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My name is Jake. You probably already know that. You probably know the rest of the drill too. I won't tell you my age, my location, my last name. If those got out, the Yeerks would find us, and me and my friends would be dead. And with us would die humanity's last hope.
I'm not about to let that happen.
Yeerks are evil, sluglike little aliens. In their normal state they're blind and deaf, helpless to do anything but swim senselessly. Not very scary, just gross. But if one gets close to your head: game over. It'll wiggle into your head through your ear canal and wrap itself around your brain, sinking into all the little nooks and crannies until it has total control over you. You're trapped backstage as it walks and talks and acts like you, flipping through your memories like TV channels in order to impersonate you perfectly. All you can do is watch, helpless, as it uses you to betray your friends and family.
I know. It's happened to me.
I was lucky. My fellow Animorphs found out about the Yeerk in my head and killed it before our secrets could be exposed. It starved to death in my brain for three slow, agonizing days. I still see its memories when I dream, sometimes. That was scary, yes, but also bizarrely routine. A mission, a complication, a solution. The end.
Right now, we're dealing with something a lot more complicated.
-
The night air is crisp and cool; the stars are out, along with a sliver of moon. Cassie's barn is deserted, which is exactly how I need it. No Rachel, no Cassie, no Marco, no Ax. This isn't a group meeting. This is a one-on-one.
<Everything's clear out here,> Tobias says into my head. <Man, owl eyes are amazing. Did you know there's an ant on the barn door? I can see that from forty yards away like I'm looking at it with a magnifying glass.>
I can't answer, since I'm not in morph, but I feel better knowing that Tobias is out there, ready to intervene if things go... sour. It's a little worrying that he can't see inside the barn without exposing his location, but I've no doubt that if a fight breaks out he'll be able to hear it.
<Here he comes. He's in rat morph. Is it bad that I kind of want to eat him?>
I crack open the barn door, look left and right in a slow parody of a head shake, then glance at the sky. Let David think I'm impatient. Worried.
<Be careful, okay?>
I close the barn door again, but before I can turn around, someone taps me on the shoulder. My jump is only half faked. I wish I could be Marco and react overdramatically, or say something witty, or otherwise somehow regain the psychological high ground by clowning around; but I'm not, and I can't, so instead I turn to face David with as calm an expression as I can muster.
“You startled me,” I say. “I didn't see you come in.”
David shrugs and half-grins in a way that's probably apologetic. “I snuck in.”
I punch him lightly on the shoulder, mirroring his unfinished grin. “You could have just walked in, dude.”
He's new to morphing but he's already pretty good at morphing clothes: he's gon the bike shorts, of course, but he also managed to hang onto a tight T-shirt with a Spiderman logo on it. I wonder briefly if he's going to turn out to be the same kind of morpher as Cassie (some Andalite word I can never remember: eestren, maybe? I'll have to ask Ax later), but I dismiss the thought out of hand. David doesn't have the personality for it.
That shirt is really tight, but not in a too-small kind of way. Just in a... body-clinging kind of way.
Focus, Jake.
I've let the silence stretch on too long, and David shifts awkwardly to rub the back of his neck. The movement lifts the hem of his shirt a little and exposes a tiny sliver of skin at the stomach.
FOCUS, JAKE.
“So, you, uh, wanted to talk to me?” David asks.
“Yeah,” I say, forcing my eyes back up to his face. “Just wanted to, you know, check in.”
“And you couldn't have done that during the day?”
“David,” I say. “You've been acting... Well, I know we haven't been the nicest to you. Are you okay?”
He sneers at me, but it doesn't look like his heart is really in it. “Who are you, Cassie? Why do you care?”
“You're one of the team now,” I say, squashing down the trickle of trepidation that accompanies my words. My call, my responsibility. “It's my job to make sure nobody breaks down.”
“Gotta keep your soldiers in tip-top fighting shape?” David mocks. He sounds bitter. Tired. His eyes have grey hollows under them, visible in the faint moonlight seeping into the barn. His lips are dry and cracked.
Seriously, man,” I say, stepping forward a little to put a hand on his shoulder. He doesn't step away or shrug off my hand, which I take as an invitation to keep talking. “Have you been sleeping?”
His defiant looks slips for a second. “A little.”
“Eating? Drinking? Taking care of yourself at all?”
I expect him to get sullen, but instead the defiant look slips again and this time it doesn't come back. The change is so unexpected that for a moment I wonder if he's morphed somehow. He suddenly looks a million years older, a million years angrier, a million years more tired, a million years more stressed. I stare without meaning to. Is this what I look like when my own mask drops?
“Why do you care?” David asks, refusing to meet my eyes. “I can deal with it. I can still fight with you guys. That's what you want, right? Why do you keep asking?”
His question makes me pause. Why am I still pressing David like this, him alone out of my teammates? I've pretended not to see the heaviness settling on and warping Marco's shoulders, the wild thing clawing its way from Rachel's insides, Cassie's constant moral sickness, Ax's split and hopeless loyalties, Tobias's subtle withdrawal from the group. I've let them all deal with their own problems without offering much more than a gripped shoulder here or an encouraging word there. Why is David different?
I realize my grip is tightening on David's shoulder and force myself to relax.
“You've been through,” I take a deep breath, “a lot more shit than the others have.” A lie. But a lie that he'd believe. He's a lot more inclined to self-pity than the rest of us are. And besides, at least we still have homes, families.
I think of Tobias, perched silent and watchful in a tree outside. Well. Most of us still do.
David reaches out and grips my wrist loosely, the wrist that isn't attached to the hand still on his shoulder. His fingers are shaking.
He's been a wild card, a hindrance, a constant worry every since we “drafted” him. None of the others really like him: not even Cassie, the gentlest, not even Ax, whose situation isn't that dissimilar from David's own. I can hear Marco's voice in my head: he's a killer, he's insane, he's a loose cannon, he thirsts for blood, he named his cat Megadeath, he's dangerous. And maybe he's right. Marco's paranoid, but he's usually paranoid for a good reason. And he's usually right. But not always.
David is looking at me again. His eyes are a weird, dead kind of grey-brown in the sparse lighting. Where moonlight touches his head, his blonde hair shines nearly silver. Something about his expression has changed.
“I...” He trails off, starts again. His grip tightens a little on my wrist, fingers sliding down towards my palm. “I know I've been acting... weird. Erratic. I know I've been scaring you guys. I've just been scared myself, and taking it out on the wrong people.” He steps forward, into my personal space. I have exactly one inch of height on him. I can't read his eyes, and I take a step back automatically, into the barn door. David takes another step forward.
<Jake?> Tobias says. <I just saw the barn door move. Is everything okay?>
I'm too distracted to figure out how to reassure Tobias. Or to figure out if I should reassure Tobias. My grip on David's shoulder is turning my knuckles white.
“I've been dealing with all this shit by lashing out at you guys, blaming you guys,” David continues. “You're not the enemy. You've never been the enemy. It's the Yeerks. So.” He looks like he's working up to something. I can't tell if my hands are too hot or if his hands are freezing, and he's so close that there's less than half an inch of space between our noses. David's cheekbones are accented by the weak light, and his eyelashes are almost as long as Cassie's.
Jake. Focus.
<Give me a sign, man. You okay?>
“Uh,” I say eloquently, voice barely a whisper. “I'm...”
“Think of this like an apology,” David tells me.
Then he closes the tiny bridge of distance between our faces to kiss me.
It's not actually the kissing I'm distracted by at first. It's how powerful he feels. It's stupid, but I feel like I can feel the big morphs inside him fighting under the skin: the lion, the golden eagle.
Then he pulls away.
You always see on TV how one person will stop kissing and draw back, and the other person will lean forward like they're following, because they want more. I didn't really put much stock in that, and only partially because it was only very recently that I became interested in that sort of thing. It had just always seemed a little contrived. However...
But David just does this weird little move where he pushes me back gently and spins me around at the same time, so that now he's the one closer to the door, and slips out of the barn before I can break my daze. I never get a chance to say a single word.
I don't know how long I stand there in the dark with the door cracked open. Eventually a familiar shape swoops in and lands awkwardly on the floor of the barn. I kneel down automatically and offer him my arm. His claws bite into my arm. I don't care.
<Jake,> Tobias says. <Jake, talk to me. What happened? Did he do anything?>
“No,” I manage, glad for once that the eyes of a red-tailed hawk aren't designed for nighttime hunting. I don't want to think about what color my face must be right now. I suddenly have too much on my plate as it is. “Everything's fine.”
Tobias tilts his head, inspecting me with one razor-sharp eye and then the other.
<If you're sure,> he says finally, then pushes off my arm and flaps to a higher altitude.
“Yeah, I say, not sure who I'm talking to anymore. “I'm sure.”