A/N: This full-on banger is a direct-continuation divergence from Ch. 19 of Book 19, the one where Cassie leaves the Animorphs, gets lost in the woods, and then gets in a very messy situation with a little girl controller. As fun and ethically murky as that book is I have always disliked the way it ended. I felt like there were opportunities presented for maximum chaos that never got explored.
I'll be polishing and updating every couple days until it's done. Estimated words... 15k-ish?
I really recommend at least skimming Book 19 up through chapter 19 if it's been a while. The first several chapters of this pull locations, information, premises, etc. from canon fairly consistently. Past that, (and into the probable sequel) divergence starts shaping events.
This fic is mostly finished. Current WIP 13.5k words.
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Animorphs, Book 19, Chapter 19 | Cassie:
I was a fool. I was a coward. I'd been unwilling to do the hard, brutal, necessary thing. Instead, I'd followed… what? A wish? An instinct? A pathetic hope?
«To be like this,» the Yeerk said dreamily in my head. «Oh, to be like this. To fly. All alone, up here in the sky! To have these eyes. I can see everything! Everything down to the tiniest blade of grass.»
I waited for Aftran to head toward civilization. But she didn't. She circled. Unsure. I could hear and feel her doubts.
But then, down below, threading their way through the trees, a dozen men in state police uniforms. They were moving along the river. Glancing left, the osprey's eyes saw Karen, still sitting hunched on a rock.
Several thousand yards of dense forest separated the men from the girl.
«A rescue party» I thought. «Of course. I'm missing. Karen is missing. There will be a massive search underway.»
«Yes, there probably is,» Aftran agreed. «But those aren't normal rescuers. They are Controllers. I know some of them. They aren't looking for you, they're looking for me. They will expect me to be in Karen. If they find her, they'll know I've made you my host. They'll ask why.»
She moved the osprey's head, swept the horizon anxiously.
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PROLOGUE
There were birds in the sky, far off in the distance. Multiple raptors. Flying together. Aftran knew who they were the same second that I did.
She started to say something. Cut herself off. Turned my head down at subtle movement from below.
My eyes snapped back to the ground, to Karen. She was sobbing, shoulders shaking, starting to crawl away off the rock. I saw the lithe tan-and-black figure on a branch above her for what it was only after it leapt.
«NOOOOOOOOOOO!» I screamed, helpless in my own mind. «Oh, God.» I gasped.
Aftran dove, the osprey stooping through the sky and shooting towards the injured little girl. Her shock rolled off of her with an incredulous, excited edge.
It was over before my wings dropped into the treetops: the leopard took no chances with its third approach. It fell onto Karen, mouth open wide, and crushed her windpipe into a bleeding ruin.
She spasmed, flailed. Went still.
I felt my wings open to catch air as my body aborted the dive. I watched through eyes I could not control as the leopard held Karen's body by her ruined throat. It leapt gracefully back into a tree as though she weighed nothing. Laid her body down, hanging her from a crook in the branches. Dropped to a lower branch and casually bounded away.
Aftran alighted the osprey on a perch in the canopy as I cried. She kept my eyes focused on Karen's crushed throat. Her shocked elation mingled with my shocked horror until I could hardly separate out what was mine.
«Well,» she said shakily. «It seems the situation has changed.»
I felt relief bleeding off from her. Relief at being alive, at not dying when Karen had. A slew of impressions: She was still riding the high of flying. Marveling at the clarity of the osprey's eyes. Thinking over the opportunities a morph-capable body represented.
«... My people will assume I expired after exiting my former host.» She murmured.
My creeping revulsion and horror felt overwhelming. Endless. Terror shot through me as her word choice caught up with my overloaded panic.
Former host. That's what she'd just called Karen. Former—
«I see you understand the reality of the situation,» Aftran said tersely. She paused. «While not ideal, this—»
«Not Ideal? Not Ideal!?» I screamed, panic flooding me. I was going to lose it. I was so, so stupid. Profoundly, earth-shatteringly stupid. I wanted to crawl into a hole and die.
I'd lost my own body, trapped myself in a living nightmare, all to let a little girl speak in the last moments of her life. A part of me still insisted it was the right decision. The rest of me wanted to throw up from recrimination and dread.
The Yeerk watched the approaching birds of prey through a few high branches. They were maybe two minutes away from me, from Karen's corpse. The controller search party would find Karen in about the same time.
I felt her open my memory again, flip through it like her own personal guidebook. I saw her find the memories of Jake's infestation, absorb how we'd dealt with it, observing our group's tactics in holding and freeing him.
«Interesting,» she said. I felt her focus, her resolve hardening. The osprey's head and upper body turned as she searched the surrounding forest, studying the trees.
I understood the very moment my gaze focused on a hollow in a tree on the other side of the river. «No,» I said quietly, numb with horror as I realized her plan.
My wings opened. She pushed off the high branch and glided through the canopy, over the river, staying below the treeline. It took less than a minute to reach the bushes at the base of the tree.
My body demorphed. I started begging as feathers shrank into my skin and I rose up from the ground. «Please. Aftran, Please. Don't do this. You don't have to—»
«Your friends will kill me.» She said flatly, implacably. «They will starve me out.»
I sobbed. «You don't know that!» Panic consumed me. «They might not hurt you,» I lied, frantic. «Maybe— Maybe you can just—»
«Do you know what Kandrona starvation is like?» Aftran demanded. I felt her fury. Her fear. «The agony it inflicts?» She scoffed, pushing my body to change at top speed. I was barely fully human before feathers began to sprout again from my skin, as my eyes swelled huge in my face and my skull receded to make space. «Do you even care, Cassie? Do you understand what your fellow Animorphs will put me through?!»
Owl. She was morphing my body into a great-horned owl. She would hide, silent and secret, in the hollow of a tree. None of the others would find me.
«No.» I said numbly. «I don't.» And I didn't care. I knew I didn't understand. But if it was her or me, if I had to make the choice...
My own anger hit me. Anger at Aftran for doing this to me, anger at myself for not killing her while Karen was sleeping defenseless in the cave, anger at myself for being stupid enough to think Aftran would ever release a prize like a human body that could morph if she didn't have to.
The owl's instincts rose up, confident and assured. Aftran lifted us up on silent wings.