was there.
DAVID HAS CHANGED.
We didn't say anything. We didn't know what to say.
YOU HAVE TO ADMIT, IF THOSE TWO FIXED TIME WITH PRETTY MUCH NOTHING TO GAIN, HE'D HAVE HAD TO HAVE CHANGED.
Rachel nodded to herself.
"Pretty much nothing?" David echoed.
YOU'LL SEE. IN THE FUTURE.
He disappeared.
"I hate it when he does that," all of us said. Then we started laughing. Jake got up and shook hands with David.
"I guess you'll need a place to stay, huh?"
"Until I find my parents," David answered. He said it so we would all know that he wasn't kidding.
"Well, you can stay with us until then," Jake offered.
"There's just one thing that I want to know about the future," Rachel said to us.
"What?"
"Did my daughter look good or what?"
"Or what," David joked.
I made a face. "So-so."
Chapter 12
The next day, at school, I went through my classes as usual. David was enrolling, courtesy of Jake's parents. No one mentioned his dark side.
At lunch, I ran into Jessica, of course.
Actually, she ran into me, literally.
"So how's the freshman doing?" she sneered.
"Pretty well, and you?" I was trying to be polite. I wasn't in the mood for a fight. (That's a momentous occasion, by the way.)
"What, no smart remark?"
I smiled. "I guess I'm just more mature."
"Right." She sat down at the table. She was going to try to push me into having a fight with her. "You know, I think we have a problem."
"Let me guess. This is your table, so you're just going to try and force me to move. Either that, or you're going to say that I'm the problem. Those are two completely unoriginal insults."
Jessica stared at me, her mouth dropped. "You. Are. Rude."
I smiled at her. "I guess so."
She left with a slight pout. Then Jason came and sat next to me.
"Good job dealing with Jessica."
"Yeah. Right."
"No really. And I was thinking, well, um, do you want to go to the movies sometime?"
Right then David came by with a lunch tray and sat down on the other side of Jason. He gave me a quick peck on the cheek, said hi, then started eating while staring at Jason.
"Sorry, Jason, but I can't."
He nodded and looked at David. David looked back. He didn't show any expression. He just chewed and stared at Jason like a dead man.
Jason left.
David looked at me, grinning. "Do I make a good dead person or what?"
I shook my head.
The guys came over and saw how every time Jason looked our way, David would turn around and stare at him. We started laughing.
"So, uh, how cute was I in the future?" Marco asked.
David and I looked at each other.
"Okay, how rich was I?"
David and I didn't answer.
"Was I married?"
I shook my head.
"But I had a lot of girls hanging all over me, right?" He looked over at Rachel and raised his eyebrows, up, down, up, down.
"Um. No," I said.
"I think you got stuck in wrong future. The one that sucked."
The End... For now...