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I looked right into his eyes – those unnervingly familiar eyes, stolen by that thing – when I said it.
“Ram the Blade ship.”
And then... then they weren't his eyes. They were hers. Somehow, they were hers, and they weren't threatening, they weren't in that thing. And we were somewhere else, in space, outside of space. Somewhere I'd been before.
“Cassie,” I breathed. “How?”
She smiled, and only then did I notice the rest of the face. Not Cassie. Cassie's eyes, but also the eyes of a little girl, and an ancient whale, and a hork-bajir, and somehow the sense of something facing me blind, something tiny and helpless. Something I'd seen in space before, seventeen thousand of them, floating and struggling briefly before they froze. I looked away.
“No,” she said. “Not Cassie. Sorry.”
“Aftran.” It wasn't hard to guess. I was kind of surprised I'd remembered her name. I wouldn't have, if it hadn't so often been on Cassie's tongue.
“Yes.”
“Why... do you have her eyes?”
She sighed in the airless void. “Everything that somebody touches becomes part of it. This is especially true for my kind. But it's true for everybody, to a degree. Look down, Jake.”
I did. And then I closed my eyes, but somehow I could see straight through my eyelids. I could see everything.
My hands were drenched with blood.
My human hands had seen so little blood, but they were dripping with it. It made no sense.
“No,” I said. “No, I've been in this space before. This is an... an ellimist thing. This blood thing never happens. Symbolic stuff like that never happens... unless you count Tobias, I guess. But not to me. So this is a nightmare.”
“Children trapped in war believe what they have to believe about themselves,” Aftran said, her voice becoming harsh. “But you've had time to think, Jake. Have you been here since winning the war? Have you been here since having to make those calls you had to... no, you decided to... make?”
“You know about that.”
“Believe it or not, news travels even to the ocean eventually.”
I could have tried to justify myself over those yeerks, swimming in space. I could have tried to justify myself over what I did to Rachel. I could have tried to justify myself over those kids, those new recruits that I sent to die. I didn't. I'd given up trying to justify myself a long time ago. Especially for some random yeerk.
“Why are you here?” I asked.
“A deal. With Him.”
“The Ellemist.”
She nodded. “One moment I'm swimming happily in the ocean and the next I'm pulled into a scene straight out of Cassie's memories where this little blue alien is going on about the fate of some distant planet. He needs me to go in as... you know, as the old me. He said I needed to pick my own partner.”
“You mean slave.”
“Nobody's going to make you do anything against your will, Jake.”
I thought about that. I decided that after everything... well, it was kind of hard to care. I'd spent so long hating yeerks, then being clueless in a world without yeerks, and now here I was fighting some unknown force on the Blade ship and the concept of yeerk possession just seemed so trivial. What could she do with my body than was worse than what I'd already done? What could she pull from my memories and taunt me with that I hadn't replayed for myself a thousand times?
“Nothing against my will? Can I trust your word on that?”
She gave me a disparaging look. “How many times do I have to give my life in the name of my ideals before you'll believe me?”
That was a pretty good point. I nodded once. “Why me?”
She bit her lip. “There are very few people I trust. The old Peace Movement are... adjusting, and Cassie is... busy.”
I nodded again. I understood. Cassie was out. Cassie was working to build a better future, beyond the war. I'd made the same decision regarding Cassie myself. “But you trust me?”
“She trusted you.”
“That was before a lot of the more intense battles.”
“She wouldn't have cared.”
I could say no. I could say no, and end up on that ship, where I was supposed to be, and ram the Blade ship, as I was supposed to do. But I couldn't be entirely sure that getting me out of there for a bit to see or change something wasn't part of the ellimist's design. He'd played similar games before.
I looked down at my hands, smeared with blood.
I looked up into the eyes of the little girl, the ageless whale, my comrade in arms, my enemy.
“Alright,” I said. “Let's go.”
“Don't you want to hear what the mission – ”
“Brief me when we get there. I'm in.”
She flashed me a grin, a grin that was nothing like Cassie's. And we were yanked suddenly into real space, and I was standing on a stony shore I didn't recognise under a greenish sky, a large slug cupped in my hands. Two remnants of a past war who barely knew each other outside the memories of another.
I lifted my new partner to my ear.
“Let's kick some butt,” I whispered.