Author's Note: Well, the end is truly in sight. As I post this chapter, I'm putting the last touches on Chapter 33, which means I'm still 2 chapters ahead. FINALLY. :) If this keeps up - and I'm not going to utter any promises, because we know where that leads, but IF this keeps up, and I can keep reliably posting a chapter every weekend, then the story will be finished by November. Almost hard to believe. :) I have to admit, it's a little discouraging that it took me so long because Animorphs fandom has dwindled over the last ten years, like anything would when it's no longer being actively expanded by it's canon authors. So few people have made it with me from when the first chapters were new to this point. But it's for you that I'm making sure that this actually gets finished. :)
Craig Tozier
We sent the others on to the safehouse.
Thankfully, Marco and Cassie had considered the possibility that our hospital headquarters could be overrun, and they were aware that many of our people were in no condition to live out in the wilderness of the Hork-Bajir valley. Too many of the kids needed electricity for breathing machines, medication, and other supports, so Marco had Ax hack into the real estate and banking systems and purchase two five bedroom houses for us, each of which we had stockpiled with enough medication and equipment to stay put for three months if necessary while figuring out where to go from there. The first of them was in our town, with a second in the Animorphs' hometown as a second backup in case the Yeerks discovered the primary backup position as well.
Unfortunately, the house in the Animorphs' hometown had been destroyed along with the rest of the town, so if the Yeerks had found the nearby one, as well, then we were in a lot of trouble.
It also meant I couldn't take the risk of flying the Controller prisoner to that house and showing him where it was.
«Ray, Erica, you two are with me. We need to take the Yeerk elsewhere while our people get everything set up.» I watched one of the pigeons and the hawk with the ferret on it's leg bank left, and followed them.
«He's going to claim to be an uninfested human,» Colette told me as she started to venture out of thought-speak range. «That's what the other one did. What a load of shit.»
«I don't know,» Ray mused. «If the Yeerks knew we were there and wanted to take us out, why would they send only two morph-capable humans to get us? Why not storm the hospital in force?»
«Simple – arrogance,» Erica sneered. «Either cause we're kids or because we're disabled, or both. They figured they could just lure us into some lame trap and make sure they preserved the morph-capable host bodies.»
«Alright, Yeerk,» I said, including him in my thought speech, «you want to save us a whole bunch of trouble and just let go?»
«A thousand feet in the air?» the Yeerk asked incredulously. «You're not /that/ mean, are you?»
«Well, we're in no position to free the human host,» I reasoned, «and I'm sure he'd rather be dead than a Controller, so… it's either you can drop to your doom or you can feel what it's like to get eaten by a red-tail. The way Tobias tells it, even when he tries to make it quick for his prey, it's not always pretty.»
«What if the Yeerk left my head and we talked about it human to human?» the Yeerk asked, surprising me.
«Oh, so you're going to admit that you /can/ leave your host?» Erica asked. «Why didn't your friend, then?»
«Because he's not a Controller,» the Yeerk responded. «He used to be, but he lost his Yeerk when the pool exploded.»
«Uh huh,» I said skeptically. «I knew that kid – he was a good friend of mine, before he was infested. And I heard his Yeerk was some big shot Sub-Visser or something. So I think it's more likely that he said no because he was an involuntary host, and you're amenable to it because your host is a collaborator.»
It was a few seconds before the Yeerk responded. «Okay, got me there. I really don't have any way of disproving that theory. But we should still land and talk, because you can't disprove /my/ claim either. And either way, you really need to hear what I have to say.»
I considered my options. «Fine. Let's do lunch, then. You follow my orders one hundred percent, though, cause at the first sign of trouble, we're done talking. Got it?»
«Got it,» the Yeerk assured me.
«Okay, then. Ray, you land and let the Yeerk get off you, then fly back to the safehouse and wait for us.» Switching to private thought-speak, I added to Ray, «Actually, you circle around a block, morph to leopard, and get ready to charge in on my orders.»
«Got it,» Ray told me, diving.
«Yeerk, you demorph to human,» I ordered.«I'll do the same. Then you give me the Yeerk and it stays in my pocket for the duration of our conversation. Erica, you don't demorph until I've got the Yeerk, okay?»
«Fine,» the Yeerk – or I guess, from context, the Yeerk's host – replied. «But you don't harm my Yeerk during the conversation, and you give him back to me either way. We part company amicably one way or the other.»
«That's unexpected,» I remarked privately to Erica. «Opinion?»
«Could be genuine,» Erica remarked as we landed in the alley. «But remember – the Yeerks are morph-capable now. Maybe this host is a Yeerk nothlit himself, using his new human body to breed trust with us because we wouldn't be so quick to mistrust a fellow human.»
«You'd think walking the proverbial mile in our shoes would change his outlook, in that case,» I noted.
Erica snorted. «Uh huh. How many kids have come through the hospital with a broken leg and just gone right back to treating us like dirt once their injuries were healed? People don't change, Craig, you know that.»
«I guess.» I watched Ray fly off, and I watched as a human-Controller boy emerged from the Yeerk ferret. A dirty blonde, blue-eyed kid, about my age. «Hmph. You'd think they'd have sent an adult.»
«What does it matter?» Erica remarked. «A morph-capable host body doesn't need any kind of strength in it's natural form to be formidable, and the Yeerk is probably adult.»
I started my own demorph. Erica stayed perched on the dumpster, poised to attack if necessary. Or at least attack as much as a pigeon can, which isn't much. It was a shame Erica hadn't taken Tobias' hawk body for her transit morph.
Once both the Yeerk host and I had demorphed, the boy stuck out his hand for me to shake. "Eric Campbell, and Ewell Five-Nine-Three of the Sulp Niar pool. Both pleased to meet you."
I nodded, but didn't take the offered hand. "Craig Tozier. No touching, if you don't mind – it wouldn't do to have a human-Controller out there with the ability to morph my body."
Eric bit his lip, lowering his hand. "Fair enough." his Yeerk sighed. "Well, I guess I'll just get out of this body and leave you and Eric alone for a bit." He closed his eyes, and then I began to see the sign of the Yeerk slug slithering out of the human ear. Eric held his hand out to catch it as it fell out.
I reached for the Yeerk, but Eric held up his other hand to stop me. "You heard his name," he said forcefully. "Ewell Five-Nine-Three of the Sulp Niar pool. Not 'Yeerk', not just some slug. A person with an identity, and my friend." Only then did he reach out and hold out Ewell for me to take. "Prove to him that humans can keep their word."
I took Ewell and pocketed him, gingerly, although my crappy skintight morphing outfit probably made him a little cramped in there. " I never gave my word that he'd come out of this alive, Eric. But… I'm willing to listen." I looked up at Erica. "Find a house with an open window and nobody home. We'll borrow it for now." I gestured towards the street. "Come, Eric. We'll talk as we walk."
By the time Erica had found accommodations for us, Eric had told me the story of how he and Chris had started dating and how it had led to his infestation. The story added a little credibility for me, since, of course, I knew from my little sexual experimentation sessions with Chris during our time in the Cub Scouts that it was very possible that he was gay, even though I had personally just gone along for the new experiences and was pretty sure that I was straight, or at least mostly straight. He told me about the Yeerk peace movement, which I had heard the basics about from Cassie, and how they had used his proximity to Chris in order to become morph-capable.
"Now," Eric finished, "we're trying to find an amicable solution for everybody. We in the Free Controllinists movement have come to care somewhat deeply for our Yeerks, and we now have a way for them to break away from Visser One without starving to death, as well as any other Yeerks that can be captured or convinced to rebel against the Visserarchy."
"How is that possible?" I asked earnestly.
"We have one of the Earth-based Kandrona," Eric replied. "We want to give it to the Animorphs, give them the ability to take Yeerk prisoners and support their Yeerk allies."
I took a few moments to digest his words. "That's... well, that's interesting." Actually, I had no clue what the hell it meant, but it sounded important. "I'd have to discuss it with Jake, of course. And while I'm inclined to believe you, I still can't trust you with the location of either my own base camp or Jake's."
Eric nodded. "I expected as much," he conceded. "Chris will have contacted his brother by now to find out where the Kandrona is. The plan is to meet him tomorrow night at the Kandrona's last known location and go together to find it from there." He held up his hands. "I won't set any conditions. It can be just you and me, or you and me and Jake, or all the Animorphs, whatever you guys want. We go, we meet Chris, we find and recover the Kandrona, and we work it out from there." He sighed. "I won't lie to you, it's inside the Yeerk blast perimeter, so it won't be the safest place to go."
I took Ewell out. "Then this Yeerk is our guarantee. We take it back to our camp, and we don't release it back to your custody until we're all safely back with the Kandrona."
Eric frowned. "Why do you need a hostage?" he asked. "And why Ewell instead of me?"
I shrugged. "Simple. He can't see in his natural state, so if we bring him somewhere secure, we don't need to worry about him revealing that location later. And holding him guarantees that you, at least, won't try anything funny." I held the Yeerk out to him. "Here, put him back in and let him know the terms, see if he agrees."
Eric put the Yeerk to his ear and it immediately started pushing it's way in. I couldn't help but watch, fascinated, at the process, and at how Eric just sat there, staring blankly, for almost a full minute afterwards while they had their internal conversation.
Finally, Eric's body spoke again, with Ewell talking. "I agree to your terms, Craig," the Yeerk stated. "Chris believed you to be a friend; I will trust you because I trust him."
I nodded. "Fair enough." I waited for the Yeerk to again disengage and be placed in my hands before speaking again. "Alright, we meet back here an hour before sunset tomorrow, and you take us to the Kandrona. Erica will escort you to the edge of town and, once we're sure that you can't follow us, you'll be free to go."
Eric nodded somberly, looking at the Yeerk in my hand. "I'll be back for you," he whispered gently to it, before getting up. Erica remorphed to her pigeon morph and rested on Eric's shoulder, and the two of them left. I waited until they were a short distance away and morphed to hawk, carrying Ewell in my talons to the safehouse.
When I got there, James and Cassie were waiting for me. I demorphed and carried Ewell into the house.
"Who's that?" said Cassie, gesturing to the Yeerk. "Is that one of the ones responsible for you guys falling back?"
"It's a bit more complicated than that," I explained to her. "Long story short, though, yeah, his arrival caused things there to get a little reckless, and.. well, if the bulk of the Yeerks didn't know we were there before he arrived, they do now."
Cassie seemed about to ask more, but James put an arm on her shoulder. "We can leave a few people behind to guard the safehouse and deal with the Yeerk, but right now we have more pressing matters to attend to." He looked right at me. "The Taxxons are being used to dig a new Yeerk pool, Craig. We're going in to stop them."
"Awesome!" Ray called out, eager for action.
Timmy, rocking back and forth in his natural, palsied body, said "Go… good to… kick the.. THEM out."
Colette snickered. "Yeah, I want to get to /use/ the croc this time."
James gave encouraging smiles to the other Animorphs. "Guess I have a few volunteers," he told Cassie. "I think we can scrounge up a few more, although with the evacuation we need to at least leave Erica and Craig here to get things set up here."
"Hey, you're going without me?" I objected.
James gestured to Ewell. "Well, you have that… /thing/ to take care of, right? I can't wait to hear that story when I get back."
In the end, it was decided that James, Colette, Timmy, Juan, Kelly, Ray, Tricia and Connor would go to help Jake's group deal with the Taxxons. They morphed with Cassie and flew off, leaving the rest of us to prepare a plan for meeting with Chris and Eric.
Cassie Godfrey
We were flying towards the new Yeerk Pool. Jake had ordered the Primary Animorphs to approach in bat morph so that, when we got closer, we could come in at different angles and get the lay of the land before launching the first wave of the attack. James and the rest of the Auxiliary Animorphs were supposed to come in as second wave, so they were following behind in their regular transit morphs, while the Hork-Bajir were force marching along the ravine from their colony.
While we were still in range of the Auxiliary Animorphs, James asked Ray to explain to us the basics of what had gone on at the hospital and afterwards with Craig, Erica and the Yeerks.
Privately, he included to me, «We can't be totally sure the three of them weren't taken, Cassie. It's unlikely, because Craig was calling the shots to the Yeerk when he left the hospital, but it could still have been a trap somehow. We need to watch Ray during the battle for signs of being a Controller.»
«We'll know as soon as we get there,» I noted wryly. «If he's a Controller, he'll warn the Yeerks as soon as we get to the pool.» I felt a surge of guilt for not telling Jake about what was going on with James' people. It was tactically important information, to know they'd been compromised and forced to flee the hospital, not to mention the remote but real possibility of Ray's capture. But Jake was already on overload dealing with General Doubleday and the Taxxons and how to handle capturing the Pool ship. Besides, James wasn't telling me anything I didn't already know - I had already discussed the possibilities with Marco and he had said the risk was negligible. He was much more concerned about what was going on with Ax and the approaching Andalite fleet, and we had already agreed to keep /that/ from Jake until the time was right, so this was just par for the course.
So I listened, as Ray explained to me and James about the two morph-capable humans, Chris and Eric, who had come to the hospital looking for Craig. How Chris had claimed to no longer be a Controller and Eric had claimed to be a member of the peace movement, along with Ewell. And how they had a Kandrona that they wanted to turn over to us.
«It was weird,» Ray finished. «I mean, I was in leopard morph spying, so I couldn't really see his face, but he /sounded/ so sincere. And he absolutely loved that Yeerk – he was heartbroken when we took it away with us.»
«You're not having second thoughts about going after them tonight, are you Ray?» James asked warily. «You seemed eager to come on the mission.»
Ray responded without hesitation, «No way, man. That kid may have been nice, but there's no way I'm letting Visser One build a pool in MY backyard. I'm not a good swimmer anyway.»
We had a chuckle on that joke, and then I was sure that Ray wasn't a Controller. A Yeerk might have played up Ray's eagerness for combat, but no Yeerk would casually drop Visser One's name like that. So I didn't voice any objections. Marco told me to catch up with the lead group so Jake could brief us on the plan, and I flew on. And said goodbye to Ray. For the last time.