CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
::Tobias::
I swore at the top of my voice as I banged my fists on the door. Sharp pain was shooting through my arms, but I cared less about getting hurt than wanting to be out of this claustrophobic room. Good grief, first I lost my wings, now I was to be stuck in these cramped four walls? Hell no!
"Who the hell are you? Let me out of here!"
I stumbled back a few steps as the pounding in my head intensified. I could barely remember how I even ended up here. Wait...
Rachel?
Think, Tobias, think!
I had been with her earlier. Then we had met those dudes from The Sharing who sent us on a running spree.
We split up. I was in the forest.
How did I...
I sank to the floor, wincing as another bolt of pain shot through my head.
"Let me out of here!" I cried, once again, but to no avail.
Did Rachel manage to get away safely? I hoped to death that none of those jerks had caught her. It was bad enough that they had recognised me for being Elfangor's son. The last thing I wanted was to drag Rachel down too.
Not that she would care, of course. She would just jump head-first down into the chance to...
Maybe the old Rachel would. This Rachel wouldn't.
Things were coming back to me, the whole time warp shenanigan. But for the life of me, I couldn't really remember what had gone on the moment I stepped into the forest.
"Just let me –"
I stopped upon hearing footsteps. Quickly, I got to my feet as something clicked in the lock.
The door pushed open. I narrowed my eyes.
A middle-aged man with a scruffy appearance entered and shut the door behind him. He wore a very sinister smirk and tucked his hands into his jeans pockets.
"Who are you?" I stared at him incredulously.
His smirk and silence were infuriating me.
"I said – who are you?" I lunged forward to shove him, but he was quicker. He held out a fist and I found myself flying backwards into the wall. I let out a gasp as I slid down the concrete surface.
"Hi, Tobias," said the man, haughtily.
I grimaced. "You're a Controller."
The man smiled. "Welcome to your humble abode for the next few hours."
"What do you want with me, you lackey?" I spat. "There's nothing you're going to get out of me!"
"How about, something I can get into you?" asked the man.
I flinched. The mere idea of a Yeerk next to me was nauseating enough, let alone the idea that one might go into me at any moment. "Take your filthy worms away from me!"
"Such a bad actor, Tobias," said the man, reprovingly. "The Animorphs would lose the war immediately because of your pathetic cover."
I stared at him again. "W-what?"
How did he know...
My heart nearly stopped beating. They had found out. That was it. The end. We had come to this alternative reality to meet our end. The Earth's doomsday.
Rachel. They must have taken Rachel. All of us would fall into the hands of these disgusting alien supremacists, and every Earthling would be subjected to their control.
Our battle was over.
I hung my head.
"And a very stupid boy too. What happened to the boy who thought his life would change for the better by becoming a bird?"
My head shot up. The man was adjusting his shirt so his eyes were not on me. But I was staring so intensely at him that I felt like my eyes would shoot out fire to incinerate him at any moment.
"What happened to the boy who thought he could fight even though all he had was a pair of wings and a broken life?"
The man lifted up his head and I saw the smirk deepen into something hard and cruel.
"What happened to the boy who thought he could hold onto a girl so he could hold onto his humanity, but in truth, the girl was losing her humanity as well?"
I didn't know what to say. Part of me was really confused, and part of me was scrabbling at something really déja vu about what the man was saying.
"I thought I would make your life easier, Tobias. Give you a home. Give you a mother. All the things you always wanted to have, or that you could have had if not for those meddling aliens. That way you would never want to return back to your old life."
The man slowly walked to the other end of the room. "But in exchange, I would take away your wings. Take away the one thing that gave you courage. And oh boy, look at what it has done to you. Look at this shaking mess that you've become."
I tried to stop trembling, but I couldn't. "Who... who the hell are you?" I felt so sick sounding so weak, but the pain and fear in my body were combining into a lethal force, wrecking me.
The man made a tutting noise. "And look what it has done to your brain. Can't guess, Tobias?"
My brain was in such a mess that I just stared at him blankly.
"Guess I'll just have to make things a lot more basic for you."
I blinked. The image before me was starting to blur. I thought I was going to black out. But –
No.
No.
I wasn't fainting. The man was shapeshifting.
Morphing. Or actually, demorphing.
And he was becoming somebody – somebody familiar.
Somebody I would recognise for life.
Somebody I wished I could club to death. With a stupid baseball bat. Payback for what he thought he had done to me.
I spat immediately. "It's you! It's you who created this stupid, ridiculous reality!"
David – yes, goddamn, David! – laughed once he had finished demorphing from the middle-aged persona. I hadn't seen him for so long. At least, not as a human.
He spoke, but in a low, quiet voice that harboured a cold tinge of menace. "You all broke me. All of you."
"Why are you doing this?" I gritted my teeth. "Now's not the time for games!"
David advanced towards me. "Then what? You expect me to be kind and help you in your vendetta against the Yeerks? You all had a vendetta against me and you didn't stop at anything! What will all of you do when the time comes? If those worms refused to leave their hosts, would you kill all of them along with the humans they have infested?"
I felt something catch in my throat.
"Hard pressed for an answer?" David smirked, kneeling down before Tobias. "Pretending to be such martyrs, fighting for the greater good. Sacrificial, even, aren't we, Tobias? Lost your humanity for the war. But let me tell you something. None of you have that moral capacity to make the right decisions. Not even the most moral of you all. Look at what Cassie did to me. Look at what she did and where it has landed me."
"You're a human now," I replied, coldly. But beneath the pretence of bravery, every single fibre of my being was rattling with fear.
David threw back his head and laughed out loud. "Yes, of course, I'm human now."
"You couldn't have done this all on your own!" I glared at him. "It's Crayak, isn't it?"
David threw up his hands airily. "Believe what you want. This was completely my idea."
He smiled. "Because if I didn't choose to come back to do this to all of you, I would be nothing. Not even a rat. You know why?"
He leaned closer to me. "Because your girlfriend killed me. And I'm here for revenge."