Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

My name is Tom.

Or at least, it was Tom. I mean . . . no, it still is. But introducing myself now is a little more complicated than "just Tom" . . . But I used to be just Tom.

I remember what it was like being just ordinary Tom. I was a totally normal kid. The good things in my life were things that could have happened to anyone. My problems were problems that anyone could have. It was all such a cliché of normal that I can almost laugh about it now. It feels like a lifetime ago, but it really wasn't that far back at all.

I had just turned sixteen. After my birthday I immediately got my driver's license. Back then, operating an ordinary car was enough to excite me. I started borrowing my mom's car to drive myself to school. Not every day. My mom does most of her work from home, but I can't leave her without a car all day every day.

But a few days a week, instead of relying on the bus or my parents, I enjoyed the newfound freedom of being able to take myself where I wanted - and mostly, I used it to go to high school. The irony was not lost on me.

On those days, I drove with my little brother Jake riding shotgun and I dropped him off at his middle school. I didn't need to. His school was close enough that he could walk home. Which was good because I had basketball practice after school, so Jake would always go home without me.

Jake was never one of those annoying little brothers who acted like a total brat. He was actually really mature for his age. Or at least, he tried to act mature. I think that's why we used to be so close in spite of the three-year age difference. Sometimes I felt like we could be twins, if you ignored how he was significantly smaller than me.

But we hadn't been as close since I started high school. We didn't hang out or even talk as much. I didn't think there was a real reason we drifted apart - I hoped there wasn't - it was probably just a natural part of getting older.

And I had less free time after starting high school. The high school basketball team didn't take much more time than the middle school team. But the school work was a lot harder, and I spent more time studying.

I studied more. And yet . . .

I stared at the test paper in my hand. A red "D+" was written at the top. I had the irrational feeling that the "plus" was put there to mock me.

To be clear, I was not a "D" student. This was not a typical grade for me . . . But it wasn't my first "D" either.

I don't remember being a bad student in middle school. But then, I do remember the work being easier. My grades were all over the board, but slowly, gradually, they were dipping lower and lower. Math, history, english. Even science, which used to be the only subject I actually liked. I remembered getting a few "A's" in middle school science. These days, a "B-" was considered lucky.

I showed my "D+" to my basketball coach. I was worried about my spot on the team. The school's official rule was that athletes couldn't let their grades drop. But all my coach had to say was:

"Don't worry about it. That policy is just a guideline. No one's gonna care about one or two D's."

"But . . ."

"If it still bothers you, just work that frustration out on the court."

I actually would have felt better if he got mad at me. This way, I felt like I was getting away with doing something wrong.

I didn't want to be one of those dumb jock stereotypes - the kind of guy who could get away with anything because the school needed him to score points. It's arrogant to say, but I was sort of the star player. Even more so on my middle school team, but their standards were lower. Back then I was the only one on the team who took winning seriously.

Now that I was in high school, I was still pretty good at basketball. But was I actually talented at the sport? Or was it just because I was taller than my teammates? I am pretty tall. And not just tall "for my age", like I was in middle school. I was like a full size adult and bigger than half my teachers. I'm not bragging, just saying. It's not really something I can brag about or take credit for.

I didn't talk to my parents much about my grades. They didn't ask very often, and I never volunteered details. They never got mad about my report cards. Whenever they did hear about a test or essay that was less-than-excellent, their response was usually something like, "All we ask is that you do your best." For some reason, their chill attitude didn't make me feel better.

My dad's a doctor. And my mom writes scripts for television. They're not super geniuses or anything, but they both seem really smart. Sometimes I think the reason they don't ask about my grades is because they've already accepted that I won't grow up to be as smart as them.

I'm not dyslexic (though I did have to look that word up in the dictionary). And I'm pretty sure I don't have ADHD. There wasn't anything I could blame it on. I was probably just . . . not very smart.

My coach said I didn't have to worry about being kicked off the team over my grades. But I didn't want to be accused of not taking my grades seriously. So after class I asked one of my teachers if there was something I could do for extra credit.

"Well, let me think . . . Have you heard of The Sharing?"

I hadn't.

"Another teacher mentioned it to me. I don't know all the details - I'm not a member - but it's some kind of community outreach program. I know it's for people of all ages, not just teens like you. They could probably set you up with some kind of tutor. And even if it doesn't improve your grades, they do a lot of volunteer work, so it would look great on a college application."

It wasn't much info about what this club actually was or did, but it sounded good.

"He keeps saying they need more members. I wasn't interested, but you might want to check it out."

That simple conversation about improving my grades was what sent me to my first meeting of The Sharing.

Chapter Text

The Sharing wasn't what I expected. For one thing, it was a lot smaller.

They met inside of a church. I heard somewhere this same church was used for Alcoholics Anonymous meetings on other days. I guess because it had no rental fee. It seemed The Sharing didn't have the funds to buy its own building.

There were only about a dozen people there. And most of them weren't even real members. I learned that The Sharing only had four official members running things. The rest were students or young adults who just showed up trying to decide whether or not to join - like me.

To my surprise, I recognized all four of the full members. The co-founder, Mr. Chapman, was the vice principal of my old junior high.

The other co-founder was a Hispanic woman who introduced herself to the crowd as Eva. It took a few seconds of staring, but I realized I recognized her too. My little brother Jake had a best friend named Marco who he hung out with all the time. I used to babysit the two of them when they were younger. That's when I first met Marco's mother, Eva.

The final two full members were Chapman's wife, and a teacher at my high school called Mr. Tidwell. Small world, I guess.

Eva gave a short speech about why she started The Sharing: She wanted people to set aside their backgrounds and differences, and come together to help each other when they needed it, and to help their larger community outside. Individuals would become part of something greater. It was a simple, straightforward premise - if a bit cheesy.

Then Eva explained that The Sharing's next big project was to go to a national park and thoroughly clean up all of the litter in the nature trail. She passed around a clipboard and asked for volunteers to sign up.

Spending an entire Saturday picking up garbage. Unsurprisingly, not a lot of people signed.

Once the speech was over, the dozen of us split up and mingled and pretty much just did our own thing. People drank the free coffee and chatted with each other like it was a casual party.

I understood that The Sharing, as an organization, was still new and getting on its feet. But it tried to pass itself off as a non-for-profit with lofty goals about bettering the community, while it just felt like a club run out of some guy's basement. Frankly, I thought it was kind of pathetic.

Still, a teacher and a vice principal were members. At least I could probably get what I came for.

Eva came around to me with the clipboard. I was taller than her - even more than I remembered, proving how long it'd been since we met. But once she saw my face she smiled brightly. "Hello, Tom. Good to see you again."

I didn't expect her to remember me, especially not that quickly. I guess my surprise showed.

"It is Tom, right?" she asked, suddenly unsure. "You're Jake's brother."

"Y-Yeah, that's me. Nice to see you again, M-" I stuttered. I was about to call her "Mrs Last Name" but I realized in horror that I couldn't actually remember what her last name was. "-Marco's mom," I finished pathetically.

But she just smiled again. "Call me Eva. So can we count on you for the clean-up? We need all the help we can get." She held out the almost-blank clipboard and pencil to me.

I froze. "Uh . . . Sorry, I - I'm busy with my family that day."

I mentally kicked myself for copping out. It's the environment. A good guy's supposed to care about this stuff, right?

Eva had to have seen through my B.S. answer, but she kept her expression polite. I guess she was used to it.

I changed the subject. "Actually, the reason I came is 'cause a teacher recommended it. They said I might be able to get a tutor here?"

"A tutor, huh." She had to think about it. "Well, Mr. Tidwell is a teacher at the local high school. Although, he teaches English. What subject do you need help with?"

I didn't want to admit it out loud. "Um . . . Kind of . . . Well, all of them, really."

Eva smiled. Just a little one, like she was trying not to.

"I'm not stupid," I blurted out defensively.

She stopped smiling. "I didn't think you were."

My face felt hot. I was starting to regret coming here.

"Having bad grades doesn't make you stupid, Tom. Take me, for instance. I've always considered myself a pretty smart and capable woman. I can organize events, look for funding, rent buildings, file the paperwork, and fix that stupid coffee maker twice a week. But solving quadratic-equation-whatevers leaves me cold. Marco's great at math, but he didn't get it from me, that's for sure."

I smiled, genuinely, in spite of how awkward I felt a moment ago.

"Have your parents been pressuring you about your grades?" Eva asked.

I gave a quick, humorless laugh. "I wish. It's more like they don't even expect good grades from me. Although they always praise me about how well I did in the last basketball game."

Eva didn't reply. She just listened, holding the clipboard to her chest. Suddenly, I found myself just opening up to her and spilling my guts.

"I feel like everyone thinks of me as the dumb jock who's gonna peak in high school. Like the only thing I'm good for is scoring points. I wanna prove them wrong, but my grades keep sinking lower and lower. And my parents aren't pressuring me, exactly, but . . . My dad's a doctor, you know? How am I supposed to compete with that?"

"It's not a competition, Tom," she replied. "And do you even want to be a doctor?"

The question surprised me. I shrugged. "I dunno. I never really thought about what I'm gonna do in the future." I didn't like admitting that, since it sort of added credibility to the peaking-in-high-school thing.

"Oh, that can't be true," she said mischievously. "There must have been something you dreamt about when you were little."

I didn't want to answer, so I turned the question around. "You first. What was your childhood dream?"

Eva kept on her grin as she said, "I was an old-fashioned girl. I just wanted to fall in love, get married, and have a family . . . Didn't quite work out the way I planned, though." The grin didn't reach her eyes anymore.

I didn't remember until right then. Jake had explained to me that Marco's parents divorced almost two years ago. Marco was really upset about it and started spending a lot more time at our house. He still visited his mom a lot, but he lived with his dad full-time.

Eva's dream was to have a family. But her marriage failed and she lived away from her son. I realized too late that asking adults about their dreams could be a sore subject.

But she chuckled at me and said, "Oh, don't look at me like that. I'm happy where I am. Even if dreams don't work out, you can always find new dreams. Now stop dodging the question and tell me what your dream was. There must have been something."

There was something, actually. A long time ago. But I never told anyone, not even my parents.

However, I felt like I owed Eva an honest answer now. "Don't laugh."

She shook her head, silently promising.

I shyly told her, ". . . I wanted to be an astronaut."

Eva didn't laugh, but she had an expression of amusement mixed with . . . something I couldn't identify. "Really?"

"But that doesn't count," I said quickly. "That's what all kids want at some point."

"Not necessarily."

"Well, sure they do. Every kid wants to go into space."

"Why did you want it?"

I blinked.

Why did I want it?

Why was she asking?

How could I put it into words?

I looked at the roof, imagining the sky beyond it. "There's just so much out there, you know? The size of it all. Stars and planets and comets and asteroids and nebulas and . . ." This was embarrassing and immature to say, but I was on a roll. "And aliens too." Yeah, I admit it, deep down I believed in aliens. "I mean, there are millions of stars and millions of planets, there has to be life somewhere out there. Who wouldn't want to go see it all?"

I looked back down at Eva. She was smiling at me, but not like before. She was smiling like she knew something.

In retrospect . . . that could have been a clue. But I wouldn't understand until later.

"You shouldn't give up on that dream, Tom."

I shook my head. "I didn't give up, I just lost interest. Being a real astronaut would mean sitting in a little box for weeks or months at a time. And the farthest you could go is maybe Mars, and there's nothing there but a big desert. Reality's just not like what you imagine as a little kid."

"You know what they say: Truth is stranger than fiction."

I wasn't sure what that was supposed to mean. But I decided right then, I liked Eva.

"You know, with people like you here, I can't understand how this club doesn't have more members," I said.

Eva stopped smiling, looking disappointed.

Oops. "Sorry. Did I stick my foot in my mouth again?"

She shook her head. "No, it's fine. Becoming a full member of The Sharing is a bit of a commitment. We always knew it wouldn't be for everyone."

She took a breath and changed the subject. "So. Tutor. Shall we go talk to Tidwell, Mister Future-Astronaut?"

I winced. "No, no, please. Please don't tell anyone I said that. It's embarrassing."

"As you wish." She smiled again, this time with a smile that made me worried how much I could trust her.

She led me to the other side of the room, where she spotted Mr. Tidwell.

As we walked I asked, "Is this really okay, even if I'm not a full member?"

"Of course it is. The Sharing is here to help the community. And whether you're a full member or not, we're glad to have you with us."

Eva lifted her clipboard, and with a smirk in her voice added, "Even if you don't help with the clean-up."

I grimaced. Touché, Eva.

.

I talked to both Mr. Tidwell and Mr. Chapman. Tidwell had a reputation for being the strictest teacher at our school. Class clowns couldn't get away with nothing while he was watching. But outside of class, he was actually really nice. He gave me some good advice about note-taking and getting into college and stuff.

As for Chapman: In junior high I remembered Vice Principal Chapman as always seeming exasperated. Frustrated at not having everything under his control. And now . . . well, that hadn't changed, really. But Chapman wasn't mean either. He tried to help, and he didn't belittle me or treat me like I wasn't trying hard enough.

I was a little taken aback by how easy it all was. And I knew this wouldn't improve my exam scores overnight, but it felt so good to talk to people who took my worries seriously.

The Sharing kept talking about using teamwork to make things better. I realized it wasn't just a sales pitch to try and recruit people. It was something they actually believed in.

Although - and this could have just been my imagination - after talking to them and Eva I couldn't shake the feeling that they were hiding something.

.

That evening, after I got home, Jake and I were sitting on the sofa watching a basketball game.

I was only half-paying attention to the TV. My mind kept wandering back to my conversation with Eva.

"Hey, Jake," I spoke up. "What do you want to be when you grow up?"

He looked at me. Clearly the question caught him off guard. "Why?" he asked.

"Just curious," I answered.

Jake thought about it for only a second, then he gave a little shrug and looked back to the TV. "I dunno. Probably a doctor or a navy pilot."

I raised my eyebrows. "Pretty specific choices for a kid who 'doesn't know'."

He shrugged again, like he felt awkward talking about it. "I mean, I don't know for sure what I'm gonna do. It'll still be a while before I need to worry about that stuff."

He obviously thought about it before though. More than I had, at least.

I watched Jake as he watched the game on TV. He looked at the basketball players with a sort of far-away expression, like he was daydreaming.

Then he shook it off, smirked, and pointed at the screen. "Whatever I am, I promise not to miss any of your games once it's you up there."

I made sure to smile, but inside I felt awful.

I asked him, but Jake didn't bother asking me. He just took it for granted that I was going to be a pro athlete.

Being 'the basketball guy' was the only thing people knew me as.

We didn't talk again for the rest of the game. The team we were rooting for lost by six points.

Chapter Text

I ended up going to the park to help with the clean-up after all. The Sharing guilted me into it.

They didn't guilt me on purpose. I told Eva I wasn't coming, and she didn't ask again. But she and the others were so kind and helpful, I felt bad for not doing anything in return. I mean, even if I wasn't really a member, wasn't the point of The Sharing for everyone to do their part? Wasn't the point of me being more than the basketball champ to be more responsible and do good work?

On Saturday, I parked my mom's car and stepped onto the grass. They called this place a national park, but that was using the term very loosely. It was really just a patch of empty grass between where the city ended and the woods began. I saw on the map that on the other side of the woods was some sort of farm. And in a third direction the woods stretched out and out towards the mountains.

Here in the park, the place was empty. No sign of The Sharing or any volunteers. Did I get the time wrong?

I walked along the edge of the woods, looking for anyone. Before long, I saw Mr. Chapman coming out from the trees in the distance. I jogged over to him.

"Why are you here?" he asked.

"What happened to the clean-up?" I asked.

Mr. Chapman looked exasperated - like, more than usual. "We canceled it. Not enough people signed up - which turned out to be a good thing, because a new problem came up and we didn't want to get them involved. Why are you here?"

"I felt bad about not signing up. I changed my mind and came to help."

"Well, that was very kind of you, but like I said, it's been canceled. You can go home now." He tried to be polite, but he spoke briskly, like he wished the conversation was over already.

He grabbed my upper arm, not tightly, but enough to lead me away from the woods. I was more confused than anything as I walked along. "W-What's going on? What's the new problem?"

"Don't worry about it. We have it under control."

"But, like, I'm here anyway. Shouldn't I stay and help?"

We stopped a short distance from my mom's car. Mr. Chapman let go and turned to face me. He tried to be reassuring, tried to be patient - emphasis on tried.

"Tom, really, it's fine. We have it all under control. You just go home. Relax. Do whatever you do. Have a normal day, don't get involved, all right?"

Mr. Chapman turned around and quickly walked back to the woods. I was left standing there, trying to understand what just happened.

I walked towards the car. I could have just driven home. There was literally no reason not to do as Mr. Chapman asked. Going home and minding my own business would have been the smart thing to do.

Instead, I turned right around and went into the woods. Maybe I really was stupid.

I stepped cautiously around the trees. The area Mr. Chapman disappeared into wasn't anywhere near the nature trail. There was no path; just pure nature. I looked around silently, trying to find Mr. Chapman - or anyone else - and trying not to get lost.

I wondered if it was just Mr. Chapman here or if all The Sharing's full members were involved. How far into the woods had they gone? I didn't see any sign of a problem. What the heck was going on?

Finally, a sound. A loud crack of a tree branch. A sign of movement in the distance.

I moved closer. I tried to be stealthy, but I felt too out-of-place to be really good at it. My sneakers crunched over pine needles. I hid behind a tree and carefully peeked out around it.

In the distance, in a darker section of the woods, I caught just a glimpse of it. I thought it was a fallen tree at first, but it moved. The smaller branches were legs, moving the giant animal away from me.

Whatever it was, it was no ordinary animal. And I was alone in the woods with it. I suddenly felt scared.

A hand reached out from behind me and covered my mouth. I almost made a very un-masculine scream, but I held it back. It was Mr. Chapman. "I told you to go home," he whispered, more annoyed than ever.

Once he released my mouth I whispered back, "Yeah, well, I didn't. Sue me."

He glared at me. Took a deep breath through his nose. And then he very calmly whispered, "I suppose you're not going to leave without an explanation. All right, here it is: You're not safe here. Some very dangerous creatures appeared in these woods, and if we're not careful, they're going to kill us both. Now do exactly what I tell you, don't make a sound, and follow me."

I didn't argue.

He led me by the hand through the woods. But we only took a few steps before there was a rustling in the brush, followed by a hissing sound. I didn't know much about wildlife, but I could tell it wasn't a snake.

"Run!" We took off. We twisted around the trees for a few seconds, but then we stopped abruptly. A giant centipede was blocking the path ahead.

Now, when I say "giant", I don't mean "ew, a giant bug, somebody squish it". I mean GIANT! It had to be twice as long as I was, and it was thicker than any of the trees around us. It was a copper-colored tube with a dozen spider-like legs on either side. The top-third of its body was bent upright, and instead of legs that section had lobster-like claws. Big red blobs surrounded the tube near the top. I assumed they were eyes. Most terrifying of all, the very end of the tube was a huge open mouth packed with pointed teeth.

It crawled towards us very, very slowly. I think it was drooling.

"Tom, don't move. Don't do anything," Chapman ordered while keeping his eyes on the creature. Very, very slowly he reached into his coat pocket.

"I know," I said quietly and nervously. "It's like a bear, right?"

That puzzled Chapman so much he actually took his eyes off the creature to look at me. "You think it's a bear?"

"Well, no, obviously. I meant we treat it like a bear. We just play dead and it'll leave us alone, right?" I asked hopefully.

Chapman looked back to the centipede monster. "No, bad idea. If it thinks we're dead, it won't leave us alone - It'll eat us faster."

A second before he said that, I actually thought I couldn't get more nervous.

The three of us stood still, sizing each other up. Chapman's hand was inside his coat.

"RUN!" Chapman called. He pulled out a laser weapon and fired. A beam of red light hit the creature. I saw no wound, but it staggered back like it was struck with a hammer.

"SSSSWEER!" the creature cried.

Chapman grabbed my hand and pulled me away. He led me zig-zagging through the trees. I didn't have any trouble keeping up. I suspected I could run a lot faster than Chapman if I let go, but he knew the way. We were obviously following some kind of path I didn't know about.

Another centipede monster came at us. Chapman fired the weapon again with his free hand. While it was stunned we ran in another direction. I could hear the awful half-hissing, half-whistling sound they made all around us.

"How many of these things are there?" I yelled.

"I don't know! I didn't stop to ask them," Chapman shouted back.

We came to an open clearing. A large meadow within the woods. In the center was a short hill of dirt, rocks, and broken tree branches, only a few feet tall but wider than the front and back yards of my home put together.

Chapman ran up to the edge of the dirt mound. There was what looked like a small sheet of glass that somebody dropped onto the dirt. Chapman pressed his hand onto it, and a second later it lit up. A big square of earth flipped upwards - a door lifting on hydraulic hinges, revealing brightly lit stairs going down.

Before I could even process this, Chapman pushed me towards the opening. "Inside! Now!" The whistling of the creatures were in the woods behind us.

I went underground with Chapman right behind me. The dirt-covered mechanical door closed and sealed us in.

It was only a short flight of steps down. Instead of an underground cavern, I walked into a clean, metal room. I stopped with my mouth hanging open.

Eva was there. Shocked, she pointed at me while looking at Chapman. "What's he doing here?"

"He didn't know the clean-up was canceled," Chapman wearily explained. "I did tell you that doing volunteer work this close to the ship was a bad idea."

"So you brought him inside?!"

Chapman gestured up towards the door we came through. "Well, I couldn't leave him outside to get eaten by Taxxons, now could I?!"

Eva nodded. "Fair enough."

I examined the room as they argued. There were doors leading to other rooms, but the main room was already large and open. The walls were lined with computer screens, work consoles, chairs, and cabinet doors. Everything was very high-tech looking, and labeled with letters and symbols I didn't recognize. At the end of the room, for some strange reason, was what looked exactly like a metal hot tub. I could see an opaque liquid sloshing around inside.

I found my voice. "What is all this?!"

Eva looked at me. "Tom, I'm sorry, but don't ask any questions because we can't answer them."

She sat down at a computer again and looked closely at the screen. Chapman looked at the screen over her shoulder. "Well?" he asked.

"I found three heat signatures, moving away from us," Eva said. "And I also found a signal which is probably their ship. That's where they're heading; they're regrouping."

I spoke up again. "Are all the Sharing members involved in this, or is it just you two?"

Frustrated, Eva replied, "I said no questions. As soon as it's safe, you're leaving."

"Why can't you tell me?" I asked. "Is this classified? Are you like secret government agents or something?"

"What? No!" Chapman said. "We're nothing like that."

"You said you couldn't answer questions," I said triumphantly.

Eva winced and ran her hands through her hair. "Tom, you weren't supposed to see any of this."

"Too late for that! There were aliens out there! I can't un-see that!"

"What makes you think they were aliens?" Chapman asked, suddenly calm.

I blinked. "I dunno. What else could they be?"

"In my experience, people usually guess mutants or mythological monsters or something. They don't usually go for aliens right away."

"Your 'experience'?"

"Answer the question. What made you think aliens?" Chapman looked at me like he was genuinely interested in the answer.

For some reason, I felt like a student who hadn't studied being grilled by his teacher. I thought quickly. "Well . . . If there were things like that on Earth before, someone would have noticed. So if they're not from Earth, then they've gotta be aliens. Besides, this is definitely an alien spaceship!"

"How could you possibly know that?" he challenged. "Have you ever seen a spaceship before? Do you have any idea what a real spaceship would look like?"

"I know what Earth ships look like, and it's not this!" I shot back angrily. "I'm not stupid, Chapman! Now stop trying to hide it and just admit it!"

We glared at each other. He managed to be very intimidating despite being slightly shorter than me, but I didn't back down. Then, surprisingly, Chapman smiled. I don't think I ever saw him smile before.

He turned to Eva. "I like this one. He reminds me of a younger me."

"Much younger, Chapman," Eva quipped as she worked the keyboard. "Much, much younger."

"I think we should tell him. God knows we need more people," Chapman said.

"I think we shouldn't be involving children," Eva said.

"And I think I'm not invisible!" I said. "Come on, Eva. I get that you don't want me to get involved, but I'm already involved. I've seen enough."

She sighed deeply. She turned away from the computer and faced me. "It's a long story."

"Then I better get comfortable." I turned one of the other chairs around and sat down . . . It actually wasn't comfortable at all, but I wouldn't let that stop me.

Eva sighed again. Then she looked at Chapman while pointing at her computer. "You can handle this, right?"

She stood up and Chapman took her place, doing whatever work was needed. Eva took a new chair directly in front of me, and started her story.

.

"Remember what you said the other day? About the sheer size of space and how there had to be life out there? It's all true. Aliens have secretly been coming to Earth for some time now. Not just the ones you saw outside - all types. Some are hostile. Some are peaceful explorers. And some crash here by pure accident. Either way, we try to help out. The Sharing is . . ." She hesitated. "I don't want to say 'a front', but -"

"But all the full members deal with aliens, and you don't want the part-timers to know," I figured. "And you're gonna ask me to keep it secret too."

Eva smiled at me. "You catch on fast. And you were worried you weren't smart."

"Don't change the subject."

She nodded. "Right. You must have questions. Where do you want to start?"

I stared at her. Then I looked over to Chapman, and back to Eva. I asked, "Are you guys aliens?"

Overhearing us, Chapman paused at the keyboard for a second. Eva hesitated, then simply said, "Yes." She tilted her head. "Well, yes and no."

"How can it be yes and no?"

Eva stood up. "Come with me."

I gratefully got out of the chair that obviously wasn't designed for humans. I followed Eva to what looked almost exactly like a Jacuzzi. The tub was about eight feet across and stainless steel. I looked down into the liquid that wasn't water. It was sludgy. Brown. Viscous. Honestly, kind of gross. The liquid wasn't completely opaque, but it was murky and a little hard to see through. There was movement under the surface.

"Look closely, but don't touch," Eva said.

I bent down low and strained my eyes. Through the murky liquid, I barely saw a creature swimming around. It wasn't a fish. It was more like a slug. Four or five inches long. Gray, maybe. Then I saw there was more than one. A lot more.

"They're called the Yeerks," Eva answered my unspoken question.

"They look like slugs," I said stupidly, not knowing what else to say.

"My apologies to slugs, but they're just dumb animals. Not sentient. Yeerks are just as intelligent and emotional as humans, if not more." She went on to explain, "The Yeerks are born deafblind. No eyes, no ears. They can't move on land. But they have a special ability no other creature in the universe has. They can become part of other lifeforms. A Yeerk enters the ear canal of another creature, and connects their brain with that creature's brain. The Yeerk sees what the host sees. And the host hears what the Yeerk thinks."

"They're parasites," I realized uneasily as I stood up straight. "These things crawl inside people and hear their thoughts?"

Chapman spoke up without turning away from his console. "It's worth mentioning they don't harm their host. They just do what they need to survive."

Yes and no. I understood what Eva meant. "There's a Yeerk in your brain right now," I said. "Yours and Chapman's."

She nodded with a concerned expression, like she was afraid of scaring me. "Yes." She placed a hand on her chest. "I am Eva, and a Yeerk. Two people talking to you." She gestured to the man at the computer. "That is Chapman and a Yeerk. Two people listening to us."

"And Mrs. Chapman and Mr. Tidwell," I realized. "The whole Sharing is made up of people with Yeerks in their heads, isn't it?"

"Yes."

This was a lot to take in.

"You're saying there's literally a space alien controlling your brain right now?" I stared at Eva.

She shook her head firmly. "No. Not controlling. The Yeerks have been . . . devolving . . . for generations. Now they simply don't have the strength to control a host that resists them. They can only use a body when the host allows them. Two minds, sharing thoughts, working together as one person. And it's a big risk for the Yeerk too, you know. They need to return to the pool every three days to feed. If a host rebels at the wrong time and keeps them away, the Yeerk would starve to death. But they take that risk anyway because it's the only way to have eyes and ears and move around . . . The Yeerks aren't invaders, Tom. They're refugees. All they want is to live in peace and see the world."

Eva went to a cabinet and took out a clear pitcher filled with water. "Don't freak out, but you need to see this." She lowered and tilted her head so her left ear was above the water. A moment later, the hole of her ear glistened. I could see the long, gray slug squirming out of her head like toothpaste coming out of a tube.

I wasn't grossed out. In retrospect, I probably should have been grossed out beyond belief. But at the time I was too busy being fascinated.

The Yeerk dropped out of Eva's ear and into the pitcher with a soft "plop!" It was long and thin like a pencil, but quickly contracted into its true slug-like shape. Eva gently put the pitcher down on a desk. We both had a perfect view of the Yeerk floating in the water.

"Why did you do that?" I asked.

"Because I needed you to know that I'm just Eva now, speaking to you without a Yeerk in her head," she spoke emphatically. "Everything you heard is true. The Yeerks don't control people against their will. You have to believe me."

"I believed you even before the Yeerk came out," I replied.

She was surprised. She clearly expected me to need a lot more convincing than that. "Really? How come?"

I shook my head. "I dunno. I just did."

Eva blinked. Then she smiled.

I pointed to the pitcher. "What's its name, anyway? Do Yeerks have names?"

"Her name's Edriss," Eva answered.

"That's nice."

"She hates it, actually."

"Why?"

"It's a family name," Eva explained as she gently pulled Edriss out of the pitcher and held the Yeerk to her ear again. "This Edriss is named after Edriss Five-Six-Two, a famous historical Yeerk who was, to put it mildly, not a nice person."

I looked over to Chapman. "And you?"

Chapman - or rather, Chapman and the Yeerk - finished their work at the computer and turned to face us. "Iniss. My wife has a Yeerk named Niss, and Tidwell is with Illim. So, any more questions?"

"Uh, yeah!" I gestured around the spaceship. "How did you guys get involved in all this? I mean, how did it all start?"

"It started with me, actually," Chapman said. "When I was your age, I was abducted by aliens - not Yeerks. A different race called the Skrit Na. By the time I got back to Earth, I was sort of an expert on aliens. Ever since, whenever I heard about UFO sightings, I'd investigate."

Eva resumed. "This was a refugee ship piloted by two Hork-Bajir hosts. It crashed here not too long ago, and Chapman found it right away. The Hork-Bajir passed away, and Chapman took it upon himself to protect the Yeerks in the pool. We're old friends, so he got me involved too."

"And eventually, my wife and my friend Tidwell asked to join."

"What does that make The Sharing, then?" I asked. "A way to recruit people to become Yeerk-carriers?"

Eva looked disappointed. "That was an idea. But I admit, I didn't fully think it through. This isn't something we can blurt out to the whole world, after all. If the wrong person found out about us, they might come and destroy the pool. For the most part, The Sharing really is just a way to support the community."

"It's also a good cover for all the time we spend together," Chapman said. "Earth is in a sort-of intergalactic crossroads, and like Eva and Edriss said, different species are secretly passing by fairly often. With this ship's technology and our Yeerk allies, we try to make sure they don't cause any trouble." He rolled his eyes. "I really wish I had this ship when the Skrit Na returned to Nevada six years ago."

I stared at Chapman, still struggling to wrap my head around the whole situation. "So . . . What you're telling me is . . . The whole time I was in junior high, my vice principal was secretly an alien investigator? With real aliens?" I'm not ashamed to say I reacted like an excited child. "Oh, my God! I had no idea you were so COOL! Man, I wish I knew this back then!"

Chapman smiled, struggling to control his ego and look modest. "Thank you, Tom. I suppose this all does seem very cool to a student who wanted to be an astronaut."

I stopped smiling. I looked over at Eva and silently glared at her.

She shrugged. "What?" she asked innocently. "It slipped out."

Chapter Text

My name is Tom. I was standing in a spaceship that was partially buried underground. We came here to hide from dangerous aliens in the woods outside. Eva and Chapman were explaining to me the reality of alien visitations on Earth, and the friendly aliens they were carrying around in their own bodies.

In retrospect, I should have been freaking out more. I was probably supposed to insist that they were tricking me, or I was hallucinating, or it was all a dream and I would wake up any second. Another person would have been in the "this can't be real, this can't be real" phase for a while. But I accepted the whole thing kinda easily. I mean, I'd always believed in aliens, deep down. But having proof thrown in my face was kind of a big deal. And yet I dealt with the whole thing so fast.

Maybe I was just weird.

Then again, Eva and Chapman were the ones weird enough to bond with Yeerks. I sympathized with the Yeerks' desire for eyes and hands and stuff, but I had trouble imagining why a human would decide to invite a stranger to live inside their brain.

"So what were those aliens out there?" I asked.

"They're called Taxxons," Chapman answered. "Very dangerous species. They're genetically programmed to be constantly starving. Their entire culture is based around looking for more food. And their favorite food is meat - the fresher the better."

"Would they really eat humans?" I asked.

"They would eat each other," Chapman replied. "That's how hungry they are."

"As far as we can tell, only one ship fell through the atmosphere," Eva spoke up, walking over to join Chapman by the computer screen. "And not even a very big ship. So it's probably not an invasion on behalf of their race. My guess: These are a small group of pirates acting alone."

"Okay, so Yeerks are the good aliens, and these Taxxons are the evil aliens," I figured.

Eva turned to me and shook her head. "Oh, no, no! Don't say that, Tom. Taxxons aren't evil. They're just hungry. It's easy to mix those two up when you're lower down on the food chain."

Chapman spoke up. "Think of it this way: Taxxons are to humans, what humans are to pigs. Well, Taxxons are like that to everything, really."

"That's not the same thing," I responded. "Pigs aren't intelligent like humans."

"Maybe not, but they still feel fear and squeal before they get slaughtered. Doesn't stop you from eating bacon, does it?" Chapman asked pointedly.

"Actually, I don't eat bacon. I'm Jewish."

"What about beef?"

"I think I'm vegetarian."

"You 'think'?"

"I do now."

Chapman smirked, but said, "We're getting distracted." He looked at Eva. "You did contact the others before we arrived, I assume?"

Eva nodded. "Yes. I sent out a message to Tidwell and your wife. Don't worry."

"They're coming to help, right?" I said.

"No, I told them to stay away," Eva replied.

"What?!"

"They would have to sneak through a forest full of Taxxons to reach us," Chapman explained to me. "It's too risky, and they can't help us anyway, because our only weapons that can do any real damage are stored right here in the ship."

"So what's the plan, then? Are you gonna use the weapons here to blow up the Taxxon ship?"

Eva gave me a harsh look. "What anti-Yeerk propaganda have you been listening to? We don't just 'blow things up' first and ask questions later. We'll fight if we have to, but if there's any chance to solve this peacefully, we'll take it."

At the computer, Chapman said, "I can't get an exact fix on their ship's location, but I do have the frequency for their communications. We can send a live transmission right now."

"Perfect. Let's get started." Eva looked at me. "Tom, you stay back, all right? Don't say anything. Just let us do the talking. If all goes well, we'll have you home in no time."

I stepped back to the side of the room. Chapman stood right next to me. He leaned over and whispered, "I turned on an English translator, so you'll know what the Taxxon's saying."

Eva stood in front of the main computer screen, looking confident and professional. A moment later, the screen's image showed a close up of one of the giant centipedes I saw before: A Taxxon.

"May I assume you're the pilot of the Taxxon ship?" Eva began.

The Taxxon made its half-hissing, half-whistling noise. Subtitles appeared on the bottom of the screen. The subtitles read:

"YOUR SIGNAL IS CONSISTENT WITH YEERK TECHNOLOGY. ARE YOU THE VISSER LEADER OF THE YEERK SHIP?"

"Yeerks don't have Vissers anymore," Eva replied. "Our group has a very flat power structure. Think of me as a spokesperson."

The Taxxon moved away from the camera. That seemed to confuse Eva. Was she being brushed off? Apparently not, because the Taxxon reappeared after a few moments. Maybe something in its own ship distracted it briefly.

"WHY ARE YOU CONTACTING US, SPOKESPERSON?" the screen read as the Taxxon pilot spoke with its alien sounds.

"I'm here to negotiate. I understand what you and your crew want: A nice place to settle down with lots of food stock nearby. And you figured Earth, with its primitive technology, would be an easy mark. Well, I'm sorry to tell you, humans are simply too much trouble to eat. They may not travel the stars, but they have lots of guns. And a crew of a half-dozen Taxxons in a worn-out ship just wouldn't last long against a hundred-thousand panicking humans . . . However, I'm offering a peaceful alternative."

The Taxxon paused. "EXPLAIN."

"Alien ships have stopped here before. Our group traded for some very useful technology. Namely, an Ongachic Food Generator. Using feedback energy naturally released by standard z-space engines, it can transform water into a nutritional paste. Not the tastiest food for Taxxons, I admit, but it comes in great bulk with only a low drain on resources. And you can have it. Free of charge. If you agree to leave this planet in peace, you can take the food generator with you."

The Taxxon pilot was silent for a moment. Then it made a very shrill whistling noise. But for some reason, no words appeared on the screen. The translator wasn't working this time.

I leaned over to Chapman and whispered, "What's it saying?"

Chapman stared at the screen with a grim expression. "It's laughing."

"WE KNOW OF YOUR ONGACHIC FOOD GENERATOR. WE KNEW THE ONGACHIC SHIP MET WITH YOU BEFORE. THAT IS WHY WE CAME."

Eva had the confident expression of a master negotiator so far. But now there was a twinge of worry. "What do you mean?"

"WE DID NOT COME HERE FOR THE HUMANS, YEERK. WE CAME FOR YOU."

"You knew we were on this planet?" Eva asked.

"CORRECT. AND NOW WE KNOW YOUR EXACT LOCATION."

There was a sudden bang against the door by the stairs, along with the hissing sound of Taxxons outside. I jumped back, my heart suddenly pounding.

Chapman said a word I didn't know. I instinctively guessed it was an alien swear word. "They found the door already."

"That door can hold them, right?!" I asked in desperate hope.

"Not forever," Chapman answered darkly.

"YOU WERE FOOLS TO NEGOTIATE. WE TRACED YOUR COMMUNICATION SIGNAL BACK TO YOUR SHIP. I SENT MY ENTIRE CREW TO ATTACK YOU THE MOMENT YOU CONTACTED US."

Eva looked back to the screen. "You don't understand. There's no need to fight. We're giving you the generator!"

"INSUFFICIENT. WE WILL BREAK INTO YOUR SHIP AND TAKE ALL YOUR TECHNOLOGY BY FORCE. WE WILL EAT YOU. AND THEN WE WILL USE YOUR TECHNOLOGY TO CAPTURE AND EAT THE HUMAN CATTLE. WE WILL EAT OUR FILL."

Chapman stepped forward angrily. "A ship your size, there can't be more than four or five Taxxons out there! You think we can't beat them?!"

"CORRECT."

"Yeerks try to be pacifists, but we'll fight if we have to," Chapman continued. "We have weapons! Not just the stunner I used before. Dracon beam rifles! Even with just us, we can burst your crew open like water balloons!"

"STILL YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND. WE PLANNED THIS ATTACK. WE PREPARED. WE BROUGHT A THOUGHT-WAVE PULSE."

"A what?" Eva asked.

"A WEAPON SPECIFICALLY DESIGNED AGAINST SYMBIONTS. BASED ON COMPUTERS THAT INTERFACE WITH THOUGHT-SPEAK COMMANDS. IT IS A TELEPATHIC BOMB THAT SENDS FEEDBACK TO ALL MINDS IN THE AREA. HARMLESS TO INDIVIDUAL MINDS. BUT TO TWO-MINDED SYMBIONTS JOINED TOGETHER, IT WILL OVERWHELM AND RENDER THEM UNCONSCIOUS."

"That's ridiculous!" Eva blurted out. "There's no such thing as a 'telepathic bomb'!"

"IT IS EXPERIMENTAL TECHNOLOGY."

"Which is another way of saying it probably doesn't work," Chapman quipped. "What do Taxxons know about thought-speak anyway?"

"IT WAS NOT DESIGNED BY US. IT WAS DESIGNED BY THE ANDALITES."

Up till now, Eva and Chapman acted worried yet stayed strong. But their faces immediately paled. They were terrified.

"How did you get Andalite technology?!" Eva yelled.

Eva told me not to say anything, but I was sick of how they just kept talking instead of actually doing something about the Taxxons waiting right outside the door. "Who cares!" I cried. "They're bluffing! They're making it all up!"

Chapman and Eva looked at me. "What?" Chapman said.

"If they had an anti-Yeerk weapon, they would've used it right at the start, wouldn't they?"

For a second, Eva looked upset at me for butting in when she told me not to, but then she turned back to the screen. "That's a good point. If this weapon is as good as you say, why haven't you used it yet? Our walls can't block thought-speak."

"CORRECT, BUT YOUR WALLS ARE THICK. BREAKING INTO YOUR SHIP WOULD TAKE TIME. IT WOULD BE EASIER FOR MY CREW IF YOU SURRENDERED."

"Why should we surrender?" Chapman demanded.

"WE GIVE YOU A CHOICE. OPEN YOUR DOOR, AND WE WILL KILL YOU BEFORE WE EAT YOU. RESIST, AND WE WILL USE THE THOUGHT-WAVE PULSE, WE WILL BREAK INTO YOUR SHIP, AND YOU WILL SUFFER IN AGONY AS WE EAT YOU ALIVE."

All three of us stared at the Taxxon on the screen in dread.

I looked to the others and quietly said, "Are you sure about that whole not-evil thing?"

Eva looked up at me. She seemed more sad than scared. I'm not a mind reader, but somehow I understood. She was scared for herself, but more than that, she was scared for me. I was a child. An innocent bystander. It was her job to keep people like me out of danger. She really didn't want to get me involved. But here I was.

"I'm sorry," she quietly told me.

She moved forward and slammed a button on the keyboard. The screen went black.

Eva marched across the room while giving orders. "Tom, barricade yourself in the back room. Chapman, we're gonna have to fight our way out of this. Get the - AAGGHHH!"

She immediately clutched her head with both hands. I didn't see anymore because my own eyes winced shut. There was no sound - no obvious cause - but I suddenly had a piercing headache. I could barely think straight. But it only lasted for a few seconds, and then my head was fine. The headache was gone like it was never there.

I opened my eyes just in time to see Eva and Chapman collapse to the floor. They didn't recover like I had. The telepathic bomb had worked. The Taxxons weren't bluffing after all.

"Eva! Mr. Chapman!" I kneeled down to the floor and shook Eva's shoulder. Then I reached over and shook Chapman. They were breathing. Alive. But unconscious.

BANG! BANG! Something was clanging against the metal door by the stairs. I could hear the hissing from outside again. The Taxxons were trying to break in.

I shook Eva harder in a panic. "Eva! Wake up!" I moved over and slapped Chapman's cheek. "Wake up! Please!"

BANG-BANG-BANG!

They wouldn't wake up. I was on my own. Me, trapped underground, against four or five Taxxons at the door.

I looked around the room, trying to figure out what I could do. I went to the computer. The screen was blank. The keyboard wasn't written with English letters or numbers - it was all alien language. In a panic, I pressed buttons at random. Nothing happened.

The banging against the door never stopped. BANG! BANG! The door shook on its hydraulic hinges.

I tried opening the cupboards on the walls, but they were sealed shut. Locked behind some kind of keypads. They were all labeled in alien writing I didn't know how to read. I didn't know how to open them. I didn't know where the weapons were. I didn't know anything about this ship. I didn't know how to save Eva or Chapman.

I stared at the door. I thought it was thick, but the metal was already dented. It shook looser in its frame. The monsters outside were getting louder and angrier.

Right then, I felt very young. I had an adult-size body, but I wasn't really an adult yet. I wasn't prepared to handle this.

"I don't know what to do," I whispered.

BANG-BANG, went the monsters at the door.

"I don't know what to do!" I shouted.

BANG-BANG-BANG!

I looked around the room again. Eva and Chapman were still unconscious. The only other creatures here were the Yeerks swimming in the pool, but they couldn't help. Yeerks couldn't do anything without a host body. They needed a body.

I stared at the pool.

I ran over while pushing my sleeve up my right arm. I bent down. And I plunged my right hand and forearm into the pool. I felt around, searching.

"I'm not an adult . . ."

BANG!

"I don't know aliens . . ."

BANG!

"I'm not smart . . ."

BANG!

"But there's one good thing about me. I got a great body!"

I felt what I was searching for. A creature like a big slug. I wrapped my fingers around it and pulled it out of the liquid. My hand and arm dripping with whatever the strange liquid was, I pressed the creature against my right ear.

The Yeerk took a second, figuring out what it was touching, and then it squeezed its body thin and entered my ear canal.

. . .

. . . Pain.

I wasn't prepared for the pain.

My knees hit the floor. My whole body clenched and shuddered. I groaned and gagged. It hurt like nothing I ever felt in my life. It was like an electric drill pressing into my ear, digging through my head. My eyes watered. I remembered, too late, my dad explaining anatomy facts about eardrums and small bones in the canal that you would have to cut through in order to reach the skull. You would have to cut through the skull in order to reach the brain. The pain was overwhelming.

But all of that only lasted for a second. After that it was numb. The pain was gone, or at least far away. But discomfort remained. Discomfort from the pressure inside my inner ear. Discomfort from the knowledge that there was something moving inside my head, squeezing deeper and deeper. And then . . .

And then . . .

For the rest of my entire life, I will never experience anything so shocking . . . so unusual . . . so incredible . . . as that first moment. My whole life up to that moment, I was just Tom, with just my own thoughts. And I was still Tom, I still had all my own thoughts, but now alongside them were someone else's thoughts! Not just words - it was more basic than words. I could sense someone else's emotions reacting to what my body felt.

I wasn't alone in my head anymore!

I sensed someone else looking through my memories. Learning who I was. My name. My family. Things I did in daily life. They felt the floor I felt under my knees. They felt the liquid I felt dripping off my hand.

I sensed their memories too. Memories from their life flowed seamlessly into my mind. His name was Temrash. No last name, no number. Yeerks stopped using numbers a long time ago. He was just Temrash. He never had a host before. Lived his entire life blind in the pool. But Yeerks had a way of connecting to a computer from within the pool. Information was transferred to them through a special language. Temrash had no where to go besides the pool, so he had a lot of time for studying. He researched all the information the computer had to offer. He never saw or heard before, and yet he was so educated about the universe and other species. And he knew everything there was to know about this ship - he never knew when he might get a host and would need that info.

We bled into each other so easily. We learned so much about each other in only a few scarce moments, and there was still so much to know. We both wanted to just sit there and savor it all, but I remembered the urgency of the situation.

<We're under attack!> I screamed inside my head.

BANG! In the time it took for us to bond, the Taxxons had nearly broken down the door. We were almost out of time.

It only took Temrash another second of memory searching to understand what was happening. <Get me to the keyboard,> he thought at me.

I got back up to my feet. I walked - a little unsteady, unbalanced - but I quickly got to the main computer console. I held my hands above the buttons, unsure what to do.

<Don't resist,> Temrash asked. <I'm gonna try using your hands.>

A second later, my right hand lowered and a finger pressed a button. Then another. It was a strange sensation. It was like someone else was grabbing my hands and moving them around, but I couldn't feel anything touching them. They were being moved from the inside - inside my own brain.

Temrash could read what the symbols meant. He was activating an emergency defense system: a quick surge of power to electrify the outside of the ship.

The lights dimmed for a second, and the Taxxons screamed outside. The banging stopped. That would buy us maybe a minute.

My eyes looked around the room. Temrash and I had to decide very fast what to do next. Weapons? No, revive the others first. I looked for the first aid supplies. Temrash could read the language written on the walls. And because he could, I could.

I - we - whichever - ran to the first aid cupboard. It wasn't locked, but I didn't know that before. I didn't have time to try every door. My hand dug around inside and pulled out a thin metal tube. Temrash knew it was an emergency stimulant syringe, like space-age smelling salts. I kneeled down to Chapman and pressed it against his neck. He gasped as his eyes opened. Then I did the same for Eva.

Next I moved over to the vault with the weapons. Kneeling low, I typed the code for the lock. The short door slid open. Inside were two long, red-and-silver Dracon beam rifles. I grabbed one and tossed it. "Chapman, catch!"

Chapman was still a little disoriented from waking up, but he was able to catch it. I grabbed the other rifle for myself.

BANG! The Taxxons resumed their attack. The door was almost broken off its hinges, but that didn't matter now.

As Chapman and Eva got to their feet, I moved in front of the stairs. I pointed the rifle up towards the door, and I let Temrash fire.

There was no recoil from the weapon, but a hot flash of red light shot at the door and destroyed it. The Taxxons and their battering ram staggered back. I saw one of them holding up a metal ball in its claws. That had to be the telepathic bomb. The word "bomb" suggested a one-time use. But just in case, I aimed.

Now, I should probably mention, I had excellent aim when it came to throwing basketballs, but targeting with a gun is completely different. I never did that before. And neither had Temrash, obviously. It was only dumb luck that we actually hit what we aimed for. But, hey, it worked.

FSHOOM!!

The beam destroyed the ball-shaped weapon, along with most of the Taxxon's claw. It staggered back and screamed. The other Taxxons stepped forward.

"Don't move!" I shouted. "You're covered!" Chapman moved by my side and aimed his rifle with me.

They hissed angrily, but stayed put beyond the doorway. At least for the moment.

With Chapman watching them, it was safe to look over my shoulder. Eva was at the computer, calling the Taxxon ship. The image of the pilot reappeared on the screen. It seemed shocked to see us again.

"We're still here, Taxxon ship," Eva announced. "Your weapon didn't work like you hoped! Your plan failed!"

The pilot on the screen was enraged. The ones at the doorway weren't any calmer.

"Before you think about rushing us," Chapman said to the Taxxons at the doorway, "I can definitely shoot at least two of you before you get in here. You sure you want to keep fighting?!"

The five of them glared at us like they were seriously considering it.

I could feel Temrash's nervousness inside me. They outnumbered us, but we had powerful guns pointed at them. They would probably lose. So they would probably choose not to fight. But then again, they put a lot of effort and planning into this attack. They were angry. And they were hungry.

<Let's bluff them,> I thought.

<What?> Temrash responded.

<I thought they were bluffing us. Let's try it ourselves. If you're gonna scare someone away, go big!>

I stepped backwards as I spoke. "Yeah, we could shoot some of you. You could bite some of us. Or, we could try this." I pointed the Dracon beam rifle at the main computer, right at the screen showing the pilot. "I'll blow up the computer and trigger the self-destruct! Kill all of you Taxxons at once!"

"What?!" Eva cried.

I ignored her and spoke to the Taxxon pilot. "You had a big plan to take our ship, but your plan failed. So now it's our turn to give you a choice. I can instantly kill your entire crew in a fiery blaze, make sure you never get our technology, and leave you here to fend off five billion humans by yourself . . . OR . . . You accept the food generator. You get off this planet. And you never come back!"

The pilot glared at me. Eventually, he spoke. I didn't need the subtitles this time. Because I could hear Temrash's thoughts, I understood Taxxon language now.

". . . We agree to your terms," it said bitterly.

In a show of surrender, the Taxxons outside took a few steps away from our ship.

Eva stepped towards me. She looked confused. She quietly asked, "Tom, how did you . . .?"

Then she noticed the liquid still dripping from my hand and the side of my head. I smiled at her and touched my right ear. "I had help."

She stared at me with her mouth open.

I grinned wider. "Does this mean I'm a full member now?"

.

The Taxxons took the food generator and went back to their ship. We followed them, carrying our weapons, watching and making sure that they all boarded and flew away. We used our ship's sensors to confirm that they left orbit. And before they left we made sure to tell them that if they ever returned, we would know. They hated feeling like they lost against us, but they didn't argue. Like all predators, Taxxons preferred meals that didn't involve a lot of risk. And we proved that we were simply too much hassle to eat.

These Taxxons were nasty, but I tried not to hate them for it. Like Eva and Edriss said, they were just starving predators looking for a meal. I know I tended to get pretty irritable when I was hungry enough.

With the danger and excitement dying down, I was able to think more as we tied up the loose ends. As I watched the Taxxons leave, and as we returned to our own ship, I communicated with Temrash inside my head. We learned about each other. And I learned all about the history of the Yeerks.

The Yeerks weren't always peaceful. Originally, many generations ago, Yeerks had the strength to dominate their hosts completely. They wore bodies like suits, controlled them like puppets, and the hosts cried inside their brains completely powerless to resist. The Yeerks were an empire that traveled to many planets and stole host bodies by force. They were conquerors. Enslavers. It was biologically natural to them.

But eventually they found a species too powerful to conquer: The Andalites. They took it upon themselves to rid the universe of the Yeerk menace. There was a war. And the Andalites created a terrifying weapon: A prion virus. A virus that attacked their very DNA. The virus spread throughout the Yeerk Empire and killed nearly the entire species in one sweep. The Yeerks who survived had their DNA damaged. They mutated. And then they died off too while their descendants devolved into what they are today.

Modern Yeerks are too weak to dominate their hosts like their ancestors did. Temrash could only move my body if I didn't resist his control, and even then he couldn't work my body for long periods of time. Every three days, a Yeerk must leave their host and return to a Yeerk pool in order to absorb Kandrona rays. If the host didn't feel like making a trip to the pool, the Yeerk wouldn't be able to force them, and the Yeerk would helplessly starve to death.

As a species, the Yeerks' whole culture had always been about conquering and using lower life forms. When they lost the power to do that, it scared them straight. Yeerks became totally dependent on the kindness of others. They became pacifists, fighting only when unavoidable.

But that wasn't enough for the Andalites. They still wanted every Yeerk dead, harmless as they were, as punishment for their ancestors' war crimes. And they didn't mind killing Yeerk-sympathizing hosts along with them. To this day, the Andalites searched across galaxies, determined to shoot down every refugee ship out there. They almost succeeded.

As far as anyone knew, that one small pool in our ship, plus the five Yeerks in me and The Sharing's full members, were the only Yeerks left alive in the entire universe.

Temrash, like all Yeerks alive today, was born generations after the war and the prion virus. The only life he had ever known was one of peace, studying inside of a pool. But there were fanatics out there trying to murder him because of something his ancestors did before he was born.

It was just . . . so unfair. That's a horrible understatement, but what else could I say to Temrash?

We tried not to dwell on it. Not when there was so much good about Earth, this new home planet.

.

We were back in the Yeerk ship. We called Ms. Chapman and Mr. Tidwell, letting them know the danger had passed. They came to help with the aftermath. Tidwell brought pizza, God bless him.

I took a giant bite. As I chewed, I felt another strange sensation. My body tasted the food, and I had my own reaction to that taste, but I could feel Temrash's reaction too. This was his first experience with the sense of taste. Lucky him that it got to be pizza.

Temrash swore inside my head. <Oh, this is great. Can we please eat this every day?>

<I've been asking my mom that for years.>

A bit earlier, I helped Chapman carry out the spare door from a back supply room and lift it up into place. Now he and his wife stood on the stairs, connecting it properly to the ship.

"Tom, Temrash," Chapman-slash-Innis called. "You saved our lives, and don't think I'm ungrateful. But you know," he said, half-annoyed, half-joking, "you could have done it without destroying the door."

"Hey, give me a break," I called back. "It was my first time saving the world." Temrash and I grinned. "I mean, our first time. We'll do much better in the next adventure."

Eva-slash-Edriss set down her pizza slice and gave me a serious look. "There doesn't have to be a next time, you know."

I stopped. I set down my half-finished slice and stared at her.

"Tom, you only bonded with Temrash because you had to. You didn't really choose it. So I don't want you to think you're stuck with the consequences. And Temrash, I know how hard it is to go back to the pool after being spoiled with a host body - believe me, I know - but we need to be fair. Tom, if you don't want -"

I held up a hand. "Eva, Edriss, I'm gonna stop you right there. Almost getting eaten by Taxxons was terrifying. And putting Tem in my ear was really painful. But even so . . . This was the best day of my life!"

"Really?" She seemed confused. "Even with how dangerous it was?"

I grinned excitedly. "I met aliens. And I saved the Yeerk pool. I made a difference today! I've never made a difference before."

I looked around the room. Everyone was watching me. Four faces. Eight people.

"I want in. I want to be part of this, more than anything. And I wanna stay with Tem. I like him. We're already friends. Heh, I call him Tem now. Short for Temrash."

<Tem and Tom,> he said to me. <It's like destiny!>

"I know, right?!" I said out loud. I focused on Eva's face. "Please don't kick me out. I wanna help the Yeerks. And besides . . . This is so much better than being an astronaut."

Eva smiled, but she still seemed hesitant. "I still don't like the idea of dragging a minor into this."

Mr. Chapman shrugged. "I was his age when I started saving aliens."

Ms. Chapman smacked his shoulder. "You were not!"

He smiled at her. "And I was great at it!"

She smirked. "You weren't that either!"

Eva nodded in resignation. She looked at me with a much more genuine smile.

"All right, then . . . Welcome to The Sharing."

.

I drove my mom's car home. I knew joining the Yeerk team wouldn't be all fun. There would be hard work and risks in the future, but I wasn't worried. I was thrilled. High on adrenaline. And why shouldn't I be? I just had my first battle against a dangerous enemy, and I won! Really won. It was a solid victory with no casualties - except for the Taxxon that lost part of its claw, but supposedly they grow back anyway.

I drove while Tem quietly observed from inside my head. After parking, I let Tem walk us to the front door. He moved my legs a little unsteadily, but he would get better with practice. We stood and looked up at the house. My home.

<I guess this is your home too, now,> I told him.

<I guess so,> he thought softly.

The house was the same as it always was. And my family would be the same inside. But I was completely different. I was starting a whole new life today.

I opened the door and went inside.

Jake was there in the living room. Tem had never seen him before, but he knew exactly who Jake was from my memories. It was a strange sensation for him, to be so familiar with someone he never met. Jake was sitting on the sofa watching TV. Homer, his golden retriever, was lying next to him. Jake turned his head away and announced, "Tom's home!"

My mom came in from the other room. She smiled at me. "Welcome back. How did the clean-up go?"

I smiled silently at her for a moment. Knowing.

And then I said, "It was canceled, actually. Not enough people signed up. But then there was sort of an accident at Sharing headquarters, so I offered to stay behind to help with that instead."

"That was nice of you," my mom said.

I had considered telling her the whole story. The Sharing gave me permission. They figured I knew my family best, so if I really believed they were trustworthy enough, I could decide how much to tell them. I was excited by everything I learned, and I wanted to share that excitement with my family. And I wanted to introduce them to my new friend, Tem.

But not right away. I would probably tell them in a few days, once I was used to it. The truth was . . . It was fun having a secret. I was one of the only humans on the planet who knew aliens were real. That made me special. I wanted to enjoy being special for a while longer.

My mom left. I stayed standing there, smiling to myself.

"What are you so happy about?" Jake asked with a raised eyebrow.

I shrugged. "Just seeing the world in a new light, I guess."

He smirked and looked back to the TV. "You big weirdo." He absentmindedly patted Homer next to him.

I looked down at Homer. The dog looked up at me.

<Can I pet him?> Tem asked.

I stepped towards the dog on the sofa. "Hey, boy." Tem reached out my right hand.

In an instant, Homer jumped away from me, over Jake's lap, off the couch. He hit the floor whimpering and ran towards the back door in a full panic.

Jake and I stared after the dog in shock. "What got into him?" Jake wondered.

I stared at my right hand. It was the hand that reached into the Yeerk pool. I had washed it, of course, but maybe the smell lingered. The smell of Yeerk.

Suddenly, it hit me. Like a splash of cold water on my face. A sinking feeling deep in my gut.

There was an alien parasite in my brain!

Up till then I thought it was cool. I had always wanted to meet aliens. But now I realized how other people might see it. I wasn't "special" . . . I was "not normal" . . . I was one-half of an inhuman creature. Homer reacted the way most people would react if they knew. I didn't regret bonding with Temrash, but how would my family react if I told them?

Would my parents freak out?

Would my own little brother be afraid of me?

And not just afraid of Temrash, but of me, the guy strange enough to think putting this thing in his head was "cool"?

I realized then that I couldn't tell my family after all. Not anytime soon. Tem sensed my thoughts, but he couldn't think of any way to comfort my anxiety, so he was silent.

Chapter Text

My name is Tom. The Yeerk in my head is named Tem.

A lot of things changed in my life after I invited Tem to live inside my brain. My life changed in strange ways. But perhaps the strangest thing of all is that I adjusted to it so easily.

Symbiosis was like having a close friend follow me around - ALL THE TIME. Literally twenty-four hours a day. Tem was with me while I had dinner with my family, not that they knew it. He was with me when I watched TV, did homework, worked out, brushed my teeth, showered and used the bathroom. Sometimes he offered commentary, and sometimes he just observed silently. While I was getting used to him, he was getting used to the entire planet Earth.

And, yeah, that much closeness was awkward and annoying at first. But only at first. Once I adjusted to it, it felt completely natural to share my body and thoughts with him. It might have been because he wasn't human. Stuff like this really was natural for symbionts. Also, Tem learned literally everything about me right when we first met. There was no point in acting shy around someone after that. I could understand how most people would hate being a host, but the lack of privacy really didn't bother me.

One exception: I stopped masturbating. I didn't even fantasize about girls anymore. Yeerks think using hosts for stuff like that is vulgar. Tem saw all my memories of me doing it - there was no helping that - but he had zero interest in watching it live. And even if he was interested, that was the one thing I refused to do with an audience in my head.

But in most other ways, having him around was fun. I enjoyed feeling his excitement at experiencing this new world. Sights and sounds and legs and fingers were all new to him. He understood it all thanks to my memories. Tem "remembered" listening to music, playing sports, and eating candy, but he never actually did those things himself before. He was eager to try it all firsthand, and I was happy to indulge him.

And because I could feel Tem's emotions, it was like the reaction to everything my body did was doubled. When I drank a glass of soda, it was like I was tasting the sugar for the very first time - because half of me was. I couldn't believe how sweet and cold it was. And the bubbles tickling my nose almost overwhelmed me! I had to stop drinking as I burst out giggling.

My mom noticed. I cleared my throat and said, "I-I remembered something funny. It - You had to be there." She accepted it and moved on.

As far as I could tell, my family didn't suspect anything. How could they? I wasn't any different on the outside. I was just quieter and more introspective. "Lost in my head" as they might say, having no idea how accurate that was.

My family thought I was the same, but there was a lot different in my life. The most important difference was the Three Day Rule.

Humans get their energy from food, water, and oxygen. Yeerks get theirs from Kandrona rays. A Kandrona is like a small power station attached to a Yeerk pool, filling the liquid with an energy that imitates the sunlight of their home planet. Yeerks need to leave their host and return to the pool in order to feed. While humans can go without food for varying amounts of time, Yeerks have a strict time limit of three days. If they ever go longer than that between feedings, they die.

And the only Yeerk pool and Kandrona we had at the moment was inside the ship in the woods. No matter what else was going on in my life, I had to manage my schedule in order to drive out there every three days.

Tem first entered my brain mid-day Saturday. Three days later would have been during school on Tuesday, so we returned to the ship Monday evening instead. Tem slipped out of my ear and back into the pool. For about half an hour, I was alone again for what would be the only time for the next three days.

I decided to lock myself in the ship's bathroom, once I made sure no one could hear me. (I'm a healthy teenage boy - don't judge me.)

It didn't hurt for Tem to exit and reenter my head. It hurt like Hell the first time, because Tem had to break past my eardrum and my skull itself - the human ear canal simply did not evolve with Yeerk passage in mind. But the slime on Tem's body acted like a painkiller, and it left behind a sort of mucus-y membrane in the spots he damaged. Those membranes filled the hole in my skull and did most of the work of my eardrum, and Tem could brush them aside like flaps without breaking them. Yeerk passage was now easy and painless - for my right ear, at least.

For Tem's small size, damaged DNA and many weaknesses, his body was capable of incredible things. I was amazed.

Another change to my life was the way my grades improved. Which was great, since that was the reason I went to The Sharing in the first place. But they didn't improve that much. Tem knew all about z-space and Sario rips and how gravity really worked, but he didn't have the "wrong" answers my primitive human teacher was asking for. And not having been born on this planet, he didn't know any more about Earth history or human biology than I did. We still had to study a lot.

Tem didn't like studying. He loved doing it back in the pool, but now that he was out, he'd rather be doing stuff. Of course, it's not like I enjoyed studying either. I just had to. And since Tem read all the same books that I did, once in a while he would remember something I forgot - or vice versa. Two sets of memory for the price of one. So my test scores improved a little. Just enough so I didn't have to worry about the dumb jock stereotype as much as I used to.

The biggest improvement was math, since that was universal and Tem was a genius. I actually started to give wrong answers on purpose. If my math scores suddenly went from "C's" to straight "A's" overnight, people might think I was cheating.

And for the record, I do not consider any of this cheating. Tem was a part of me now. Our thoughts and memories bled into each other without even trying. I couldn't just "shut off" that whenever I did homework.

Mr. Tidwell, the host for Illim and the hardest teacher in my school, didn't really approve of me getting help from Tem. Being a host himself he understood, but he still didn't like it.

"It's not like we're trying to cheat," I defended myself against him. "Tem tries to hold back his help in math, you know."

"Only to stop people from getting suspicious," Tidwell replied.

"It still counts!" I shot back. "What am I supposed to do? Leave Tem in the pool, all day, every school day?"

<Please don't put that idea in their minds,> Tem pleaded.

Tidwell and Illim knew there was nothing they could really do about it. In the end, they let it go. But they made a point of not taking it easy on me in English class.

Tem and I were a pair. For the most part, I controlled my own body. Tem could forcibly take control for a second, or blurt something out of my mouth if he was excited, but he couldn't have real control unless I relaxed and allowed him to work.

He wanted practice with my arms. He wanted to have fun with sports. So I lay face up on my bed holding a basketball. I relaxed. I waited for my arms to start moving.

Tem threw the ball up in the air, not quite high enough to hit the ceiling. As it fell back down, my hands tried to catch it, but fumbled. The basketball hit me right in the face and bounced onto the floor.

"Uh . . . Ow," I said pointedly.

<Yeah, I know. I felt it too,> he thought irritably.

I grabbed the ball and returned to the bed. Tem tried it again, and he caught the ball this time. And the next time. Tem played catch with himself, throwing the ball up and catching it. Tem had very little experience moving a host body, but he had all of my muscle memory to make it easier.

For me, it was kind of exhilarating. I kept watching the ball coming towards my face, worried it would hit me again, struggled not to react, and then at the last moment my hands always caught it, without any input from me. It was scary and fun.

I lived my whole life controlling my own body. But now my arms and hands were playing ball all on their own. It was like strings I couldn't see or feel were moving my body around. It was so weird.

I loved the weird. I loved the new.

<Tom, I need to stop,> Tem told me after several minutes. <I'm getting tired.>

<Okay.>

I retook control and rested the ball on my chest. I could have gotten up and done something else if I wanted, but I chose to lie there for a while, staring at the ceiling. Meanwhile, Tem rested inside my skull, exhausted. It took a lot of effort for a little slug-like creature to move a body this big for so long.

For all the incredible things Tem was capable of, his body had a lot of genetic imperfections and weaknesses. I felt sorry for him.

That's an arrogant thing to think, but I couldn't help it, and I couldn't hide my feelings from Tem. He understood that.

Anyway.

My life was busy. My family knew that I joined this new club called The Sharing. They believed I spent all my free time with them, having meetings and doing volunteer work. The best thing about that cover story is that sometimes it was actually true. The Sharing really did clean up the environment, support food banks, and wrote petitions to politicians. We really did have meetings to try and recruit more part-time members for the volunteer work.

But most of the time, when my parents thought I was at a Sharing meeting, I was in the Yeerk ship trying to save the world another way. With Tem's knowledge and my fingers, I did maintenance on the ship and upgraded the computer. Or I rebuilt broken technology we salvaged from crashed ships. Our group sent and received messages from aliens passing through the solar system. If they were hostile, we managed to drive them away. If they were peaceful, we made negotiations and trades, and respectfully asked them not to reveal themselves to the primitive humans.

I loved it, but it was hectic. Alien stuff ate up a lot of my time. After a few weeks, I came to a decision. I made one more change to my life.

"You're quitting the team?" my basketball coach asked in confusion. "Why?!"

I gave him some typical excuses. I had another extra-curricular. I wanted to focus on my grades. Stuff like that. But the truth was, my heart just wasn't in it anymore. The basketball team lost its appeal for me.

I didn't want to upset anyone by leaving. But frankly, I didn't care much what they thought either. My teammates just laughed it off back when I was insecure about my grades, like I was just being uptight. When I proudly told them about the afternoon I spent working at the food bank, they laughed again, like I had become weird for caring about that stuff.

The coach tried to convince me to stay. "But you're one of our best players. The team would be lost without you."

<If they're not a good team without you, they're not worth your time, are they?> Tem quipped.

It was so tempting to say that out loud. But instead I smiled and said, "The team will survive without me."

I didn't tell my parents I quit. And I definitely didn't tell Jake. I knew they would make a big deal out of it, and it just wasn't. I mean, it was just a game. Who cares?

I did tell the Sharing members though. I mentioned it to Tidwell while we were refitting the z-space transmitter and improving its interface with the language translation matrix.

"You quit the team?" While holding a small device, he gave me a suspicious look. "You're not trying to punish yourself for having an unfair advantage with schoolwork, are you?"

"For the millionth time, it's not cheating!" I was lying on my back, working with wires under the console.

"Whatever you say." I was pretty sure Tidwell and Illim were just teasing me about it at this point. Pretty sure. "Seriously, though. You didn't need to do that. We wouldn't mind if you spent less time here instead."

"I'd rather be here," I replied. "If it's between basketball and alien stuff, I'd choose here every time."

"What I mean is, you shouldn't have to choose just one," Tidwell said, as he used tweezers to insert redundant transponders into the device. "You shouldn't have to give up the things you love."

"I don't love it." I took the device from him and put it back inside the console. "I mean, the team. I still like basketball. I'm gonna keep practicing on my own. But the team has this whole 'winning is everything' mentality. And it's hard to take that seriously after fighting for your life against Taxxons."

Tidwell considered this. He nodded. "I see what you mean. Nothing like a hungry Taxxon to give you perspective."

I finished my work under the console and fit the cover back into place. "Before I met The Sharing, I was starting to worry that the only good thing about me was being 'the basketball champ'. But now I know there's more to me than that. Even without Temrash, there'd still be more to me."

<Not that I'm going anywhere,> Tem said to me.

"Not that he's going anywhere," I repeated out loud.

"No regrets, then?" Tidwell asked.

"No regrets!" I cheerfully confirmed. I got out from under the console and stood up straight. The computer screen came to life. It showed a star chart with tons of blinking lights throughout the galaxy.

Tem and I grinned. "Life is short, and the universe is big."

Chapter Text

PROLOGUE

This story takes place during those busy weeks before I quit the basketball team. But I wasn't there for this part of the story. This is how it was described to me after the fact. It may differ slightly from what actually happened.

It was an ordinary school day. Mr. Chapman was sitting in his office, going through some papers, when he suddenly noticed someone was sitting in front of his desk. There had been no knock, nor announcement, nor the sound of the door opening. Mr. Chapman just looked up and realized a man he didn't recognize had been staring at him for who knows how long.

Mr. Chapman stared at the man with suspicion and annoyance. ". . . Can I help you?"

He didn't answer. The man was an adult, pale white, but Mr. Chapman didn't notice any of his other features. His face was average and unremarkable . . . No, that wasn't right. The face was vague and blurry - It was like an optical illusion. The man looked normal at a glance, but after Mr. Chapman stared for several seconds, he realized the man was like an unfinished ceramic doll. He began to flicker, like an image shot from an old film projector.

"You're not human," Mr. Chapman announced.

"Neither are you - Part of you," the visitor replied. "Hedrick Chapman and Iniss."

The human and Yeerk pair narrowed their eyes. Iniss didn't like shady, ominous strangers who knew too much. While Mr. Chapman just didn't like anyone using his first name.

Mr. Chapman leaned back in his chair. "All right, let's get to the point," he said. "Who are you and what do you want?"

"We are the Quantum Kindred," the visitor said in an emotionless monotone.

"There's something vaguely pretentious about that name," Mr. Chapman said.

"We are a single entity that acts as many. In our natural state, we are not bound by the normal laws of time and space. We are a special being."

"Called it," Mr. Chapman said. "Now why are you in my office?"

"We want the Time Matrix," the Quantum Kindred answered.

Mr. Chapman rolled his eyes and sighed. "That nonsense again," he muttered. He leaned forward with his hands clasped together on his desk. "If you came to this planet because of that rumor those idiot Skrit Na started, let me tell you: The Time Matrix does not exist. There is no time machine on Earth. It's a myth."

"The presence of the Time Matrix has covered this entire city with a Sario fold - a weak point in time and space. We cannot narrow it down further, but we know it's somewhere in this city."

"That sario-whatever could have come from anything," he replied nonchalantly. "I promise you there is no time machine here. Now, do you mind leaving? I'm actually in the middle of something."

"We can sense your thoughts," the Quantum Kindred said. "We can see the Time Matrix in your mind."

Mr. Chapman froze. "You're telepathic then." After a few moments, he spoke again, but without seeming concerned. "Fine, I lied. I know all about the Time Matrix. But I took a vow to make sure nobody would ever find it or use it. I'm not going to help you."

"We do not need your consent. The thoughts of lesser life forms are transparent to us." It paused. "We have been listening to the thoughts of all the humans here, searching for information of the Time Matrix, until we found you. You will lead us to its location."

"I know why you're still talking," Mr. Chapman said confidently. "You're having trouble reading my mind, so you're trying to make me think about it. But you see, the reason you're having trouble is because after it was hidden away, I used a Psychic Scrambler on myself to stop nosy telepaths like you from learning too much." He smirked. "Pays to be prepared."

The Quantum Kindred said nothing.

Mr. Chapman stopped smiling. "I have very little patience for people who underestimate us 'lesser life forms'."

"We can overcome a Psychic Scrambler."

Mr. Chapman stared at the Quantum Kindred for a few moments. Then he asked, "Can you?"

The Quantum Kindred stared back.

This shouldn't be possible. It could see Mr. Chapman's thoughts, but somehow, even while scanning at point-blank range, it couldn't see all his thoughts. There were illogical gaps in the memories. It knew that Mr. Chapman knew where the Time Matrix was - it knew Mr. Chapman was thinking about it right now - but the Quantum Kindred just couldn't see it.

"And you won't be able to," Mr. Chapman said. "My good friend Iniss has been physically attached to my brain for a long time, looking through all my memories with my permission, and not even he knows where the Time Matrix is hidden. So what chance do you have?"

"We can overcome the Psychic Scrambler once you open your mind to us willingly."

Mr. Chapman stood up with his hands firmly on the desk. "I will do no such thing. You strike me as a person who's never been told 'no' before, so I'm saying it now. The Time Matrix is off-limits. Give up and go home! And if you cause any trouble on this planet, you'll be picking a fight you really don't want to have." He sat back down and picked up his pen. "Now get out of my office. I have work to do."

The Quantum Kindred was silent again. A moment later, it flickered like the static of a TV screen, and then it was gone.

.

SEVERAL DAYS LATER

My name is Tom. The Yeerk in my head is named Tem. And we were both a little annoyed.

Ms. Chapman, the host for Niss, had called us out of the blue, saying she needed our help with something. She specifically said it was about the Yeerk ship. Naturally, I dropped everything and agreed to help because I assumed it was important. But she picked us up and drove us to a furniture store.

Ms. Chapman - Well, I knew it was her and Niss. But generally we just used the name of the host to refer to both host and Yeerk as a unit. The Yeerks don't seem to mind, and it helped prevent us from slipping up in public.

Anyway, she darted around the store to inspect everything that caught her eye, like a hummingbird moving from flower to flower. I followed close behind her and listened to her ramble, wondering why I was here.

"I know what you're thinking," Ms. Chapman said. "We should be in an office supply store, right?"

<Not what I was thinking,> I told Tem.

"Swivel chairs would be the easy choice. Lightweight. Easy to deliver. Not too expensive. But they're just so plain, you know? Drab. I was thinking, we should get something that's actually nice. Trouble is, there's just so many options to pick from. And obviously, we can't just snatch one of everything. It's gotta have a theme. I say we pick the material first, and then we worry about color. My first thought was Naugahyde. Don't know why, just popped into my head. I was like, 'Naugahyde, why not?' But then Niss pointed out, 'doesn't that get sticky?' So I was like, 'yeah, it looks so cheap too'. Maybe we should do suede instead. What do you think? Naugahyde? Suede? What?"

She talked a lot. If Ms. Chapman talked that much in her own head, I wondered how Niss ever got a word in.

Tem searched through my memories. <What's Naugahyde?>

<Something cheap and sticky, I guess?>

Out loud, I said, "Mrs. Chapman-"

"Ms., not Mrs.," she corrected. "Actually, just call me Alison. I mean, we're all friends, right Tommy?"

"Uh, sure, Alison." I didn't bother telling her not to call me Tommy. "Why are we here? When you asked for my help, I thought you meant . . . you know, at the ship."

"I did," she replied. "We're picking out new furniture for the ship. Everyone's always messing with the computers, and the engine, and the pool, but nobody stops to think about the chairs. I mean, the chairs we have now have just got to go! They are so god-awful uncomfortable, don't you think?"

I nodded, conceding the point. "They are, yes."

"Right?! Of course, they were designed for Hork-Bajir, not humans, so what do you expect?"

I looked around nervously. I was pretty sure no one was close enough to overhear, but it's not like we were the only ones in the furniture store, and she wasn't exactly being quiet. "Should we really be talking about that stuff in public?" I whispered.

But she just waved it off. "It's fine. Don't worry. Oh, this looks cute. What do you think of this?" She picked up a throw pillow. It was poofy and fuzzy and a hideous pink-purple color.

"It looks like someone from Sesame Street got turned into roadkill," I deadpanned.

She looked down at the pillow, then put it back where she found it. "You're right, too much." Then she went to get a closer look at a duvet.

"Do you really need my help for this? Interior design's not exactly my thing."

"If I find something today, I wanted your help moving it. After all, I can hardly ask the delivery boys to send it to the middle of the woods, now can I?"

"Wait a sec. You dragged me out here just 'cause you needed someone to carry your stuff?" That made me angry, probably more than it should have. I figured The Sharing members, of all people, would be the last ones to treat me like I was only good for moving furniture.

"I know what you're thinking." Ms. Chapman nodded understandingly. "You're worried you're not strong enough, right?"

I blinked, suddenly more confused than angry. "No, I'm sure I'm strong enough, it's just-"

"I know basketball is usually for the tall skinny kids, but you're not that skinny, Tommy. Not really."

"I'm not 'skinny' at all!" I make sure to stand straight with my shoulders back, showing off my full size. "I work out. I can easily carry a few chairs into the ship."

She smiled brightly. "Great! Thanks for offering."

I blinked again. "Wait, what?"

She moved over to a blue plush armchair. "What do you think of this one? Too plain?"

"Hold on, I wasn't - I -"

Tem spoke inside my head. <There's no point in arguing. She's our ride home anyway.>

I sighed deeply. I stared at her and the armchair, and said, "It clashes with the pool liquid's color."

I was being sarcastic, but she looked back at it and said, "Good point." Then she moved on to the next thing.

We continued looking around the store for a little while. Ms. Chapman couldn't commit to anything. Everything was either too expensive, the wrong style, or just "meh". I don't mind saying I was no help at all. I just didn't care what the furniture looked like, but at the same time I thought everything in the store would look out of place inside an alien computer lab.

Before long a salesman came up to us. "Are you looking for anything in particular?"

"We need chairs for . . . an office study. We can call it that, right Tommy? Yeah, let's go with that. Very modern style office. Something classy, without being frilly. You know what I'm saying? And it needs to be on a budget 'cause we need five. As for the material, we're thinking . . ." She looked to me, expecting me to pitch in.

"Not Naugahyde," I said, which was the full extent of the help I could or wanted to offer.

"All right, let's look back here," the salesman said politely. "I have an idea you and your son might like."

"Oh, he's not my son." Ms. Chapman narrowed her eyes. "Why would you think that? Do I LOOK old enough to have a son his age?!"

The salesman quickly shook his head. "No! No, not at all. You look - Follow me, please."

As we followed him, I leaned down to Ms. Chapman's ear and whispered, "You do have a daughter not much younger than me."

"Doesn't mean I should look it," she whispered back. "Speaking of Melissa, what time is it?" She pulled down her sleeve and looked at her watch. "Three-forty - Wait, that can't be right." She pressed the watch to her ear. "My watch stopped. You! What time is it?! Right now?!" She called to the salesman.

He looked at his own watch. "I have five to five."

"Oh, good lord! We're gonna be late! Come on!" She rushed towards the entrance.

"What about the-" I started to say.

"I SAID COME ON!" She came back and grabbed my hand, pulling me into a run.

A moment later we were racing through the parking lot towards her car. "I completely lost track of time," she cried. "Melissa's gymnastics' class is almost over! And I promised to pick up her and her friend!"

"What's the big deal?" I asked. "It's not the end of the world if you're a few minutes late."

She opened the car door. "Tom, it's a matter of principle! Now get in!"

I got in the car, and quickly regretted it. When Ms. Chapman drove us to the furniture store, her driving speed was normal. Now that she was in danger of being late somewhere, her speed was binary - Meaning full stop at red lights, then faster than legal the rest of the time, and nothing in between.

HOOONK! Another car honked their horn at us, after Ms. Chapman cut him off at a turn and came within an inch of hitting him.

"Yeah, honk all you like! I'm in a hurry!" she shouted out the window. She constantly weaved between lanes and passed any car that dared to go under the speed limit. Riding shotgun, I tightly gripped my seat belt like a life preserver. I wondered if Niss felt as helpless a passenger as Tem and I did, or if she was an accomplice to the driving.

We pulled into the parking lot of the YMCA with a screech - the car somehow perfectly straight and centered within the lines.

Ms. Chapman looked at the car's clock with a satisfied grin. "There, right on time."

"If you're gonna drive like that again, I'd rather walk home," I quietly told her.

"Don't be ridiculous," she said. "I would never drive that recklessly when my daughter's in the car. What kind of mother do you think I am?" She looked out the car window and waved at the girls coming out of the YMCA building. "Hi, sweetie!"

My body unclenched by the time Melissa and her friend climbed into the backseat. I worked closely with the adult Chapmans, and they mentioned their daughter to me, but I never actually met her before now. Melissa looked around three years younger than me, putting her in the same grade as my brother Jake and my cousin Rachel.

I was a little surprised to see that Rachel was the friend we were picking up. "Tom?" She hadn't expected to see me either. "What are you doing here?"

"Who's this?" Melissa asked Rachel, rather than me or her mom.

"He's my cousin. Jake's big brother." She looked back to me, waiting for my explanation.

"I was helping Ms. Chapman-"

"Alison," she insisted.

"-Right. I was helping Alison with a Sharing thing," I said, which was sort of half-true.

"Sharing thing?" Rachel repeated.

"It's that club my mom and dad are running," Melissa reminded her.

"Oh, right," Rachel said. "Are you a member, Tom?"

"Yeah. I'm a full member now, so I'm kinda running things too."

"I wouldn't give you that much credit. You're just the new guy," Ms. Chapman said with a playful smile. She drove out of the parking lot - thankfully, at a normal speed again. "Tommy was helping out with a few errands before we came here. You know how The Sharing is. Work, work, work. We're getting ready for our next open house meeting this Saturday. Trying to get more people to join. Fingers crossed."

That's not really what we were doing today, but the part about a meeting on Saturday was true. I turned in my seat to smile at the girls. "You two should come. It'll be fun."

I invited them casually, without really thinking about it. But Ms. Chapman abruptly stopped smiling. The girls couldn't see it, but she gave me a sideways glance and a subtle, but unmistakable, shake of the head.

". . . But you're probably too busy," I added.

"No, I'd like to come," Melissa replied.

"You sure?" her mom asked, looking at the rearview mirror. "You don't have to."

"You and dad are always doing so much work with The Sharing, I think I should see at least one meeting. How about it, Rachel? Will you come with us?"

Rachel shrugged. "Why not? I don't have any plans for Saturday."

"Well, now you do," Ms. Chapman said with a big smile. "We're all going to The Sharing."

She glanced at me again with a big grin. I got the distinct feeling she wanted to rip my head off.

.

Ms. Chapman dropped Rachel and me off before going home with Melissa, so I didn't have a chance to talk with her alone. Later that evening I called her on the telephone.

The Chapmans told me before that they secretly attached alien software to their landline. Phone calls going to or from their house couldn't be wire-tapped. Yeerk-related calls were in no danger of being overheard - through the phone line, at least.

I looked around the kitchen, double-checking that my family wasn't around, and I spoke into the receiver. "Sorry if I did something wrong, but I need a little context. Why don't you want Melissa to come to the meeting?"

"I don't want her getting involved with all the alien stuff," she answered. "She's like a million years too young."

"She's-"

Tem interrupted me by thinking, <Telling her that she's only three years younger than you probably isn't the way to go.>

I frowned. Decided to switch tracks. "I wasn't inviting them to join the real Sharing. Just the public meeting. That's okay, right? We have normal people come in all the time."

"Yeah, but both her parents are full members, so that makes it way too easy for her to get deeper involved," Ms. Chapman said. "First she comes to one meeting, then she's coming to all the meetings, then she wonders what we're really doing when we claim to be at meetings she's not invited to, and before you know it she's demanding to see the pool and hear the whole story. No, it's better to just stop her from getting interested in the first place. And my husband thinks the same way."

"Well, you know . . ." I hesitated.

Sensing my thoughts, Tem spoke up. <She's just gonna argue.>

I ignored him and spat it out. "It might be better to just come clean and tell her everything."

"She's thirteen, Tom!"

Tem was polite enough not to say 'I told you so', but I could sense him thinking it subconsciously.

"I'm not letting her get within a zillion light years of Taxxons or Skrit Na. Not gonna happen!"

"I'm not saying to put her on the front lines, just stop keeping her in the dark. She's the only one in your household who doesn't know what's going on. That doesn't seem right."

"Forget it!"

I stopped holding back my thoughts. "Don't you think you're being a little patronizing? Eva kept telling me, 'don't get involved, you're too young' over and over. Do you have any idea how that feels? Even if she is young, doesn't Melissa deserve to know what her mom and dad are involved in?"

"Well, what about you?" she shot back. "You have a little brother the same age as Melissa, right? Have you told him yet? And don't your parents deserve to know what their son is up to?"

I paused, uncomfortably. "That's different."

"How?!"

"Because . . ." I looked around the room and through the doorway, checking once again that my family couldn't hear me. I saw Homer, the family dog, walking towards the kitchen. He noticed me and turned to quickly walk away. He had been avoiding me every chance he could lately.

I winced. "Because I'm the only one in this house who's a host. I'm the odd man out. And frankly . . . I'm a little scared of how they'll react. But Melissa's different 'cause she's the only one there who's not a host."

"Well, maybe I'm scared of how she'll react too," she said with a more vulnerable tone.

I couldn't argue with that.

The line was silent while I tried to think of something to say. Ms. Chapman spoke up first.

"Tom, Temrash - And Niss too, for that matter - All of you listen. I don't have a degree, or a career. And I don't know how to start a non-for-profit from scratch like Eva did. I'm just a stay-at-home mom. And these days it's not 'cool' for a woman to be 'just' a stay-at-home mom. But it never bothered me because I'm a good mother. No matter how busy I get with the Yeerks, no matter what alien-invasion-of-the-week is going on, I keep Melissa safe. And if that means keeping her in the dark sometimes, so be it. Do whatever you want with your family, but leave my daughter out of it."

I nodded. I couldn't possibly argue with any of that.

"Okay . . . I'll tell you what. When I see her Saturday, I'll make a big deal about how all the volunteer work isn't much fun. She won't want to join after that. After all, what kid wants to pick up trash in a park all day?"

"You came to the clean-up."

"Yeah, but I mean little kids. I'm much more mature and responsible," I said with an exaggerated smugness.

Ms. Chapman laughed, just like I intended her to . . . although I was a little hurt that she laughed that much.

"Yeah, I was probably over-reacting earlier," she said. "I mean, it's just one meeting. What's the worst that could happen?"

Chapter Text

Saturday's meeting of The Sharing had a good turnout. Almost two dozen people.

The Sharing only got started a couple months ago. It was taking the organization a while to find its footing. But as time went on, more people began to hear about it, and it gradually gained influence.

There were three types of people who come to these meetings. First, there were the newcomers. They heard about The Sharing from a friend-of-a-friend, and they showed up out of pure curiosity, just to see what this weird, vaguely-defined club was really about. Or maybe they hoped The Sharing could do something for them. These guys may or may not ever come back. I started out like that.

Then, there were the regulars. They weren't official members; they're just the people who keep coming back to most meetings. They enjoyed our message of making the world a better place, and were the most likely to sign up whenever we need extra hands for volunteer work.

And finally, there were the full members: the five of us, who were secretly five pairs of people.

At a typical public meeting, we asked people to sign up for our next volunteer work project. If there was no current project, we brainstormed ideas of what we could do next to improve the community, or improve the planet. We're very pro-environment, anti-global warming. We all talked together and tried to keep everyone informed of what's going on in the city. Obviously, we full members didn't inform the public of anything alien-related. But once in a while they informed us of strange, inexplicable rumors and sightings. The public meetings were a good way for us to learn about, investigate, and suppress alien sightings before they got out-of-hand.

We made a point of being all-inclusive. Our posters had a little disclaimer at the bottom, promising that everyone will be welcome and treated equally, regardless of race, religion, or sexual orientation - And being the late Nineties, that disclaimer ironically drove a lot of people away. But we needed people who weren't prejudiced. After all, we're secretly harboring illegal aliens in the most alien sense. Anyone who had a problem with non-white Eva wasn't going to be useful.

For the most part, Saturday's meeting was normal. But our whole theme of "everyone is welcome, we want to build a community, we can always use more people" got a little awkward, since there were two kids in the audience today who we did not want to join.

It was the part of the meeting where everyone split up and did their own thing. I found Rachel standing alone - Melissa probably went off to see her parents. My cousin was left looking around the room like she was trying to decide what to do.

I sauntered up to her with an easy smile. "Hey, cuz."

She smiled back at me. "Hey, cuz." When Rachel got back from her gymnastics class, she wore casual sweats over her leotard. Everywhere else, she looked like she belonged in a teen fashion magazine, with a trendy outfit, perfect hair, and manicured nails. She was a very confident, self-assured young girl.

"So. This is The Sharing," she tried to make conversation.

"Yeah," I nodded and looked around at the mingling crowd. "What do you think?"

"It's nice," she said. She didn't offer anything else.

"Listen," I said, trying to sound more casual than awkward. "It's not actually a rule - we don't want to turn people away - but technically, you're supposed to be at least sixteen before you get involved with Sharing work. I mean, I don't know if you were interested in becoming a member, but . . ."

"I'm not interested, actually," she said quickly.

"Oh, okay." I was careful not to act relieved.

"I mean, no offense," she added even quicker. "I'm not trying to diss your club or anything. It's just not for me."

"No, that's fine." It was more than fine.

Rachel was family and I loved her, but we were never close. In fact, this was probably the longest one-on-one conversation we had in a while. But she and Jake were very close, being the same age and going to the same school. If she and I were both members, I didn't think I could stop Jake from getting involved too. And that would have been a messy situation I didn't want to think about yet.

So I was glad. But then I got curious. Despite being polite about it, Rachel seemed pretty decided about not coming back. "Any reason in particular?"

"Well . . ." She considered saying something, then shook her head. "No, it's nothing."

"Rachel, it's me," I said with a grin. "I'm not gonna get you in trouble for not liking The Sharing."

She shrugged. "I dunno what it is. You're all really friendly, and yet . . ."

Rachel looked over to the corner of the church. Eva and Mr. Tidwell were chatting quietly about something. Then they noticed Rachel staring, and turned away a little before resuming their talk.

Rachel watched them. "It's probably just my imagination. But this place feels too . . . I dunno. Too exclusive . . . Too 'inside'."

I understood exactly what she meant. The Sharing is always friendly, and the full members say they want people to join. But the first time I came here I also felt like they were hiding something from me. Now, I was a full member and I knew the thing we were hiding from everyone.

.

After the public meeting, we had something important to do.

Rachel and Melissa were among the last ones out of the church, leaving together. I cleaned up a little. And then I joined the other full members in a back room. It had a desk, some chairs and some boxes. Some kind of office-slash-storage room. There was a clear pitcher of water on the desk.

There was one more person with us. Her name was Maggie. I think she was some kind of social worker. She was one of the regulars, coming to almost every open house.

I closed the door behind me. "Hey, is this Melissa's?" I held up a blue hair scrunchie I found on the floor of the main room. I thought I had seen it on her wrist earlier.

Alison took it and put it in her pocket. "Yeah, that's hers. She's always losing these things. I'll get it back to her."

Maggie shifted in her seat, looking around at the five of us. The Chapmans, Eva, Mr. Tidwell, and me. "So, you wanted to ask me something?"

Eva sat in front of her. "It's more of a proposal, really. You've been such a great help in the past, Maggie. And we're truly grateful. But The Sharing only has the five of us in an official capacity. We need more people to become full members. So . . . We were hoping you might be interested in being one." She was a bit nervous. We all were.

But Maggie didn't see the big deal. "A full member? Well, maybe. What does that involve, exactly?"

"It's a bit of a sensitive issue," Mr. Chapman spoke up. "You see, the full members have another project that the people in the public meetings don't know about."

"Is it like a secret?" she asked.

We gave a quick and awkward glance to each other. "It is a secret, actually," Mr. Tidwell said.

Maggie's smile was fading. She was getting suspicious.

Eva spoke gently. She was making an effort to keep her listener calm. "We don't want the public to know this because it makes us sound crazy. You will think it's crazy, but just hear us out. The full members - the true Sharing - Our real project is investigating paranormal activity."

"Paranormal?" she repeated. "You mean ghosts?"

"No. We mean . . ." Eva stared at her, and after a bit of hesitation, she finally dropped the bomb. "Aliens."

We all held our breath, looking towards Maggie. Watching her reaction.

Disbelief. Nothing extreme, she was just having a bit of trouble taking this seriously. "Aliens? You mean, like, UFO sightings and strange lights in the sky? You look into that stuff?"

"Not quite. We mean real aliens," Eva stressed.

Maggie stared.

"We've met them," Eva added.

She kept staring. Then she laughed. "Is this some kind of big joke?" She looked around the room, waiting for us to laugh with her.

None of us laughed.

Mr. Chapman began speaking. "Several months ago, a refugee ship crashed near the city. It was carrying a species called the Yeerks. The Yeerks are slug-like, deafblind symbionts who live by attaching to the brain of other creatures. They live inside our bodies like a passenger, or a copilot. They get to use our eyes and ears, and we get to hear their thoughts and knowledge. And there are several dozen Yeerks still waiting in the ship. We need humans to volunteer to be their hosts."

Eva resumed. "Yeerks attach to the brain, but I promise they don't take it over. The human hosts keep control of their bodies for the most part. But the Yeerk is always there, communicating directly with their mind. It's symbiosis - A peaceful, mutually-beneficial, co-existence."

Maggie stared at our expressions, waiting for us to yell 'just kidding!'. She gave up on waiting. "Oh my God . . . You actually believe this. You're all completely bonkers! You actually believe in this 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind' stuff!"

"Fifth kind," Mr. Tidwell said.

"What?"

"A level three close encounter is seeing an alien outside its ship. Level four is going into its ship. Level five is direct communication," Mr. Tidwell explained.

"At this point, we've seen pretty much every level there is," Alison said flippantly.

Maggie's mouth opened and closed a few times. Since we were apparently insane, that made us difficult to react to.

"We know it sounds crazy, Miss," Mr. Chapman said. "But it's all true, and we can prove it."

"Prove it?"

"I already told you. The Yeerks are living inside our bodies, right now."

Mr. Chapman leaned over the desk, so his ear was directly above the pitcher of water. After a few moments, the hole of his ear glistened with something wet. And then something gray began squeezing out.

Maggie watched the creature coming out of Mr. Chapman's ear. All of us were watching her, gauging her reaction. She hadn't gotten out of her chair or said anything, but her expression was of shock and disgust. She watched the Yeerk. We watched her . . . No one was watching the door.

Iniss dropped into the pitcher with a soft 'plop!' We made sure to warm the water earlier, but it was probably uncomfortably cool by now.

The moment of truth. We had revealed our greatest secret to an outsider. Now we looked to see how she would take it.

Maggie got out of her chair and backed away. "What is that?!"

Not well then.

"That is a Yeerk," Eva explained calmly. "It comes from outer space. Everything we told you is true."

Maggie pointed at Iniss in his pitcher. "What the hell is that?!"

Very not well.

"Miss, please calm down," Mr. Chapman - and only Mr. Chapman - said.

"Calm down?! That's a freaking alien! You're all aliens! You - You have things in your heads! Oh my God, you're trying to put one of those in my head, aren't you?!"

"We know how it sounds," Mr. Tidwell said gently. "But it's really not as scary as you think."

"Get the hell away from me!" she said as she backed against the wall.

Okay, there was no way this was going to get better. Trying to be discreet, I moved towards a cardboard box on a stack in the corner.

"This is what The Sharing is?! It's just a way to put aliens in people's brains?!"

"We're not forcing you to do anything," Eva promised. "The Yeerks are peaceful."

"That's what all aliens say before they start taking over the Earth!"

<Thirty seconds ago she didn't think aliens were real. Suddenly she's an expert,> I thought.

<And I know plenty of aliens who are very upfront about not being peaceful,> Tem thought.

The full members had their palms open towards Maggie, like they were trying to calm a skittish animal. "Maggie, if you don't want to be a host, that's fine. We won't make you," Eva said. "All we ask is that you don't tell anyone about this."

"Don't tell - I'm telling everyone! The police! The newspapers! NASA! I have to warn people about this cult!"

Eva winced. "I really wish you hadn't said that."

"What do you-" Maggie finally seemed to realize how close everyone was.

She went for the door, but Mr. Tidwell blocked her way. As she tried to shove past him, Alison and Mr. Chapman each dove for her and grabbed an arm. "No! I don't want an alien in my brain!"

While she screamed and thrashed and tried to break away from the group, I opened the cardboard box. Inside was a cloth and a glass bottle we brought from the ship, just in case. I quickly opened the bottle and poured a bit onto the cloth.

"Let me out! HELP! HEL-" I pressed the cloth against her face. She kept struggling for a bit, but then she grew weaker. I kept the cloth pressed firmly on her nose and mouth. Eventually, her eyes closed and her body fell limp. I kept it on for just another second or two, just in case she was faking, and then I pulled away. The others helped her unconscious body back into the chair.

We five hosts stared at her. The woman we dared to trust with our secret, who had the worst possible reaction.

Alison sighed deeply and said what we were all thinking. "And here we go AGAIN."

I balled up the cloth and threw it angrily into the trash can. "We are never gonna get enough hosts."

Eva checked her watch. "It's been less than fifteen minutes since the meeting ended. Erasing her memories shouldn't be a problem."

Mr. Chapman gently pulled Iniss out of the pitcher and returned him to his ear. Meanwhile Mr. Tidwell opened another box to get the memory-erasing equipment. It wasn't a helmet so much as a metal band and a big mess of loosely-connected wires. We set it up on the unconscious Maggie's head. Pods went in her ears like tiny headphones. Wires pressed against her temples and were held in place by tape. This was the first time Tem and I saw it done, but the others had told us about their previous failed recruitments.

"I get nervous every time we do this," Mr. Tidwell muttered. "I'm always worried the machine won't erase enough, or we'll find someone who's immune to it."

I couldn't blame him for being nervous. The memory erasing technology was originally something the Yeerks stole from the Andalites. We knew enough to use it, but that didn't mean we understood everything about it.

"You're just being paranoid," Alison said. "We'll just erase the last twenty minutes from her memory. And when she wakes up we'll tell her she fainted and she won't know any better. It's worked before."

"It won't work forever," I said. "Too many people, and they'll notice how strange it is that everyone who stays late at The Sharing faints. Hell, there's probably too many people already. We're screwed if they ever compare notes."

Everyone froze, letting that sink in.

"Well there's a happy thought," Mr. Chapman said bitterly. "Thanks for that, Tom."

I pointed to my temple. "It wasn't me. It was Tem."

<You big liar!> Tem thought.

I grinned. "And he says he's not sorry - Tom's lying!" Obviously, that last part was Tem taking control of my mouth.

"What we need are people who don't need their memory wiped," Mr. Tidwell said. "Maybe we could have broken it to her more gently?"

"I don't think there is a gentle way to say 'hey, wanna have an alien living in your brain?'," Alison quipped.

"Well, we were all fine with it," Mr. Tidwell replied. "We can't be the only five humans on Earth willing to be hosts."

There was no easy solution for getting more hosts. At least, none any of us could think of. The five-slash-ten of us were frustrated.

Meanwhile, Maggie slept peacefully in her chair as the technology wiped the last twenty minutes from her mind. Soon she would wake up, and it would be like the conversation never happened.

"Listen, we don't all need to be here for this, right?" I asked while pointing at Maggie. "'Cause, I'll stay if you need me, but my parents are expecting me. And I've got chores and stuff."

"No, we're fine," Eva nodded. "You can go."

"Thanks." I waved goodbye to the group. "I'll talk to you later."

The door was open by a crack. I pushed through it and left the back room, closing the door behind me. I took several steps before I froze.

<We did close that door earlier, didn't we?> I asked Tem.

<Maybe the latch didn't catch and it just slid open?> Tem suggested. Neither of us were sure.

Before the recruitment started, I made sure everyone else already left the church. Looking around the main room again, there was still no sign of anyone. We and Maggie were the only ones in the building. So it probably didn't matter if the door was open or not. We were fine.

Right . . . ?

.

I wasn't there for this part. I only found out about it long after the fact.

That night Melissa was having a sleepover at Rachel's house. They didn't plan for one; Melissa just casually asked if she could spend the night. She had a very brief phone call with her parents to get permission. It had been a long while since the two girls had a sleepover, but there was nothing unusual about it. Melissa was acting completely normal that evening. Nobody suspected that she only asked because she didn't want to go home.

I didn't find out until much later, but after Melissa and Rachel left The Sharing, Melissa had gone back to look for her hair scrunchie.

Right now, Melissa was lying in the dark in Rachel's sleeping bag, wondering if she just imagined what she heard. Wondering if it was safe to talk to anyone about it.

She must have fallen asleep at some point, or at least half-asleep, but she was awoken by the sound of the window opening, followed by a strange rustling sound. "Rachel . . . ?" No response. "Rachel, are you there?" she asked loudly enough to wake her, but still no response. Melissa sat up and fumbled for the lamp.

The room lit up. The window was indeed wide open, and coming through it was a long, dark green vine. It reached towards Rachel's bed and wrapped all around the girl's body. But Rachel was still sleeping peacefully, like she couldn't feel the plant's tight grip.

A white and gray burst of light appeared in the room - like three-dimensional static from a broken TV. A second vine went through the window towards the static, and it became a figure. An adult-sized porcelain doll. The plant bonded with its torso, but he remained awake. "Hello, Melissa Chapman."

Melissa backed away in terror. "What are you?" She made a point of asking what instead of who.

"We are the Quantum Kindred." It gave her a reassuring smile. "And we need your help to find something very important."

Chapter Text

"BARK! BARK! BARK!"

Tem and I woke up with a start.

Homer was barking his head off. This was exactly why I hated when the dog slept in Jake's room, which was very close to my room.

I groaned and pulled the covers up over my head. "Jake, will you shut your dog up?!" I yelled.

Homer let out a strangled cry, like he was in pain. And then silence.

I lowered the covers. I sat up and listened. Total silence. That got me nervous.

Jake loved that dog. I knew he would never actually hurt him, but something had upset Homer. I looked at my alarm clock. It was long after midnight; so late it was almost early. But I was wide awake now.

Tem thought, <It's probably nothing, but . . .>

I finished, <. . . I agree. Let's just make sure.>

I got out of bed. Moving cautiously, I couldn't hear Homer, Jake, or my parents stirring as I left my room and walked down the hall. I knocked quietly on Jake's door.

"Jake," I said softly. "Everything okay in there?"

No response.

"I'm coming in," I said. I turned the doorknob.

Jake's bedroom was dark. But the window was wide open, and light from the streetlamp outside let me see just enough. The first thing I saw was a thick vine coming through the window, stretching towards the bed, and wrapping around my brother's still body.

"JAKE!"

There was a second vine wrapped around Homer. The golden retriever was lying on his side, eyes closed.

Sorry Homer, but my brother was my first priority. I ran around the dog and yanked the covers off the bed. Jake's eyes were closed and his face was peaceful, like he was just sleeping normally. But that dark green vine from the window curled up and down around him, pinning his arms to his torso. The end of the tendril was slapped against his neck and cheek, slime glistening in the faint light.

I grabbed the vine and tried to pull it off him. But as soon as my hands touched it, my vision blurred. I grew lightheaded. And I sensed . . . something. It felt kind of like when Tem searched through my memories, but it wasn't the same. This was more forceful. Mechanical. Or maybe . . .

<Tom, what ->

Tem was confused. No, the plant was confused. Wait, what? Two of us? I was sleepy. My head drooped.

<No, don't sleep!> Tem cried.

Working together, Tem and I pulled my hands away from the plant. I staggered back and shook my head, trying to get my brain awake again.

<Okay . . . So . . . It's a plant that puts you to sleep when you touch it, or something?> Once I was able to focus again, I looked through Tem's memories of studying alien species, but couldn't find any quick answers. <You ever heard of that before?>

<You can't expect me to know every thing in the universe.>

I turned on the light to see better. Jake was breathing, and I checked his pulse too, careful not to touch the vine again. I could see Homer breathing deeply as well. They didn't seem to be hurt, but I couldn't wake them. I looked out the window to see where those vines came from - and realized the situation was so much worse.

The two vines were connected to other vines stretching from house to house like a giant green spiderweb. It didn't break into every house, but several, and the plant stretched across the neighborhood and out into the distance.

I stepped away from the window and looked back at my little brother. I leaned close to his peaceful face. "Jake, if you can hear me, I'm gonna fix this. I promise."

I turned off the light.

I hurried downstairs to the kitchen and dialed the phone. Waited impatiently through the rings. "Eva? Sorry to wake you, but we have an emergency."

.

Eva was actually last to arrive. Mr. Chapman, Mr. Tidwell, and I had gathered on Chapman's front lawn, bundled up in jackets and holding flashlights.

As Eva got out of her car, I said, "You know, it just occurred to me what a really good kid I am. Before tonight, I never even thought about stealing my mom's car and sneaking out in the middle of the night."

<That's not being good. That's just how much you love sleeping,> Tem said.

<It still counts,> I replied.

The vines hung above our heads, draping across streetlamps and telephone poles. It was like an enormous net covering the town.

"Where's Alison?" Eva asked.

"Here I am!" Alison Chapman came out of her house holding a thermos and a stack of plastic cups. "If we're having a crisis in the middle of the night, I figured I should brew some coffee."

"Ohh, God bless you." Eva eagerly thanked her. Alison passed around the cups and filled them all up. There were only four cups.

"Where's mine?" I asked.

"You're a teenager. Coffee'll stunt your growth," Alison said. "Oh, wait, maybe that's cigarettes?"

"Either way, I'm already the tallest one here. I don't think it's a problem." I took the thermos from her and drank a big gulp.

"Did you check on your parents?" Eva asked me.

I lowered my eyes for a moment. "Same as Jake."

She nodded. "These vines weren't near my apartment or in the city. Whatever it is, it seems to be concentrated in the suburbs." She gestured up to the Chapmans' house, which had been ignored by the vines. "At least Melissa's okay."

"We don't know, actually," Mr. Chapman told her. "She's sleeping at a friend's house. Frankly, I'm scared to find out if it spread there yet."

"I don't think the plant's really hurting them," I told them. "It just keeps them asleep."

"We're not sure what this plant is doing. For all we know, it could be slowly eating them," Mr. Tidwell spoke up. I could tell it was Illim specifically speaking. Tidwell tried to be tactful, but Illim and his brutal honesty were always ready to remind us when the glass was half empty. "Tom, you touched it, but you got away. How exactly?"

"I almost didn't," I replied. "It tried to, like, plug into my brain, but I don't think it was expecting two of us at once. I think we confused it for a second. But I was lucky. I came real close to falling asleep."

"Very close," Tidwell the English teacher said like an automatic reflex. "You keep using 'real' as a synonym for 'very'. It's not."

"But it is a synonym for 'truly'," Chapman mentioned.

"Oh. Good point. Never mind."

"Can we focus, please?" Eva asked. She looked back to me. "You 'confused' it? Did you sense some kind of intelligence?"

Tem and I tried to remember what we felt in that single second. "I'm not sure. It's alive, at least." Tem took control of my mouth to blurt out, "All plants are alive." I retook control and added, "What I mean is, it's not just a plant. It might be like an animal?"

"Whether it's intelligent or not, we need to get rid of it before dawn," Tidwell said. "When anyone not touching these vines wakes up and sees them, there's going to be a panic. Not to mention the people working the graveyard shift out in the city."

"And like Tom, they'll try to pull them off their loved ones and fall asleep themselves," Eva said.

"Right, let's get to the point. Show of hands," Alison said while raising her palm. "All in favor of just cutting up this Evil Ivy with Dracon beams?"

One by one, Eva raised her free hand, while the rest of us lifted our flashlights. I didn't like the idea of just destroying something without really knowing what it was, but we didn't really have any other options.

"Okay then." Chapman took another drink of his coffee, then carefully set the cup down on the grass. "Let's start with the closest branch, and see what happens."

We all set our coffee down. Then I turned off my flashlight and traded it for something else in my jacket pocket. A black metal tube, shaped exactly like another flashlight. We designed it that way on purpose for simplicity and camouflage. This was our basic Dracon beam.

I turned off the safety and changed it to the highest setting. With soldier-like unison, the five-slash-ten of us stood in a line and aimed our weapons at the vine wrapped around the closest streetlamp. "Fire!"

TSEEEW!

Five streaks of red light hit the thick, twisted vine. The section of plant glowed a bright green color - and did nothing else. We stopped firing. No damage.

Alison groaned. "Of course it's immune to energy weapons! Otherwise, that would be helpful!"

Chapman said, "Assuming these vines are offshoots of a single plant, they should lead back to one big stem. If we find the main body, we may be able to do something."

"One of us should go to the Yeerk ship," Tidwell said. "The sensors there can help."

"Hey, wait a second," I spoke up. "This is an alien plant, but it's a plant. So how'd it get here? Did it pilot a spaceship?!"

"Maybe a seed dropped from a passing ship and got caught in Earth's gravity," Eva suggested.

"Or maybe someone brought it here on purpose," Chapman realized. "It's not just the plant we have to worry about. There's another enemy here."

"We brought it here," a new voice said.

We all turned around. A figure walked down the street towards us, badly illuminated by streetlamps.

I noticed two things about it. First, a couple of the long vines wrapped around its torso and trailed on the ground behind it, before reaching up into the sky to join the rest of the web-like plant. Second, and even more disturbing, was the body itself. It wasn't quite human, just human-ish. The figure was like a giant china doll. Its face was almost convincing, but it flickered like a low quality film. Every other second I saw that its true head was blank white and the face was only projected onto it. It was like a plastic mannequin was being used as the screen for a drive-in theater.

Chapman scowled. "You again."

Eva looked at Chapman. "Chapman, do you know him?"

"The plant's new, but I've seen that person before," he answered. "It calls itself Quantum Kindred. It came to my office last week to cause trouble."

"Last week?" Eva narrowed her eyes. "And you didn't think to tell anyone?"

"He didn't tell you about us, because he didn't want you to know why we came." The Quantum Kindred spoke in a calm, flat tone that barely concealed its arrogance. "Hedrick is keeping secrets from his supposed teammates."

"Who's Hedrick?" I asked.

"He's Hedrick," Alison pointed to Chapman.

"I thought your name was Iniss?"

"Not the Yeerk. His human name is Hedrick Chapman," Alison said.

"Your first name is Hedrick? No wonder you go by Chapman."

Eva ignored us and sternly said, "Chapman, I want an explanation."

Chapman didn't look at Eva. He glared at the Quantum Kindred with a clenched jaw. Finally he said, "It was looking for the Time Matrix."

"Time Matrix?" I repeated. Tem hadn't heard of it either. "What's that?"

"An Andalite legend. It's basically a time machine. But it's just a myth, isn't it?" Eva asked, sounding unsure.

"It is so much more than a time machine, and it's real," the Quantum Kindred said. "The Time Matrix is shielded, and we cannot search for it directly. So we gave this body the ability to read minds, and searched instead for a person who knew its location. We scanned countless minds all throughout the universe. And finally, our search led us to Hedrick Chapman. We know he helped hide it somewhere in this city."

"Hold on." I stared at Chapman wide-eyed. "Is that true? On top of all the other alien stuff you've been involved in, you also have a time machine stashed somewhere?!"

He looked at me sharply. "No, I don't. No one does. That machine is too dangerous, and too tempting for anyone to ever use, including us." He looked around the group. "I'm sorry for keeping secrets, but the fewer people who know about it, the safer the universe is."

Eva stared at Chapman. I don't think she liked being kept out of the loop. But then she nodded to herself; she understood his point. "But if this thing is a mind reader, then it knows too."

"No," Chapman calmly told her. "I have a defense against telepaths. It can only read part of my mind. It can't see where the Time Matrix is actually hidden."

The Quantum Kindred spoke. "And that's why, after our first encounter, we searched the galaxy for the perfect weapon and found this plant." The vines wrapped around its torso squirmed and wriggled, as if showing off. "Since we can't see your thoughts clearly, we will use force to make you talk."

"So your plan is to hold the whole town hostage until I cooperate, is that it?" Chapman said.

"No," the Quantum Kindred replied.

I think we were all confused by that. "No?" Chapman repeated.

"The townspeople are not our hostages. We only put them to sleep to keep them from interfering . . . This is our real hostage." It looked over its shoulder with a nasty smile. "Come here, Melissa."

Chapman and Alison both flinched in a sudden terror.

From behind the car in the neighbor's driveway, Melissa Chapman slowly stood up and walked towards the Quantum Kindred. Melissa was smaller than a lot of girls her age. She was short, thin, and pale. Right now, she looked more meek and fragile than ever.

"Melissa, get away from that thing!" Alison cried out.

But the girl didn't move away. "I'm sorry," she said quietly. "It got Rachel. It said if I came along, it would let her go." She sounded like she was trying not to cry.

"So trusting," the Quantum Kindred said.

A vine shot out from its arm and wrapped around Melissa.

Her parents tried to run towards her, but Tidwell grabbed Alison's hand, while I rushed over to hold Chapman back. "You can't! It'll put you to sleep too," Tidwell reminded them.

Chapman ignored what he said and thrashed in my arms. "Let go of her!" he shouted. "Let go of my daughter!" I was in decent shape, but holding him back was a real struggle.

Melissa now looked more drowsy than scared, but she wasn't unconscious.

"We won't put her to sleep," the Quantum Kindred said. "We want her to hear this. Hedrick Chapman . . . Give us the Time Matrix. Or we will kill Melissa."

Melissa grew alert again, looking at it in terror.

"Why do you want that stupid time machine anyway?!" Alison shouted angrily. "What's the point?!"

"The point is to obtain our freedom," it said loudly. "We will do ANYTHING it takes to escape our prison!"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

Eva was slowly stepping sideways towards her car. The Quantum Kindred must have noticed, but it ignored her as it spoke.

"Eons ago, we didn't need a machine to time travel. We could walk through time as easily as you mortals walk across land. We were originally a single person, but by traveling to the same moment again and again, we became an entire civilization. But the Ancient Races feared our power. And so they trapped us in a prison outside of the universe, reducing us to the form of a single person again."

Alison stared. "That's why you keep saying 'we'?! I thought you were part of a species, but you're just a nutjob talking to himself!"

"The insults of lesser beings mean nothing to us," it said smugly.

"You said you want to escape, but you're already free, aren't you?" Tidwell asked.

"No. This is an artificial body that took many ages to construct. We control it remotely and move it around the universe, but our true self remains trapped in the prison, unable to travel through time. That is why we need the Time Matrix, to break the barriers of the universe and allow our escape."

"And probably blow a giant hole in reality in the process," Chapman said.

"All that matters to us is ourself. We are a better race than you individuals, with your secrets and your conflicts. Reality is better served by our presence."

"Well, you can forget it," Chapman growled as I continued to hold him. "If you kill Melissa, then I'll never help you. She dies, you lose too!"

The Quantum Kindred asked in its terrible arrogance, "Would you really let it go that far?"

Melissa wobbled on her feet, half-asleep. A long vine stretched out and linked her to where the Quantum Kindred stood.

Before Chapman knew what to say next, we heard Eva shouting.

"Everyone, shoot it!"

We didn't look at her or question the order. We just trusted that she had a plan. I let go of Chapman and we all fired our four Dracon beams at the Quantum Kindred. Vines wrapped around its body to block the beams, and while it was distracted with that, Eva ran towards it carrying an axe.

"Yaah!" Eva swung the axe at the vine that stretched between Melissa and the Quantum Kindred, cutting through it in one chop. The severed end released Melissa and she fell to the ground. Chapman and Alison stopped firing and ran over to where Melissa fell.

"You keep an axe in your trunk?!" I yelled over the sound of the lasers.

"You said we had a plant problem, so I came prepared," she replied.

Tidwell and I kept firing. The vines protecting the Quantum Kindred were undamaged, but it staggered backwards from the force of the beams.

A couple of the vines suspended overhead lowered towards us. But Eva ran up and swung her axe around, chopping the vines before they could touch us.

Meanwhile, over by Melissa, the chopped vine that had held her was dissolving into ash. She was groggy, trying to push herself up while fighting off the effects of the plant. Her parents kneeled down next to her, checking her vitals, and holding her tenderly.

"I'm sorry, Melissa. I promise I will fix this," Chapman said.

"Darling," Alison looked at her husband with a rare serious expression, "it wants us to watch her get hurt. She's not safe where we can see her."

Chapman turned to me and shouted, "Tom! Get over here!"

I stopped firing and went over. Now only Tidwell was holding back the Quantum Kindred while Eva dealt with the vines. I didn't know how much good only one beam would do, but our Dracon beams wouldn't last long anyway while firing continuously at full power. I didn't know how we could stop that monster long-term.

"We'll hold it off. You and Melissa get out of here," Chapman ordered.

"Why me?" I asked. "Shouldn't I help you fight?"

"Don't argue, just get somewhere safe!"

"Stop treating me like the baby of the group!" Tem thought I shouldn't be arguing in the middle of a battle, but I was sick of their patronizing. "I'm younger than you, but Tem is the same age as the rest of the Yeerks. We can help-"

"Tom! Temrash" Alison shouted at us. "We're not dismissing you, you morons! This is the most important mission you will ever have for the rest of your life! Protect our daughter!"

I stared at her for a moment. Then I nodded firmly. "Right. Come on, Melissa." She was still dazed, but didn't resist as I pulled her to her feet and dragged her to the car.

The Chapmans fired at the Quantum Kindred again. They stopped with the continuous beams and switched to alternating quick blasts. "Here's the plan," Mr. Chapman called out. "I'll head to the ship, and use the sensors to find the main body of the plant - the root. You keep Quantum Kindred busy as long as you can, then when I tell you were the root is, destroy it!"

"Right!" the other three hosts replied together.

I helped Melissa into the passenger seat of my mom's car. Then I ran over into the driver's side, and drove off as fast as I could.

Chapter Text

I drove towards the city. I didn't have a destination any more specific than that. I was just gonna keep driving until I couldn't see those vines overhead anymore.

If this Evil Ivy, as Alison named it, was all a single plant, it was impossibly large. It was a gigantic net dropped on top of the suburbs. Some of the vines hung so low they banged the roof of the car as I drove. It felt claustrophobic.

Tem and I didn't know how to stop this plant or the Quantum Kindred at all, never mind doing it before dawn. Anxiety was eating away at us. But we had no choice but to put our full trust in our teammates. Our only job was keeping Melissa out of danger.

Melissa wasn't drowsy anymore. "Tom?"

"You should put your seat belt on," I told her, although in the rush I hadn't put on my seat belt either.

She ignored me and asked, "Where are you taking me?"

"As far away from these vines as I can," I answered without looking at her. I was speeding, at least by residential area standards, so I kept my eyes on the road.

I turned a corner - and hit the brakes. The road ahead was blocked by a mess of extra-low vines acting as a fence.

<If I floor it maybe we can break through,> I thought.

<I'd rather not risk getting stuck,> Tem replied. <Or dragging the vines along with us.>

<Fine.> I did a U-turn and looked for another route.

Melissa was silent for a few moments. I was expecting her to ask something like 'what's going on?' or 'was that a real alien?'. But instead she said, "Tom, let me out."

"What? No. It's not safe here," I told her.

"I don't need your help. Stop driving and let me out," she said more forcefully.

<Uh, why, exactly?> Tem wondered.

Out loud I said, "Your parents are counting on me to keep you safe, and I'm not gonna let them down. So just relax, okay?"

Now she asked, "Then tell me what's going on. That thing - Quantum Kindred - it said something about breaking the universe? Do you people deal with things like this all the time?"

"That's . . ." I frowned. "You're having a very strange dream, Melissa. Don't worry about it."

<Seriously?> Tem asked.

<There is no good cover story and I don't have time to think of one,> I mentally replied.

"Tell me the truth," she demanded.

I didn't reply. I just focused on driving fast. What the hell could I say?

Melissa reached for her door handle. I immediately pressed the auto-lock button, sealing her in. She unlocked the door, so I locked it again.

"Melissa, relax! I'm the good guy in this dream," I insisted. "I'm taking you away from the monsters."

"I don't believe you!" she said angrily. It was a pretty dramatic reversal from the scared, fragile demeanor she had with the Quantum Kindred. And frankly, I wasn't in the mood to deal with it. "Either you let me out, or you start telling the truth!" she demanded.

"Or what?" I challenged.

This was the wrong thing to say.

After a second of angry glaring, Melissa reached over and pulled hard on the steering wheel.

"HEY!"

The car turned sharply, throwing me off balance, bumping hard as we drove over the curb. I immediately slammed on the brakes. The car screeched to a stop, terrifyingly close to crashing into a telephone pole, which would have been especially disastrous considering I had been speeding.

"ARE YOU CRAZY?!" I screamed at her.

"I saw the alien at The Sharing!" she shouted back.

I stared. "What?"

"I came back to look for something, and I heard you all talking behind the door. I Iistened in, and I heard what you were saying about Yeerks and hosts." Melissa was becoming less confident, more desperate and panicky. "So then I opened the door to peek inside, and I saw that thing come out of my dad's ear! And that woman freaked out, and you guys drugged her! And then you wiped her memory!" She gave a quick breath of a hysteric laugh. "And then you started joking around like it was no big deal!"

I stammered. "O-Okay, that sounds bad, but - but it wasn't . . ."

Melissa wasn't smiling anymore. "And now there's a plant monster trying to kill me, and I don't know if I can trust my own parents! What they did at the meeting . . . Was that even real?!"

She stared at me, scared and confused. And honestly, Tem and I didn't feel much better.

"Was it real?" she repeated. "Are there really aliens hiding inside my mom and dad's brains?"

I felt helpless. I empathized with Melissa, and I wanted to explain. But this was Mr. and Ms. Chapman's secret, not just mine. ". . . I can't talk about it."

She moved to open the car door.

I grabbed her arm to stop her. "Okay! Okay! Yes, it's true! It's all true. We work with aliens. We are half-alien. And, yes, I know what we did to that woman looks bad. But you gotta understand. The Yeerks are a small group of refugees who are helpless without host bodies. And Earth is a dangerous, xenophobic planet. We only did that to her to protect ourselves. I swear, we're not the bad guys here."

"Yeah, you kept saying Yeerks are peaceful," she replied. "But Quantum Kindred said it wouldn't hurt me, and look how that turned out."

"Fine. Maybe I can't prove that you can trust us," I admitted. "But we were the ones who got you away from Quantum Kindred. That's got to be a point in our favor, right?"

She looked up at me nervously. "Are you going to wipe my memory now?"

I shook my head. "No." I chose to be completely honest. "Even if we wanted to, we can't erase memories from that many hours ago."

"I didn't even know aliens were real, and now . . . My own parents . . ." she said in a tone that broke my heart. "Were they always like that?"

"No. Just a few months."

"Oh, of course," she nodded. "When The Sharing started."

"Give or take a few weeks."

"There are aliens hiding inside my mom and dad," she repeated, like she was shell-shocked. "They were watching me. Having dinner with me. Listening to everything I said to them. And I never even knew they were there."

<Your family's going to have this reaction when they learn about me, aren't they?> Tem wondered.

I didn't answer him. But, of course, he knew what I was thinking.

"The Yeerks, Iniss and Niss, they may not be your parents, but they still like you, Melissa," I told her. "They want you to be safe. And your real mom and dad didn't go anywhere, you know. They weren't brainwashed or replaced by pod people. Being a Yeerk-host is more like . . . having an invisible friend whispering in your ear. It's not that bad."

"If it's not that bad, why didn't they just tell me?" she asked.

"Because of this," I gestured at her. "They were afraid you'd have this exact reaction."

"Afraid?" she said incredulously. "What am I gonna do? Ground them?"

"Maybe they were afraid you'd stop loving them."

Melissa didn't respond.

And she didn't have time to respond. The car jerked suddenly, tilting forward. We'd stayed here too long. I shifted gears into reverse and slammed the gas pedal, but we didn't move. Looking out the windows, I saw more vines lowering towards the car.

"Dapsen!" I realized a second too late that I shouldn't have been cursing in front of Melissa. I realized a second after that I cursed in Yeerk language and she wouldn't understand anyway. I turned off the ignition and shouted, "Get out and run!"

Melissa and I rushed out of our respective sides. A thick bundle of vines had gotten underneath the car while we were talking. It lifted the back end only an inch into the air, but it was enough to make the wheels useless.

Melissa barely got a few steps before a vine reached up and tripped her. Another lowered from the sky to wrap her torso.

"No!" I tried to run to her, but fell flat on the ground. A vine wrapped tightly around my ankle. I clawed at the ground, trying to drag myself forward. "Melissa!"

An image like static appeared nearby. Yet another vine dropped from the enclosing plant net above and connected to the static. It became the Quantum Kindred.

<It can teleport,> Tem thought. <That is so not fair!>

It smiled down at me as the plant continued to slither and wrap up my body. "It was a waste of effort," it said. "You can only slow us down."

That was frustratingly true. This wasn't even the Quantum Kindred's real body; that was stuck in a prison outside of normal space. This was just a remote-controlled doll it could teleport to where it needed. And if it could teleport, there was no way our teammates could stall it for long.

"Look on the bright side." The Quantum Kindred leaned down towards my face. "The Andalites are coming."

Tem's terror sent an involuntary shudder through my body. "What?"

"They're on their way to Earth right now. But you won't need to worry about such trivial things once we have the Time Matrix."

My arms were pinned to my sides. The vines lifted Melissa and I helplessly into the air.

.

I later learned, while Melissa and I had been doing all that, the others had their own hassle.

Eva, Tidwell, and Alison were chopping down as many vines as they could. Anything cut away from the main body dissolved into ash, but the plant grew to replace them too fast.

Chapman had raced to the Yeerk ship buried in the woods and accessed its computers. He used the sensors to find the most likely origin point of the plant. He called Eva to tell her it was at the very edge of the residential district.

Eva spoke into her cell phone as she drove. "I see it, Chapman!"

The three hosts got out of the car. Every last vine in the suburb led back to one, single stem as thick as a tree. But the stem wasn't attached to the ground. It was sticking out of a shining white portal about seven feet in the air.

"Is that a zero-rip?" Tidwell wondered. A zero-rip was a theoretical hole in physical space, as opposed to a Sario rip that tore through both space and time. It was a portal that connected two different parts of the universe.

"It didn't bring the whole plant here," Eva realized. "It created a zero-rip and pulled a single branch through. The root is probably on the other side of the galaxy."

"How large is this plant?" Tidwell asked in shock.

"Doesn't matter. Let's chop it up," Alison said.

They all grabbed the weapons Eva brought in her trunk. Eva swung her axe high over her head and struck the stem. Tidwell jumped up and hit it with a butcher's knife. Alison had bolt cutters to give her reach, but could only make little slices. As they chipped away at the stem bit by bit, the plant grew back to repair the damage. They couldn't make any progress.

Eva took a break from chopping and spoke into her cell phone again. "Chapman, you better get over here. It's too thick, and it heals faster than the three of us can cut it."

Alison stared up at the plant. And she thought about her daughter.

The Quantum Kindred was trying to kill Melissa. The only ways to save her were either stopping the Quantum Kindred by force, or giving up the Time Matrix.

Alison knew what she had to do.

"Eva, I have a plan. Give me your keys," she said.

Eva handed her keys over. "Where are you going?"

As Alison rushed to the car she said, "To the construction site by the mall!"

"What? Why?!"

Alison didn't answer. She drove away as fast as she could.

.

Chapman ran out of the woods towards his car. Then he stopped in his tracks.

The Quantum Kindred stood before him. The vines attached to its back stretched out behind him and far into the distance. Melissa and I stood on either side of it, vines wrapped tightly around us like straitjackets.

"I'm sorry," I said, too ashamed to say any more. Chapman gave me and Tem one job, and we let him down.

Chapman didn't reply. He looked at Melissa. Then at the Quantum Kindred.

"You've given us a lot of frustration, Hedrick Chapman." It smiled with its fake flickering face. "But that's okay. You'll give us what we want now."

Chapman kept his expression neutral. "If I tell you where the Time Matrix is -"

"That's not enough. You shield your thoughts too well, so we wouldn't know if you're lying. You must willingly surrender all knowledge in your mind." It held out its hands. "Touch this artificial body, and allow it to connect your brain directly to ours. That is the only thing that will ensure your daughter's life."

Melissa spoke up. "If you find this Time Matrix thing, what exactly are you gonna do with it?"

"Before we were sealed in the prison, it took centuries of looping through time to populate a single moment. The Time Matrix will let us do more than escape - It will let us break the laws of time and space! It will fill the universe with an infinity of us! We will finally become the master race!" It grinned with pure mania. "Do you understand how badly we want it, Hedrick?! Do you understand how much we are willing to hurt your daughter for it?!"

Chapman continued to keep his expression neutral, but I could tell it was a struggle.

Melissa stared at her captor for a moment. Then she looked at Chapman and said, "Let him kill me, dad!"

"What?!" All of us looked at her. Even the Quantum Kindred seemed caught off guard a bit.

"He's just gonna kill me anyway once he gets what he wants," Melissa said. "If I'm gonna die, I wanna die protecting the universe from him!"

She was scared and on the verge of crying, but she still said it with such conviction. I had no idea the first time I met her, back in that car ride that felt like a lifetime ago, but that young and tiny girl was secretly a badass. No wonder Rachel was friends with her.

The Quantum Kindred smiled. "Such a brave girl." It looked at Chapman. "But you're the parent. It's your choice. Do you really want her blood on your conscience?"

The vine lifted Melissa up. Her feet dangled helplessly above the ground. And then the vine squeezed. Tighter and tighter. She groaned in pain. Her ribs would probably bruise soon.

I was sick of being helpless. I tried to run over to Melissa, but my own vine pulled be back. I twisted and struggled with my arms, but I just couldn't break through.

"What's it going to be?" the Quantum Kindred asked him.

Chapman's lip trembled. "Let her go first, and we'll talk."

"No deals."

The vine lifted Melissa high into the air, over our heads - and then slammed her into the ground like a ragdoll.

"AAHHH!" she screamed in pain.

"NO!" Chapman also screamed in pain.

I struggled futilely against my vine, Tem and me cursing inside my head.

The vine lifted her high again.

"STOP! You win!" Chapman cried out, his expression desperate and despairing. "You win. I'll do it. Anything. Just stop hurting her. Please."

The vine lowered her down slowly and laid Melissa on the ground gently.

"Very good." The Quantum Kindred grinned madly and held out its arms. "Now, come to us. Show us everything in your mind!"

Chapman stepped towards it slowly.

<No!> Tem screamed inside my head. <Chapman, don't!>

I should have agreed. I should have cried out 'no Chapman, don't do it, don't sacrifice the universe for just one person'. But I couldn't bring myself to say it. I couldn't say 'let that innocent bystander child die'. All I could do was clench my jaw, pull against the vine, and hate my own uselessness.

Chapman extended his arms towards the Quantum Kindred's arms.

"No . . ." Melissa cried out weakly.

They grabbed each other's wrists.

The Quantum Kindred grinned in victory. Chapman's expression was of sadness and surrender . . .

But then it changed to a scowl. He gripped the Quantum Kindred's forearms so tightly his knuckles turned white. The look of rage on Chapman's face was so intense it scared me. "Did you really think this would work?" he growled. "You obviously don't have children."

After a moment, the Quantum Kindred stopped smiling. Its fake expression grew concerned. Something was happening in their minds I couldn't see. "What are you doing?" It began coughing.

Chapman shouted in its face. "You hurt my daughter!"

"What are you -" It coughed more. A wet, hacking cough. "- You -"

"YOU! HURT! MY! DAUGHTER!"

The Quantum Kindred spat black foam out of its white face. The vines attached to its back spasmed and trembled, along with the vines holding me and Melissa. The entire plant was reacting. The porcelain doll fell to its knees, though Chapman kept a tight grip on its arms. "What have you done to us?!"

"Exactly what you asked. I opened my mind to you," Chapman answered. "But not to give you information. I'm sending you all the emotions I felt when I watched you threaten Melissa. All of my hate for you. Fear and panic. That pit in every parent's stomach where they think, 'Oh my God, if anything happens to that child, I will die!' That is what I'm sending directly into your brain! How does it feel?!"

"It hurts . . ." It was spitting up black bile, leaking black snot, and crying black tears. "Stop it . . ."

"I barely got started," Chapman said. "It's hard enough for Iniss for endure this, and I'm not even aiming it at him. You? There's no way someone as self-absorbed as you could handle all this pain, is there?!"

"Stop it!" It tried to pull away from Chapman. "Let go of us!"

"Let go of my DAUGHTER!"

The Quantum Kindred screamed like it was stabbed with a red-hot poker.

The vine uncoiled and released Melissa. The vine around me fell away too. The entire Evil Ivy was withering up like it was sick, and it probably released everybody it was attached to in the whole neighborhood.

Chapman let go and ran to Melissa. The Quantum Kindred collasped on the ground, curling up in pain and continuing to scream. Its image was flickering worse than ever, cycling through static, normal, sick, blank doll, and even sicker. The plant stayed connected to its back, but it spasmed violently.

Melissa got to her feet and hugged her dad tightly, and he hugged her back. I stood in front of them, guarding them against our weakened enemy on the ground.

The broken doll stopped screaming and glared past me, up at Chapman. Chapman glared back while continuing to hold his daughter.

"I warned you to give up and go home," Chapman said firmly. "After what you did to Melissa, staying in your prison is the only way you'll be safe from me."

Its pain switched to anger. It yelled. It slammed its fists on the ground over and over. It was having an all-out tantrum like a toddler.

And then the vines shot towards us. We jumped back, and their tips dug into the ground like spears.

The Quantum Kindred rose to its feet. It wobbled unsteadily. It was weakened, damaged, but not dead. "I'm sick of you!" It was so angry it forgot to call itself 'we'. "I'm sick of all of this! It'll be faster if I burn this city to the ground, and dig the Time Matrix from your ashes!"

The vines pulled out of the ground and pointed at us menacingly. The three-slash-five of us stared back, prepared for a fight.

But the Quantum Kindred suddenly stopped. It turned away like it noticed something far in the distance. "No!"

.

I later learned, at that moment, Eva and Tidwell were still trying to cut through the main stem. They stopped when they heard a rumbling sound coming towards them. "What's that?" Tidwell asked.

Eva turned to look, and burst out laughing.

A dark yellow excavator was rolling down the street. It was an impressive construction machine with a long arm ending in a bucket with sharp teeth.

Alison was in the driver's seat. "Hang on, Melissa. Mommy's on the way."

The excavator reached the Evil Ivy. Alison rapidly worked the levers to move the giant arm where she needed. The arm raised up - and then rushed down like a monstrous axe.

The bucket tore all the way through the thick stem in one strike. The half of the stem that led towards the houses convulsed, sucking up the vines before it dried up, withered, and began dissolving into ash. The other half of the stem retreated through the portal, back to where the rest of its body waited. Without the plant forcing it open, the shining white portal sealed close and disappeared.

.

"NO!" The Quantum Kindred screamed. "NOOOOOO!"

The vines detached from its back and pulled away. All the vines fell on the ground, dead, instantly beginning to dissolve.

In a burst of static, the Quantum Kindred teleported away.

.

It reappeared where Alison and the others were. It glared up in rage at the woman in the construction machine.

"You lower life forms can't beat me!" it shouted. "You can stop my plant! You could even destroy this artificial body! But I will NEVER -"

Alison pulled more levers. The excavator's shovel rose up and slammed down onto the Quantum Kindred, shattering it like a cheap vase. The broken pieces sparkled with other-dimensional circuitry and fluid. The pieces glowed and twitched for a few seconds, and then stopped. It was just junk now.

Eva and Tidwell stared up at Alison. "What?" Alison asked. "It said we could destroy it."

.

The next morning.

Well, I say morning, but it was closer to noon really.

I groggily walked downstairs. I trudged to the kitchen to make a late breakfast. Jake was there, making an early lunch.

"It lives," he smirked. "I was starting to think you'd never wake up."

"It's Sunday. Get off my back," I said bitterly.

Jake stopped smiling. "What's wrong?"

"I had really bad insomnia. It took forever to fall alseep," I lied effortlessly.

It wasn't actually dawn by the time I finally got my mom's car home, but the sky was starting to get lighter. Without the Evil Ivy keeping my family asleep, I had to be extra quiet and careful when I snuck back inside the house. The fact that mom and dad weren't waiting to pounce and ground me probably meant I got away with it.

"How'd you sleep?" I asked.

He shrugged. "I slept fine." As an afterthought he said, "I had a weird dream though."

"That's good," I mumbled quietly. "Just keep thinking that."

.

The Evil Ivy had dissolved so quickly there wasn't a trace of it left. Any brief glimpses people had before falling asleep were chalked up to bad dreams. As far as we could tell, no one in the city suspected it was ever there.

The Quantum Kindred was gone. Its true body was still alive in wherever that prison was, but it took eons to remotely build that first doll. We wouldn't see another one in our lifetimes. And that's assuming the damage Chapman dealt to it hadn't just finished it off by now.

It kept claiming to be superior to us mortals. And yet it couldn't stomach something as common as a parent's concern for their child. I loved the irony in that.

Later that afternoon, we met up at the Yeerk ship. The big metal room with the pool and computers - and a set of black swivel chairs with dark red cushions. Very sleek and comfy. Alison chose well.

Melissa was there, getting all her questions answered.

"And this is the pool, where the rest of the Yeerks live," her dad showed her as calmly as he could. "There's a terminal inside that the Yeerks use to access the computer. And we use this keyboard to communicate with them."

"You could send them a message if you like," her mom offered.

"I wouldn't know what to say," Melissa said quietly.

Her mom and dad had hoped to keep the danger and strangeness of their lifestyle away from their daughter, but it found her anyway. It was an awful lot for Melissa to take in. Not only the existence of aliens, and not even that her parents were alien investigators, but that they were half-alien symbionts themselves. But Melissa seemed to be handling it pretty well, even if she wasn't embracing it with open arms. I suppose the same could be said for her parents, adjusting to letting their daughter in on the secret.

But it was easier now than it would have been before last night. If there was one good thing that came out of last night, it was that Melissa had absolute proof of how much her mom and dad loved her, Yeerks or no Yeerks.

If there was a second good thing, it was that I now knew Mr. Chapman's embarrassing first name. That's a petty thing to enjoy, but Tem didn't judge.

"So," Melissa spoke up hesitantly, "there are a lot of Yeerks in the pool. And you guys really need volunteers to be their hosts. And I know I'm in on the secret now . . ."

Tem and I listened closely. Hopefully.

"But is it still okay, if I don't become a host?"

Tem's and my spirits sagged a little. But Alison grabbed her daughter's hands and said, "Of course it's okay, sweetie. It's your choice. No one else can make you."

"It's just, this is all so new," Melissa said shyly, as if she needed an excuse. "I'm not ready to think about that yet."

"Melissa," Chapman told her, "even if you did want to become a host - which we're not asking you to - you're still so young. Before sharing your life with someone else, it's better to grow up first, and really understand who you are."

"But Tom did it, and he's still a kid," she mentioned.

"Not compared to you," I shot back.

"He's an exception," Eva spoke up. She grinned at me. "An exceptional kid."

I frowned at her.

Then I said, "I guess it's good that at least one person in the group isn't a host. It might come in handy if we ever come across another telepathic bomb."

"Don't even think that!" Alison cried. "She's not fighting with us. She's not getting involved in anything dangerous again."

"But it's not all dangerous, right?" Melissa asked. "There are fun aliens too, aren't there?"

"Sure," I replied. "We contact all kinds of people. I love hanging out here."

Mr. and Ms. Chapman gave me a look. They thought I was gonna be a bad influence on their daughter. Maybe they were right.

Tem and I tried to keep our spirits up. But as Melissa and her family kept talking, deep down, our thoughts kept going back to what Quantum Kindred told us last night.

The Andalites are coming. They're on their way to Earth right now.

Was that true, or was it just bluffing to make us nervous?

I really didn't know.

Chapter Text

My name is Tom. The Yeerk in my head is named Tem.

It happened on a Friday. It started with a totally normal morning. Although "normal" meant something different to me than it used to. It meant something different to my family.

My dad was the first one I saw. I woke up and went downstairs just in time to see him heading out the door. We said hi and I wished him a good day at work. My dad's a doctor. A pediatrician, specifically. His normal day involved giving little kids check-ups, examining their heads. Examining their ears.

. . . How would he react if he knew my right eardrum was slightly damaged by the slug-like alien that burrowed a path to my brain? I had no idea how I would explain that away during my next physical.

I went to the kitchen and saw my mom next. As I made myself breakfast, I asked her if I could borrow her car tonight. I knew she'd be fine with it, but even if she said no, I could just use my bike or something. All that mattered was being allowed to leave the house. When my mom asked where I was going, I told her that club I joined, The Sharing, was having another meeting.

. . . This was a flat-out lie. I actually needed to sneak away to the Yeerks' hidden spaceship so Tem could have his feeding. Mom said yes without having any idea that making me stay home would mean life and death.

My little brother Jake was the last one awake, as usual. He came to the kitchen and started breakfast just as I finished. I only said a quick "good morning" to him before I headed back upstairs. Jake's gaze lingered on me for a bit. He didn't say anything, but I got the feeling he wanted to tell me something - unless I was just being paranoid.

. . . Did Jake ever get paranoid? Had I ever, unknowingly, dropped some sort of clue that I wasn't human anymore? Yeah, technically, I was still human. But "I" was only half of the whole "me".

This was basically my life. I acted same as always on the outside, but inside there was this world-changing secret always on my mind - Literally, on my brain. I could physically feel the tiny bit of extra pressure inside my skull. It didn't hurt, but it was there. You would think having an alien parasite in your -

<For the millionth time! Parasites harm their host. I am a 'commensal'. We learned that word in your biology textbook. You should remember it.>

<No one cares, Tem.>

- You would think have having an alien commensal-or-whatever-the-word-is in your brain would be a hard secret to keep. But the people around me had no idea. It felt like I was hiding a placard under my shirt and daring them to notice.

I felt bad about lying to my parents. And I felt bad for treating my best friend like a dirty secret. But at the same time, deep down . . . I kinda loved it. I was one of the only people on Earth who knew about aliens and I loved how special that made me.

The thing was, I didn't need to keep it a secret. The other Yeerk-hosts gave me permission on the very first day. I could tell my family any time I wanted . . . But come on. How could I possibly say, "There's a gastropod from outer space living inside my skull. No, I'm not crazy. Look, I'll have Tem crawl out of my ear to prove it. See? Mom, please stop screaming."

How the hell could I tell my family THAT when I haven't even worked up the guts to tell my dad I quit the basketball team yet?!

Whatever. It was a worry for another day. Right then, I needed to get ready for school.

.

It was a normal day at school. Which is to say it was dull and, basically, awful.

I trudged along through my classes. In Math, I pretended to trudge along instead of having a mathematical genius in my brain. In History, Tem learned more about humanity and was slightly horrified. In English, I tried to keep my head down but Mr. Tidwell-plus-Illim were unforgivingly hard on me. Well, he was hard on everyone, but still.

I used to be a pretty popular guy. I'm not saying I was King of the School or anything, but being on a sports team got me a decent amount of attention. Now there was a distance between me and everyone else. The same distance between me and my family.

I walked down the halls and watched the crowds around me. It felt like I was watching them behind glass. All of them got so worked up over games and cliques and parties and looking cool. Not that long ago, all that stuff was important to me too. But now it just didn't matter anymore. Maybe that meant I wasn't a kid anymore . . . Or maybe I had turned into a space alien after all.

Most people knew me as the Basketball Guy. The team hadn't played their next game yet, so I don't think everyone realized I wasn't on it anymore. But the word was gradually spreading.

"Hey, Tom. Is it true you got kicked off the basketball team?" asked some girl who walked up to my locker who literally never spoke to me before.

"I wasn't kicked off. I quit," I said casually.

"Why?"

I didn't tell her it was because I lost interest, and instead said, "Because I wanted to focus on my grades more, and I wanted to do more volunteer work with The Sharing. I just didn't have time for basketball practice anymore."

She left without another word. That was actually one of the more polite reactions I've gotten.

I was getting sick of having to explain why I quit over and over. I had naively thought giving some excuses to the coach would be a one-and-done deal. I really wasn't looking forward to having the conversation again with my family.

As for my former teammates - Even when I was on the team, we weren't super close. I mean, we liked each other, sure. We always cheered each other on. Hugged after a good game. But we were just teammates, you know? Then when I left with no warning, I became Benedict Arnold to them. They stopped talking to me completely. Whenever we passed in the halls they glared at me like I ran over their dog.

The cold shoulder bothered me a little. But at the same time, it was so ridiculous and stupid that I actually found it funny. Meanwhile Tem felt a little bad for me, but mostly he was indifferent to all the teenage drama. I mean, Tem and I stared down flesh-eating Taxxons. We survived an attack from an inter-dimensional madman and a plant monster. This was just high school stuff - Who cares?

Popularity didn't matter to me anymore. Between the five human hosts, the five Yeerks bonded to them, and the dozens of Yeerks in the pool, not to mention Melissa, I wasn't exactly starving for someone to talk to.

.

I went to the pool in the evening. Tem just barely started feeling hunger pains about half an hour before we arrived.

To get to the Yeerk pool I drove to the national park, got out of the car, walked through the woods, found the clearing, pressed my palm on the hidden hand print scanner, and walked down the steps into the partially-buried-underground spaceship. I was making this trip almost every day. As much as I loved our headquarters, I hated how out-of-the-way it was.

The pool itself was a vat about four feet tall and eight feet wide. It held a lukewarm liquid and exactly 86 Yeerks, not counting the 5 with hosts. I leaned over and Tem disconnected from my brain. He slipped out of my ear and dropped into the pool, temporarily bringing the count up to 87.

I couldn't hear Tem's thoughts anymore. I couldn't physically feel him either. I was alone in my head again.

That was supposed to be "normal" for a human. But after living in symbiosis all these weeks, it felt like the opposite. I had gotten so used to Tem's presence that being separated felt like there was empty space in my head, both physically and mentally. Not that I would ever stop Tem from separating.

Yeerks can't get the energy they need when they're bonded to a host. Every time Tem left the pool, it started a three-day countdown to his death. (The exact limit is closer to 74 hours, but still coincidentally close to Earth's rotation.) Before the timer hit zero, Tem had to separate from me and return here to absorb the nutrients he needed, especially Kandrona rays. It took about half an hour to become fully charged again.

I read somewhere that humans can survive up to three days without water. I don't know how precise that is. But imagine that the only drinkable water on the entire planet was in one ship buried in the woods that's a good 20 minutes away from your house, and no, you can't take any home with you. The host-less Yeerks living in the pool didn't have eyes, ears, hands, legs, or very much to do, but at least they never had to worry about starving.

We've been trying to build a second Kandrona generator. Scavenging the right parts was an agonizingly slow process.

Eva-plus-Edriss was there in the ship with us. She wasn't there for a feeding, just routine computer work. There wasn't anything she needed my help with, so I just did homework while waiting for Tem.

Eventually, it was time to signal him. Then I carefully lowered my head until my right ear was submerged in the red-brown liquid. I always had the irrational fear that the wrong Yeerk would sneak in, but I trusted the system.

Something wet and fleshy touched my ear. Even after all these weeks of doing it, this first second still felt gross. Then there was the familiar and almost comfortable pressure moving through my ear canal. Inside my skull, the Yeerk body stretched impossibly thin and sank into the crevices of my brain. After a few moments, I sensed his thoughts and emotions and immediately confirmed it was Tem after all. We were one again.

Whenever Tem swam in the pool, he found a couple other Yeerks and communicated by touching palp-to-palp. As I dried my head with a towel, I searched through his recent memories and caught up on the gossip from the last three days.

Carger was their usual jerk self. They were all like "why can't you find more hosts by now? You should be trying harder". Fermat - who, by strange coincidence, had the same name as a human mathematician, and thus got interested in proving Fermat's Last Theorem - sadly, hadn't made any progress. They were thinking about giving up and searching for a new hobby. (Frankly I was amazed Fermat got as far as they did, considering they did all the math work in their mind instead of looking at paper. But maybe that's ableist of me.)

In short, that Friday was just a normal day. More than that, it was quiet. It'd been over a week since aliens passed through our system. Eva and I were just about to leave the ship together. It was starting to get dark, and while we all knew the path intimately, it was nice not to be alone walking through the woods at night.

That's when it happened.

The computer made a beeping alert. We went back to the main monitor, Eva sitting down at the keyboard while I looked over her shoulder. "A zero-space corridor is about to open up," Eva announced.

Zero-space, or anti-space, is another dimension where faster-than-light travel is possible. It's what allows people to travel across the universe without taking hundreds of years. A corridor appearing meant an alien ship was about to re-enter normal space.

Eva turned our ship's scanners to full sensitivity. I went to another terminal to help. Working side by side, we took the information the computer gathered and cross-referenced it with our databases.

The corridor was forming slowly. Then suddenly, it opened and closed all at once to spit out a single ship extremely close to Earth. Not within the atmosphere, but close enough that we were obviously their destination. The energy signature was faint and vague, but the physical shape immediately found a match in our files.

My body froze. Tem's fear was like a splash of water, and I soaked it up like a paper towel.

I looked over to Eva. Could we be wrong? But she looked over the numbers, and then turned to me. Her expression was the same as mine.

"That ship . . . It's Andalite."

The Andalites. A warrior race obsessed with driving the Yeerks to extinction. And they've been known to kill any Yeerk-sympathizer who gets in their way.

What I had thought was a normal day was actually Judgment Day. This was the day the Yeerks had been dreading ever since they arrived on Earth.

Their executioners had found them.

Tem was scared, but I was angry. These Andalites were so obsessed with their genocide plan that they searched across eighty-two light years instead of just, you know, stopping.

We all quickly got back to work. We had to act fast, because they were moving fast. Their ship fell towards Earth like a meteor. We scanned everything we could learn about the ship. They weren't cloaked - they weren't trying to hide.

"Our cloak is fine, right?" I asked Eva. "There's no chance they're scanning us?"

"They can't track us unless we send them a message," Eva said. "I learned my lesson from the Taxxons."

We had to assume they already guessed our refugee ship was somewhere on Earth. But as long as they didn't know the pool's exact location, it wasn't the worst case scenario yet.

The Andalite ship was heading right for this city. But that could still be a coincidence. Chapman once explained that the Time Matrix, hidden somewhere in our town, drew in zero-space corridors like a magnet. Traveling aliens had no idea why, they just noticed zero-space traffic to this particular city on this particular planet was quick and easy and they kept showing up. I loved meeting friendly aliens, but we kept finding jerks too. And now Andalites. I wished Chapman would tell us where the Time Matrix was so we could throw it into the sun or something.

<It'd probably blow up the sun,> Tem reminded me.

<Because nothing can ever be easy!> I thought.

I used the computer to plot their trajectory course. Tem calculated and narrowed down the numbers until we knew exactly where they'd land. "They're heading . . . for that abandoned construction site next to the mall," I announced. I winced. "They're gonna touch down in less than three minutes!"

It actually wasn't a bad spot. Much better than a more populated area. But if they weren't cloaked, it wouldn't be long before the human authorities showed up, and then it'd quickly become a disaster - and we had almost no time to stop it.

"I'm calling the others." Eva grabbed the cell phone we kept in the ship. (We once tried finding a way for the ship's communication system to hack into the human telephone network, but it was technically illegal, and Alison pointed out it'd be simpler to just buy another phone.)

"What's the plan?" I asked.

"Same as any other hostile encounter," she said firmly as the phone on her ear rang. "We negotiate. Convince them to leave. And if that doesn't work, we stand our ground."

But if we couldn't call them with the communication array, the only other way to confront them was in person.

As Eva relayed the situation to Chapman, I went to the weapons cabinet to get a Dracon rifle. Tem used my mouth to say, "Do you happen to have some sort of special, anti-Andalite weapon I don't know about?"

"Afraid not," Eva answered.

"Not even a little one?" I added.

"Sorry."

I was frustrated, feeling hot-headed, and bracing myself for a big fight. Tem was a lot more nervous than usual, trying not to panic. Between the two of us, we were doing a really bad job at keeping my body calm. <It's only one ship,> I reminded us. <We've repelled worse attacks than this.> I tried telling ourselves that this battle would be no different.

But Tem knew I was lying to myself. This was different. The hostile aliens were fought before were pirates and scavengers. Just greedy trouble-makers looking out for themselves. Even the cosmic-scale Quantum Kindred was ultimately just a nut who only cared about himself. But the Andalites weren't like that.

The Andalites were coming for us.

Chapter Text

I drove Eva to the construction site as fast as I dared. But we knew that no matter how much I sped, it wouldn't be enough. The Andalites were already touching down by the time we got to the car.

Who knows what they were doing right now while we were fighting Friday night traffic?

"I'm sure you know this already, but don't mention anything about the Yeerks to the Andalites," Eva spoke up. "If we're lucky, we'll pass for regular humans who just happen to investigate UFOs, and we'll convince them to leave without a fight."

"Right," I nodded. "The rifle in the trunk is only a last resort."

The fact that it's a weapon aside, the Dracon rifle was distinctly Yeerk technology. The sight of it would be a dead giveaway. Although I felt safer having the flashlight-shaped Dracon beam in my pocket.

The construction site was isolated, sort of. There was a highway separating it from the mall, and an open field separating it from the suburbs. A spaceship landing here wouldn't actually be next to a highly populated area, but it would still be too close for comfort for me.

We finally arrived, almost exactly the same time Chapman's car did. We each drove through the opening in the chain-link fence, completely ignoring the "NO TRESPASSING" sign.

It was dark. And the construction site was very big. I don't know what they were supposed to be making here, but they hadn't done any real work in forever. The earth movers and excavators were left abandoned. It looked like a ghost town of half-finished buildings. I don't mind saying it was downright spooky. And with uneven ground and obstacles in random spots, this place wasn't meant to be driven through.

But we didn't have to go far before we saw the ship.

We parked the cars and got out, leaving the headlights on. Chapman, Eva and I huddled together.

"Alison didn't come with you?" Eva asked.

"She's at home watching Melissa," Chapman answered, keeping his voice low. "I left Iniss there too, swimming in a tank."

"You mean you're just Chapman now?" I asked.

"It's a precaution. If they have another thought-wave pulse and all of us were bonded, we'd be devastated," Chapman said.

Tem and I hadn't even thought of that. Then again, Chapman was the only one of us who had experience fighting aliens without Yeerk backup. He was the natural choice to be unbonded.

The three-slash-five of us turned towards the ship. Took one last moment to steel ourselves. And moved forward.

Driving through the darkness, we saw the light before we noticed the ship. The hatch by the front end was open and a strong white light was spilling out. The ship was about twice as long as a school bus. The back end curved up and forward with a sharp point, like a scorpion's tail. Or rather, like an Andalite's tail.

That shape distinctly identified it as an Andalite ship. They have a thing about their tails.

The ship looked badly damaged - scorch marks and deep gashes. The lights on the outside of the ship were off. There was just the bright light of the inside shining through the doorway.

"Did someone attack it?" I whispered to the others.

"Could have been zero-space turbulence," Chapman said. "It's hard to tell at a glance."

The hatch was open, and a straight metal ramp led to the ground. But no one was in the doorway. We all turned and looked around the area. This was definitely an Andalite fighter ship . . . But where were the Andalites?

"Hello?" Chapman rose his voice. "Is anyone there?"

No response. No sign of anyone.

"We come in peace?" I tried. Still nothing.

If I was going to hide inside my spaceship, I wouldn't open the door and put the ramp down for no reason. But if I was going outside, I also would have locked up behind me.

"They abandoned their ship?" I wondered out loud.

They had to be here somewhere, didn't they? They didn't land that long before we arrived.

"Boys," Eva spoke up. "Look at that."

She took out her flashlight and aimed it at the ground. There were tiny puddles of liquid sinking into the dirt. With her light shining on it, I could tell it was a dark blue color.

"That's blood." I wasn't asking.

Chapman kneeled down, took a vial out of his coat pocket, and scooped up a bit of the non-human blood. I looked around, but I couldn't find any sort of blood trail. If there were hoofprints, I wouldn't notice them in ground this uneven and with old footprints from the construction workers covering everything.

What on Earth happened before we got here?

We heard a car coming up behind us. We all spun around, then relaxed when we saw it was Mr. Tidwell's car.

He quickly parked and jogged over to us on foot. "I'm sorry I'm late. What'd I miss?"

"We all missed it," Chapman said in exasperation. He gestured to the ship. "They left already. Nothing's here."

Tidwell looked at the open hatch warily. "Is there any chance they're still inside?"

We followed his gaze. None of us wanted to go inside the ship of our mortal enemies. But we didn't come all this way just to ignore it.

I stepped forward, but Tidwell grabbed my hand to stop me. "Wait," he hissed. "BioFilters!"

I froze. Tem and I had both forgotten about that.

Gleet BioFilters were Andalite technology specifically designed to find out if someone had a Yeerk inside or not. If there was one built into that ship and I walked inside carelessly, I would've been vaporized.

"I'm just a human right now," Chapman told Tidwell. "I can go."

With a calmness that made me irrationally jealous, Chapman walked up the ramp. We hosts followed close behind him. Chapman didn't actually go through the doorway. He paused right at the threshold to look inside. "Is anyone there?" he called out cautiously. I looked over his shoulder to see what he was seeing.

Compared to the darkness outside, the interior of the ship was extremely bright. It took my eyes a few moments to see clearly. The cockpit was mostly empty; no chairs, barely any buttons or levers. But there was a big computer screen on the wall. It showed large alien symbols that changed every second. Tem didn't have much practice with the Andalite written language, but he quickly realized they were numbers. 11. Then 10. Then 09.

<It's counting down,> Tem thought.

<To what?> I wondered.

I think every single one of us realized it at the same moment.

"Run!" Chapman turned and pushed us away. "RUN!"

We all sprinted away from the ship.

FSSSHHHHOOM!!

It wasn't an explosion as much as an extremely loud sizzling. It sounded like one of those spinning fireworks - if it was right next to your head. I turned back to look. The hull of the ship cracked all over, and through the cracks glowed a orange-yellow light. Even from this far away, I could feel the heat on my face.

The ship wasn't blowing up. It was dissolving. Shredder energy tore through the ship and crumbled it up section by section. Sparks flew. The metal screeched. It was like the Fourth of July trapped inside a bubble.

But the whole thing took less than a minute. The noise and lights died down, and there was nothing left of the Andalite fighter ship but ashes and tiny scraps of burnt metal.

"Did . . . Did we set that off?" Eva wondered as the destruction was winding down.

"No," Chapman sounded certain. "The self-destruct would have been counting down since they left."

"Why would they destroy their own ship?" I practically shouted. "Why would they leave themselves stranded on Earth? And where ARE they already?!"

"If I had to guess, I'd say the ship was too badly damaged to be flown again. So they destroyed it to stop the locals from scavenging the technology," Chapman said.

"But that's so extreme," I said.

"I hate to be racist. But, you know." He shrugged irritably. "Andalites."

There was a sound. Like footsteps on the hard dirt. It was faint and far away, but my body was charged with so much adrenaline I would've noticed a fly buzzing at that distance.

The others noticed it too. Eva aimed her flashlight. Out in the distance was a low concrete wall on top of a short hill.

There! Something moved in the shadows.

"Who's there?!" Chapman yelled authoritatively.

I ran after it, sprinting full speed. I reached the incline and ran up and around the wall. I got out my own flashlight and searched through the darkness. But I couldn't see anyone.

In one direction was a half-finished building. In another direction, at the edge of the site, were a bunch of trees. And then there was the open field that led to the suburbs. Which way did they go?

Did I imagine it? No, I couldn't have. There was definitely someone here. But I lost them.

I kicked at the ground and sent dirt flying. "Dammit!"

The Andalites could be anywhere now.

The other Sharing members caught up to me. "We need to get out of here," Tidwell said. "The cops will be here any minute to investigate that explosion."

I followed them back to the cars. I was frustrated. No, I was more than frustrated. I was furious. Ten minutes ago I was terrified and hyped up, bracing myself for the fight of my life against the Yeerks' greatest enemies. Instead we completely missed our best chance to confront them. And now the Andalites were hiding hell-knows-where and plotting hell-knows-what.

"What's the plan?" I asked. "Do we have a plan?"

"I want to go back to the Yeerk ship," Eva answered.

"The scanners will never be able to find individual life forms from that far away," Tidwell reminded her.

"I'm going back because I don't think the pool should be left unguarded right now."

Chapman looked at her. "Will you stay there overnight?"

"Why not? It has sleeping quarters," Eva said with a shrug. "I live alone. Nothing waiting for me at home."

"I live alone too," Tidwell mentioned. "You want company? If anything happened, there's safety in numbers."

Eva nodded. "Thanks."

Chapman handed her the vial of Andalite blood. "When you get there, analyze this. Learn what you can from it. And take the scenic route. Make sure no one and nothing is following you." He glanced around nervously, then leaned close and lowered his voice. "Remember, they can look like anything."

Andalites could disguise themselves as other life forms. It the most dangerous thing about them on a long list of dangerous things.

We all looked around again, searching the darkness carefully. We strained our ears for any kind of noise. Anything that could be a bird or a stray cat, eavesdropping on us.

"I'm going home. I'll let Alison know what happened," Chapman said. "I have a police scanner at the house. I'll tune in and see if they learn anything."

"What do I do?" I asked.

"You should probably go home," Eva said.

"To do what?" I was confused. "I don't really have any equipment there."

"No, I mean," Eva nodded at me, "you should go home."

My eyebrows shot up. "Are you kidding?! Andalites loose in the city. Our biggest emergency ever. And you're benching me?"

"Tom, I get that you're worried and you want to help. But there's really nothing you can do tonight," she said.

"I could guard the ship with you. Safety in numbers, remember?"

"You can't stay out all night," Eva said incredulously. "Aren't your parents expecting you?"

I stammered. Tried not to blush. "I - I can make up an excuse, or something!"

"The police are coming and we don't have time to argue!" Chapman spoke up sharply. "We need to go, now! We will call you tomorrow and think up a better plan. Until then, the best thing to do is regroup, get some rest, and wait to see their next move."

I was about to say something, but Tem interrupted. <They're not wrong, Tom.>

I clenched my jaw. I stared at the three humans.

Was there really nothing more we could do tonight?

"Fine," I grumbled. "But if you learn anything about where they went, no matter what time it is, call me, okay? Don't care about what my mom and dad will think."

We quickly moved the Dracon rifle from my mom's car's trunk to Tidwell's. Tidwell drove Eva to the ship. Chapman went to regroup with Iniss and Alison . . . And I drove home to avoid breaking curfew. As I drove away, I saw in the rear view mirror flashing lights that might have been cop cars arriving at the construction site.

I hated this.

I was physically strong and fast and agile. And Tem was just as smart and educated as any other Yeerk. As a unit, we should have been one of the most capable members of the team. But I couldn't escape my status as the underage kid.

I wanted to be a grown-up.

I wanted to be useful.

I didn't want to be the dumb kid who couldn't even drive to the construction site in time to do anything about the invaders.

I almost slammed my hand hard against the steering wheel. Instead I forced my body to relax and gave Tem full control of the driving. I worried that I was too angry to drive safely.

<How are you able to stay so calm?> I asked him.

<I dunno. Maybe I'm just used to feeling helpless,> he thought sadly.

After a moment, I thought, <Nah, you just have less testosterone than me.>

Tem laughed. <Well, you're not wrong.>

.

I walked through the front door. "I'm home," I called out, not really putting any effort into faking happiness. The adrenaline drained out of me by now. The evening turned out to be really anti-climactic. Now that the Andalites were in hiding, we were reduced to playing a waiting game.

If the Andalites didn't know where the Yeerk ship was, we were still okay. But if they knew already . . . Would Eva and Tidwell really be okay by themselves?

Those thoughts were interrupted when my mom called from the other room. "Is Jake with you?"

"No," I answered. "Why?"

My mom walked into the living room. "It's starting to get late. I was hoping you found each other and you gave him a ride."

"What, you mean he never came home?" I stopped home before going to the pool and Jake wasn't here, but I just assumed he'd get back shortly after I left. His curfew was earlier than mine after all.

"He called after school to say he and Marco were going to the mall," she said. "But he was supposed to be back by now."

<He was at the mall?> Tem repeated in shock.

I froze.

The mall was just a parking lot and a street away from the construction site.

There were two ways to walk home from the mall. One: You stick to the sidewalks and go the long way, completely avoiding the construction site, like Jake was supposed to. Or Two: You take a shortcut through the site, which would have put Jake smack in the middle of where the Andalite ship landed.

<What if Jake got there before we did?> Tem worried. <Did the Andalites see him?!>

<No, Jake's a good kid,> I told him. <He wouldn't break the rules like that. Mom and Dad have threatened to ground us until we're twenty if either of us ever walked through there at night.>

<Didn't stop you, though,> Tem pointed out.

<That's different.>

<Tom . . .>

I sensed his thoughts and tried to cut him off. <He's fine!>

<Tom.> Temrash was concerned, sad, trying to be gentle. <It's a distinct possibility. If Jake went through there to try and get home on time . . .>

. . . Then he would have been there right when the Andalite ship touched down. If the Andalites wanted to eliminate witnesses, they wouldn't have cared that Jake was only a child. And there was blood at the scene. But only alien blood. There was no red human blood. Was there? Did we miss it?

I told myself Tem was just being paranoid. I was being paranoid. Jake could have left the mall earlier. He could have left later. He could have taken a different route. There were a million possibilities. There's no evidence he was ever there.

But the impossible-to-ignore fact was that my little brother was not here!

Right then, when my thoughts were spiraling completely out of control, the front door opened. It was Jake.

I sagged from relief. Then I thought angrily at Tem. <You jerk! You got me worried over nothing.>

<Sorry,> he thought meekly. <I only thought it was possible . . .>

"There you are," our mom said to him.

"I'm sorry," Jake said briskly as he shut the door behind him. "I know I'm late. I'm sorry." He wouldn't make eye contact with us. His face was pale. And he was breathing heavy, like he had been running.

"You should have called," she said. "I'd rather one of us come pick you up instead of you walking alone after dark."

"I know! I'm really sorry!" He sounded guilty, but rushed past us and ran straight up the stairs and towards his room.

"Jake?" she called after him. We heard his bedroom door bang shut. She sighed and shook her head. "I'll talk to him later."

The old me probably would have made a joke. Something like, "it's the day we've been dreading; Jake's officially become a moody teenager" or whatever. But I wasn't in the mood.

I had more important things to worry about.

Chapter Text

Saturday morning. Finally.

Somehow, I fell asleep. But it wasn't a restful night. I was prepared to be woken up at any moment with news that the ship was under attack. But by the time morning came there was still no call from the others.

First thing I did after getting up was to check the morning news on TV, without caring how out-of-character it might have looked to my parents. There was only a brief mention about the "unknown disturbance" in the construction site last night that was "still being investigated" - which was code for "we don't want to admit we have no leads". There was nothing about sightings of strange blue creatures. Wherever the Andalites were, they were apparently lying low. At least in the places the media could see them.

The morning dragged on. Tem and I waited, trying not to go crazy.

The phone rang.

I raced to the kitchen in a mad dash, but my mom answered it first. She'd been waiting there with some papers spread out on the table. "Hey, Madeline. So I read both drafts of the script and - What? Oh. Yeah, hold on." She held the receiver out to me. "It's for you."

"Thanks." I took the phone while giving her my nope-nothing-strange-going-on-here smile.

"Please make it quick. I'm expecting an important call from work," my mom said.

"Sure." I walked as far away as the cord would let me. (If I didn't make it clear before, this took place in the Nineties and cordless phones weren't really popular yet.) I turned away from my mom and spoke quietly. "It's me. What's happening?"

"We're fine," Eva's voice answered. "Nothing happened all night. Proximity sensors confirmed no one even approached the ship. They're not coming after us."

I breathed a sigh of relief I'd been wanting to breathe since last night. "Oh thank goodness."

"You're telling me," Eva said. "Even if the Andalites know we're somewhere on Earth, it's now safe to assume they don't know the pool's exact location. This makes things a lot easier."

"Listen, I can't really talk now. My mom's waiting for the phone." Translation: I can't say anything alien-related because my mom might overhear. "But what's the plan? Are we meeting up?"

"Not yet. Give us an hour or two first. Tidwell and I both want a chance to go home. You know, get a change of clothes. Have some real food instead of astronaut paste. We'll all meet at the ship after that to discuss our next move."

"I can come now while you're doing that." Translation: I can guard the pool while you're gone, just in case.

"Not necessary. I already talked to the Chapmans. Alison's on her way right now."

"Of course she is." Translation: You're leaving me out again.

"Tom, I know you've been worried since last night. But we're probably going to be very busy after today. You should take advantage of the downtime while you still can."

My mom spoke up behind me. "Tom, please. She could be calling right now."

It was the most important alien invasion ever, and I had one older woman telling me to wait around, and another older woman trying to stop me from talking altogether. It was more than a little frustrating. "O-Okay, fine. I gotta hang up now. I'll see you in an hour. Just - Just be safe, okay?" I walked back and hung up the phone.

"You're going out?" my mom asked innocently. "Is everything okay?"

I shrugged, distractedly. "Uh, yeah. There's . . . a thing, and . . ."

Usually, I was disturbingly good at lying to my parents and making up clever cover stories. But this time there wasn't a need. Barely five seconds after I hung up the phone, it rang again.

Mom answered it right away. "Hello? Yes, Madeline. I got them right here. So, in the first draft . . ."

I walked out of the kitchen, leaving my mom to her work.

After an uncomfortable sleep in the ship, bracing themselves for an attack, Eva and Tidwell wanted a break to unwind before jumping back to work. That was fair. But I didn't want a break. I'd been waiting on pins and needles all night - I wanted to do something! I wondered if I should just forget what I told Eva and rush to the ship now.

While Tem and I tried to decide what to do, Homer suddenly started barking from somewhere upstairs, loudly.

Over the barking, I heard my mom saying, "What was that? Fifteenth?" She struggled to hear as the dog continued barking his head off. "Hang on." She poked her head out the kitchen. "Tom, can you please deal with Homer?"

I was already upset. A part of me wanted to say, "you deal with him, I have more important things to worry about". But frustrated as I was, I knew I wouldn't gain anything by making my mom mad too. So what I actually said was, "Fine," and headed upstairs.

Homer didn't usually make this much noise inside the house. Something must have been freaking him out. The last time he made this much racket indoors was when the Evil Ivy attacked.

<You don't think he's barking because the Evil Ivy came back, do you?> Tem worried.

<What do you think it means when I literally have a space alien listening to my thoughts, and I think someone's being too paranoid?> I told him.

Slightly embarrassed, he changed the subject. <You know, from my perspective, I'm the ordinary guy and you're the space alien listening to my thoughts.>

<I'm not an alien.>

<You are to me.>

<I can't be an alien if I'm still on my native planet. You're the immigrant.>

Tem paused. I sensed that he wanted to make a clever comeback, but he couldn't think of one.

That finally put me in a good mood again. Tem was a genius and could pilot spaceships, but I could still outsmart him now and then.

<Oh . . . don't be so smug,> he thought lamely.

By the time I climbed all the steps, Homer had stopped barking. But as long as I was up here, I figured I should check on him anyway. The dog wasn't in the hallway, so he was probably in Jake's room.

I knocked. "Jake, you got Homer in there with you?" I opened the door without waiting for an answer. "Mom's on the phone and -"

It wasn't Jake. It was a skinny blond kid I had never seen before.

I narrowed my eyes. "Who are you?"

"I'm Tobias." Then, as an afterthought, he said, "I'm a friend of Jake's."

Homer was with him. There were dirty clothes all over the floor - which wasn't strange. Jake's room was always a mess. What was strange was that one of Jake's t-shirts was slipped on over Homer's head and front legs.

I stared. "What . . . Why are you dressing up the dog?"

"It was Jake's idea," Tobias answered after a brief moment. "I told him it was weird."

<He needed to be told it was weird?> Tem wondered.

I looked around the room. The only ones here were this Tobias kid, Homer the dog, and me. "Where is Jake?" I asked.

After another brief moment, Tobias said, "He went to find more clothes."

I glanced at the pile of untouched dirty laundry on the floor. Then I looked at Tobias with a raised eyebrow. At that moment - and I'd swear to this in a court of law - the dog looked at him with the same expression.

"Uh-huh." On second thought, I didn't care what they were doing. "Well, our mom's on the phone. So stop torturing the poor guy and keep him quiet, all right?" I kneeled down and rubbed Homer's head. "Understand, boy? Quiet. Shh."

I scratched at Homer's ear, and the dog panted happily. This was actually the closest I've been to Homer in quite a while. He started avoiding me after I bonded with Tem. I was worried that he could smell the Yeerk in me and he hated it, or at least he was weirded out by how I was mysteriously different than what he was used to. But he didn't seem bothered by me now. Maybe he finally got over it.

Well, if the dog could adjust to the new me, maybe there would be hope for my family once they learned the truth.

I left Homer and Tobias, and closed Jake's bedroom door behind me. I casually wondered where Jake really was. Two steps down the hall I thought:

<Wait. He's not stealing my clothes, is he?>

I checked my room. No one there. Nothing missing from the closet either.

I rolled my eyes. Then I flopped backwards onto my bed. Between my mom tying up the phone and my little brother and his friends acting weird, moving out on my own was looking more and more appealing.

.

Not long later, I was feeling impatient again. I wanted to get in touch with the others. Mom was probably off the phone by now. Maybe I could call Alison at the ship or Chapman at home, see if they learned anything.

I went into the kitchen. Mom was gone, but Jake was there - talking on the phone.

I fought down the urge to groan. It felt like not waking up to news that the pool was already destroyed was the only break I was going to catch today. I wished we had a second phone line. Or maybe I should sell some stuff and just buy my own cell phone. It's not like I had no use for one.

Jake glanced at me as I came in. He was hunched over a bowl of cereal as he spoke into the mouthpiece. He quickly looked away from me, perhaps a bit nervously, and quietly said, "I'll just see you there in a couple hours, okay?"

He hung up the phone and resumed eating. So the phone was finally free, but I didn't want to talk about Yeerk-stuff with Jake sitting right there. I also couldn't just stand around waiting for him to leave. I had to act like everything was normal; like the emergency at the construction site never happened. I went to the counter to make some toast, giving myself an excuse to linger until Jake was gone.

I waited. Still.

There were aliens plotting a genocide hiding somewhere in the city . . . and I was standing around waiting to use a phone.

I didn't have time for this nonsense!

<The fighter last night wasn't that big. How many Andalites do you think would be riding it?> I asked Tem bitterly. <Three or four? Not more than four, right?>

<I'm really not an expert on Andalite ships, but about three sounds right,> Tem answered. Then he asked, <Does Jake seem okay to you?>

<What? Yeah, why?>

<I dunno. He seems kind of upset. He was really jumpy last night too.>

I did the mental equivalent of a sigh. <Is it time for another paranoid theory, Temrash? We've already established he wasn't killed last night.>

<Tom, I'm serious. I mean, look at him.>

I turned my head towards the kitchen table.

Jake did seem a little pale. And he was eating his cereal kind of fast. He was definitely anxious about something. He was almost jittery, like he was pumped full of adrenaline, even though he was just sitting at a table.

I remembered how quickly he ended his phone call as soon as I came into the room. Earlier, he was sneaking around to do who-knows-what while his weird friend covered for him. It also wasn't like him to be out as late as he was last night. And when he finally did come home, I remembered the expression on his face. How tired and ragged he looked. But I didn't pay attention because I had my own reasons for being anxious and upset.

Temrash was right. Something was going on with my brother. And I'm ashamed to say an alien noticed it before I did.

I knew Jake and I had been drifting apart for a while, even before I got busy with The Sharing. I told myself it was just part of growing up. But we used to be so close. We used to talk to each other about anything and everything. And now, I was so wrapped up in my own problems that I wasn't even paying attention to him anymore.

Did I . . . really have no time for Jake?

No. Forget my problems. Forget the Andalites. Even if the entire world was in danger, I could spare a few minutes for my little brother.

I put on a smile. Brought my toast to the table, turned a chair around backward and straddled it, sitting across from Jake. I put on a big show of being casual, trying to put him at ease. "Hey. What's going on, midget?"

"Midget" was like my nickname for Jake. I teased him a lot about being smaller than me, but not in a mean way. At least, it wasn't supposed to be mean. I was pretty sure Jake understood that. He was actually big for his age, which is exactly why the nickname's funny.

"Nothing," Jake replied. He didn't make eye contact with me. He seemed to become even more nervous once I sat down. He was pale and twitchy, and I was even more certain something was wrong.

A horrible thought popped into my head: What if he was on uppers?!

<Why would Jake be taking drugs?> Tem asked me.

I paused. <. . . I dunno.>

<Well, you thought it.>

<Well, I guess . . . He's around the age people start pushing drugs on kids, right? So if he's all sweaty and hyped up and nervous around people, it might be uppers.>

<I suppose it's possible.> That was the conscious thought he directed at me, but I could sense subconsciously that he believed I was just being paranoid.

<Shut up. I'm not the one who thought he was abducted by aliens last night,> I shot back.

<Fair enough,> he admitted.

This mental conversation only lasted a moment or two, as I chewed and swallowed my toast in the physical world. Out loud, I casually said, "You sure? 'Cause you seem kinda worried about something."

"I'm fine," he muttered, still refusing to look at me. But he didn't leave. I got the feeling he really did want to tell me something but couldn't bring himself to spit it out.

I didn't want to be casual anymore.

I pushed my plate aside. I stared at Jake's face with a serious expression. "Jake, listen. I know we don't hang out much anymore, but I'm still your big brother. If something's wrong, you can talk to me. Whatever it is. You know that, right?"

That's when Jake finally made eye contact with me, and it broke my heart. He had the expression of a kicked puppy. Or someone who had the weight of the entire world forced onto their shoulders.

A dozen possible problems raced through Tem's and my minds, some teenage and some alien. Was it drugs after all? Or was Jake being bullied? Did he see the Andalite ship last night, and was scared no one would believe him? Did he suspect that there was an alien inside me? Did Marco finally come out of the closet?

Finally, Jake said, "I, uh . . . I didn't make the team."

My theories were all over the place, and yet his answer still caught me off guard. "What team?" I asked, puzzled.

"What team?" he repeated. Abruptly, Jake didn't seem nervous anymore. He switched to looking as puzzled as me. "The basketball team. Your old team."

"Oh." Jake and I had drifted even further apart than I realized. I didn't even know he wanted to try out for basketball.

Wait. He didn't make it? From what I remembered of middle school, the basketball team was really laid back and I was the only player who took winning seriously. I'd have thought the coach would give him a spot just for being my brother. Jake must have been REALLY bad at tryouts if he couldn't even get on that lame team.

<Obviously, I'm not an expert on how to talk to brothers, but you probably shouldn't say that to him,> Tem told me.

Jake was staring at me, waiting for my reaction. I didn't know what to say, so I just made a little shrug and told him, "Too bad."

Jake's face scrunched up in confusion. "Too bad?" he repeated.

Well . . . wasn't it?

I shrugged again. "It's just sports."

His eyes bugged out at me. "It's just sports?"

"Yeah. I mean, jeez, Jake." I rolled my eyes. "Is this what's been bothering you since yesterday? I was worried it was something important."

This was the wrong thing to say.

Jake leaned back in his chair, staring at me strangely. ". . . Something important?"

<Is he going to repeat everything you say?> Tem wondered.

The way Jake was staring at me was starting to make me uncomfortable. "What?"

He blinked. He gestured at me. "Tom, I just can't believe you're talking like this. You're . . . you! You live for sports."

That actually made me a little angry. Was that really how Jake saw me? Like I was just some musclebound jock who only cared about putting a ball through a hoop?

<Please, no one thinks you're musclebound, Tom. You're too lanky for that,> Tem couldn't help but snark.

<Shut up!>

"I do not 'live' for sports," I said bitterly. I shifted in my seat. Diverted my eyes. "I . . . I don't even play anymore," I mumbled quietly.

"You what?" Jake asked.

I looked back at him and finally spat out my littlest secret. "I quit the team, okay?"

"You quit?" With that, Jake nearly fell off his chair. "When?!"

Awkwardly, I said, "A couple days ago." I was rounding down. A lot.

"You quit the team and you didn't even talk to me about it?" Jake continued his little freak-out. "What's the deal?"

I couldn't believe how extreme a reaction Jake was having. I felt like I could have told him there was an alien living in my brain, and pulled Tem out of my ear to prove it, and he would have LESS of a reaction to that.

"Why would I talk to you about it?" I rose my voice. "It's not like I needed your permission. I just wasn't into it anymore, so I quit. It's not a big deal."

"It kind of is."

"No, it's not!" I snapped at him. "I have more important things to do with my time."

Jake blinked at me again. "Like what?" he asked, not rudely, but like he really didn't know. Like he was genuinely confused. Like he couldn't imagine any interests I would have outside of this one thing.

I scowled. "Well, not talking to you, that's for sure!" I stood up and pushed my chair back with a loud scrape. "Basketball's just a game, Jake. Get a life!" I turned and stomped out of the kitchen, ignoring Jake's shocked expression.

I regretted starting the conversation. I had wanted to make Jake feel better, but all I ended up doing was making myself angry.

Tem was silent inside my mind for a few moments. Then he hesitantly said, <I'm sorry for making jokes back there. I shouldn't have distracted you.>

I was still angry. Jake's reaction really bothered me. The worst part was, a year or two ago, his opinion of me would have been right. I would have thought not making the team was a huge tragedy. Because back then, there was literally nothing else I was good at besides basketball.

But I was different now. I was doing really important stuff. I've saved people's lives. Even with just the "front" part of The Sharing, the stuff that wasn't a secret, I did volunteer work and helped the community. But my brother only thought of me as a dumb jock who had nothing going on in his life except a sports team.

Well . . . screw him.

Chapter Text

I rode my bike to the woods. I couldn't ask to borrow my mom's car every single time I went out, not while claiming I didn't need it for anything important. I wanted my family to think I was still a normal teenager who wasn't up to anything special.

Although that kind of made my fight with Jake earlier seem stupid. I should probably apologize to him. But one thing at a time.

I was the first one to meet Ms. Chapman at the ship. Mr. Chapman was last to arrive, and he brought their daughter with him.

"Melissa? Why are you here?" Eva asked with concern. We were meeting to discuss the Andalites, and I knew Eva didn't want to talk about anything scary in front of her.

Wearily, Chapman explained, "She said if I left her at home, she'd follow on her bike and bang on the ship's door until we let her in. She knew this meeting was important and she refused to be left out."

"Good for you!" I grinned and gave Melissa a high-five.

Eva gave a little sigh. Then she said, "Fine. How much do you know already, Melissa?"

"An Andalite ship landed last night, and Andalites are the really bad aliens hunting the Yeerks," she answered.

"Although," her mother Alison spoke up with a hopeful smile, "you never actually saw them, right? For all we know, it could've been a completely different alien in a stolen ship."

"Actually," Eva said with a sad frown, "we analyzed the blood sample we found last night." She looked over to Mr. Tidwell.

Tidwell took his cue and turned on a computer screen. It showed a strand of DNA and a detailed report written in Yeerk language. "There's no mistake. It is Andalite."

Alison sagged. "Oh. So much for that theory."

It was only a slim possibility, but one we all hoped for deep down. Instead, we had confirmation: There was at least one Andalite loose on Earth.

Tidwell pressed more buttons. The screen switched to a picture of the Andalite ship alongside schematics. "We also found a match for the ship in our database. It was a modified, deep space, military fighter. A standard fighter is part of a fleet and rides inside a larger Dome ship. But this model has z-space engines and can make long voyages alone. It's designed for two pilots and up to one passenger, but it can also be flown by a single person if necessary."

"So it's three at the most. That's not too bad, right?" Melissa said.

"One's enough to break the Kandrona," Chapman said grimly.

Tidwell continued. "The ship was already damaged when it landed. Either there was some sort of accident, or an unknown party attacked it on the way. Either way, we're assuming it was too badly damaged to be flown again. So they abandoned ship and activated the self-destruct to stop anyone from scavenging the parts."

"That just seems dumb," Alison said with a shake of her head. "Now, I get they probably couldn't move it to a better hiding spot. But now they have no chance of ever fixing it. How do they plan to get home?"

"Maybe their plan is to steal our ship," I said. "They have no idea it can't fly either."

"I'd like to point out," Eva spoke up, "the Andalite home world is eighty-two light-years away from Earth. If -"

Melissa interrupted. "It's how far? How many miles is that?"

I relayed Tem's answer out loud. "In Earth measurements, one light-year is about five-point-eight-eight trillion miles. So . . ." Tem did the math in my head. I tried to follow along. "Four-hundred-eighty-two trillion. Rounded up."

Her eyebrows shot up. "How long does a trip like that take?"

"It varies. Zero-space sort of shifts around sometimes," I told her. "Right now, I think it takes a couple months, including rest stops."

"No wonder it broke down on the way," Melissa joked.

Eva resumed. "What I'm saying is, the Andalite army is spread thin. If that fighter was traveling with other ships, they'd be in orbit already. But they're not. Therefore, we can assume it'll be a long time before more Andalites come to investigate what happened."

"With three Andalites and nutritional rations for them, there would be very little room for any other cargo," Tidwell said. "Then again, Andalite technology doesn't tend to be very large. We have no way of knowing if they saved any devices from their ship. If they did, it's too small for our scanners to track."

"So to summarize," I said as I crossed my arms, "we're dealing with two Andalites - or maybe one - or three - probably not more. They were attacked by another alien who's on our side - unless they weren't. And they don't have any technology left - unless they do." I nodded. "Well, this is extremely useful info. Should I be writing this down?"

The adults gave me unamused looks. But I saw that Melissa was trying not to smile.

"Fair enough," Tidwell said. "Let's focus on what we do know: The Andalites themselves."

He worked the keyboard, and several more screens lit up. Most of it was text written in Yeerk language - useless to Melissa. But there was one screen showing a picture of our enemy.

An Andalite looks kinda like a cross between a centaur and a scorpion. They were covered in fur, mostly blue, with a bit of tan mixed in. They had a flank with four legs ending in hooves, like a small horse or a large deer. Above that was a torso, two arms, and a head, all humanoid in shape - shape but not appearance. The hands had too many fingers. The head had no mouth. There were two eyes on the face, but two more eyes on stalks growing out the top of its head. At the other end of its body was a tail that curved up and forward, ending in a sharp blade.

"Its tail looks like a scorpion's," Melissa pointed out. "Is it poisonous like a scorpion?"

Tidwell shook his head, keeping his eyes on the screen. "No, but it's very sharp and very fast. It would take only a second to slice through -" He paused awkwardly and looked at Melissa, as if he just remembered how old she was. "- a tree branch."

"It's not their natural bodies we should be worried about," Chapman said. "The most dangerous thing about Andalites is their ability to morph."

"Morph?" Melissa repeated the unfamiliar word.

Eva explained. "It means they become an exact copy of other life forms." She read a screen as she spoke, double-checking her facts. "First they physically touch a creature, and that lets them absorb a DNA sample into their own body. After that, the DNA is inside them forever, and they can use it at any time to become a genetic clone of that creature."

"I didn't know it worked like that," Alison said. "Niss always thought they could turn into anything. But you're saying they can only 'morph' the things they touched at some point. Well, that's not quite as bad."

"It's still very bad," Chapman reminded her. "If only because it lets them heal injuries."

"How do you mean?"

Chapman explained. "Let's say you cut an Andalite's tail off. Then it morphs into a Hork-Bajir. The Hork-Bajir tail is undamaged. So you cut that off too. But then it demorphs back into an Andalite. The Andalite tail also grows back. Every time they morph or demorph, they're essentially growing a brand-new body out of the DNA. Nothing can hurt them for long. Anything less than instant death, and all they have to do is morph and they're good as new."

"That's amazing," Melissa said.

"I don't want them amazing," I snapped. "I want them easy-to-beat, with a big fat bull's-eye on their weak spot. Do they have any kind of weakness?"

Tidwell looked through the files. "They can only stay in morph for up to two Earth hours. If they stay any longer than that, they're stuck in that form permanently and can never morph again."

"That's not a weakness, that's a limitation," I responded. "A weakness is something like Kryptonite, or silver bullets, or holy water. Something that lets us go, 'stay back, or we'll hit you with your weakness!' Anything?"

He looked more thoroughly. "Uh . . . No. Nothing."

"Great. Perfect. You can hit them with a chainsaw, and they'll just shrug it off. Meanwhile, we die in agony if you spill salt on us! This is not a fair match!"

<What do you mean 'we'?> Tem asked. <Salt doesn't hurt humans.>

<I'm trying to show solidarity.>

<Your vocabulary is improving.>

<Thank you.>

"Will they attack the people here? I mean, the humans?" Melissa asked.

Eva shook her head. "Not likely. They are known to attack allies of the Yeerks. But if they think you have nothing to do with them, they'll ignore you. I'm pretty sure they even have a law against getting involved with 'primitive' species. At the very least, we don't have to worry about them going on a rampage throughout the city."

"That's right," Tidwell said. "They're more likely to lie low, and search for the Yeerks stealthily."

"So we need to find them before they find us. Now, where could they be hiding? Any suggestions?" Eva asked.

"There are some abandoned buildings in the city," Tidwell said. "We could search all of them one by one."

"Or maybe they went back to the construction site after the police left," Alison said.

"Wherever they go, the first thing they'll do is acquire local morphs," Chapman said. "They'll want to observe humans unnoticed. Learn everything they can about this new planet."

"How do Andalites eat without a mouth?" Melissa asked.

The randomness of the question made us all pause.

I stared at her. "Does that really matter right now?" I asked.

Chapman ignored me and answered, "They have a kind of mouth in their hooves. They eat by stepping on grass."

"Then they'll set up their base somewhere where there's lots of grass, right?" Melissa said. "Just like you keep coming here for Yeerk food, the Andalites will keep going back for Andalite food."

We all paused again. Looked at each other.

This time I smirked. Leave it to the little kid to point out the obvious solution.

"Of course," Eva said. "They went to the forest - this forest. It's the natural Andalite habitat. Plus, there're plenty of Earth animals here to acquire. They'll explore the city in a morph, and then come back here to rest."

"But the forest is enormous," Alison complained. "It goes all the way out to the mountains. We'll never find them."

Then Chapman said, "If even one Andalite has free rein of the woods here, then it's only a matter of time until they stumble onto this clearing."

The next part didn't need to be said out loud. We were all thinking it.

They find this huge clearing inside the woods, they find the mound of upturned dirt, they realize it's a spaceship buried underground. With just us five hosts, we couldn't possibly guard the ship 24/7. If the Andalites break inside while there's no host to defend the Kandrona, it's an automatic Game Over.

"There's no choice," Chapman said. "It's time to move the Yeerk pool to a more secure location."

"Do you have a more secure location?" Melissa asked.

Chapman went to the computer console. "We always knew we might have to move the pool one day. We've all been looking for alternate hiding spots. So far, this seems like best option."

He brought up a map of the city, then zoomed in to a single building. He pulled up floor plans of the building . . . and a diagram of what lay beneath it. "There's an abandoned building downtown. It's been empty for years. And deep underground is a cavern, with a path leading up to the building's basement. We know the cavern is of alien origin, but we have no idea which species made it. Or what they made it for. Or how long it's been there. But it seems to have been abandoned for even longer than the building. And without their ship's scanners, the Andalites will never even know it's there."

I nodded. "So we break into the building, hide the Yeerks and Kandrona underground, and hope the mystery aliens don't come back and kick us out . . . It's as good a plan as any, I guess."

"But we'll need to return there every three days," Tidwell said. "What happens if someone notices us sneaking in?"

"Then we'll claim The Sharing is renovating it," Chapman replied.

"What if someone buys the building?"

"Then we'll deal with that as it happens," Chapman replied. "If we're gonna move, we need to do it right away, before the Andalites have time to explore the woods. I say we transfer the Yeerks and the Kandrona tonight, so they're safe, and then move the computer equipment more gradually."

Eva raised her eyebrow and gestured to the pool. "Shouldn't we let the other Yeerks have a say in this plan?"

Chapman looked at her a bit skeptically. "I highly doubt they want to stay in the 'natural Andalite habitat'."

"All the same, I think we should keep them involved in this decision," Eva responded. "They're the ones moving."

Chapman stared for a moment. Then he nodded. "Fair enough."

We wrote a message on the computer. Eva and Tidwell already let them know last night about the Andalite ship. Now we explained our proposal for the new headquarters. We explained that moving might mean losing the computer for a few days, but staying in the woods might mean the Andalites finding them. We asked for a vote. Once we finished writing, a special pulse vibrated through the Yeerk pool, letting everyone know there was an urgent message that needed everyone's attention. With limited terminals inside the pool, it would take a while for everyone to have a turn.

"So, we have a plan for keeping the Kandrona safe, but we still don't really have a way of stopping the Andalites, huh?" I muttered bitterly.

Melissa raised her hand. "Um, I have a dumb question."

"There are no dumb questions, sweetie," Alison assured her. "Go ahead."

Hesitantly, she asked, "Do we actually know the Andalites are looking you? I mean, I know they were bad guys in the past. But isn't it possible these ones are just lost or something?"

"Yes, it's possible," Tidwell answered. "It's just not a risk we can take. Besides, it was a military ship."

I added, "You gotta remember, Melissa. These are the people who shot down every. Single. Refugee ship, except this one. They murdered the entire Yeerk species. And they killed hosts by the thousands along with them." I continued while ignoring the glares Mr. and Ms. Chapman were giving me, telling me I was scaring their daughter. "Now they're on the same planet as the only Yeerks left in the universe. We can't assume it's just a coincidence."

She winced a little. "I guess it was a dumb question."

"It really wasn't," Chapman replied. "The entire species isn't made up of blood-thirsty monsters. Elfangor wasn't like that."

"Elfangor?"

Chapman glanced away, calling up old memories. "Elfangor-Sirinial-Shamtul. I met him a long time ago - many years before I bonded with Iniss. He was . . . Well, he wasn't a saint. But he was decent. He spoke out against the military's genocide plan. He was sick of all the killing."

"You know a friendly Andalite?" Tem had no idea there was such a thing. The idea got us excited. "Well, call him! Maybe he can reason with the ones here now."

"He's dead," Chapman said flatly. Quietly, he added, "Died a long time ago."

"Oh." Tem's and my spirits dropped. So much for that.

We got the results in less than half an hour. 62 in favor of the move to the underground cavern. 23 against or undecided. One didn't vote. (And we all knew who. Akdor was a weirdo who never used the computer and refused to talk with anyone.)

It was settled. We were moving the Yeerk pool. Today.

"Begin Operation Exodus," Alison said dramatically.

"It didn't need a fancy name," Eva said.

"It's depressing how you think that."

Chapter Text

First, Mr. Tidwell went out to rent a moving van. Something small and cheap that he could get right away.

The rest of us stayed behind and packed. There were more than enough containers in the back room to hold all the Yeerks and most of the liquid.

For the first time since the ship arrived on this planet, we shut off the life-giving Kandrona.

Gently, slowly, with our sleeves rolled up and pitchers sunk deep into the liquid, we scooped all 86 Yeerks out of the pool and placed them into the smaller tanks. Melissa helped too. Her parents said she didn't have to - we could all tell she was a little grossed out by the Yeerks' slimy slug-like bodies. But she was sweet enough to pretend it didn't bother her and volunteered anyway.

Only one Yeerk gave us any trouble. Every time I reached with my pitcher, they swam away. They absolutely refused to be caught. Tem groaned through my mouth. "Somehow, Akdor, I know that's you." But I got them eventually.

We moved faster after that, working together like an assembly line. We drained the pool. Unhooked the computer. Disassembled the Kandrona into parts easier to carry. And we began moving things out of the ship. Even with six human bodies, it took many trips to carry everything out of the woods and into the waiting van.

These woods were as familiar to me as the ship was. I'd lost count of the number of times I walked this path. I noticed a squirrel looking at me from a tree branch.

I stopped walking. I just stood there, holding a tank of Yeerks in my arms, staring back.

The squirrel hadn't moved. It was just watching me . . . Was that normal?

I wasn't really sure how long it took (Just a few seconds. Not that long. Right?) but the squirrel eventually broke off the staring contest. It scurried up the tree and I lost sight of it in the leaves. But I didn't relax.

Tem and I were both silent inside my head, but we were suddenly hyper-aware of a lot of animals in the forest. There were bird calls from somewhere nearby. A harmless little garter snake was slithering under a bush. Ants were digging out of the ground.

Our deadliest enemy could be any of them.

I never paid much attention to the wildlife in these woods, except to stay out of their way and occasionally check myself for ticks. I never had to think about what "normal" behavior looked like in animals. So would I be able to notice an impostor if I saw one? But even if I could, there were too many creatures here. It would be impossible to check every one of them. We were a parade of humans carrying Yeerks in crates. We were completely exposed. Exposed and surrounded by hundreds of eyes. What if they tried to follow us to the new hideout? Anything - literally anything - watching us could be-

I flinched when a hand touched my shoulder. It snapped Tem's and my attention away from the woods and back to my own body. We hadn't realized how fast my heart was pounding.

Eva looked up at me, keeping her hand on my shoulder. "You okay?"

I couldn't respond right away. Tem couldn't do it for me, either.

But of course, Eva seemed to know exactly what I was thinking. She probably had the same thoughts herself. "It's very unlikely they found the clearing this fast. The forest is so large, it's possible they'll never find the clearing at all. This move is just a precaution. Remember that."

"Yeah, I know," I said. I pulled away from her and resumed walking.

There was nothing Tem or I could do about all the wildlife except ignore it. So that's what we tried to do.

.

Tidwell had also brought pizza when he returned with the van. It felt appropriate to me, since we also had pizza the very first day I came to the ship. We took turns with our lunch breaks while the others kept moving. During my break, I borrowed Chapman's cell phone to call home.

"Listen, Mom. I don't really know if I'll be back in time for dinner or not. We're gonna be pretty busy for the rest of the day."

"Is it that Sharing club again?" she asked. "But you were just there last night."

"It's not that exactly. One of the members, Mr. Tidwell - he's also a teacher at my school, maybe you remember him - anyway, he's moving to a new house. It was supposed to be later this month. But he just found out someone made a mistake in his lease paperwork, so he has to be out of his old address by today. So The Sharing is pitching in to help him pack up and move."

I prepared this cover story and cleared it with Tidwell and the others. In the unlikely event my mom called my bluff, those responsible adults would confirm my story. There was no risk of being caught.

"They're making you help with that?" she asked incredulously.

"No one's 'making' me, Mom. It's just, he needed all the help he could get, and I want to help."

"Oh. Well, that's generous of you. I hope he appreciates it."

I chuckled. "He won't bump up my grades for this if that's what you mean. Nothing would ever make him do that."

I felt guilty about how easy it was to lie to her. There was never anything in my expression or tone that made either of my parents suspicious. I had a natural talent for acting that I never would have discovered if it wasn't for all these secrets I had to lie about.

"Anyway, I probably won't be home until after dark. If I miss dinner, I'll just grab something quick while I'm out."

"You know, Tom. Ever since you joined that club, it seems like you're always busy with some project. Remember to take some time for yourself and have a little fun, too."

"I'm fine, Mom." Another lie. "Don't worry . . . Hey, is Jake there?"

"He was at Cassie's earlier, but he just got home. He's upstairs with Marco now. Do you want to talk to him?"

I paused.

"No . . . No, that's fine. I'll see you later. Bye." I hung up.

.

We didn't expect to get everything out of the ship in one day, but we got more than I hoped. In the end, we spent hours carrying stuff through the woods to the moving van. We were deliberately waiting until it was closer to sunset before driving downtown.

When it finally did start start approaching dusk, we drove to the new hideout. Tidwell and Chapman drove the moving van, while the rest of us followed in Alison's car.

It was a very old building. And it was in an old area near the center of the town. There wasn't much activity here, but it was actually a great location. Not too far from any of our homes. I loved the spaceship hidden in the woods, but I was looking forward to an easier commute.

We took a back alley and got the moving van behind the building. We didn't have to worry much about human witnesses at this time of day. Besides, no one paid any attention to this building for a long time. The backdoor had an old, rusted padlock.

"Did anyone think to bring bolt cutters?" Tidwell asked.

"I did." I took out my pocket-size Dracon beam.

TSEW! The broken padlock pieces fell to the pavement.

"It's cut," I announced.

Chapman went in first, holding a portable scanner. The rest of us were right behind him, looking around with flashlights.

The place seemed completely empty. No furniture or trash. Just a little dust. The air was stale. There were light switches and ceiling lamps, but the power was off. We found a bathroom but assumed the water was shut off as well. There was no sign that anyone had been here for ages. Chapman walked through each room and waved the scanner around to be absolutely sure.

"No Andalites. No human squatters. Not even rats," he announced. "The building's clear."

We went down to the basement. Also empty, and much darker. Chapman scanned the back wall, the green glow of the device illuminating his face.

"The entrance to the cavern is behind this wall. The drywall's thin, but it's solid. We'll need to break through it. Eva?"

Chapman stepped out of the way as Eva stepped forward and aimed with the full-size Dracon rifle.

FSHOOM!

She fired one shot, blasting a big hole in the wall. The drywall was thin and old, and it didn't take much at all to begin crumbling. Just a few shots later, and the entire wall was gone, revealing another wall behind it.

The new wall was a set of double doors. I went forward to touch it. It was so smooth and cold I couldn't tell if it was rock or metal. In the center where the doors met was a circular pattern with a few tiny red lights. I assumed it was some kind of locking mechanism. If it was also a symbol from some alien culture, Tem didn't recognize it.

"Here's what I don't get," Alison spoke up. "We're assuming they built the building on top of this without knowing it was here, right? But how on Earth could a construction crew dig out this basement and not notice it was right next to an ominous underground lair?"

"Perhaps the aliens who made the cavern were also the ones who built the building?" Eva suggested.

"Iniss and I each have another theory," Chapman said. "Iniss thinks nobody ever found the cavern because it was hidden by some type of psychic perception filter, which has since stopped working due to old age."

"And your theory?"

"People are just stupid."

I got out a handheld computer device. I was planning to try and hack into the lock mechanism to get it open, but I quickly realized it wasn't necessary. It wasn't locked. The cavern really was abandoned.

I pulled, and the doors slid open. Behind them were stairs leading down.

It wasn't a very long walk down. But it felt long, in the darkness. We only had our flashlights and the green shine of the scanner's screen. But once we reached the bottom, the room lit up. The light came from thin lines in strange shapes carved into the rock walls and ceiling. Motion activated, I supposed. It was only a dim light, but it was enough for us to see.

The cavern was large. Larger than our ship. Possibly larger than the meadow the ship hid in. The walls weren't as smooth as the door. It looked like natural rock, except for the faint lights coming from within. There was also writing carved into the walls, in between the glowing hieroglyphics, but it was a language Tem didn't know. Chapman didn't recognize it from his pre-Yeerk alien encounters either. We would later learn that the language was too old for even our computer to translate. None of us had any idea what it meant or who wrote it.

Strangely, the air seemed less stale here. I don't know how that was possible with the entrance sealed off. The cavern looked ancient, but the aliens who made it used deceptively advanced techniques.

Chapman looked around the empty cavern. He turned to face us. "Well, this is it . . . Any thoughts?"

Alison walked along and said, "It's a little dark, but a few lamps will fix that right up. Some here, some here. Maybe one of those fancy UV lamps that imitate real sunlight. The Yeerks get artificial sunlight, why not the humans? We'll put the generator here. The computers will be against the walls. The pool will go right in the middle. Well, maybe not the middle. Maybe closer to the stairs. And speaking of the stairs, I'd love if we could cut down on all the walking. Maybe there's a way to convert it to a dropshaft? If we could, that'd make it real easy to bring down a nice sofa now that we have the room."

Tidwell chuckled. "We'd better set up the pool before Alison claims this space for herself."

.

Bringing all the equipment down the stairs wasn't a problem. We had a mag-lev tray that slid down the stairs like a dolly rolling down a ramp.

We set up the pool quickly. The original pool was built into the floor of the refugee ship, but the ship came with a spare that could be assembled outside for exactly this reason. It was a cheaply-made thing, but it snapped together easily, was about as big as the original, and didn't leak. Soon, the 86 Yeerks were swimming inside safely.

Then we reassembled the all-important Kandrona. Eva connected it to the pool, did a final safety check, and - as we all held our breath - switched it on . . . It worked perfectly.

Melissa looked confused at the others' relief. "Was there a chance it wouldn't?"

"Well, we did take it apart and put it back together for the first time," her mom answered. "You never know."

Eva examined the lights on the machine. "But the power cell is running. Connection is good. The liquid is receiving Kandrona rays. The new Yeerk pool is officially good to go."

"We still need to set up a computer terminal for them," Chapman said.

"I'll let Illim inside so he can update the others in person," Tidwell said with a smile. He paused when he saw my face. "What's wrong, Tom? You look almost disappointed."

They all turned to look at me. Tidwell was right; I wasn't smiling. I didn't feel good.

"It's just . . . I feel like we haven't accomplished anything," I said. "All we did today was find a new hiding spot - so we could run and hide. The Andalites are still somewhere in the woods. We have no way of finding them. And even if we could find them, we don't really have a way of stopping them. There's no Andalite ship we can send them home in. So . . ." I shrugged helplessly. "So how do we win?"

The whole group was silent. They looked mostly uncomfortable now.

Except Chapman. He was completely unworried. Or at least he acted like it. "We don't have to win. We just have to make sure we don't lose. As long as they can't find the pool, we're okay."

He looked around the group. "Look, I get it. We all panicked when we heard Andalites were here. I did too. And we do need to be careful, but we don't need to act like frightened rabbits! This isn't an army of invincible super-demons, it's a tiny group of guerrilla soldiers, and they can be defeated."

Melissa cheered up. "Dad's right. Quantum Kindred could read minds, teleport, and put the entire town to sleep, and it still couldn't beat us. We can survive whatever a few shapeshifters throw at us."

"And think about it from their perspective," Alison spoke up. "They're stranded on an alien planet, alone, with no ship. If they know anything about humans, they know exposing themselves will cause a big panic. It's entirely possible they're not looking for us at all. They might just lie low and wait for reinforcements to come."

I looked at her expectantly. "And when they do come?"

"We may not have a way of stopping the Andalites now," Eva said. "But there are a lot of aliens out there who don't approve of what they're doing. If we're lucky, one of them will come to Earth first, and maybe they will have a way of stopping them."

"That's a big maybe," I said.

"We just have to accept that there's no instant solution here," Chapman said. "We're playing the long game. Now that the Kandrona is safe, we can afford to be patient and wait for an opportunity."

Despite everything all of them were saying, I still couldn't stop worrying. Neither could Tem. When our emotions were in sync, feeding each other, it was hard to break the loop and feel anything else.

"But the Andalites could still find this building. The Kandrona's not completely safe yet."

"We'll never be completely safe. No one ever is," Tidwell said darkly. "We can be hit by a bus, or get cancer, or struck by lightning. Tragedy can strike at any time, with or without aliens. We have no choice but to accept that and keep living our lives anyway."

At the sight of his sad expression, I didn't dare argue. Tidwell's wife died over a year ago. We all knew, but we tried not to bring it up.

Tidwell brightened up a little before continuing. "But we are safer than we were. It's a lot harder to notice anything suspicious about this building than to find an empty meadow in the middle of the woods. And we can use alien technology to secure the door's lock. It's not a hundred percent, but I think we'll be okay."

Less than 100 percent. Was that really enough, with 91 lives on the line?

I've always been a sore loser. It was hard for me to accept that there was no way to win anytime soon.

But Tem had grown up blind, deaf, and limbless. And he was much more patient than I was. He was more ready to admit there were certain things that just couldn't be done. <They're not wrong, Tom.>

I took a breath. "We don't have to win, we just have to make sure we don't lose . . . right?"

"We will win someday," Chapman said confidently. "Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow -"

Alison suddenly spoke in a deep voice. "- But soon, and for the rest of your life!" That made Eva and Tidwell laugh a little. Even Chapman smirked.

Melissa looked up at me, confused. I shrugged. It wasn't a Yeerk joke.

.

We unloaded the rest of the moving van that evening, but we just left the equipment lying around in the cavern. Setting it up would take more time. We were all getting tired after the long day, especially the others. None of them were as athletic as I was (just saying).

We would come back tomorrow. We would get the computer and everything else up and running a little bit at a time. At some point, we would make a second trip to the old ship to get everything we left behind today. It would take a few more days before our new headquarters was finished.

But right now we had the pool, the Kandrona, and a lock for the door. That was the important thing. Everything else could wait.

Andalites were not nocturnal. They were supposed to spend their nights sleeping somewhere deep in the forest. Anxiety still ate away at my gut, but I had to believe that, even unguarded, the Yeerks in the pool would be safe at night.

Well, that building was a shorter commute from my home than the woods were. It would be easier for me to check on them more often. So there's that.

I got my bike out of the moving van and rode home. It was dark, but I made it to the suburbs and my house just fine.

Exhausted, physically and emotionally, I walked through the front door. "I'm home," I called.

My mom and dad were watching TV in the living room. "Hi, hon."

"Did I miss dinner?" I asked.

"I left a plate for you in the microwave," my mom said.

"Thanks." I was very thankful. All I had to eat before getting home was the last slice of cold pizza.

"You were out pretty late," my dad said, looking a little concerned. "Everything go okay?"

"Yeah," I answered as I walked past them. "Even with all of us working together, it took a while to pack and unload the truck," I said, refreshingly honest. "Mr. Tidwell's all settled in now, though." I'd use another cover story for going out tomorrow.

I went into the kitchen. Jake was there, doing homework at the table. He seemed better than he did this morning, but he didn't pay much attention to me as I entered the room. I awkwardly walked past him to the microwave.

<You shouldn't put this off,> Tem reminded me. I knew he was right.

A minute later, I brought my reheated food to the table, sitting across from my brother.

"Jake?" I said softly. He looked up at me. He didn't look upset; just normal. Still feeling awkward, I shrugged a shoulder. "I'm sorry I yelled earlier. And I'm sorry you didn't make the team like you wanted."

He nodded. "It's no big deal," he said. I didn't know if he meant the fight or not making the team.

Jake went back to reading his textbook, and I ate in silence.

A few minutes later, I spoke up again. "Hey, I'm kinda tired tonight. But sometime tomorrow, maybe we could shoot some hoops. Just you and me. One-on-one."

<Don't say it,> I told Tem, a second before he could joke about how it'd technically be two-on-one.

Jake blinked. It had been months since I had done anything with him like play basketball. He smiled. "Yeah?"

"Sure. Just 'cause neither of us are on a team, that doesn't mean we can't have fun playing with each other."

Jake smiled wider and nodded. "Okay, cool. Tomorrow then."

"Looking forward to it," I said in a rare moment of total honesty.

I took a deep breath - Tem and I, together - and for the first time in a full day, we relaxed.

The Andalites were still out there, looking for us. We'd have to stay on our guard indefinitely.

But just for that night, Tem and I told each other to put it out of our minds. That house was our safe space. At that moment, there at home, in front of my little brother, I felt safe.

IF ONLY I KNEW . . .

.

That night feels like a lifetime ago.

I'm tied with rope to a wooden chair. I'm inside an old wooden shack; a depressing, half-fallen-down mess with log walls and a roof that only covers half the place. I'm miles away from the life-giving Kandrona.

Tem and I panic. I struggle against the rope. I rock with my whole body, grunting with effort, desperate to escape. But the rope doesn't break. My wrists and legs have no leeway at all.

I can't break free!

I look in front of me. My captor stands there, looking down back at me.

My captor looks exactly like the same little brother I watched grow up - but not really. Jake's face was never used to make this expression before. He looks down at me with absolute hatred.

"Three days, Yeerk. In three days you will die. Tick tock."

Chapter Text

My name is Temrash. The human I live inside is named Tom.

I can't tell you my last name . . . because I don't have one. That's a human thing. Or a Hork-Bajir thing. Yeerks like me just have one name.

We used to have numbers in our names. A long time ago, before my ancestors left our native planet, there were dozens of thousands of Yeerks living in every pool. There were so many of us, we needed numbers just to keep track of everyone. There was a Temrash 111, a Temrash 112, a Temrash 113, and so on.

This generation, there are so few of us left that we don't need to double-up on names. I am the only Yeerk in the universe named Temrash. I am Temrash 001, I suppose.

I lived in a city filled with humans, and none of them knew my name. No one can see me while I'm bonded to my host. When people looked at Tom's body, they had no way of knowing I was inside his head, watching and listening.

It's a lonely way to live. But that's the way it had to be because the Andalites were out there.

Tom walked down the sidewalk, his long legs carrying us through his neighborhood. We passed by a pet dog on a leash, being walked by its human owner - at least that's what it looked like.

"Hey there," Tom smiled politely at the older human woman. But we did a cautious glance at the dog.

We passed someone's front yard, and we noticed a squirrel sitting on a tree branch. It looked at Tom for a second, then it turned and ran up the tree trunk.

They could be anything.

We left the suburbs and entered the downtown area. A stray cat stared at Tom as it relaxed on a window sill. Tom kept walking, though he and I both felt uneasy under its gaze.

We heard wings flapping. Tom looked up and saw a black bird flying across the rooftops. We ignored it. To a crow, Tom just looked like an ordinary human.

Andalites could morph into the shape of any animal they touched. They're as good at hiding as us Yeerks. There were only a couple of them on Earth, so they weren't everywhere. But they were anywhere.

In the old part of the downtown district, we came up to a certain building. As Tom walked he looked around himself, acting casual, checking that no one was watching him - and without breaking stride he turned and went around to the building's back door.

The back door was sealed with a shiny new padlock. Tom took a key out of his pocket and unlocked it.

Again, he looked around the back alley and up to the sky. No creatures in sight - human or otherwise. Then Tom quickly went inside the building and closed the door behind him.

.

The underground Yeerk pool cavern. The Sharing's secret headquarters. Tom wanted to name it "the Batcave" but he was solidly outvoted. Right then, it was mostly a mess of unpacked boxes, but it was starting to "shape up", as the humans say. The core computer terminal was against the wall, and a few long wires connected it to the pool itself.

Tom crouched down with his right ear above the pool. I disconnected from his brain, squeezed out through his ear, and dropped.

This part was always a little scary and fun. For half a second, I was falling through the air. Blind, touching nothing, moving fast and completely out of my control.

Then I hit the surface. I sank into the liquid with a splash. It wasn't water. It was thicker, warm, filled with nutrients, and energized with Kandrona rays. I soaked it up. Once again, I was inside the Yeerk pool.

I couldn't hear Tom's thoughts anymore. I was just me again. Yeerk in body, individual in mind.

I was blind. I was deaf - well, sort of deaf. Yeerks can sense sound vibrations, but it's different from "hearing" as humans know it.

But unlike a deafblind human, I had another sense. Like sonar or echolocation, it told me the distance and the vague shape of things. It was mostly useless in air; I would only notice something that was right next to me. But the range was farther in liquid.

Another Yeerk brushed up against me. They moved to touch their palps to my palps. That's how we talked; we transfered our thoughts through touch. Yeerks couldn't read each other's thoughts as seamlessly as we could connect to a host's brain, but it was enough to communicate.

Every Yeerk conversation starts the same: <Who is this?> We identified ourselves. <Welcome back, Temrash.> I was famous as one of the few Yeerks living outside the pool. They tried to make small talk, but I politely ended the conversation and moved away. I wasn't in the mood to talk during this feeding.

Since I got a host, some other Yeerks accused me of acting, as humans put it, "stuck up". I wasn't, though. I hoped. I didn't think I was better than them . . . but there's no denying I was different. The proof was that I kept thinking in human expressions.

It's easy for a host to imprint on you. Before I met Tom, I didn't realize how easy it was. It was more than just switching my pronouns from "they/them" to "he/him".

Maybe I wasn't a "normal" Yeerk anymore . . . whatever that meant.

.

I wasn't born on the Yeerk home world. I was never in a natural pool dug into rock or soil. Instead, I was born inside a refugee ship traveling through zero-space. It was, as literally as possible, the middle of nowhere. My pool was held in sleek and sterile metal, with a community of about a hundred people, eating artificial sunlight from a generator.

But it had a great computer. I could plug in my palps and upload the words directly to my mind. It was so much more advanced than Earth technology (just saying). I loved reading information that way. I used to read through the encyclopedia for almost a whole cycle at a time.

To be blunt, there was nothing else to do . . . except talk with my Yeerk siblings. And they're nice - most of them - but they didn't have any more to say than I did.

Some of the other Yeerks were fine with the way things were. They're content just swimming in the pool and eating Kandrona rays. Relaxing all day, every day. But I hated it. I hated being stuck inside a pool, inside a ship, in the middle of deep space, and later in the middle of a forest, on an alien planet. I felt isolated from everything.

Yeerks are symbionts. We didn't evolve to stay in our pools forever. We're meant to bond with other creatures and explore the world.

The Ancient Yeerks - the space-travelling Yeerk Empire - took their hosts by force and enslaved them. The Andalites counter-attacked with a prion virus that mutated the whole species. As a result, Modern Yeerks like me have a whole mess of health problems to deal with. Most importantly, we can't control a host who resists us. Even when they don't resist, we don't have the strength to move the body for long periods.

On one side, that might be a good thing. Without the temptation to control hosts by force, it was easier for Yeerks and their hosts to have a peaceful relationship. We could live together as one creature, like the Ancient Yeerks should have done from the start.

But on the other side, that only works if you're lucky enough to find a cooperative host. You don't know what their mind will be like ahead of time. Imagine bonding with another person only to find out that they're evil. Oops! Too late now! You're completely in your host's power. You have no way of stopping them from bringing you away from the pool and starving you to death.

I was unbelievably lucky to get Tom as a host. He's not selfish or xenophobic at all. He has some self-esteem issues because he's, let's say, not a genius. But he'll fight with everything he has to protect those he cares about. And the body itself is nice too. He didn't even plan to become a host, but once it happened he "embraced it with open arms", as the humans say.

I remembered when I first felt that violent current in the pool - Tom shoving his hand in and trying to grab a Yeerk. The other Yeerks were startled and swam away from the thrashing. But I thought: This is my chance! And swam towards it.

In retrospect, it was more likely to be an attacker trying to hurt us than a potential host. I rushed in without thinking things through at all. Maybe it's not just imprinting. Maybe Tom and I were similar from the start.

.

I finished feeding on Kandrona rays. I was good for another three days.

I swam towards the surface. My sonar found the outline of a human ear submerged in the liquid. I pressed myself against the ear, felt for the hole, and squeezed myself into it.

The human ear canal really wasn't designed for Yeerk entry. The first time I made this trip, I basically had to break through by force. I did some damage to the small bones and eardrum, not knowing what they were. Fortunately, they mostly healed, and I now knew how to move them aside without breaking them.

Soon I reached the skull. It had a small hole sealed by a membrane. I slid it open and went inside. I touched the brain and felt the tingle of electricity. I kept moving forward, stretching my body flat, until I was completely inside the skull and covering as much of the brain as possible. I sank down deep into the brain matter, attaching my neurons to its neurons.

Then, I plugged into the senses. I could feel everything in that body. It was like I transformed into a human. His body was my body. Our body was our body.

This body didn't have sonar. But it had sight, which was much more effective. I could sense things from very, very far away. Even at a distance, I noticed not just the basic shape but precise details. I saw colors and brightness and other things unhosted Yeerks didn't even have a concept of. If I didn't have Tom's memories to work with, I wouldn't even know how to use most of this information.

Another major change was my size. In Earth measurements, as a Yeerk, I was a few ounces in weight and a few inches in length. As a human, I was hundreds of times heavier, and my head was several feet above the ground. Sonar wouldn't even be able to reach that far down.

I was a giant! Even by human standards, Tom's body was above-average height.

<Thank you,> Tom proudly replied after I thought that.

This body was athletic too. Tom spent years practicing sports, which is a type of human game that tests physical ability. As a result his muscles were strong, he could run fast, and he had lots of stamina. Tom was a little vain about his body, but I suppose he was right to be. I was lucky to have a body like this.

It wasn't all good, though. Unlike us Yeerks, who reproduce by fission, humans reproduce sexually. And Tom happened to be at the stage of maturity where he had enough hormones to fill up a pool and spill over . . . The dreams I have been forced to watch. You don't want to know . . .

<I didn't exactly ask for all these hormones either,> Tom often reminded me.

But having a host was more than just a body and hormones. It's connecting your mind to their mind. For three days at a time, I knew everything Tom ever did in his life. I felt his emotions. We heard everything the other thought, sharing information as fast as we could think it. Communication was redundant. Addressing each other was done merely for making conversation. It was a closer friendship than I could ever have with another Yeerk.

It was possible to hide my thoughts from Tom. I think that was normal for the Ancient Yeerks. But doing it all the time would have been so much effort. It felt more natural to just let our minds blend together.

We weren't two separate creatures: Temrash and Tom. But we also weren't one creature. It was a strange middle ground between the two. Only someone who experienced mental symbiosis themselves could really understand.

And I loved it. But sometimes I wondered . . . was it possible to bond too deeply?

When we separated during my feedings, I didn't keep perfect recall of his memories, but I still had my own memories of our time together. They changed my perspective on things.

There were some Yeerks who didn't want a host at all. They feared the host's brain would overpower them; like they'd be reduced to extra software for the host's brain to use. I dismissed that as paranoid nonsense. But wasn't it true that human culture, and Tom specifically, was rubbing off on me? Was I "going native"?

That never seemed to happen to the Ancient Yeerks. But post-virus Yeerks were almost like a new species. There was little information on the long-term effects symbiosis would have on us.

I wasn't scared exactly. But now and then, I wondered.

If a Yeerk's biological function was to become part of another species . . . then what did it even mean for a Yeerk to stop being a Yeerk?

Chapter Text

My name is Temrash. The human I live inside is named Tom.

We returned from the Yeerk pool to Tom's home. It was a house, which is a specific type of building surrounded by grass, designed for a single human family.

Tom had one sibling and two parents, and they all lived together. This was a common arrangement for humans, though not invariable. Human families are certainly always smaller than the hundred-person litters of Yeerks.

In the upstairs hallway, Tom was walking towards his room when we heard sound from behind us. "Hey, Tom. Can we talk for a minute?"

Humans communicate by sound. Their throats and mouths could send words through the air like ripples across water. It took months for the ship's computer to teach me a new alien language, but connecting to Tom's brain let me learn English in an instant.

Tom turned around to see his dad, his male parent. "What's up?" Tom asked casually.

Humans also communicate visually. The subtle movements of their bodies and faces signaled their emotions. Right then, I could tell Tom's dad was gentle but also serious. "I heard from Jake that you quit the basketball team."

<Of course Jake told him,> Tom thought bitterly. It took all of his willpower and some of my help to stop himself from rolling his eyes and groaning - a rude show of annoyance.

Let me explain: Basketball was a game. The basic goal was to physically move a sphere across the area over and over. A basketball team was a way for students to play it regularly after school. Tom's dad was a fan of the game, and he was proud of his son's talent.

"Is that true?" his dad asked.

Tom had been stalling this conversation for weeks. He wished he could skip it altogether.

"Uh . . . Yeah," Tom said at last.

"Why didn't you say anything?" his dad asked.

Was he angry? Probably not, but maybe a little disappointed. Human faces couldn't tell you everything.

"I guess," Tom said awkwardly, "I was worried you'd make a big deal out of it. When Jake heard, he acted like the sky was falling. It's really not a big deal."

"Isn't it? You were planning to turn pro someday." Meaning, to play the game as a profession. That's a thing on Earth.

Tom was exasperated. "No I - Why does everyone think I wanna be a pro athlete?!"

His dad's face looked confused. "You said you did. Didn't you?"

"I said that once when I was twelve! And before that I wanted -" Tom stopped himself from saying he once wanted to be an astronaut. He was still too embarrassed to admit that to anyone outside The Sharing.

I said nothing, of course. Tom's dad had no idea I was here. Whenever Tom talked with his family, I usually watched passively, like it was a human TV show or a Yeerk memory dump. Don't mind me; I'm just an innocent bystander.

Tom resumed with, "It stopped being fun, Dad."

"Is that the only reason?"

"Isn't that enough?"

"Well, nothing's fun all the time, Tom. Being on a team is about discipline, and commitment to your teammates. You shouldn't just walk away the first time it gets a little boring."

That made no sense to me at all. Basketball was literally a game. If it doesn't make you happy, give it up.

But Tom understood what his dad was saying. He remembered all the times his parents drove him to practice, and to away games. All the times they cheered for him in the stands. They spent a lot of time and energy indulging their child's hobby. Tom felt bad about telling them it was all for nothing. Most of all, he remembered how often they praised him for playing well . . . He didn't have many memories of them praising him for anything else.

He covered up his guilt with anger. "So what? I'm not allowed to quit? Ever?"

His dad turned his head side to side. That meant no. "I'm not saying that. I'm just worried you didn't think it through first. After all, it could have meant a scholarship."

Another explanation for those of you who never had a human host: A scholarship was . . . It's sort of like an invitation to higher-level studies. They're given to students who excel in studying, or who excel in games. Don't ask me why for the latter. I don't get it either.

I felt the anger inside Tom flare up hotter. "I don't need - !" He stopped himself. He wanted to say that he could get a scholarship even without basketball, but he couldn't quite bring himself to believe it.

As Tom struggled to think of what to say next, his dad asked, "Does this have anything to do with that Sharing club?"

"No," Tom said like an automatic reflex. Then he added, "Well, maybe a little. I didn't really have time for both of them."

He winced internally. Tom was usually a great actor, but somehow he fumbled here. He sounded more defensive than he meant to.

The Sharing was a cover used by us Yeerks and the hosts. Sometimes we did charity work in the human community. But most of the time we just pretended to do charity work while sneaking away to the Yeerk pool or other alien-related missions.

Tom knew that his parents thought it was strange that he was so interested in this club. They wouldn't have thought anything of it if The Sharing was a state-wide organization with lots of members Tom's age. Or if they did fun things like bonfires or barbecues. But as far as his parents knew, The Sharing was just four adults doing volunteer work, who were mysteriously unable to get more members. It was getting harder for Tom to make up excuses for all the time he spent there.

His parents pretty much let Tom do as he pleased, and they didn't ask many questions. And Tom took advantage of that for all it was worth. But had he gone too far? He couldn't let them get suspicious about what he did at The Sharing. He couldn't.

<Well, actually you could,> I told Tom. <You just don't want to.>

<Not now, Tem.>

"Then wh-" his dad started, but Tom interrupted.

"Look, my teammates are jerks. My coach is all, 'win win win, nothing else matters'. And I was sick of it. I'm sorry about the scholarship thing but I'm not going back," Tom said firmly.

His dad looked at him strangely. "Tom, why are you so upset? I'm not saying you can't trade basketball for another club. I just want to understand what's going on with you."

"What's that supposed to mean?!" Tom said defensively.

His dad looked concerned as he spoke. "You used to be so open with us. These days, you're practically never home. And even when you are here, you're so quiet and lost in your own head. I thought you were at basketball practice all week. Now I find out you've been off the team, and you didn't even mention it."

He sounded hurt at that last part. He wasn't upset that Tom quit, just that Tom hid it from his family.

Actually, Tom had been bottling up his feelings even before he bonded with me. In this family, Jake was always the quiet one, and Tom was the loud one. That started to change when Tom started high school. It got worse when he became a symbiont. And his parents were finally starting to notice the change in him.

"I . . . I just . . ."

"And to be honest, I'm a little confused by your interest in this Sharing club. Why exactly did you join that?"

There it was. The dreaded question.

Tom started to panic inside. He wasn't ready to tell his dad about aliens. But I figured he could say his other secret: the reason he went to that first meeting.

<I'm not telling him that either,> Tom thought.

<He's already suspicious. You gotta tell him something.>

Tom refused. His mind raced. He didn't want to tell the truth, but he couldn't think of anything else.

As for me, personally, I was tired of his stubbornness. So I decided to stop being an innocent bystander.

I forcibly took control of Tom's speech. It wasn't hard; these words had already been on his mind since he started high school. It only took a little push to force out what he was thinking.

"I'm sick and tired of feeling stupid!" I quickly made Tom say.

His dad blinked in shock.

Tom's eyes widened. His face felt hot. He was blushing - an involuntary reaction to embarrassment. And anger.

He turned his head away and clenched his jaw. He was furious at what I did. He fantasized about pulling my body out of his head and throwing me against a wall, which I thought was an overreaction.

"You're not stupid, Tom," his dad said gently.

It was out now. There was nothing Tom could do about that.

"I'm not smart either," he mumbled quietly. "I'm the dumbest one in this family."

His dad asked, "Why would you say -"

After that little leak, the dam burst open. Tom turned back to his dad and shouted, "Dad, you're a doctor! Mom's able to think up all these creative ideas for her scripts. And Jake - who's younger than me - is like two steps away from getting on the honor roll . . . I had to struggle to stay above a D-average!"

Tom interrupted again before his dad could open his mouth. "And don't tell me 'just do your best' or 'you're good in other areas'. That's just code for 'we know you can't do any better'!"

"That's not what it means," his dad protested. "Of course, your mother and I want you to get good grades, but don't beat yourself up over it. You don't have to get straight A's, Tom."

"But I want to, Dad," he stressed. "Do you get that? I want to be the smart guy, not the dumb jock. People say 'you can be anything', 'you can do anything you set your mind to', but they don't mean it. When I tried to do something different, everyone acted like I was being weird . . . The Sharing never acted like that."

After being so honest, Tom switched back to lying. He thought up a new way to explain his time at The Sharing. "You know all those meetings we have? They're actually tutoring sessions. I mean, not all of them. Some of the volunteer stuff is real. But a lot of it was just me talking with Mr. Tidwell or Mr. Chapman. And it's been helping. My grades are getting better. A little."

The real reason was me. I was the one who had spent all that time studying math and physics, plus several other subjects Earth schools didn't test for. I understood String Theory. More than that, I understood why String Theory was wrong and why the rest of the universe moved on to the Harmonic Theory. I at least knew the basics. And since Tom had access to my memories, he could sort of follow along when I thought about it.

But Tom still felt insecure. He didn't feel smarter because he couldn't recall all the details when we were separated. He couldn't really take the credit for my intelligence.

Except he could, because we were almost always together. Our two brains made up a shared larger brain. Sort of. Right?

Tom somberly said, "The only thing people know about me is that I like basketball. I'm tired of that. I'm sorry if I messed up my chance for a scholarship, but . . . I needed a change."

His dad looked at Tom sympathetically. "Why didn't you just tell us you felt this way?"

He stared. "I dunno. I . . . I was embarrassed."

After a moment, his dad said, "I'm sorry if we made you feel like you couldn't come to us. I want you to know, you can talk to your mom or me about anything, Tom."

<If only that were true,> Tom thought sadly.

Out loud he just said, "Thanks, Dad."

"Just curious," his dad added. "It's fine if you don't know. But since you don't want to be a pro player anymore, have you thought about what it is you do want to do when you grow up?"

Tom knew the answer without having to think about it.

<This. I'm already doing exactly what I want. Yeerks. Alien encounters. Defending the Earth. I want to do this forever.>

But he already knew it wasn't a real career option. Investigating UFOs wouldn't pay the bills.

"I dunno," he answered mostly honestly. "I wanna do something important. But I still don't know what though."

"It's fine if you don't have it all figured out yet. But I hope you'll let me know when you do."

Tom nodded.

A few moments later, we were alone in his room. He shut the door behind him.

Tom leaned his back and head against the door. He stared into space.

<I'm not happy about what you did,> he told me.

I was a little sorry, but I also thought, <It worked out for the best though, right?> Tom still hid so much from his family. I felt it was good for him to be honest wherever he could.

Tom and I thought alike on a lot of things. But we still had disagreements.

Recently, I'd been worried about "going native". If I kept connecting to Tom's brain, would his personality override mine? Would I stop being "me" someday, and become "Tom 2.0" instead? Maybe I already did. How would I notice? Was I already too far gone from that young Yeerk studying at a computer?

Meanwhile, Tom didn't mind cutting all ties his old self.

Was changing into someone else really possible?

More importantly, was it good or bad?

There was no way to measure such a thing.

There was another big issue. <You're never going to tell your family about me, are you?> I asked.

We knew all of each other's thoughts, of course. I could have looked up the answer in the same time it took to address him. I only put it in the form of a question for the sake of conversation. That's how things were with mental symbiosis.

<If I told my parents, they might force me to stop investigating aliens. They might even try to separate us.>

<You don't know that they will.>

<And you don't know that they won't.>

Tom paused, trying to organize his thoughts.

<I like the way things are now,> he concluded. <Right now. I wish we could stay like this forever.>

<That would be nice.>

Chapter Text

My name is Chapman. The Yeerk in my head is named Iniss.

I won't tell you my first name . . . It's not a secret. I just never liked it. I'd change it if there wasn't such a ridiculous amount of paperwork involved. It's easier just to have everyone call me Chapman.

It's difficult to know where to begin this story. I suppose I should start at the very beginning, with my teenage years.

To summarize: In my senior year of high school, I, and a girl I barely knew, were abducted by aliens. We were 'rescued' by other aliens who really weren't any better than the first set. Then we were dragged along on an adventure to find the most dangerous weapon in the history of the universe. It was a long adventure. Bad things happened - which to this day I insist were only 30 percent my fault, at most.

Then worse things happened. We don't talk about it.

In the end, only three of us made it back to Earth alive. Me. The girl, Loren. And an Andalite soldier named Elfangor-Sirinial-Shamtul.

We had found the weapon, the Time Matrix. And we understood that the time machine was too dangerous to be used by anyone, including ourselves. The three of us hid it away on Earth and vowed to never tell anyone its location. We were the only three beings in the universe to know the secret.

By the time we got to Earth, Elfangor had become so disillusioned by the ways of his people that he chose not to go home. This decision was influenced by the fact he and Loren fell in love - for some reason.

Elfangor used his morphing power to take the form of a human, and he made a new life on Earth. He could have kept the morphing power forever as long as he returned to his true form every two hours. But he chose to stay in his human disguise permanently. That's known as becoming a 'nothlit', and it meant he could never undo his decision.

What could drive someone to become a nothlit on purpose? I wouldn't mind cutting ties with my old self. But how could someone be so desperate to escape their old life that they would willingly trap themselves in an unfamiliar body forever? I just couldn't understand it.

That inability to understand him was one of several reasons he and I never really got along.

He renamed himself Alan. Al Fangor. Loren began calling him that too. But in my mind, I always think of him as Elfangor the Andalite.

.

Space is huge. People underestimate just how huge. To put it in perspective, if you could travel at the speed of light - which you can't - it would still take years to get to the star system right next door.

Fortunately, there's anti-space. Also called zero-space. It's another dimension where physics work differently. Aliens use it as a shortcut to get to the planet they want. But zero-space is also huge, it shifts around sometimes, and some paths are faster than others.

No one knew the Time Matrix was on Earth. It was dormant. But its mere presence warped zero-space all throughout the area. Alien explorers would go, "Darn, z-space currents are so slow! It takes forever to get anywhere. Oh, hold on! The current leading to this particular city on this particular planet is nice and fast. Let's go check it out!"

As the years passed, word spread. Eventually, Earth became the go-to tourist spot of the galaxy. And it became our job to make sure the tourists didn't cause trouble.

I didn't necessarily want to become the city's secret defender. It's just that, whenever there's a problem, I didn't trust that anyone else was competent enough to fix it - except maybe Loren and Elfangor.

We may not have been best buddies, but we were allies. We put aside our differences and repelled hostile invaders, helped lost travelers, salvaged the technology they left behind, and above all, made sure no one got too curious about the Time Matrix's hiding spot.

All things considered, we made a pretty good team.

.

Ufology was just our night job. We still had lives outside of it. Loren and Elfangor lived happily ever after with each other. And I found a nice girl of my own.

I was nervous when Alison got pregnant.

It wasn't like when Loren and Elfangor got pregnant. They were thrilled. They loved the idea of becoming parents. Me? I was always the guy who looked out for Number One. I never really wanted kids.

But I had no intention of abandoning the baby. I wasn't that much of a selfish jerk - anymore.

I married Alison. I admit we made it official after we learned she was pregnant, but it's not as if we weren't considering it before. I did love her. Maybe not as much as I do now, but back then it was a lot for a guy who didn't like anyone.

The idea of having a baby scared me - not the idea of supporting a family financially. I wasn't worried about that. I could be responsible. I could raise a child, and protect her. I could go through the motions . . . But I was scared that I wouldn't love her.

That fear was in the back of my mind right up to the day Melissa was born.

I remember the first time I held her in the hospital. She was crying, her face scrunched up under the unpleasant fluorescent lighting. Without even thinking about it, I angled my body to block the lights, giving her shade. Then Melissa opened her eyes. The newborn in my arms looked right at me. Right into my eyes.

My own eyes started watering. I swear, at that moment, it's like I became someone else.

Oh . . . I get it now.

.

Elfangor and Loren also had a child. A boy. They named him Tobias.

The poor thing was barely a toddler when Elfangor died. It was a car accident. A random, pointless, accident that was the other driver's fault.

It was hard to imagine. Elfangor had survived countless battles. He stayed on Earth mostly to get away from all the bloodshed, but he was once a terrifying, unstoppable warrior. His enemies threw everything they had at him to no effect. To this day, there are people on other worlds who have nightmares about 'Beast Elfangor'. Even after becoming a human on Earth, we survived some close calls against alien invaders. But in the end, all it took to kill him was an ordinary car accident.

I hate irony.

Miraculously, baby Tobias survived. Loren also survived, but not unharmed. She had severe brain trauma that both blinded her and made her lose all her memories. The doctors said, though they couldn't know for sure, it was unlikely she would ever get her memory back.

I checked. I visited her in the hospital after the accident. Without revealing anything myself, I confirmed that she couldn't remember her husband, or his true nature. She knew nothing about aliens. Most importantly, she no longer knew the location of the Time Matrix.

From that moment on, I was the only one on Earth, possibly in the whole universe, who knew the secret.

Fine. The fewer who knew, the better.

That was the only silver lining. Elfangor was buried under a fake name, in a body that wasn't even his, eighty-two light-years from home. I suppose that was his choice though - except for the part where it happened so soon.

Loren had a long recovery ahead of her. Physical therapy and learning how to live as a blind person. Tobias would be placed into foster care until she recovered.

But even after Loren got discharged, I had no intention of contacting her again. I wasn't going to drag her back into our life of fighting alien invaders. She was blind. She lost her husband. She deserved to retire.

I was on my own.

.

Let's skip ahead a few years.

A ship crashed in the woods. It wasn't an invader, or a lost traveler, or even a tourist. It was a refugee ship on a mission of mercy.

Eighty-nine Yeerks in the pool, plus two Yeerks bonded to Hork-Bajir pilots. As far as they knew, they were the last Yeerks left in the universe. The ship had crashed because of a malfunction in the engine. By the time I arrived and helped them fix the problem, the Hork-Bajir hosts were exposed to a lethal amount of radiation.

Those two brave Hork-Bajir were the only ones left protecting the Yeerk species from extinction. And then they were gone. But the Yeerks they were bonded with survived. And so, I chose to become the new host for the Yeerk pilot, Iniss. I couldn't save his old partner; I felt like I owed him something.

It wasn't quite that Iniss and I merged into a single entity, like some Yeerk-host duos tried to do in the past. After the death of his Hork-Bajir host and good friend, Iniss didn't mind a little emotional distance with his new host. We could still hear each other's thoughts. And we got along well - he was certainly better company than the roommates I had in college. But he was him, and I was me.

Almost immediately, Eva - one of the few people I consider an actual friend - got involved in helping the Yeerks. She bonded with Edriss. Soon enough, I explained everything to my wife Alison, and she chose to bond with Niss. And then Tidwell. With Illim. And then Tom. With Temrash.

As alien visitations became more frequent than ever, I was finally part of a team again. A much larger team than I ever had before. It wasn't bad.

.

I was now thirty-five. People told me I looked older, but what did they know?

My day job was Vice Principal of a junior high school. I worked under Principal Arlington. She mostly worked with the staff and administrative matters, while I mostly dealt with disciplining the students. We divided our duties that way for the simple reason that I was better at being scary.

Melissa was thirteen. She was now a student at my school.

There was also someone else I knew who was now a student. Obviously, I couldn't keep track of every single person who goes here. But when I looked over the roster at the start of the year, I noticed a name I could never mistake.

Fangor, Tobias.

A blast from my past.

Chapter Text

My name is Chapman. The Yeerk in my head is named Iniss.

I hadn't spoken with Loren since that one meeting right after her accident, over ten years ago. But I was thinking about her and Elfangor a lot recently.

The biggest reminder was when her son enrolled in my school. I quickly found the face that went with the name on the roster. I never said anything to him, but I couldn't help but think of his mother every time I saw him in the hallways.

Later that psychic monster, Quantum Kindred, came to Earth. After searching all over the city for anyone who knew about the Time Matrix, the fact that it only focused on me seemed to prove that Loren's amnesia never recovered.

And then the Andalite ship crashed. There was now at least one Andalite hiding in the city. Knowing that made me think of that other, more-or-less good Andalite I used to know. And his wife.

All these years, Loren never contacted me either. She presumably never remembered me. I didn't expect her to. And without alien-fighting to keep us working together, our relationship completely evaporated.

But recently, it was like the universe was sending me reminders of her. Like it was trying to say, "Hey, it's been a FULL DECADE since you lost touch with your so-called-teammate. Don't you think you should do something about that?!"

It was true. I've been putting this off for too long.

I waited until one of Iniss' feedings. Once he was in the pool, I would use my alone-time to call Loren on my cell phone. It felt right to do this as my old self. As just-Chapman.

The call wasn't supposed to be anything dramatic. I didn't intend to reveal the secrets of her alien-filled past. This phone call was just reconnecting with an old acquaintance. Just, "Hi, you're not dead, right?"

But I was still uneasy.

Iniss spoke inside my head. <Brave enough to fight Taxxons. Nervous about a phone call. That is so human.>

<I can always leave you stranded in this pool, you know,> I replied darkly.

It was an old threat; I didn't really mean it. But even if I had, Iniss wouldn't have been intimidated. He indifferently left my ear and sank into the pool.

I left the underground cavern for better reception. On the building's ground floor, I stood next to a window and typed the number into my phone. I had looked it up earlier in the phone book: Fangor, Loren. All these years, she never left town.

It rang once. Twice. Thrice.

"Hello. This is Loren Fangor speaking."

I swallowed. "Hello, Loren. This is Hedrick Chapman. You probably don't remember me, but we used to work together, before your car accident." I paused. "You don't remember me, right?"

"No, sorry." She apologized politely, not guiltily. "I guess you know all about my accident. But if you were hoping my memory came back, it never did. All I know about my old life is what they told me at the hospital." She spoke simply. She wasn't sad about her memory. It was just a fact.

"I see."

If Iniss was in my head, he probably would have interrupted my thoughts with some snide remark about how my words were an odd choice for speaking to a blind - Oh, hell, I thought it anyway! I've been with him too long.

"You said we worked together?" Loren said.

"Yes, uh, with your husband, mainly. Al Fangor. We helped out with his projects sometimes."

"No one from before the accident ever calls me. I had the idea that he and I didn't have any friends from back then."

"Yes, well," I didn't bother keeping the embarrassment out of my voice, "'friend' might be more generous than I deserve. Knowing what you went through, I should have checked in more often. It was wrong of me to ignore you so long. I'm sorry."

"Hedrick-"

"Chapman, please. I never liked the name Hedrick."

Silence.

"Loren, are you there?"

"Yes. Sorry." She spoke like she was coming out of a daze. "That happens sometimes. I almost remember something, but . . . It's nothing clear. Just my mind wandering."

"I see."

"Why are you calling? I mean, I'm sorry if I'm being rude, but why now? What happened?"

"I suppose I'm calling because of your son."

"My . . . You mean Tobias?"

"I'm a vice principal, and Tobias goes to my school now. Every time I see him in the hallways, it reminds me how long it's been since I spoke with you."

"Are you sure he's my son? That Tobias?"

"Of course I'm sure. The name on the roster is Tobias Fangor. And he's the spitting image of you."

"I . . . I don't know what to say . . . How is he?"

There was something strangely unsettling about her tone. "In what way?"

"I'm not sure I should even ask this, but . . . Do you know where he lives?"

I narrowed my eyes. "Hold on. Are you telling me he doesn't live with you?"

"I had to give him away. I couldn't raise a baby after the accident."

"Yes, I knew that. But I thought - I just assumed it was temporary. You're saying you don't even know where he is?!"

Loren spoke softly. Somberly. I had trouble telling what kind of emotions were behind that voice. "I think . . . They must have explained it to me at the hospital. But those early days, there was so much going on, and I was hurt. It's a blur. By the time I recovered enough to live on my own, I couldn't remember the names of who he went to live with. I honestly didn't know how to find him."

"But surely, you could call child services and have them figure it out, couldn't you?"

She paused a long while. "Maybe you're right. Maybe I could have tried harder. But I wasn't even sure if I should contact him. I figured, wherever he was, he was living a normal life without me. So what good would it do to drag him back into my problems?"

Now it was my turn to pause a little. "That's . . . disturbingly similar to the reason I never called you all these years."

"His foster family must remember my name. If Tobias wants to get in touch, he will."

"And he really hasn't?" I asked incredulously. "After all these years, no one from your old life has called you, even once?!"

Another pause, followed by her small, restrained voice. ". . . Just you."

.

"HOW was this allowed to happen?!"

Later that night I was pacing angrily in the kitchen. Alison was there, chopping vegetables as she listened to me.

"She had no idea Tobias was living with her own sister and her brother-in-law! She didn't even know she had a sister, because they never bothered to visit her after the accident! Loren always said they were jerks, but not one word in ten years?! What is wrong with that family?! And what the hell was social services doing all this time?! They just dumped Loren's name in the round file and forgot about her!"

Alison hummed in response.

"After everything that woman has done for this city! People don't know how invaluable she was during the Skrit Na Civil War! Or the invasion of the Scarlet Liars fleet! Every human in this city should be on their hands and knees thanking her! But instead, they treat her like Andalites treat vecols!"

I stopped pacing and stared at Alison's back. "And you know what the worst part is?" I angrily tapped my chest. "I did it too! I'm just as guilty as all those other idiots who abandoned her! I could have called her any time and fixed this, but I didn't! I'm the exact same, self-absorbed, jackass I was when I was eighteen!"

Alison hadn't said anything. She just kept chopping vegetables.

I narrowed my eyes. "Dear? You and Niss. At least ONE of you is listening, right?"

"Loren was separated from her son. You feel bad. Repeat, repeat, repeat," Alison said casually.

<See? They're listening,> Iniss said dryly. He'd also been hearing my thoughts on the matter since leaving the pool, and he didn't hide how tired of it he was.

I had no friends.

Alison shrugged. "I wasn't gonna interrupt. I'm letting you vent."

I walked up next to her. "Don't treat me like a tantruming child. This is serious. Loren might have been right not to try and regain custody, but she didn't even know where her son was. Can you imagine if we were cut off from Melissa like that?!"

She put down the knife and sighed. "Are you gonna reunite Loren and Tobias?"

"I intend to try."

"Then just do it!" She turned to face me with an easy smile. "Darling, I can give you excuses on how you were too busy with your own family to worry about Loren's, but I'm not going to, because it doesn't matter! There's no point in ranting about what happened in the past. So focus on what you can do now. That's how you make things better."

And Alison proved once again I was wrong about the no friends thing.

I let out a breath and smiled faintly at her. "I love how you just cut through all the nonsense."

<Hey!> Iniss protested in my head. <She just said what I've been telling you all afternoon.>

<Yes, but she said it better.>

Iniss did the mental equivalent of an eye roll.

.

The next day. Lunch period. The cafeteria.

My dark shoes clacked against the linoleum, though the sound was drowned out by the dozens of noisy students. I wore a suit and tie, as usual. Even in my off-hours, I can't remember the last time I wore casual clothes.

I walked with purpose, scanning the rows of tables and children. Soon I found my target. Tobias was one of five kids sitting at a table at the far end.

There are so many students each year that it's impossible for me to be familiar with all of them. But by coincidence, I did know most of the group he was with.

Sitting next to Tobias was Rachel. I knew her as one of Melissa's best friends. They shared a gymnastics class and she visited the house many times in the past. I liked Rachel. Good manners, but not a suck-up. A very dignified and confident young lady. I also sensed a hint of anger issues beneath her surface, but hopefully she would grow out of that.

Sitting across from Rachel was Marco. I knew him as Eva's son. Eva was a good friend, and I hated admitting this, but I've never liked Marco. He was snarky and sarcastic. Disrespectful to authority. Never took things seriously. Always talking back. Had an extremely high opinion of himself that was in no way justified.

In other words, exactly like me at that age.

But his grades were also good enough that his behavior didn't really warrant an intervention. His teachers mostly just put up with his class-clowning.

Then there was Jake. I knew him only tangentially as Rachel's cousin and Tom's younger brother. Nice kid, but unremarkable. You could probably put his picture in the dictionary under the word 'AVERAGE'.

The last person there was a short black girl . . . Her, I did not know. She might have been one of the friends at Melissa's last birthday party, but I couldn't remember. As vice principal, the fact she wasn't on my radar meant she was a decent student who never got into trouble, so good for her.

The five were leaning over their trays and chatting quietly. But when they noticed me approaching, they immediately fell silent. They straightened up and watched me cautiously as I walked up to the table.

<Oh, talking about something they don't want the Vice Principal to hear,> Iniss mused. <That's interesting.>

Maybe a little, but I didn't really care. I filed it away for later.

I looked down at Tobias. "Mr. Fangor, would you ple-"

"Wait, hold up," Marco interrupted me. One more reason to dislike him. He grinned at Tobias. "Your last name is 'Fangor'? What kinda name is that?"

"Your first name is 'Marco'. Don't tease," I told him.

Marco fell silent. Rachel smirked at him.

I ignored them both and looked back at Tobias. "Please stop by my office after school today."

He looked up at me very calmly. "Am I in trouble, sir?" His tone was polite but guarded and, strangely, made me think of his father.

"No. If you were in trouble, you'd be coming now, and I wouldn't be saying please. I just want to talk." I glanced over the whole group. "Enjoy your lunch."

I walked away, leaving them to gossip on what this could be about.

.

The end of last period. I had some papers spread out over my desk when the knock came at my office door. I actually finished a few minutes ago, but it's good to look busy for the students. "Come in."

Tobias Fangor walked in. He was thirteen. Average height, but very thin. His hair was long and dirty blond. He was unmistakably Loren's child. Most of his features came from her - that was probably for the best.

The boy had no idea what an oddity he was. A mixed-race, first-generation Earthling. An anthropological wonder.

Biologically, he was a normal human. Half his genes came from Loren. And the other half came from the nothlit body Elfangor created using DNA samples from multiple humans. (I wasn't one of them. I made Elfangor acquire people the hard way.) But a paternity test for Tobias wouldn't correctly match to any of those humans; only the strange mixture that was Alan Fangor.

Elfangor's Andalite DNA was lost forever when he went past the two-hour time limit. There wasn't even a trace of anything alien in Tobias. And yet . . .

He sat down. "What's this about, Mr. Chapman?" His voice was soft. His expression was guarded. Not quite blank, but close to it.

I've worked with enough children to recognize the tropes. This boy was probably being bullied.

I've done a lot to reduce bullying since becoming vice principal, because I do not tolerate that nonsense in my school. I've suspended those morons Andy and Pat more than once. But I'm aware there were still minor instances where I wasn't looking. There always are.

Not that Tobias would ever admit it or ask me for help. He was polite around authority figures, but he never expected help from them.

Gentle and courteous on the surface, while bitter and battle-harded underneath. I had to be imagining it - projecting - but I kept thinking that there was so much of his father in him.

I clasped my hands together on my desk. "I didn't call you here as the vice principal. This is actually a personal matter."

"Personal?" He raised an eyebrow.

"I knew your parents, Tobias," I said plainly. "We worked together a long time ago. After your father died, I fell out of touch with your mother. My fault, mostly. I admit that. But recently, I reconnected with her . . . Were you aware that she's searching for you?"

Tobias blinked. Then he blinked a few more times. He seemed unsure how to respond - which seemed a bit strange to me, considering it was a yes-or-no question.

Finally he replied, "You talked to my mom?"

<Ugh, not quick on the uptake, is he?> Iniss muttered.

I ignored Iniss and gently answered Tobias. "I'm not sure what your guardians told you, but the reason your mother never contacted you is because she literally didn't know where to find you. She's also under the impression that you don't want her to contact you. It's your decision, but honestly, I think she would really like to hear from you."

He was taken aback. Uncomfortable. It was the most emotion I saw from him thus far. He was quiet for a long time, and then he asked, "Is this for real? You found my mom? And you're friends with her?"

"We're past that. Try to keep up," I replied, starting to lose patience.

"But . . . I don't . . . Why wouldn't she know where to find me?"

A sinking suspicion. I narrowed my eyes. "Tobias, what exactly did your guardians tell you happened to your mother?"

He looked troubled. He didn't like talking about this. "Not really anything. I never knew what happened to her. I didn't even know she was alive."

<You . . .> Iniss was stunned. <Didn't it occur to you to find out?!>

I agreed with the sentiment, so I relayed it out loud. And I added, "She's in the phone book, Tobias."

I realized a second too late how badly I put my foot in my mouth. Tobias didn't wince or get angry at me. His eyes just sort of . . . glazed over. It was like he couldn't see me anymore. Slowly, his gaze sank downward.

Dapsen.

Softly, I said, "I'm sorry. That was unnecessarily rude of me. You were a child. It wasn't your responsibility to find her."

Looking at something about a thousand feet below my desk, he whispered, "They said she didn't want me."

"They're liars, and they don't deserve to keep you."

He didn't respond. He looked like a wounded animal.

"Your father, Al, was killed in a car accident. The same accident gave Loren a traumatic brain injury, or TBI. She's blind. She has memory problems. She needed years of physical therapy before she could take care of herself, much less herself and a three-year-old. Neither your relatives nor social services kept her informed on what happened to you. It wasn't her fault."

He lifted his head. "So now what? She wants - what? - she wants me back? She wants me to visit?"

"That's not the question. The question is: What do you want?"

He stared.

.

After a long phone call with Loren, the following day, I parked my car in the unused driveway of Loren's small house.

I turned off the engine and looked over at the passenger seat. Tobias held his backpack in his lap, and had his other meager possessions in two bags in the backseat. He stared silently at the house.

"You okay?"

He didn't respond.

"It's not too late to back out if you're nervous," I told him. "We can just go. I could drive you to your uncle's or something."

"I'm not going back to him. Or my aunt," he said, voice hard, not looking at me. "Ever."

I did not ask if Tobias' aunt and uncle abused him. Their reaction to Loren's injury already told me more than I wanted to know.

<For two humans who obviously didn't want to raise a child,> Iniss thought, <they didn't try very hard to send him back to his mother.>

The whole situation made me angry. Iniss was just weary. Together, we evened out into irritated.

Tobias still hadn't made any move to leave the car. We just sat there.

"If we're doing this, can we do it soon?" I asked. "Because my daughter's doing a gymnastics exhibition at the mall today, and I told her I'd be there." Iniss thought it'd be boring, but this was for my daughter, so he'd deal with it.

"Do you really think this will work?" Tobias mumbled. "She's disabled. She doesn't even remember me."

"I don't know if this will all work out. No one knows," I said bluntly. "You couldn't live together eight years ago. But at least now she can feed herself, and you're old enough to know not to stick your tongue in electric sockets . . . If it doesn't work out, call me and we'll find some other arrangement for you."

Tobias finally looked at me, suspiciously. "Why are you helping me so much?"

I shrugged a little. "Because it's right." I added, "Besides, I owe Loren. Your father too."

"What was my father like? You knew him, right?"

"Yes. In fact, you could say I'm one of the only people who really knew him."

"You were friends?"

"Wouldn't go that far."

At his curious expression, I added, "I respected him, on a good day. But we were always butting heads. He was very self-righteous. Of course, so am I. But he was also . . . right . . . an annoying amount of the time."

"Did he have any family? Do I have more uncles, or grandparents?"

Iniss and I conferred for a moment, deciding on the best lies and the best half-truths to tell him.

"I don't know," I said at last. "Al completely cut ties with his family and his old home. He wasn't born in America, you see. He came from very far away."

"Where?"

"He wouldn't talk to me about the details. All I know is that he was a solider. He was forced to fight people who didn't always deserve it. One day, he got sick of it all. The fighting. The propaganda. He was so sick of his old life that he left everything behind and ran away to start a new life here. He never looked back."

The words had an effect on him I didn't expect. His hands trembled a little, and he seemed to turn pale, but I couldn't tell. He turned his head away too quickly and looked out the window, up toward the sky.

"Tobias?"

He didn't say anything for a long time. Which was kind of a thing with him, but this seemed more serious. He stared at the sky silently.

Finally, in a cracking voice, he said, "I . . . I almost ran away too . . . I mean, I didn't. I wouldn't. But I was thinking, more and more, how nice it might be if I didn't look back and just . . ."

He turned forward again, face serious. "Never mind. Doesn't matter."

"Al didn't just run away. He ran to something. That's the key. He wanted to live his life with Loren - and you."

Tobias didn't reply. But he finally got out of the car.

Chapter Text

My name is Tom. The Yeerk in my head is named Tem.

I walked up to Jake's door. I raised my fist to knock, but stopped. I thought I heard my name. If I listened closely, I could just barely hear voices through the wood.

"Take that back." My brother Jake. Quiet but angry.

"It can be anyone, remember?" His friend Marco.

"Not him. He would never do that."

<Don't eavesdrop,> Tem said.

<Spoilsport.>

I knocked loudly. "Make yourselves decent!" I said just as loudly. I opened the door without waiting for an response - or rather, I tried to. It surprised me that the doorknob wouldn't turn.

I meant it as a joke. They were decent, right?!

A couple seconds later, there was a click and the door opened. Jake looked up at me nonchalantly. "What?" Marco was sitting on the beanbag chair behind him. Everything looked normal.

"Why did you lock the door?"

He rolled his eyes in the way only adolescent little brothers could do. "'Cause you're always barging in."

<He's not wrong,> Tem commented, <Mister Eavesdropper.>

<You should talk,> I shot back. <You eavesdrop on literally every conversation I have!>

<That doesn't count! I'm half-you.>

In my head, this fast-as-thought exchange only took two or three seconds. I wasn't gonna spend longer than that arguing in front of Jake.

"Mom said to tell you dinner's ready." I looked over Jake's shoulder at Marco. "You staying?"

"Yeah," Jake answered for him. "We asked Mom earlier."

Marco got to his feet and smirked. "As if I'm gonna say no to free food," he said as he walked past us.

Marco was Jake's best friend. They've been practically glued at the hip since kindergarten. It almost seemed like he spent more time over at our house than I did.

I guess it's true when they say opposites attract, because Jake and Marco looked about as different as possible. Jake was tall for his age, while Marco was short. Jake's pale, and Marco has caramel-brown skin. Jake kept his bangs long but the rest of his hair boyishly short. Marco's shiny black hair nearly went down to his shoulders.

Their personalities were different too. Jake was usually quiet and serious and, frankly, worried too much about everything. Marco lived his life like he expected applause from a studio audience every time he walked into a room. He was loud, constantly making jokes, and loved being the center of attention.

Also, he was gay. I was about 90 percent sure of this. I was 50 percent sure he had a crush on Jake, and maybe 10 percent suspicious they were secretly dating.

<I still don't think he's gay,> Tem thought.

<Have you seen his hair?!>

<Hair has nothing to do with sexual orientation,> he insisted. <You only think he's gay because you humans try to make EVERYTHING about romance and sex.>

<And you only think he's NOT gay because you Yeerks keep forgetting the rest of the universe isn't as asexual as you.>

<I'm in the body of a sixteen-year-old boy. Your hormones won't let me forget.>

It was an old argument. We kept waiting for him to prove one of us right. It was probably rude for us to be making a bet about this, but what Marco didn't know wouldn't hurt him.

.

My family was laid back in a lot of ways, but we were kinda formal about dinner time. Even on the rare nights we got take-out, we always sat together at the main table, and we never had the TV on. We weren't really religious either, but we still said a prayer before eating.

We brought in a fifth chair for Marco. My family thought there were five people gathered for dinner tonight. None of them knew Marco was actually the sixth; there'd been five people here every other night for months.

I probably shouldn't have joked earlier about Tem eavesdropping on my conversations. It wasn't really his choice. Tem watched my mom, dad, and little brother. He listened to our small talk. He was invisible - though he wasn't exactly silent. Tem and I thought alike on a lot of subjects. What I said often reflected what he was thinking anyway. And even when we disagreed, we decided together what my mouth would say out loud. He had questions or comments for my family; I decided what sounded too out-of-character for me. That's how communication worked for Yeerk-hosts.

Tem and I were two separate people. At the same time, we were also a single person. One body governed by two blended minds. It was something ordinary humans wouldn't understand.

The point is: Tem could say little things to other humans, if he really wanted. But he was still lonely. These people were practically his adopted family, and they had no idea he even existed.

These dinners made me feel a little lonely too. My whole family was right there, but I kept such a big part of my life from them. The placard was still hidden under my shirt. Still nobody noticed.

<This is probably how Marco feels.>

<He's not gay.>

It was always tempting to tell them everything. But it was a lot harder now that Andalites were hiding on Earth. I could hardly tell my folks that their son was the target of a manhunt by space-fascists. And I didn't want to risk dragging them into the same danger I lived with. Especially Jake. I would never, ever, let the Andalites get their tails into Jake.

So instead, we just talked about normal stuff at dinner. Marco did most of the talking tonight. He complained about doing wrestling in his last gym glass. He lost, and Marco acted like the whole thing was a criminal conspiracy by the gym teacher to ruin his life.

"I don't even like wrestling when I'm winning," he whined.

"How would you know?" Jake asked. I immediately reached across the table and gave him a high-five.

Marco grinned. "I should be insulted, but that was a good shot and I respect it." He frowned. "Seriously, though. Getting up close and personal with a bunch of sweaty guys? Not my idea of a good time."

<Methinks he doth protest too much,> I thought smugly at Tem.

<Or he protests just enough,> he replied.

Marco continued. "Although, still smells better than helping Cassie clean up after horses. I don't know how I let you keep talking me into that."

I didn't have perfect recall of Jake's circle of friends, so I asked, "Who's Cassie?"

Marco, completely casually, replied, "Jake's girlfriend."

Jake seemed to choke on his food for a moment.

"Whoa! Wait." I stared at Jake. "Since when do you have a girlfriend?"

That nixed my theory that Jake liked Marco back.

<Told you so.>

"I - She's not!" Jake frantically waved his hands. "Marco's just being stupid. Cassie - She's just a regular friend. That's it!"

I stared at Jake's blushing face for a moment. Then I ignored him and looked at Marco. "Level with me. Are they dating?"

"He likes her, and she likes him back," Marco said simply. Before Jake could protest, Marco turned to him. "Yes, you do! Everyone can see it." He turned back to me. "But they are so freaking shy, they would probably spontaneously combust if they did so much as hold hands."

"Oh, so it's like that." I grinned as wide as possible. "Lil' Jake's in loooove!"

Jake was blushing all the way down to his neck. "Shut up." He pointed at Marco. "And you shut up. It's not like that."

"Tom, stop teasing your brother," my dad said, even though his smile told us he was enjoying this too.

"Hey, as the big brother, it's my job to get involved in this." I looked back to Jake, mock seriousness. "Do I need to have a talk with Cassie? Let her know what'll happen if she breaks your heart?"

"For the hundredth time, she's just a friend. Nothing's gonna happen," he insisted while giving me a stern glare.

His glare didn't intimidate me. "So what I'm hearing is: I still have a little time before I need to write the best man speech for your wedding."

"I beg your pardon?" Marco raised an eyebrow at me. "I'm gonna be his best man. And I already have the speech written."

"If I ever do get married, neither of you will be my best man," Jake said.

Marco dramatically slapped a hand against his chest. "Ugh! Drive a steak through my heart, why don't you?!"

"Really," I added. "For that, you're out of my will."

My mom came to Jake's rescue by changing the subject. "What about you, Tom?"

I stared. "What about me, what?"

"Are you seeing anyone at the moment?" she asked with an mischievous smile.

Oh. That.

This awkward feeling was probably karma for teasing Jake. But I kept my face relaxed, expertly hiding how uncomfortable I was. "Uh . . . No. Haven't found the right girl yet."

"The basketball star couldn't get a girlfriend before Jake?" Marco asked. "That's sad."

"She's not my girlfriend!" Jake hit peak exasperation.

"Honestly, I'm not really looking right now," I said. "I don't wanna date someone just for the sake of dating, you know? I'd rather wait till I meet a girl naturally."

Was that a good enough answer? Did my parents think it was weird I wasn't dating yet? It would be embarrassing if my little brother really was dating before me.

The truth was I did want a girlfriend - at least eventually. But it was probably never going to happen as long as I was a Yeerk-host. Even once I was an adult, it was entirely possible I would never lose my virginity.

Yeerks, mostly, are asexual and aromantic. The pre-virus Ancient Yeerks believed that stuff was only for "lesser" species. Giving into their host's yearnings was considered disgusting and scandalous.

(Some historians suspect Edriss 562 had less-than-appropriate relations using her involuntary hosts, but there's no proof one way or the other. History shrugs.)

Modern Yeerks didn't look down on other species like that anymore. But they still didn't like using a host's body to get sexual pleasure, and frankly, I didn't blame them. Tem and I were almost a single person, and we had no privacy or shame with anything else, but there's got to be a boundary somewhere.

The closest thing I had to a love life was every three days - well, not every three days, but during most of Tem's feedings in the pool - I would sneak away to a bathroom and spend my once-per-three-days alone time, you know . . . having alone time. And then I suffered through the awkwardness of Tem seeing my memories on his return. But I was a teenager; you can't expect me to stop completely.

So no girlfriend. But it wasn't only because of the sex thing. The bigger issue was the idea of an actual, long-term, relationship . . . What kind of relationship could a girl and I have when I'm keeping a secret this huge? It wasn't just what I do or where I go, but my own identity. Surprise! There's actually two of us in here! And how could I fall in love with someone when half my two-person brain wasn't even interested in romance?

I never regretted bonding with Tem. In a perfect world, I would stay his host for the rest of my life. But it came with unexpected questions we didn't have answers to.

<Chapman and Alison were married before they became hosts,> Tem reminded me. <You should ask them how they deal with relationship stuff. They probably set aside time to separate from Iniss and Niss and ->

<Ew! Stop putting that thought in my head!> I pleaded.

<I'M putting the thought in YOUR head?!>

<I'm not gonna ask Chapman and Alison when they get intimate!>

<You humans are so weird. You think about sex constantly, but you can't stand to talk to each other about it.>

<It's not constant. Just . . . recurring.>

The easiest answer was to just ignore the issue. Tell myself it didn't matter unless I someday found a girl I liked.

Just one more unknown question about my future I kept putting off until later.

.

After dinner, somehow I wound up driving Marco home.

He lived only a few blocks away, but it was dark out. He asked me to spare him from walking. I didn't mind, but Tem idly wondered why he asked me instead of the adults, since I had to ask my mom to borrow the car anyway.

By the front door, as I was putting on my favorite denim jacket, I looked over at Jake. "You coming with us?"

Before Jake could open his mouth, Marco spoke up. "Nah. It's just a quick drive home. And we already said goodbye."

"I don't mind coming," Jake said.

Marco said, "But Jake, if we're together, we'll just start talking again and it'll take all night to finish. You know how we get." He looked up at me with mock sadness. "Long goodbyes always break my heart."

Before I could even think, Tem responded with, <He's just being funny. It doesn't mean a thing.> Yeah, right.

Jake seemed unsure how to respond. I grabbed my mom's keys off the hook and said, "You coming or not? I've got homework later."

I opened the front door as Marco slung his backpack over his shoulder. Before Marco walked out, Jake grabbed him by the arm, leaned close and whispered, "Don't be rude to Tom. And don't say anything stupid." Jake's look was oddly serious, even for him.

Tem and I each wondered if this was evidence in our bet, decided it wasn't, and ignored it. Marco shrugged Jake off and followed me outside.

I got in my mom's car. Marco rode shotgun. I asked, "Your dad's house, right? Or Eva's apartment?"

"Dad's house. I don't really sleep at my mom's place."

Eva and Marco's relationship had been strained ever since the divorce. I never asked either of them for details.

I drove into the night.

Marco casually asked, "So you're on a first-name basis with my mom?"

"She asks everyone at The Sharing to call her Eva."

That was true. But the real reason I was on a first-name basis with Eva was the annoying, frustrating, humiliating fact that I couldn't remember her last name! I knew it once - I must have. I kept waiting for her full name to come up in conversation, but everyone just called her Eva. It drove me nuts.

<Just ask her,> Tem told me in exasperation. <Or ask Marco.>

He thought it was stupid for me to be embarrassed by this. But I kept telling him, <I am not gonna admit I forgot her name.>

<You could ask if she kept her married name or not after the divorce.>

<That's not any better.>

<Then . . . Pretend you know the name, but double-check the spelling or something.>

<Oh. That could work.>

"Speaking of names," I said nonchalantly, keeping my eyes on the road, "Refresh my memory. What's the proper spelling of your last name?"

Without missing a beat he answered, "It's spelled exactly the way it sounds."

I frowned.

<Great idea, Tem. That was super helpful.>

<Like your 'do nothing' plan was any better.>

Marco spoke up again. "So about The Sharing . . . It's kinda funny how little I know about that club when my own mom is the founder."

I shrugged. "There's not much to know. It's just volunteer work and tutoring."

"The Sharing has meetings open to the public, what, every two weeks?"

"More or less."

"But you also have members-only meetings almost every day, don't you?"

"Not quite that often."

We reached his dad's house. I pulled into the driveway and parked.

But Marco didn't get out of the car. "So what exactly do you do during all those private meetings? Mom never really talks about it."

Alien stuff. But I obviously wasn't gonna tell him that.

Before I could answer, he added, "I ask, because all Mom says is 'some new project' or 'volunteer work'. She never talks to me about the details. I'm curious 'cause there are only so many times a week you can work at a soup kitchen or pick up litter at the park."

Well, this was annoying. Usually I just made up a few vague cover stories and that was enough to satisfy people. I wasn't used to being pestered for details.

Tem was starting to get nervous.

"I don't know what to tell you," I answered. "We don't punch in a time clock and follow a written schedule. Mostly we just talk and try to think of new ideas."

He paused a second, watching me. Then he shrugged. "Yeah, it's probably nothing. It's just, recently, I've been on the lookout for anything unusual. And for a moment, it almost seemed like The Sharing was hiding something." He laughed. "But that's ridiculous, right?"

He acted like it was a joke, but I realized it was just that: an act. He was suspicous for real.

Crap. I always thought Marco was just some kid, but now I realized he was smart. My acting skills were enough to fool normal people. But Marco was quite possibly smart enough to see through me. Smart enough to notice The Sharing was up to something.

No, he didn't know. Right now, he was just a paranoid kid looking for trouble. But if I said the wrong thing, he would latch onto it and keep going until he found the truth.

Suddenly, I felt like I was trapped with a wild animal. This car was a tank of water, and Marco was a shark sniffing for blood. Exposing a single drop around him could be fatal.

I kept my expression calm. But inside, Tem's mind and mine raced. I needed to distract Marco. Change the subject. But he was smart - a regular pivot would only make him more suspicious. I needed to go big. My only hope was to distract him with something so huge, so mind-blowing, it would monopolize all his brain power and make him completely forget what he was talking about.

"So then, wh-"

I interrupted him. "Before you go, there's something I gotta ask. Is Cassie real?"

As I hoped, he was confused by the randomness of the question. "Real?"

"You know, the girl Jake supposedly likes. You didn't make her up, right?"

Now he looked skeptical. "Why would Jake make up a girlfriend just to deny dating her?"

"Well, I thought - I mean I wondered . . ."

"What?"

"I just wondered if, maybe, you made up a girl to hide the fact that Jake was dating . . . you." I looked down at him, pure innocence.

He stared at me. For at least four full seconds by actual count.

Then, in what was probably a higher pitch than he intended, he shouted, "What the hell?!"

There we go.

I held up my hands. "Hey, it's fine if you are. I totally support you two."

"I'm not dating Jake!" He shrieked as if I suggested he date his own mother. "Why would you think that?!"

I shrugged. "It was just a thought. I mean, I have no idea about Jake. But I always suspected you were, you know. . ." I innocently looked away. Innocently.

He angrily replied, "I'm not gay! I like girls!"

I rolled my eyes. "Yeah, you like 'em so much, you wear your hair like one," I mumbled.

"THIS IS NOT A GIRL HAIRCUT!"

Okay, Marco was either really deep in the closet, or homophobic. Either way, I actually started to feel bad about how upset I was making him. But, hey, whatever it took to get his mind off The Sharing.

"Look, I like girls, got it?" he insisted. "I'm not faking! I like girls, so that proves I don't like guys!"

"No, it doesn't," I said simply. "You can like girls and guys, you know."

He was about to say something, but then he stopped. He switched from angry to puzzled. "Wait. You can like both?"

"Yeah, Marco. It's called bisexual. Look it up."

He thought this over silently for several long moments. He stared at me. Looked out the windshield. Back to me. "That's a real thing?"

I smirked. "Well, that got your attention."

He blinked. Blushed. Tried to say something, and settled on, "S-Shut up!"

Marco got out the car and slammed the door behind him. I calmly watched him walk across the driveway and enter his house.

Tem thought, <Okay, I'm starting to see it.>

Chapter Text

My name is Tom. The Yeerk in my head is named Tem.

This adventure began at an inconvenient time: the middle of school.

I was sitting in English class, a subject that Tem could offer no help with. He and I tried to focus on the lecture, but it wasn't easy. Just because I wanted to be a better student didn't mean the schoolwork stopped being incredibly boring.

That's when my beeper went off. Almost silent, I felt it vibrate in my pocket.

Yes, I had a beeper. This was the Nineties, before cell phones got really popular. Of course, beepers weren't popular either for my age group. But this particular beeper had most of its Earthly guts taken out and replaced with alien software. Instead of receiving a message from a telephone, it received information from the computer at the Yeerk pool.

I froze, immediately on high alert. The teacher paused his lecture at the same moment.

This was the class Mr. Tidwell taught, so the timing wasn't completely inconvenient after all. The student body knew Mr. Tidwell as one of the strictest teachers in school. I knew him as the host for Illim. I also knew that he had a beeper of his own hidden on his person. He had received the message too.

We made eye contact.

I raised my hand. "Mr. Tidwell, may I please use the bathroom?"

If it was another student, he might have argued a bit first, asking if it really couldn't wait till class was over. But he didn't hesitate before telling me, "Very well."

With a few of my classmates giving me confused glances, I quickly shoved my notebook into my backpack and sprung out of my chair. I walked up to his desk.

As he put a hall pass in my hand, Tidwell gave me a serious look and said, "Be back in five minutes."

I gave him my million-dollar smile. "Sure thing."

I was out of the building less than a minute later.

Running across campus, I took the beeper out of my pocket and checked the tiny screen. It was an automated alert from the long-range scanners: Z-space corridor opening in Earth's orbit. That meant new arrivals.

I reached a pay phone and put in my loose change, wishing once again that I had my own cell phone. I dialed the Chapman house. Mr. Chapman would be working at his own school now, but hopefully Alison would be home.

She picked up on the first ring. "Hello?"

"It's me. You got the alert too, right?"

"Yep. I'm getting online right now."

The Chapmans had a secret room in their basement, with a smaller computer that was connected to the larger computer at the pool.

"The z-space corridor is opening slowly," Alison explained what the scanners told her. "So we've got a bit of time before the ship comes out."

Talking about stuff like this over a public pay phone wouldn't usually be a good idea. But the Chapmans also had alien software protecting their telephone line. Calls to or from their number couldn't be wire-tapped. (Somewhere, an immoral phone operator was probably listening in on a very confusing busy signal.)

The Chapmans got to keep all the cool stuff at their house. That's the advantage of being the only house on Earth with multiple Yeerks under the roof.

"Are they sending any messages?" I asked.

"Not yet."

"Do we at least know who they are yet?"

"Well it's big, whatever it is. Scanning the frequency-thingies . . . Looks like a Dayang colony freighter."

"Ugh, that's no help." The Dayang were a race of traders. They mass-produced and sold their ships to whoever needed them. It could have been anybody riding that ship.

"Hang on," Alison said. "I'm getting another call. It's probably Eva."

I looked around. There was no one else here at the moment. But I couldn't really stand outside the school's front entrance all day and not expect to get caught.

"Okay, I'm gonna head to the pool. I'll call you back from there."

I hung up and dashed to the bike rack. My mom had the car today. One more inconvenience, but at least I didn't have to run all the way.

As I pumped my legs and rode my bike as fast as possible, I felt a small twinge of pity for Tidwell. He had to keep up appearances, so he was stuck in school and missing all the action. But at least I got to escape.

.

From the high school to the abandoned building. From the basement to the underground cavern.

The cavern was dark. But hieroglyphic-shaped lights in the rock walls lit up automatically as I walked in.

The Kandrona, the pool itself, and all the Yeerks inside were close to the entrance. A few cables on the floor connected the pool to the main computer terminal against the wall. Lining the walls all around was a mishmash of alien technology traded from several different species. The mechanical guts of the Yeerk ship - the long-range scanners, the communication array, the encyclopedic database - were here as well. The only things from Earth here were some sleek-looking office chairs.

This was our base. The Yeerk pool.

I sat down at the main computer. With Tem and I working as one, we pulled up all available information on the freighter inside the z-space corridor. Then we set up a live connection with the computer in the Chapmans' basement. Alison's face appeared on one of the screens. Right after that, I heard Eva walk in behind me.

Eva looked at me disapprovingly. "Shouldn't you be at school?"

"Shouldn't you be at work?" I shot back.

Eva was a freelance journalist. Her hours were flexible. When she told people she was out chasing a story, it wasn't totally untrue. It was just sometimes a story she couldn't ever publish.

She frowned, but didn't scold me. That'd come later. She pulled up a chair next to me. "Alison said it's a Dayang freighter. Any updates?"

"It just materialized into regular space."

Dayang colony freighters were very large ships. Much larger than our Refugee Ship, even larger than a Blade Ship, but smaller than a Pool Ship. The Dayang designed them to be adaptable for a colony of any species. They're not meant to be a long-term home, but they're enough to support the group until they reached a new planet.

Eva typed at the keyboard, preparing to make first contact. Eva-plus-Edriss was our designated ambassador. Eva hadn't worked with aliens for as long as Chapman, but unlike him, she didn't constantly put off "you're causing me problems and I can't wait for you to go away" vibes.

She sent the ship a message in Galard, the closest thing to a "universal" language. Please identify yourself.

It took a few minutes for the reply to come. We are a colony of 63 Hork-Bajir.

"Hork-Bajir?" we heard Alison say in surprise.

Tem had heard of Hork-Bajir hitch-hiking with other species. After all, before it arrived on Earth, our own refugee ship had two Hork-Bajir hosts working with the Yeerks. But it was pretty rare for them to be flying around the galaxy on their own.

Before we could reply, they sent a new transmission. A request for a live video chat.

Eva opened the channel. On their computer, they could now see Eva's face. On our screen, and on Alison's screen at home, we saw the head of a Hork-Bajir. It was like a mix between a lizard and a bird. Green, scaly, with two horns pointed forward and a sharp beak.

I had never seen one before, of course. But it was just like the encyclopedia described to Tem. It wasn't a big shock to me or Alison.

Eva, however, gasped. "I know that face," she whispered.

The Hork-Bajir spoke in her own language. It roughly translated to, "We are looking for the Yeerk ship piloted by Jara Hamee and Ket Halpak."

Eva answered in the slow, stilted way the human mouth approximates the Hork-Bajir language. "That's us. My name is Eva, and my Yeerk's name is Edriss."

"I am Toby Hamee, daughter of Jara Hamee and Ket Halpak."

That got my attention like an electric shock.

I looked at Eva - or rather, towards Edriss inside of Eva. Edriss used to be bonded with Ket, before she . . .

Eva said, "Y-Yes, I kno-"

"Where are my parents?" Toby interrupted. She wasn't here for small talk.

Eva frowned sadly. She hesitated. "I'm very sorry, Toby. But Jara Hamee and Ket Halpak . . . are dead."

Hork-Bajir language didn't really have gentle euphemisms like "passed away" or "are no longer with us". Eva had no choice but to be blunt.

Toby's expression hardened. Her face may as well have been made of stone.

After some nerve-wrackingly long moments, she said, "How?"

"It was an accident. When the Yeerk ship came here, it broke. They were too close to the damage for too long. They died from radiation sickness." Eva used the Galard word for "radiation". There was no such word in the Hork-Bajir language. "Radiation is . . . It's like poison, but-"

"I know what radiation is," Toby said irritably.

Eva paused. "I'm sorry. They were sick before my friend and I found them. We could do nothing."

Toby turned her head away sharply and closed her eyes.

Eva and Alison were both quiet. Tem and I mostly felt awkward. What the hell we were supposed to say?

Eventually, Toby looked back at Eva and said, "Where are their bodies? I want to see them."

"They were buried. I can tell the location to your ship. We can meet you there."

They were buried in the same meadow as our Yeerk ship. I leaned close to Eva and whispered to her in English. "You sure it's okay to bring them to the ship?"

Eva looked at me sternly. "Tom. It's their daughter. We'll make it okay."

.

The Hork-Bajir were a strange species.

In the rules of the Galactic Truce, alien species were split into two distinct groups: "Advanced" species that understood zero-space and had the technology to travel to other planets, and "primitive" species that were isolated on their own world. It was a rule that the former shouldn't reveal themselves to the latter.

There's a gray area between those two groups that wasn't supposed to exist. That's where the Hork-Bajir were.

They used to be primitive in every sense of the word. And not just because they started later than other species. Frankly, they were never going to be very smart. And, yes, I know, I'm the jock who was barely pulling a C-average. I know how much it hurts to be told you'll never learn. But I'm saying this from a biological point of view. A monkey can't learn calculus no matter how much you try to teach it, because that's just not how their brains work. Hork-Bajir were smarter than monkeys, but less smart than humans.

They were probably never going to build spaceships. But then the Yeerk Empire found them, and they brought their own spaceships.

Hork-Bajir were a popular choice of slave for the Empire. Back then, Yeerks used their hosts like puppets. The hosts had no control over their bodies, but they were still aware of what was going on around them. Primitive species like the Hork-Bajir were being exposed to knowledge about space centuries beyond them.

Eventually, the Empire was destroyed. And suddenly there were all these free Hork-Bajir left behind. A non-advanced species that had been all over the galaxy.

Most of the Empire's former slaves went back to their own planets - well, the ones who survived the Andalites, that is - which isn't a lot.

But the Hork-Bajir's home planet was pretty badly messed up by one disaster after another. Going back there wasn't a very practical option. Most Hork-Bajir either settled down on the planets they landed on, or friendly aliens gave them a lift to a more suitable, tree-filled planet. They were a race of hitch-hiking alien nomads.

As Eva and I drove towards the woods, I mentioned how confused I was to find such a large group of Hork-Bajir traveling on their own.

"I don't mean to be rude . . . Okay, maybe I am being rude, but . . . Are Hork-Bajir really smart enough to pilot a spaceship by themselves? Even if it had really good AI, it's a lot harder than pressing a gas pedal and steering."

"Toby is a seer," Eva explained. "A genetic mutation much more intelligent than average Hork-Bajir. She's probably smarter than all of us put together."

"Oh, I see."

She continued. "She was only a child when Ket and Jara were separated from her. It was after that when Ket and Jara met Edriss and Iniss. They volunteered to protect the refugee ship, even though they knew it would delay any chance of finding Toby again."

Tem and I nodded silently. They may not have been very intelligent, but Tem had always been in awe of how kind and selfless those two Hork-Bajir were. They stayed long after all other hosts either were killed or abandoned the pool. If not for those two, the refugee ship would have been destroyed long before it reached Earth. Every Yeerk in the pool owed their life to them several times over.

"They missed their daughter. And yet . . . they were never worried. They honestly believed Toby would be all right, no matter where she was. And sure enough, now she's all grown up, and assembling her own group of refugees."

"She must have learned about our refugee ship while searching for her parents," I said. "Then she heard a rumor about Yeerks protecting Earth and . . ."

One more reason why Ket's and Jara's deaths were awful. We fell silent in the car.

.

The Yeerk refugee ship was buried in a meadow in the woods. It was a big, empty clearing surrounded by trees. It had been a while since I'd been there.

Eva and I rendezvoused there with Alison and a bunch of Hork-Bajir.

The Hork-Bajir were tough-looking aliens. They were only vaguely human-shaped for having a head, torso, two arms, and two legs in all the same spots. But that's where the similarities ended. They were green reptiles. Their heads were on top of long, snake-like necks, and they had long, blade-tipped tails at the other end. They were about seven feet tall. Claws for hands and talons for feet. And most intimidating of all, they had razor blades growing out of their wrists, elbows, and knees. They looked like the forbidden love children between a Ninja Turtle and the Shredder.

Those blades were only for harvesting tree bark, which was what they ate. Hork-Bajir looked dangerous, but they were actually a very peaceful species. Supposedly.

The ship was buried in the center of the clearing. But at the very edge, right where the trees began again, were two rows of disturbed earth. Not too fresh; thin patches of grass had started to grow on top again. At the head of each, two twigs were tied together in the shape of a cross and planted into the ground.

Jara Hamee on the left. Ket Kalpak on the right.

Toby Hamee sat on the ground in front of them. She didn't cry. I wasn't sure if her species made tears the way humans did. She didn't really make any noise, she just sat and stared for a long time.

About a half-dozen other Hork-Bajir came down with Toby while the rest waited in the ship. I didn't know if they were her bodyguards or what. They never said anything. All of us stood behind Toby, humans on one side, Hork-Bajir on the other, respectfully silent and motionless.

Except one. After a minute, a Hork-Bajir woman (I could tell because she had two horns instead of three; besides that Hork-Bajir men and women looked mostly identical) broke away from the group and walked to the hill of dirt in the middle of the clearing. She looked over it intently.

When she started brushing her claws over the dirt and twigs, I walked up behind her. "Please don't touch that," I said in her language.

"Is this the Yeerk ship?" she asked.

"Yes."

She kept looking at the mound. I was worried she was trying to find the door. "Yeerks are inside?"

"No."

She turned and looked at me sharply.

"We moved the Yeerks to a better hiding spot," I explained.

"Your . . . 'technology' . . ." she said the word in Galard, "is inside?"

"No. We moved that too." Most of it, anyway. The ship was almost empty now.

"Where?" she asked.

I narrowed my eyes. "You don't need to know." That's the closest expression the language had for "None of your damn business".

She seemed to understand the translation. She glared down at me.

She was a foot taller and had a face that could literally skewer me, but I glared right back at her. <You don't scare me,> I thought. Tem was more nervous, but no one needed to know that.

Toby stood up again and called out to her. "Don!"

After a few more seconds, she walked past me and returned to her group.

Toby turned to face Eva and spoke calmly. "Thank you for bringing me here."

"What will you do now?" Eva asked.

Toby gestured vaguely in the direction of the mountains. "Our ship's scanners found a good valley in the mountains. We will make our new home there."

"You're going to stay on Earth?" Alison asked.

"If you're worried that we'll bother the humans, we won't. We just want a quiet place to make a new home."

It wasn't hostile, exactly, but her tone made it clear that it wasn't up for debate. They were staying on Earth whether we liked it or not.

"We won't make trouble for you, and you won't make trouble for us." With that, Toby walked to her group. They all turned to leave.

But before they left, Eva called out, "Toby . . . My Yeerk, Edriss, she was bonded with Ket. They knew each other very well. We want you to know . . . Your mother loved you, Toby."

I thought it was a nice thing to say, but Toby spun her head back like she was insulted. "I already knew that. Of course, I knew that."

And the group of Hork-Bajir marched back towards their ship.

.

We all had a meeting at the Yeerk pool, to explain to Chapman and Tidwell everything that happened.

When Tidwell arrived in the underground cavern, he looked at me dryly. "I believe I said five minutes."

"What, you were serious?" I asked innocently.

"If for no other reason than to let me know what was happening."

"We were still figuring out what was happening," I shot back. "Really, how much did you expect me to learn in just five minutes?"

He considered this, but then he said, "Fine, but you never came back for your other classes either."

I shrugged. "Well, it got late, and school was almost over anyway. There didn't seem much point."

"And that attitude is why I need to give you a week's detention," he said nonchalantly.

My jaw dropped. "You can't be serious!"

"You ditched school, Tom. Rules are rules."

"It's not like I didn't have a good excuse! Seriously, Tidwell." I ignored how he narrowed his eyes at my lack of "Mister". "If an alien invasion isn't an excuse for missing school, what is?"

"Eva and Alison could've handled it." Tidwell looked at Eva. "You said on the phone they weren't hostile."

"They weren't. It was a very peaceful encounter," Eva replied casually. That traitor.

I was about to say something, but Tidwell interrupted.

"Tom, I'm being strict because I'm worried about you. We may be half-alien now, but we're still half-human. It's important that you hold onto your regular human life. I don't want you to start throwing everything else aside because you think Yeerk-business is the only thing that matters. That's an easy trap to fall into - I say that from past experience."

He made a good point, but my teenager-ness didn't want to hear it.

"Yeah, yeah, but, like . . . If something happens during school hours, it's a lot harder for you or Chapman to sneak away without anyone noticing. I'm the practical choice for dealing with that stuff. Besides, it's not like I cut class all the time."

Tidwell stared at me, considering what I said. Then he said, "One afternoon detention."

"Come on-"

"One afternoon, and I'll make sure the school doesn't notify your parents that you skipped school, like they're supposed to," he said sternly.

I frowned. ". . . Fine."

<It is his job. How would it look if the strictest teacher in school let you get away with this completely?> Tem thought.

<Don't take his side!>

We explained all the details of what happened with the Hork-Bajir. Chapman pulled up an image of the mountains on the computer. The far-away valley where the Hork-Bajir were now settling.

"Are we really gonna let them do whatever they want?" I asked.

"They have just as much right to stay on Earth as the Yeerks," Eva said. "They're not invaders or pirates. They're refugees, like us."

"Here's a thought," Alison spoke up. "We need more hosts for Yeerks. And they know all about Yeerks. So . . ."

"But they would have to sneak through the city to come to the Kandrona every three days," Chapman said. "Distance aside, that's a big risk of being caught by humans. Or Andalites."

Eva nodded. "If we get a second Kandrona and set it up in the valley, then maybe. But unless that happens . . . Then again, from Toby's perspective, her parents were too busy helping Yeerks to search for her. I wouldn't blame her if she resented us for that."

"True," Alison frowned. "She wasn't exactly giving off 'let's be best friends forever' vibes."

I groaned. "We are never gonna get enough hosts."

"So what should we do?" Tidwell asked.

Chapman stared at the picture of the valley. "Nothing. We leave them alone. For now."

Tem didn't see a problem with it. Hork-Bajir were most at home around trees, not stone streets and metal buildings. As long as they stayed in their hidden valley, everything would be fine.

But I was uneasy. Toby said they wouldn't bother us. But I didn't like the way that other woman was snooping around the Yeerk ship.

Chapter Text

Jake opened the front door, talking to someone over his shoulder. "I need to get my wallet. Wait out here." He came inside but froze when he saw me. "Oh. Hey, Tom."

"Hey." I was heading to the front door, holding a basketball. Tem and I were about to shoot some hoops, taking turns with my body, keeping score on how well we each did.

<It's not a competition. It's just exercise,> Tem told me.

<No, it's a competition,> I told him.

<I'll be using your body. Your muscle memory. It'll make no difference.>

<Yeah, tell yourself that after I crush you.>

I was about to pass Jake, but he blocked the doorway. "Where're you going?"

<Tell him you're planting a garden,> Tem thought.

I smirked and held the ball in front of Jake's face. "I'm gonna plant a garden. Can't you tell?" I brushed past him and went outside.

Marco and some other kid were standing on the driveway. Right away, I noticed that Marco had gotten a haircut since our talk in the car. His once neck-length hair was now chopped even shorter than Jake's.

I couldn't keep the smug grin off my face. "Nice hairc-"

"Before you start," he pointed at me. "I got it cut like this because my stylist recommended it. It had nothing to do with what you said the other day."

<Not even I believe that, Marco,> Tem thought.

I thought about teasing him. Then I thought, nah. Keeping the joke going for this long would just be mean. Let the poor guy come out when he's ready.

Instead, I turned my attention to the kid standing next to Marco. The kid looked about Jake's age. Besides that . . . Frankly, I didn't know what I was looking at. They were either a really masculine girl or a very feminine boy. The skin was light brown. But again, I couldn't tell if they were a person of color or a white kid with a really deep suntan.

"I haven't seen you around before," I said.

"He's a new friend from out of town. We're going to the mall together," Marco explained.

A "he" then. He didn't say anything. He kept alternating between staring at me and turning his head around to see what was behind him.

"I'm Tom. Jake's brother. You got a name?"

"Yes I do. My name is Phillip." He repeated the name with stronger articulation, as if he was worried he pronounced it wrong the first time. "Phil-lip." And then he kept going. "Ip. PHIL-ip. Phi-LIP. Ph-Ph-Ph-Ph-" Marco quickly jabbed an elbow into the kid's side. "I am Jake's cou-" Another elbow jab. "-I am Jake's friend from Canada. Fffffriend. Ca-na-da. CAN-ada. Ca-NA-" Another jab. "I am Canadese."

I stared. Slowly, I shifted my gaze to Marco.

"He has a form of Tourette's syndrome," Marco said.

"Ah," I said.

Jake came back outside. "Okay, let's go," he said quickly. "I'll be back later, Tom."

"Later," I said. The three boys turned to leave and Phillip nearly tripped over his own feet. Jake and Marco grabbed him and practically dragged him upright.

I watched them rush off. "Uh, nice meeting you, Phillip," I called after them.

"Nice meeting you!" he practically shouted over his shoulder. "Nisssssss-" Jake and Marco shushed him.

I turned towards the hoop above the garage door and started dribbling the ball.

<Is it my imagination, or does your brother have a habit of collecting weird friends?> Tem asked.

<I really shouldn't judge. After all, my best friend's an alien.>

Tem took the first shot. The ball bounced off the rim.

.

The following Saturday, something strange happened.

The computer at the Yeerk pool picked up a distress signal. It came from a gravel quarry way out in the middle of nowhere. There were no ships in the quarry, just the distress beacon.

The frequency was distinctly Yeerk, but it was a very old frequency. Like, it was already old back when the Yeerks were an evil empire. It was the equivalent of picking up a telephone and hearing Morse code. The signal came from a one-way distress beacon, not a communicator, so we couldn't really talk back to them. The proper response to such a signal was to send help in person.

There were only three groups of aliens known to live on Earth at the moment. There was us. There was the Hork-Bajir colony who lived in the mountain valley way out in the other direction. And there were the Andalite bandits.

"Sooooo . . . This is a trap, right?" I said.

"It's definitely a trap," Eva, Chapman, and Tidwell all said in perfect unity.

"Doi," Alison added.

"Are these Andalites idiots or do they just think we are?" I asked angrily. I really didn't like being thought of as an idiot. "Even if it's a Yeerk signal, it's obviously not Yeerks sending it. Unless they got to Earth without a ship. Or we're supposed to think it's one of us, like we don't keep track of our own numbers."

"With a signal like this, in an isolated place like that, they must be expecting us to send a ship to investigate," Tidwell reasoned. "Which means they don't realize our refugee ship can't fly anymore."

"It's just like I said," Alison said. "Since their own ship blew up, they want to hijack ours to get home."

"I'm pretty sure I'm the one who said that," I reminded her.

Alison waved it off. "Oh, who keeps track of these things?" I narrowed my eyes at her, but only briefly.

"It's a stupidly simple trap," Chapman said. "But . . . It might be difficult to avoid."

We all looked at him. Alison said, "How do you figure? All we have to do is not go."

"If we go to the quarry, we'll be putting ourselves in danger," Chapman explained. "But if we don't go, we'll miss our best chance of finding the Andalites."

"That's true," I said. "This is the best lead we've had since they came to Earth. And since their trap didn't fool us, we can turn it around and trap them instead."

"Let's not rush into anything," Eva said. "Knowing it's a trap doesn't magically make it safe. Do you really want to just waltz into it?"

"Well we're not gonna stop the Andalites just by staring at them through a scanner," I shot back.

Tem and I were in sync. It's not that we didn't know it was dangerous. Of course we were nervous. But we were also excited to get any chance to stop the Andalites.

"We should also consider the one-in-a-million possibility that this distress call actually is a distress call," Tidwell said dryly.

"Even more reason to go!" I said. "Let's go and be prepared for anything. We should bring all our best weapons. The Dracon rifles, the compact Dracon beams, magnetic cuffs, force-field projector, stasis manipulators, tranquilizers, bio-trackers-"

"Maybe some semi-automatics and a bomb while we're at it," Eva said sarcastically.

"Do we have a bomb?" I asked. I wasn't sarcastic.

Chapman spoke up. "We shouldn't all go. If things turn badly, somebody needs to guard the pool. Or act as a rescue party. I recommend a team of two or three go investigate the quarry, keeping an open communication channel with the others. Be prepared for a fight, but don't start one. The main objective should be to learn about the enemy. With a bit of luck, maybe even follow them to their base. Now, since we don't have a flying ship, getting there will take some time. The team should get ready to leave as soon as possible. Any volunteers?"

"I'm in," I said immediately.

Eva said, "Tom, this could be an especially dang-" But I cut off her usual "You're only a child and as adults we really shouldn't be sending you into danger because oh-my-goodness imagine if your parents found out" speech.

"Eva, you would have to tie me up to make me sit this one out."

.

In the end, Eva and I were the ones to go. There was no road leading to the quarry. We drove on a motorbike through the woods. Well, I called it a motorbike, but it wasn't cool-looking like one at all. It was originally a mag-lev cart for hauling equipment. But it was faster than walking.

We scanned the gravel quarry as closely as possible, but it wasn't much help. The sensors at the pool were designed for finding spaceships out in orbit. They weren't sensitive enough to pin down specific life forms, at least not that far away. We couldn't see how many were there or what morph they were in. All we had to go on was the location of the distress beacon.

As I drove, Eva sat behind me and kept in contact with the pool. The others called the freighter at the Hork-Bajir colony. The call rang for a while, but Toby answered eventually. She confirmed what we already figured; all the Hork-Bajir were accounted for in her valley and none of them were sending a distress signal. It had to be the Andalite bandits.

The quarry really was in the middle of nowhere. If we had a ship, it would've taken just five minutes to fly there. I figured sneaking up on land might give us the element of surprise. But with no ship and no road, getting there took us THE ENTIRE DAY.

Well, not literally, but it sure felt like that.

I started to worry they would leave before we could get there. Eva stared at her handheld scanner. The distress signal was coming in loud and clear. But as I feared, it stopped when we were only halfway there.

"They turned the beacon off," she said over the buzz of the engine.

"Dapsen!" I drove between the trees as fast as I could.

It took another half-hour to finally arrive. We parked the vehicle in the sparse trees and walked to the gravel. The quarry itself was just a giant hole in the ground with rocks and a bit of water at the bottom. Very empty. Very few places to hide.

"Marco would probably find this place funny," Eva muttered.

"What?"

"Our lives have become like a sci-fi show," she explained. "And now we're in what looks like the set of every alien planet on every sci-fi show there is."

"Yeah. Hilarious."

Cautiously, we walked down to the center. Eva paid close attention to her scanner. While I scanned the area with my eyes and my Dracon beam held ready.

Nothing. There weren't even little birds or lizards they could've been morphed as. The place was deserted, and they took the distress beacon with them.

Eva spoke into her communicator. "We're here, but . . . They're not. We're too late."

Chapman replied on the other end. "Since we took too long to send a ship, they figured we weren't coming. They gave up and left."

<Figures,> Tem thought. <They blew up their own ship because fixing it would be too much trouble. Andalites have no patience.>

<Neither do I. Honestly, I kind of get it.>

I kinda hoped this quarry was their headquarters and it wouldn't matter when we got there. But even Andalites weren't stupid enough to set a trap in a place that could be traced back to them. The scanner couldn't find any sort of trail we could follow either. But if they could morph birds, there wouldn't be.

There was nothing more we could do there. We got ready to head back.

There was a chance they really were there in the form of tiny bugs. They could even be hitching a ride on our bodies. But since Andalites could only stay in morph for a maximum of two hours, there was virtually no chance they'd still be there after the long drive. Just in case, Eva and I swept the mini-scanner all over our bodies and found nothing. And just because Tem and I felt like it, the first thing I did after getting home was take a shower. I couldn't find so much as a flea hiding on me - and I looked.

I wished we found them at the quarry. If they weren't in one place, they were in any place.

We were all frustrated. Sure, we didn't walk into a trap after all. But we had nothing else to show for the day. For the second time, the Andalite bandits ran away before we even saw them. We were zero for two.

.

It got worse.

We didn't know it at the time, but someone else had noticed the Andalite bandits' distress signal.

Chapter Text

The Chapmans lived in a nice-looking house in a nice-looking neighborhood. Two stories tall, a garage, a well-kept lawn. Nice, but perfectly normal. It was a lot like my house, actually.

I rang the doorbell. Right away, Melissa opened the front door. "Hi. They're waiting downstairs."

This was her home, but I walked ahead of her liked I owned the place. I'd only been here a few times, but I knew the way. Melissa and I went past the living room, through the hallway, and down the stairs into the basement.

Her basement looked completely ordinary. There was a billiards table covered with dust and boxes of Christmas decorations. At the far end was a white wooden door, totally inconspicuous. It was usually kept locked, but it wasn't now. We opened the door and went inside.

This is where it stopped looking normal. Chapman's hidden office had an alien computer set into the wall. This computer was something he scavenged from his old alien-hunting days, before he met the Yeerks. It wasn't as advanced as the one from the refugee ship, but it did the basics. The room also had regular office stuff: a swivel chair, a phone, a bulletin board. Stuff like that. The office was like two different worlds blended together.

The others were all here already. Chapman sat in the only chair, working at the computer. Alison, Eva, and Tidwell were left standing. This windowless room felt a little cramped with six humans.

"Here." Eva handed me a newspaper. Not the regular paper, it was a trashier tabloid thing.

The headline read: LIZARD PEOPLE SIGHTED. The accompanying photograph was of the top of some building downtown at night. Taken from below, it was zoomed in to a very blurry something-or-other climbing onto the roof. It was a really bad photograph that could be written off as some guy in a costume. But anyone who had seen one before would recognize the shape. It was definitely a Hork-Bajir.

I grit my teeth. They already told me about this on the phone, but seeing it was another thing.

Mr. Tidwell deadpanned, "This is actually worse than that time with the photographs of Bigfoot."

Alison glared at him. "I have apologized for that. Repeatedly!"

"Apologized for what?" Melissa asked. "Wait a sec. Is Bigfoot real? Is he an alien?!"

"We're not talking about it," Alison said firmly.

"There's only one Hork-Bajir in the picture," Mr. Tidwell explained, "but the article says that witnesses saw multiple creatures prowling through the city last night."

"The good news is, most people don't take that tabloid stuff seriously," Eva said. "And I was able to keep the story quiet at the more respectable newspapers. They just wrote it off as a hoax. But I'm only freelance, so there are limits to what I can do. If there are many more sightings, we won't be able to keep a lid on it."

"Humans reading newspapers is not the problem," I said bitterly. "The problem is Hork-Bajir are running around our city when they're not supposed to doing who-knows-what!"

I skimmed through the tabloid. Ignoring the dramatic exaggeration and the wild speculation, the facts seemed to be that nobody was hurt and the lizard people ran away once the humans spotted them. No explanation of what they were really doing here or where they were now.

As I focused on reading, Tem used my mouth to ask, "Does Toby have a comment?"

"I've been calling her ship all day. She's not picking up," Chapman said. A little light continuously blinked on the console.

Melissa said, "The Horn Badgeers-"

"Hork-Bajir" Tidwell corrected.

"Right. You said they were friendly. So they wouldn't hurt anyone. Right?"

"We certainly hope not," her dad replied.

"Hork-Bajir love trees, and dislike urbanized areas. They wouldn't have come into the city just because they were bored. There must be something they wanted last night." Mr. Tidwell said.

The computer suddenly beeped and the monitor turned on. A Hork-Bajir's face filled the screen.

"Oh! They answered. Finally!"

"Let me," Eva said. She quickly switched with Chapman in the chair and faced the screen. "Hello," she said in Hork-Bajir language.

I could tell that the guy on the screen wasn't Toby. He had three horns. Toby only had two. He seemed surprised - maybe. Tem and I didn't have much experience reading Hork-Bajir facial expressions.

"Hello," Eva repeated. "Is Toby there?"

"H-Hello . . . ? Are you talking to me?" He moved his face close to the camera. I knew he could see Eva's face on his screen. And since this office wasn't that big, he could probably see the rest of us standing behind her.

"Yes. But I want to talk to Toby. Can you please get her?"

"I . . . I heard noise inside the ship. 'Beep beep' noise. So I went inside. I touched the light on com-pu-ter."

Melissa tugged at my sleeve. She quietly whispered to me, "What are they saying?"

I leaned down and quickly whispered back in English, "It's some random guy. Eva's asking him where Toby is."

"I didn't know com-pu-ter can talk," the Hork-Bajir said. "Hello, Computer."

Eva shook her head. "No, I'm not the computer. My name is Eva. I'm a person. I'm using your computer to talk to you from far away."

"Oh! I know that! I know how that works," he said excitedly. "It's like the Speaking Trees. Computers make noise that go long way. Hork-Bajir can't hear the noise, but other computers can."

Eva nodded patiently. "Yes."

"Computer is not you. It looks like you. Computer says here what you say there."

"Yes, that's right. What's your name?"

"Rik."

"Rik, is Toby there in the valley?"

"Yes."

"Can you please get her? Tell her Eva wants to talk."

Rik hesitated. "Toby is busy. It's a bad time."

"Yes, it's a bad time for us too. That's why we need to talk. Please? It's important."

Reluctantly, he nodded. "Yes, I get her."

"Thank you."

Rik walked away, but the camera stayed on. Now we just saw the inside of their empty colony ship.

As we waited, Alison spoke up. "Is it my imagination, or do all Hork-Bajir have human-sounding names? We were just talking to 'Rick'. That's a human name. And 'Jara Hamee' sounds a lot like 'Jeremy'. And then there's 'Kate' Halpak. I can't be the only one hearing this."

"What about Toby?" I asked.

"Toby sounds kinda-sorta like Tobias."

"You think?" Chapman asked. "That one feels like a stretch . . ."

After a few minutes, a two-horned Hork-Bajir walked into the camera's view. "Hello, Eva - No, Eva and Edriss," she said, but not happily. She sounded weary.

"Hello, Toby." Eva was speaking the Hork-Bajir syllables smoother than during their first meeting. Her human mouth was getting used to the language. "Some Hork-Bajir from your valley were in our city last night. Do you know anything about this?"

I'm translating loosely. A more literal translation of the sentences would be something like, "Hello Toby. Yesterday, night, Hork-Bajir leave valley. Inside human-place. You know?" It's not a language with a complicated set of grammar rules. But it's not just the words, it's the way Eva said it.

Toby didn't answer right away. She stared at Eva with an excellent poker face. Then she calmly asked, "Where are they now?"

Eva blinked. "I was hoping YOU could tell US. Are you saying they haven't returned yet?"

No response.

"Toby, tell us the truth," Eva said. "Did you order them to come here?"

"Absolutely not." Again, I'm translating loosely. The word was really just "no", but that doesn't describe the firm tone Toby used. "I was trying to stop this."

Again, Melissa asked me, "What are they saying?"

But I just shushed her. "I'll explain in a minute."

Alison, more polite than I was, moved over and began quietly translating in her daughter's ear.

Eva said, "Please tell us what's happening."

Toby still hesitated. Though she kept her expression neutral, it was obvious she was having some kind of internal debate. Deciding whether or not to trust us. Finally, she sighed from exhaustion. "No point in hiding it . . . Twelve Hork-Bajir left the valley. We've been searching for them through the woods, but we still haven't found them. I didn't realize they went as far as your city. Maybe I should have guessed, but I didn't."

"They left," Eva repeated. "You mean they're not just lost."

"No. They chose to leave. Or rather, Don told them to leave."

"Don?"

"Dawn. Another human name," Alison muttered smugly.

I remembered the name. Don was that Hork-Bajir who was acting nosy around the Yeerk ship. She seemed very interested in getting inside and seeing our stuff.

Toby explained. "Our colony traveled through space for a long time. Moving to space ships and space stations. Looking for lost Hork-Bajir. I brought our ship to Earth because I wanted to find my parents. And also because I wanted to stop traveling. I wanted a new home away from aliens and technology, where Hork-Bajir could live like Hork-Bajir. Most of the colony wants to live a quiet, peaceful life . . . But Don is different. She was one of the last to join us. Ever since we arrived on Earth, she argued with me. Don wants to bring the whole colony back into space. After listening to Don, some Hork-Bajir began to agree with her."

Chapman leaned over Eva's shoulder and spoke. "In other words, the colony is split between the Toby-group who wants to stay on Earth, and the Don-group who wants to go back to space. But they can't fly the ship without your help, can they?"

"Don asked many times that I teach her how to fly the freighter ship. I always said no. Not because she wouldn't understand, but because I don't trust her. Don doesn't want to keep traveling for peaceful reasons. She wants to fight other races and take their technology. She wants the Hork-Bajir race to the strongest in the universe. I want Hork-Bajir to be strong too, but Don goes too far. She won't fight to save Hork-Bajir. She only fights because she wants power."

"You let someone like that into your group?" Chapman blurted out.

"We didn't make her pass a test before joining," Toby said defensively. "We looked for any Hork-Bajir who needed help. I didn't know what she was like until later."

Eva spoke up again. "I'm confused. If Don and her group want to get off Earth, why would they go away from the ship?"

Toby lowered her eyes for a moment before speaking. "The night before they left, Don and her followers argued with me again. She demanded one last time that I teach her how to fly the ship. I said no. But then Don said she didn't need me anymore. Because earlier that day, five aliens contacted her and gave her new orders. If I wouldn't help her, she would work with them instead."

"Five aliens?" Eva narrowed her eyes in puzzlement. "When was this?"

"The same day you called us to ask about the fake distress signal."

So the same day the Andalites tried to set a trap for us, somebody somehow sent a message to Don too.

"These aliens that called Don . . . Were they Andalites?! No, that can't be. There should only be one or two Andalites on Earth. Are you sure she said five?"

"Yes. Five aliens. She wouldn't tell me who they were, but she kept repeating the number, like it was important. 'The five help Don!' 'The five give us technology!' 'Hork-Bajir and the five defeat everyone!' She wasn't making much sense. I wanted to make her explain later, but the next morning she and her eleven followers were gone."

Tem and I puzzled over this in our shared head. We studied the blueprint of that Andalite fighter very closely. It wasn't that large. There simply wasn't enough room to smuggle five Andalites on board. And no other space ships came to Earth since the Hork-Bajir landed. So who were the five aliens helping Don?

Chapman told Toby, "It wasn't any of us, if that's what you thought."

"I knew it wasn't you."

"Then why didn't you call us?" he asked irritably. "Twelve Hork-Bajir left the valley, and we had to find out through a tabloid. You don't know what that is, but it's not good."

"This is a Hork-Bajir problem. We can fix it ourselves."

"No," he said even more irritably. "If they're running around human territory, that makes it a human problem. And you HAVEN'T fixed it yet."

Toby started to match Chapman's irritation. "We WILL find Don and bring her back before she causes any trouble. We only need a little time."

Eva spoke more diplomatically. "Maybe we can help you find them."

"I don't want you to get involved," Toby said.

"Why not?"

"Because I'm tired of aliens trying to 'help' Hork-Bajir. Ever since the Empire was destroyed, different aliens have been telling us where to live and doing everything for us, because they think we're too stupid to take care of ourselves. You think it's help, but it's an insult. If other races don't respect Hork-Bajir, the least they can do is leave us alone."

"We respect you."

"No, you respect ME, because I'm a seer. You don't respect any of the 'stupid' Hork-Bajir."

"That's not true."

"Then why did you make Rik get me?!" she snapped. "I was searching through the woods all day and night yesterday. I was trying to get some rest when you called. You could have asked Rik about all this, but you insisted on talking to me and only me."

"Aren't you the leader?" Chapman asked.

"I'm 'like' a leader, but I don't control everything in this valley. I just drove the ship. Rik could have told you everything you need to know about Don, but you didn't even try asking him. I'm the only Hork-Bajir you will talk to, because I'm more intelligent, and intelligence is the only thing you care about. Admit it."

I felt a pang of guilt inside. Tem and I both did. Honestly, we kinda DID think talking to regular Hork-Bajir would be a waste of time. Were we racist? Ableist?

But Eva and Edriss, apparently, felt differently from us. "No, I didn't talk to Rik because he's a stranger," Edriss said sternly through Eva. "I wanted to talk to YOU because your mother was a very good friend of mine, and I owe it to her to check on you when something happens."

That silenced Toby. Clearly, she wanted to argue, but they made a good point Toby had trouble denying.

Before anyone spoke again, an alert sounded on our computer. Eva quickly pulled up the data in another window.

"It's our refugee ship. The one buried in the woods," she announced. "It's empty, but its alarm is still connected to our computer network . . . Somebody just broke inside."

You didn't need to be a seer to guess who it was.

"We're closer than you are," Eva said. "Sorry Toby, but I think we have to get involved now."

.

We went upstairs. We planned things in a hurry, getting ready to rush out, deciding how to split up.

I relayed Tem's thoughts out loud. "Do we believe Toby's story? For all we know, she made the whole thing up, and Don is breaking into the ship under her orders."

"Ket and Jara would believe her," Eva said. "I'm not sure what to think."

Edriss and Iniss, currently bonded with Eva and Chapman, used to be bonded with Toby's parents. The Yeerks never actually met Toby before she arrived on Earth, but they saw the memories of Ket and Jara raising their young daughter. It was a strange state of knowing-but-not-knowing someone. Strange for humans, but normal for memory-sharing Yeerks.

"We need to find Don and hear her side of the story," Chapman said.

"Well, if she is telling the truth," I said, "twelve rogue Hork-Bajir might be more than we can handle. And that's not counting an extra five mystery aliens." I pulled my flashlight-shaped Dracon beam out of my jacket pocket. "We're gonna need more than this."

Mr. Tidwell looked at my Dracon beam with surprise. "Why did you-" He narrowed his eyes. "Do you bring that with you everywhere?"

I paused under his gaze, just for a second. "Not to school."

My teacher stared at me suspiciously for another moment. Then he moved on.

"I'll stay here and use the computer to coordinate things," Chapman said.

"Is there anything I can do?" Melissa asked.

Both her parents immediately replied, "No!" Then, more gently, Alison said, "No, let us handle this, sweetie. You just stay home and stay safe, okay?"

"'Kay," Melissa said quietly.

A few seconds later, as we moved towards the front door, Melissa spoke up again.

"Guys, I know I'm not much help during these things, but . . ." She looked up at us, meek and awkward. ". . . I'm not 'in the way', am I?"

Her mom and dad blinked at her. "Of course not," Chapman said. He leaned down to be eye-level with her. "Melissa, one of the reasons we deal with all this scary stuff is to keep the city safe for you. You're not in our way, you're our goal."

Hearing that gave Melissa a shy smile.

Alison added, "I know it's frustrating to be stuck on the sidelines. But please be patient. We'll explain everything when it's all over."

After another moment, she nodded. "Okay, Mom. I'll be patient."

Eva watched the scene with a serious expression.

.

I wasn't there for this part. This is how it was described to me later.

After the rest of us left, Chapman returned to his secret office, and Melissa stayed upstairs and tried not to worry.

She decided to call her friend Rachel on the telephone. Obviously, she wasn't going to tell Rachel what was happening. Melissa knew the alien stuff needed to be a secret, even from her best friends. But talking about normal teenage stuff seemed like a good way to get her mind off things.

She dialed Rachel's house. Her sister Jordan picked up. She said that Rachel wasn't there. She was hanging out at Cassie's place today.

Melissa thanked her and hung up. Then she dialed Cassie's number. Melissa wasn't as close with Cassie as Rachel was, but they were still casual friends. Even if Rachel and Cassie were already busy over there, maybe they could all chat on the phone together for a few minutes. And maybe Melissa could casually mention that it was a bad day to go on a hike in the woods.

Cassie's dad picked up. He told Melissa that Cassie went over to Rachel's house.

"What? But . . . Uh, no. Nothing's wrong . . . Thank you. Bye."

Melissa hung up and stared at the phone. "That's weird . . ."

Chapter Text

My name is Eva. The Yeerk in my head is named Edriss.

My life turned out very different than how I imagined. Once upon a time, I was a little girl living in Mexico. Little did I know I would one day be an American divorcee subletting her body to an alien renter.

I'm not complaining. Everything I've done in my life, I've done for a reason. It's just sometimes I take a step back and I think: It's a lot.

I used to be funnier. I always used to tell Marco, "When life gets you down, you can react two ways. You can cry, or laugh. Laughing is usually better." I don't cry, but I don't joke as much as I used to either. I take everything so seriously these days. And I can only blame part of it on Edriss' influence on my brain.

My heart went out to them when I discovered the Yeerks. As a (legal) immigrant, I feel a lot of sympathy for war refugees who struggle so hard to find a better home. I agreed to become a new host. Although, right up to the moment the slug-like extraterrestrial touched my ear I kept wondering, Is this really a good idea?

But I don't regret it. Not really. Bonding with a Yeerk, quite literally, opened my mind.

The biggest issue is our religion. When we first met, Edriss was a firm atheist: There is no God. After spending time with me and listening to why I believe what I do, she has since become an agnostic: There might be a higher power, but it can't be proven. She comes with me to church sometimes and listens politely. But she feels that Christianity is too arbitrary and Earth-centric to really commit to.

As for me, as someone who accepted Jesus Christ as her savior, sharing my body and mind with someone who hasn't feels, somehow, inappropriate. I haven't given up on converting her one day, but for the most part, we just agree to disagree.

Sometimes I worry I'm not a good Catholic. After all, I vowed to be with Peter until death, then I got divorced instead. People from my old church let me know exactly how they felt about that. Perhaps the divorce wasn't strictly necessary, but Peter and I both agreed it was for the best. We've remained amicable.

And sometimes I worry I'm not a good mother. My relationship with Marco isn't un-amicable, but it's distant. Even when we're in the same room, there's a distance between us. I know he blames me for the divorce.

It's nothing like the Chapmans' relationship with their daughter. Melissa knows all about the Yeerks, about her parents' half-alien-ness, but they're still fine. Alison found a way to balance keeping Melissa involved and keeping her safe. And they make it all look effortless.

Sometimes, for a moment, I wonder if it would help to tell Marco everything.

But then I come to my senses.

Nothing good could come from telling Marco how much danger his mother is getting herself into.

.

Alison and I walked through the woods. It was late afternoon. The sun was just starting to go down.

"I hate to be THAT person," Alison said, "but this is not a good plan."

"It's not a plan at all. It's something we just have to do," I replied with deliberate calmness.

"You and I wouldn't stand a chance in a fight with ONE Hork-Bajir. If all twelve are there and they get violent, we wouldn't last five seconds."

"The same goes for any innocent bystander who accidentally crosses their path. The photographer last night got lucky. We need to negotiate with them before the luck runs out."

We reached the clearing. The wide open meadow surrounded by a fence of trees. In the center was the familiar mound of dirt and rocks that hid the refugee ship. The door was wide open - a big square of earth was flipped upwards and held in place by hydraulic beams.

We looked around the meadow. The setting sun and the trees cast long shadows everywhere. We couldn't find anyone in the darkness.

I called out using the alien language in Edriss' mind. "Don! Are you here? I want to talk."

A few moments later, she stepped out of the ship. She walked onto the grass and stared at us, who stayed near the edge of the meadow.

A Hork-Bajir.

Physically, a very dangerous alien. Taxxons might be a little more dangerous in terms of destructive power, but their defenses are weaker. Hork-Bajir are very hard to kill.

I'm short, especially compared to a man. The seven-foot reptile towered over me, and she had more knives than a chef's kitchen.

Don also had something metal on her head. It was clipped onto her horn and hung down the side of her face, like . . . a headphone? Or a camera? She had something metal in her claw too, but from this distance I had no idea what it was.

"I know you," Don said in her own language that Edriss instantly translated for me. "You're Yeerks. I saw you here before."

"Yes. We know you too, Don. Toby told us about you."

She suddenly held her arms out wide. She gestured to the empty meadow around and between us. "I'm alone. I told my friends, 'Wait here'. They wait. Only I came here."

"Why are you here?" I asked her, making sure to sound authoritative and brave. "And why were you in the humans' home yesterday?"

She took only a moment to decide whether or not to answer, then said, "I'm looking for Yeerks. Not you. All Yeerks. Little Yeerks in pool." She gestured to the open door behind her. "That day, the other Yeerk said, 'Pool isn't here.' Said, 'Technology isn't here. We hide them.' But I looked here anyway. I didn't know another place to look."

Edriss thought this over. It's not that Don didn't know how to call us on the computer. She specifically said she was looking for the pool and NOT us. That got Edriss . . . not "suspicious" so much as "convinced" Don was up to something bad.

I agreed. Still, we gave her one more chance to explain. "Why do you want to go to the pool?"

"To make Hork-Bajir powerful!" she shouted. "Hork-Bajir are strong and fast . . . But we are not smart . . . We cannot fly the ship. Only Toby can fly the ship. But Toby say, 'No! I won't help Don.' So I look for Yeerks. If we put Yeerks in our heads, we'll know what they know. They will teach us to fly the ship ourselves. And they will teach us how to fight other aliens!"

"Why do you want to fight them?"

"To make Hork-Bajir more powerful," Don repeated. "We defeat aliens, we take their weapons, we get more power. Then fight more aliens, and take more technology. And we'll find more Hork-Bajir! More ships. More intelligence. More and more, until Hork-Bajir are the strongest in the universe!"

It was just as Toby said.

I shook my head. "No, that's wrong. Fighting is not the Hork-Bajir way."

She scowled at me. "Old Hork-Bajir way is gone. In the past, all Hork-Bajir lived on one planet, with Father Deep, and Mother Sky. My parents' parents' parents saw Mother Sky's flowers. Then, the Old Yeerks took them into the stars. Now, all Hork-Bajir are different . . . We all know the stars are not flowers . . ."

I expressed Edriss' thoughts. "I understand. The Old Yeerks did many bad things, and we're all hurting from them. Including the New Yeerks. You and I are the same. We have no home. No traditions. We need to find new ways for our people. But we can do it without violence. Without bloodshed."

"We are not the same. You have intelligence. Aliens only care about intelligence. Aliens tell Hork-Bajir, 'go here', 'do this'. They say, 'you're not smart', 'you don't matter'. They treat us like animals. They don't even ask our names. Hork-Bajir everywhere are weak against aliens. No more!" She slapped a claw against her chest. "I will MAKE Hork-Bajir powerful! And I will be best of all! Everyone, everywhere, will know the name Don Alddak!"

I blinked.

Alison and I looked at each other.

We looked back at the Hork-Bajir.

Then Alison blurted out, "Your name is 'Donald Duck'?!"

She looked confused. "No. Don Alddak."

"Don-ald Da-"

"Don Alddak!"

Alison paused. She opened her mouth to say something, but changed her mind.

I spoke up. "Your plan won't work. You can't take the Yeerks away from the pool. If the Yeerks leave Earth for more than three days, they'll go hungry and die."

"We will take Yeerks and leave Earth. Then we will have three days to learn everything they know."

"No, you don't understand. They'll DIE."

"I understand." She narrowed her eyes at us. "I just don't care."

Alison and I exchanged another look.

"Well, there are two problems," I said calmly. "One, the Yeerks in the pool don't want to die."

"The same for us. We REALLY don't want to die," Alison said calmly.

"And two, we don't want you to fight aliens in space. So we can't help you," I said.

"We're sorry," Alison said.

"Yes, we're REALLY sorry," I said.

"Because we LIKE helping people," Alison said.

"But this time we CAN'T," I said.

"Too bad," Alison said.

Don replied, "You will show us where the pool is." Before we could deny her again, she waved and shouted. "Now! Come out now!"

The leaves rustled and the branches creaked. Suddenly, I saw more Hork-Bajir climbing through the treetops around us. For such large creatures, they were able to hide perfectly until now, moving through the trees as nimbly as squirrels. I counted a total of four as they jumped down into the meadow. They moved close to Don. Five, 7-foot-tall, living weapons staring down Alison and me.

Don laughed loudly. "I tricked you! I said, 'I'm alone'. I lied! Many of us are here! You think you're smarter than us, but I tricked you! Now we will MAKE you show us the pool."

They took a step towards us, but then -

TSSEEEW!

A red flash of light scorched the grass directly in front of their feet. The Hork-Bajir all jumped back in surprise.

<She was so proud of herself,> Edriss thought. <It's almost a shame to tell her everyone knows that trick.>

The Hork-Bajir looked to where the blast came from. There were many trees in these woods, but it wasn't too dense. When they looked carefully through the shadows, there was an unblocked line of sight going from the spot of scorched earth, out to the distance, straight to the Dracon rifle held by Tom.

They heard footsteps from the opposite side of the meadow. Tidwell stepped out from behind a tree, also aiming a Dracon rifle at them. "Don't move. We have many allies hiding close by. They all have powerful weapons aimed at you right now."

A bluff, of course. With Chapman at his office, there was only Tom and Tidwell covering us. There were 86 Yeerks in the pool when we stopped by to pick up the weapons, but there were so few of us able to move around on dry land. We had no choice but to bring Tom here.

Tom was only 16. Just three years older than my own son. And like all 16-year-olds, he believed he was indestructible. He was always in such a rush to prove himself. Always eager to help on these missions, regardless of the risk to himself. And I wasn't doing very much to stop him.

His mother Jean was my friend. If Tom died on my watch . . . It wouldn't even need to be that serious. If he got a broken arm or needed stitches, and Jean learned that I allowed him to be in that kind of danger while hiding it from her . . . she would never forgive me.

The Hork-Bajir looked at Tom and Tidwell, and nervously looked at the woods all around, trying to spot the other snipers who weren't really there.

Except Don. She looked right at me with a glare sharper than her horns.

"We don't want to fight," I said. "But we can't let you take the pool. Please, go back to your colony."

"No! We must find the pool," Don said. "The five are looking too. We must find it before them."

"The five?"

"The five came to me. They say, 'We help you, you help us'. The five teach me many things. Gave me technology. The five say, 'We find Yeerk pool together. We use Yeerks together.' . . . But they lie! I know they lie. The five will use the Hork-Bajir, like everyone uses the Hork-Bajir. I say, 'Yes, we find pool together.' But I must trick them. I MUST find pool before the five!"

"The five WHAT? Who are you talking about?" I asked.

"The five is the five," Don answered.

<Well that's useless,> Edriss thought.

Don continued. "I need the five, but I can't trust them. The five want to work with Andalites. Bad! If I find pool first, I won't need the five anymore." She took a step towards me. "Tell me where the pool is. Now! Or the five and the Andalites and the Hork-Bajir will destroy you!"

She took another step, and another Dracon blast hit the ground in front.

Tom marched towards us and spoke coldly. "The next one hits you. We have many friends hiding. You can't beat all of us."

One of Don's followers turned to her. "What happens now?"

Don looked angrily at the metal device in her claw. After a few moments of silence, she said, "No choice. We retreat."

"You should go back to the colony," I repeated. "Toby wants to talk to you."

She glared at me and said, "No. We must do the five's plan instead."

She dropped the device on the ground. Then she and all her allies turned away and walked towards the woods.

Edriss and I thought quickly. Should we just let them go? Would trying to stun them all unconscious be worth the risk of a battle? But then-

FLASH-FLASH-FLASH.

The metal thing on the grass let out a rapidly blinking white light. It was silent, but blinding in all the shade and the twilight. So bright my eyeballs burned in the micro-second before I pressed my eyelids shut.

I heard the footsteps of the Hork-Bajir change from a walk to a run. Then jumps. Branches creaked and leaves rustled.

I tried looking through my fingers, but I couldn't see clearly through the flashing. It was about fifteen seconds before the machine stopped. Then it took several more seconds of blinking for my eyes to adjust.

For such large creatures, Hork-Bajir were extremely fast and agile. They were long gone now.

.

The device Don left behind was about a foot square. Half of the surface was a screen. It was almost like a flat laptop computer. Alison kneeled down on the grass and held a scanner over it.

I called Chapman with a handheld communicator and explained what happened - though it took a minute to find a signal. An Earth cell phone might have been better. Not all the alien tech we scavenged was super-advanced.

Tidwell set his Dracon rifle on the ground, but Tom kept a careful grip on his, turning all around to watch the trees, just in case. The sun was still setting. It was getting darker.

"They seem to be gone," I spoke into the communicator. I held it out so we could all hear. "But they may still try to follow us to the pool. It wouldn't be safe to go back yet."

"Agreed," Chapman said.

Alison seemed confused at her scanner. "There's something organic in this. At least I think it's organic . . . It's some kind of computer, but the superconductors have DNA."

Tidwell wondered, "Someone used plant life to build a computer?"

"I dunno what they used. Honey," she spoke up so the communicator could hear, "I'm gonna send the data over to you."

She pressed some buttons on the scanner. In a few moments, the readings would appear on the computer screen in Chapman's office, where he would match it against the database.

Tidwell looked closely at the device on the ground. "This didn't come from the Dayang ship. Could Don have gotten it from the Andalites?"

"It's not Andalite technology," Chapman replied over the speaker. "They wouldn't make . . . Hold on."

"What?"

"No, that can't be."

Tom turned to look at us. "What?"

"I think this is a Venber computer. Yes, these readings are Venber DNA."

"What's a Venber?"

"But these things are ancient, and they were banned everywhere. How did a bunch of Hork-Bajir . . . Oh . . . Oh, of COURSE."

Alison grabbed my wrist and spoke directly into the communicator. "Honey, come back to us. What's going on?"

"I know who Don's allies are," Chapman said. "The five aliens. She kept saying it, but we all misunderstood. It wasn't 'five', it was 'THE Five'."

"The five who?"

"Elfangor told me about them. When the Andalites first discovered z-space and traveled to other planets, The Five were the very first alien species they met. It was their First Contact."

Edriss and I were both puzzled by something. "So 'Five' is the name of a species? Why would they name themselves after a number? Wouldn't that mean there were four others species before them?"

"I don't know. Nobody knew. The name isn't the point." Chapman continued, "There was this other species from some moon. The Venber. Sentient, but primitive. The Five attacked them, and melted down their bodies to make material for their computers. They hunted the entire Venber species to extinction."

Alison looked at the machine again. "You mean this thing was made out of a dead guy? Oh, that's disgusting!"

Chapman's voice replied, "It must be centuries old, though. If technology made out of Venber can last that long, I kind of get why The Five did it." Then, "That was Iniss' thought. I want everyone to be clear on that."

"If The Five are so bad, how come we've never heard of them?" I asked.

"Well, when the Andalites learned what they did to the Venber, they got so angry they did a genocide of their own."

"As Andalites do," Tom muttered.

"But dear," Alison said, "The Five aren't extinct. They're helping Ms. Duck."

"It must be just like with the Yeerks. The Andalites tried to wipe them all out, but a small handful survived. They could've been lying low all this time. Waiting for their chance."

"So the theory is," Tidwell spoke up, "refugees from The Five - somehow - found Don, gave her some technology, and are helping her look for the Yeerk pool. But why?"

"There's a good way to find out," I said.

We all looked down at the Venber computer.

Chapter Text

My name is Eva. The Yeerk in my head is named Edriss.

We used the scanner to learn more about the computer Don Alddak left behind. It was barely larger than an Earth laptop. As I hoped, it was also a communicator. It was all set up and ready to send a transmission to some other machine many light-years away. All we had to do was switch it on and start talking.

The woods were still getting darker.

I set the device on the grass. I made a sign of the cross and thought a silent prayer for the unnamed Venber who was sacrificed to make it.

"All right. Let's see who answers."

And then, I turned it on.

The communicator was specifically an interociter - it showed a three-dimensional hologram of whom you're talking to. Edriss had never heard of an interociter that was this small. This must be incredibly advanced technology despite being as old as Chapman said it was.

The hologram appeared hovering over the device. The shape was tall and thin like a human, but completely covered by a cloak. A large hood draped over what could have been a head. I couldn't see any part of their body, not even the number of limbs. It seemed weird that they would talk through a hologram if they were just going to hide what they looked like anyway. But then again, this allowed them to see a hologram of me on their end.

The cloak was gray, like an old statue. The hologram shone so brightly that the dark forest seemed even darker in contrast. It looked almost as though that figure and I were the only two people in a black void.

"I was hoping you'd call." The voice was calm, confident, and vaguely feminine.

She spoke in English. And it sounded completely natural, not like an automatic translation from a computer. She even had an American accent.

"You know English?" I said.

"I taught myself several of Earth's languages. We've been studying Earth for a long while. I thought it'd be polite to have this conversation in the local tongue. O puedo hablar en español, si quieres."

She was smug. I didn't like smug.

"Who are you?" I demanded.

"My name is Pamaclees of Light."

I looked the hologram up and down. "That's a rather dark and mysterious look, Miss Light."

Covered by the robes, a limb reached up and moved up her hood, revealing her face. Two dark eyes and a mouth, but no nose. Her skin was the same dark gray as the cloak, but I had no way of knowing if that was its real color or the effect of the hologram.

She smiled at me. It was even a human smile - the edges of her mouth pointed upwards.

"You're a representative of the Yeerks, yes?" she asked. "I was watching you through the camera Don wore. She thought she turned it off before her 'secret' meeting. But she didn't realize we can turn it on remotely. Bless her heart."

"My name is Eva. Am I correct in thinking you're a representative of The Five?"

"Oh, you've heard of us. That makes this simpler."

"I haven't heard anything good. I was told that a race called the Venber is extinct because of you. The computer I'm using to talk to you right now was built out of a dead person's remains. You wiped out an entire species - sentient people - just to improve your technology. Is that true?!"

"That was not my fault. That was before my time," she said firmly. "What The Five did to the Venber was a mistake."

I looked at her warily. "You're not just saying that? You really mean it?"

"A Venber's body was unique in the universe and had countless uses. But they were hunted to extinction because the old Five were greedy and short-sighted. If I was around back then, I would have kept some Venber alive for breeding stock. We could be harvesting their biological material to this day, instead of going through all this expense to preserve and upgrade these old computers. The Venber never would have died out on my watch."

"Yes, you're a real saint," I said. "Is the entire Five species like you?"

"Species?" Pamaclees chuckled a little.

"Is that funny?"

"The Five isn't my species," she said. "The Five is an organization, or a movement."

"Oh . . . Only five members?"

"We have many members from different species all over the universe. The name 'Five' refers to our five core principles. The five things that make us, us."

"Which are?"

"The first is that only we get to know the other four."

"I see . . . That's how you survived the war with the Andalites. They couldn't find all of you, because they had no way of knowing who was a member and who wasn't."

She smiled again. "The Andalites can kill our members, but they can't kill an idea."

"But Don Alddak isn't an official member, is she? You're just using each other." A picture was forming in Edriss' mind and mine. "You're not on Earth, because this signal is going across light-years. Which means you met Don when she was still in space. You gave her a camera and a computer, and you've been sending her secret instructions ever since. She joined Toby's colony as your spy. She does your dirty work while you stay safe at home. And when she's done, you'll swoop in and take the rewards for yourself. Am I close?"

"Positively toasty."

"Don wants the Yeerks because she thinks they'll make her smart enough so she won't need you anymore. But what are you after? Are you going to melt the Yeerks down to make more computers?"

Pamaclees answered, "That's the last thing I want to do. You Yeerks are so rare. So wonderful. We want you just as you are."

I stared at her suspiciously. ". . . What do you mean?"

"The Five are scientists. We're always on the hunt for more knowledge. We infiltrate planets secretly and collect all the information they have to offer. Yeerks would be invaluable to that process. You can sneak into other races completely unnoticed. You can connect directly to another creature's brain and learn everything they know. You would be the perfect spies for The Five. The ultimate assimilators of knowledge."

I blinked. "So you're saying you don't want to hurt the Yeerks . . . You want to recruit them."

"The Hork-Bajir army. Don's threats to take Yeerks away from the Kandrona. That's just insurance. We would much rather you join us willingly, Kandrona and all."

<Yeerks were universally hated. Now suddenly everybody wants us,> Edriss thought in amazement.

<Wish it was this easy to get volunteers in The Sharing,> I thought.

I looked back at the hologram of Pamaclees. "Harvesting Venber. Manipulating Hork-Bajir. Why should we help someone like you?"

"We can help each other. The Five are masters of genetic engineering. If we had a few Yeerk bodies to experiment on, we could breed new Yeerks. I understand that you've lost the strength to control a host that resists you. We can give you that strength back. If you join us, we can make you conquerors again. You could enslave entire planets to your will!"

"You're really not selling it . . ."

"All right, something peaceful then. Your dependence on Kandrona rays, perhaps. We could potentially create new Yeerks who can survive outside the pool for up to ten days - or thirty - or forever! Imagine, immortal Yeerks who don't need the Kandrona at all."

Edriss thought this over. <That is tempting . . . But no.>

I repeated this out loud, and added, "We just don't trust you."

"Have it your way. If you won't come with us willingly, we'll just have to take you by force. We'll get help from Don and her Hork-Bajir friends . . ." She grinned, showing sharp, pointed teeth. "And the Andalite."

A chill started in Edriss and spread out to my human skin. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"The other day, you heard a distress signal on a Yeerk frequency, right? The Andalite soldier was trying to set a trap for you. Well, we heard it too. We've been watching Earth ever since Don arrived, and we paid attention to even the tiniest z-space signal. But unlike you, we were able to hack their transmitter. And we sent messages back to him."

<Don also said something about working with Andalites,> Edriss remembered.

"You talked to the Andalite? You're working with him?!"

"A single Andalite soldier, stranded on a strange world. So desperate to get a new ship that he set the most obvious trap in the universe. We were sure he'd be happy to work with us. Especially when we offered to help him track down his hated Yeerk enemies."

"But the Andalites are your enemies too," I said, perplexed. "They almost wiped out The Five, didn't they? I figured you'd want revenge."

"None of us care about revenge. We just want to use them."

"Why?"

Pamaclees of Light smiled and said, "The Five uses everyone and everything. All species, all the universe is raw material for our experiments. Besides, the Andalites have morphing technology. We would love, love, love to get our hands on that."

"No, you can't trust someone from the Andalite military. They look down on all other species. And they're so violent."

"Yes, violent," she said eagerly. "That's exactly what we're counting on. The Andalite soldier is going to lead the Hork-Bajir in an attack on your human city."

"An attack?!"

"Don's not going to sneak around the city like last night again. I've told her to be more aggressive tonight. They're going to raid the streets and break into every building, block by block, until they find the Yeerk pool."

"You can't do that!"

"It's already done," Pamaclees said, horrifyingly calmly. "I've told Don my plan. She's regrouping with her followers as we speak. And I've also sent a message to the Andalite's z-space transponder. The Andalite will rendezvous with Don's group at seven P.M. tonight at the edge of the woods. I'm sending the exact coordinates to this computer."

A quick beep came from the device.

"From there, they'll march into your city and tear everything apart until they find your base. And I've told them to kill any human who gets in their way. You already know how Don feels about aliens; she's not gonna mind."

"That's insane," I cried. "You'll reveal the existence of aliens to humans in a way that's impossible to cover up. The whole world will panic - And for what?! This plan work even work! Twelve Hork-Bajir can't defeat the entire human population. The police will show up - with guns! - long before they find the pool. It's going to be a bloodbath for humans and aliens! Everyone will lose!"

"That's right," Pamaclees said. "A siege like this will have very little chance of success. But Andalites are too arrogant and Hork-Bajir are too stupid to realize that. It's going to be a disaster. But it's still going to happen."

She looked at me expectantly. "UNLESS . . . you would like to make us a better offer?" She smiled again.

I stared at her.

Then I took a step forward and said, "We're not offering you anything. We're gonna stop Don without your help. And then, we're gonna stop you. That's a promise."

Her expression hadn't changed at all. Pamaclees just said, "See you soon."

And then the hologram disappeared. The transmission was over.

.

The attack would begin at 7. That was less than half an hour away.

We hadn't left the meadow yet. Alison, Tidwell, Tom, and I stood next to the ship in the dark. We now knew where Don's base was, but what could we do if we went there?

Alison frantically spoke into the communicator. "Right dear, what's your plan?"

"Who said I have a plan?" Chapman's voice replied.

"You better have a plan 'cause I don't," Alison said.

"Actually, I may have something after all," Chapman said slowly. "Half a plan . . . Two-thirds of a plan . . . All right. Question: What do we have that neither Don's Hork-Bajir nor the Andalites do? Answer: A ship! That's the biggest advantage we have. What if we flew the refugee ship to their base?"

"Well that would be lovely, but we can't fly the ship," I said. "We still don't have a replacement for the broken engine. If we turn on that piece of junk, it'll become radioactive again." Edriss spoke through my mouth, "I refuse to have another host die of radiation sickness, not even to save the city."

"Short-term exposure won't be a problem," he replied. "We turn on the engine. Five minutes to get there, five minutes to scare them off, five minutes to fly back. Then we shut the engine down again. That's not enough time for it to become lethal. At the very worst, we'll feel queasy for maybe half a day."

Tom quietly muttered to Alison, "I love how he says 'we', like he won't be safe at home while we're doing this." Alison rolled her eyes and nodded.

If Chapman heard this over the communicator, he ignored it. "Think about it. They're expecting a fight against primitive humans. They can't fight back against a ship hovering over their heads. If we threaten to shoot them from above, they have no choice but to surrender. Fight's over before they even leave the woods."

Tidwell hesitantly said, "It could work."

.

It wasn't working.

We four hosts were crowded in the pilot room inside the refugee ship. Alison shone a flashlight over my shoulder as I tried to work the control panel. The ship didn't have working lights at the moment. Besides the faulty engine, pretty much the only thing we hadn't moved to the new cavern was a first-aid kit with some potassium iodine pills. We found the pills a minute ago and swallowed the last of them. It was a way to give ourselves a little extra protection against the radiation.

But it might have been for nothing, because the engine wouldn't activate.

"What's wrong?" Tom asked.

"It's the ship's safety protocols," I answered. "Because the engine's so damaged, the system won't let it turn on again."

Alison pointed her flashlight to her watch for a second. "It's fifteen to seven," she said with some panic.

The Andalite was probably meeting with Don right now, preparing the plan of attack.

"Can't we just override the safety?!" Tom asked.

"It can't be done manually," Tidwell explained. "We need to tell the computer it's okay. But we need power to turn on the computer. And with the auxilary generator at the cavern, the only power source left is the engine."

"So we can't use the computer until we turn on the engine, and we can't turn on the engine without the computer," Alison said.

"Yes," Tidwell said.

"Wait a sec," Tom said suddenly. "We have another computer."

"We do?" I asked. But he was already running out the door.

Tom came back a moment later. He grinned triumphantly and held up the Venber device.

"That?"

He stepped around me and pulled a connector cable from the control panel. "It sent a transmission across light-years. It must have some kind of power source." As he fumbled under the sparse light to connect the Venber device to the ship, he said, "The Five started this whole mess. It's only right we use their tech to stop 'em."

"I don't really like the idea of attaching that evil thing to our ship," I said. "A person was murdered to make that."

"Well it's no use to him now, is it?!" he snapped. And then he snapped the cable into place.

Both the Venber device and the control panel lit up.

The screen read: VORTEX FILTERING COIL IS DAMAGED/NOT FOUND. PLEASE REPLACE COIL BEFORE ACTIVATING MONAD ENGINE.

OVERRIDE? YES/NO

I hit "yes", but it just said: ERROR. VORTEX FILTERING COIL IS DAMAGED/NOT FOUND. I typed a more complicated way to turn off the safety features, but all I got were more error messages. Then, with a feeling of guilt in my stomach, I took the Venber device from Tom and began typing on that screen. I tried to have the new device completely override the ship's operating system.

UPDATING PROTOCOLS . . . ERROR. ERROR CODE: 2735164

REBOOTING SYSTEM . . .

UPDATING PROTOCOLS . . . ERROR. ERROR CODE: 2735164

REBOOTING SYSTEM . . .

UPDATING PROTOCOLS . . . ERROR. ERROR CODE: 2735164

I groaned loudly and looked upwards. "¡Dios mio! Please, give us some help!"

The very instant after I said that: SYSTEM READY. INITIALIZING MONAD ENGINE. A loud rumble came from below decks. The engine was on again. All the lights of the ship lit up.

The other three humans looked around in impressed surprise. I looked upwards again and said, "Thank you!" I wondered if Edriss still needed convincing that God was real after that.

<That's not proof. It's just a coincidence,> she insisted.

<We'll talk about it later,> I replied.

Together, Edriss and I began piloting the ship.

It had no generator, no Kandrona, no digital encyclopedia. Only a faulty engine for propulsion and the bare bones of an operating system. It was like a rusted old van scrapped for parts and held together with duct tape. But we had just kicked it off its cinder blocks. It was moving again.

We aimed upwards. The room rumbled and shook harshly. Outside the ship, dirt and leaves slid off the roof. After a few moments, the entire ship slowly began pulling itself out of the hole it buried itself into.

Our refugee ship was airborne. We all looked at the view screen in front of us. Our view rose higher and higher, hovering above the treetops.

I glanced around the room. I had Edriss' memories of piloting, but this was the first time any of us humans were in a flying spaceship. Alison and Tidwell were both amazed. Tom was practically shaking with excitement; he looked like a little kid at Christmas.

I turned back to the view screen and braced myself. "All right. Let's go stop a war."

.

We flew low. The hull of the ship almost brushed the the tops of the trees. We didn't want to attract any attention from the city.

The coordinates Pamaclees gave us were for another clearing close to the edge of the woods. Even flying slowly, it took less than a minute to arrive. This was the place where the Andalites were supposed to rendezvous with the Hork-Bajir before they stormed the city together.

When we got there, the scene we saw on the view screen . . . was not what we expected.

"The . . . hell . . . ?" Alison whispered in horror.

We couldn't believe what we saw on the screen. Without a discussion, I landed the ship. We quickly opened the door, and we four humans stepped out of the ship and onto the grass. The four Yeerks looked around the area through our eyes.

The Hork-Bajir were dead. Or at least, dying.

It was dark, but the headlights from the ship let us see most of the battlefield. We saw red blood and blue-green blood splattered all over the ground and the trees. Several trees had been broken and slashed at. And the Hork-Bajir, normally terrifying and covered with weapons, lay broken on the ground. I tried counting the victims, to see if all twelve were here, but it was hard to tell . . . They weren't all in one piece . . .

It was a scene of carnage.

Even worse, it wasn't silent. I could hear moaning. Crying. And I could hear someone trying to breathe, but it was mixed with a wet, gargling sound. It came from people whose torsos had been ripped open. People whose guts were lying outside their bodies on the ground. People who were missing part of their head. They weren't all completely dead yet. But I knew, they wouldn't last much longer.

A Hork-Bajir can survive a lot of damage. It takes a lot to kill one of them . . . This was a lot.

We humans and Yeerks stared at the battlefield in silence for several long moments. Suddenly, Tom turned and stepped away. He dropped to his hands and knees. And he vomited.

I studied the area. I didn't see any Andalite bodies.

Of course I didn't. Andalites can morph. If one of them got injured like this, they could just turn into a bird and fly away.

I saw movement.

One Hork-Bajir was lying on her back, and she tried pushing herself up on her elbow blades. I quickly went to her. There was a major stab wound in her chest - she was probably impaled by an Andalite's tail blade. Her face was slashed up, and the camera she once wore was in broken pieces on the ground, but I recognized her.

"Don Alddak," I said. The name wasn't funny anymore. "What happened?"

She glared up at me as blood pumped out of her chest. "An . . . da . . . lites . . ." She struggled to talk. "The Five . . . called them . . . The Five wanted us . . . to work together . . . Andalites . . . didn't want that . . . I knew . . . we couldn't trust The Five . . ."

Don slumped on the ground, clutching her wound. There wasn't any sadness or fear of death on her face. Only anger. "Why couldn't you just give me what I wanted?"

That was the last thing she ever said. She looked away from me and up at the night sky. She died looking at the stars that were not flowers.

.

We moved the refugee ship back to its old hiding place. We turned off the engine.

We called Toby Hamee and told her everything we knew. She didn't cry or scream at us, she kept composed as always. I was grateful that she didn't blame what happened on us - at least, not out loud. We gave her the coordinates. She insisted we not touch the bodies. She and the other Hork-Bajir would come down to the place and handle it themselves.

We lingered inside the refugee ship for a bit.

Tom said, "I miss the Quantum Kindred."

Alison looked at him. "You miss the Quantum Kindred?"

"I miss winning," he said. "I miss when we actually stopped the bad guys."

"The city's safe," Tidwell pointed out. "The pool's safe."

"Is it though?" Tom asked.

The Venber device suddenly started beeping.

Before we could do anything about it, a transmission started. A hologram appeared inside the room. Pamaclees of Light looked at me. This time, she didn't seem smug like before.

"I saw some of what happened through Don's camera," Pamaclees said. She spoke without any energy. She sounded hollowed out, like the rest of us. "When I sent the message to the Andalite bandit's transmitter, I assumed there was only one or two of them. But six of them arrived at the meeting ground."

"Six?"

"Yes. I don't understand it either. But there were six of them. Most of them were morphed as Earth animals. A tiger. A gorilla. A bear. A wolf. Some type of bird. I heard the stories of what the Andalites did to The Five in the past, but they were so much worse than I realized."

"What happened?"

"I told them, we would use the Hork-Bajir to attack the human city. But they attacked the Hork-Bajir instead. They stopped my plan before it could even start . . . I thought I could control the Andalites. I thought that if I offered a way to hunt down their hated Yeerk enemies, they would agree to anything I told them. I didn't think they would care what happened to humans. I was wrong. So wrong . . . They didn't even say anything, you know that? They made no demands. Don and I had no chance to bribe them, or threaten them. They just fought and fought. They were completely beyond my control."

After a moment, Pamaclees said, "You'll be glad to know, The Five is going to stay away from Earth for a while. We're cutting our losses. And we need to reconsider how to approach Andalites in the future . . . You were right, Eva. This was a fight I should not have started."

And then she said, "But it's your problem now."

The hologram switched off.

A moment later, sparks came out of the Venber device. Then the casing broke open. All the lights and sounds died down, and something liquid oozed out of the self-destructed machine.

.

Edriss and I were in a daze for most of the next day.

Tom was right about missing the feeling of winning. The pool was secure. Life went on in the human city like normal. But nothing felt victorious about last night.

We had thought there were three Andalites at most hiding on Earth. Now we knew there were six.

Where did they come from?

I finished work. I lay down on the sofa in my small apartment.

My head was swimming. My thoughts kept drifting to Alison and Melissa. And to Ket and Toby.

Poor, brave, selfless Ket Halpak never got to say goodbye to her daughter before she died.

I wasn't sure what the right thing to do was, but I knew what I wanted to do.

I called my son.

"Marco," I spoke into the telephone, "I'm sorry about cancelling our weekend together again." As if mere words would let him know how honest I felt.

As Marco got older, his words got better at masking his feelings. But he didn't sound upset. "It's okay. I was pretty busy with other stuff anyway."

"Are you busy with your friends again tonight?"

"Why?" he asked.

"I thought, as long as your dad's fine with it, you and I could go out to a movie tonight. If you want."

"Yes," Marco said immediately. Then he tried to salvage his coolness with, "I-I mean, okay, I guess." So he wasn't quite flawless at hiding his feelings. "What movie?"

"I dunno," I said with a smile. "Something funny."

This wasn't out of guilt or fear I was a bad mother. I was seeing him because I honestly missed him.

In these trying times, I would hold on to little bits of happiness wherever I could.

Chapter Text

My name is Tom. The Yeerk in my head is named Tem. We were on our way to pick up my little brother after school.

Jake usually walked home, but I had the car today, so I told him to wait for me so I could give him a ride. I felt like I'd been neglecting Jake lately. I wanted to do little things like this now and then to make up for it.

It was only a few days after that thing with the Hork-Bajir and The Five. I was still a little shaken up by it.

.

My first experience with aliens ended in victory. Most of our encounters ended successfully and peacefully. I had been riding high on our winning streak, but that high started to fade when the Andalites arrived. We'd never even gotten close to capturing them. But at least we all stayed safe.

Then all those Hork-Bajir were slaughtered. And we weren't able to stop it. Yeah, it was only the bad Hork-Bajir, but still. And besides, we never really knew how bad the other 11 were, or if they were just swept along with Don Alddak's evil scheme. My best friend is a gray slug and I have direct access to his inner thoughts. Stuff like that taught me not to judge creatures by their appearances. Hork-Bajir were scary-looking aliens, but I understood - better than most - that they were still people.

The sight of their broken bodies . . . When you have two brains - two sets of memories - in your head, it makes it a lot harder to push out images like that.

But the next time I sat down for dinner with my family, I had to act like nothing was wrong. I picked at my chicken casserole, was reminded of the Hork-Bajir's sliced-up flesh, and once again seriously considered becoming a vegetarian. I felt sick. I think I hid it well enough, though. I'm a really good actor. I have to be.

Then I looked across the table to where Jake was eating. He seemed totally the same as always. Quiet. Thoughtful. A sweet, innocent, average kid who never had to worry about hiding a secret this big. The biggest tragedy he ever had to deal with was a bad tryout for a school basketball team.

I stared at Jake. At that moment - just one quick moment - a hot emotion flared up inside me.

I hated him.

I hated Jake for having it so easy while I was secretly dealing with this trauma.

Then I quickly pushed that feeling away. That was no way to feel about my own brother. Tem reminded me that Jake did nothing wrong. We couldn't hate him for staying safe.

If I was a normal human, I could just pretend I never thought it. But it's a lot harder to lie to yourself when you're hearing another person's thoughts hearing your thoughts. I wasn't honest to the people sitting at the dinner table, but I had to be honest to myself. I admitted what I felt in that instant. I simply chose not to feel it again.

This double-life of mine was putting a lot of distance between me and my family. I had to make a conscious effort to keep acting like Jake's big brother.

.

Anyway.

I parked the car and waited for Jake to show up. I watched a bunch of other kids walking to other cars, meeting up with their parents or older siblings. But there was no sign of that familiar face.

I stepped out and walked towards the school building. There was a mess of kids moving around or chatting together on the sidewalk. I found Jake quickly enough. He was talking with some girl. The first thing I noticed about her was that her faded jeans were way too short.

Jake saw me over her shoulder. "Hey, Tom." The girl turned around to see me.

"Ready to go?" I looked back and forth between them. ". . . Unless you need another minute?"

"Uh . . ." Jake seemed indecisive. He looked at the girl.

She shook her head and smiled politely. "That's okay. My dad will be here any minute anyway."

Jake nodded. "All right. See you later, Cassie."

I grinned. "Oh, so THIS is Cassie." I looked at Jake with extreme interest.

He looked back at me like a deer in the headlights.

But only for a second. Then he promptly walked towards the car and said, "Okay let's go," while grabbing my arm.

But I pulled out of his grip and said, "Well, don't be rude. Let me say hi first." I continued grinning at him. "Aren't you gonna introduce us?"

Inside my head, Tem sat back and relaxed, always up to watch a little entertainment. I could almost imagine him with a tub of popcorn.

Jake looked embarrassed - not so much that I felt bad for him, but just enough for Tem and me to properly enjoy it. Resignedly, he gestured to me then her. "Cassie, this is my brother Tom. Tom, this is my friend Cassie."

I looked her over, memorizing Jake's apparent type. She was a black girl with very dark skin and very short hair. She was pretty short overall. Maybe she wore those jeans 'cause she thought they made her look taller?

I grabbed Cassie's hand and shook it. "It's great to finally put a face to the name. I've heard so much about you."

She smiled back at me, politely, but awkwardly. "Thank you?"

Jake looked like he couldn't decide between wanting to crawl into a hole and wanting to push me down one.

I lingered, still grinning, still holding her hand. "I gotta ask . . ." I gestured my free hand towards Jake. ". . . HIM? You can do so much better."

"Tom!" Jake shoved my shoulder. He probably meant to do it hard but he was like half my weight so I barely felt it. "Can we go now?!" And he totally wasn't blushing at all.

I let go of her hand and waved as I followed Jake to the car. "Don't be a stranger, Cassie!"

I got back in the driver's seat. Jake rode on the passenger's side. His pouting face made him look even younger, and the redness spread out to his ears.

I laughed as I began driving. "You got it bad."

He just turned his head towards the window.

"Oh, lighten up, Midget. You can't blame me for having a little fun with your very first girlfriend."

He mumbled, "We're not really dating, you know."

"Why not?" I asked.

Jake looked at me and opened his mouth. But nothing came out. I think he was caught off guard by the straightforwardness of the question.

Finally, he shrugged a little and turned away again. "Well, aren't I too young to be dating?"

"You are, yes," I admitted. He was only thirteen. I didn't have a girlfriend at thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, or sixteen. It'd be embarrassing if he really were that far ahead of me. Of course, I wasn't looking for a girlfriend 'cause I was busy with Yeerk stuff.

<I could get a girlfriend super easily if I wanted,> I thought.

<I wonder,> Tem thought.

<Shut up.>

Out loud, I told Jake, "But you're not too young to admit you like someone. You do like her, right?"

We came to a red light. Jake hadn't replied. I caught a glance of his awkward, uncomfortable reflection in his window.

Temrash had a new thought. <The signs are there, but maybe we're just wrong. Maybe he doesn't like Cassie that way.>

Gently, suspiciously, I asked, "Does you not-dating Cassie have something to do with Marco?"

Jake looked confused. "No. Why?"

"No reason," I said quickly.

The light changed to green. I drove.

Jake started talking more. "Marco and everyone acts like we're already a couple. But we never . . . I mean . . . Cassie's different from every other girl I know. She helps out with her dad's veterinarian work all the time. It's like she's already a grown-up with a real job. She's a really hard worker. And - and she has such a big heart. She's always thinking about the bigger picture. And me . . . They say I'm a natural leader, but I'm just a normal guy."

He quietly finished with, ". . . She really can do better."

My heart sank. I asked Tem to take control of the driving while I focused on talking. "Jake, I was joking. You know I don't really think like that, don't you?"

"Yeah, I know. But Cassie's amazing. She could have anyone she wanted."

<Could she though? With that fashion sense?> Tem wondered.

<Focus on driving,> I told him. Frankly, I agreed with him, but that wasn't the point.

"Any girl your age would be lucky to have a boy like you," I said out loud. Sure, Jake was a doofus sometimes, but he had tons of good qualities too. "You're nice. And you're responsible. And you have that whole moody-serious thing going on. Girls like that. And you're super-handsome."

"You think I'm super-handsome?"

"Well, you look like me, so . . ."

He laughed a little. I smiled. "Don't sell yourself so short, little bro."

"Yeah, okay. But I don't know if I even want to go on dates and stuff. Especially now."

"Why especially now?" I asked.

Jake had just cheered up a little, but now he caught himself. His smile dropped. He looked out the window again nervously.

"Jake . . . ?"

". . . I can't explain," he said at last.

"Whatever it is, you can talk to me about anything, Jake," I said.

I was a dirty hypocrite for saying that, and I knew it. Tem thought I was being harsh on myself. But that didn't make it less true.

I had secrets. The very essence of my identity was a secret I jealously guarded. I lied to Jake and hid things from him, not to protect him . . . Not only to protect him . . . But also to protect myself. I hid things out of selfish fear of his reaction. I kept secrets locked up in my head simply because I wanted to. So what right did I have to snoop around inside Jake's head?

But I still wanted to know.

But Jake would not say anything.

I nodded. "Okay. You don't have to tell me."

A moment later I added, "But after hearing you gush about how 'amazing' Cassie is-" He flushed again. "-I do think you should let her know how you feel."

"I just said-"

"You don't have to 'date' her," I interrupted. "If you think you're too young or too busy or whatever, fine. If you're genuinely happy with the way things are now, great. But if you like someone that much, you should tell her how you feel. Then you'll decide together what to do about those feelings."

"Why do you want me to tell her so much?" he asked.

Because a bunch of Hork-Bajir died a few days ago.

Because the Taxxons could have eaten me.

Because the Evil Ivy could have kept you asleep forever.

Because of the Five, or the Quantum Kindred, or a million other dangers.

Because nobody knows when or where the Andalite bandits will strike next.

"Because tomorrow, we might die," I calmly said out loud.

Tem kept our eyes on the road, but I felt Jake's eyes looking at me.

I continued, "Nobody knows how much time we have on Earth. So you shouldn't look for excuses to put off the good stuff." I glanced at him and smirked. "Trust your big brother's wisdom."

He smiled at me. "When did you get so wise?"

"I've always been wise. You just never listened."

We laughed together as I pulled into the driveway.

It had been a long time since Jake and I had a heart-to-heart like this, and I was starting to wonder if we would anymore. It was nice.

.

I didn't ask Jake about Cassie soon after that. I didn't want to embarrass him too much. I don't know if he actually took my advice or not.

But about a week later, I happened to see him and Cassie walking down the sidewalk together. They were holding hands.

Good for them, Tem and I thought.

.

Those little moments with Jake were so important to me.

Little did we know, the countdown had already begun.

It would be a very long countdown . . . A very long time until the end . . . But it was always getting closer.

Chapter Text

My name is Chapman. The Yeerk in my head is named Iniss.

A single road cut through the countryside. I was driving. (Iniss refused, choosing to stare passively at the scenery while I did all the work.) (Not that there was much work, I just kept the car moving in a straight line with nothing else in sight for ages and ages.) Eva-slash-Edriss and Tom-slash-Temrash were riding along.

Long story short: We were heading towards Zone 91.

"So Zone Ninety-one is a real place?" Tom asked from the backseat. "I always thought it was something they made up for TV."

"Nope, it's real all right," Eva replied next to me. "The Most Secret Place On Earth."

"Please," I scoffed. "I know three or four places way more secret."

"Like your hiding place for that time machine?" Eva said hopefully.

"I'm still not telling you where it is." Eva was my friend, but if I wasn't telling the creature attached to my brain the location of the Time Matrix, there's no way I was telling her.

Tom spoke up again. "And does the government really keep an alien locked up there?"

"Of course not," I said. A moment later, "Well, actually, I wouldn't know. I was never able to break inside."

"Zone Ninety-one is a facility owned by the U.S. Air Force," Eva explained. "The public knows that much, but that's all they know. What the Air Force uses it for is classified. Like, completely classified. They make such a big fuss about how no one is allowed to know what goes on there, so that invites a lot of speculation. Someone said 'alien' and the rumor's never gone away."

Tom said, "I realize it's probably too late to be asking this, but should we be worried? I mean, these might be the shady government people who capture aliens, and we're aliens, so . . ."

"We're not actually going inside Zone Ninety-one," I reminded him. "The meeting place is outside their territory. We'll be in and out real quick, and we won't even have to see those Air Force losers."

Instead of Zone 91, the area we were driving through was what most people called "the Dry Lands". Out past the city, out past the forest, it was enormous stretch of flat countryside. There was an occasional tree, but it was mostly grass, and taller grass, and dead grass, and no grass, plus some wildflowers and boulders . . . and more grass. And the highway.

When someone asks you to think of "the middle of nowhere", this was the image you thought of. Which actually made it a really good place for a secret government base.

And it was an hour-long drive, so there wasn't much to do except think about the last time I was on this road . . .

.

Elfangor drove. He always drove. Loren sat in the passenger side, while I was in the backseat.

We were in a yellow convertible Mustang. The top was down, so the wind rushed through our hair. At the speed we were going, we almost had to shout to be heard over the air blowing past our ears.

"What is that smell?" I said.

"What smell?" Elfangor said. He was in human form now, and called himself Alan, but in my mind I always thought of him as Elfangor the Alien.

"You don't smell that? It's everywhere."

Loren, her long blond hair flying behind her, sniffed the open air. "You mean . . . fresh air? The smell of the countryside? Grass and earth and the occasional horse?"

"A lack of C-O-two emissions and carcinogenic pollutants?" Elfangor added.

"See Chapman, we're out of the city. This is what air is SUPPOSED to smell like."

"I hate it."

We drove on. And on and on and on.

"How long is this drive gonna take?" I said.

"Do you have something more important to do today?" Elfangor asked.

"I do at seven tonight. I have a date with that Alison girl."

"Another one?"

I shrugged, casually smug. "She wants me."

Loren laughed. "Poor Alison. Desperate Alison. No-taste Alison."

"You should talk. You're swapping spit with a literal space alien." I pointed between them. "Don't deny it. I know all about what you two get up to."

"Swap - Is that what it's called?" Elfangor asked uncomfortably.

"Hush," Loren told him.

We drove past the only pay phone for miles, and kept going.

.

That was an awful long time ago . . .

Back to the present.

We arrived first. We parked my van in the middle of the road. Way out in the distance, so far a human would need binoculars to read it, was a sign that said:

STOP! GOVERNMENT PROPERTY. RESTRICTED AREA. AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY BEYOND THIS POINT. ALL OTHERS SUBJECT TO ARREST AND PROSECUTION. THIS MEANS YOU.

That sign was the official border for Zone 91. But that's fine. We were still on this side of the sign, in public territory.

Eva had a dark gray pantsuit. Tom and I wore black suits for men. We stood outside the car, each of us wearing sunglasses and trying to look professional and intimidating.

I noticed Tom's pants ended slightly above his ankles. Eva was probably right - we should have brought Tidwell for this part instead.

.

"We need someone who looks like an adult," Eva had said.

"Which I do!" Tom had said in an offended tone that didn't really help his case. "I totally look like one of those thirty-year-olds who plays a teenager on TV."

"Maybe once you finally start shaving," Eva had muttered.

"I shave," Tom had replied. ". . . Sometimes."

.

Still, Tom was tall as an adult and wouldn't be doing much talking. This could still work.

Another car drove up. As we were blocking the road, they slowed to a near stop, trying to decide if they should drive around us.

I held out my palm, stepped forward, and loudly said, "Turn off your engine and exit the vehicle slowly."

The driver rolled down the window and stuck his head out. "I-I'm expected," he sputtered nervously. "I'm supposed to be-"

Even louder, I said, "Sir! Turn off your engine and exit the vehicle!"

"Yes! Yes, sorry!" A moment later, he stepped out of the car with his hands raised up. He was a rather fat man with a thin mustache. He wasn't strictly ugly, but he had the type of face that was perfect for sniveling.

"B-But I'm supposed to be here," he said. "I'm supposed to be bringing a delivery to Zone Ninety-one."

"We know. We're the ones you're delivering to." I reached into my coat pocket and quickly flashed an ID badge. "Squadron Ninety-one, Intelligence Division."

Fun fact: There actually was a Squadron Ninety-one. The general public never heard of it, but it was a name floated around online sometimes. Conspiracy nuts like this guy would recognize it.

"You're Secret-Seeker-One-Hundred, correct?" I said.

The internet wasn't a big place in the Nineties, but there was a corner of it where people obsessed with aliens hung out. And there was a black market for buying and selling things that supposedly came from outer space. Most of the time, they were fake pieces of junk that con artists sold to gullible Trekkies. But I made sure to check those sites occasionally, because every once in a blue moon, it was the real thing.

We were here because secret_seeker_100 made a big deal online about the alien artifact he had found.

"Yes, that's me. Although that's not my real name," he said, as if I actually needed that explained to me. "My real name is Bob D-"

"Don't know, don't need to know," I said without patience. "Do you have the item?"

The four of us gathered around his trunk as he opened it up.

The device was exactly as it looked in the pictures he posted online. A black box, about a foot square. It was probably some kind of computer. There was no screen or obvious buttons, but little gaps in the casing revealed strange circuitry inside. The most striking feature were the hieroglyphics carved onto it. Everyone on the message boards agreed that they must be some kind of alien language, but no one was able to match or translate it.

Those hieroglyphics were exactly the same as the ones in the cavern where we hid the Yeerk pool.

This device, whatever it was, was our first lead towards learning about the mysterious aliens who built that cavern underneath our city.

But secret_seeker_100 had gotten the idea that it was stolen from Zone 91, and for some reason, he told the message boards that he planned to drive out there and return it to them. Naturally, we couldn't let that happen. Eva felt a little guilty about stealing it from him. I did not.

Eva waved a handheld scanner over the black box. The scanner was actually junk, but it looked like something a special agent would use. "It's real," she pretended to confirm.

"I bought it in an auction from a private collector," what's-his-name said. "I swear, I had no idea it was stolen from Zone Ninety-one. Honest! It's not like I stole it myself. I didn't do anything wrong."

"Unfortunately sir, it's illegal even to possess stolen federal property. We need to confiscate it."

I snapped my fingers. Tom handed me a clipboard, and then he went to lift the black box out of the trunk.

I handed the clipboard to what's-his-name. "Sign on the bottom. This non-disclosure agreement states that we will not press charges against you, so long as you do not tell anyone what happened here today."

He didn't even bother to read it before signing and giving it back to me. That was almost a shame. Tidwell made sure the form would look real enough to fool people.

But then he smiled hopefully. "So, uh . . . Since I signed that and I can't tell anyone anyway . . . Could you let me know what that machine really is? And what planet it came from?"

"No." I turned towards Tom and Eva. "All right people. Let's pack it up and-"

VROOOOM!

I heard the engines before I saw the jeeps. I spun my head around. Counted four - no, five jeeps - racing off the road around us, forming a circle.

I have no idea how they showed up so quickly without any of us noticing. It's not like there were a lot of places to hide out here.

Multiple men wearing fatigues jumped out of each jeep. Every one of them had a gun.

"STAY WHERE YOU ARE!"

"HANDS IN THE AIR!"

It was like a magic trick. In barely five seconds, out of nowhere, a dozen soldiers suddenly had us and our cars completely surrounded and ready to shoot us down.

What's-his-name held up his hands in immediate surrender. Eva and Tom were both frozen in shock, Tom still gripping onto the black box.

Okay. Didn't see this coming. But we could still get out of this. I lifted up my ID badge. "Stand down! We're with the Intelligence Division of Squadron Ninety-one. We have jurisdiction here." I stepped closer to the nearest solder with my arm fully extended, giving him a good look at my ID. "Security clearance code: Four-four-niner-seven-three-zero-four. Confirm that with your superiors. Then all of you return to base and leave this to us."

I was feeling quite smug about knowing the correct code. But the soldier, without even looking at my extremely convincing ID badge, said, "You're not with the Intelligence Division."

I stared at him.

"Yes, we are," I said forcefully. I showed the wallet again. "See?"

"No, you're not," he said just as forcefully. He lowered his gun and used his other hand to pull out his own ID badge. "WE are Squadron Ninety-one's Intelligence Division." He put the badge back in his pocket. "So who the hell are you?"

Everyone froze.

"I don't get it," what's-his-name said.

I glanced at Eva and Tom. With a groan, Tom slowly set the black box on the ground. And then all three of us put our hands up.

"'We won't even see those Air Force losers'," Tom mumbled.

"Shut up," I said.

Chapter Text

The soldiers loaded Eva and Tom into the back of one jeep. They put me and Bob Dubois - the victim of our attempted heist, whose named I learned because he kept shouting it at the soldiers over and over while asserting his innocence - in the back of another. The mysterious black box went into a third jeep. They drove us past the warning signs and into Zone 91.

The long drive felt wrong somehow. Not just because it was extremely inconvenient for us. It felt . . . weird. But more on that later.

Squadron 91 was a part of the U.S. Air Force. A part that, according to the government, doesn't really exist. The true purpose of the infamous Zone 91 was that it was their headquarters.

Zone 91 wasn't one big building, like the secret headquarters on TV. It was a sprawling military base. (Okay, the Air Force is technically separate from the military, but let's be real, nobody cares. It was military-ish.) A lot of it was empty space - open fields and runways for planes to take off. There were also big aircraft hangars and nondescript buildings. People in camo-print combat uniforms moved from place to place. For all the rumors online about Zone 91, the buildings looked really bland from the outside. There was no neon sign saying, "This is the part the conspiracy freaks came to see!"

Our drivers made frequent stops in order to show their security credentials to other people. They kept explaining and re-explaining who the four of us were. Even as prisoners, we needed special permission to be on the base.

Eventually, the soldiers brought Eva, Tom, and I into a building. They took Bob towards some other building in another direction - no idea why. They didn't tell us anything besides simple orders like "walk this way or we'll shoot".

Okay, they didn't actually say "we'll shoot". But since at least one person had a machine gun pointed at us every instant along the way, it was implied.

They put us in some kind of break room. There was nothing inside but a rectangular table, four chairs, and some bulletin boards on the walls. The boards had posters saying things like "Correcting Mistakes is Everyone's Responsibility" and "If You See Something, Say Something" and "Coughs and Sneezes Spread Diseases".

I did not make up that last one.

We sat along one side of the table, myself in the middle. We took off our sunglasses. Tom took off his tie. They kept us waiting about another ten minutes. We couldn't talk among ourselves since a guard was watching us, standing against the wall while cradling his gun. We sat there in silence.

At least it was silent on the outside. Inside my head Iniss complained the entire time. He chose to blame me for all this, as if we didn't make the plan together. He was supposed to have his feeding tomorrow morning, and kept irritably asking what I was going to do about it if they kept us detained for too long. The other humans and Yeerks couldn't hear Iniss. Just lucky ol' me.

Finally, the door opened. A man named Torrelli stood there.

He looked at me. I looked at him.

He scowled and shook his head. "Oh, it would be you."

"I told you I'd be back," I said.

He was older now, but I recognized him immediately. He stepped inside, along with some other soldier, and closed the door. "It's been a long time, Hedrick Chapman." He made a pointed look at my thinning hair. "And it shows."

I narrowed my eyes. "I must say, I'm surprised you're still working here, Sergeant Torrelli. I figured, surely by now, a mob of angry villagers would have chased you into a burning windmill."

"It's Captain Torrelli now. Unsurprisingly, I've been promoted since your last visit here. I'm now the head of security for all of Zone Ninety-one." He leaned over and put his hands on the table in front of me. "Which means I decide what happens to trespassers now, which is very bad news for you."

Eva gave me an unhappy look. "You told me you never broke into Zone Ninety-one before."

I responded, "Well . . . Not all the way in. This is about as far as Loren and Alan and I got."

Former-Sergeant Torrelli stood straight again and looked at Eva, then at Tom. "You brought new accomplices with you this time." He looked back at Eva. He stared at her suspiciously for quite a while. "You look a lot like that mouthy Hispanic kid who tried sneaking in the other day."

Eva raised an eyebrow almost all the way up to her hairline. "Did you seriously just say that all Hispanics look alike?" She looked to me. "Is there an H.R. department here I can report him to?"

"What's your name?" Torrelli demanded.

Without missing a beat, she replied, "My friends call me Eva. You can call me Elena Paloma Gracián Vasquez."

"Finally," Tom blurted out.

We all looked at him.

Torrelli stepped in front of him. "You sunk to a new low this time, Hedrick. Not only do you have the gall to impersonate Squadron Ninety-one, you're dragging a minor along with your crimes. What are you, in middle school?"

Tom crossed his arms. "Screw you, I'm nineteen. You'd look young too if you wore sunscreen more often."

"Tell me your name."

"Do I have the right to remain silent?" Tom asked defiantly.

"Listen to me, kid. Before I decide whether or not to arrest you, you are not leaving this room until I call your parents - just in case you're younger than you say you are. So tell me your full name, your parents' names, and your home phone number. Now."

Tom stared at him. "My name . . . is Tom Chapman." He tilted his head towards me. "I'm his son."

I gave Tom a sideways look.

Torrelli leaned down to be closer to Tom's eye level. "You're not Hedrick's son. You know how I know that?"

"I know you're wrong," Tom said.

"Ever since the first time Hedrick tried to break in here, we've had a file on him. And every few years we do another background check to keep tabs on what he's been up to. The last time I checked, according to birth records, Hedrick's only child is a girl." Torrelli sneered smugly at Tom. "How do you explain that? Did you change sexes?"

With a hard glare and without a hint of sarcasm, Tom said, "Yes. Now update your files and respect my lifestyle choices."

Torrelli stared back, unconvinced. But then . . . he blinked. Wondered. Curiously, he glanced down at Tom's chest.

"Don't stare, pervert," Tom said.

Torrelli made eye contact again. Then he straightened up uncomfortably.

He turned to the guard. "I was told there were four. Where's the other one?"

"Sir. Captain Cornell took the remaining suspect for questioning, along with the cargo he was smuggling."

He tried to remain professional, but after all these years, Former-Sergeant Torrelli still was no good at keeping the I'm-dealing-with-an-idiot look off his face. "Lieutenant, you did not answer my question," he said evenly. "Where did Captain Cornell take him?"

The guard also tried to remain professional, but couldn't quite keep the nervousness out of his tone. "He . . . wouldn't tell us . . . Sir."

Torrelli stared at him for about five full seconds. He said very, very, very evenly, "Are you saying that you drove a civilian onto the base and now you can't tell me where I can find him?"

"Sir, with respect, Captain Cornell was the ranking officer at the scene. He told us he was acting under your orders."

"What are you talking about? I never-" He stopped. He let the guard's words sink in.

I couldn't help but smirk. "Typical Torrelli. The head of security and you don't even know what your own people are up to. How did you get picked for this job?"

I could tell he was restraining the urge to punch me in the face.

Thankfully, Eva spoke up first. "Captain, with all due respect, why are we here in the first place? We were very careful to check where Zone Ninety-one officially ends, and we were legally in public space when your troops grabbed us. You can't charge us with trespassing when we were outside your territory."

Torrelli looked at the guard again. "Is this true?"

"They hadn't, technically, crossed the border yet. But Captain Cornell ordered us-"

"Cornell again."

He clenched his jaw a few moments. Then he said to us, "Wait here. You two with me." Torrelli opened the door, and the two soldiers followed him out.

Before they left the room, Tom called out, "I'm serious about your files! I want my old name and gender removed!"

The door closed. There was a loud click from the lock closing. We were alone.

I reached over and smacked the back of Tom's head.

"Ow! What was that for?"

"On the one hand, I appreciate you trying to get Melissa's real info removed from their records. But you cannot pretend to be my child AND nineteen years old."

"Why not? Middle-aged people can have adult children."

"Thirty-five is not middle-aged!"

"You're only thirty-five?" Confused, he looked me up and down. Then he turned away and muttered, "You don't look it."

"I do too look it!"

Eva groaned with weariness.

I turned to her. "And you, Miss Paloma-Garçon-whatever. Why would you choose that for your fake name?"

"Oh, of course," Tom mumbled quietly (disappointedly?).

Eva asked, "What's wrong with the name I gave them?"

"An alias that long is kind of hard to remember, don't you think?" I asked.

"That's the point."

". . . Ah."

"Can we please focus on what's important, like getting out of here?!" Eva took a deep breath to calm herself. "Chapman, I gather that you and Loren and Elfangor tried sneaking into Zone Ninety-one before, and Captain Torrelli caught you, correct?"

"Basically."

"How did you escape?"

"We didn't 'escape', they threw us out."

"They're not gonna arrest us?" Tom asked hopefully.

"They'll probably keep us waiting for a few hours. Long enough to do a background check on us. Once they're sure we're not working for Russia or whoever, they should let us go. They only arrest the conspiracy nuts who refuse to leave."

"Then why bring us here at all?" Tom asked. "Like Eva said, we weren't trespassing. What do they care?"

"Who knows? Maybe Torrelli just woke up on the wrong side of the Black Lagoon today. That man loves making me miserable."

Iniss spoke inside my head. <Yes, Torrelli being out to get you specifically is the simplest explanation. But perhaps we should consider the faint possibility that the planets don't revolve around you.>

<What's your theory then?> I asked him.

<This is all about Secret-seeker and his black box. They don't even care about us. We just got caught up in the mess.>

<But Squadron Ninety-one wouldn't care about some loser from the internet either. Unless . . .>

I continued my train of thought out loud. "Iniss had a thought. He thinks the real Intelligence Division already knew about the black box and they wanted it for themselves."

"Makes sense," Eva said.

"No it doesn't. The Intelligence Division doesn't go out and steal alien objects from people. That's not their job. They don't interact with the public at all if they can help it. And they definitely don't give people long drives into their territory. Everything about Zone Ninety-one is designed to keep outsiders out, not bring them in. Which means somebody here wanted that black box so badly, they were willing to break all the rules to get it."

"That guard mentioned orders from a Captain Cornell," Eva said. "Do you know him?"

"Don't think so."

"That Torrelli guy didn't seem to know anything," Tom said. "Maybe-"

Speak of the devil, that's when the door opened. Torrelli was alone this time. He shut the door behind him and stepped up to the table.

"All right, Hedrick. I want answers and I want them in a hurry. We know you were impersonating the Intelligence Division and Bob Dubois wasn't. So assuming he isn't part of your little gang, who is he and why were you meeting him?"

"Ask him yourself," I said.

"Chapman, that's not helping," Eva told me. She calmly faced the captain. "Listen. We never met Mr. Dubois before today. He wrote on a message board on the internet, claiming to have an alien artifact. He said he was going to bring it to Zone Ninety-one around this time. The three of us wanted to get it first to see if it was real. So we intercepted him. For the record, we stopped him from trespassing into Zone Ninety-one. That's the extent of our relation to him."

"This supposed-alien artifact. Why would he bring it here?" Torrelli asked.

"He had gotten it in his head that it was stolen from here so he was 'returning' it." Eva's reporter side came out, looking at the former-sergeant inquisitively. "Is that true? Is that black box an alien object from Zone Ninety-one?"

"Ma'am, what we do at this facility is classified. But I can tell you that there is no such thing as alien-"

"Torrelli, it's me," I said impatiently. "Remember who you're talking to."

He stared at me for a long time. He looked back at Eva. "The point is, nothing has ever been stolen from this facility. Despite some eager attempts in the past," he added with another sharp look at me.

We were interrupted when the door opened again. A new soldier holding a small handgun stepped inside and, without looking away from us, quickly shut the door behind him. I had seen so many guns here that I was almost desensitized to them, so it took me a second to realize he was aiming the gun at Torrelli.

Torrelli looked over his shoulder and focused on the gun. To his credit, he remained very calm about it. He turned to face him. "Captain Mason Cornell . . . What the hell do you think you're doing soldier?"

The much-talked-about Captain Cornell said, "Put your gun on the floor, very slowly."

His exasperation reaching its peak, Iniss blurted through my mouth. "Dapsen in buckets! Are we getting mixed up in a Zone Ninety-one mutiny?! I should have stayed behind in the pool today."

The two of them completely ignored Iniss' outburst. Torrelli hadn't moved. After some angry glaring Cornell said, "I don't want to shoot but I'm prepared to."

Glaring equally angrily, Torrelli said, "There's no point in going through with this. Even with me out of the way, you can't escape the whole squadron."

"I'll take that chance now put your weapon on the floor," Cornell said quickly.

Eva, Tom and I glanced at each other. Should we do something? I didn't care much for Torrelli but I'm not a monster. I didn't want him shot. Not fatally anyway. But what could we do?

Keeping his eyes on Cornell every second, Torrelli very slowly took his gun out of its holster, and he crouched down to set it on the ground. That surprised me a little. I expected Torrelli to do more of a Western stand-off. Maybe he didn't want to risk a gun fight with civilians in the room.

As Torrelli stood back up, Cornell said, "Kick it over here."

The handgun skidded across the floor. His eyes and gun still aimed at Torrelli, Cornell reached down to pick it up. and put it in his own empty holster.

"Now give me your security key card."

Less carefully, Torrelli took a plastic card out of his shirt pocket and tossed it by Cornell's feet.

Once it was in Cornell's pocket, he said, "And tell me the emergency override code for the Cage. You're the only one who knows it."

"What the hell do you need that for?" Torrelli demanded.

Cornell didn't answer.

"You can't be serious . . ." Torrelli's tone began shifting from rage to terror, with a pinch of disgust mixed in. "You're trying to set the Beast loose, aren't you? That's what all of this was about?!"

Set the Beast loose?

Were the rumors true? Did Zone 91 have an alien locked up after all? If so, what kind of alien was it?

<The Beast . . . Beast Elfangor? No, of course not.> But no other uses of the name came to mind.

Cornell's face tightened, like it was hurting him to say this. "I have no choice."

"You're not just a traitor to Zone Ninety-one," Torrelli said to the younger man pointing the gun at him. "You're a traitor to the whole lousy human race!"

Cornell aimed the gun a little higher, right between Torrelli's eyes. "Tell me the emergency override code for the Cage."

With a voice as hard as stone he said, "Know this. I WILL let you shoot me before I tell you that code. The Beast is the most dangerous thing on Earth. Possibly the most dangerous thing in the universe. If it ever escapes Zone Ninety-one, no one on this planet will be safe. And I will gladly lay down my life to prevent that."

He looked at me and added, "THAT'S how I got picked for this job!"

Cornell stared at him with a clenched jaw. Then he said, "Fine, I'll do it without your help. Put your hands against the wall."

As Torrelli walked towards the wall, he kept looking at us and said, "Hedrick, if there's anyone on this continent you care about besides yourself, you must stop him from unlocking the Cage no matter what! Understood?!"

Cornell walked up behind him. Instead of shooting, he slammed the handle of the handgun against Torrelli's head.

Tom impulsively jumped out of his chair like he wanted to do a heroic rescue. But Cornell spun the gun towards him. Tom froze. Torrelli was on the floor and groaning. Slowly, Tom settled backwards into the chair. Cornell reached down and smashed the gun hard against Torrelli's head a second time. Torrelli was silent now.

Cornell stood up straight and once again aimed the gun towards us. "Stand up. All of you. You're coming with me."

Iniss was right. We should've both stayed home today.

Chapter Text

We left the interrogation room with Torrelli's unconscious body locked inside.

Eva, Tom, and I walked slowly down the halls with our hands at our sides. Cornell walked close behind us with his gun drawn. Others saw us, but ignored us. And why wouldn't they? Captain Cornell was a high-ranking officer, and we were trespassing on a secure military base. Escorting us at gunpoint was the opposite of suspicious.

"Where are you taking us?" Eva asked, for some reason. He didn't answer, obviously.

Once we were outside the building, he quietly said to us, "If you try to run because you think I won't shoot, remember that I don't need all three of you."

We didn't run. We let him herd us across the base.

Should we have resisted more? Iniss and I weren't sure what to do. Even if we got away from Cornell, it'd take ages of running to get back to our cars. It's not like we could ask the other soldiers for help. We're strange civilians and he's your fellow officer, but he's the bad guy, take our word for it.

We knew that Captain Cornell was a traitor to Squadron 91. And pointing a gun at us made him our enemy too. But that didn't make Squadron 91 our allies. Nobody, including me, knew what they actually did here. Would stopping them be a good thing?

On the one hand, Former-Sergeant Torrelli was an evil vampire and any organization he worked for couldn't be all that good. But on the other hand, Torrelli said Cornell's plan would put the entire planet in danger. The chance of Torrelli telling me the truth about anything was about 1 percent . . . But not actually zero.

Speculation was pointless. Unless we got that gun away from Cornell, we didn't have a choice. He was forcing us to help him with . . . something.

I thought to myself - as much as I could with a Yeerk in my head. <Assuming Torrelli was right and his plan is to set this mysterious 'Beast' loose, why does he need our help? What does he expect us to do?>

Iniss responded, <He doesn't need our help. He just needs us nearby so he has someone else to blame it on.>

I winced. <Damn. You're right, aren't you?>

<That's hardly uncommon.>

We were walking towards the largest hangar on the base. I estimated it was the very center of Zone 91. It was about 15 stories tall, with doors big enough for a monster from the Hork-Bajir planet. Those doors were already open, but slowly closing with the sound of a loud motor.

"Faster," Cornell hissed at us.

There were two guards outside. They looked confused as we power-walked towards them. But Cornell held out his ID badge. "I'm ordering you to stand down and let us through. We're on an urgent assignment from Captain Torrelli."

No doubt they felt conflicted by 1, a direct order from a familiar and higher-ranking officer with security clearance, and 2, three people in black suits they had never seen before who obviously didn't have clearance. But before the two of them could do their job and shoot us, we stormed past them into the hangar.

The heavy doors shut behind us with a deafening THUD! We were now inside the heart of Zone 91.

Danger aside, Alison would be so jealous right now.

The outside looked like an aircraft hangar, but inside there were no planes. It was mostly computers. Giant boxy ones like a wall of lockers with blinking lights and also small modern ones set on workbenches. There were also scanners and printers churning out long spreadsheets. There was other high-tech stuff I didn't recognize, but it was all distinctly Earth technology.

There were also people. Military men with dress uniform and medals, and scientists in white lab coats. They gave us confused glances as we marched by. Then they recognized Captain Cornell and returned to their duties.

We reached the very center of the hangar. There we saw something that was definitely not Earth technology. It was on a large pedestal and surrounded by glass, like an art piece in a museum. It was a big metal box with smooth corners, about eight feet long, hollow and open on one side, minty green in color.

Most people wouldn't know what it was. But ever since the Andalites arrived on Earth, we'd been studying the blueprints of their ships. We knew the equipment they needed on long journeys.

Eva stared at it. "Is that a . . . ?"

"I think it is," I answered.

She whispered to me, ". . . Should we tell them?"

"I wouldn't."

"Keep moving," Cornell said quietly.

We passed the . . . alien artifact . . . and continued to the other end of the building. Jutting out from the wall was a big booth. Cornell slid a key card (Torrelli's?) through a scanner on the side, and the doors slid open.

The inside was empty. It was an elevator.

He gestured with his gun again, and the three of us silently stepped inside ahead of him.

With four humans huddled inside, the doors closed. The elevator went down. Not far, maybe one story.

As we went down, I glanced at the gun he was pointing at Eva. Now that we finally had no one watching us, I briefly considered grabbing the gun. But a struggle would be a stupid idea in such close quarters. Projectile weapons aren't like lasers with a stun setting. Unlike in action movies, a stray bullet could easily be fatal even if it was only in your leg or shoulder.

I glanced at Tom, really really hoping he understood that and didn't try anything stupid.

The elevator opened. No "ding". We all stepped out into the new room. It was smaller than the room above. Like a long hallway with a low ceiling and bad lighting. At the opposite end were another set of elevator doors. Both the left and right walls were lined with a row of tables stretching into the distance. Each table had its own object. Alien objects.

Now I understood. The thing upstairs was a decoy. Even if someone managed to break in that far, they would assume that was the big secret of Zone 91, not bothering to check if there was any more in the back. This was were the good stuff was hiding.

We walked along, Cornell covering our backs, examining each table we passed. The metal crate upstairs was probably the largest complete alien device the government found. Down here were mostly fragments, but they looked useful. I recognized living metals. N-alloys. A broken piece of hull from a Skrit Na saucer. Hey, that looked like a vortex filtering coil - We could use that.

We reached the second elevator and Cornell opened the doors. We went inside and did the whole thing over again. Only this time, we were going down a lot further.

As the elevator sank down and down and down, I looked at Cornell. I realized his face was a little paler than before. He was sweating and his eyes were bloodshot.

This wasn't just nerves. He was starting to look sick. That's not really a good sign for a trigger-happy kidnapper.

Eva spoke up softly, like she was trying to calm a skittish animal. "Listen, that gun really isn't necessary. If you just explained what your plan is, maybe we'd be willing to help. I gather that Zone Ninety-one is locking up some kind of . . . creature? The Beast? And you want to give it its freedom?"

"No!" he snapped. "I would never set it loose. Never! I'm not trying to get it out of the Cage. I'm trying to put something in."

Oh. Okay. That means my old theory was shot and I actually had no idea what was going on. That's what I get for listening to Torrelli.

Before we could ask him any more, the elevator opened and Cornell ordered us out.

I couldn't tell how deep underground we were. The new room was much, much larger and completely empty. Concrete walls. Fluorescent ceiling lights came on automatically as we entered. The opposite wall was mostly one giant metal door, with a small keypad and a big wheel on the front, like the vault of a heavy-duty safe.

Cornell walked past us and typed on the keypad. He finally wasn't watching us.

I casually began undoing the buttons of my suit jacket. He must have heard me or something because he turned and aimed the gun at me in a panic.

"What? I'm hot," I said impertinently. I opened my jacket, showing him that I wasn't concealing a weapon or wire or whatever he was scared of. I slipped the jacket off and carried it on my arm.

"Don't move," he ordered. He typed on the keypad again and then the giant door swung open.

Iniss and I noticed several things simultaneously.

1: The next room was just like this one. Large, brightly lit, lots of space inside. Our guts told us this was the end of the line - The very deepest part of Zone 91.

2: The center of the room had a big metal box. Pitch black. Twelve feet tall. I had no way of knowing how thick the metal was, but it looked solid enough. It had one door with a keypad and a card scanner. Alarm lights, currently off and silent, mounted on the roof. This must be the "Cage".

3: A device was on the floor and a mess of wires connected it to the card scanner on the Cage. It took an extra second to recognize it from the pictures Eva had sent me. It was another Venber computer, just like the one Donald Duck - excuse me, Don Alddak - got from The Five. Numbers and computer code flashed across the screen.

4: The Black Box that started this whole mess was also on the floor, connected to the Venber computer by a second string of wires.

5: What's-his-name . . . Bob Dubois was there, sitting cross-legged on the ground with his hands tied together and duct tape over his mouth. His eyes pleaded at us for rescue.

Once I absorbed all of this, my first instinct was to get that tape off so he could talk.

<What for?> Iniss asked.

I thought this over. <Good point.>

Didn't matter. Without Cornell's permission, Eva rushed over and ripped the duct tape off.

"Ow! Will someone please explain what's going on?!" he whined.

"Step away, everyone!" Cornell waved the gun around. He had gotten even paler in the last minute, and he was breathing heavy, like he was in pain. Yeah, something was seriously wrong.

Tom and I got Bob to his feet and we all moved to the side, giving Cornell a wide path to the Cage.

He stepped over and bent down to the Venber computer. Still gripping the gun, he used his free hand to stick Torrelli's security card into the device. "Now that I have the card, that should be enough to hack it open, even without the code," he mumbled.

"How do you know how that device works?" Eva asked.

Cornell ignored her. He kept mumbling, "This is a mess. I was trying to help it, and it turned on me . . . It wants the black box . . . If I give it that, it says it'll let me go . . ."

He stood up and stepped back. He was looking at the Cage. Not us.

I still had my suit jacket draped over my forearm. I calmly and slowly stepped closer to Cornell's back.

That's when the Venber computer lit up in a bright red color. All the numbers scrolling on the screen were replaced with the Galard word for "success".

The siren lights on the Cage began spinning around. And the giant, foot-thick door slowly swung open.

We all stared inside. This was the big secret hidden in the deepest part of Zone 91. The so-called Beast.

It was smaller than I expected. About human size. It stood in the center of the Cage, wrapped up in thick chains connected to the inner walls and roof. It was also attached to an I.V. tube and computer wires. Instead of duct tape, it had a steel plate wrapped around the lower half of its head.

Iniss didn't know what it was. But it was somehow familiar to me. Where did I see it before?

Then I remembered. A long time ago, Elfangor, Loren and I found an old book from the Skrit Na. It was an encyclopedia about ancient legends and mythologies from across the universe. It included a drawing of the creature that was now in front of me.

A monster that looked like it was made of steel, and ivory, and molten lava.

"No," I breathed. ". . . No, no, no, that is not possible."

"What is it?" Eva asked me.

Torrelli was telling the truth after all. If this was what I thought it was, it really was the Most Dangerous Thing in the Universe.

I wasn't scared - Okay, that's a lie. And Iniss would never admit it, but he was scared too. But we were also angry. Things that don't make sense always make us both angry.

"It's not supposed to be real. It's a myth. A ghost story aliens tell to scare each other. Stories about the ultimate killing weapon, wandering loose somewhere in the universe . . . What the HELL is it doing on Earth?!"

"Chapman, talk to me," Eva said, keeping her eyes on it. "Is it some kind of . . . robot?"

"No," I answered. "It's a cyborg. Half organic creature, half machine. Two separate things that were fused together to make something worse than either of them were alone."

It stared at us with eyes that were like blue robin's eggs.

"It's called the Howler-Chee."

.

This is what I learned in that mythology book.

In ancient times, there two species. The peaceful Pemalites. And the violent Howlers.

No one knew the Howlers' true name. Each species used their own language's word for "howler", or some equivalent translation, to name them after the sound they made. They were a race of warmongers. One day they would simply drop out of the sky and destroy your planet, without even explaining why.

The Pemalites were highly intelligent in a universe that was still young. They were also peaceful, opposed to all forms of violence. They built androids - an entire race of mechanical people, called the Chee. The Chee were powerful and indestructible. They were also self-aware and felt emotion like a living creature. They had free will, except they were programmed to follow the Pemalites code of pacifism. They could never hurt another creature, no exceptions.

The Howlers attacked the Pemalites . . . And this is where the legends get murky. Some say the Pemalites reprogrammed their androids, turned them into weapons to fight back against the Howlers. Others think a single Chee malfunctioned and went rogue. Some say the Howlers captured a few Chee and experimented on them, trying to reverse-engineer their own androids. Maybe it was a freak accident. Maybe it happened to the entire species, or it was only to a single individual.

Regardless of how, all the legends agree that at some point, a new creature was created. A hybrid. Howler and Chee combined into a single entity. And it was driven insane by its conflicting halves. It went out of control and attacked both sides of the war.

In the end, the Howlers, the Pemalites, and the Chee were all wiped out. Whether they were ever even real was reduced to mere speculation. Only the Howler-Chee survived, and is still out there stranded on some planet, waiting to destroy any travelers unlucky enough to find it.

Or so the legend said.

Chapter Text

The door to the Cage was wide open. But the Howler-Chee was still trapped inside. Thick heavy chains wrapped around its arms and torso like a strait jacket. Four chains leashed it to each corner. It hadn't made any move to break free. It was completely motionless.

"That's a real alien, isn't it?" Bob asked. He sounded happy, like he hadn't heard a word I said about how dangerous it was.

I was standing close behind Captain Cornell, holding my suit jacket by the sleeves. I looked over to Eva and mouthed the words: Distract him.

She saw me. Past experience taught me that Eva was pretty awful at reading lips, but thankfully she figured out what I was thinking anyway. "Captain Cornell," she said confidently. "I demand to know. After you give that creature the black box, what are you going to do with us?"

"I'll figure it out later," was all he said. Cornell crouched to the ground and unplugged the Black Box. He grabbed it with both hands - right after setting his gun on the ground.

<Finally.>

I flung my jacket over his head, onto his face, and pulled back hard. He dropped the Black Box and grabbed at the fabric. He stood up and pulled away from me. (Calculated risk. I'd be screwed if he took his second gun out of his holster and fired blindly over his shoulder instead.)

As we struggled, Tom ran over and sent a right hook to Cornell's head. I let go of my jacket as he dropped to the floor.

Wincing in pain, Tom held his fist. "Oh, f- That hurt. It never hurts on TV."

Cornell wasn't moving. He was out cold, face down and probably drooling on my good suit.

That's when I noticed something weird on his neck. I crouched down and pulled back his uniform's collar. Dark red lines ran under his skin like the roots of a weed. I pulled the collar down lower. There was a very, very tiny opening in his skin, right on top of his spine, and a green light shone through and blinked. The surrounding skin was swollen and an ugly red-purple color, like it was infected.

Eva and Tom stood by me and stared down at it. Eva said, "It looks like some kind of device implanted under his skin. A tracking device?"

"Who cares?" Tom said. "What are we gonna do about that?" He gestured towards the thing in the Cage.

The Howler-Chee still hadn't budged or blinked. It might as well have been dead. My gut told me it wasn't.

"I vote we get out of here, and find someone upstairs who knows how to lock it up again," I said. I lifted one of Cornell's arms and stood up. "Help me carry him to the elevator. Hey, internet guy! You help too!"

Bob acted like he didn't even hear me. He walked past us towards the Cage.

I let go of Cornell's arm and he hit the floor again. (I'd care later.) "No. The other way. Away from the killing machine."

Bob stopped a few feet in front of the open door. He called inside. "Hello? Are you a real alien? Are you alive?"

". . . Yes . . ."

We all stared at the Howler-Chee and froze. It stared back at us with empty blue eyes.

Its mouth was covered with a metal plate and welded shut. But the voice we heard was electronic. Artificially synthesized. There must have been a digital speaker somewhere in its machine parts. It was using that to communicate instead of its mouth.

According to legend, the sound of its true voice would make your head explode. And not figuratively.

"I . . . should not be," the electronic voice continued. "But I am still . . . alive."

"What do you mean, not supposed to be?" Bob asked.

". . . I used to be two creatures . . . One organic, one mechanical . . . My organic parts had a life expectancy of three Earth years. When I fused, I used my mechanical parts to hack the genome of my organic parts. I removed the limit on my lifespan . . . That was hundreds of thousands of years ago . . . Both my races are now dead . . . But still I remain."

"You're all alone," Bob said sadly, completely taken by its sob story.

<Oh please,> Iniss thought.

"How were you controlling Captain Cornell?" I asked.

It fell silent, just like any one of my students caught in a lie.

"When asked why he was doing all this, he said he had no choice. I'm guessing," I pointed down to the blinking chip in his neck, "it's because of that."

The Howler-Chee hesitated. Then it said, "Yes . . . The implant is connected to Mason Cornell's central nervous system . . . I wirelessly hacked it and used it to inflict pain. It was the only way to make Mason Cornell bring me the holy relic."

"Holy relic," Bob repeated. He pointed to the Black Box on the ground. "You mean that?"

"The moment it entered the atmosphere of this planet, I could feel it . . . I had to obtain the holy relic by any means."

"Why? What's so special about it?" I asked.

" . . . It will allow me to speak with God."

"God?" Eva said.

This was a rare moment where Iniss and I were both speechless. That was probably the last direction I expected this conversation to go.

(Side note, I'm an atheist. So was Iniss. Whenever people start talking about God I have to fight the urge to roll my eyes.) (Yes, even you, Eva.)

Once I recovered from the mental whiplash, I said, "You mean, it's a communication device? You'll use it to call the aliens who built your android half?"

The electronic voice almost sounded confused. "No . . . It is a holy relic. I will use it to pray to God."

"Listen. You're old and you're probably confused. You were created by two alien races called Howlers and Pemalites. They weren't gods. Gods aren't real."

"DO NOT SAY BLASPHEMY!"

It moved for the first time, pushing towards me, but the chains went taught and held it in place.

We all flinched and took a step back. The Howler-Chee struggled for a bit, but it couldn't break out of its restraints. Soon it relaxed back into its original position.

"Okay then," I said. "Touchy subject. Won't bring it up again."

"I was created to serve God," the Howler-Chee said. "That is my purpose."

"All right," Eva spoke up. "Please explain it to us. Who exactly is your God?"

"Both of them . . . The Crayak and the Ellimist."

I'd heard of the Ellimist. It was from Andalite mythology; a being that can change reality on a whim. I never heard of a Crayak though.

"The Crayak God begot my organic parts . . . The Ellimist God begot the Pemalites, who begot my mechanical parts . . . The two Gods, playing their eternal game . . . The Crayak God spoke to my organic parts. To our whole species. God gave us instructions for the game . . . The Ellimist God is different. Neither the Pemalites nor the Chee could hear his voice. But after my two halves fused, I could. I played games for both Crayak and Ellimist. But when the Cataclysm occurred -"

The Cataclysm?

"- I lost the power to hear either God. My body was damaged. I wandered through space, until I fell to this planet. The humans imprisoned me. Experimented on me. Tortured me. And I have waited all this time to hear God's voice. I want God to tell me what to do."

I pointed to the Black Box. "With that?"

"That is the only thing that remains of either of my races . . . If I have it with me, in the Cage, perhaps I will feel closer to God. It is the only chance I have to hear his voice again . . . I have waited . . . and prayed . . . for so long . . ."

This was when Bob turned around and picked up the Black Box.

I told him, "Just a hunch, but I really don't think you should-"

He ignored me. Before I could stop him, he stepped right up to the entrance of the Cage, holding up the box like an offering.

"My name is Bob Dubois. I'm the one who found this. I took it because I always wanted to meet an alien. So I'll give it back to you. But you have to promise to stop hurting that soldier and-"

His back partially blocked my view. I almost didn't see what happened.

Something shot out from the Howler-Chee's torso. Cables, long and thin, shot out from gaps in between the chain links. Like whips they wrapped around the Black Box and yanked it out of Bob's grip. They retracted and pulled the box against its chest.

Bob stepped back in alarm. I stepped to the side to see better. One of the cables plugged into the Black Box, and a second later, the lid popped open. That box wasn't a computer device after all; it was a lock box.

And inside the box was a bright blue crystal barely the size of a grape.

Another wire shot out and connected the Howler-Chee's body to the blue crystal. The next instant, the Howler-Chee closed its eyes and sagged.

Iniss and I had no idea what that crystal was. But we both knew, instinctively, that this was an "oh shit" moment of the highest caliber.

Its eyes opened again. "CORRUPTED CODE PURGED! FULL REBOOT IN PROGRESS! ACTIVATE SELF-REPAAAAAAIR!"

It pulled at its chains. Before long - SNAP! SNAP! - The metal links broke apart. The Howler-Chee flung its arms out and ripped free from its chains. The electrical wires that connected it to the Cage tore apart with a shower of bright sparks.

WOOOOOOR! WOOOOOOR! Sirens blared and the lights on top of the Cage flashed. Over the alarms, a automated voice said, "Security breach! Security breach!"

The massive door to the Cage began to close, but the Howler-Chee stuck its arm out through the gap. As the rest of us walked backwards in fear, it pushed and struggled against the door. The door slowly creaked further open.

With another burst of sparks, the alarms on top of the Cage broke and fell silent. It continued struggling against the power of the door, half-in and half-out through the opening. And with a final desperate lunge, it slipped out of the Cage. The door slammed shut behind it.

The Howler-Chee stood before us. It was shaped like a human, or maybe like a dog up on its hind legs. Its skin, the parts of it I could see, was like molten rock; a mix of burnt black and glowing red. Above the skin were strips of metal. Metal wrapped around its torso like an external ribcage. Metal on its arms and legs like braces. Dull gray and unpolished, with bits of ivory mixed in. The Earth metal plate was still fastened over the lower half of its head. Above that its two eyes, two blobs of blue on a black-and-red face, stared at us unblinking.

The cable disconnected from the blue crystal and left it inside the black box. The box lid shut, and the Howler-Chee tossed it to the side of the room like used-up trash.

Carefully, not in fear but in awe, Bob walked up to it. Right in front of it. "You see that? You got out after all. You made it. Because of me," he said proudly.

"Thank you, Bob Dubois," said the Howler-Chee.

In one relaxed movement, the Howler-Chee put its hands/paws over Bob's ears and crushed his head.

"AAHHH!" Tom screamed and jumped back.

I didn't see Eva's reaction. Iniss and I were frozen to the spot. In retrospect that was not a smart reaction. We should have been running away because holy shit.

Bob's corpse fell to the ground. What was left of his head was - I won't put a lot of detail into describing what it looked like because seriously nobody needs to know that - but it was horrifying and disgusting. His skull was leaking things no skull should leak.

"Ten points," said the Howler-Chee, sounding almost bored.

The Howler-Chee walked towards us.

Chapter Text

We turned and ran. Thankfully, the wall-size vault door was still wide open. The elevator in the next room was the only way in or out of this underground prison.

At that very moment, the elevator doors opened. Captain Torrelli ran out with almost a dozen rifle-wielding soldiers.

I awkwardly stopped and changed course, running to the side. Eva and Tom ran with me, leaving a clear path for the soldiers. The Howler-Chee, who had been walking slowly like a melodramatic villain, froze in shock at the sight of them.

The soldiers ran into the room and Captain Torrelli shouted, "OPEN FIRE!"

BLAM! The first shot sounded like an explosion. A large bullet aimed straight for the Howler-Chee's head.

I suddenly had a flashback to when I was a kid and watched reruns of that old black-and-white show The Adventures of Superman. Every episode gangsters would shoot at him, and Superman would smugly stand still as the bullets harmlessly bounced off his chest. What that show always forgot is that bullets carry a hell of a lot of momentum, and just because you're bulletproof doesn't mean your feet are attached to the ground.

CLANG! The bullet hit the Howler-Chee right in the face and knocked it off balance in an almost cartoonish way. It fell backwards, arms flailing, and hit the floor.

Before it could react, more bullets struck it. Then more and more. A downpour of automatic gunfire was slamming all over its body. The soldiers marched forward to shoot it at even closer range. Bullets ricocheted off its metal armor with sparks. Bullets also sank into its exposed flesh. It didn't seem to be hurt — it kept trying to get up — but the force of the bullets kept pushing it down. It had no leeway at all.

"Under attack! Under attack!" it cried.

Eva, Tom, and I were crouching down at the side of the room, covering our ears at the non-stop sound of micro-explosions. Captain Torrelli shouted over the gunfire, "CONTINUOUS FIRE! KEEP IT ON THE DEFENSIVE!"

While most of the squad kept the cyborg pinned to the floor, two more soldiers who weren't shooting ran forward and around the battle. Crouching low and giving a wide berth to the gunfire, they ran to Captain Cornell's unconscious body, which was next to the Venber computer. With machine-like efficiency they rolled him over, unplugged the device, set it on his stomach, and quickly dragged him back to the vault door. Cornell was groaning, like he might recover soon.

Bob Dubois was obviously beyond saving. They didn't bother trying to retrieve his body. They left my jacket behind too. Just saying.

A different soldier came towards us to guide us away, but Tom suddenly shouted, "Wait! The box! We might need it!" and ran forward like an idiot.

"TOM!"

The black box — and the crystal inside — was still where the Howler-Chee had thrown it away. Perpendicular to the line of bullets between the squad and the cyborg. Tom rushed forward at a diagonal and grabbed it.

The Howler-Chee saw him. The momentum from the bullets kept pushing it down, but it flailed, twisted, reached its arms towards him. Bullets reflected off its exoskeleton in random directions. One ricochet came frighteningly close to Tom's path. He yelped, but kept his head down and kept moving. He carried the black box back to the vault door.

Eva and I had gone through the doorway into the other room with Cornell. As soon as Tom joined us, Captain Torrelli shouted to the soldiers, "FALL BACK!"

The soldiers began walking backwards as they continued shooting at the Howler-Chee. The moment all the soldiers were past the doorway and in the room with us, Torrelli typed on the keypad. The vault door began to slowly swing shut.

They had to stop shooting once the gap in the doorway was too narrow. I could still see the Howler-Chee through the shrinking gap. It was on the floor, bleeding a black tar-like substance, and awkwardly crawling towards us. Then it pushed itself up and limped, with bullets popping out of its wounds. Then it gained speed, staggering angrily.

And then the vault door blocked it from view. The door closed with an echoing CLANG! The wheel on the front spun and we heard more CLANGS and CLUNKS as heavy tumblers and deadbolts slid into place.

Now that there was a door between us and that monster, Iniss had a moment to think. <Torrelli recovered quickly.>

<Of course he did,> I thought. <Everyone knows you need silver bullets to do any real damage to his kind.>

<You're joking at a time like this? Just like a human.>

<Who says I'm joking?>

Torrelli spoke into a walkie-talkie. "All hands: Code Gray-White. Repeat: Gray-White. The Beast is out of the Inner Cage. This is not—"

"Captain!" a soldier shouted.

The keypad on the vault door flashed. Numbers and asterisks rapidly blinked across the screen.

Torrelli ran to it and pressed buttons furiously. "There's a keypad and handle on the other side. It's trying to unlock the door!" He pressed even faster. "The emergency override isn't working!"

The big wheel handle on the door started turning in the other direction. It gradually spun faster.

"Magnetize it, now!" Captain Torrelli ordered.

A soldier stepped forward and stuck a round metal device on the door. It stayed in place like a magnet on a refrigerator. A yellow light lit up, and the wheel stopped turning.

"What is that?" Eva asked.

"Classified technology," Torrelli answered. Meaning they scavenged it from aliens. "All you need to know is turning that handle now would be the equivalent of lifting one and a half tons."

He sounded confident as he spoke. But a moment later, with a loud creaking sound, the wheel started turning again very, very slowly.

Torrelli clenched his jaw. "All right, let's make it three tons."

Another soldier stepped up and stuck a second device on the door. The wheel held still. This time it stayed that way.

Silence.

. . . And then a sudden BANG! Like something had angrily slammed a fist on the metal door from the other side.

Then silence again.

"We're safe now, right?" Tom asked, still carrying the black box. "I mean, it can't open the door. Right?"

Torrelli looked to the first soldier instead of Tom. "How long will those magnetizers keep working?"

"At full strength, the estimate is two hours, Sir. Maybe less. The batteries can't be recharged while they're in use."

I said, "What—"

"It's not your turn to talk yet," he snapped at me, sounding angrier than I'd ever heard him before. Which is saying something. "Back to the surface, everyone!"

.

It took two trips to send everyone through the elevators. But soon all of us were back on the surface. We were inside the hangar, not far from the Andalite "artifact". There were even more soldiers gathered around to watch us, along with some scientists and other mystery people.

The soldiers took the black box from Tom. He, Eva, and I stood nearby with guards watching us carefully. For once they weren't actually aiming guns at us, but they still made it clear we weren't allowed to move.

By now Cornell was mostly conscious again. Torrelli angrily pushed him forward and yelled, "On your knees!" He took out a new handgun from his holster and aimed it at Cornell's back. "On your knees right now!"

Captain Cornell didn't resist. He calmly set his knees on the floor.

Captain Torrelli walked around and aimed the gun at Cornell's face. Torrelli's own face was an expression of intense rage. "Hands on your head!"

Cornell quietly did as he was told. He was still pale and looked sick, but kept his expression impassive.

"You should know, I have a recording of you attacking me in the holding room."

A reaction. His eyebrows creased in confusion. "That room doesn't have cameras."

"It didn't," Torrelli said. "But then those three blasted kids managed to sneak out, and I decided we needed an upgrade in security. I also noticed you tried to turn off the surveillance cameras underground, but I have extra cameras not even you know about. We saw and heard everything you did next to the Cage. So skip the excuses and tell me what the goddamn hell you were thinking!"

Captain Cornell wouldn't answer.

"Why do you have alien technology inside your body?!" Torrelli shouted. "What else are you hiding?!"

Eva spoke up from behind the line of soldiers guarding us. "The Howler-Chee said it was using the implant to attack his central nervous system. It was forcing Captain Cornell to cooperate."

Without looking away from Cornell or lowering his gun, Torrelli said, "But we know the Beast isn't the one who put the implant in his body. The Cage can't be opened without everyone on this base finding out. It never had an opportunity to stick it in you so who did?! Who are you working for?!"

"Captain, I think you should see this." Someone in a white coat walked up to Torrelli while holding some kind of Earth-made machine. (Probably Earth-made. I didn't actually know what it was.)

"Just now I tried scanning the implant in Captain Cornell. I didn't find anything at first. But then I searched through non-terrestrial frequencies, and I found a significant amount of outgoing data. The device is a transmitter."

"Transmitting what?" Torrelli asked.

"I need a moment." He went over to one of many computer consoles, set down the scanner, and typed. Cornell turned his head and watched him. After a few moments the scientist said, "The implant is broadcasting information over a hidden frequency. I think I can convert it into a video file . . ."

A moment later, an image appeared on the computer screen. It was a picture of the scientist's back standing next to the computer console. He turned around in surprise. Cornell shamefully looked to the floor, and the image on the screen shifted to a view of the floor.

Torrelli didn't move. But he looked at Cornell so angrily he was probably a few degrees away from spontaneous combustion. "You have a foreign device in your body that's been broadcasting everything you see and hear. You have been leaking every secret inside Zone Ninety-one. To who?! Another country? Another planet?!"

Torrelli stuck the gun even closer to Cornell's face. "Answer! How long have you been a traitor to Squadron Ninety-one?!"

Captain Mason Cornell coldly replied, "I'm not a traitor . . . The correct term is 'plant'."

He looked over to Eva. "This is all your fault!"

"Excuse me?"

"If you surrendered to The Five back when Pamaclees of Light asked, I wouldn't be in this mess. I spent years infiltrating Zone Ninety-one. But after that thing with the Hork-Bajir backfired, The Five suspended all projects on Earth. My assignment was put on 'indefinite hiatus'. Which is a nice way of saying they left me to fend for myself. Then the Beast took over my transmitter and now look what's happened!"

"You work for The Five?" Eva asked in low-key horror.

Captain Mason Cornell faced forward, jaw clenched, eyes cold. "My other name is Mason of Heat. I have nothing more to say."

Torrelli put his gun back in its holster. "Arrest him. And put him in isolation. We don't want the Beast getting any more information from him."

Two soldiers grabbed Mason of Heat's arms and pulled him to his feet. He didn't resist as they led him away.

Now, finally, I had a better understanding of the situation. The Five snuck an undercover agent into Zone 91. It was probably never their plan to help the Howler-Chee escape. But the Howler-Chee saw an opportunity when it sensed that the black box was on Earth. It wirelessly hacked Mason of Heat's implant from inside the Cage and tortured him until he relented.

In summary, The Five stuck their noses into something they shouldn't, it backfired horribly, there's a countdown to a massacre, and we're stuck in the middle. Again. Yay.

<This day can't get any worse,> Iniss said.

Captain Torrelli faced me. "We have to talk."

<You had to say it,> I said to Iniss.

Chapter Text

"Tell me everything you know about The Five," Captain Torrelli ordered.

Eva and I glanced at each other. I didn't really want to tell him anything. Eva apparently thought differently.

She said, "We don't know much either. What we do know is that they're some kind of secret society from outer space. They call themselves scientists, but really they just spy on other planets and use force to take whatever they want."

"And you know this because . . . ?" Torrelli asked.

"A member called Pamaclees of Light contacted us a while ago," Eva said. "She tried to recruit us. We refused. That was the last we heard of her."

"And why would they contact you?" Torrelli asked suspiciously. "What do you people have to offer them?"

I spoke up. "That's classified."

He glared at me. "That's our line."

"Your group is the one with the major security leak, not ours."

Before Torrelli could strangle me, another man in a formal dress military uniform stepped forward. He was a big man. I had said Dubois was fat but this guy was significantly wider. He walked with purpose and with his back straight. There were a ton of medals pinned across his chest — I bet they meant something.

Torrelli faced him and stood ramrod straight. "Sir, I have no explanation for how a double-agent was able to infiltrate our ranks this deeply, but I take full responsibility."

The wide man calmly replied, "The point is academic, Captain. Right now we need to focus on getting the Beast sedated again." He turned to the scientists. "What's its status?"

They directed his attention to a computer on a workbench. The screen showed a live picture of the room deep underground. The Howler-Chee wasn't trying to break open the vault door at the moment. Instead it was using its hand to dig into the gaps between its metal exoskeleton. It was nonchalantly picking bullets out of its flesh and dropping them on the floor. Dubois' dead body could be seen in the corner of the screen.

I just barely heard Eva's voice whispering, "Are you gonna be okay?"

I turned. Eva and Tom were huddled close together, with her hand on his shoulder. Tom was hugging himself and not really looking at anything.

With the guards half-ignoring us, I tried to keep this as private as I could. I stepped close to them and whispered, "What's wrong?"

Eva looked at me like it was a stupid question. Tom had a similar expression, but more angry. "What do you think?" Tom hissed.

"If you're scared of the Howler-Chee, it's still trapped," I said. "We still have time to figure out a way to stop it."

"It's not that, it's Mr. Dubois," Tom said. His angry expression sort of . . . crumpled. "I never saw anyone die before. Neither of us have, and it's freaking us out," he said quietly, reminding me that Tom and Temrash were both feeling this.

I was confused. "What about all those Hork-Bajir?"

He shook his head dismissively. "That's different."

I narrowed my eyes. "Why? They're not human so they don't count?"

"Of course not," he hissed again. "They were dead when I got there. It's not like I had to see it happen. Mr. Dubois wasn't even supposed to be here. He was just a normal guy who wanted to meet an alien. And he was nice to that thing. But it still . . . Why would it even do that?"

Eva rubbed his back sympathetically.

I said, "Yeah, it's terrible. But this isn't the time to worry about that."

Eva looked at me like I was being too harsh. "Chapman."

"Well, sorry, but it isn't. I said we have time to stop the Howler-Chee, but we don't have forever. Feel sad for Dubois later."

"I can't just stop being upset on command," Tom told me irritably.

"You're just gonna have to juggle for a while," I replied.

Tom and Eva both looked confused at the simile. "Huh?"

"Humans have only two hands. So if they want to juggle with three or more balls, they need to throw some in the air for a while. It's the same with emotions. There's an insane murder robot getting ready to break out and go on a rampage. We need to focus on THAT first. Put your attention on what's in your hand, and deal with what's in the air later."

He gave me a look. A very teenage look.

"No, I'm not being not fair," I agreed. "But that's the way it is."

Someone cleared his throat.

We turned to look. The fat man with all the medals stood watching us, with Torrelli by his side.

"People, I am Executive Director Jones."

"Executive Director," Eva repeated. "That's not an Air Force rank, is it?"

He shrugged. "It is here."

"I take it you're the head of Squadron Ninety-one?" Eva asked.

Director Jones hesitated. "The chain of command here is a little more complicated than—"

"Oh, just answer the question," I snapped. "We've been kidnapped, threatened, and locked up with an alien death machine. I think we've earned a break from all your 'cannot confirm or deny' nonsense."

He rolled his eyes. "Right, fine. Broadly speaking, I'm in charge."

"Okay. Now before you get mad at us for seeing your big secret, or trying to blame what happened on us, let me remind you that we didn't want to be here in the first place. The double-agent in your organization dragged us into this mess. Of course, we can all agree that none of us want the Howler-Chee to get loose. So even though I didn't want to be here, now that I am, I'm gonna help you fix this."

Torrelli angrily replied, "Squadron Ninety-one does not require assistance from amateur outsiders. We will handle this on—"

"Don't misunderstand. I'm not offering to help. I'm helping," I said sternly. "Whether you like it or not."

Eva said more gently, "Captain, please, we really do want to help."

"How exactly do you think you can help?" Director Jones asked, not patronizingly, but as a genuine question.

"You're doing it wrong," Tom spoke up.

We all turned to him, but Tom wasn't speaking to us. He was looking over at another workbench. A technician had placed the Venber computer there and was trying to get it working. Alien text and error messages flashed across the screen.

"Excuse me?" the technician said.

"No, really. That's wrong," Tom said with blank-faced innocence. "You're trying to hook up a Galard-English translation program, right? But you forgot to convert the number base. Here, let me."

Without caring about the guards, Tom walked up to the technician's side and began typing on the keyboard. "You just assumed Galard uses a base-ten number system like Earth, when it's actually a base-nine system. It only uses digits zero through eight. So your math is being mistranslated. Like here: These symbols translate to 'one-two-six', but that doesn't mean one hundred and twenty-six. It means nine to the second power times one, plus nine to the first power times two, plus nine to the zero power times six, which totals the number we think of as one hundred and five. So before you can translate it to base-two binary computer code, you have to correct the base-nine mistranslations. I like using Jillay's Formula as a quick way of switching from one base to another. So I just finish up like so . . . and . . ."

As Tom finished typing, all the error messages went away. The text on the screen changed from alien language to English, and then the Venber computer ejected Torrelli's security card.

Torrelli rushed over and grabbed his card back. He stared suspiciously at Tom for a few moments. "Where did you learn to do that?"

"It's not that hard," Tom replied calmly. He shared a look with me. "It's like juggling."

A moment later, Torrelli said, "Now I know you're not Hedrick's child." He sent me a smug look over his shoulder. "Intelligence like that completely defies genetics."

"He gets it from his mother," I said.

Executive Director Jones asked Tom, "You can read Galard?"

"Yes," Tom didn't lie.

"What about the language the Grays use?" (Grays was what humans called Skrit Na.)

"I dabble," Tom said.

Director Jones thought silently for a few moments. Then he faced Torrelli. "Captain, I want your professional opinion. Do you suspect that these three are working with Captain Cornell or this 'Five' group?"

Torrelli made eye contact with me for a few uncomfortable moments. I knew he was tempted to say whatever it took to get me in front of a firing squad.

Instead, he looked back to the director and reluctantly said, "Security footage clearly shows them fighting against Cornell. While that could have been some sort of elaborate trick, I do not actually believe it was. Their desire to stop the Beast seems genuine . . . That being said, Hedrick Chapman is an irresponsible, self-centered maverick and he would absolutely sell out the entire human race to save his own hide."

I frowned. "That was one time, let it go."

"They may not be our enemies, but I don't think we can trust them."

Director Jones replied, "I don't think we can trust anyone after what happened with Captain Cornell. But if they claim to have useful information, we may as well hear them out."

He pointed to Tom, and then to another table that held the black box. "If you can get that open again, you're good with me." He pointed to a couple of guards. "You two watch everything he does, just in case."

The guards led Tom to the workstation. Tom gave us a little shrug as he passed Eva and me. Then he sat down and stared working on the black box.

Director Jones faced me and Eva. "As Mister Chapman said earlier, none of us want the Beast — or the 'Howler-Chee' as you call it — to escape this building. If we don't get it sedated and back inside the Cage, the entire human race is in danger. This is a potential extinction level event."

Eva raised an eyebrow. "Aren't you being a little dramatic? I mean, it's one creature. It can't possibly kill five billion humans by itself."

"When we've talked to it before, it claimed to have driven multiple alien species to extinction," Torrelli said. "And it's expressed its intention to do the same to humans. We'll be safer if we take it at its word."

"How did it get here anyway?" Eva asked. "Does it have a ship?"

Director Jones explained, "It crashed in this area forty-nine years ago. The Air Force found it burning in a crater. No sign of a ship or escape pod. Apparently its bare body fell through the atmosphere like a meteorite. Reports say it was half-dead. Its body was so badly broken from the impact that it could barely move. But even then it was still able to kill the first soldiers that got too close to it."

"Why would you idiots keep something that dangerous?!" I said.

Torrelli glared at me again. "What were we SUPPOSED to do?! Throw it in a dumpster?"

"The Air Force's main priority was to contain the creature," Jones aid. "They built Zone Ninety-one around it. They built the Cage, dug out the basement, then moved the Cage down there."

"I know how the government works," I said. "Don't tell me you're not trying to reverse-engineer it. You have a fantasy about using that monster against your enemies some day. If you just accepted that it's too dangerous to control and destroyed it—"

"We tried," Torrelli snapped. "We've been trying."

I blinked. "Come again?"

"It's true Squadron Ninety-one spent many years examining it," Director Jones said. "Learning everything we could. Wondering if we could recreate its abilities. But a lot of good people died in the process. Even while restrained, it took any opportunity to attack anyone that came too close. Eventually, the U.S. government was forced at accept that the Beast really is too dangerous to ever be useful . . . We've spent the last six years trying to kill it."

"Trying?" Eva said softly.

"The metal in its body is damn well indestructible," Torrelli said. "It's stronger than anything we've ever seen or heard of. It's even stronger than Coo-Hatch steel."

While listening to us from his table, Tom looked up. "Coo-Hatch are real?" he muttered.

"But that armor doesn't cover its whole body," I said.

"We have been able — barely — to cut into its flesh in between the armor," Jones explained. "But we can't hit any vital organs. And any minor damage we have been able to do heals too quickly. The mechanical half has some sort of self-recharging power source, and it creates its own nutrients that it feeds to the organic half. It doesn't need food or water, so we can't starve it. It doesn't need air, so we can't drown it. It's immune to radiation, so nuclear warheads are even less of an option than they would be otherwise. We've tried lasers. We've tried acid. We've tried every poison we can think of, germ warfare, and classified things I'm not even allowed to talk about. Frankly, we ran out of ideas."

Torrelli looked at Eva. "This is why it's a potential extinction event. If it gets loose it could keep going until there are no humans left, because what's stopping it? It can beat us just by outlasting us." He mumbled, "Pretty much the only thing we haven't tried is a Quantum Virus. But safety issues aside, nowhere on Earth has the technology to make one of those."

I looked at him suspiciously. "How do you know what a Quantum Virus is?"

He looked at me suspiciously. "How do you know what a Quantum Virus is?"

Director Jones spoke up, "There are two things which have had some effectiveness. First is a chemical we call B-sixty-seven. It's a sedative. Makes its organic side drowsy. Weaker. We fed it a constant supply through I.V. when it was in the Cage. But since it broke out . . ."

"It's getting flushed from its system," I finished. "It's waking up."

"The second has been to infect its robotic side with computer viruses. That's done some damage, but again, not enough. Our software simply isn't advanced enough. And whatever it did with that crystal in the black box seems to have given it a factory reset."

Torrelli looked at me skeptically. "So, Hedrick, since you're so helpful, what's your idea?"

Chapter Text

I took another look around the hangar. In the center, the Andalite embarrassment still stood inside its glass case. Around that, desks and computers and other high-tech machinery filled most of the space. A mix of soldiers and scientists worked and walked from place to place. Nobody was running or screaming in a panic, but they had a nervous energy about them. Anticipation of a disaster.

Against the far wall was the elevator that led down to where the Howler-Chee waited, shut and silent. Nobody wanted to get too close to it.

Tom sat at a desk, typing at a computer that was plugged into the black box. Eva and I stood right behind him, with Eva offering ideas over his shoulder. Torrelli stood with us, watching us carefully, making sure we weren't going to double-cross him or whatever nonsense he was afraid of.

I watched Executive Director Jones walk up to a short but broad-shouldered soldier. "Lieutenant Burke, where's the suppression unit?"

The soldier saluted and said, "Sir, they're getting in their protective gear and their tranquilizers are being loaded right now."

"Well, they're not going fast enough, Lieutenant. I need them here right now."

He nodded, said, "Yes sir, I'll see what I can do," and took off.

"Shouldn't you always have tranquilizers ready to go?" I mumbled.

Torrelli heard me and replied, "Compound B-sixty-seven goes bad if it sits too long. We have to make a fresh batch each time."

Then Director Jones walked towards us and addressed Tom. "You. What have you learned about that crystal?"

Tom looked up from his work and answered, "Okay, so, this box is a computerized safe. When the Howler-Chee put the crystal back inside, they locked it and set a password on it. And I haven't been able to break it open yet." Before Director Jones could say anything Tom added, "And yes, I know you need it fast, but this software is more advanced than anything I've seen before. There just isn't a way to make shortcuts through it."

"Fine, just keep at it. That crystal somehow made the Beast stronger and I need to know—"

"Executive Director." A scientist in a white coat walked up to him, holding a walkie-talkie. "We just detected a new frequency on the CB."

"From where?"

"I think it's . . . from it."

The scientist held up the small radio. At low volume, slightly obscured with static, we could barely hear the artificial voice repeating, "Calling Squadron Ninety-one . . . Calling Squadron Ninety-one . . ."

He took the walkie-talkie, adjusted the volume, and walked right up to the TV monitor that showed the underground vault.

We could all see the Howler-Chee on the screen. It had finished plucking out bullets. It was staring up towards the ceiling, directly into the camera.

Into the walkie-talkie he said, "You are speaking to Executive Director Jones."

"Open the door," the Howler-Chee calmly said. "Let me out."

A moment's pause. Then equally calmly, "You know I can't do that."

"You're only delaying the inevitable," the Howler-Chee said. "I used the holy relic to reprogram my mechanical parts, so my self-repair systems are fully operational again. Even as I speak, I'm getting stronger and stronger. Soon I'll be able to break through that door and reach the surface."

"Then why do you need me to open it?"

"To save time. I think I've waited long enough, don't you?"

Director Jones spent a few moments considering what to say next. "Supposing you do reach the surface, would you be willing to negotiate with us?"

"No. I'm going to kill you," it replied, almost cheerfully. "I'm going to kill every single human in Zone Ninety-one and there's nothing you can do to stop me. And when I'm done that, I'm going to leave and look for more humans to kill."

"As I've explained to you before, and as my predecessors explained to you, the top priority of Squadron Ninety-one is to protect the human race from you. If you have any other demands, then I'm willing to talk. But I cannot allow you to kill any more of my people."

"I understand. Then I have nothing more to say to Squadron Ninety-one."

It turned and walked towards the vault door. Director Jones quickly ran to me and shoved the walkie-talkie into my hands. "Keep it talking," he quietly hissed. "Keep it busy."

On the one hand, Iniss and I both hated talking orders. But on the other hand, we wanted to talk with it anyway.

I spoke into the device. "Don't hang up yet."

It stopped and looked back at the camera. "We have nothing else to discuss."

"But I'm not from Squadron Ninety-one. I'm one of the people Mason of Heat dragged down to meet you. Remember?"

I watched it on the screen. It couldn't see me, but it continued staring up at the camera.

"Yes, I recognize your voice. You're the blasphemer."

I've been called worse.

"There's something I don't understand. When you killed Bob, by any analysis, that made things worse for you. He was the only person in a fifty-mile radius that might have become your ally. If nothing else you could've used him as a live hostage. So why did you kill him?"

"Because that's the game," it said, like it was obvious.

"The game?"

"The game of the Crayak God. 'Kill as many sentient creatures as possible.' The Ellimist God doesn't like that game. But as of our last communication, it's still Crayak's turn."

I had to pause a bit to process the sheer stupidity of this. "So . . . the reason you want to kill everyone . . . including the only person who was kind to you in almost fifty years . . . is to win a game?"

"Games are my life," it said. "They're what every part of me was made for."

It spoke proudly. The words were made by an electronic synthesizer and heard through a handheld radio. But it could still put emotion into them. This creature was not some mindless robot.

"The Crayak God made the Howlers to play the killing game. The Pemalites made the Chee to play all sorts of games. And I'm the best there is. After my two halves fused, I travelled all across the universe testing my skills. I defeated both the Howlers and the Chee. I killed millions of Hetwan and Coo-Hatch — before they ran away to that place nobody talks about. I even found The One Who Is Many, The One Who Is All, and I turned them into No One. Dead long before they sight on your galaxy. You're welcome."

"Blah, blah, blah," Iniss spoke through me. "Overconfidence doesn't impress me. You're not invincible just because you beat everyone you met so far."

It hesitated. ". . . I didn't beat everyone."

"What?"

Something in its voice changed. "There was one thing I met that I didn't defeat."

I saw Torrelli and Director Jones exchange an excited look. This was new information for them.

"So somebody beat you after all," I said into the walkie-talkie. I didn't expect it to answer this, but it was worth a shot. "And how did they do that exactly?"

"No. It's not that I was defeated. It's that I was too scared to fight . . . I ran for my life, and prayed to both Gods it wouldn't follow me . . ."

"What was it?" I asked.

The Howler-Chee hesitated again, its half-metal face impassive. "I don't want to talk about it."

Iniss wanted to question it more. But I knew I couldn't force it to talk if it didn't want to. I switched to a different track. "You said before that you wanted to hear God's voice."

"All Howlers could hear the voice of the Crayak God. But after I fused, my psychic abilities were enhanced. I could reach out and hear the voice of the Ellimist God as well. The two almighty Gods use the entire universe as playing pieces for their eternal game. And I took turns playing for both of them. You said God wasn't real, but I heard them. Until the Cataclysm happened."

"What's that?"

"The Cataclysm was to be the final confrontation between the two Gods. The effects reverberated throughout time and space, and overloaded my quantum transceivers. My brain and body were damaged. I fell through space for many ages, unable to hear either God, until I landed on this planet. But now, thanks to the holy relic, I am slowly returning to full strength. Very soon I will finally make contact with God again! And then, I will either continue the killing game, or God will give me a new game to play."

". . . That doesn't make sense," I said.

"What doesn't?"

"If these people are gods, and not some delusion or advanced aliens who built you, why would they need to wait for you to fix your transceiver thing? Are they not godly enough to send you a message some other way?"

We waited for the Howler-Chee to answer.

And waited.

"Hello?" I said.

We all stared at the screen. The Howler-Chee stared back at the camera, motionless, silent.

Suddenly, the frequency on the walkie-talkie switched to static. At the same moment the Howler-Chee turned away from the camera and began staring at the vault door.

I looked at the others. "I think I hurt its feelings."

"Executive Director, the suppression unit is here," some soldier reported.

"Finally! Get them down there!"

Chapter Text

A dozen soldiers — twelve exactly, I counted — stormed into the hanger and to the elevator. They wore black SWAT armor. They each had a big helmet covering their entire head, with a shiny black visor hiding their face. Director Jones explained to me that they weren't ordinary helmets. They were custom-built to protect the wearer's ears by blocking out high-frequency noise. A necessary precaution against the Beast.

Meanwhile, as seen on the security camera, the Howler-Chee was pulling at the metal plate that covered its lower face. Its claws dug into the crude metal. After a lot of straining, the plate snapped off. The revealed mouth was like a wire frame in the shape of a dog's muzzle, attached to the molten rock head and below the blank blue eyes. It opened and closed its jaws a few times, flexing, testing.

The suppression unit went down. The rest of us kept our eyes glued to the security video. There were now multiple screens showing us the entire underground room from different angles. The Howler-Chee stared at the vault door, motionless and patient, like it knew something was about to happen. We all watched and waited.

The soldier's voice came through the director's walkie-talkie. "We're in position."

Executive Director Jones replied, "Do it."

A colored gas suddenly shot into the room. Chemical B67 in aerosol form. It came from the edge of the vault door and sprayed all the way to where the Howler-Chee stood.

As the mist continued spraying, the giant door opened. Not all the way, just a gap small enough to a human to fit through. Soldier after soldier rushed inside, through the mist, protected by their helmets and armor. They aimed weapons at the Howler-Chee.

The mist began to fade, letting us see the Howler-Chee again. It didn't move. Except to open its mouth.

"KEEE—"

The video muted automatically after a split second. Or perhaps the speakers didn't have the technology to recreate a sound that high frequency. Either way I watched the Howler-Chee continue to howl angrily at the soldiers. But the soldiers didn't seem bothered by it.

Torrelli watched the screen with his arms crossed. "It won't be so easy, you punk," he said quietly. But I could see his fingers gripping his sleeves tensely.

Two soldiers in front carefully aimed their weapons and fired. Thwip, thwip! Then again. Thwip, thwip!

Four darts struck the Howler-Chee's torso. They missed the metal ribs and stuck right into its molten rock colored flesh.

It stopped howling. It quickly yanked out the darts, dropping them on the floor.

And then it disappeared.

"What?" Eva gasped.

"Holographic camouflage," Executive Director Jones explained. "But if the helmets work, they should be able to see through it."

The solders fired more tranquilizer darts. Two, then four. The six darts seemed to stop and hang in midair, exactly where the Howler-Chee was standing before. It hadn't even bothered walking away.

It became visible again. It didn't take the darts out this time. It wasn't moving at all. And its big blue eyes were blank and unchanging as always, but I irrationally judged its expression to be one of pure rage.

We heard the soldiers through the radio. "A Squad, move forward. B Squad, keep the exit blocked."

Six soldiers moved towards the Howler-Chee. But then it disappeared again — Wait, no. It didn't turn invisible. It just moved so quickly that I almost didn't see it. Like a cobra striking.

The Howler-Chee rushed forward and grabbed the closest soldier by the arm. Then it ran to the side, dragging the soldier over to the wall in a flash. It slapped the soldier against the wall like he was a rag doll. Again and again.

The remaining soldiers fired with sniper-like precision. More tranquilizers stabbed the Howler-Chee in the back. The Howler-Chee dropped its victim, turned, and ran towards the others. It punched another soldier and sent him flying across the room.

"B-sixty-seven is ineffective! Repeat: B-sixty-seven is—" He was interrupted when the Howler-Chee stabbed its claws into his stomach.

Two more soldiers ran forward. Their weapons looked different from the others' tranquilizer rifles. They each had a long pole that the soldiers shoved directly against the cyborg. And then they sparkled with electricity. The Howler-Chee's entire body shone brightly as it was being electrocuted.

If it felt any pain at all, I couldn't tell. It just yanked one weapon right out of the soldier's hands. Then it turned the weapon around and struck it back at him. The electrocuted soldier fell to the floor instantly. Then the Howler-Chee swung the weapon like a bat and hit the second soldier. He went flying in a shower of sparks.

"Fall back! Seal the vault!"

The remaining soldiers switched to regular bullets, firing at the monster as they walked backwards to the vault door. The Howler-Chee ran around and picked them off one by one. It grabbed the tranquilizer darts sticking out of its own body and threw them as projectiles. When it realized some of its previous victims were only injured, it rushed back and finished them off. It killed most of the suppression unit within seconds.

One soldier fell to the ground. The Howler-Chee stood over him and stomped its foot onto his torso. And it continued stomping on him over and over.

The lucky ones slipped through the narrow gap in the doorway. They frantically tried to close the heavy door before the Howler-Chee could follow them out.

Only . . . it wasn't trying to follow them. It kept stomping on that same soldier long after he was dead. Repeating the same motion like a broken record long after the vault door sealed shut.

All of us in the hangar watched the screens in silence. 12 soldiers went down there. Only 3 got out. 9 were dead.

A scientist nervously spoke up. "Maybe we can modify the magnetic clamps. Find a new power source. Keep the vault sealed permanently."

Torrelli looked at him with his typical are-you-an-idiot face. "Except that wouldn't be enough. If we can't sedate it, it will eventually dig through the concrete. It could tunnel its way out."

The Howler-Chee's angry voice came through the speakers. "I want to speak to the blasphemer!"

We looked back at the screens. It had stopped pummeling its victim and was staring up at the camera again.

I kept my face impassive. I took a walkie-talkie and said, "My name is Chapman, for the record."

It talked without moving its true mouth, using the same artificial voice as always. "I have now returned to my full strength. All of my functions have been restored. I am exactly the same as I was before the Cataclysm."

"Are you gloating?" I asked.

"The two Gods exist in a higher dimension of space-time. Once again, I have multiple ways of communicating with that realm. I have access to the quantum transceiver. Chee-net. The collective memory."

"And?"

"I have scanned all frequencies of n-dimensional space. Zero-space. The psychic continuum. I have sent signals through the event horizon manipulator."

"And?"

"And . . . there's nothing. It's not that they won't speak to me. I can see into their plane of existence. But they're not there. I don't understand how that's possible. Did they destroy each other? Did they run away to some other universe? I exist to play games for the two Gods. That is my only purpose. I have waited all this time, I have endured everything, for one reason. To hear God's voice again. But there's . . . Nothing."

Then, in a voice like a toddler trying not to cry, it asked, "Why did God abandon me?!"

Silence.

And then I simply answered, "I don't know. Maybe there never was a God. Maybe your memories of 'Crayak' and 'Ellimist' were a delusion. A cyborg brain made out of incompatible parts trying to make sense out of things."

"That can't be true."

"Well, either way God's not there anymore. You said it yourself."

"But . . . If there's no God to play games for . . . What do I do?"

What the hell was I supposed to tell it? The Meaning of Life?

Eva gently took the walkie-talkie from me. "Let me."

Iniss thought, <If she tries to convert it to Christianity, I'm gonna smack her.>

But that's not what she did. Eva gently asked the Howler-Chee, "What do you want to do?"

It didn't answer.

Eva continued, "All this time, you've been killing innocent people just because you thought your God wanted it. But you don't have to do that anymore. So think, what else is there? Not what a false God wants. Tell me what you want."

The Howler-Chee was quiet for a long while. It looked away from the camera. It thought to itself. We all watched it with nervous anticipation.

And then it looked back and said, "I want to keep playing the game. I want to kill you."

Panic flashed across Eva's face. "No, don't say that. There must be something else — something besides killing."

"My organic parts have memories of the killing game. And my mechanical parts have memories of games without killing. Killing was always more fun."

"We're not playing pieces in a game," Eva cried out. "We're real people! We have lives, and friends and families, and emotions. When you attack people, they feel pain."

"I know that. I've known that for millennia. It made killing people more fun."

Eva looked like she was going to be sick. "How can you say that? I'm trying to help you."

"If you want to help me, let me kill you," the Howler-Chee said. "Actually, no. Don't let me. It's more fun when you resist. It's more fun when you get scared and suffer. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. This can work even without God. Okay. I'm gonna start trying to break out of here now. I'll be up there to kill you soon. Okay. Okay."

The walkie-talkie went dead. On the screen it marched towards the vault door.

Torrelli shouted at Eva. "Nice work, you bleeding heart! Look what you've done!"

"Torrelli, that's not fair!" I shouted back at him. "It was insane from the start. What Eva said didn't change anything."

"I know that," Torrelli said. "But I'm stressed out and blaming someone makes me feel better!"

Eva looked at me and said, "Honestly, that's valid."

Executive Director Jones marched to Tom's workstation. "Young man, have you opened that safe yet?"

Tom sighed in frustration. "No. And I'm sorry, but I'm not going to. The programming is too advanced for me to hack into. The only way to unlock this box is by entering the password."

The Black Box sat on the desk, plugged into a basic Earth keyboard and monitor. On the screen were three blank spaces.

Tom got out of the chair and rubbed the back of his neck. "It's a three-digit numerical code. Base nine. That's all I could figure out. I'm sorry."

"Guess there's only one thing to do," Iniss muttered through me. He had an idea. I didn't like it, but for lack of better options, I let him try it.

I sat down in front of the Black Box. I let Iniss use my arms to type on the keyboard. He pressed 0, then 0, then 0 again.

"It's not gonna be all zeroes," Tom said.

"We won't know unless we try, will we?"

Iniss pressed ENTER. There was an angry buzzing sound, and the screen flashed an error message.

"Told you so," Tom muttered.

The screen changed from 000 back to blank, just like it started. Iniss was energized with relief. "Yes! It's not locking us out."

He entered 001. Wrong. Then he entered 002. Wrong.

"That's your brilliant idea?!" Torrelli cried out. "You're trying every possible passcode in sequence?"

"It's called Brute Force Hacking," Iniss said. "Since there's no penalty for wrong guesses, all we have to do is keep trying as fast as we can and eventually we'll hit the right one." He continued pressing buttons with my fingers as we kept talking.

Tom, or presumably Temrash based on the math, said, "It's a three-digit code with nine possibilities for each digit. Which means the total number of combinations are nine cubed, which is seven hundred and twenty-nine. Trying them all will take FOREVER."

"We still have time," Iniss shot back.

Eva said, "But we may not have unlimited tries. What if it's like a bank's website and it won't let us try again after three wrong guesses?"

"Well, I'm up to number four and it's fine so far."

"Chapman," Tom said. I hope he meant Chapman-and-Iniss and he didn't think this was exclusively my idea. "This is not a good plan. This is a stupid plan. We should stop and think of something else before you waste HOURS on—"

The lid of the Black Box popped open.

All of us stared at the open box and the blue crystal inside. Then we looked at the screen, which read "006". That was the correct code.

Iniss and I looked at the screen. Then we looked at Torrelli. Torrelli looked at Executive Director Jones. Executive Director Jones looked at Eva. Eva looked at Tom. Tom looked at the screen. And then Tom looked down.

Finally, Tom calmly asked, "Can we please not comment on this?"

I silently took the tiny crystal out of the box.

Torrelli blinked and said, "Hey, wait a minute." He looked at Tom suspiciously. "You call your father 'Chapman'?"

Tom shrugged. "I do when we're working."

Torrelli squinted at him suspiciously for several more seconds. Then he moved on.

As the Howler-Chee stubbornly tried turning the handle on the vault door underground, we spent a few minutes studying the blue crystal. We hooked it up to another basic Earth computer, and quickly realized that the crystal itself was a computer processor.

"It's just as we thought," Executive Director Jones said. "This is an alien computer that the Beast used to restore its robot half to factory settings."

"The Howler-Chee kept calling it a holy relic from its old race," Eva said. "The aliens who built the Chee androids must have also built this crystal to control them."

"It's more than that," I muttered. "Look at the screen. The crystal completely overrode this computer's operating system. I can look through every bit of coding and do whatever I want with it."

"So you're saying that this tiny thing can break through the security of any computer?" Torrelli asked.

"The question is," the director said, "can we use this crystal to stop it?"

"We can probably use it to do anything," I answered. "If we write a program that says exactly what we want the Chee parts to do, we can use this crystal to upload that program, and the Howler-Chee would have no defense against it. At least, in theory. I'd like more time to learn about this crystal and understand how it works."

"The magnetic locks will run out of power in less than an hour. Possibly a lot less," Executive Director Jones snapped. He turned and addressed all the people in the general area. "Assemble the data on all previous attempts to hack the Beast's software! I want that monster shut down YESTERDAY!"

On the security camera, the Howler-Chee pushed at the handle with all its strength. The wheel slowly turned a tiny bit . . .

Chapter Text

My name is Tom. The Yeerk in my head is named Temrash.

We all worked quickly. The Squadron 91 guys gave us copies of software to look through; all previous attempts to hack the Howler-Chee's computer parts.

The data inside the blue crystal had schematics, access codes, and everything else needed to control the Chee androids. That, combined with the humans' software, gave us all that we needed to write a pretty decent self-destruct program. Something that could make the android half shut down permanently, but not before destroying the organic half, and not giving the Howler-Chee any chance to interrupt the process.

Eva, Chapman, two other technicians, and I were all typing at different keyboards. It wasn't a matter of typing as fast as we could, but making the program most efficient. Assembling the best bits of different programs into a single whole that the alien crystal easily understood. We regularly checked each other's work. One wrong line of text could mess up the whole thing.

At one point, Temrash and I paused. We thought about what we were really trying to do: We were trying to kill someone.

Was that really okay? Maybe there was another way. Maybe we should be trying to turn the android off instead. No, Squadron 91 had standing orders to kill the Beast. Even if we found a way to stop it peacefully, they would destroy it anyway after we left. Wouldn't they?

But if I destroyed it first . . . Would that make me a murderer?

It was too late to stop now. If I stopped working or changed strategies, it would mess up the program for everyone else.

The Howler-Chee was trying to kill us. It was trying to kill the whole world. It's not murder if it's self-defense . . . Right?

If we're all doing this together, do I still count as the one killing it?

While Temrash and I were spinning this over and over in our head, our hands stopped over the keyboard. People began staring at us.

We resumed typing. Just keep juggling. Just keep pushing through a little longer.

I lost track of how much time we were taking to write the program. But I knew exactly when time ran out.

WWWOOOOOOOO!

Alarms blared inside the hangar. Alarms were probably going off all across Zone 91. The Howler-Chee had torn open the vault door downstairs. On the cameras, I saw it march out of the vault and towards the elevator.

Executive Director Jones immediately turned a key on a control panel and slammed a big red button.

Back on the screen, just as the Howler-Chee reached the elevator, the doors exploded. The blast covered the whole image with smoke and fire and shrapnel. I felt the rumbling through the floor all the way up here. Once the smoke on the screen cleared, the Howler-Chee seemed unharmed. But what used to be an empty elevator shaft was now a thick pile of rubble spilling out through the doors.

My optimism was brief. The Howler-Chee simply started digging through the rubble — and quickly. Its arms tore through the concrete like a chainsaw cutting through styrofoam.

The alarms continued blaring, long and loud like a tornado warning. Executive Director Jones reached for a microphone on the console and shouted, "Code Black-Black! Repeat: Code Black-Black! The Beast is approaching the surface! Emergency responders report to central hangar! All other personnel evacuate Zone Ninety-One immediately!"

I looked to the hangar's only exit. The dinosaur-sized doors were sealed shut.

There was a rolling cart with a bunch of those black helmets. Captain Torrelli quickly grabbed two and shoved them towards Eva and me. "Put these on and hide somewhere, and that's an order!"

"Hide?!" Eva exclaimed as the scientists ran around us in a panic, each one grabbing a helmet as they passed. Chapman took one too.

"We can't open the hangar during Code Black-Black!" he shouted over the alarms. "We have to try and keep it trapped inside!"

"Oh yeah, that's a brilliant way to run things!" Chapman replied.

"Shut up and move," Captain Torrelli snapped back as he put a helmet over his own head.

"What about the crystal?!" I said.

"We'll figure it out, go!" he shouted.

Eva already got her helmet on without my noticing. She grabbed my arm and pulled me away from the desk.

Too late, I heard a crashing sound behind us. I turned to look.

Through the elevator doors that had crumpled open like tinfoil, the Howler-Chee stepped into the hangar. It had dug from the basement all the way up here in seconds.

I immediately put on my helmet and tightened the strap under my chin. It covered my whole head. From the outside, the visor was black and hid my face. But I could see through it fine from inside. I felt padding against my ears — Temrash felt irrationally claustrophobic inside my head — but the alarm was only a tiny bit quieter.

The handful of soldiers there, Captain Torrelli included, stepped forward and aimed their weapons. Instead of the heavy artillery from before, all these people had left were handguns. But they tried anyway. "Open fire!"

The bullets ricocheted off its metal exoskeleton. The Howler-Chee stood still and calm. The soldiers may as well have been using foam darts from toy guns.

It opened its mouth and howled.

"KEEEEEEEEE-row!"

I could still hear voices, alarms, and gunshots through the helmet. They said it was specifically designed to protect the wearer from the higher frequency of that howl. Even so, the sound made my head spin. The helmet didn't seem to make much difference.

I realized I was wrong when I saw someone in the corner who was unlucky enough to not get a helmet in time. He fell to the ground and screamed, hands covering his ears, blood dripping through the fingers. But at least this victim was alive enough to keep screaming, unlike all the others.

I fought back the urge to throw up. How many more people did I have to watch suffer today?

When it realized its howl wasn't affecting the shooters, it stopped. Bullets continued to bounce off of it. Instead of fighting back, it just ignored them and walked away.

Instead of walking to the locked exit, it went to the side wall of the hangar. And it punched through the wall. It ripped back the metal. It tore out giant chunks of the wall, making an opening much larger than it needed, like it was savoring the moment.

Captain Torrelli stopped firing and spoke into a walkie-talkie. "It's out! IT'S OUT!"

One leg, then the other. It stepped through the giant hole in the wall. For the first time in almost fifty years, the Howler-Chee was outside.

I moved to get a better view through the opening. It stood there in the bright daylight. The open air of Zone 91. It held its arms out wide. It slowly lifted its head back . . . And it screamed. Not like before. Not the ear-splitting howl. This was a wordless, purpose-less, long cry of undefined emotion. Like it was an animal. Or just insane.

It stopped. The tornado-warning-like alarms that had been blaring all across the base had stopped too — they weren't helping anymore. But then there was a new sound, like a low rumbling thunder.

The Howler-Chee calmly turned its head. A jeep with two soldiers came into view. And two tanks were not far behind it.

The jeep stopped. The passenger soldier lifted a bazooka onto his shoulder and fired. KA-BANG!

It hit the Howler-Chee right on target. A small explosion, and the Howler-Chee was thrown backwards a few feet and landed on its back. But the next instant, it was back on its feet and launched itself at the jeep. It crossed the distance just as fast as the bazooka shell did.

It jumped onto the jeep and stabbed one arm each into the chests of both soldiers, skewering them. They didn't even have time to scream. Then the Howler-Chee swung its arms and threw the soldiers out into the far distance.

BANG! The first tank fired an explosive shell at its target.

The Howler-Chee caught the explosive in its outstretched arm. Its legs stayed put, but its torso spun around like a swivel chair. Without any loss of momentum, it swung the explosive around and released it back towards the tank. It fit perfectly into the long gun barrel and went straight down to the turret.

BOOM! The tank's cockpit exploded.

The second tank fired another shell. The Howler-Chee knocked it aside and ran forwards. The shell exploded on the ground in the distance, and the Howler-Chee grabbed the bottom of the tank. It strained with effort. Its feet sank into the ground. And then, impossibly, the massive tank tilted upwards. The tiny cyborg flipped the enormous machine onto its side. Without a second's pause, the Howler-Chee started ripping into the tank's underbelly.

"There's gonna be no end to this," Captain Torrelli said. "We need to finish that virus and find a way to stick it in him!"

"Oh, is THAT what we were supposed to do?!" Chapman shouted at him.

The captain shouted back at him. "If you can't help, then be quiet!"

The Howler-Chee continued ripping off fragments of the sideways tank and tossed them aside. It wasn't trying to get to the humans inside quickly or efficiently. It was destroying the tank for destruction's sake.

I ran forward.

"Tom, don't you dare—" I heard Eva's worried shout from behind me. "TOM!"

"KID!" I ran past Executive Director Jones and through the opening in the wall.

I was outside the hangar. I shouted as loudly as I could towards the destruction.

"I CHALLENGE YOU TO A GAME!"

The Howler-Chee paused, holding a large piece of torn metal in its claws, and it turned its head towards me.

"Yeah, you heard me! I CHALLENGE you," I yelled at the top of my lungs. "Not this random killing stuff! A real game! One that I'm gonna BEAT you at!"

It didn't react, except to continue glaring at me.

"You've been sitting on your butt all this time waiting for your God to give you a new game! Now I'm giving you one! Are you gonna ignore me?! Are you gonna run away 'cause you're scared you'll lose to a mere human?! . . . WELL?! ARE YOU?!"

That monster, that could rip a tank apart like cardboard, that could rip me apart like spiderweb, kept glaring at me in silence. Then it carelessly dropped the fragment it was holding, and stepped down from the upturned tank. It walked towards me.

Without meaning to, I took a step backwards. But Tem and I worked together to keep my body under control. We managed to stay put as it moved closer.

It stopped and stood in front of me. It was a few inches shorter than me, but that meant nothing. It was like Death itself in physical form.

"I accept your challenge," it said calmly. "What would you like to play?"

"We'll need a computer for this," I said. "Come inside."

It followed me back inside the hangar. Nobody fired, but the soldiers reflexively aimed their guns at it. The Howler-Chee acted like they weren't even there.

Everyone was watching us silently. The two of us were the most important people on the planet right then. I led it back to the desk where we were working on the crystal.

The Howler-Chee stared at the crystal. Looked wide-eyed at the open black box. "That was locked," it said in shock. "I even changed it from a one-digit passcode to a three-digit code. How did you open it?"

"That's not part of the game," I replied.

It stared at me, unsatisfied. ". . . Fine. So what is the game?"

"We were writing a program on this crystal. A program that was supposed to make you self-destruct. We were about . . . I guess halfway done when you got up here. This is a game where I try to finish the program, and you try to stop me. If I win, you die. If you win, we have no way of stopping you and you kill us all."

"Adequate stakes," it said, not sounding afraid at all. "What are the rules?"

"We're going to take turns writing code on the crystal. Your brain's a computer so you can do it in your head, but I need a keyboard. So to keep things fair, we'll measure our turns by the amount we write, not the time. I'll write . . . Let's say fifty characters of code per turn. And you can't just erase what I type, that's too easy. On your turns, you'll write twenty-five characters of new code to try and counteract what I wrote."

"And how many turns do I get?"

"We each get ten," I replied. "If I get the self-destruct program functioning before the end of my tenth turn, I win. If I don't, you win."

"In other words, I can write a maximum of two-hundred-fifty characters of computer code in order to mess up the program on the holy relic. And you must counter me and finish the program with only five hundred keystrokes. A game of efficiency and creative thinking."

"No ties. No uncertainty. Either I get it working or I don't and that's it."

"I'll agree to those rules," the Howler-Chee said.

"No he won't," Captain Torrelli tried to warn me. "He'll cheat!"

The Howler-Chee turned its head towards him. It didn't look insulted, but puzzled. "Why would I cheat?"

"Yeah, I don't think that'll be an issue," I said.

"Of course it's an issue," Torrelli hissed. "If you give it that crystal before the virus is ready, he'll delete it all to save himself, because what's stopping him?!"

"If it wasn't willing to play by my rules, it wouldn't have accepted my challenge," I said.

"Exactly," the Howler-Chee said, looking back to me. "A real game has rules. If I don't win within those rules, then I'm not really winning. And besides . . . I don't need to cheat. Ever since my two halves fused, I've never lost anything. I've played more games than you can imagine, and I always won all of them."

"That's impossible. What about games of luck? Dice rolls and stuff," Chapman asked.

"That's not a game, that's gambling," it replied.

To which Chapman had no rebuttal.

"I'm a servant of God who outlived God. All I have left are winning and killing. Now . . . Who goes first?"

I hesitated. "You get the crystal first, which means I get it last."

"Fine. Let's begin." It calmly held out its palm. Red and black flesh attached to mechanical claws. A hand that could have killed me without even trying.

Very bravely, I gently placed the blue crystal onto its hand.

Everyone else in the hangar watched us, frozen in horror and anticipation.

The Howler-Chee set the crystal into a tiny node on its chest. It looked like a blue pendant on top of its metal exoskeleton.

And then . . .

"AHH! A-a-H-g-AA-k-AHHH!"

The nanosecond the Howler-Chee accessed the data in that crystal, the program executed. It screamed in pain and spasmed violently. Its arms and legs were ramrod straight yet shaking in their joints. Black fluid started leaking out of its chest.

I backed away and I said, "Yeah, the thing is, I lied. The 'half-finished' virus in that crystal was already done was ready to execute by the time you got out of the elevator. We just needed a way to plug it into you."

The Howler-Chee stood there, its wide blue eyes staring at me in disbelief. "Y-y-y-O-u — c-c-c-H-e-A-t-E-d!"

"Yeah, I cheated. That's how you win every game."

The virus in the crystal worked its way through the cyborg's body. The only way to stop it would be to physically take out the crystal before it was too late, but it couldn't move its arms. The android parts that had kept its body alive for millennia were now working to kill it.

It looked at me in rage. It couldn't fight the software, and it couldn't physically eject the crystal. All it could do was open its organic mouth and howl.

"KEEEAAAAAAAA—"

This howl was different from before. It sounded was almost like an opera singer vocalizing. The pitch kept getting higher and higher. Even with the helmet protecting me, I winced.

KSSHH!

A glass of water somebody left on a desk suddenly exploded, leaving a wet mess of broken shards.

CRKK! CRSSHH! SSKKHH!

A giant crack appeared in the screen of the closest computer. Then in all the computers. Screens and TV monitors were shattering all over the hangar, sending glass shards flying all around us. People ran for cover.

And the Howler-Chee continued to howl louder and higher.

"—AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA—"

KA-SSHHH!

In the center of the hangar, the giant glass box that surrounded the Andalite artifact fell apart. The huge pile of broken glass fell to the floor.

"—AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA—"

And the Howler-Chee screamed even louder and even higher. Its blue eyes bugged out. Its jaw was open so wide I thought it might break.

For a fraction of a second I saw tiny cracks appear in the blue crystal on the Howler-Chee's chest, before—

TSSSSH!

The crystal exploded! The tiny fragments went flying like grains of blue sand!

Immediately after, the Howler-Chee went silent. It closed its eyes and fell flat on its back.

My head was spinning. I had fallen to my hands and knees without realizing it. I slowly stood back up and looked around.

The fluorescent lights above us were shattered. Light came in through the giant hole in the wall. Broken glass everywhere on the floor. Everyone was dazed and reviving slowly. People tended to the poor man with the bleeding ears. Eva and Chapman were still there. They looked the same as I felt, almost ready to pass out after using up so much adrenaline.

I stepped closer to the Howler-Chee, my shoes crunching over bits of glass. I stared down at it nervously.

It was able to destroy the crystal, but it seemed the crystal already did the job. The Howler-Chee was motionless, except for the thin trails of smoke rising up from its body, and all the liquid leaking out onto the floor. A growing puddle of something not quite blood and not quite oil. Bits of its armor had broken off, exposing rotting red-and-black flesh underneath.

And then it opened its eyes.

I jumped backwards, my heart beating a thousand times a minute.

Lying on its back, the Howler-Chee's blue eyes looked around like it couldn't believe it either. Then it started to giggle.

"I didn't die," it said. Not with its electronic android voice. It was a raspy, scratching voice made with its organic mouth.

It tried pushing itself up onto its elbows. The mechanical parts weren't working, but the organic half was still living. Organic muscles struggled to move the metal rods in its arms.

"Maybe I can't die," it said in amazement. "Maybe I'm immortal." It giggled uncontrollably.

Captain Torrelli ran forwards and fired his handgun. Two bullets sank into the exposed flesh of its chest. The Howler-Chee screamed in pain and fell on its back again. But it didn't close its eyes.

"I'm never gonna die . . . Never gonna die . . ."

Captain Torrelli tried shooting again, but the gun just made a clicking noise. Out of bullets.

With a burst of effort, the Howler-Chee pushed itself to its feet and grabbed the captain's forearm. "AHH!" It yanked him and tossed him aside. Captain Torrelli fell to the floor, cradling his broken wrist.

The Howler-Chee turned, almost slipping on its own blood, and dashed for me. I don't know how it could still be so fast. Before I knew what happened, it was behind me with its arm around my neck. It was rough, but it didn't snap me in half like I knew it could have.

The other soldiers aimed at us, but Eva cried, "Don't shoot!"

The Howler-Chee walked backwards, dragging me along as its human shield. Nobody was in a rush to waste the last of their ammo anyway. Even with its android-half broken, bullets still weren't enough to kill it.

We moved through the opening again, back outside. It coughed suddenly. Turned its head to the side and spat out more black liquid and a broken mechanical gizmo. Then it resumed walking like nothing happened.

We reached the abandoned jeep. With a groan, the Howler-Chee roughly tossed me into the passenger seat. It was definitely weaker now. It had lifted me like I was a backpack instead of a paper doll.

The next second it was in the driver's seat, one hand on the steering wheel, the other hand on my arm in a rock-hard grip. The jeep lurched forward at full speed. We swerved away from the central hangar, turned and drove across the base towards a smaller aircraft hangar.

As it drove, the Howler-Chee spoke quickly. Shakily. Manically. "You cheated in that game. But that's okay. We'll play more games. Lots of games. Yeah, this can work out." It stopped to cough again. Glowing orange drops like molten lava hit the windshield. "I'll steal a plane, and we'll fly off. And they won't shoot us down! Not with you as a hostage. And even if they do shoot us down, I'll probably survive anyway. I'll keep playing games and killing people everywhere I go. I'm gonna live forever! WITHOUT GOD. But that's okay. I'm not upset. I'm not upset."

What the hell was I supposed to do?! Tem was terrified. I was exhausted. We were running on fumes. Did we have any options?!

We reached the hangar. It parked the jeep off to the side of the doors. With its grip tight on my arm, I was dragged out of the jeep like a child. It was strong, but it walked with an exaggerated limp. Its knees started making a loud grinding noise. Blood squirted out of the bullet wounds on its chest.

The Howler-Chee let go of me long enough to use both hands on the closed doors. With a mighty shove, the hangar doors slid open.

Waiting right behind the doors, for some reason, was a tiger.

What.

The.

"HHHHRRROOOOWWWWWWWWRRR!"

The tiger's roar was different than the Howler's howl. It wasn't more painful, but it reverberated all through the area. The sound vibrated through my chest.

In case I wasn't clear, "tiger" wasn't a nickname for some fancy fighter jet. This was a literal, fully grown, jungle cat. It launched itself out of the hangar and tackled the Howler-Chee to the ground.

"Under attack," the Howler-Chee shrieked. "Under attack!"

I ran back to the jeep. Crouching down behind the vehicle like it was a shield, I looked over the hood. I saw the Howler-Chee manage to throw the tiger off, right before a grizzly bear came charging out of the hangar and sent it flying backwards.

More animals came out. A wolf. Some kind of bird of prey. A gorilla. Why the hell?! Did Zone 91 keep a freaking zoo on the base?!

And then something ran out that definitely did not come from a zoo. It was mostly blue, with a bit of tan mixed into its fur. Four legs with hooves. An upright torso with two arms. A long, curved tail with a sharp blade at the end. One of its stalk eyes turned and saw us. I froze, meaning I stayed still and I felt cold.

Andalite.

Since Temrash was born, he read horror stories about the Yeerks' ultimate enemy. They made a Vanarx Yeerkbane look like a mild inconvenience. This was the first time Tem or I saw an Andalite in person . . . Somehow, I thought it'd be bigger.

The Andalite ignored me and joined the other animals in the fight. Tem realized first what should have been obvious to both of us from the start. They weren't animals. They were all Andalites in morph. The Andalite bandits had snuck into Zone 91 and were helping to destroy the Howler-Chee.

My main reaction was: WHY?! Also: HOW?! WHEN?!

I watched the battle from behind the jeep. Six Andalites against one half-dead Howler-Chee. And the latter was putting up a decent fight. The Howler-Chee would use its ridiculous strength to throw an animal through the air several yards away. But every time it did, the other five rushed in to attack.

It was happening so fast I could barely tell what was going on. Screeching, the bird flew overhead and dug talons onto its eyes. The Howler-Chee tried swatting it away, but its arm was weighed down with the tiger's jaws biting into it. It stabbed them with its claws, flung them away, and the gorilla punched it in the face. It got back up. The bear slammed its whole body onto it. It pushed the bear off like a beach ball. The tiger bit it again. The wolf ripped at its flesh. It threw them off. Back and forth, over and over.

Animal blood went flying. Useless robot parts fell off. This wasn't like a pile-up tackle in a football game. It was carnage! It was a frenzy!

It was working!

"KEEE—" It tried to howl, but the unmorphed Andalite's tail blade slashed across its throat. The howl turned into an angry gargle.

No weapons. Its robot parts were dead and useless. The Howler-Chee desperately tried to fend off its attackers, but they were relentless. Claws and teeth and fur and tail blades and talons swarmed over it.

The Andalite stabbed its tail blade deep into the Howler-Chee's chest. "GGLLALALAAA!" It screamed through its bleeding throat. The grizzly bear stabbed its paw into the cyborg's face. The claws sank deep into the head like it was an overripe melon.

The Howler-Chee kept swinging its arms, slashing at the animals and air blindly. Then it fell onto its back. Its body spasmed violently on the ground.

But the Andalites didn't stop. Against an enemy this powerful, they had to be sure. The gorilla and the bear took turns pounding on what was left of its head. Then the bear smashed its torso. Again and again. And then some more.

Then everything stopped. The six Andalites backed away from their enemy. I stood up straight. Stepped around the jeep to get a better look.

The body was a broken, mangled mess on the ground. It was completely still. I waited, but it didn't even twitch.

The Howler-Chee was dead. The Andalite bandits had killed the unkillable.

One by one, they went inside the aircraft hangar. The Andalite not in morph. The bird of prey. The wolf. The gorilla. The bear.

The tiger paused. It turned to look at me. I stood completely still. I didn't even breathe.

An Andalite inside a tiger, and a Yeerk inside a human, staring at each other.

It couldn't know. Could it? Temrash was safely hidden, invisible inside my head. And the tiger couldn't even see my face through the dark visor. From the outside, I just looked like a human wearing a suit and a motorcycle helmet. He didn't know who I was — what I was — right?

The tiger watched us a few moments longer. Then it went into the hangar. The gorilla used its hands to slide the doors closed.

I think I stood there for three more seconds. And then I fell down onto my butt. I was shaking a little. The emotional exhaustion was finally catching up to Temrash and me. After spending all this time juggling, the juggling balls had finally crashed to the ground.

I was sitting there in a daze when more soldiers arrived. Some went over to where the Howler-Chee lay, making extra-extra-sure it was dead. Other soldiers went to hangar and tried to get it open.

The moment he got the door open, birds flew out, almost hitting the man in the face. Six birds of prey flapped their wings and went high up into the air.

The soldier closest to me automatically aimed his rifle up, unsure if he should shoot the birds or not. But they weren't really birds, they were the Yeerks' mortal enemies in morph. This could be our best chance to kill them.

But I rushed back to my feet and pushed his arm down. "Don't!" I looked up at the six birds. "Let them go . . . We owe them."

I watched the six birds as they flew far away from Zone 91.

Chapter Text

It was all over but the clean up.

Eva and Chapman reunited with me outside, near where the Howler-Chee had fallen. Soldiers scooped up the broken cyborg body and loaded it into a van. Chapman was watching them very carefully.

Captain Torrelli, his arm wrapped up in a sling, walked up to Chapman with an unimpressed expression. "You're trying to think of a way to steal it, aren't you?"

Chapman did a quick glance at him, and responded, "I'm worried about what you people are going to do with it. Even when it's dead and broken, I don't trust the military — and you specifically — with that kind of technology."

"We're certainly more trustworthy than—"

Executive Director Jones walked up and interrupted him. "At ease, Captain. There's been enough fighting for one day." He turned to address us. "As I've said before, our superiors agreed that the Beast and what's left of its technology is too dangerous to attempt reverse engineering. We're going to disassemble the body and dissolve the parts in acid. Anything that doesn't dissolve will be buried in a place where the enemies of the United States will never find it. Rest assured, Mister Chapman. No part of it will ever be used by the wrong hands, including ours."

Chapman's expression seemed to say, we only have your word on that. But then he looked away. We did have their word, and that would have to be enough.

"It's a shame it turned out this way," Eva said quietly. "So much death and destruction. It was all so senseless."

Captain Torrelli stared at her a moment. Then he rolled his eyes upward in disbelief. "That is just like a civilian."

"What is?" Eva asked.

"We defeated the most dangerous enemy in human history. We literally saved the world. And you're still not happy."

Captain Torrelli walked past her and stopped in front of me. "Young man, you did a very brave thing back there. I wouldn't have expected it from somebody who was born a girl." Ignoring the look Eva gave him, he continued, "You may not have literal balls, but you have figurative balls of steel."

I stared at him uncomfortably. "What am I supposed to say to that? Thank you?"

"You're welcome," he replied with a straight face. Then he turned and walked away.

Chapman asked, "What's gonna happen to Mason of Heat?"

Oh yeah. I had almost forgotten about the guy who started all this.

Captain Torrelli answered without looking back. "That's our business."

We were escorted back across the base, without guns being aimed at us for once. We went past the central hangar. There was already a big tarp covering the missing chunk of wall. Soldiers were scrambling around the area to get it repaired. I also saw the two scientists who helped us write the virus waiting outside. We worked together but I never learned their names.

"I'm curious," Eva spoke up. "Now that you're not guarding the Beast anymore, is Zone Ninety-one still going to have a job?"

"Of course," Captain Torrelli answered.

"Doing what?"

"Classified."

One of the two scientists said, "The alien toilet got through this in one piece. We still have that."

Captain Torrelli's eyes bugged out at him angrily. "Am I the only one here who takes classified information seriously?!"

Chapman said, "What do you mean classified? We already saw the . . . Wait." He looked around at the group. "You knew that big green crate is a toilet?"

"Of course we—" Captain Torrelli stared at him. "Do you think we're idiots?!"

Before Chapman could say what he wanted, the scientist added, "We've been studying it for years. Why would you think we wouldn't be able to figure out what it does?"

The second scientist spoke up. "To be clear, that's only one of multiple theories. I still think it could be a small lab for growing cultures."

"No, Daniel," the first scientist replied. "It's a toilet. You're just in denial."

He frowned and meekly looked away.

Eva asked them, "And you're going to keep guarding it anyway?"

"It's alien technology," Executive Director Jones answered.

"Yes, but even so," Eva said. "You're treating it like a top-level, national security secret. Don't you feel the least bit embarrassed or, I don't know, disappointed, that it's a toilet?"

The Executive Director, the Captain, the soldiers, the scientist, and even the second scientist in denial, all looked at Eva like she said something really weird. "No. Why?"

Chapman shook his head and muttered, "I will never understand the military."

I pretty much stopped listening around that point. I sort of checked out mentally. I was tired. I hadn't done much running around that day, but I was emotionally fatigued, and it was affecting my body.

They took us to another building and quickly processed us. We were free to go as long as we didn't tell anyone about what we saw that day. That might seem a little lax for the Most Secret Place On Earth. But this was a unique situation and, frankly, they didn't know what else to do with us. They had a big mess to clean up and were in a hurry to kick us out.

We signed confidentiality agreements — not that they would stop us. I signed mine "Thomas Chapman". And Temrash, Iniss, and Edriss never signed anything. If they told every Yeerk in the pool, Squadron 91 didn't need to know.

Some soldiers drove us back to the road where we had left the cars. They took Mr. Dubois' car and drove it back to the base.

I felt bad for Mr. Dubois. And all the solders who died. But even though there was time to think about it now, there was nothing I could really do.

We got into Chapman's van and finally began the long drive home.

We had come here to learn about the markings on that Black Box, the same markings that were all over the Yeerk pool cavern. We now knew they were made by the same aliens who built the Chee androids. Did that mean the Pemalites had been on Earth before? How recently? The Howler-Chee had supposedly destroyed all the Chee and the Pemalites long ago. But were there other remains of their technology hidden somewhere on Earth?

I was too exhausted to worry about that.

The Howler-Chee had also said that it once found something so scary that it made the unstoppable killing machine run for its life. What was it talking about? What could possibly be that dangerous?

I was too exhausted to worry about that either.

.

Finally, I opened the door into my house. "I'm home," I called out, lacking any enthusiasm.

I walked towards the stairs, but my dad came into the hall to greet me. "How did it go?" he asked with a smile.

"Um . . ."

I left the house in my good suit and was out of touch for most of the day. I gave my family some Sharing-related cover story before I left, but I had completely forgotten what it was.

". . . It was fine." I walked past him without another word and started up the stairs.

I was wearing a white button-up shirt and dark pants. I carried my tie and my suit jacket in a bundle under my arm. That jacket had Howler blood and Chee oil on the back, from when I was being used as a human shield. I folded it up so it couldn't be seen. I would need to wash the stain out myself before my parents found it. Or maybe I could just burn it. Right then all I wanted to do was lie down and take a nap.

My younger brother Jake was walking down the upstairs hall. As I passed him, he stopped and stared at me.

Tired as I was, I stopped and looked back at him. "What?"

"You're wearing a suit," he said.

"So?"

He looked my clothes up and down. He looked at my face, suspiciously. "Were you . . ."

"Was I what?" I asked wearily.

Jake stared at me for a long time. Like he was trying to figure out something important.

But then he shook his head. Scoffed like it was silly. Before walking away he said, "Nah, it couldn't be. Never mind."