A/N: After sitting on it a while, I've decided to take this a bit further, probably out to seven parts, so I can have Eva address the faked death. Thanks everyone for the feedback - you're the ones who give me ideas!

V: Five Months Later

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{You could just go through all my memories. You don't have to ask questions.}

{That becomes tedious very quickly, and I already know all the answers anyway. How you respond to questions is infinitely more interesting.} Edriss said.

{Well, from what you've told me, Yeerks really only live in one place. All of you grew up in the same place, knowing all of each other. A long time ago, humans spread out across the globe. Entire generations went by without people in one group communicating with other groups. So whole new languages and cultures evolved by the time groups ran into each other again.}

{There is only one Yeerk culture and language,} Edriss mused. {Before portable pools, there was only one great pool. We all grew in the same environment. Any Yeerk can talk to any other and expect to be understood. With humans, conditioned acts of communication in one culture can be entirely misconstrued in another. Perfectly benign words in one language are grave insults in another. And this is not even considering the plethora of religions you humans have. Surely there have been some efforts at homogeneity?}

{There have been efforts in the past. The Crusades, the Holocaust, ethnic cleansing, even here in California with the push for eliminating Spanish language classes for hispanohablantes.} I told her, more than a little ashamed of my species' history. {But many of us value different cultures. We see diversity as a good thing. You learn from other people's differences.}

{Yes. You do,} Edriss said. {I assume this is why you continue to speak Spanish to your father despite the fact that you both speak English. Valuing a culture that you are no longer immersed in.}

{It will be a pity,} she added, {that when we control this world all this diversity will be exterminated. This planet and its inhabitants might be the most varied of any planet we have found. So many species, and so many different variations within the species.}

{Well, good thing you're not going to control this world. At least not while your little Sharing project only attracts junkies and bums.}

{The Sharing will evolve. Passing as humans is more difficult than passing as Hork-Bajir, but we will learn. The steps between a Gedd and a Hork-Bajir are must vaster than the steps between a Hork-Bajir and a human. Eventually The Sharing will attract even the most successful and confident of humans.}

{I doubt it,} I told her. {I doubt it because it's so much easier to pull in people who have nothing than it is to pull in people who have something. You may know that, but your minions don't.}

It was five months since my infestation. I hadn't given up hope that I'd be free someday. At every feeding I attempted escape, which seemed only to amuse Edriss. Once she'd forgotten that I'd had my keys in my pocket, and I'd managed to pick the cage lock and make it twenty feet before being caught again. Another time I'd convinced one of the uninfested Taxxon guards to release me. I'd gotten maybe forty feet, that time. But I never managed an escape.

Rather than being upset, Edriss took it in stride. I didn't know whether she really felt that confident that I never could escape or was just faking it to keep me scared. She called it a game, and gradually I began to call it that too. It was infinitely easier to cope with the enslavement, of my body and others, if I considered the whole thing one elaborate match of chess.

Every time I played the game, she won. Every move I made, she knew the instant I concocted it. Every time the game ended, she was still in my head, calmly reassuring me that she had insurmountable advantages. She thought I would eventually give up, but I didn't. Every defeat made me even more determined to beat her. I turned my energy from trying to escape while free to trying to find out how to overpower her while she was inside.

And oddly enough, while I never forgot the disgusting murderer and slave-mistress she was, if I viewed her as a competitor I could develop a strange sort of relationship with her, and her with me. She explained to me that there was no reason to hurt me more than her presence already did, and a reasonably content host was much less of a hassle and much better company than a constantly angry one. I expected that there was something more to her explanation, but she never responded any further.

Instead, we spoke of politics, both Yeerk and human, and society, and language, and current events. She asked me about marketing, and because I couldn't withhold information, I gave it to her, even though I knew she'd relay the information onto the sub-vissers running The Sharing. Occasionally she asked me about emotions, but never told me anything back about the complexities of the Yeerk mind. I suspected she was guarding something from me, but Edriss was very, very good at keeping mum about things she didn't want to divulge.

She did things, as well, that she had no interest in, just because I wanted to do them. She had no desire, as far as I knew, to garden, and no concept of taste, but she indulged my cravings for certain foods and started a small pot of herbs in the kitchen. She said they kept me calm, and it was possible they did.

Sometimes she let me have occasional moments of freedom, citing again that a happy host is a good host. I was not happy, but I was grateful for the privilege. A few months in, she began to let me tell Marco goodnight every time.

{Remember,} she would hiss at me each night. {One word about the situation to him, and he'll be a slave like you before morning.}

And I would plant a kiss on Marco's forehead and say, "good night, honey. I love you very much. Sleep tight, don't let the bedbugs bite." And he would grimace the way ten year-olds do at kisses, but I knew deep down that he secretly was happy that as busy as Mom got, he still was top priority. And then Edriss would take control back.

{You know, Edriss,} I said once, {I think you may have a soft spot for children.}

{Why?} she sneered. {Because sometimes I let you fawn over your own weak, petulant child?}

I dropped it at that.

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Eventually, I discovered that Yeerks sleep. They do not sleep long, only approximately five minutes every five or six days. And it wasn't that I had control when Edriss was asleep, just that if I fought hard enough and caught her unawares, I might be able to regain a modicum of autonomy for just a second. I discovered it at work one day. Edriss assumed I wouldn't notice, but for just an instant I felt her consciousness dim, and for that same instant I used all my might to bring my hand up to my head and claw at her.

It was a futile move, of course. It wasn't like I could tear Edriss from my head. But the sudden idea that I could struggle back was exhilarating and confusing. I'd acted out of delirium. Within seconds Edriss had resumed control and was thinking of an excuse for the bloody trails along my temple.

But I knew. And knowing that Edriss couldn't maintain one hundred percent of control was worth the broken skin and the wasted opportunity. It was worth the way she took away some of those small free moments. I could lie in wait, keeping my mind aware of any change I felt from her. And when the opportunity came, I might win a small victory.

Edriss suspected that I'd try this, of course. She moved her sleeping until when I was also asleep. For many, many weeks I didn't catch her sleep at all.

By either chance or divine intervention, however, I awoke one night and found myself alone in my own head, for just a moment. I knew I'd have to act quickly, before Edriss awoke. My mind raced with the thousand things I wanted to tell Peter.

Lock me up for three days. No. He wouldn't understand and I wouldn't have time to explain. Edriss would protest, explain that she'd been she'd been sleep-talking. Or worse, she'd find a way to have him infested. I knew, deep inside, that it was too late to ask them to save me.

My husband slumbered peacefully by my side, though how he could sleep through his own snoring had always baffled me. I took in, lovingly, his glasses at the bedside table, his bare feet poking out beneath the covers, the calm expression on his face. So sweet and oblivious. He hadn't asked for his wife to be infested by the leader of an alien race, but then again, neither had I. Nor was I ever going to ask for the same fate to befall my husband.

Quickly, I sat up, grabbing Peter's arm hard enough to hurt as I did it. "They won't take you if you stay away from the military!" I yelled. Edriss was already clamping back down before the third word was out of my mouth, so the second half of the statement was only a tiny, hollow squeak.

But audible. So beautifully audible.

He sat up next to me, arms quickly around me. "Honey?"

Edriss had regained total control, but hadn't prepared for this situation. She played that I had been sleeping. "Sweetie? Was I having a dream?" And then after a few moments of cuddling with my husband, she put my body back to sleep.

Before my mind shut down in slumber, I heard her say {I hope your son enjoys not being picked up after school tomorrow}. And as much as the idea hurt, I still felt victorious. I had no way of knowing if telling Peter that would keep him safe in the long run, but his odds were a little bit better now. For the first time, for even a minor prize, I had won a round of this cruel little game. I had shaken her confidence.