A/N: Welcome to the Yeerk pool! Sorry this took so long to update, I've been real busy lately and haven't had time.
Disclaimer: The brilliant K.A. Applegate is the owner of the Animorphs and I'm the owner of Hope, Josh, Bade, Alexandria, and Sarah.
They all stared at me with shocked looks on their faces. Then at faces mixed with fear, excitement, and dread. I think the dread was most evident. Then the fear. There was very little excitement in their faces. In fact, I don't even know why I bothered to mention the excitement.
"Why do we have to do it now?!" Sarah finally broke the silence.
"Because there don't seem to be any Biofilters." I explained. It didn't relieve any of their worries. It didn't relieve any of mine either. I don't actually know what Biofilters look like. This was my team and if any of them got hurt, it was my fault.
"You went down there!" Josh yelled. He looked pretty mad as wall as scared, and when a cool and calm guy like Josh gets mad...watch out.
"No, I didn't go down there. I just checked out the door. Come on, we'll never get a chance like this." I said.
"But what about the plan? We don't have flea morphs." Alexandria asked.
"Screw it and let's go," Bade answered for me.
"Okay, say the line we've been hearing for the past few days and then we'll do it, uh...uh...dang, you need a nickname." Sarah teased.
"What line? Nickname? What the...?" I asked.
"Rachel's line, silly. And we need to call you something other than Hope. How about fearless leader because you are so much like Jake?" Alexandria explained to me.
"I'm not like Jake." I argued.
"Whatever, we'll think of a nickname for you later. Just say the words and let's get going." Bade joked. Bade was in on this! Ooh, he was going to get it...I don't know why, but he was just going to get it.
I rolled my eyes,"Let's do it! Now everyone, morph halfway so we won't be recognized."
Everyone did as they were told and soon we were unrecognizable, even me. My paleness had gone and I had just morphed which completely changed the results. We walked in there, hoping nobody would notice five teenagers wearing skin tight clothes asking for extra butter popcorn with extra butter all the way to the rim. It's not exactly normal, but then again, we weren't exactly normal either. Soon, we were through and on our way down. Down through the roughly carved stairs and low ceilings that only occasionally had a light hanging from it. Down to terror we've only read about.
"I don't like this! I feel so vulnerable as a human. I want to leave." Alexandria whispered to herself while holding Josh's hand. Sarah had a hold of his other hand. Even with their extreme fear, they still didn't like the other much.
"Hope, can we just go, please?" Bade asked me and gripped my hand. All of them turned towards me. I was supposed to be the strong one, the leader. And strangely enough, I wasn't afraid. I nodded bravely and we walked down for what seemed like forever but Sarah informed me was only twenty minutes.
Then I saw it. The Yeerk pool. And the part about not being afraid, I could throw that to the wind because now I was terrified. I knew the moment I laid my eyes on it that I would have nightmares for the rest of my life.
The Yeerk pool was like a huge lake except it was filled with sludge. Instead of picnicking families you had screaming families in cages. Where ducks should be, only Hork-Bajir, Gedds, and taxxons as well as a couple of other species I've never heard of existed. There were six piers hanging over the pool. Three of them were where Controllers would calmly walk over and hover their heads over the surface before they would either calmly walk away or scream for mercy. The screaming people would go to the cages to await the upcoming fate that faced them every three days. After a while, a person would be dragged out of the freedom of the cages and forced under the sludgy surface. You think you know what it's like from the books, well, you know nothing until you've actually stared at the horrors of it.
"Nice vacation spot. Yeerk pool, USA. Instead of you staying with us, we'll stay in you." Sarah tried desperately to lighten the mood, the fear, the horror. Needless to say, it didn't work.
I don't know who said it first or if we all said it at the same time or even if the words were just a figment of our imagination's, but the message was clear from all, "I want to go now and never come back."
I was the first to recover, the first to be strong. When I got mom and dad back, I could be scared to death, but now I had to stay the strong one or this whole group will crumble.
"Let's do it, troops." I said quietly. None of us were morphed enough to use thought-speak.
"Nononononononono! I can't do this Hope, I can't! Look at it, come on Hope, look at it! It's too big. Let's stop this nonsense. We aren't superheroes or Animorphs. We can't do it!" Sarah eyes welled up in tears.
"My name is not Hope for nothing! Either you come with me or I'll do this myself. Just keep in mind, that tomorrow, there will be more people, and the next day, even more. What do you think you'll do when your parents are Controllers like mine, huh? How will you tell them that you were too scared to fight? I, for one, am not going down without a fight, even if there is no point in the fight. And if I die, then so be it, but this is one girl they are never going to take, and if I do get a Yeerk in my head, I'll feel slightly sorry for it because I will make its life hell. Now, are you with me or not?" This is one war speech out of many that you will never hear, because even if I could remember it word for word, the moment those words popped out of my mouth, I knew how cruel and how manipulative they were.
After a minute, Bade finally said, "I may be scared, but Hope is right, and I'm not going down without a fight either. I'm sure not going to end up like my granddad."
Alexandria sighed, "I'm in."
"Josh was next, "It's our duty. So no more people will get hurt."
Sarah gulped, "I...I guess I'll do it...so my mom and friends never has to become one of them."
"I already told you that I'm doing this." I told them.
"Where do we morph?" Bade asked.
"How about the bathrooms?" Sarah suggested.
"An ape going into the bathroom, an ape coming out." Alexandria joked. I was glad; right now we needed a little normalcy.
"Uh, aren't your morphs a little big for a bathroom?" Josh asked Sarah and Bade.
"Does anyone see a spot without security cameras?" I asked, going into leader mode.
"What about the boxes? We could hide under them," Alexandria suggested.
I rubbed my temples, a habit I had picked up when I was young and was using more and more frequently, "Everyone under the boxes." They all nodded and went their separate ways to sneak under some boxes. I went forward to hide in the shadows.
That was when a hand reached from behind me and turned me around, "Where do you think you're going?" a man asked.
Here was my bind. I couldn't morph without demorphing first, and then he would see the necklace which I could absolutely positively not let him see. A leopard would attract a lot of attention and the others were waiting for my orders to attack.
"Important work," I lied partly. It was true, I was doing important work, but not the type he thought I was.
"Ah," he said and I was relieved for a moment, "Well, get in line to feed." He pushed me into the line. I was trapped with one way out and that was to go through the long twisting line. I stuffed a small rock in my ear and awaited my turn to "feed".
When my turn came, the rock fell out and I started screaming. Whenever I tell the others what happened, I tell them I was acting and they buy it. It probably would have been smarter to pretend to be a voluntary but I was screaming from pure fear. I was thrown into a cage with several others.
Hope, where are you? We're all ready, Josh asked beneath one of the groups of boxes.
I morphed myself enough to use thought-speak, I'm in a cage guys. At the Yeerk pool. I'm about to be infested.
Sirens started going off and Controllers rushed around me with Dracon beams. That's great Hope. Because I think this is a trap, Sarah said.
A/N: I know that was a really short chapter but it sounded better than when I tried to combine this with the next chapter.