Chapter Text
My name is Cassie. I'm not very smart. I'm not good with numbers and I'm not good with words. But in my short life, I've learned a lot. I could probably make a decent living writing those 'did you know?' facts that show up in magazines.
Did you know that there is life on other planets? That there is a world where the bright sunlight gleams off a beach littered with gemstones and pierces the perfectly clear ocean water – or did, before that beach was blown up?
Did you know that penicillin, the miracle drug that sparked off the whole field of antibiotics, was discovered at least three times, but thought too expensive to develop? That it was eventually developed because the timing of the last discovery put it firmly in the middle of a war, and while it was too expensive to save human lives during peacetime, it was a small price during war to keep our soldiers alive long enough to kill more people?
Did you know that humans went to the moon as part of a massively accelerated space program as an act of war, and that developments in space exploration have been dwindling ever since?
Did you know that the first electronic computers were developed to decode enemy messages in wartime, and that the entire field of computing owes its origin to that desperate race to kill each other more effectively?
Did you know that scientific experiments show that eighty per cent of human beings, real everyday human beings from every culture and every walk of life, will electrocute a puppy to death if somebody in authority asks them to? That they'll also keep applying more and more electricity to human victims at the prompting of an authority figure; weeping, protesting, volunteering to trade places, but still pushing the button, just because the person in charge says 'please continue'?
I'd been doing a lot of reading.
I probably had a couple of library books overdue, actually, and I was trying to remember when they were supposed to be returned when I took the last corner on the way to Rachel's house and nearly ran straight into Marco.
“Whoah! Hi, Cassie.”
“Sorry. Hi.”
“So, oatmeal,” Marco said, as if that was a meaningful statement. Unfortunately, our lives had gotten weird enough that it was a meaningful statement.
“Any ideas?” I asked.
“As a matter of fact, yes,” he said. “I was sitting at lunch today, eating that ridiculous slop the school calls food, and thinking.”
“And?” I asked.
He blinked at me. “And I was eating that ridiculous slop the school calls food,” he repeated. “In the same building where the yeerks are hoarding all this weird oatmeal? I was thinking, you know, they could just serve that up one day and nobody would even question it, even though eating oatmeal for lunch is stupid.”
“You think they're planning on poisoning students?” I asked. “Why?”
He shrugged. “Maybe there's something in the oatmeal to make students all depressed or something, so they want to join The Sharing? I don't know. But why else would they have it all there?”
That made sense. It sounded exactly like something that the yeerks would do. Drug people to poison their minds. That's basically what The Sharing did already, right, with their words and smiles and catch phrases?
We through Rachel's gate and rang to doorbell. Her little sister Jordan let us in.
Jordan was a couple of years younger than Rachel, and looked like Rachel in miniature. I don't mean that she looked how Rachel had at her age; Rachel at her age had worn khaki shorts and had the lean muscles of an amateur gymnast and gone lizard-catching with me in the river. I mean that if you looked at Rachel now and tried to imagine her a couple of years younger, you'd have a pretty good picture of Jordan. She dressed in bright colors with glitter lip gloss, kept her blond hair long and straightened, and collected those silly slap-band things that could be pulled straight but curled into a bracelet when you struck them across your wrist. She had a pale blue streak in her hair when she answered the door, which I knew must be fake or her mother would have killed her.
“Cassie,” she said. He eyes skipped to Marco and she hesitated, clearly trying to remember his name.
“Theodore,” he prompted.
“Marco. Come in.” She stood back and let us pass. “Rachel said she'd be down in a bit.”
We followed her into the kitchen, where Sara was pouring herself some juice. Sara's about eight or nine years old, I think; I'd lost track at some point. “Hi, Cassie,” she said.
“Hello, Sara.”
“What am I? Chop liver?” Marco asked.
Sara looked at him silently, then back to me. “You brought your boyfriend,” she said.
“Wait,” I said, “what?”
“Cassie's dating Jake, dummy,” Jordan said, rolling her eyes. “Rachel's dating Marco.”
Marco, beside me, made a small, strangled noise. I just shook my head. “I'm not... dating anyone...” I protested quietly.
“That doesn't make sense,” Sara told her sister, screwing up her nose. “Jake is gross. Marco is way cuter.”
“And Rachel's way cute too. Cute people end up together. Haven't you ever read a single magazine?”
“Cassie's cuter than Rachel.”
“Cassie's socks don't even match!”
“Um,” I said. I felt like I should stand up for myself, somehow, but had no idea how to push my way into the sister joust unfolding before me. I glanced at Marco for help, but he wasn't watching the girls. He was looking out into the hallway with an expression on his face that was very difficult to describe, but if I had to I'd probably compare it to him receiving a phone call that he'd just inherited a vast amount of wealth, his own network TV show, and the entire cast of Baywatch wanted to date him.
I followed his gaze and saw why.
Rachel was standing in the hallway, looking dumbfounded. I was willing to bet she'd heard the whole thing.
She strode, quickly, into the room. “Jordan, Sara, why don't you guys pick what you want delivered for dinner? Somewhere else?” she said pointedly.
Jordan looked like she was going to argue for a moment, but when she saw the look on Rachel's face she just rolled her eyes and rushed her sister out of the room.
Marco, grinning, opened his mouth. Rachel rushed forward and grabbed his jaw, pushing one finger into his cheek between his teeth to prevent him from speaking.
“Before you say a single word,” she said in a low, dangerous voice, “I want you to remember that I can turn into a bear and tear all your limbs off. And you can heal really well, so I can do that more than once. Do you understand?”
Marco's eyes widened. He understood.
“Good. Remember that. Keep remembering that forever.” She let him go. “So,” she said. “Soda? We only have orange.”
“Orange isn't even a flavor,” Jake said from the hall. He entered, screwing up his nose. “It's a fruit. That's cheating.”
“Jake's here,” Jordan called unhelpfully from the other side of the house.
“You mean like lemon?” Marco asked, raising a brow. “Or pineapple? Or basically everything else except cola?”
“Yes, exactly.”
“I can assure you that there are absolutely no vitamins in this soda,” Rachel said reassuringly, handing a couple to me and Marco.
“Kitchen's looking good,” I noted, glancing around. Since the house had been rebuilt and Rachel's lawyer mom had managed to get quite a lot of money from the insurance company, the layout had changed. The new one was much more modern, with one of those flat glass stovetops and everything.
Rachel wrinkled her nose in mild distaste. “I can never find anything. I miss the old kitchen.”
“You crushed the old kitchen with your giant elephant butt,” Marco pointed out.
“No sense pointing fingers,” she shrugged. “It's gone.”
“Ax and Tobias are waiting on the roof, by the way,” Jake said.
“Well why didn't you say that first thing?” Rachel muttered irritably, brushing past him to charge upstairs. We followed.
Rachel opened her window to let the two birds of prey in. I leaned casually against the door in case her sisters decided to barge in while Ax demorphed and remorphed human.
“So,” Jake said. He clapped his hands together. “Oatmeal.”
We all looked at Rachel. She frowned.
“What?” she asked. “Why are you all looking at me?”
<We're kind of wondering what you think we should do,> Tobias pointed out. <About the Star Defender thing. Since Melissa's your friend.>
“Is this our mission, or their mission?” Marco asked.
Rachel bit her lip. “We don't really have a mission,” she shrugged. “I mean, they're hoarding oatmeal. We don't know why. Not really anywhere we can go with that.”
“Marco has a theory,” I said.
We looked at Marco. He explained his school lunch theory again.
<So... what?> Tobias asked. <We just break in again and destroy all the oatmeal? Burn it?>
“Set fire to the school?” Marco asked disbelievingly. “You're saying we should set fire to the school? I feel like I really should love this plan, but...”
“Burning it is a bad idea,” I said. “We don't know what's in it. The fumes might be toxic.”
<Okay, okay, but we get rid of it somehow.>
“We should tell them,” Rachel said decisively. “The Star Defenders. At least some of them go to our school, right? Like Melissa? So they're in danger too. If we can't stop the plan, at least they'll know not to eat the oatmeal.”
<I'll tell her,> Tobias said. <I don't have a human identity she can recognise me as any more.>
“Oatmeal is such a weird choice, though,” I mused. “Why wouldn't you poison the chips or something? Everyone eats chips.”
Marco shrugged.
“The Star Defenders are following up that... project pipeline thing, right?” Jake asked. “Where we think it's a drug development pipeline of some kind? Maybe it's a... a test thing, and it only works in oatmeal?”
“'Why' doesn't matter,” Rachel said. “Stopping it matters. We're not letting them poison people.”
“Okay,” I said, “how?”
<We're not sure they're poisoning people,> Tobias pointed out. <If we run off to stop something that isn't happening we might miss out on what's actually going on.>
“What other uses can you think of for hoarding vast amounts of yeerk oatmeal?” Marco asked, raisin an eyebrow.
“Tobias has a point,” Jake said. “Step one is finding out exactly what they're doing.”
“Last time we tried that, we ended up getting sucked into the nothingness of zero-space and nearly died quite a lot of times,” Marco pointed out. “I'm not saying we shouldn't look deeper. I'm just saying.”
“That did happen, yes, but it had nothing to do with the mission,” Jake said.
“Right, but now that we're talking about it, could we maybe establish some rules on that? No morphing small stuff unless we have to? It was not fun and somehow I don't think we can count on being rescued next time.”
“There should be no next time,” Ax said. “The odds against such an event are billions to one. Bill-yon-zuh. Wun-wun-wun-nuh.”
“Yeah, well, the odds were billions to one the first time, and it still happened. I can't be the only one who finds that really weird.”
I rolled my eyes. “Marco, a billion to one chance is going to show up one in a billion times. Otherwise it would be impossible. Superstitions are born from people assuming that just because something of absurdly low probability happened – ”
“Hey, hey, let's stop this train right here before Cassie starts assigning homework,” Marco said, putting up his hands.
“Oatmeal,” Jake said patiently.
Marco shook his head with a faint smile. “Oatmeal,” he said. “The problem with this mission is going to be taking it seriously. I mean, oatmeal.”
A car pulled into the driveway. Rachel glanced out of the window and sighed. “It's Mom.”
“Already?” Jake frowned and glanced at Rachel's alarm clock. “I thought she was working late.”
“She was. But it's Friday, and she's coming home early instead, which means that she wants a nice family dinner together because she's working all weekend. Which means that I'll have Jordan and Sara all weekend. Wonderful.”
“Fear not, Xena; we can work around your plans of looking out for Gabrielle and... ah...” Marco dwindled off.
<That one got away from you, huh?> Tobias asked.
“Who's Gabrielle?” I asked.
Marco stared at me. “Do you even watch Xena?”
“Uh... no? Wait, why do you watch Xena?”
“Because she's Xena. Warrior Princess.” He shook his head slowly. “Rachel, how about – ”
But Rachel had already gone. We followed her downstairs, Tobias and Ax lagging behind to put some respectable clothes on.
“You're home early,” Rachel was observing as we entered the kitchen.
“Yeah. It's going to be a big one, sweetie. I might have to go in on the weekend,” she said in the manner of somebody who knew there was no 'might' about it.
Rachel nodded. “The glamorous life of a hot-shot lawyer,” she said, rolling her eyes. “I hope you like take-out because the girls are going through the menus right now.”
“Well if your environmental group friends are staying then that's probably for the best,” she said, shooting us a smile. “Hello, guys.”
“Hi, Aunt Naomi,” Jake replied. I gave her a little answering wave.
“Are you staying?” she asked. “There's a phone in the hall if you need to call your parents.”
Rachel and I exchanged a glance. Her mom was being a lot more accommodating than usual. She must be planning to stay pretty late at the office over the weekend.
She had also clearly never seen Ax eat.
“Uh,” I said, “we wouldn't want to impose. We should go home.”
“Nonsense,” Rachel's mom said, “I wouldn't dream of breaking up your little environment meeting.”
We were about to protest further but Jordan came striding into the kitchen, Sara on her heels.
“I'm older and I picked Chinese,” Jordan said.
“We always get what you want,” Sara whined. “I want pizza.”
“Pizza makes you fat, you know.”
“Only if you eat the crust, duh.”
“So long as it's food and it gets here fast I don't care,” Rachel's mom announced, rubbing her temples.
“Rough day?” I asked.
“Oh, yes. Impossible case. Defending somebody's sanity.”
“Did some nutcase start killing people and you have to prove he deserves to go to jail?” Marco asked, grinning.
Rachel's mom fixed him with a withering stare. “No,” she said after taking a few moments to digest what Marco had said. “A wealthy gentleman attempted suicide and his family are claiming he is insane and not able to handle his own affairs. They want to lock him up and take his property. I've got to prove that he can handle his own affairs, which would be a whole lot easier if he wasn't constantly ranting about having an alien living in his head.”
The ensuing silence was broken by Jordan. “An alien? What a freak.”
“Don't call people freaks, Jordan. But yes, an alien. He's named it Yark or York or something.”
We Animorphs all exchanged looks. It looked like oatmeal had fallen off our priority list.