I hoped he was dead. Ax would have hoped he was dead... Free or dead, I remembered that. All of us had said that. And yet none of us would really want to kill another, unless necessary.
Would I have killed Ax myself if I'd known this would happen? I wondered.
Jake. Jake and Cassie. Marco. Ax. My parents, definitely. Our families.
Tobias. What would happen to him? Shot down? Tricked into morphing something with a larger ear canal today, at the meeting? I could picture it. "Here, we need new battle morphs," Cassie would say. "I just got this cougar in today. We should all acquire it and test it."
It would work. I knew it would.
And I'd run, like a coward. Not that I could do anything else. But I knew I wouldn't go back to save them. I understood that, and I wasn't going to pretend that I was headed back someday. I was going to survive.
Or was I...? What could I do? Where could I go? My dad? He'd be infested too, and they'd figure that I'd go there. I racked my brain. Where to stay? I couldn't get a job. I didn't have any paperwork. I wouldn't have an address. And I'd need to morph some other human and stay in morph all the time, demorphing every two hours. Unless I wanted to be a nothlit. Which I didn't. I needed this power...
My thoughts were getting more and more jumbled. I landed and collapsed under a tree. I didn't know where I was. I'd lost track of where I was a long time ago. I could only hope they'd lost track of me. Was that realistic? No, it wasn't, but I needed some good luck.
I was helpless. I had nothing. I had no home, I had no future, I had no chance of college and no chance of a job. The facts hit me, each different idea one more jerk in the jackhammer pounding in my brain.
One more day at the mall with Cassie. One more fight with Marco. Was it so much to ask?
Apparently it was.
I had to be getting close to the limit. I closed my eyes and concentrated, letting my feathers evaporate and be replaced with my light tan skin.
You idiot, don't close your eyes when there might be Yeerks coming.
My eyes snapped open and I sat up straight. My instincts had kept me alive this long and I wasn't about to ignore them.
Where could I sleep at night, now? Such an extraordinarily human concern, irrelevant, ridiculous, and it was the final straw. A choked sob gurgled in my half-human throat and my head fell to my deformed hands. "Ohhh..." my voice moaned. "No, no, please, no. Not now, not this. Not alone."
Who was I begging? The Ellimist?
The Ellimist! "You could have stopped this! Where were you?!" I stood up, mostly human, golden hair sprouting from a bald human head. "What am I supposed to do, Ellimist? You've told us before -- tell me now!"
Nothing. I don't know what I expected. I couldn't sanely have expected him to come when I needed him.
Rest or morph? Rest or morph? What to morph? Ant? They'd never find me, never if the searched for a million years, but I'd probably end up a nothlit. What if the ant brain took over and I never got out? What if?
I'd been wrong. I'd come back. I'd have to. I had nothing. I was nothing without the war. And I...
Did not want to die, not yet.
Rest or morph?
Or lie here, for hours and hours, waiting to be found. I was no fool. Every Yeerk in the state would be looking for me. I had no money. I had no way to get anywhere. I was trapped, and in that moment I truly understood helplessness for the first time.
It actually occurred to me, for one frozen moment, to go back, acquire a human, and kill her. It would have to be a her. Several targets popped into my mind instantaneously.
What would the Yeerks not anticipate me doing? There were so many of them, they'd anticipate everything. All of them would be thinking, watching, waiting for me, wanting to be the lucky Controller who gunned me down.
Fine then. What would they be commanded to do? Stake out my house, probably my dad's apartment, too. Stake out Tobias's meadow after they got him. Or killed him. Despite myself, I shuddered. Controllers could be freed. Dead people could not.
I needed Tobias. I needed him now. I needed him to tell me it was okay. I needed Cassie to check my violence. I needed Jake to tell me what to do. I needed Ax to anticipate the Yeerks' next move and to know what they were capable of. I needed Marco to lighten the horror of what was happening. I needed all of them, there and then, to be there, and to reassure me just by being there.
Get a grip, Rachel.
Rest or morph? I was back to the same question.
Two more minutes. Just two more minutes.
And the Yeerks were two more minutes closer. I sat up numbly. What morph? I'd rested long enough. Necessity dictated that. Eagle? They'd look for eagle. Seagull wouldn't go fast enough and I was in a forest and seagulls should not be in forests.
And slugs should not be in space ships...
"Concentrate, you idiot!" I shouted to nothingness. Birds took flight. A squirrel stared.
What morph? I couldn't think through the haze in my brain. Cassie was a Controller. Jake was a Controller. Ax was a Controller. They knew all my morphs. They knew what to expect. Where could I get new ones?
Bobcat. Were there bobcats in these woods? Twenty to thirty miles per hour. Not cheetah speed. Not even really fast. But they'd blend in. Could I...
I froze. It was impossible. It couldn't be. There was no way that I'd seen a flash of the cat through the trees. It was watching me carefully, too far away for me to make it there in a few bounds. Sure of itself, but not arrogant.
The Ellimist? Pure luck? There was no way to know. I stayed motionless, wondering how to get to it without scaring it off. It could be one of my friends... ex-friends... Controller friends... I doubted it. There was one way to find out: acquiring it. It is impossible to acquire someone else's morph.
How to get to it...
I paused. What do bobcats eat? Rats? Squirrels? I was pretty sure they'd go for a shrew...
No. I was not thinking this. There was no way I was thinking this.
I was thinking this.
I began to morph, slowly, then with more confidence as my reckless plan solidified. The bobcat looked startled as I rocketed to the ground. Fur rippled over my body. I felt the tail forming behind me, felt the tiny claws slide out of my fingers. It was a quick morph after I began to focus... I bounded towards the bobcat.
It was wary, but I saw the hungry light in its eyes. It was coming towards me. It was going for it. It closed in, and I twitched, making a good moving, panicky target.
I was fearless. At long last, I was Xena. I had nothing left to live for but life itself, and if the bobcat took that, better him than a Yeerk.
I felt a sudden rush of adrenaline as the shrew's mind collided, way too late, with mine.
{Aaaaaaaah!} I turned tail and ran. Now the bobcat was getting into it. He was faster than I was.
Plan, you idiot! Plan! I started demorphing, still running, still leading him. I'd thought I would be faster but as I writhed and felt my shrew legs lengthening I was just stumbling.
I tried to control it, tried with my not-quite-Cassie skills, to stay small. For a few moments I was successful.
The bobcat was almost on me when he stopped dead. My scent was changing.
I zoomed up from the ground at warp speed and suddenly I was Rachel, my height, with a horrible shrew mouth and short fur and teeth, whiskers, a long shrew nose... I would have screamed, but the bobcat was frozen and I wanted him that way.
My fur shrank back in. My nose and mouth returned to normal. I dived.
My hand touched the coat of the bobcat just as he started to leap away. He crashed, his eyes getting the vacant look of someone not quite all there. I felt his DNA flowing into me and I breathed again. Not a trap. A real bobcat. My real bobcat.
Mine...
My plan had been insane and suicidal. And it had worked. I'd morphed at warp speed and now the exhaustion caught up with me. I sank onto the carpet of pine needles, not even knowing which way to run.
I closed my eyes and slept...