Story isn't mine, animorphs belongs to scholastic.
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Tom grinned down at me, producing a dracon beam from his jacket and pointed it at me.
"Morph out now, Jake. You're running out of time after all. You only have so long before you're trapped in morph, and we can't have that, now, can we?"
I tried one last ditch effort to play the part of Homer, and gave another bark.
"Don't try to play innocent animal with me, midget. We had already installed cameras in your room. We have already seen you morph. Now, demorph. NOW." Tom readjusted his dracon at me, his voice threatening.
Crap, he had seen the entire thing. How could I have been so stupid? So careless?
More to the point, how long he had been suspicious of me to go ahead and do that?
Either way, I was trapped in my room, with Tom pointing a weapon at me. I looked past him, calculating, seeing if I can make a run for it.
Tom must have seen me looking, ready to bolt, and grabbed me by the scruff of the neck.
"Uh uh uuuuh…." He tsked. "Don't even think about trying to run away."
I struggled to get out of his grasp, growling, trying to think of a way to get away from Tom, when I heard my mother's voice.
"Tom? What are you doing?"
Tom quickly straightened up, shoved the dracon beam back in his jacket, and shut my bedroom door.
"Uuuuhhh…. I was just playing with Homer." He tried giving an excuse to hide what he was doing.
"I thought I told you to mow the lawn…."
"I was Mom, but…." Taking advantage of Tom's distraction, I took this moment to morph out of dog and back to human. I had to hurry before Tom turned his attention back on me. Morph quickly, then morph to falcon and get the hell out of there…
My paws shifted back into human feet and hands, my tail sucked back into my spine. Colours flooded my vision as my eyes changed back into human eyes. I had to hurry… I was just glad my mother arrived when she did providing Tom with a distraction. It was a good thing she was still human and Tom still had to play his part.
Odd that Tom would still play the part, I was certain, as desperate as the yeerks were to catch us animorphs, Tom would just ignore mom or worse. Suspicion seeped into my mind as a memory flashed through my head, of this morning, when Mum looked at Tom when I ate breakfast and Tom smirked back and nodding….
Was my Mum human?
Surely…
Suddenly I could hear the argument outside my room change in tone. They had stopped arguing over lawn mowing, and I heard my mom say. "Do you think he's had long enough?"
"Let's see shall we?" And Tom opened my room to show me, just finishing morphing out of dog. My eyes widened in shock. A trick! It was all a trick!
"See, you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar." My mother spoke in a low, dangerous tone, smiling smugly. "All we had to do was lull him into a sense of brief security."
"MOM?" I gaped in horror. She had been taken! Taken by the yeerks! I had to get out, now!
Not wasting any time, I rushed forward, hoping to barrel into Tom but he just pushed me back onto my bed.
"Not this time midget. This time…" He brought out his dracon beam again, pointed…
"…this time, there is no more escape."
He fired.
TSEWWW!
A flash of red, and for a long time, all I knew was darkness.
Coldness…
I awoke, blinked at the bright lights until my vision adjusted. I tried to move my arms, but found that I couldn't. Was it too late? Had I been taken by a yeerk myself? I tried moving my head. It could move!
Grateful for being able to do even that small movement, I tried looking around at my surroundings. I was on a table, restrained from the look of things, in a white room with a screen on one side and a window on the other. From that window I could hear howls, screams, the sloshing of liquid, and laughter, dark laughter. On each corner of the room an armed hork-bajir stood guard.
Of course. I had been captured, and now I was somewhere in the underground complex of the yeerk pool.
Not a good situation. I had to get out while I could.
I tried moving my hands again, but they wouldn't move. I could try morphing, something small. I closed my eyes in concentration, focusing on a cockroach…
"I wouldn't try morphing if I were you." My eyes snapped open. There, leaning by the door, was Tom. He stood with his arms crossed, watching me.
"We have injected you with a paralysis drug. We also have a force field surrounding your body, so even if you could morph, you're likely to get crushed by whatever body part shoots out first, even if it was something small, I wouldn't press my luck." Tom explained. He pushed up from the door and began walking around me, examining me.
"So what are you planning to do with me, huh?" No use keeping up pretenses any more. It was obvious the yeerks knew what I was, now that they had me. "You want to kill me, hurry up and finish the job." As frightening as dying sounded, I was hoping that was what they had planned. There were things worse than death, and the yeerks were all too happy to provide such fates.
"Kill you? No, why would we waste someone who's morph capable? You're much too valuable to be destroyed."
My blood froze. I was certain they were going to infest me, and I would live out the rest of my life as a yeerk slave, a controller. Forced to watch as I was made to betray my friends…
"…You're not going to…." I choked, horrified.
"…Infest you?" Tom finished for me, smiling. "Jake, Jake. Jaaake. Haven't you already realised? You're already infested."
"What?"
"'What?'" Tom repeated mockingly. "Don't you remember? I thought we had for once made some progress." He walked over to the screen, still blank, and pressed a button. A moment later Chapman walked in. I wasn't surprised that he would turn up.
"Oh hello Jake." Chapman said. It sounded like he was greeting me after walking into his school office for being late for school. "How are you feeling?"
I gave him an angry glare in reply.
Chapman only laughed, when Tom spoke up. "He still thinks he's human." Chapman's laughter died down.
"Don't you remember? You're one of us." I shook my head. What was wrong with the yeerks? Why did they think I was one of them? I was me, Jake. I was free, at least when I wasn't pinned down to a table.
Maybe I could play this to my advantage. If they thought I was a yeerk, I could pretend, use it to get out of this place.
"Oh. Yeah. Now I remember." I spoke up. "I am a controller, I work for the glorious yeerk empire. May the kandrona shine and strengthen you."
"See, he knows who he is." Chapman turned back to Tom. "There was nothing to worry about, after all. We should let him go…."
But Tom just stood with his arms crossed, eyes narrowed at me. "I don't think so. I know my little brother better than that; I think he's faking it in order to get out."
"No, I really am a yeerk." I shook my head.
"Really?" Tom stood in front of me. "Prove it. Give me your name."
"I….." I racked my brain trying to come up with an answer. If I said the wrong thing….
A yeerk name, any yeerk name…
"I… I…" I didn't know what to say.
"You're name…" Tom narrowed his eyes again, his voice firm. "…Is Esplin 107. You don't remember that, do you, Jake."
Esplin 107… why did that name ring a bell?
It took a moment, but I remembered that dream I had. But that was only a dream I had, surely…
Tom must of seen the recognition in my eyes, and smiled, nodding. "Oh, you do remember. Maybe you just need your memory jogged a bit more." He walked back to the screen and pressed the same button again. Tome turned to look over his shoulder. "Perhaps you remember this person?"
The door opened again, and in walked an old man in a lab coat, a familiar man, average build with wavy grey hair, worn blue eyes behind glasses. The doctor from my dream!
"You? No, you were only a dream!" I gaped as the doctor turned to look at me.
"Esplin 107, still having trouble remembering I see?" The doctor smiled sadly, looked at his clipboard, and turned to Tom. "How is he?"
"He's struggling but he's getting there."
"This can't be…" I shook my head. Struggled against my bonds, but again, my hands wouldn't even move. "This is all wrong!"
"So you're finally seeing the truth?" Tom asked. "You're not Jake. You're not an animorph. That life is over, you're one of us now."
"NO!"
"Now stop being a fool and tell us where the other animorphs are."
"I'll never betray the others!" I yelled back in protest. "I'm not one of you."
"Really." A smile crept over Tom's features. He walked over to the window and looked out to the yeerk pool beyond, then turned back to me. "You're hosts parents are down there you know. We have taken them already; their yeerks are in the pool feeding on kandrona as we speak. The parents are in cages waiting to get infested again."
I said nothing, feeling anger over what the yeerks had done to my family. Tom indicated the window with his head. "Get out of that host or we will kill the parents of our hosts."
"What? But… but.." I spluttered. Impossible, they couldn't expect me to…
"Do it." Tom said firmly. "Or your parents are dead." I could tell from his tone, and knowing yeerks, that he was serious. My parents would die.
But I wasn't a yeerk! I wasn't one of them! I was Jake! I was free!
How could I leave my body when I was a human?
"No!" I yelled in protest.
"Then leave that body." Tom crossed his arms again.
"But I'm not…"
"Aren't you even going to try?" Tom hissed.
"I…" This was insane. Insane! I couldn't possibly be a yeerk, it would be impossible to do what they said. But I couldn't let my Mom and dad die..
What could I do?
"Just try it, Jake." The doctor said tiredly. "When you are out of that body, we won't hurt you."
"Yet." Tom glared at me warningly. "Now do it, or watch your parents die."
"I…"
I didn't want to believe what they said, and humoring them would only get so far. But I had no choice, I had to try doing what they said. It might have been the only chance my parents might live, and if I couldn't leave my body, if I was just Jake, well, at least I tried.
I closed my eyes, and concentrated. Focused on disconnecting.
Surprisingly, it worked. To my shock and horror, I felt myself separating from my brain… Jake's brain. I felt a hole and squeezed through it, instinctively using some sort of echolocation to find may way around. I squeezed through a hole, an ear, until my body felt dry air. I left the body, blind, mute, almost deaf, and I felt something warm and large hold me.
It couldn't be… That dream WAS real. And I really was a yeerk.