Chapter 2-Love vs. Life
(A/N-This is the next part of possible solutions to all the dilemmas Applegate has in her books. The first came from #41 The Familiar. This comes from the Visser Chronicles. Quotes will be in italics. And by the way, I don't own Animorphs. Unfortunately.)
I held the gun.
And Darwin, my son, calmly took the barrel in his right hand and pressed it against his own heart.
I understood. Darwin was a Controller. The Yeerk inside his brain was holding his gun so that I couldn't spin around and shoot Visser Three. Holding the gun so that the only person I could kill was Darwin.
The Yeerk's host body would die, my son would die. The Yeerk might be rescued in time. It was dangerous for him, though. Visser Three must have threatened him terribly to get him to do this.
I looked at my son, the features that were a unique blend of Allison's Korean physiology and Hildy's French physiology. The eyes, the hair, were Allison's. The skin was pale, the mouth wide, were Hildy's.
Nothing of me, of course. How could there be? And yet, this child would not have existed but for me. Surely that made me in some part his mother.
I struggled to control my facial expressions. I was helped by the injuries. I had seen myself in the mirror; my right eye always seemed to be crying now.
Darwin a controller. His sister? My daughter? Where was Madra? Where was my little girl, named for the bright, tiny, moon of the Yeerk home world?
The gun was trembling in my hand. Pull the trigger. It was all I had to do. I would be free. Visser Three had staked everything on this one showdown.
If I refused I would be beyond even Garoff's power to save.
Perhaps Visser One is unfamiliar with the operation of the weapon, Visser Three smirked. That seems unlikely in the extreme, but just to refresh her memory, you pull the trigger, Visser. Just pull the trigger!
You can't do this, Edriss, Eva said.
I have no choice! They'll kill me!
Once before you chose your life over love. Are you happy with the result?
That was true. Choosing my life a visser over love and a happy life with Essam had led me to this. Forced to shoot my own son. I was not supposed to care. I did. Cared so deeply that I knew my heart was practically torn into two, in human terms, even though I had no evidence that the human heart could be torn apart so easily. I assumed it was a metaphorical term at the time, but now, I knew. It could. My heart was throbbing, like a pump pumping the deadly adrenaline through every vein of my body. For the first time, I truly understood the term "torn apart".
Once, I had played the game humans called chess. It was a strategy game, in which the objective was to force the opposing side's king into defeat, or 'checkmate'. I had learnt, in my study of human history, that the game had been played by ancient kings. Ironically, this was a game that had become reality. Two kings. Victory was in my grasp. All I had to do was sacrifice Darwin, one of the countless pawns in my possession and it would be checkmate. Visser Three's seemingly erroneous claim would be proven wrong. I would survive. And he would not. Just one pull...
If it were a real chess game, I would have seen the solution, and done it without any hesitation. There is no room in chess for mercy. This was not chess. It was the real world, where love, although I hate to admit it, shook my resolve. I knew that I couldn't bring myself to do it. Just like when I had tried, over and over, to convince myself that I did not care for the kids. Did not care for Essam. Yet I did...
Where was Marco? If I were to escape alive from this situation, the only person who could see that happen was Marco. His cavalier dismissal of my desperate proposal had shocked me to the core. I had thought that he would do anything to save his mother, even one that wasn't really his mother, but a Visser, but I was wrong. He saw the straight line of ruthlessness, like when he set up the plot to get rid of me and Visser Three. But he couldn't bring himself to let me die without letting me discover. That thread of weakness was what I was depending on. He was human, after all. But I was still helplessly, hopelessly alone.
And it was all my fault. All of it. I could have just aborted the babies. I knew that I was falling in love with Essam's could have exercised more self-control. I could have seen through Marco's ploy, if I had not been overwhelmed by my desire to destroy Visser Three. I could have, could have...
I gave myself a mental slap. I had to convince the council (and Visser Three) that I was not a traitor. Essentially, lie to them. And in the process, I had to keep Darwin's life. How?
And then it struck me. I did not mind being branded a traitor. I just did not want to die the death of one-Kandrona starvation. That realization pointed out something else. Another idea. The only viable plan. SHOOT! Visser Three roared. Or at least I think he did, since everything had subsided into a low roar all around me. My brain had gone into overdrive. But the solution had been found. And it depended on one person. Darwin.
I swerved. Hoping, desperately hoping that the shock, combined with the strength of the little momentum I could muster, would be enough for him to release it. He did. He was a nine-year-old, after all. How much strength did he have in those tiny fingers of his? Visser Three, in his glee that he had come up with a plan that had a 0.01% chance of working, must have been too glad posturing to remember that Darwin's body was that of a child and just wasn't as strong as the adult human morph he had.
At that moment, time crawled to a stop. Visser Three's tail arced across the air, towards me. Getting closer and closer with every second. The Hork-Bajir around trained their Dracon beams at me. Facing Visser Three, I did what he had wanted me to do. Pulled the trigger. Of course, he wouldn't have wanted the bullet to be going through his head. Point-blank range. That deadly tail, together with the rest of him, fell to the floor, milliseconds before he decapitated me. With that accomplished, I placed the gun, with almost deadly calm, against my temple. The Hork-Bajir all around me closed in, on orders to take me alive, which was not going to happen.
No. I am not. I told Eva.
And pulled the trigger.
(A/N-How's that? Please review, and tell me if there's any way I can improve, whether in my technique or ideas. Thanks to all the people who have been reading and reviewing my stories!)
(A/N-This is the next part of possible solutions to all the dilemmas Applegate has in her books. The first came from #41 The Familiar. This comes from the Visser Chronicles. Quotes will be in italics. And by the way, I don't own Animorphs. Unfortunately.)
I held the gun.
And Darwin, my son, calmly took the barrel in his right hand and pressed it against his own heart.
I understood. Darwin was a Controller. The Yeerk inside his brain was holding his gun so that I couldn't spin around and shoot Visser Three. Holding the gun so that the only person I could kill was Darwin.
The Yeerk's host body would die, my son would die. The Yeerk might be rescued in time. It was dangerous for him, though. Visser Three must have threatened him terribly to get him to do this.
I looked at my son, the features that were a unique blend of Allison's Korean physiology and Hildy's French physiology. The eyes, the hair, were Allison's. The skin was pale, the mouth wide, were Hildy's.
Nothing of me, of course. How could there be? And yet, this child would not have existed but for me. Surely that made me in some part his mother.
I struggled to control my facial expressions. I was helped by the injuries. I had seen myself in the mirror; my right eye always seemed to be crying now.
Darwin a controller. His sister? My daughter? Where was Madra? Where was my little girl, named for the bright, tiny, moon of the Yeerk home world?
The gun was trembling in my hand. Pull the trigger. It was all I had to do. I would be free. Visser Three had staked everything on this one showdown.
If I refused I would be beyond even Garoff's power to save.
Perhaps Visser One is unfamiliar with the operation of the weapon, Visser Three smirked. That seems unlikely in the extreme, but just to refresh her memory, you pull the trigger, Visser. Just pull the trigger!
You can't do this, Edriss, Eva said.
I have no choice! They'll kill me!
Once before you chose your life over love. Are you happy with the result?
That was true. Choosing my life a visser over love and a happy life with Essam had led me to this. Forced to shoot my own son. I was not supposed to care. I did. Cared so deeply that I knew my heart was practically torn into two, in human terms, even though I had no evidence that the human heart could be torn apart so easily. I assumed it was a metaphorical term at the time, but now, I knew. It could. My heart was throbbing, like a pump pumping the deadly adrenaline through every vein of my body. For the first time, I truly understood the term "torn apart".
Once, I had played the game humans called chess. It was a strategy game, in which the objective was to force the opposing side's king into defeat, or 'checkmate'. I had learnt, in my study of human history, that the game had been played by ancient kings. Ironically, this was a game that had become reality. Two kings. Victory was in my grasp. All I had to do was sacrifice Darwin, one of the countless pawns in my possession and it would be checkmate. Visser Three's seemingly erroneous claim would be proven wrong. I would survive. And he would not. Just one pull...
If it were a real chess game, I would have seen the solution, and done it without any hesitation. There is no room in chess for mercy. This was not chess. It was the real world, where love, although I hate to admit it, shook my resolve. I knew that I couldn't bring myself to do it. Just like when I had tried, over and over, to convince myself that I did not care for the kids. Did not care for Essam. Yet I did...
Where was Marco? If I were to escape alive from this situation, the only person who could see that happen was Marco. His cavalier dismissal of my desperate proposal had shocked me to the core. I had thought that he would do anything to save his mother, even one that wasn't really his mother, but a Visser, but I was wrong. He saw the straight line of ruthlessness, like when he set up the plot to get rid of me and Visser Three. But he couldn't bring himself to let me die without letting me discover. That thread of weakness was what I was depending on. He was human, after all. But I was still helplessly, hopelessly alone.
And it was all my fault. All of it. I could have just aborted the babies. I knew that I was falling in love with Essam's could have exercised more self-control. I could have seen through Marco's ploy, if I had not been overwhelmed by my desire to destroy Visser Three. I could have, could have...
I gave myself a mental slap. I had to convince the council (and Visser Three) that I was not a traitor. Essentially, lie to them. And in the process, I had to keep Darwin's life. How?
And then it struck me. I did not mind being branded a traitor. I just did not want to die the death of one-Kandrona starvation. That realization pointed out something else. Another idea. The only viable plan. SHOOT! Visser Three roared. Or at least I think he did, since everything had subsided into a low roar all around me. My brain had gone into overdrive. But the solution had been found. And it depended on one person. Darwin.
I swerved. Hoping, desperately hoping that the shock, combined with the strength of the little momentum I could muster, would be enough for him to release it. He did. He was a nine-year-old, after all. How much strength did he have in those tiny fingers of his? Visser Three, in his glee that he had come up with a plan that had a 0.01% chance of working, must have been too glad posturing to remember that Darwin's body was that of a child and just wasn't as strong as the adult human morph he had.
At that moment, time crawled to a stop. Visser Three's tail arced across the air, towards me. Getting closer and closer with every second. The Hork-Bajir around trained their Dracon beams at me. Facing Visser Three, I did what he had wanted me to do. Pulled the trigger. Of course, he wouldn't have wanted the bullet to be going through his head. Point-blank range. That deadly tail, together with the rest of him, fell to the floor, milliseconds before he decapitated me. With that accomplished, I placed the gun, with almost deadly calm, against my temple. The Hork-Bajir all around me closed in, on orders to take me alive, which was not going to happen.
No. I am not. I told Eva.
And pulled the trigger.
(A/N-How's that? Please review, and tell me if there's any way I can improve, whether in my technique or ideas. Thanks to all the people who have been reading and reviewing my stories!)