CHAPTER TWO

::Tobias::

"Tobias! Stop running!"

This was utterly insane.

"Tobias!"

I ran out of the school as fast as I could, even though I was never fast as a human, much less with not much practice running with legs. But I felt as if running could take me out of this strange reality, a strange reality where Loren was bringing me to school, and Jake was looking completely at home being a junior high school kid with no memory of who I was.

This was wrong. If we were out here in the open... the Yeerks would kill us. Everyone in the valley. This was not what it was.

I ran out into the school field, narrowly missing a Frisbee, and some kids yelled at me. One of them looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn't put a finger to the person's face, not when I was running off, gasping for breath. I could hear Loren's cries become fainter, but I refused to look back. No, it wasn't because she had slapped me, not least in a hallway full of students. It was that she was talking to me like... the way she actually seemed to look at me, the way she seemed to care! I couldn't take it. It was so disgustingly wrong, it made me nauseous more than I was hurt and confused.

Stop giving me false hope! Stop giving me hope! You don't know me at all, you never cared!

This is insane. I panted as I ran and stumbled, ran and stumbled. This is not real. Why am I getting so worked up over something that isn't real?

Behind a huge group of students, I made a detour and ran back to the school, to find one of the corners outside the school where I used to hide in, to hide away from Andy and Tap-Tap, those jerks who used to give me the swirlies in the school toilet.

Demorph! DEMORPH!

Yes! To red-tailed hawk!

I willed myself to change as I ran. Come on!

But there was nothing. I was still running. Human legs. Human arms.

DEMORPH! I screamed in my head.

At last, I dove into the shadows. I was exhausted, frightened. I couldn't demorph. I was stuck, as human. I tried to picture another morph, and the first thing that came to my mind was the Hork-Bajir, even though it would have been so utterly out of place. But I was out of sight.

I concentrated.

Still nothing.

NOOO!

"Arghhh!"

This is just a nightmare. I slapped my arm, and the stinging pain reigned. I stared at the red patch in disbelief.

Couldn't morph. My eyes rolled upwards to the sky. What if... what if this was real? All of this?

"This is stupid!" I cried out. "This is not the future, Ellimist, or the past! This is some warped reality of the present!"

There was no reply.

"Come OUT!" I yelled, frustrated.

Fear overcame me, and I could feel my eyes burn with tears.

"Get us out of here, Ellimist, or if it's you, Drode," I whispered. "We're not your pawns anymore. Stop playing games with us... this isn't funny at all..."

It was unnerving. One moment I had been in Loren's cabin helping her to tidy it up, wondering if I should actually tell her about Elfangor. I didn't know why I was helping her, I just felt like I had to do it. She was doing it too, but she never spoke, or looked at me. I always got the feeling that she didn't want to look at me because all she would have for me was not love, but pity.

No, no. Stop it, Tobias. I clutched at my hair. What happened next?

I hadn't even realised I was being transported elsewhere. It all happened so suddenly. The next thing I knew, I was being jostled about by a crowd of high school students rushing to class. The sudden burst of sound, and the movements, had all caught me off guard. I nearly flapped my arms in order to escape, to fly away, only to realise I was still human. Run! Run! The adrenaline forced me to move. Then I began to run. Down the staircase. Along the corridors. It hadn't occurred to me that I knew this place and was running towards the foyer. Following which, someone collided with me, and I saw that it was Jake. Relief coursed through my veins when I had met him.

But then he couldn't remember me at all, and looked utterly perplexed as to who I was and all the things I said. Had he lost his memory? What was wrong with him? Worst of all, he looked so young, so innocent, so unlike the weary, vacant-eyed Jake who had just lost his parents to the Yeerks. This was not the Jake I knew.

Not the Ellimist. Crayak. It had to be him. He hated Jake. He took away his memory.

But if Jake had just lost his memory, why did he look like he belonged? He belonged to this reality. He was part of it. I was not.

Loren, too. She belonged. She had said I had to stop playing my 'make-believe games'.

No, I realised, no. This wasn't some game.

It was me. This was a nightmare for me.

I curled up into a ball. My human memories – returning to assault me. The uneasiness of high school brought me right smack in the middle of it again. The unhappiness of not having a mother resulted in one who cared too much for me till she slapped me in the middle of the hallway because I refused to obey her. And the fear of losing my friends led Jake to forget me.

It was a horrifying nightmare.

Rachel... what about Rachel? Where was she? Would she forget me too? And the rest – Cassie, Marco, and Ax? And were the Yeerks still around in this reality? Did they know we were humans? This was not the Time Matrix, was it? It couldn't be. Otherwise Jake would have been himself. A dream. It had to be a dream, a nightmare, not real, not real...

I pinched myself. The stinging pain did not help matters.

I took a deep breath, before standing up, shakily. Then I walked round to the side of the school building, peering onto the school field. It was empty now; break was over. Loren was gone. Where had she gone?

Irony. Jake had forgotten me, and Loren had remembered me.

Rachel. I had to find Rachel.

I didn't think I could handle Rachel forgetting me too. But I had to find her. I only became Human-Tobias for my human friends. Now that I couldn't become Bird-Tobias to escape, I would have to find Rachel, and the rest of them. Even Jake. I had to tell all of them.

Then somehow, somehow, they could make this nightmare disappear.