Words of Another Time: #3 - The Division

Chapter 1

My name is Tobias. Ten days. That's how long I stayed in the human world this time around. Hey, almost twice along as last time, and I'm not even trapped in the body of a hawk now. Or maybe I'm trapped as a human, who can say? Anyway yeah, while the others can't tell you where they live or their last names because it might lead the Yeerks arriving on their doorsteps, I can't tell you simply because I don't have those things. I live in a valley in the woods up in the mountains. My last name… which one? My aunt's, my uncle's, my timewarped alien father's? My hawk half doesn't even have a last name, doesn't even comprehend the concept.

I know the others worry I might do something stupid. But I've grown up a lot from when we went through this the first time around. I know that the ability to morph is our greatest weapon, and I know that being human by default means a lot to Rachel, and the others even if they won't come out and say it. After the war's over, maybe we'll see… but for now, I'm a regular human kid who spends some – but not all – his time in the body of a red-tailed hawk. A red-tailed hawk that is my other half. Like now, while the others were in school doing algeabra or gym or whatever I was flying over the hospital, trailing the wife of our – their – assistant vice-principle on her lunch break. I climbed high on a thermal, spreading my wings as wide as I could to maximize surface area, my feathers stretching themselves apart from one another as easily as a human breaths or blinks; both halves of myself thrilling as we rose higher on the heat rising from the hospital parking lot, then pushing off to follow three, four, six blocks, into the parking lot of a Taco Bell.

She parked and went inside. I waited. Then waited some more. Enough time that people went in after her and still came out with no sign of Mrs. Chapman. Bingo – Yeerk Pool entrance… at least a distinct possibility. I wouldn't know until I followed up in three day's time. Maye not even then if she alternated her schedule; some of them did, some of them didn't.

Finally, she came out again, carrying a bag of food; another red flag, unless she was picking up for someone else at the hospital, she'd had plenty of time to eat her own. On the way out, she nodded and exchanged a few words with a balding middle-aged guy who had just gotten out of a blue SUV. I flew around and made sure to get his license plate. Maybe it would be nothing, or maybe we had a new Controller to follow.

Mrs. Chapman drove back to the hospital, and I turned around, heading out of town back in the direction of my new home. I'd been in morph for a little over an hour now; I'd have enough time to get back and morph, then kill a few hours before I met up with the others. Enough time write down my observations for the day. Maybe come up with a plan to sneak around the Taco Bell and see what came up. Enough time to work on my nest – my campsite – a little more.

I was killing time though really, I knew that. Me, Rachel, and Jake had a rescue mission to plan; a trip to the bottom of the ocean to find Ax all while four ships were also out there hunting him on behalf of the Yeerks. Thinking about it sapped my concentration for further reconnaissance. Maybe I had something with the Taco Bell at least, and the SUV – I'd also spent the morning out by the railroad tracks trying to find out more about a set of warehouses that I think are a feeding hub for the Taxxon Controllers on Earth, but I didn't get anything concrete out of it. Whatever was going on there, the Yeerks (if it was Yeerks) had it locked down tight.

Oh well. I'd done enough of this sort of thing in the first timeline to know you just have to keep plugging at it. Intelligence work is about connecting the dots with a scrap here, a coincidence there, painstakingly drawn together. My valley was in view now; its lush green slopes interspersed with rocky crags, the creek that ran through it west to southeast and the bend with the rise that petered out into a grove of Maple and Oak trees that I now called home.

I morphed, saying goodbye to my hawk half for the time being before getting on with things; writing down my notes and then working to establish a more permanent home. I hadn't really started yet, but my tent was on a flat spur coming off the swell – hardly a hill – on the highground next to the creek, and I figured I could dig a sort of half-cave in the side of it and then move my tent there to give me a bit more protection when it rained, and when winter finally came. Sorta like a variant of the Scoop that Ax would build for himself once he got here.

Anyway whatever, I kept my notes, moved stuff around a bit and then headed over to Cassie's barn, where the others were meeting after school. Rachel and Cassie were standing just under the awning when I arrived, and I could see Marco riding his bike, just coming up to the long gravel road of Cassie's driveway. I could make out every spoke on his wheels, every zip on his backpack.

((Hey guys,)) I let out as I dove through the upper window and landed on the gate of one of the horse stalls that serves as a supply room. Cassie doesn't like me swooping in too close to the horses. Jake was here too apparently, he turned to look at me from where he'd been out of sight before, in the shadows of the back corner, over by the pair of wolves still recovering in their cages.

((Picking up a new morph?)) I asked and Jake nodded. "Well, old morph but yeh. I can't believe I forgot until now. He paused for a second. "You should probably pick it up to… the female I guess." Jake winced. "Sorry, I won the coin flip last time but you weren't involved in that, probably should have started fresh. My bad."

(Eh, don't worry about it,)) I replied and then began to morph back to human again. My feathers melted away like wax and then sucked into my skin. My talons split and softened as my face elongated. There was this sense of heaviness as all my bones recovered their density all at once. My sight and hearing disappeared, leaving me almost blind and deaf and earthbound.

"Anaww loogs…. Look like that's not the only morph you got today," I pointed a stubby mostly-human hand at a bird in a cage. A peregrine falcon.

Jake looked a little sheepish. "Yeah, I'm looking forward to it again, no lie. Seagull – something else I picked up again today – and Raven are fun and all, but… well, you know."

I laughed. "Yeah, I do."

"Hey Tobias," Rachel and Cassie came in as I was stroking the female wolf. "Everything fine out in the valley?" Cassie added.

"We'll have to have a housewarming party," Rachel added with a smile. Her head moved as something caught her eye – "oh, Marco's here."

Marco didn't stop for small talk. As soon as he came up to the barn door, he got off his bike and pulled out a bundle of papers from his backpack.

"We have a problem," he said, throwing a notebook down on a workbench and clearing out a space among Cassie's dad's toolset. Birds and rodents all around the barn squawked and fluttered. Cassie gave him a look. "Sorry," he grumbled as he moved things around some more, but a little more quietly and more controlled.

"This," he jammed a finger at a patch of ocean off the coast – a seamount, a shallow ridge extending off the coast for a hundred miles or so according to its coloring – "is where I'm pretty sure Ax landed last time around." He drew a line to the coast. "Given that we were able to get to him most of the way in dolphin morph, both in terms of depth and distance. I'm not sure exactly but I'm 99% sure it was somewhere around there. Which…" he pulled out the notebook and flipped a few pages.

"Which, yeh, that's where The Big ? and Gemini first started sailing around, nine days ago. Both local ships that suddenly went sailing around that mount as soon as we got back with separate highly publicized cover stories. But they've been drifting further out, and as the area of their search has increased suddenly Western Constellation is circling in the same general pattern, and a fourth ship, Argus, is coming up from down south to join the hunt. Argus, unlike the other three, has machinery to search deep. Deeper than we think Ax is."

We all stared. "This is really good work," Jake said after a moment. I nodded.

Marco shrugged. "Ax man taught me a few tricks, and I'm no slouch myself." He grinned at Rachel. "No words Rach about my superhuman computer skills?"

Rachel rolled her eyes and tsked. "I guess if you can't be funny you might as well be a little smart.:

"Blasphemy." Marco deadpanned. Aaaanyway," he went on. "Bad news is we obviously screwed up waiting this long. The other bad news but in a way that sorta cancels out the original bad news is that the Dome Ship isn't where it was last time, and the Yeerks don't seem to have any idea where it's gone either. The further out they get from the original spot… well, it's a big ocean."

"Which doesn't do us any favors either," I pointed out.

"If Ax had time on the Dome before it landed to realize what was going on, could he have done anything to move it?" Jake looked among us, but nobody had an answer. Ax was a cadet right now, and though he didn't really talk about it much it was a given he was basically on the Dome to keep him out of the way of the actual soldiers. It's not like he had access to the ship's controls. Not that we had any idea how those worked, either.

"If he did, or if someone else did, he could be anywhere," Rachel added at last. "He could be a few hundred miles from where he was last time, or he could be in a completely different ocean. We don't know."

"We still need to go out there," I countered. "I mean first of all, we need to at least know what the Yeerks know, and if Ax is out there we need to at least make the effort."

Marco looked dubious. "It probably wouldn't hurt to check out their shipping operation," Jake added. "If the Yeerks can commandeer research vessels and freighters this quickly, that's something we should know about."

That wasn't the reason I was hoping for, but I'd take it if it kept Jake onboard. Rachel gave me a look that let me know she wasn't going anywhere either, even with her doubts.

Cassie was looking at the map, and the little marks Marco had made that represented the presumably Yeerk controlled ships. Her fingers traced the mount, and then the route back to the estuary the others had swam from. Then over to where the Yeerks were looking now. "These are too far out to get to in two hours as dolphins." She chewed her lip. "I doubt we can count on the whale this time around. He could be anywhere. Uh the whale that is. Although Ax could be anywhere to," she stammered off.

Marco nodded, and pulled out another map. "And this is what the shipping lines look like."

We hatched a plan. It wasn't great, not a lot of room for error. Rachel, Jake and I would fly out Friday and head out to the shipping lines and find a large enough ship to safely morph. We had a few candidates who should be roughly in the right place heading in the right direction. When we were close enough to a Yeerk ship we'd fly over and see what we could find. It wasn't exact but from the air we had about thirty miles of wiggle room and bird eye views. We'd stay long enough to get anything we could about Ax's status and how big the Yeerk navy was and then hightail it back home however we could. And if there was anything that gave us a chance to find an rescue Ax, we'd take it.

"I'll contact Erek," Jake said when we fleshed it out into at least a somewhat workable plan. "We're going to need cover for at least two days by the sounds of it, possibly three."

Rachel scoffed. "So long as going to math class doesn't interfere with their pacifist programming, sure."

Jake shrugged. "They did it last time. We need to mend bridges, maybe this sort of thing can be a start." Cassie squeezed his hand and they shared a smile. I stole a glance at Rachel. She looked back and rolled her eyes at the two of them, I grinned.

"There's something else to discuss, actually" Rachel interrupted them and then shared a significant look with Jake. She stood up straight. "I think we can maybe start a Yeerk civil war. Maybe even infiltrate the Yeerks themselves."

Cassie was the first to speak, although the shock on her face was evident. "You think we can start the Yeerk Peace Movement now?"

Rachel shook her head, fast enough that little whisps of blonde flipped across her shoulders. She told us how Chapman had spoken about Visser Three with such anger and hatred that Mrs. Chapman had to calm him down on pain of what Visser Three might do if he found out, and the hints that maybe he wasn't alone to think that way.

"Maybe he was just blowing steam," Marco cut in. "I mean we already know Visser Three is the boss form hell, and Chapman's pretty high up right? He's feeling stressed and is bitching about his boss to his wife… or his partner Yeerk or however the hell that relationship works out."

"No, think about it," I said before Rachel could get too far into it with Marco. "I mean yeah, I'm sure there's some grumbling… but if we know about that, and threaten that it could get back to Visser Three, maybe we can force something out of him, anyway."

"Blackmail," Cassie half-asked, half-suggested, looking like the word tasted oily on her tongue. "What if he calls our bluff? How would we talk to him anyway without the risk of slipping we're you know, human?"

Jake shrugged. "I don't know. But it's worth thinking about." He looked at the maps. "But we aren't getting to that anyway before this stuff, so just something to keep in mind for now." He turned to Cassie. "Any more thoughts about The Gardens?"

Cassie shrugged. "I assume they have an idea of where we get our morphs from, and are trying to keep us out. How they plan to do that I don't have any idea." She shook herself, clearing her head. "Marco and I are just going to look around, right?" She gave Marco a look, and he replied with a brief nod. "You guys have the dangerous mission… you sure we shouldn't come with?"

Jake frowned, then said no. "This is important too. And if Ax really is missing, there isn't going to be a fight and escape for us, either." He sounded grim.

"We should head out now," I said, the idea bubbling out of my mouth before I even really thought it through. The others all looked it me. I plowed on. "This whole thing depends on the Chee covering for us anyway, so let's just go ahead and ask them and then fly out. It's not like we need to wait for the weekend if we – if you guys – have cover."

Jake mulled that over for a moment, then turned to Marco. "Anything you think is going to change in the next day or two?" he asked, jerking his head toward the maps. Marco was silent for a moment, then shrugged. "I dunno man, but it makes sense to go earlier if we're doing this. Personally I think we gotta wait this one out for Ax to show up."

"I don't," Rachel rejoined. "And I know Tobias doesn't. That's two against one already, and you're not even going."

Marco rolled his eyes. "Chill Xena, I'm not arguing. You guys go ahead, and yeah, no sense not going now if you're going at all. I don't think I'm going to come across a game breaker before Friday."

"Ok," Jake said, turning to me and Rachel now. "I'll hit up Erek on the way home and give Rachel… I'll call you with the news either way. If the Chee can take over for us at school tomorrow, we'll meet at Tobias' at eight tomorrow. If not, Tobias we'll see you after school and see what we can figure out."

The meeting ended shortly after that. The others had families to get back to, I decided to go to the skies and take a good look over the valley, if there was anything else that I needed to think about if I was going to be living here full time. Maybe I'd grab what remained of my cash and then fly back into town, hit up Barnes & Nobles and see if they had anything about building a dugout. As I flew out of Cassie's barn, I would have scoffed if I could – hawks don't need books to tell them how to survive, only humans do.

My name is Cassie. Obviously if you're reading this, you know we survived splitting up that weekend. It was dumb. Looking back, I guess we were still feeling invincible over the whole time travel thing. Like we'd come this far last time so it was a given that we were going to come at least this far again. Even with Visser Three somehow coming back with us, and whatever it was that happened to Erek, and almost getting caught by the fake Kandrona – it still hadn't really registered how far over our heads we were.

It was Marco who put it together, which is a little funny because more than any of us, it was Marco that hit the reset button in the first place. There we were, a Cape Buffalo and an African Elephant, stampeding through the park like our lives depended on it (they did), as I frantically tried to remember the park's layout while ignoring a laser burn down my back as I we looked for a way to disengage our pursuers and escape. Marco's left tusk had been smashed (his own fault, admittedly) and his right ear had been seared in half (the Yeerks' fault) and he kept thoughtspeaking at me, whether he was talking to me or to himself and he forgot he was broadcasting to me I don't know.

((There are six of us. Well, five right now. Maybe five forever now we don't know. Twenty-four hours in a day. We have to sleep. Even if the Chee covered for us every day and we all made out like Tobias, that gives us fifteen hours a day. Fifteen times five is… seventy-five. Seventy five hours a day to fight the Yeerks.))

((Marco, turn left. At the sign for the warthogs.))

He turned left, but kept going. ((Seventy-five hours a day to fight the Yeerks, tops. The Yeerks on the other hand have what, a thousand hosts by now? I doubt that, given the size of the Yeerk Pool. Ten thousand? A hundred thousand? A million? Probably not a million, at least not in this city, or odds are at least one of us would have been a Controller when Elfangor met us. So let's say a hundred thousand.))

Three Controllers skidded in front of us. One was a park employee, an elderly guy in the red uniform of one of the greeters who walk around the park, offering directions or help or just around in case guests have questions. He wasn't a bad guy. But he was the enemy, a slave to the Yeerk in his head. They all had that determined look that said they knew they weren't just up against random wild animals. Not that facing off against us would have been park protocol anyway. We didn't stop, I didn't think, I just barreled through them. Something sliced into my thigh. A fourth Controller that I hadn't seen had shot me with a handgun. Without stopping Marco picked him up in his trunk and tossed him into a wall. The Controller crumpled. I didn't think about it.

((So yeah, let's say a hundred thousand Controllers,)) Marco went on, like he wasn't aware he had maybe just killed someone. To protect me. ((Even if Yeerks have to go to school, or work, or look after kids, or whatever, even if they all only manage one hour of Yeerk invasion activity a day. That's one hundred thousand hours a day compared to our seventy-five. Even if it's only ten thousand, that's ten thousand to seventy-five.))

We stormed into the open air 'jungle plaza' – basically a food court with an animal theme. It was empty now, the ordinary tourists had been evacuated as soon as we began our impromptu stampede. I smashed into one of the buildings that sold pizza and popcorn and premade salads for hungry guests. ((Morph out! Then birds.))

Marco barreled in behind me, already shrinking. ((No not birds, we gotta go bug. Fly.))

((The can kill us with bugspray if we go bug.))

((We're outside… more or less. They won't get us. Bird is too obvious. They'll shot us.))

((Ok.)) I was more human than buffalo now, which was good because I could here voices outside now, faint but coming towards us. I scrambled back deeper into the store, back into the aisles of candy and chips, catching sight of the sign for the employee only bathroom. I went in. Marco followed, his legs still as thick as a tree trunks and his otherwise human nose a foot long.

((Ten thousand to seventy-five. Cassie – what we were doing last time was a miracle, even if it didn't feel like it. Give the Yeerks Ten thousand hours to fix their past mistakes and we-)) His thoughtspeak cut off as the demorphing process went past that ambiguous point where thoughtspeak no longer works.

"What are you getting at," I asked, hissing, taking a split second to breath before focusing on the fly. The Yeerks outside were hesitating. They're sentient beings too, and none of them wanted to be the first inside, none of them wanted to make the sacrifice. It gave us just enough time to survive.

"I don't know." Marco said as he too finished demorphing. "I'm just pointing out the math."

We shrank, me a little faster. Marco's skin cracked and blackened, his eyes bulged out of his head even as they kept their human look and structure. Tiny bristles exploded from his face and hands. I turned away.

"You're not a peeeach eighterugh."

I finished morphing, loud noises and vibrations started to fill the building, but the fly didn't process things beyond the abstraction. It didn't care. We zipped forward and up and out of a tear in the bathroom screen over the window even as the Controllers destroyed the hotdog machine and the pizza lamps.

((My point, I guess,)) Marco admitted as we buzzed on up and over the security fence not more than twenty yards past the food court, hidden from guests by the mock jungle foliage. ((Is that time is not our friend. We've got to hit the Yeerks in ways where seventy-five of our hours cost them tens of thousands in return.))

I'm getting ahead of myself, but that's really what I wanted to point out. I'll go back and fill in everything that happened, I promise. But even if it doesn't clear my own conscience, I want you to appreciate where we stood. What convinced the others to do what they did. And understand why I couldn't, even though I understand why they made the choice they did. Even Jake.

I'm getting ahead of myself again. Jake and the others left the barn, and I was getting ready for an hour of so of mucking the horses and taking care of our newest guests, including a pair of squirrels that had been half electrified and Jake's Peregrine falcon. Marco stayed behind though, slowly packing up the stuff he had brought to show the others.

"That really was some impressive research," I told him as I reached into the outdoor fridge where my dad keeps the meds. "I had no idea all that stuff was just available online."

Marco looked a little uneasy. "I wasn't joking about learning from Ax. I'm probably one of the more talented hackers in the world right now, at least for a few more years." He was silent for a minute. "I really do hope they find him, you know. Or well, get him out of wherever he is."

"I know." I turned back to the cages, walking slowly so as not to frighten the patients. "Don't worry about Tobias and Rachel – they know you. They're just antsy. Things haven't exactly gone as we intended."

Marco let out a hollow, barking laugh at that, but cut off when the squirrels jumped. "Sorry. Yeah, I know. Anyway- what are you thinking about for Saturday. It's an outdoor event, right?"

"Yeah, looks like. My mom brought home a bulletin about it last night," I fought back the icy feeling that went through my blood at the idea of my mom being connected to The Sharing, even unknowingly. She wasn't though, no more than any other employee: they'd sent them home with everyone, just an FYI sort of thing. I was getting off topic again. "Luncheon, a few speakers, nothing crazy. But a couple of people are coming up from the out of town, and I think there having some private conference afterwards with a few people. My mom at least isn't invited to that."

Marco nodded, though whether just acknowledging that I was done talking or the point that my mom was not part of the inner circle of this thing, I wasn't sure. "So bird morphs should do well enough you think? Just scout out the place."

"Actually, I thought maybe I'd just go as me. It wouldn't be weird for me to be there at all, right? And to be inquisitive about what's going on, maybe look like I was interested in volunteering?"

"Yeah," Marco said slowly. Then more forcefully, "yeah ok that makes sense. So I'll be your backup in the sky, and I guess I can direct you to anything that looks fishy. And then the indoor meeting, we going to crash that too?"

I nodded. "I was thinking about that last night. Cockroach morph would be ok, we're used to it, but they might have precautions for that. I was thinking rat." I pointed to a cage in the back of the barn where I had already caught our needed morph.

Marco made a face.

"They're hearing is excellent and we should be able to move around fairly well if we're careful. I morphed one once with Rachel for um… well for my science project actually. It wasn't so bad."

"The things we do for the Animorph lifestyle."

I shrugged. Of all the things we do I really don't think rat is so bad among them. "I think it's the best option, unless you have any other ideas?"

He let out a deep, very dramatic sigh. "No. I don't. Ok I'm in."

"Bird. Rat. Not the most superhero of morphs but you know what, at least it's safe, right? No way we're going full battle morphs in the middle of a zoo during visitor hours.

Marco groaned. "Why would you even say that?"