What that, Rachel made her way back down the wall to the floor, already beginning to demorph before she had set the first of her six legs down on it. She shot right up almost immediately, the squares of tile that she had just settled down on growing smaller beneath her feet even as she made her way out from beneath the sink. She didn't want to end up getting stuck down there when she grew too big for the space, after all.
When she had just begun to regain some of her usual height, when she was like two feet tall or something like that; two feet tall, with skin like burnt sugar, huge antennae that were longer than her entire cockroach body had been to start with, human eyes, a thin growth of blonde hair, semi-humanoid legs that bristled with cockroach hairs and the swiftly-melting spikes from her cockroach exoskeleton, and a wide, throbbing yellowish abdomen, the door opened and a man shuffled into the room.
He was wearing an open bathrobe and slippers. At first, he simply made his way toward the toilet that sat off to the side of the room they both now stood in. Then, very slowly, he turned to look at her. Rachel wasn't particularly worried about what this guy might say; after all it was like Jake had said, this was a facility for people with mental illnesses.
Right as the man's eyes fixed on her, by whatever strange and unpredictable process guided the morphing, Rachel's human teeth and lips and tongue emerged from the cockroach's mouthparts.
"Hi," she said, trying to sound as normal as she possibly could; like this was all completely ordinary as far as she was concerned. "Could you get George Edelman for me?"
"Sure," the man said, nodding and starting to make his way out of the bathroom. Before he left, though, he turned back to look over at her. "Are you... real?"
"Nah. I'm just a figment of your imagination," she said.
"Ah," he said, seeming disappointed somehow. "I'll get George."
Continuing her demorphing even as the man whose name she didn't know made his way out of the bathroom, Rachel was soon able to stand and walk as a human. And not a moment too soon, because George Edelman himself came into the room just as she had finished her transition back into her human form.
"Hi," she said, as cheerful as she had been when she had met that other man. She stuck out her hand so he could shake it. "I'm... I'm helping your lawyer with your court case," she said, finally settling on a half-truth.
Mr. Edelman was obviously too startled by the fact that she had just appeared in the bathroom to shake her hand. She couldn't really blame him, though. She wouldn't have really known what to do, if their positions had been reversed.
"Who are you? What are you doing here?" he asked, then he looked down. "You're not wearing shoes."
"Yes, I apologize for my slightly," she paused for a moment, searching for a more sophisticated word than the one she was about to use, but she couldn't think of one; she continued anyway. "My slightly weird appearance, here."
"Yes, weird," Mr. Edelman said, frowning uncertainly at her; his face was so intent, but she didn't know what he was thinking. He shook her hand after that, though. "I guess I'm not one to be talking about "weird"."
"Would you like to have a seat?" she asked, offering him the toilet.
"No. Thanks," Mr. Edelman said, and again he turned a considering look on her. "You're awfully young."
"Thank you," she said, already having thought up her response to just this kind of thing. "Actually, I'm twenty-five, but I work out, I eat the right foods, I don't smoke, and I always wear sunscreen. Mr. Edelman, why did you try to kill yourself?" she asked, before he could ask or say anything else.
Mr. Edelman sat down on the edge of the bathtub with a soft, hopeless sort of sigh. Rachel, for her part, leaned against the sink and tried her best to look the part of a particularly youthful twenty-five year old lawyer's assistant. Mr. Edelman looked back up at her, his confused but kind gray eyes shining briefly in the light spilling in from the window. He made a brief effort to smooth down his hair, but eventually gave the effort up as hopeless.
"I had no choice," he said. "It's this thing in my head."
"Okay," she said, nodding. "Yes. What thing in your head?"
"The Yeerk," Mr. Edelman looked at her with a sick smile, as if he was expecting her to laugh at him and say he was crazy; like everyone else, probably.
"What, exactly, is a Yeerk, sir?" Rachel asked, after she had taken a moment to get her heartbeat and breathing back under control; and to swallow with a throat suddenly dry. "Mr. Edelman," she said, when he didn't speak for a few, long moments. "I promise you I won't laugh. And I won't make you take any more pills. And I won't say you're crazy, either. Now, can you tell me what you mean when you say "Yeerk"?"
"Yes," Edelman said, nodding in obvious relief. "The Yeerks are parasitic aliens. They enter the brain through the ear canal; they take over every function of your conscious mind. They..."
Edelman's speech stopped suddenly as a spasm wracked his body; he jerked wildly, wrapping both arms around himself in an obvious effort at regaining some form of control over himself. It was an effort that was clearly failing, for all of Edelman's determination. His mouth snapped open and shut, teeth clicking and clacking against each other, making him resemble nothing more than some insane ventriloquist's dummy that had been brought to life.
Grabbing Edelman by the shoulders, trying to steady him even though she didn't know quite what was going on with the man, Rachel was startled when he started raving in a strangely high-pitched, manic tone.
"I- I- I what? Farum yeft kalash sip! Sip! Sip! The pool! Gahala sulp!"he screamed once, briefly, but that was almost the only human sound he made, and even it was distorted by the way he was speaking. "Help! Coranch! Coranch!"
Edelman slumped to the ground, falling silent and gasping in an effort to regain his breath; Rachel helped to prop him up.
"Are you okay?" she asked.
"No," Edelman whispered. "It happens, sometimes. It's the Yeerk, you see? He's mad. Insane. He's in my head and he won't get out, but he's insane. Completely insane!"
"Okay, okay," she said, raising her hands to try and placate him; she didn't want anyone who wasn't involved in this conversation to come barging in. "Just try to calm down, okay?"
"Yes," he nodded convulsively. "Yes."
"Look, I can't stay much longer. But, you have to tell me: how is the Yeerk staying alive without Kandrona rays? You've been here for more than three days."
The look on Mr. Edelman's face wouldn't have been easy to describe to someone who had decided to ask her, because it wasn't really one expression; it was more of a succession of expressions: hope, dread, amazement. All of them flashed over his face in the time that it took her to blink.
Grabbing him by the shoulders, Rachel shook him slightly. "I know it's weird, but you have to trust me. How does it happen? Why is the Yeerk insane? How does it survive without the Kandrona?"
"Andalite?" Edelman whispered, a tone of awe and wonder in his voice.
"Yes. Andalite," she lied.