5. Two Dead Children
«It is not possible to conceive of a greater evil than the deliberate killing of a child.»
– Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill, Megamorphs #3: Elfangor's Secret
CassieAs a fly, the Hive's tunnels had been a wild ride. As a Taxxon, it felt natural, almost like a dolphin swimming through the ocean. This was the Taxxon's ocean – wet mud filled with the microbiome of the Living Hive. I sped along, still burning with hunger, but filled with purpose. It was this intoxicating feeling, like I knew I was being sent somewhere for an important reason. It wasn't the total loss of self I had as a termite, but more like the way soldiers look in movies about World War II. Like they're doing their duty because their comrades need them to, and it's all for an important cause. The way I thought war was supposed to be, before I became a soldier myself.
Eventually, I slowed, then came to a stop. I tasted that the Living Hive was barely detectable in the soil anymore. «THIS IS AS FAR AS I GO,» the Hive said. «CONTINUE STRAIGHT AHEAD TO THE SURFACE AT THE SAME ANGLE, AND YOU WILL ARRIVE AT YOUR DESTINATION.»
«Thank you,» I said. I flicked my tongue ahead and found there was no more tunnel. I would have to dig the rest of the way.
After eating the mud deep within the Living Hive, the regular old California dirt tasted like week-old leftovers. It was horribly dry. No matter how much I ate, it never soothed the Hunger. But the idea of stopping was even worse, because then I'd be empty.
I could sense when I was close to the surface. «Stop,» Illim said, and when I couldn't, he made me. Rachel and Tobias bumped right up against my butt end – I tried not to think how nasty that must be right now – and Illim broadcast to all of us, «Do you feel that? The vibrations.»
«The earth is shaking,» Tobias said. «Something big is going on up there.»
«The troops marching in?» I said shakily. «Didn't we tell the governor the soldiers should be quiet about this?»
«We did,» Jake said grimly. I'd almost forgotten he was there. It was hard to think about anything but the Hunger and the mission in this morph.
«We have to get closer,» Rachel said.
«Do it,» Jake said. «But don't break the surface.»
It was hard to go slowly. Easier to suck the dirt down greedily, even if it wasn't the right dirt. But I had to go slow so I wouldn't come bursting through the surface into… whatever was going on up there. Illim helped, again, drawing on memories of the Living Hive giving me the discipline of purpose. I dug upward slowly, and then stopped.
«Gunfire,» Rachel said. «That's gunfire.» And screams. Illim and I could hear it too.
«Cassie?» Jake said. «Hit the surface, then back up and hide. We're going to do some fly recon.»
Slow, so slow. I flicked my tongue out and slurped down the last layers of dirt like I was licking the last delicious scraps of food from a bowl. I felt the cool night air, and the Taxxon instinctively retreated from it into the safe warmth of the ground. The Animorphs in fly morph must have flown up, because Tobias and I, along with Illim and Rachel, were alone.
«Hungry,» Tobias said. I felt the tip of his tongue flicker against my back end.
«Tobias,» I warned, even though I was just as hungry.
«I got him,» Rachel growled. «Just hold tight.»
«They're fighting!» Loren cried. «There's two units of soldiers here, fighting each other. I guess a Controller unit must have found out about the drop-off.»
«I can't tell which ones are the Controllers,» Jake said.
«How are we supposed to help?» Marco said. «If we come busting out of the ground as lions and tigers and bears, the regular old humans might start shooting us too.»
«We tell them we're here to help?»
«Yeah, that's gonna be super reassuring when their own buddies are firing on them.» Marco, of course. «You can't trust anybody, but don't worry, guys, you can trust the creepy little voice inside your brain!»
I said, «What if it's not a creepy voice in their heads or a big scary monster coming out of the ground? What if it's just a girl?»
«Cassie!» Illim cried. «You can't! You'll be killed!»
«Cassie,» Marco said, «I am legally obligated to tell you that's insane. It's written in my Animorph contract.»
«I'm the best morpher,» I said stubbornly. «And with Illim to help me, my morph to Taxxon was even quicker. If I get shot, I'll morph it away.»
«And what if you're shot in the head?» Illim demanded.
I added for everyone to hear, «I can use my moose morph to make my skull thicker. I'll look a little weird, but…»
«Do it,» Jake said. «We can't just sit down here and listen to the Controllers kill that other unit.»
«We're gonna die,» Illim said. I ignored him. I thought I was going to eat my friends just now and he saved me, so he was just going to have to accept that I could save him. I demorphed, and lay in the dirt, slick with my own Taxxon spit, hearing Tobias's horrible Taxxon breath on me from behind and the shattering blaze of gunfire ahead. I focused on the moose, the sturdiness of its skull where the antlers attached, ready to take the impact if the moose got into a fight. My head crunched, the skull thickening. I felt moose fur spread over my skull, the back of my neck, and down my shoulders before I stopped the morph. Well, the moose fur was pretty similar to my skin color, so the soldiers probably wouldn't notice.
«Cassie, you gotta go up there now,» Rachel said. «I just barely have enough of a grip on Tobias so he doesn't eat you.»
I crawled out of the tunnel into chaos.
Gunfire. It was hard to tell where it was coming from. Shouts. Blazing bright spotlights searching the night for targets. My teeth started chattering. The last thing I wanted to do was call any attention to myself. I was terrified one of the spotlights might land on me any moment. I clutched Quincy to my chest. «Illim,» I thought, «give me the strength to do this.»
Starbursts exploded in front of my eyes as a white light blasted my face. There was a gasp and a thump, and somebody pinned me to the ground, facedown, weight on top of me.
I focused on the moose.
"Kid," a man's voice growled in my ear, "what the hell are you doing here? You're gonna get yourself killed."
I relaxed and let go of the moose. A real soldier, then. Any Controller would have instantly recognized me as Cassie the Animorph. "I'm your contact," I said, turning my face to the side so he could hear me. "I'm the one you're supposed to be handing off rations and medicines to."
"Shit," the soldier said. "A kid?"
"Listen," I said. "Those soldiers you're fighting. They're not the soldiers you know. Not anymore. They've been taken over by aliens called Yeerks. The governor knows, but she can't go public with it yet."
A pause. "That's crazy. But so is watching soldiers from my own platoon firing at me. Go on."
"I'm here with other aliens who want to fight them," I said. "We can help. But we don't know which of you are on our side and which have been taken over."
"And even if I told you the differences in our insignia," the soldier continued, "you probably won't be able to tell them apart in the heat of battle. Right. What if I tell you where the supplies are? Can you grab them and bug out of here?"
"Yes. But you have to tell whoever's guarding them not to shoot us, no matter how strange we look."
The soldier laughed bitterly. "Right. Don't shoot the bug-eyed alien monsters, just our comrades."
"I wish we could help you," I said, "but we can barely help ourselves. We have refugees. Humans being hunted by the Yeerks."
"If we survive this fight, kid, we'll help your people. That's a promise." The soldier moved a little, so he was between me and the sound of where the closest gunfire was coming from, but gave me enough space to get up into a crouch. Quincy let out a chatter of echolocation, and I slipped into four-eye to look at the man in ephemeral sketches. He didn't have a visible dæmon, which meant she was probably small and hidden inside his body armor. "Sergeant Hao Li, of Fifth Squad," he said.
"Cassie Clark," I said, "of the Guardians of the Galaxy." Better not to mention Illim. Too complicated.
"Is that a bat dæmon I see?" Sergeant Li said. "I'll just point to the truck, then. It's back that way." He pointed, and Quincy sent out a burst of echolocation following his finger. Li saluted me. "I'll comm my squad and let them know the bug-eyed monsters are friendly."
"Wait," I said. "How can I get in touch with you? Do you have, like, a radio frequency or something?"
"We do," Sergeant Li said, "but the alien body-snatchers or whatever they are will be able to listen in. Call my private office line."
He told me the number. I mumbled it under my breath a couple times, but Illim said, «Don't worry, I've got it,» and made the memory of Sergeant Li saying the number burn like a camera flash in my mind.
"Thank you, sir," I said. "Good luck." And I ran back to the tunnel.
BA-BA-BAM! Pain exploded in my leg. I half-fell into the tunnel, screaming in shock and pain. I demorphed all the way back to human, then focused on the Taxxon, with Illim speeding along the morph right beside me.
«Cassie,» Illim said, «that was the craziest thing I've ever experienced.»
«Illim,» I said. «That was not even close to the craziest thing I've ever experienced.»
«I believe it,» he said. We were back in the Taxxon morph, and the Hunger hit like a sledgehammer. It was a good thing I was facing mouth-up or I would have gone in for a bite of the others right away, who had all demorphed in the tunnel to get ready for battle.
"What happened?" Jake asked.
«I know where the supplies are,» I said. «I talked to a sergeant. One of the real soldiers. He's told the soldiers near the supply truck not to shoot any, uh, "bug-eyed monsters" who show up.»
"Great," Marco said. "Let's get the hell out of here."
Everyone got back in morph, and I led Rachel and Tobias in a tunnel toward the supply truck, guzzling down the dry, empty dirt. It was hard to judge the distance underground relative to what Quincy "saw" with his echolocation, and when I broke surface, we were still a dozen feet short of the truck. There was nothing for it but to shuffle over there as quickly as our Taxxon legs could take us. A soldier standing guard at the supply truck saw us, screamed, and dropped his weapon.
«Hi,» Tobias said, with some of Rachel's mischief in him. «We're the bug-eyed monsters from outer space.»
The soldier's monitor lizard dæmon, bulky with body armor, hid behind his legs. "Voice," she gasped. "In my head."
«You thought your sergeant was talking crazy, huh,» Rachel said. «Well, surprise, he wasn't. Can we move it along and get those rations? This isn't really a nice place to hang out.»
«Cassie,» I said. «Sergeant Li told you to help Cassie, right?»
The soldier nodded, and jerkily moved toward the back of the supply truck. We followed. He rolled back the canvas back of the truck, and took out two big pallets of food. The Taxxon morph could smell it even through the packet. Drool gathered in my mouth and splattered on the ground. The trip back was going to be bad.
«I trusted you to do your job,» Illim said. «Trust me to do mine.»
«Um,» I thought. «How are we supposed to carry these? Taxxon arms are kind of pathetic.»
«It's easiest if you strap things onto your back,» Illim said.
«Hey,» I said. «I see you have some straps you used to make sure the stuff didn't move around in transit. Is there, uh, any chance you could strap them onto us?»
The soldier just stared at our spit-dripping needle-toothed mouths in mute disbelief.
«If we try to eat you, you can shoot us,» Tobias said. «Just please not the head.»
The soldier shook his head, seemed to accept that this was his life now, and carried a pallet over to Rachel and Tobias. He put it on the Taxxon back – «Oof, that's heavy,» Tobias said – and secured the straps between the rows of giant centipede legs with shaking hands. Then he came over did the same for me.
«Thank you so much,» I said. «Please don't die.»
We scuttled back to the tunnel, much more slowly this time. Rachel and Tobias went first. I went second, staring with longing at the delicious-smelling box right ahead of me.
«You don't need that,» Illim said hypnotically. «You'll be home soon. Home with the Living Hive. And it will be so proud that you did your mission just right.»
Home. Home. I just had to make it home.
It probably took less time to get back, since we didn't have to dig a new tunnel to go back, but it felt like longer. The food was dizzying, the struggle not to eat it a constant battle I thought I'd lose any second. It was only when we were back in the embrace of the Living Hive that we got any relief.
«THANK YOU SO MUCH, CHILDREN,» the Hive said, and I glowed with accomplishment. «LET ME TAKE YOU HOME.» It pulled us back at enormous speed, down and down and down, and spat us back out in the central Hive chamber. I demorphed as soon as I hit the ground.
The human refugees came running up to where we were sprawled in the mud next to the pallets of rations. "How did it go?" said Tidwell urgently.
I looked up at him and smiled with all of Illim's joy at seeing him again. "I think you guys might have a safe place to go."
TidwellRobin gave me a large box, a bag of medicines and first aid kits, some plastic bags, a carefully written-out ledger, and a smooth glossy-dark cylinder. "Sort the medicines by who needs what prescription and label the bags with the person's name," he said. "General medicines and first aid stay in the big bag. Pack them all in the box."
I carefully held on to all the stuff and waved the mysterious cylinder between two fingers. "What's this?"
"Some kind of Andalite marker, apparently," Robin said, shrugging. "Press the button on the side and it writes." He paused at the flap of the "portable scoop" we had unpacked from the Ralek River. "Are you coming with us?"
I almost answered him right away, but Illim held me back. "Give us some time to think," he said.
Robin nodded. His eyes lingered on me a moment before he left. It was weird being around the refugees sometimes. Their Peace Movement friends had all been killed. I think they were jealous of me, for still having Illim around.
I studied the ledger and started stuffing and labeling bags of medicine, soothing myself with the satisfaction of putting everything in its place. I tried not to notice that one of the bags had a bottle of Xanax and was labeled "Marco." I didn't pack that one in the box.
He's feeling worse, Kalysico noticed, as Illim prickled with pain inside my head. What is this place doing to him?
«You could go,» Illim said. «You could get something better for Kalysico than a bucket. You could be safe.»
I looked over at Kaly in her bucket. She hated it. Normally in her tank she had some plastic seaweed she could play around with and hide in. I hated it too, mostly because I was constantly afraid I would trip over my own feet and spill her on the ground.
"You told me the same thing in a bookshop seven months ago," I said. "If I had taken you up on it – if I had gone to the valley with the refugees – I would still be where I am now. And you would be worse off. Illim, there's no guarantee of safety. And the Aftran Plisam Pool is learning so much from us. All those Yeerks who get hit with this virus? They're going to have to learn what we know, too." I packed medicines away, carefully filling the whole box. "I have the morphing power now. It's time to stop believing I'm helpless."
I could feel Illim's relief. He'd been dreading the idea of watching me go even as he'd proposed it. He was scared. He needed me. «After the war, I hope your people recognize how great of a hero you are, Julian.»
"I'm not a hero. I'm just a teacher." I carefully picked up the box and Kaly's bucket.
«You won't drop her, I promise,» Illim said, guiding my steps. I walked out of the portable scoop into the glowing muck.
I found Peter Chen near the scoop, rolling up his sleeping bag. I awkwardly waved at him. He stood up, and I waved the bag labeled "Marco" at him. "Hey," I said. "Before you catch that tunnel out of here – give this to Marco." Peter took the bag, saw the pill bottle through the clear plastic, and looked back up at me, confused. I shrugged. "It's none of my business. I'm not even sure it's any of yours. If he needs it, he needs it."
As I moved on, I wondered what it would be like for the Animorphs to say goodbye to their families, not knowing if they'd see them again. At least I wouldn't be saying goodbye to Illim, not for as long as I had the option.
JakeI said goodbye to my parents. It was awful how much of a relief it was.
The Taxxons and the Living Hive had made a tunnel up to the surface at a rendezvous point with Sergeant Li's unit, which we'd arranged after Lourdes and Gonrod hacked together a way to call him through the Ralek River's communication console. Our families were going, along with all the other human refugees who'd been living in Kref Magh. Walter, Jamal, and Julie would help the soldiers protect the refugees from the Controller units.
I could see Marco, Rachel, and Cassie standing around with their families, each in their own little clump, well away from any of the Taxxon tunnel entrances. Cassie and her dad were hugging tightly, Quincy hanging from Emeraude's antler like it was a branch. Dia was half inside Mirazai's tank as Marco side-hugged his dad and ignored his stepmom. Rachel was kneeling down in the mud so she could say something to Sara face-to-face. I stood a little back from my parents, rubbing the back of my neck like I was the new kid trying to make conversation at school.
"So," I said. "You ready for the trip?"
Mom fiddled with the strap of the duffel bag at her feet. "We'll make it."
It was going to be kind of brutal. The Taxxons couldn't make the tunnel too steep, or the kids on the trip would never make it. Since it wasn't steep, it had to be super long to make it all the way to the surface. The walk was going to take all day, and if someone got tired or injured along the way, they would have to just keep going.
"You'll make it," I said. "And you'll have people looking out for you." Like I couldn't do.
Dad cleared his throat. "Still no word from Tom?"
My throat tightened painfully. "No. Nothing." I wanted to say he would be okay, and they shouldn't worry. But I'd already spent years lying to my parents. I was still lying to them by pretending that Tom had gotten trapped in morph by accident. I couldn't stand any more lies.
Mom rushed forward to hug me. Merlyse fluttered off my arm to Tz'irah's back. Mom cried into my shoulder. "Don't die, Jake. Don't. Please don't. Your father and I can't lose anything more. We can't."
Dad joined the hug too, silent. I wanted it to comfort me. It didn't. The only comfort was that I didn't have to worry about them anymore. For now, they were somebody else's problem.
TobyIt was time to go around and check on my traps.
Trapping Hork-Bajir-Controllers so we could drag them away and free them was a strategy we had used before. But now, when outright raids on our enemies were much riskier, and we were trying to use our knowledge of the forest against them, traps had become essential.
The trick was to find a tree that was obviously excellent for swinging, and weaken the crucial swinging branches in a subtle way – strategic cuts to the base of the branch, or hollowing out the trunk of a dead tree through a bird's hole. The modifications left a hrala signature, but only a small one. The weakened branch was connected by a trigger string to another tree or a pile of large rocks. When our enemies tried to use the trap branches, they fell into a covered pit at the base of the tree, and a heavy weight fell on top of them, trapping them inside the pit.
At the first trap I checked, I saw the telltale vortex of hrala rising from the pit. I rolled the dead tree away from it, and found an unconscious Gold Band inside. We didn't have time to starve the Yeerks out, and these Yeerks were too fanatic to be talked into a quick, easy death. I cut open the Gold Band's skull with my blade and saw the Yeerk wrapped in a slimy layer around his brain. I reached in, pinched the Yeerk's membrane, and pulled. Long, stringy, like sap from a wound in a tree, I extracted the Yeerk from my Hork-Bajir brother's head. Its hrala sputtered and faded in my hands as it died. I cast the disgusting sticky shreds to the forest floor, then held the wound closed, hoping fiercely that I had not infected him. There was a reason why this method was a last resort. I morphed to hawk, thought-spoke to Makooma Takit to tell her where to find him, and flew on to the next trap.
The next five traps were empty. The one after that had been tripped, but the rubble had been shoved out of the pit – the Controller had gotten away. That was worrying. I didn't want anyone going back to warn the others about how my traps worked. I was going to have to change my strategy.
The eighth trap I checked had also been tripped. I saw the glow of hrala rising from the pit, but strangely, it wasn't very much. Perhaps I had taken too long to check the trap, and the Controller had just died of thirst or injury. I rushed toward the pit and rolled away the boulder pinning the Hork-Bajir down.
I stared down at a disconnected mess that my mind at first refused to piece together into reality. Exposed, pale bone. Ragged, wet breathing. Congealing green blood. Tiny hands scrabbling weakly in the dirt.
I had calibrated the deadfall traps with enough weight to pin down, but not kill, an adult Hork-Bajir. I had not calibrated them for a child.
I joined the child in the pit. I did not recognize her from Kref Magh. The bark in my stomach turned to splinters when I got an up-close look at her wounds. Maybe, just maybe, we could have nursed her back to health in Kref Magh. Now, on the run with no resources, there was no way we could treat such grievous wounds. The child would die, and I had killed her. "What," I began. I started over. "What are you doing here, little one? Where did you come from?"
The child turned her head in the dirt to face me and snarled weakly. "Stop wasting my time and kill me already."
One of my hearts stopped, until it was kicked back into gear by the others. Those were not the words of a Hork-Bajir child. "So you're infesting little children now," I said. "You can't even give them six months for whatever passes for a childhood in your compounds, is that it?"
The tiny Controller retched up blood, then said, "We need as many hrala-sight-capable agents as possible to destroy your little rebellion. Your children are capable."
More than anything, I wanted a moment of freedom for this little girl before she died. Extracting the Yeerk from her head would kill her, but it was worth it for even a moment to be herself. "I'm sorry, little one," I whispered, and I very gently opened up the back of her skull with just the tip of my wrist blade. I pinched the skin of the Yeerk with the pointed ends of my nails and pulled. The girl convulsed in my arms. She was seizing. I kept pulling. The Yeerk stretched impossibly long, like viscous honey pooling down from a shattered beehive. I sang to the little girl, holding her spasming, broken body in my arm. I didn't know if she could hear me. If she could hear me, then the song was for the two of us alone. It was nothing her Yeerk, her slaver, would ever get to hear.
Mother Sky and Father Deep,
Raise my daughter up to sleep.
On a sturdy branch she lies,
Mother's flowers in her eyes.
As she sleeps, her Father keeps
Monsters quiet in the deeps.
In her Mother's arms she'll see
Hrala blooming on the Tree.
IllimThe taste and smell of the Pool sludge had gotten worse ever since the Aftran Plisam Pool had moved into the Living Hive. With SymbiontAI's help we had covered the Pool to try to keep out contaminants, but it's very hard to keep out microbes completely, and the Living Hive was itself a vast microbial colony. Whether it was the Living Hive or something else in all the mud, something microbial was throwing off the balance of the Pool, and nearly everyone complained of it. We felt sicker and more irritable with every passing day as the smell grew harsher.
Now, though. Now the smell was a lot worse, and it wasn't coming from everywhere in the Pool liquid, but from some origin point. It was on my way toward whatever the smell was coming from that Akdor's Worst Nightmare found me.
"Illim," said AWN. "You have to get to Tidwell right now. That smell is a dead Yeerk."
I halted mid-swim, as did the Yeerks around me who heard her. I realized forcefully that I had no idea what a dead Yeerk smelled like. There had always been pool maintenance Gedd-Controllers available to remove the bodies of dead Yeerks from the Pools as quickly as possible. The smell choked me. I felt like I had been thrown out of the Pool into saltwater. "Who died?" demanded Generation Freedom, scrunching and unscrunching in agitation. "What's going on!"
AWN compacted in on herself as tightly as she could. "It's Mielan 71."
Mielan 71. A child we'd brought out of the Grash Akdap Pool at great risk so they could grow up in freedom. A child who had been trying to learn a new way. Dead. I rushed toward the smell, even as it overpowered me. It came from the bottom of the Pool, a horribly congealed mess half-stuck to the floor. My mind rebelled at the sight. There was no physical sign of injury, just a terrible sick wrongness. "Oh, shade and darkness," said Generation Freedom behind me. "What do we do?"
"AWN was right," I said. "I'm going to get Julian."
I swam to a terminal and urgently messaged Lourdes with the news. I waited at the surface until I saw the outlines of Lourdes' chrome hand in the water, and the familiar welcoming shape of Julian's ear. I squeezed inside, and immediately felt his sick horror at the situation. And his suspicion.
«We thought we were all just feeling unwell because of microbial contamination,» I said. «But…» I saw Julian's memory of seeing Estrid out for a walk, not far from the Pool. It might not mean anything. She could have just been stretching her legs. Or…
«We can put it to the test,» Julian said. «The virus is supposed to keep Yeerks from being able to control hosts against our will, right? So try to do something that I don't want to do.»
The thought made me feel even more ill. I was long past the time when I would force Julian to do anything. But I had to try it. I reached slowly into Kalysico's bucket and pulled her out in a cupped hand. She did not struggle in my grip. I was flattered by her trust. Then I made to drop her into a cold, muddy puddle scummed over with glowing red fungus.
Julian's arm froze. The muscles all locked up. «Ew!» Kaly cried. «I don't want to go in there! That's disgusting!»
Against all my inclinations, and Kaly's objections, I pressed on the motor nerves for Julian's hand and tried to drop her again. Nothing happened.
«It's true,» Julian breathed. «She did it. She infected the Aftran Plisam Pool with the virus. And it works.» I felt his amazement and his sick horror.
"Lourdes," I said, to the Chee's imposing hologram of a large predator, one huge leathery finger dipped in the Pool. "We need to talk to Estrid right now."
"Several of your poolmates agree," Lourdes said. "But we need an Andalite to talk to an Andalite. In my experience, they listen best to each other."
Which left us no choice, really. Of the three Andalites here who weren't Estrid, the only one we had any chance of convincing was Ax.
AxI tried to convince myself that Illim's accusation could not be true. I failed.
Of course Estrid would not hesitate. We had already provided her with helpless captive test subjects. Why would she see any difference between the Yeerks we had brought her, destined to interrogate dissident vecol children, and the Yeerks of the Aftran Plisam Pool, who had sworn never to infest a host against their will? Not long ago, I too had seen no distinction between one Yeerk and another.
I turned and stalked toward the Ralek River. «I will speak to her.»
Lourdes and Tidwell rushed to keep up with me, slogging through the mud. "We're coming too!" Lourdes said. I ignored them. Let them come, or not come. This was personal between Estrid and me.
She was not on the first floor of the Ralek River. I ascended the drop shaft to the second floor, and the lab. Reluctantly, I waited for Lourdes to open it with her access. When I saw Estrid at her terminal in the lab, I burst in, tail forward. She had her tail up in an instant. I refrained from attacking her, but only barely. Instead I demanded, «What did you do to the Aftran Plisam Pool?!»
«If you are asking the question, then you know what I did,» Estrid said, too calmly. «Tell me what happened.»
Tidwell – or more likely, Illim – stepped forward, snarling, "Your virus worked, at least on me. But one of our children is dead. How many more of us will die for your experiment?"
Estrid sneered. «I did not see you here when the Animorphs brought me a portable Pool for my experiments, Yeerk. Where was your righteous anger then?» Illim tightened Tidwell's hands into fists and clenched his teeth. She flicked her fingers dismissively. «In any case, if the virus's effects have fully taken hold, and you cannot coerce your host's brain, then the infection has run its course. If no other Yeerks show signs of distress, then there will be no more deaths. How many Yeerks are in the Aftran Plisam Pool? Ninety? So if we assume a 70% infection rate – a low serial interval – one fatality – that is much lower than I had dared hope! Have any other Yeerks reported – »
I looked into her cold, distant eyes, and I saw myself. The arrogant child who believed he knew the order of the universe: Andalites on top, Yeerk scum at the bottom, and every other species in between. I saw that child in Estrid, and I wanted to kill her. I let out a djafid scream of incoherent fury and charged her. I knocked her back against the terminal, but she came back swinging, tail up to block mine. In these close quarters, my larger blade gave me little advantage. But I was driven by unstoppable rage.
I did not fight like an Andalite. I fought like every animal I had ever become. I struck with my tail, I kicked with my hooves, I hit her in the throat with my elbow, I even pulled one of her stalk eyes as hard as I could as she ducked a blow. She nearly tripped over her own lab instruments in her haste to get some distance from my barrage of attacks, yelling something about how I was a brute and a cheat. I finally pinned her against the wall with the weight of my entire body, my blade against her throat. Blood trickled down into my main eyes, blinding them. I breathed hard and ragged. Estrid's main eyes blazed hatred into mine as her stalk eyes watched something past me. I turned one stalk eye around to see what it was.
Lourdes's metal hand fell on my shoulder, heavy and cold. Illim squeezed Tidwell's body between me and Estrid, grabbed hold of my tail, and pulled. My tail muscles were stronger than Tidwell's arms, and I remained unmoved.
Illim turned Tidwell's head toward me. He looked into me. Tidwell's blue eyes were bright with tears. Illim said, his voice raspy, "Aximili, I have already seen two children die right before my eyes this week. Don't make me witness a third."
I relaxed my tail muscles and allowed him to pull it back. I stepped back from Estrid, and raised a hand to wipe the blood out of my main eyes. They quickly darkened with blood again. She had very nearly cut my eye-stalks off, and her near-miss had left a freely bleeding cut on my forehead. Estrid stepped gingerly away from the wall, too, watching Illim and Tidwell closely with her main eyes. The stalk eye I'd pulled dangled limply from her head like an uprooted vine. I quoted to her the words that had run ceaselessly through my mind since Illim and Tidwell brought me the news of her treachery, the words of the great medical ethicist Fandaray-Wouleen-Frodlin: «It is not possible to conceive of a greater evil than the deliberate killing of a child.»
«How many children have you killed, Aximili?» Estrid struck back. «You have fought a guerrilla war on Earth for years. I find it difficult to believe you have not committed this great evil yourself. And in your case, I imagine it would have been a real child, not the spawn of enslaving scum.»
Illim snarled and poked her in the chest with an outstretched finger. Estrid's uninjured stalk eye stretched upward in surprise at his boldness. "Spawn?! Don't you dare talk about an innocent Yeerk child like that! And I won't ever hear you compare the Aftran Plisam Pool to a bunch of host-breakers brought in to break the minds of disabled human children! The Yeerks of my Pool have done something braver than you could ever imagine. We woke up to the evil of our Empire, the evil that earned us freedom and power, and we left. You Andalites don't even have the grace to openly admit that you are an Empire!"
«What was I supposed to do, Yeerk? A proper medical trial is meant to have hundreds of subjects. The Animorphs brought me almost none. Would you prefer the Animorphs to use a virus whose effectiveness I could not at least partially confirm?»
"You could have asked us! Some of us would have volunteered if you'd been honest – "
«Do you seriously mean to suggest that any of you would have believed me – »
As Illim and Estrid argued, I grew. Finally, I grew large enough to attract their attention. Estrid cried out and slashed at me with her tail, but by then, it was too late. I had already grown the thick hide of an elephant, and her blows felt like little more than stings. Tidwell, Estrid, and Lourdes were pushed to the very edges of the lab, which was only just barely large enough to contain my bulk. Tidwell scrambled to save his dæmon's bucket, set aside on the ground, from getting knocked over. Instruments and sample dishes crashed to the floor all around me.
«Estrid,» I said. She glared up at me with hatred, and struck again. It hurt, but it didn't matter. She would not have any morphs that could harm me. «Your murder and treachery ends. Now.» And I swept my trunk across the nearest lab bench, sending everything to the ground.
She cried out in pain the way she hadn't at any point during our fight. I grabbed lab equipment with my trunk and tore it out of the wall. Tidwell gasped in shock and fear. Estrid screamed and cried and begged for me to stop. I ignored all of it. If I could not kill Estrid, then I would destroy the place she used to commit her evil acts. I reached for the lab stasis chamber with my trunk, and suddenly found it in the grip of two powerful hands. It was not painful, but it was absolutely immobilizing, even against the elephant's enormous strength.
I focused one dim elephant eye on Lourdes, and the hologram I had helped her construct. In all the turmoil, I had nearly forgotten she was there.
"That's enough," she said. "Estrid's samples of the virus will be in there."
All of the fight drained out of me. Lourdes was right. Even Estrid was right, in some small way. If the virus was effective, and had a low fatality rate, then we would have to declare it a success and use it. It would kill Yeerk children. But children on Earth and beyond were suffering and dying every day in the grip of the Yeerk Empire. They could not afford us waiting any longer.
I demorphed. Lourdes's grip loosened on my trunk as it withered away. When I was myself again, I saw Estrid holding the ruins of some sort of spectrometer in her hands. She looked wrecked. She did not care about the death of a Yeerk child, but she did care about the death of her work that she loved so much. She would have nothing left to distract her from the horror of our current situation. She looked up at me, utterly betrayed.
«I was trying to test possible side effects of the virus,» she said. «I was trying to understand the consequences of this mad gambit, this impossible thing I promised to do. Now those experiments are lost. All of it, lost. Aximili, you cannot imagine – » She cut herself off. «Why? Why should I even bother to try?» With that, she dropped the broken instrument and ran out of the lab. As she opened the doors to flee, I saw Loren standing outside the lab, with Tobias on her shoulder. They rushed in as Estrid rushed out.
Loren said, "Tobias had some kind of, uh, psychic vibration that you were in trouble? What's going on, Ax?"
Tobias looked around at the destruction of the lab, Tidwell holding his dæmon's bucket tight to his chest, then at me. «Hey, Ax,» he said softly. «Whatever happened – I'm – I'm here for you. Why don't you come with us?»
I stepped carefully over the broken glass. I circled my tail in an arc around Loren and Tobias, as if I could protect them from anything at all. «Please,» I said. «Take me away from here.»
18
