[Assume that this takes place approximately three years after a version of the final battle in which, inexplicably, no one died.]
“Why Sonoma State?” Marco smiles winningly at the RA for their dorm. “Simple. It was the only place that would take all six of us.” He makes a flourishing gesture at where Jake is stacking textbooks onto a shelf, across the room from where his own parents are folding bed sheets. “We are a package deal. Most of the other colleges only wanted Rachel ‘cause she’s ‘well-rounded,’ or Ax ‘cause he’s a nerd, oh and Harvard offered Tobias a legacy scholarship since there was that one time his dad straight-up invented the internet as part of a class project there…” He leans against the door frame. “But we told all those places that they do not get one of us unless they’ll take the entire ménage à six.”
“Please never call us that ever again,” Jake says loudly.
“As you wish, darling,” Marco calls back.
Jake’s response would probably be rude, but at that moment he gets distracted by his dad opening up a twenty-gallon plastic bin to reveal what looks like an entire pharmacy’s worth of over-the-counter medications.
“Dad!” Jake says. “What…? What.”
Tom sits up. His contribution to proceedings so far has been to flop across Jake’s bed and bounce a stress ball off a water stain on the ceiling. “Alternative revenue stream?” he suggests. “So that if you run short on cash, you can always just take up as a drug dealer.”
“You never know when you might need something.” Jake’s dad starts carefully stacking bottles of ibuprofen, cough syrup, and pink bismuth on a shelf above his desk.
Jake stares at his dad, mouth halfway open. “Why would I ever need four Epi-Pens? I’m not even allergic to anything!”
“That we know of.” His dad continues unpacking, unperturbed. “But this way you’ll be prepared in case of any emergencies. Anything could happen, and…” He stops, clears his throat. “And you’ll be halfway across the state, kiddo. I’ll feel better knowing that you can handle anything that might come up.”
“Yeah, and if any of it even gets opened then we’ll know for sure that he’s using it to brew meth,” Tom drawls. “Morphing fixes everything from mosquito bites to hangovers, Dad. He doesn’t need fifteen different painkillers.”
Jake’s mom straightens up, eyes narrowing. “How do you know that morphing fixes hangovers, young man?”
Tom rolls to his feet. “How ‘bout I go grab more bags out of the car, yeah?”
“Oh, so you’ve finally decided to start contributing, then?” Jake says loftily.
“You’re welcome for hauling all of your crap around all day, midget!” Tom calls, already halfway down the hall.
“Asshole,” Jake says, but he’s smiling softly to himself.
Marco gets it, totally. It’s the same warm feeling he gets any time his mom tells him to cut his hair and he swears to die before he’ll let that happen. Because they’re never going to be kids again, not really. But in its own way that makes it nice, just sometimes, to pretend. Pretend to be brats. Pretend to be certain. Pretend that they can take their loved ones for granted, even if in reality that’ll never happen again.
Tobias is expecting Marco’s jokes, all 500-odd of them, when he announces that he’s going to be an Anthropology major. Tobias has long since learned to roll with Marco’s occasionally-questionable sense of humor, and he’s happy to tolerate the comments about “studying humanity from afar” and “learning to blend in with enough practice.” He doesn’t know what to do with Cassie getting excited on his behalf and then promptly wilting when she finds out that it’s Cultural Anthro, not Bio Anthro, that interests him. Rachel just looks over his schedule, nods to herself, and says, “You realize you could revolutionize the whole field if you felt like it, right? After all, who has more perspective on what it means to be human than you do?”
Tobias, in turn, actually laughs out loud when Marco casually announces his interest in theoretical physics because “I’m here to have fun, not strain my brain to death!” What’s even more surprising is when Tobias realizes that Marco’s not joking. That Marco only got the idea because he took a string of pretests online and scored the highest on the one measuring his ability to learn basic calculus and wave theory on the fly. That his ability to translate abstract math into a concrete understanding of force and motion might not be enough to make him the next Albert Einstein, but it still exceeds his grasp of (for instance) U.S. history and the English language.
“We’ll still have a lot of introductory classes together,” Cassie tells Tobias, as she looks over her own tentative schedule for how to get a Biological Anthropology B.A. in four years. Her tone suggests that she forgives him for making the wrong choice, and is sure he’ll reconsider in time.
If Rachel thinks that Tobias has the potential to revolutionize Anthropology, she’s certain that Ax will take the entire Media Studies program by storm. She gives it five years before he’s changed the definition of what it means to be a food writer.
There’s no shame in being an exploratory major, the academic advisor tells Jake. Which is the first time that Jake wonders if maybe there is shame attached, seeing as this guy felt the need to say anything at all.
Rachel responds to a variation on this same comment with a lift of her chin, a toss of her hair, and a sharp, “Good. Because I’ve got nothing to be ashamed of.” Unlike Jake, however, she doesn’t choose her classes based on a combination of random guesses and rumors about what’s easy. She takes Intro to Women’s Studies. Intro to Marketing. Intro to Communication Theory. Intro to Criminal Justice. Intro to Applied Design.
“It’s an awesome idea!” Rachel says. Which is around the time Cassie starts mistrusting it.
They’re getting ready to go to their 9:00 class — Intro to Comm Studies — together. To be more specific, Cassie grabbed a pair of jeans and a flannel out of her drawer and has been ready for twenty minutes. Rachel has finished blow-drying her hair, but has yet to get dressed beyond her fluffy bathrobe and is only two lips and one eye into her makeup.
“You can’t join every extra-curricular on campus,” Cassie points out. “We have to study and stuff, too.”
“Yeah, but there are so many good causes here!” Rachel gestures to the pile of fliers left over from the Student Org fair. “RAINN, UNICEF, the SPCA, WWF, a bunch of other alphabet soup I didn’t totally grasp but signed up for anyway…”
Cassie sits up, grabbing the topmost flier off the stack. TWLOHA, it says, which seems like a parody meant to mock the other acronyms. She’s pretty sure she knows what this is actually about. Rachel’s good at filling the days with schoolwork and casual conversation and (Cassie has learned) a good 60 minutes a morning on personal grooming. Cassie, on the other hand…
There are no animals to care for here, and there’s no war to fight. She hangs out with Jake and Rachel and the others, of course, and she’s been doing an okay job of keeping up with her schoolwork so far, but she keeps getting caught by how many hours there are in a day.
“We cannot possibly go to the first meeting of all these orgs,” she says at last.
Rachel spins around in a cloud of hairspray and perfume. “So we’ll keep at it until we find a couple we like. What do you say?”
It was pouring rain yesterday. It rained all week. The sad huddle of booths at the Student Org Fair in front of the library had to be reached through knee-deep mud. And yet Rachel waded out there, not because she cares all that much about saving the pandas. Because it’s not pandas she cares about.
“Yeah.” Cassie opens the TWLOHA flier, skimming over the information inside. “Yeah, okay. Let’s give them a try.”
Marco walks straight by the unfamiliar blond lady having a conversation with Cheryl from the sorority next door— at least, he does at first. About two steps later he screeches to a stop, pivots around, and goes running back.
“So does this mean you can’t put me in touch with any former members of this organization?” Eva is asking. She shoves a few strands of wig away from her face, the motion aggressive.
“Former members?” Cheryl lets out a nervous giggle, fiddling with the end of her hair. “I mean, Lambda Rho Iota has a lot of alumnae who are still really involved…”
“Oh, so you don’t allow people to leave, then.” Eva leans closer. “You pull them in with your lanyards and your sport days and your so-called ‘rush’ events for social pressure, and then you never allow them to leave even after graduation. Because there is no leaving, is there? There’s only disappearing in the middle of the night, no warning, no phone calls, no body ever found —”
“Mom!” Marco throws himself bodily between her and the clueless junior she’s already reduced to the verge of tears.
“Hi, honey.” Eva leans around him. “Does this ‘Rachel Carson’ person you named your house after even exist, or is she just a demagogue you invented to indoctrinate—?”
“Hi Cheryl nice to see you bye now!” Marco shuffles Eva several feet away, giving Cheryl the chance to grab her free water bottles and run for it.
“You are not to join any of these so-called ‘sororities’ with their so-called ‘service components,’ and I do not care what alleged perks of membership they offer to you,” Eva says severely.
Marco takes a breath to remind himself that she means well, that she’s never been to college herself, that she’s entitled to be a little overprotective after everything. “What are you even doing here?” he says at last. “You and Dad dropped me off like two weeks ago.”
“What makes you think I ever left?” Eva glances around them, too distracted to notice that Marco is now staring at her in horror.
Eva drops her voice. “While we’re at it, don’t trust the ‘Quidditch’ people either, I checked and it is not a real sport. They couldn’t even answer my questions about athletic commission grants.”
“Mom. I promise that I will not join any student organizations unless you vet them first and give your approval. Okay?”
Nodding, Eva plunges ahead. “I checked the dorm building, and there are approximately fifteen exits if you allow for vents and foundational flaws that one could use in cockroach morph. Now, if the building is on fire and also under attack from multiple hostiles, we need to confirm that you can still navigate as a fly—”
“Mom.” Marco stops walking to look her in the eye. “I appreciate you trying to make sure I’m safe. But you maybe, just maybe, assuming I’m not totally helpless? That would also be cool.”
Throwing her arms around him, Eva presses his face into her shoulder. “Very well,” she whispers. “But still. Keep an eye on those Quidditch people.”
Cassie and Rachel make it through half a meeting of Legalize Weed Today. Everyone whispers and exchanges glances when they walk in. Then the guy at the front of the room starts explaining how antidepressants are just put out by The Man to control us, because people need to free their minds and realize that natural substances are the only way forward. Rachel hopes she and Cassie attract even more whispering when they stand up and walk out by silent agreement, because then they’ll at least have made a point.
To her credit, Rachel knocks. Twice. To her credit, Jake actually does make a vague noise of acknowledgement on the other side of the door. To her credit, they didn’t even lock the damn door.
So it is not her fault at all that she finally gives up and wrenches the door open after 30 seconds of mixed signals. Only to find Jake sitting swathed in his bed sheets, a squirrel perched on his windowsill. Both Jake and the squirrel give her innocent looks.
“Masters of disguise, you two.” Rachel sighs, pressing a hand over her eyes to try and block the image from her mind. At least they’re not in Cassie’s bed, which would be even worse. Rachel has to sleep in that room.
“Did you need something?” Jake’s voice comes out more high-pitched than usual.
“I don’t even slightly remember what I came in here for, because your attempt at subtlety has scarred me for life.” Rachel looks from Jake to the squirrel (who is still doing her best, which is not great, to be just a squirrel) and then back to Jake. “Next time, lock the fucking door,” she says, backing out of the room.
Jake rubs the back of his neck. “I was just—”
“And remember to use a condom!” Rachel slams the door behind her.
Cassie and Rachel try one meeting of Sonomans for a Greener Planet. This week’s revolves around the need to install plastic buckets next to every single trash can in the city of San Francisco, so that people can avoid putting liquid waste into the trash cans themselves. No one in the meeting seems to have any idea about what will be done with the liquid once it’s in the buckets, or who will pay for the buckets, or why people can’t just dump extra liquid on the nearest patch of dirt or grass instead of in the trash can.
“Raaaaaaa-chel,” Marco whines, as soon as Rachel pulls open the door to her own dorm room. “Jake lost our only room key!”
“Actually,” Jake says, elbowing his way in next to Marco, “I’m just the one who is apparently a ‘mean mom’ because I refuse to pay the 60 bucks to get us a new one. But it’s dumb that it costs so much money for a new key.”
“Didn’t you get two keys when you moved in?” Cassie calls from inside the room. Jake immediately flushes. He’s nothing if not predictable.
With a sigh, Rachel ushers the boys inside. Cassie and Ax and Tobias are already camped out on her floor, working on some project for their Ancient Civilizations class.
“We did get two keys,” Marco says, “but then this one time I was late for class, so I had to ditch everything I had on me — room key, Student ID, ten bucks, a perfectly good pair of Vans — to fly over there. The professor threatened to fail me if I missed any more classes,” he adds, in a tone that invites them all to marvel at the depths of this injustice.
“Do you not need a student ID to access the dining hall in its infinite bounty?” Ax asks, horrified.
Jake lets out an aggrieved sigh. “Every time we get to the door, he just bats his eyelashes at the student worker and goes ‘you know who I am.’ And somehow it works, every single time.”
“Anyway, we were just using Jake’s key, but then Jake lost it!” Marco throws himself across Rachel’s bed like it’s a fainting couch. Rachel shoves him aside to sit down herself.
“Where did you have it last?” Cassie asks, sensibly.
“Um.” Jake thinks about it for a while. Everyone else watches him think.
Rachel gives up before he does. “Just swallow your pride and get a new one made, okay?”
“I mean, you don’t really need-need a room key,” Tobias says. “Ax and I haven’t had one since our first week here, and we’re just fine without.”
“You what?” Rachel says.
Tobias shrugs. “I lost mine ages ago, and Ax…” He glances over.
“It was delicious. Shuss. A very distinct metallic taste, followed by a most interesting texture on the throat. However, it did prove to be most unpleasant to digest.”
“Ax let his curiosity get the better of him,” Tobias finishes.
“How have you been getting into and out of your room this whole time?” Marco asks.
“These doors are set high enough off the ground for roach morph to get under.” Jake rolls his eyes as if unable to believe Marco couldn’t figure that one out on his own.
“We were doing that,” Ax says. “However, ever since Tobias cut a hole in window screen, we have not needed to bother going through the hallway at all. A-tall?”
“You what?” Rachel says again.
“The screen’s still there.” Tobias rolls over to look up at her, trying for an innocent smile. “It just has a…” He makes a circle in the air, about three feet in diameter, with one hand. “A slight hole in the middle. So that we can get in and out without having to go under the door frame.”
“I guess it’s a good thing you guys live on the third floor,” Cassie says slowly.
Tobias nods. “Oh yeah. We’ve only had to chase two, okay three, raccoons out of there. But that was before Ax’s scent was all over the place. Turns out they do not like the smell of aliens.”
“You what?” Rachel’s starting to feel like a broken record. Also starting to wonder why it has never occurred to her before that the boys are constantly visiting her room, but it’s never the other way around.
“Technically, there have been several squirrels and a few mice who have entered as well,” Ax says, “but Tobias is kind enough to consume those invaders so that they don’t further trouble us.”
“Plus, what do you even need a dorm room for, anyway?” Tobias looks from Jake to Marco. “We’ve got the mini-fridge for cinnamon rolls and feeder mice, the TV, the microwave, and that’s about it.”
“Where are you even keeping your textbooks and whatnot?” Marco asks. “No way you’re dragging that —” He glances at the 800-page monstrosity sitting open in front of Tobias. “Under your door in roach morph.”
Tobias laughs. “Of course not! We keep books and spare clothes stashed above a loose ceiling panel in the Social Sciences building.”
“You what?” Rachel says, unable to suppress the reflex.
Jake tilts his head as if actually considering this idea. “It would save on a lot of trips between buildings, and the air vents inside Carson Hall are surprisingly spacious…”
Rachel buries her face in her hands. “How is it Cassie is the only one actually raised in a barn, and also the only one of you who isn’t acting like she was raised in a barn?” she asks her palms mournfully.
“Hey!” Jake straightens up. “I managed to hang onto my keys for over eight months!”
“Yes, and your idea of ‘doing laundry’ was to stuff every single article of clothing you owned into a single washer and then stand there in boxers and Jordans as it jammed, sprayed water everywhere, and drew attention to the fact that you never added detergent.” Rachel gives him a severe look. She is glad that he called her for help rather than trying to fix it himself, otherwise she shudders to think what might’ve happened.
“Anyway, it’s 60 dollars,” Cassie says. “If any of you can’t afford new keys yourselves, I’m happy to fork over the 240 necessary for all of you to get new ones.”
“Might I remind everyone that we’re all rich and famous these days.” Rachel glares around at all four boys. “So none of you are going to be breaking the bank if you just swallow your pride and go admit to Student Services that you need new keys.”
“That is entirely unnecessary, esse-serry, because…” Ax wilts under Rachel’s stare.
“Fine, fine,” Marco mutters. “But I want the record to show that this is all Jake’s fault.”
“‘Course it is,” Jake says tolerantly. “I’m the meanest mom of them all.”
Cassie and Rachel have been members of the local RAINN chapter for three semesters when the fundraiser comes up. RAINN starts with a Polar Bear Plunge: anyone who wants to can get sponsors to pay them to jump into the San Francisco Bay in mid-January, all proceeds to go to sexual assault survivors. Rachel, as always, offers a one-up: she and Cassie will jump out of a helicopter, turn into actual polar bears in midair, and then land in the San Francisco Bay… but only if their fans donate at least one million dollars to the event.
In the end, CNN loans out the helicopter in exchange for exclusive coverage. In the end, they raise fifteen million, and change. In the end, Cassie actually lets Rachel talk her into buying a brand-new swimsuit just for the event.
They are spectacularly bad at following the rules or knuckling under to authority, and there are ways in which it shows. Tobias fails a British Literature test, because he refuses to read All the King’s Men and he regrets nothing. Marco fails out of his Computational Biology class because he doesn’t bother to listen to the windbag professor. Rachel refuses to complete her Marketing Theory final because it’s creepy and manipulative, and just barely scrapes a C. Jake fails three classes his first semester, only one his second semester, and another two his third semester; in each case he fights the law and the law wins.
Ax reads through the assignment, twice, very carefully. Then he looks back up at Rachel. “I’m confused,” he admits.
“It’s a simple question.” Rachel sets the tape recorder on the table between them. The noisy Student Union probably isn’t the best place for this interview, but it’s the place she happened to catch Jake and Ax blatantly co-writing two slightly different copies of a Teaching of ELA essay they’re supposed to write alone, so she’ll go for it. “When, where, and how did you first become aware that aliens were present on planet Earth?”
“Why are you asking Ax this?” Jake asks.
Rachel rolls her eyes. “Because I already know how the rest of you will answer, seeing as I was right there with you, and I’m supposed to pick someone whose answer I don’t know. Since I only have five real friends, Ax it is.”
“Your logic is impenetrable.” Ax folds his hands on the tabletop. “Very well.”
“Great.” Rachel leans in to the recorder, pressing the start button. “Rachel Berenson interviewing Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill for Applied Media Relations. Ax: when, where, and how did you first become aware that aliens were present on planet Earth?”
“Actually, it was Elfangor who told me, as well.” Ax’s smile is all in the eyes, and just a little bit melancholy. “I was in my first year of education — similar to your kindergarten? Gaaarden? — and we were told to pick a planet and learn a few facts about it. I asked my brother for help, and he…” The smile becomes more melancholy. “He told me of Earth.”
“Including that there were aliens here?” Rachel asks. “That was one of your facts?”
“Not that specifically. Cally. All-lee.” Ax takes his time, turning the word over in his mouth. “He told me how soft and green the grasses were, how firm and rough the trees. He told me of the places where Earth’s rivers ran straight off the edge of cliffs, cascading down hundreds of feet with a sound like a fighter ship taking off in close quarters. At the time, I assumed he must have visited the planet to know it so well. Later, I thought nothing of it, and…” Ax takes a breath. “It was not until I learned of the will he left Tobias that I once again remembered his words, and remembered the sense that he must have known this place, and loved it well.”
“Wow,” Jake says softly.
“I am not sure if that answers your question correctly.” Ax looks at Rachel.
She clears her throat. “Seems right to me. Did you at least ace the assignment, after that?”
“Oh no.” Ax chuckles. “There were no grades, but I was chastened by the teacher for allowing my imagination to run away with me. When I later confronted Elfangor about it, he told me to my face that I must have been too elaborate in the telling.”
“No,” Rachel says, indignant.
“Sounds like every other older brother in the universe,” Jake says.
“Yeah, but—” Rachel sputters. “But—”
“Oh yes.” Ax’s smile is more genuine now. “He was occasionally fond of, as you might say, pulling my leg.”
“Like I said.” Jake raises his eyebrows. “Siblings. It’s, like, the sworn duty of the oldest to troll everyone who comes after.”
“Okay, look, that time I told Jordan and Sarah that peeing in the pool would dye the water green was self-defense,” Rachel says.
“Whereas the time that Tom told me Santa Clause didn’t visit our house because of all the bad things I’d done during the year was pure evil.” Jake shrugs. “Point being—”
“That is indescribably evil.” Rachel shakes her head. “I can’t believe I never tried that one.”
“Elfangor once told me that all creatures with mouths evolved that way to cannibalize their own parents,” Ax says. “I was terrified of djabalas for months after that.”
“Anyway.” Jake pushes back from the table. “Sorry I, uh, derailed your recording.”
“Oh, right.” Rachel looks back down at her packet. “Question two. In your opinion, what role did media coverage of the invasion play in people’s responses?”
Ax glances around. “It was most annoying for the attention it garnered. Only just this semester, I have been forced to turn down four different propositions and one offer of friendship from individuals who became aware of my presence through television or newspapers.”
“I’m just sayin’…” The guy at the next table over finishes his beer and thunks the empty glass back down. His voice is too loud, slurred at the edges. “Anyone stupid enough to join an organization like the Sharing kinda maybe had it coming. Ya know what I mean?”
Cassie feels her whole body go still. Across the table, Ax lowers his maraschino cherry back into his glass still uneaten. Tobias’s shoulders hunch defensively.
“Like, what kinda dumbass is like ‘yeah, this totally uncertified organization with its mysterious fucking leader and weird obsession with full membership seems totally legit to me.’” The drunk asshole is still talking. “And now half the yeerk-heads on the planet are like ‘boo-hoo, I didn’t meeeean to become some alien’s little bitch,’ and we’re supposed to buy that?”
Jake shoves to his feet. Rachel yanks him back down and plants a hand on his shoulder, standing herself in the same motion. “I got this,” she says.
Cassie opens her mouth to suggest that maybe they could just let it go and enjoy their drink in peace, realizes she doesn’t particularly want to let it go, and closes her mouth again.
“Tobias, stop her!” Marco hisses, apparently having the same thought, as Rachel shoves her way between the drunk asshole and his redheaded friend to get their attention.
Pointedly, Tobias leans back in his chair and takes another sip of his Mai Tai.
“Austin.” Drunk Asshole smiles blearily up at her. “That’s Sean.” He points to the redhead.
Well, no one’s died yet, Cassie thinks. And if it comes to that, she figures they can leave Ax to sit on Jake while she and Tobias wrestle Rachel off of her victim.
“My name’s Rachel.” Her answering smile is all danger. “And I couldn’t help but overhear what you were saying just now about…” She tilts her head in mock thoughtfulness. “What was it…” She snaps her head back down, jaw clenched. “Yeerk-heads?”
Sean, who appears slightly more sober, immediately goes dead-white. “We were just… I mean…” He clears his throat. “We didn’t know…”
Rachel turns to look at him, and he scrambles backward so fast he falls out of his chair.
With a dismissive sniff, she turns away and leaves him on the floor. “Anyway. Austin.” She turns back to her original victim. “Do you know who I am?”
It would appear that Austin is starting to get a clue, because he swallows hard and looks up at her. “You’re…” He swallows again, around what appears to be a dry mouth. “Animorph,” he mumbles at last.
“Now here’s something you might not have known about me.” Rachel slams both hands down on the tabletop. Austin recoils. “Funnily enough, I joined the Sharing one time.”
“I…” Austin’s voice remains open for several seconds. “If I knew, I wouldn’t… I didn’t know you were there!” he says at last.
“Oh, so you’re the kind of stinking, cringing, two-faced coward who only talks about dumbasses like me when we’re not around to defend ourselves.” Rachel leans steadily closer to Austin as she talks, until he has shrunk so far down in his chair that its top rungs rest against the base of his skull. “That’s very interesting. And would you know, I think I’d rather be the kind of dumbass who almost became some alien’s little bitch than be the kind of hollow, pitiful man who has to let shit like that dribble out of his mouth in order to feel like he’s in any way smarter or more important than anyone else on the planet.”
Austin opens his mouth and closes it several times. If Cassie had to guess, he is dead-cold sober and an inch away from pissing his pants right about now.
“Now.” Rachel straightens up, still towering over the guy. “This little bitch is going to go back over there, and if I hear you say one more word about yeerk hosts…”
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, please, I didn’t mean it, I was wrong, I’m sorry—”
Rachel turns away, releasing the guy from her stare, while he’s still mid-babble.
Sean scrambles off the floor and grabs Austin by the arm, running for the door.
“Tip your waitress!” Marco calls after them, and Sean throws a twenty on the ground as he goes.
“Going to one meeting does not count as joining the Sharing,” Jake apparently cannot resist adding, once Rachel sits back down.
“Technically it was two meetings.” Rachel tosses back the rest of her cider, breathing hard. “And I used my words, didn’t I? That’s what six years of therapy’ll get you.” She glances over at Tobias, who is staring at her. “What?”
At last, Tobias shuts his mouth. “That was,” he says slowly, “the single hottest thing I have ever seen in my entire life.”
Jake groans. “And now you’ve ruined the moment.”
“You ever stop and appreciate how, like, wet water is? Like, it’s all flowy and transparent but then if you really stop to feel it it’s got this, y’know, this texture. It’s not just water, it’s all, all, wet. But we never appreciate it. We just go through our lives like ‘blah, blah, water, whatever’ and we never really feel the water, not like the way it feels on our skin. And even being a dolphin and is like ‘water, yeah, it’s just there’ and little fishies like trout and big fishies like sharks, they still don’t really think, they don’t feel the wet…”
“Marco?”
“Yeah, Jake?”
“Exactly how many of those pot brownies did you have, again?”
“One! And it was tiny.”
“… uh-huh.”
“Okay, and then I got, like, really hungry, so I ate four more of them.”
“Next time a hot guy at a party starts offering you questionable substances, maybe bring some different snacks along for when the munchies set in. Okay?”
“Oh, yeah! What’s his name! I almost forgot.”
“Riku, the criminology major with the nice cheekbones.”
“Damn, you’re good! How did you know that?”
“You’ve already told me about his cheekbones. Three times. Now, will you please go to sleep? I have a Poli Sci test in the morning.”
“Yeah, okay, fine. Maybe I should go tell Riku about the water. Maybe he never appreciated water either. You think he drinks water?”
“Pretty good bet he does, unless someone infected him with rabies in the last hour. Go the fuck to sleep.”
“I had rabies once. Think I should tell him that?”
Tobias likes Jake well enough, but he has a lot of friends of his own, and they only really know each other because of that time Jake saved his butt from school bullies. Between that embarrassing history and Marco’s barely-concealed dismissal for The New Kid, Tobias is about to bow out from walking home with them. That is, until Jake’s incredibly hot cousin smirks and says, “C’mon, don’t you want a big strong maaaaaan like Jake to protect you from the scary construction site?” He thinks for a second that she’s mocking him, but then he realizes that her smile and raised eyebrows are flirtatious.
Suddenly, walking home with them seems like an excellent idea.
Either Jake or Cassie spots the light in the sky first, but Tobias is the one who blurts out “It’s a flying saucer!” before anyone else has the chance to say anything. He’s not quite right; it’s actually two shapes. Two ships, one far more damaged than the other, careening out of the sky. Jake is yelling about finding the nearest public building to call 911, while Rachel blusters a loud threat at the possible alien invaders and Cassie wonders aloud if anyone has been hurt. One ship slams the other, engines locking together, and they explode on the ground.
The others all dive for cover, but Tobias walks toward the crash site. He’s the one who sees when one of the ships opens, and a figure — blue-furred and muscular, like nothing he’s seen before — stumbles out of the wreck.
<Mertil!> a voice shouts, inside Tobias’s mind. <MERTIL!>
Without thought, without sense, without plan, Tobias is already running forward and shoving aside chunks of wreckage, helping the strange alien search. Moving as one, they drag the second alien out into the dull moonlight of the abandoned construction site.
Cassie gasps sharply at the sight. The second alien’s tail ends in a bloody stump, whereas the first one’s is a beautiful prehensile scythe. The larger alien falls to his knees, pressing both hands to the face of his wounded companion. Tobias isn’t sure how he knows they are whispering tenderly to each other in their strange psychic way, and yet he finds himself certain that an entire silent conversation is happening before his eyes.
<Gafinilan,> Mertil says, in thought-speak they can now hear. <We must.>
<They’re human,> Gafinilan snaps. <Seerow—>
<They’re the only chance this planet has.> Mertil closes his main eyes for a moment, bracing himself. <You don’t have much time left, and I would never survive on this planet alone with no way to morph… no way to defend myself.>
Again, an eternity passes as they stare at each other and say words that are meant for no one but each other. Tobias finds himself looking away, ashamed to be witnessing such an intimate exchange.
At last, the one called Gafinilan shoves to his feet. <So be it,> he snaps. <Humans, come here. I will need one of you to fetch me the Escafil device from inside my ship. We shall do our best to give you as much information as we can, but there is little time. The yeerks will arrive, and they will likely kill me rather than letting me get away. My—> His voice falters. His posture softens as he looks down at Mertil. <My utter fool of a mate has opted to die by my side, and if you allow his sacrifice to go in vain then I swear to haunt you throughout this life and the next.>
They split up, not long after the andalites’ hasty explanations of kandrona and time limits and intergalactic wars get interrupted by the arrival of a different set of aliens. Marco asks the rest of them 500-odd whispered questions about what kind of “Romeo and Juliet and E.T.” insanity is going on here, getting steadily more pissed off with this whole evening when the others can only shrug and tell him to keep moving.
Tobias walks home, mind reeling, still not understanding what on Earth — or off it — just happened. He eases the front door of his house open and sneaks past the living room, where (his stomach clenches) his parents are arguing in harsh whispers.
“He’s the vice principal of the entire school,” Tobias’s dad says sharply. “Almost certainly voluntary, and he’s infested at least Frank Tidwell, maybe half the faculty —”
“We are not just pulling Tobias out of school, Alan.” Loren never uses his full name unless she’s pissed. “Not three months after we moved him across the country with no explanation.”
“And what kind of education is he going to get if he stays?”
Tobias must make some kind of noise, because they both cut off abruptly. “Honey, we thought you were in bed,” Loren says, too bright. She steps into the foyer. And then, frowning, “you okay, kiddo?”
Tobias wonders what she’s reacting to. He might still be pale, or maybe she can see the way his hands are shaking. Trust no one, Gafinilan said, and Mertil had agreed. “I’m fine,” Tobias says. “Just— just tired, I guess.”
Tobias goes to Jake’s the next day. They compare notes, they experiment. Tobias morphs Champ; Jake morphs Homer. They start to think that this thing is for real. Later the following night, Tobias escapes the Yeerk Pool with a couple singed feathers, demorphing in the taxxon tunnel leading away from the cavern with what feels like seconds to spare. Maybe it’s not even seconds. Maybe he’s over. And yet he thinks of home, thinks of his family, and finds another well of desperation he didn’t know he had.
Ever since they moved to California, it seems like Tobias never talks to his parents anymore. It seems like Loren’s always away at the call center downtown, like Al’s late-night phone meetings pile up. It seems like he’s, just a little bit, out of the loop. It’s fine, he tells himself; after all, he has secrets of his own.
Rolling out of bed at 6:00 on a Saturday morning after giving up on sleep, Tobias is surprised to find his dad already sitting at the kitchen table. Al is a programmer for Microsoft, meaning he sets his own hours, and he’s not an early riser by habit. “Couldn’t sleep?” Al asks.
Tobias shrugs, sitting down next to him. The nightmares were different this time, filled with deep water and haunting voices.
After a long silence, Al says, apropos of nothing, “Did I ever tell you I have a younger brother?”
“No,” Tobias says, caught by surprise. He doesn’t really have extended family. Loren’s estranged from her alcoholic brother and eternally judgmental sister, whereas Al just says that he was born outside the U.S. and his parents are still in their home country.
“I’ve never met him in person, only seen videos. But I keep having these dreams, about a kid calling for help, trapped under the ocean inside a Dome shi — inside a dome.” Al takes a meditative sip of his hazelnut dark-roast coffee. “It’s not him, it can’t be, but for some reason it makes me think of him.”
“A voice calling for help?” Tobias realizes he’s shoved back from the table. “From inside a glass dome, under the sea? And you dreamed this?”
“Yeah,” Al says. “Why, something wrong?”
“I just remembered.” Tobias is already glancing toward the sky outside, gauging the flying weather. “I promised Jake I’d help him with a school project. I’ve gotta get over there, make sure…” He trails off, already running for the door.
Tobias loves the chance to explore the inside of the andalite ship thoroughly, in the interim between meeting Ax and escaping the yeerks with him. It’s soothing and harmonious inside in a way that feels homey and familiar to Tobias; he’s sadder than he should be to see it destroyed. The whole way back after the whale saves their butts, Tobias pesters Ax with questions about andalite culture and andalite history and andalite politics. Some part of him feels like he knows Ax already, even upon first meeting him.
The mission is going rapidly off the rails — all six of them cornered by too many hork-bajir, Visser Three recently arrived at the scene and bellowing orders — when there’s a bang. And then a strange silence.
Tobias, flying cover as always, becomes the first one to see what just happened.
Visser Three lifts a hand halfway, eyes wide with confusion. There is a hole in his forehead trickling clear-blue blood. The back of his head is simply gone. One stalk eye droops, falls. His whole body follows, collapsing to the ground. His back hooves twitch once, twice. Then he stiffens and goes still.
Tobias has already swung around, following the trajectory of the shot. The sniper is posed on a low hill, rifle back up and across her shoulder, running hard. With hawk’s eyes Tobias can see it’s a woman, athletic build, a few blond hairs escaping from beneath the silk scarf that otherwise wraps her entire head. She tucks her chin and runs with hard efficiency, gun bouncing against her back and hip even as she braces the strap with one gloved hand.
Several controllers have run forward to try and help Visser Three, but at least four or five others are already charging up the hill in the direction of the fleeing shooter.
<Tobias, Ax, help that sniper!> Jake calls, breathless exhaustion coming through even in his thought-speak. <Everyone else, break their line. Let’s bail.>
Ax leaps clear over the heads of several human-controllers and dives into the woods. He’s already morphing bird as he runs, but the controllers are gaining ground, so Tobias dives after the running woman.
There’s a getaway car waiting for her as she crests the far side of the hill, engine already running, passenger door open. The driver’s face is covered too, sunglasses obscuring what little of his face isn’t blocked by the ski mask. Tobias jerks to a stop, screeching in midair and almost taking a tumble. Frantically he flaps to regain enough altitude to tilt into a dive.
He turns away. Doesn’t follow. Instead, with a scream of challenge, he dives at the front line of controllers. Two catch talons to the scalp, the other three ducking out of the way.
It’s enough; by the time they recover, the getaway car has peeled out with a screech of tires and the familiar roar of a V8. There’s a screeee of damaged metal as a branch scrapes along the driver’s side door, but the driver gets it free and zooms off down the forest road. Ax gets a glimpse of the car as well, but he dives down next to Tobias to harass the line of controllers and there’s no time to talk before they make a getaway of their own.
They convene at Cassie’s barn later that afternoon, the other five all sitting on hay bales to watch as Marco paces and waves his arms. “What was that?” he demands of the ceiling. “What the hell?”
“Disgruntled yeerk,” Cassie suggests. “Or an escaped host?”
“Yeerk hosts don’t escape,” Jake says dully.
“I vote we gang up with this shooter, we kick butts, we take out a few more vissers.” Rachel punches a fist into her palm. “Visser Three is dead, dudes. This is good news.”
“Probably,” Ax says darkly. “Bobabibly. But it all depends which visser takes over in his stead.”
The discussion continues to swirl around Tobias, and he stays silent all the while. He does his best to smile and nod and not get too lost in his own head. But he can’t stop thinking about what he saw with unmistaken hawk eyes.
There have to be thousands of Ford Mustangs in their town, he tells himself. There have to be dozens from 1989. At least a handful of 1989 Ford Mustangs in canary yellow, with convertible tops. And loads of people like The Rolling Stones. It doesn’t mean anything. It can’t possibly mean anything.
He makes his excuses as soon as possible, slipping out of the meeting and riding his bike home. His dad’s Mustang — canary yellow, 1989, Rolling Stones bumper sticker — is sitting in the driveway as always, top pulled up and doors locked for the night. It was probably never taken out. It’s just ridiculous, to think that his volunteer-admin mom could ever fire a gun at someone while his computer-nerd dad drove a getaway car. (Unless, of course, it wasn’t his mom’s will pulling her finger across that trigger…) The silk scarf and sunglasses tossed across the back seat don’t mean anything, other than the fact that you need to protect your face from bugs when driving with the top down.
Tobias knows that he’s lying to himself, even before he sees the long scratch along the driver’s side door.
Just for a second he rests a hand on the hood, wondering if he dares tell anyone — his mom, his dad, his team, his shorm — what he saw. But there are some truths he’d rather not have. After all, Jake said it: if they are controllers, they won’t be escaping any time soon.
Rachel comes home for dinner with Tobias. (She’s no-nonsense. Surely, surely, she would spot it if…) She and Loren draw Tobias into a game of catch in the backyard as Al roasts yak meat with a cabbage slaw and dry sherry marinade. Rachel debates politics with Loren, tells Al outright that Microsoft has a duty to hire more female programmers, and twice compliments them on their “lovely home.” After driving her home (and pretending not to see their kiss goodnight), Al ruffles Tobias’s hair and says, “I like this one. You’re lucky to have her.”
Tobias invites Jake by, on an afternoon when neither one of them has anything else going on and he senses Jake could use the company. (Jake has a controller living in his home. He’d know what one would look like if…) Jake cleans his plate twice, enthusiastically comments on Al’s cooking, and only goes slightly pale upon finding out that the whole thing is a lamb stew with a seaweed base and Moroccan spice mixture. Loren gets into a rousing debate with Jake about designated hitters and interleague play in the MLB that lasts throughout dinner and into the evening. Al and Tobias, both more nerd than jock, settle for watching in awe at the enthusiastic gesticulation and war of pitching statistics. As they walk their bikes outside afterward, gears ticking softly in the quiet of the night, Jake turns to Tobias. “Thanks,” he mumbles, and then, “I wish my family still did stuff like that.”
Cassie spends the entire afternoon and evening at Tobias’s place on the excuse of the Algebra test they both have the following morning. (She’s the most discerning. They wouldn’t be able to hide from her if…) She’s quiet most of the time either of Tobias’s parents is in the room, picking at her kielbasa and bell pepper stew, studiously polite but no more. “Where exactly did your dad say he’s from, again?” she asks Tobias the next day. He tells her briefly what little he knows: his dad’s from a piece of Balkan territory that has changed hands so many times Alan himself doesn’t know what country it is today, and neither of his parents like talking about the past very much. Cassie nods, and visibly considers more than one follow-up question, but then the bell rings and they rush off to their test.
Marco stops by to try out Tobias’s game system. (He’s naturally suspicious, unwilling to let anyone get away with anything if…) Tobias’s parents both disapprove of the Nintendo — both disapprove of what they call “playing at war” — but they caved and got it for him anyway a few years ago. Marco… doesn’t exactly make a good impression. He hits almost immediately on the fact that the call center where Loren works is located directly next door to the car wash they all know is a yeerk pool entrance, goes from there to the fact that Microsoft is loosely affiliated with the Sharing, and spends the rest of dinner brightly asking too-innocent questions about what they do in their spare time and how they feel about maple-and-ginger oatmeal. Al turns against him almost faster than Marco turns against Loren, matching him with suspicious questions about what exactly Peter does for NASA and how Marco came to know Tobias. That night Al stops short of telling Tobias not to invite him back, but only just: he hedges for a while, and finally settles for, “You should invite that Jake Berenson back, next time you have a friend over.”
Tobias sneaks Ax into his home so that Ax can help with his chemistry homework. Ax comes over to Tobias’s place because yeerks might be logging in the woods, and Tobias wants to keep him safe. Tobias encourages Ax to spend the night when he’s sick with yamphut. Ax and Tobias raid Tobias’s fridge constantly, since Al is on a ridiculous quest to eat every food at least once before he dies, and the shelves are always well stocked with obscure vegetables and proteins.
They’re leaning against Tobias’s kitchen counter, sticky-mouthed from where they’re sucking fresh lemon juice through peppermint sticks, the sixth or seventh time Ax has been to the house. “Yes,” Ax is saying, “At the Academy most arisths simply eat at the same time, in the Dome ship’s main area, with no jockeying… Keying? For position, as you say. We have no lunch tables and yet—”
Cli-chak.
Alan is standing in the doorway of the kitchen. Rage distorts his features, clenches his fists around the stock of the rifle. The bullet is chambered, the safety off. The muzzle points straight at Ax’s head.
“Dad!” Tobias slips off the counter. “What the—?”
“Step the hell away from my son, andalite,” Al says through clenched teeth. “And don’t even think about trying to demorph.”
“Okay.” Tobias’s heart is pounding, mind racing through possible morphs. He steps between Ax and his dad, hands up. “Okay, there’s clearly been some kind of misunderstanding…”
“We knew you were using humans.” Alan speaks to Ax, voice still tight with anger. “Seerow’s Kindness be damned, apparently. But we never thought you would sink low enough to recruit children. He’s fourteen years old, you hruthin. Barely three and a half of our years. And you’re using him as cannon fodder. If the Electorate could see how far the war-princes have fallen…”
Ax makes a gesture, holding his hand flat with its back pointing toward Alan, and then moving his arm to his side. It takes Tobias a second to figure out, but he realizes what that same motion would’ve meant if Ax had done with a tail blade: he’s declaring no contest, and that he surrenders without a fight.
“I’d have killed you already if I didn’t care so much about this planet.” Alan doesn’t directly acknowledge Ax’s concession. “Might kill you yet, if I find out you brought Tobias into combat. It’s a crude projectile weapon, this, but it’ll get the job done just fine. In almost twenty years I’ve been on this planet, I’ve had plenty of time to master it.”
Something shifts. Ax blinks several times, drawing himself straight. <Elfangor?> he says, suddenly sounding very young.
Tobias’s dad stiffens, gun barrel lowering to point at the floor. <Aximili?>
Which is how all six Animorphs end up sitting around Tobias’s living room, arguing with his parents. Every time he thinks his life can’t get any weirder…
“No offense,” Rachel says, looking from one of them to the other, “but how do we know you’re not controllers?”
“It’d make a hell of a lot more sense than the story they just told us,” Marco mutters. “Well, except for the part where Tobias is half alien. That practically explains his entire personality.”
“I’m not a controller,” Elfangor says. “Aximili?”
<He’s right,> Ax says. <Alloran’s capture was the single greatest intelligence loss in the history of the andalite species—> Elfangor winces— <So if the yeerks had captured a second andalite, one who knows this planet far better than Alloran ever did and had up-to-date expertise on the workings of the andalite fleet…> Ax tilts his stalk eyes in an andalite shrug.
“If they had, we’d know by now,” Jake finishes. “Mostly in the form of us all being dead already.”
Elfangor smiles. “Precisely.”
The argument continues from there. Loren demands, sharp and angry, that Tobias be taken out of the war. Jake explains with a sad little smile that there are only six morphers on the face of the planet, and they’re it. Without Tobias, the resistance would be only five children without a clue. Loren tells him that that’s not good enough. That she and Elfangor have been fighting the yeerks for over a year now, and she knows this enemy enough to know that there’s no way in hell she’s letting her son continue this fight.
<I’m sorry I tried to shoot you earlier,> Elfangor says in private thought-speak.
Ax glances over at him with a single stalk-eye, and then pretends to focus back on the main conversation. <You were concerned about Tobias,> he answers. <I have killed many controllers for that same concern, so I have no place to judge.>
Talking like this, one conversation whispered in private while another is going on in the same room, is considered terribly rude and childish in andalite culture. Ax knows for a fact that their parents taught Elfangor better than this. But then, Elfangor has always had a reputation for being bad at playing by the rules. Too curious, they used to mutter, too capricious. Not proper warrior material.
<Everyone at home thinks you’re dead,> Ax says reluctantly.
Elfangor is still watching Marco’s extensive rant about how much it sucks being an Animorph in apparent fascination, but his gaze is slightly unfocused. <I know. It’s…> He looks down at his folded hands, and then back up. <It’s better that way, is it not?>
Ax’s hearts stutter unpleasantly. <Because you’re a nothlit.> There are those on the andalite homeworld who consider nothlits no better than vecols, and vecols no better than… Than humans.
<It was at Arbron’s request that Alloran reported him killed in combat, after he was trapped in morph.> Elfangor tilts his head slightly. <I know Mother and Father are, shall we say, more liberal than most. But even so, I think it’d strain their reputation to the limit if people knew I had become a second Aldrea-Iskillion-Falan. Taking Arbron’s way out seemed to be for the best.>
<Arbron-Fraomta-Semiag is still alive?> Ax says, caught off guard. <What happened on that mission?> He knows the official story — that War-Prince Alloran and two arisths were killed while assisting the in the rescue of some aliens taken by the Skrit-Na — but Visser Three’s presence was always an obvious contradiction to that version of events, even before Elfangor decided to come back from the dead.
<If you had actually been paying attention, Aximili,> Elfangor says smugly, <You’d know that Loren just explained how it was we ended up on Earth.>
Ax stiffens in indignation. <You are the one who started it!>
Elfangor breaks into a grin. <Yes I am.>
“I’m sorry,” Marco drawls, “was my horrifying war epic amusing to you?”
“Of course not.” Elfangor gestures to him. “By all means. You were saying?”
Ax suspects that he’s going to like having an older brother.
After Jake and the others have been shooed out the door, nothing gained and nothing resolved, Tobias finds himself alone in the living room with his parents. They still don’t like the idea of him fighting the yeerks, but he also suspects that his dad at least will have to be realistic in the end. For now, however, they’re sitting around the living room, looking in three different directions.
“Soooo…” Tobias breaks the silence at last. “Were you guys planning on telling me? Like, ever?”
Loren and Elfangor glance at each other. The silence expands.
“We hadn’t decided, honestly,” Loren says at last. “If… if it came up, we never planned on lying to you.”
“Yeah, well, in that case your planning sucks. You told me that you two met at a party in college, not…” Tobias gives an incredulous little laugh. “Not on a friggin’ spaceship just south of Jupiter!”
“It was Saturn,” Loren murmurs at almost the same time Elfangor says, “The term ‘south’ is meaningless outside of a localized gravity field.”
Tobias does not dignify either of those comments with a response.
“We wanted to do right by you, and we thought that meant not telling you wild stories.” Elfangor runs a hand through his hair. “We could have insisted all day long that I’m an alien and we’re refugees from an intergalactic war and we only got here because we misused a time machine, but what proof did we have?” He shrugs. “I can no longer morph, we have no alien technology at hand, and mainstream human culture firmly insists that this planet is the sole supporter of life in the universe.”
“We just wanted you to have a normal life,” Loren says softly. “That’s all.”
“Oh, so you were lying to me for my own good. That’s just —” Tobias cuts himself off. “Can I… Can I go to my room? I need some time to process this.”
“Don’t leave the house,” Elfangor says. “Please?”
“Yeah.” Tobias turns away.
“Sweetheart?” Loren’s voice is tentative. “We love you. You know that, right?”
Tobias stops, but he doesn’t turn back around. “Yeah, Mom. Love you guys too.”
The first time, Cassie calls in the middle of the night to report that Visser One has started a mass infestation effort out of a Sharing charity auction. Tobias sneaks out, fights, doesn’t die. He comes home to find both his parents sitting up waiting for him, exhausted and enraged and terribly grave. They ground him. He doesn’t argue.
The second time, he and his friends go rushing out to stop an emergency kandrona shipment meant to disperse the controllers’ presence across the entire west coast. Tobias comes back to find that Loren is sitting on the couch with their phone in hand.
“Next time you disappear,” she says, “I will call the police and report you missing.”
“Great plan, Mom.” Tobias smiles bitterly. “The cops’re ten, maybe fifteen percent controllers? Probably more than that by this point. But go right ahead. Tip them off.”
She opens her mouth to respond, doesn’t find words, and shuts it. Tobias pushes past her to go collapse on his bed upstairs. It’s been a long day.
The third time they need Tobias for a mission, Jake shows up in person. Tobias finds him standing on their front stoop, patiently allowing Elfangor to bar him from entering.
“With all due respect, sir,” Jake is saying, “the way I see it is this. Either we can continue to be a problem for you, and you can continue to be a problem for us… Or we can remember who the real enemy is here.” Jake folds his hands in front of him. “We’ve been fighting the same war at the same time on two different fronts this whole time, and we’ve mostly been getting in each other’s way as a result. I’d rather we work together from now on, because the alternative greatly increases the chances of us all winding up dead or worse.”
“That’s admirable, but this not Tobias’s problem,” Elfangor says sharply. “It’s not his fight.”
Jake takes a deep breath. “Frankly, sir, it’s everyone’s fight at this point. All we have to do to ensure the yeerks win is stay home and let it happen.”
Elfangor doesn’t answer.
“You can continue to try to stop him.” Jake shrugs. “But you understand how morphing works. You know that’ll only inconvenience us, and even then not for long.”
“You…” Elfangor takes a step forward. He glances once at Tobias, but then focuses all his attention to staring Jake in the eye. “You keep him safe. You hear me? You do everything in your power to bring him back alive.”
“I’ll do everything I can.” Jake lifts his chin, meeting Elfangor stare-for-stare. “Even if that means dying in his place. Even if it means letting the yeerks win some, to keep my team alive.”
Elfangor nods. “Very well, Prince Jake. I am holding you to that promise.”
Ax tenses, ready to run, ready to morph, when he registers the figure moving through the driving rain toward him. There’s no reason for a human to be this deep in the woods at this time of night. But then he sees the umbrella, the familiar shape holding it up and dodging between the branches, and lowers his tail. “Come on,” Elfangor calls over the downpour, once he’s close enough. “I have roasted kohlrabi in the slow cooker at home. Better than getting as much worm and mud as grass trying to graze out in this mess.”
The z-space communication system looks questionable — it’s cobbled together out of Peter’s half-remembered equations, Ax’s somewhat outdated training, and parts Elfangor picked up at Radio Shack — but the yeerk and andalite signals coming through the crackly sound system speak to its effectiveness.
<Who is this?> the andalite technical officer demands.
Jake runs a nervous hand through his hair, moistens his lips. “This is Earth,” he says, and then, “this is the resistance.”
<You are illegally transmitting to a protected channel.> The andalite sounds unimpressed. <Identify yourself immediately.>
Jake glances up at Elfangor, who nods once in encouragement. Tobias makes a small go-on motion. “This is War-Prince Jacob-Elijah-Berenson, commander of all resistance forces here on Earth.”
<You are human.> The technical officer’s voice becomes sharp with anger. <But you claim the title of war-prince?>
“Here goes nothing,” Marco mutters.
“Just like we practiced,” Elfangor reminds them in an undertone.
“War-Prince Gafinilan-Estrif-Valad died here on Earth. Before he did, he evoked the ritual of… He called it the ritual of iscalara rusgith, under the emergency protocol of fovharsa,” Jake says, barely hesitating over the unfamiliar words. “He had me swear the oaths of a war-prince: to serve my people, to protect my warriors, to lay down my life for the sake of my honor. And then he placed his tail-blade upon my forehead and…” Now he does let some hesitation come into his voice. Both Elfangor and Ax struggled to explain utzum to Jake, leading him to believe that it’s not the kind of experience easily put into words. “I experienced many of Prince Gafinilan’s memories. As if I had lived them myself. He left me his hirac dilest. A lot of other knowledge, too. Some of which I didn’t even understand myself until later.”
There is silence on the other end. The small group crouched under the flimsy shelter of the pine trees exchanges worried glances. They can all but hear the wheels turning in the technical officer’s mind: Jake has just demonstrated knowledge no human should have. He correctly described the procedure that a dying andalite war-prince would use to pass on his title and his command, bypassing all the usual protocols in case of extreme emergency.
<Very well, Prince Jake,> the technical officer says at last, and Marco pumps a silent fist toward the sky. <Although I would not have thought Prince Gafinilan capable of such a rash decision…> The words sound like they cause him pain. <What is it you require, my prince?>
A slow smile spreads over Jake’s face. Ax and Tobias exchange a nearly solemn high-five.
“First and foremost,” Jake says, “some backup from the andalite fleet would be greatly appreciated.”
Embarrassingly enough, it takes them almost two weeks to notice. Well, that’s not quite true. They notice the suspicious lack of yeerk activity in less than a week, but mostly in the form of Marco declaring it to be “quiet… too quiet” and Jake wondering what the heck has the yeerk inside Tom acting so morose all of a sudden. It takes almost two weeks of Tobias lurking over known Yeerk Pool entrances wondering where the heck the controllers are, two weeks of Ax mentioning that the internet chatter is more full of yeerk talk than usual, two weeks of Erek reporting no Sharing meetings anywhere in the country, and two weeks of Cassie telling them to appreciate the break for a change… and then Rachel snaps.
Specifically, she gets fed up with the tension, marches up to Tom in the middle of a school hallway, and (poking him in the chest every so often for emphasis) demands to know whether the entire Yeerk Empire has suddenly gone into hibernation or— or what.
Tom’s response is to grab her by the arm and drag her into Chapman’s office.
Rachel fights him with literal teeth and literal nails, of course — right up until the moment Tom turns to Chapman and goes “See? She remembers that there were brain-stealing aliens too. That proves I’m not crazy.”
Rachel stares at Tom in shock. Chapman heaves a put-upon sigh and says, “I never said you were crazy. I said that we should all probably forget it ever happened and move on, because if we told anyone then we’d appear to be crazy.”
“But…” Tom frowns, petulant. “But if we, like, got a reporter to talk about the yeerks, and enough of us agreed about what happened…”
“Then no doubt the school district would send gas inspectors out to determine why so many people in this town are hallucinating,” Chapman drawls. “The yeerks are all dead, their bodies entirely decomposed in the Earth atmosphere by now. The nonhuman hosts were last seen wandering off in search of that mystical colony of free hork-bajir somewhere in the mountains. I don’t have a way to contact the andalites. All of which means that the only proof you have is a rapidly-evaporating puddle of kandrona under the school.” He sighs. “Any reporter with an ounce of sense will blame the fumes from that for the gas leak, and we’re back to square one.”
“The yeerks… are dead?” Rachel asks.
“How did you not already know this, if you were a controller?” Tom says.
She should probably wait and confirm this with Jake and the others. Probably. But then, she’s never been very good at waiting. “Because I’m one of the morphers who’s been fighting them.”
After all that, Rachel doesn’t even get to tell the others the news. Because she bursts into their meeting only to find that Toby is already standing there looking grave, and Cassie’s mouth is hanging open. By the time Toby is done telling her story — and answering all 500 of Marco’s suspicious questions — most of the details come out.
A few days ago, close to a thousand hork-bajir and taxxons had simply wandered into the free hork-bajir valley. Toby had assumed an attack, until one of the taxxons, who gave the unusual-for-a-taxxon name of Arbron, had explained that none of them were controllers. Because, to the best of anyone’s knowledge, all the yeerks simply dropped dead a few days back.
Toby, not being born yesterday, had forced the entire cavalcade to wait three days under constant guard before letting them into the valley. They passed. All signs point to the conclusion that they’re telling the truth: the yeerks inside them all have died without warning.
Marco, being Marco, maintains that this is all some elaborate yeerk conspiracy. Until Rachel shamefacedly mentions that she blurted the whole thing out to Tom. Until Tom, muttering about their questionable taste in tourism destinations, takes them through a Yeerk Pool entrance under the car wash and shows them the cavern: empty, echoing, deserted. Filled with detritus and congealing kandrona and abandoned junk.
Cassie becomes the one to voice the question that’s been on all their minds, later that afternoon as they sit around her barn. “So…” she says slowly. “Now what?”
“We’ve gotta tell someone, right?” Rachel looks around at them. “Just pick any adult, show them that we can morph, and then…”
<And then come the conspiracy theorists,> Tobias points out. <Then come the social workers. Then come the paparazzi. Is that really what we want?>
<Prince Jake? What do you recommend?>
Jake runs his hands through his hair. “Honestly? I want to go home. I want to finish my stupid English essay, since I guess I’ve got time for it now. I want to go to the UCSB game on Saturday. I want to…” He takes a breath. “To catch up with my brother. Maybe even get some sleep for once, while I’m at it.”
They vote on it, for lack of a better solution. Rachel and Marco are all for telling the world. Cassie thinks they should wait on a decision until they talk to Toby and some of the ex-hosts about what everyone else wants. Tobias and Jake seem exhausted even by the thought of the media circus that would ensue. Ax, as always, abstains.
“Okay,” Jake says. “I guess that’s two votes in favor of sharing our story, three against. We’ll go with Cassie’s suggestion: hold off for now, revisit the idea after talking to the others.”
Things get back to normal. Kind of. Sure.
Rachel punches a girl she doesn’t even know in the face after said girl rudely ignores Marco. And then, when Marco makes a breathy comment about Rachel defending his honor, she punches him too. Detention is a relief; it’s high time someone punished her.
Cassie breaks down crying in the middle of dinner for, really, no reason at all, and finds herself crying harder when her parents hover and worry and offer explanations: it’s about a boy, it’s about the goose last week they couldn’t save, it’s about hormones.
Tobias wavers. He practices, a little bit at a time. Pretends to be human long enough to walk downtown. Grows fingers and dull eyes to see what happens when he rings Rachel’s doorbell like any other boy on the planet. Each time he goes back. Each time giving up human shape feels more like disappointment, more like relief.
Jake wanders the house in restless circles for six or more hours a night, trying to wear himself out so that the nightmares won’t wake him yet again. Sometimes he hears the crisp pock-pock-pock of a basketball on concrete outside, and feels less alone.
Marco’s dad comments on how many evenings they’ve spent together with a reheated pizza and the latest Madden. Marco brushes it off with a comment about earning enough brownie points to get a car.
Ax, with a little help from some commandeered yeerk tech, calls home again. He tries to tell his parents everything that happened, and finds he doesn’t have the words. They assure him they’re coming for him the moment they get permission from the Electorate, and he tries to believe that that time is coming soon.
Ten days later, when it seems that every single trace of yeerk activity really has disappeared for good, a kid with messy blond hair and soft grey eyes walks into their high school to enroll. There are some inconsistencies in his paperwork, of course — he lists his uncle as his legal guardian in spite of said uncle being less than a year older than him, he gives his home address as a P.O. box downtown, he has no transcripts from previous schools — but the vice principal proves willing to overlook all of those issues in light of everything that this kid has done to keep the planet safe. Chapman even signs off on the form claiming that Tobias requires access to a private bathroom once every two hours all day long for unspecified medical needs. It feels, in some ways, like the first true commitment to the idea that this peace might just last.
Which is why Marco corners Tom the next day in school. “So,” Marco says, “I had a question. And you probably don’t know the answer, but you’re like, my second-to-last resort before Chapman, so let’s go with you’re kinda my last hope. Anyway, I was just wondering, in case you happened to know—”
“Supervising the invasion of the Anati system,” Tom says over him, “as of the day all the yeerks on Earth kicked it. No one’s heard from Visser One or her forces since.”
“Anati. That’s far away, isn’t it.” Marco doesn’t wait for confirmation. “And if I wanted to, say, send a message to Anati…?”
Tom considers for a minute. “Find Alloran. He’ll know how.”
So Marco goes to Ax. Just to Ax. He’s getting closer and closer to the others all finding out about this, but… it’s his mom. His problem. He doesn’t want to trouble the others, who all deserve their rest.
Ax, however, seems to be bored out of his mind. He seizes on Marco’s “mission” with enthusiasm, hacking every open-circuit camera he can get his hands on in about two hours flat.
Between Tobias being at school for several hours a day and Jake having essentially ordered them all to take a break, Ax has a lot of time on his hands. It takes him less than three days to catch sight of a very familiar human morph — tall, balding, with a commanding smile — and figure out where Alloran has been hiding. The paper trail takes a little more tracing from there, but eventually he gets a hit on a four-star hotel whose penthouse is currently being paid for by a Yeerk Empire shell corporation… and whose penthouse guest has already been reprimanded twice for stealing too many tiny Danishes from the breakfast bar.
Alloran listens to Marco, and even seems sympathetic, but insists that, as long as they don’t know what killed the yeerks on Earth, he’s not going to contact the yeerks elsewhere to let them know so that they can start invading Earth all over again. Which is when Marco reluctantly gets the others involved, on the assumption that one of them will know how so many yeerks ended up kicking the bucket all at once.
Chapman, when asked, immediately blames the oatmeal crisis that was underway at the time when the yeerks died. However, he has no proof to back up this theory, so he’s not much use.
Tom blames the whole thing on inbreeding. He does not listen to Ax when Ax points out there’s no way a lack of genetic diversity could kill a whole species that quickly.
Jake comes up with an elaborate explanation about them having all died of the common cold. Rachel pokes fun at him for plagiarizing War of the Worlds, until Cassie points out that technically a lack of genetic diversity could in theory leave them open to all being affected by the same disease.
Marco and Tobias, it might be said, get a little too far into tinfoil-hat territory around the time they connect an experimental weapons test out of Zone 91 with a fractional shift in the pH of the surrounding atmosphere, which might have something to do with the acid rain out of Nevada… which probably has nothing to do with the yeerks dying.
Alloran makes a single, muttered comment about quantum viruses. He refuses to explain himself, or even to tell anyone what a quantum virus is.
Marco writes the whole thing off as a colossal waste of time. He goes home that night frustrated, defeated, and wondering if Ax is quite bored enough to steal an unused Bug fighter so that they can go on a kamikaze run for Anati.
He wakes up tied to a chair in the middle of an abandoned warehouse.
“Listen to me, parasite,” a very familiar voice says. “We can do this the easy way, where you worm yourself out of him right now and no one has to get hurt… or we can do it the very, very hard way.”
Which is right around the time that Marco remembers that he definitely pretended to be a controller the last time he saw his mom. “Oh crap,” he says out loud, and then, “I’m guessing you’re not a controller anymore.”
“Edriss dropped dead out of the blue, don’t know why. I stole a Bug fighter and came straight here.”
“Huh,” Marco mumbles, “must be genetic.”
Eva raises the dracon beam in her hands until it’s pointed at his head. “Surrender or don’t. Either way, I’ve got no plans for the next three days.”
Marco blinks several times. Judging by the fuzziness of his vision and the cloying taste in the back of his throat, his mom friggin’ drugged him. There’s no telling how long he’s been gone. “I should probably warn you. Jake and a couple of my other very dangerous friends are gonna be looking for me, and I can pretty much guarantee that when they find us—”
“Your threats don’t mean anything to me.” Eva smiles bitterly. “After all, I’m already dead. So I suggest you be quiet, or I might be forced to gag you.”
Marco does as he’s told. Staying quiet and staying put until his mom figures out he’s not a controller either seems preferable to fighting her.
By his extremely crappy system of internal timekeeping, it is either two hours or two days later that there’s a scraping sound on the roof of the warehouse… almost like a bird of prey landing on the corrugated iron. Eva stands up, tilting her head to listen. In the process, she lets the dracon beam drop to her side — which is when the grizzly bear hits her like a freight train. Her body goes skidding across the floor, a small mountain of brown fur and claws following.
“Stop!” Marco bellows. “Rachel, STOP!”
<I’m not gonna kill her, jeez.> Rachel pins Eva to the ground, leaning just enough weight on the arm that holds the dracon beam that the weapon clatters out of her hand.
“She’s not a controller!” Marco says. “Visser One is dead.”
<She has you tied to a chair—>
“Yeah, exactly!” Marco really wishes he could hold up his hands in a placating gesture right now. “Which we both know I could get out of in about two seconds. So if she knew I could morph, why bother trying to capture me alone? If she didn’t know I could morph, why capture me at all?”
Rachel pauses for a second, looking between him and Eva. <I don’t get it. Why did she kidnap you, then?>
“Because she thinks I’m a controller.” Marco raises his eyebrows. “Which means she isn’t.”
<Marco’s logic does appear to be sound.> Ax steps delicately forward. <In that case, we apologize for inconveniencing you, Mrs. Marco’s Mom.>
Rachel sits back on her rump with a whuff of indignation.
Eva climbs slowly to her feet. She looks over at where Marco is awkwardly shifting out of the way so that Ax can cut him loose. “Mijo,” she whispers, “who the hell told you that you were allowed to fight in a war?”
Marco stands up, stuffing his hands in his pockets. “Does this mean I’m grounded?”
“Oh yes,” Eva says, pulling him into the tightest hug he’s had in his life. “For the rest of existence.”
It finally happens less with a bang than with a whimper. The mall downtown is expanding to a new wing, and the construction equipment encounters a sinkhole larger than any California has yet seen. After a trackhoe breaks through to an underground cavern the size of a football stadium, the county immediately halts all activity and sends a team of archaeologists down to excavate what everyone is clearly expecting to be ancient ruins… and instead proves to be stranger than anyone imagined.
It is with no small sense of surreality that Cassie finds herself sitting on her couch with her parents to her left and Rachel to her right, watching on TV as scientists dissect a dracon beam while a Discovery Channel personality narrates the debate about lost civilizations and secret underground cities.
“I think it’s high time we gave them some answers,” Rachel says. “Don’t you?” Her tone is casual in a way that Cassie recognizes as an act, covering for some of the same nerves she’s feeling herself.
Cassie thinks of Toby, struggling to keep her colony alive and hidden. Thinks of Tom, too-casual just like Rachel when saying “I’m not crazy, right?” five or six times. Thinks of Ax swinging by twice a day, just to see if there’s anything she needs. Thinks of Aftran, who — she hopes — would’ve wanted this.
And then she picks up the remote and turns off the TV. “Mom. Dad.” She smiles in a way she hopes is reassuring. “There’s something we have to tell you.”
after all the choice jokes in Morph Club about how much Visser 3 loves tigers (he really, really loves tigers), I had to draw a comic about him finally getting some merch of his favorite Earth animal.
did anyone ever actually read animorphs or did we all just glance at the covers and assume it needed no explanation on the way to the goosebumps section in our elementary school library
animorphs is a scifi series about the grey morality of war and child soldiers experiencing trauma, depression, PTSD, being frequently and brutally dismembered, disemboweled, literally tortured to the brink of death, forced to murder their own family members with their bare hands, and on page 22 of the very first book they watch the alien prince who gave them their ~wacky animal morphing powers~ be eaten alive in vivid and gory detail
imagine we make contact with an alien species that’s like, vastly technologically superior, they could fucking kill us in a single shot if they really wanted to
and this species has never eaten salad before. and we show them salad and they eat it and they’re like holy living fuck this is tasty. and suddenly they’re offering us huge houses with all kind of advanced technological shit and incredible medical care and all the amenities and everything, with the only condition that we keep making salad for them.
and like, salad isn’t even hard to make. grab some plants, dump em in a bowl. it doesn’t have to be fancy salad, they’ll fall all over themselves for the most mediocre salad in the world. we can make so much salad that we’re practically drowning in it, even if we eat some of the salad ourselves. and in exchange we’re protected from danger, we have great living conditions, it’s basically paradise compared to life on earth
imagine
now realize that this is what bees have done to us
ruby-dear archive 