A/N: This 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. There were opportunities presented for maximum chaos that never got explored.
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.
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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, off in the distance. Multiple raptors all flying together. Aftran knew who they were the same instant that I did.
«So—» she cut herself off from speaking and turned my head at a subtle movement from below. My eyes snapped back to the ground, to Karen. She was sobbing, shoulders shaking, starting to crawl away off a rock.
I only saw the lithe tan-and-black cat on the branch above her for what it was after it leapt.
«NOOOOOOOOOOO!» I screamed, disbelieving. Unable to move. Completely unable to act. «Oh my God...»
Aftran was already moving, diving down, her shock rolling off of her with an incredulous edge. My osprey body stooped through the sky. I wanted to make it in time. I wanted to save her. I wanted to stop this from happening.
She was dead before my wings dropped into the treetops; the leopard didn't take a chance with its third approach. It fell directly onto her, mouth open wide. Bit down and crushed her windpipe into a bleeding ruin.
She spasmed, flailed. Went still.
My wings opened to catch air as my body aborted the dive. I watched through eyes I could not control as the cat held Karen's body by her ruined throat.
It leapt gracefully back into a tree like she weighed nothing. Laid her body down, hung her from a crook in the branches. Casually dropped down to a lower branch and bounded away.
Aftran perched me in the canopy, focused my eyes on Karen. Sat there. I wanted to look away. She didn't; she stared for long seconds.
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 could feel the giddy relief bleeding off from her. Relief at being alive, at not dying when Karen had. Impressions from her drifted down, thoughts that were open to me: she was still riding the high of flying. Marveling at the clarity of the osprey's eyes. Thinking over the opportunities and possibilities of a morph-capable body.
«... My people will assume I expired after exiting my former host...» She murmured, distracted. Her relief was turning to elation, triumph.
My revulsion and horror crept up. Built. Washed over me in waves. Terror shot through me as her word choice caught up with my grief and overloaded shock:
Former host. That's what she'd just called Karen. Former —
«I see you understand the reality of the situation,» Aftran snapped. Paused. «While not ideal, this—»
«Not Ideal? Not — NOT IDEAL!?» I screamed, panic absolutely flooding me. I was so, so stupid. Profoundly, earth-shatteringly stupid. I wanted to crawl into a hole and die.
I'd done this. I'd done it to myself, I'd lost my own body, trapped myself in a living nightmare just 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.
«Let me go.» I demanded.
She didn't respond.
«Aftran, let me go.» I pleaded.
She watched my friends through the sparse high branches. They were still two, maybe three 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. I watched her observe our tactics, how we kept him contained, freed him by starving it out.
«Interesting,» she said. Her emotions were complex, difficult to name. I felt her resolve, her fear, her intense focus. My head and upper body turned as she searched the surrounding forest, studying the trees.
I understood what her plan had to be the very moment my gaze settled on a hollow in a tree on the other side of the river. «No,» I said quietly, numb with horror.
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 started demorphing. As feathers shrank into my skin and I rose up from the ground, I started begging. «Please, Aftran. Please. Please don't do this. You don't have to—»
«Your friends will kill me.» She said flatly, implacably, cutting me off. «They will starve me out.»
«You don't know that!» I yelled. Terror and panic consumed me. «They might not hurt you,» I lied, frantic. «Maybe— maybe you can just—» I needed to say whatever it took. Anything to get her to let me go.
«Do you know what kandrona starvation is like?» Her rage and fear flooded off of her. « The agony it inflicts?» She scoffed, pushing my body to change at top speed.
«Do you even care, Cassie? Do you care that it will be torture ?» Feathers began to sprout again from my skin. My eyes swelled huge in my face and my skull receded to make space. She kept up the brutal morphing pace, fuming. «Do you understand what your little friends will put me through!? »
My body started to shrink. My feet changed, grew into killing weapons.
Owl. She was morphing my body into a great-horned owl. She would hide, silent and secret, in the hollow of a tree. That was her plan. None of the others would find me.
«No.» I said numbly. «I don't.» I didn't understand. I knew it was bad, knew yeerks feared it, knew they called it torture, but I also knew I didn't understand. And I still didn't care. 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 defenseless and sleeping. Anger at myself for being stupid enough to think Aftran would ever release a prize like a human body that could morph.
The owl's instincts rose up, confident and assured. Aftran lifted me up on silent wings.