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The days after were a blur.
There was so much to do. Inform the rest of Earth of what was going on. Lots of reunions, tears. Compile the missing, the dead, identifying the bodies – those that were left. Yeerk ships in orbit to capture.
Ax and Alloran got called back to the Andalite fleet for debriefing, several times. But they always came back. Ax, because he was one of them. And Alloran...
It was very strange, watching the Andalite who had been their greatest enemy calmly assisting with rescue efforts and facing down verbal firing squads with barely a flicker in his eyes. But he'd been a soldier; still was. He'd been trained for this; they hadn't. And maybe, like them, he was trying to repent.
He generally worked with Ax, and spoke only when spoken to. She imagined it was easier to do this than face the Andalites. The Andalites, short on time and patience and crew members, would probably just incarcerate him, anyway; Alloran had been infamous even before he had been infested.
Andalites, Cassie had long since realized, were not the saints and heroes the Animorphs had once thought they would be.
(Who were they to point fingers? Humans were no prize sometimes, too.)
Always things to do. Clean up the debris and roads. Gather up supplies and food, face the cameras and microphones. Arrange shelter and transport for those who no longer had either. Tend to the wounded. Granted the Taxxons and surrendered Yeerks the morphing power, watched them find their freedoms, and relocated them. (The Taxxons were first. No one wanted to chance a Taxxon stumbling upon a wounded man.)
At least there was no shortage of people to help, between Toby's Hork-Bajir, the freed Controllers, the army, and whatever aid the Andalite fleet could spare. And they proved to be almost more useful than their original Animorphs team.
Jake was...gone, walking on autopilot, his face a plastic mask. Tobias had left. Marco ran interference and PR between two hour naps. Ax had his liaison duties, going to bat for the human race. And there was Rachel's funeral...
It was several days before she remembered, as the last of the immediate hubbub died down. (She had been far too focused on more...important things.)
“Ax?” Cassie called softly. “Can I borrow you for a few hours?”
The rehab centre had been left intact, having been outside the blast radius. The kids were all still there – there had been no time to evacuate, not that there was any place they could have evacuated to. Overworked nurses and doctors ran through the hallways, delivering medicine and food or telling children there were neither. The air hung heavy with fear...and grief.
The Animorphs had been glossing over the auxiliary Animorphs in their stories, but there was no hiding them completely. People could count. The story was consistent: the original six, then twenty-three.
The kids at the centre could count, too. They knew they were missing their own.
They did not enter through the front door, not wanting to see the accusing glares. Instead, the osprey and northern harrier fluttered through the window, the room now oddly empty with one of its occupants missing. And the other...
Still there, still flat on his back, like James had told them. Fourteen years. His eyes were flickering; someone must have forgotten his medicine again. Or maybe there wasn't any left. Hardly surprising.
They didn't have medicine, but...
“Pedro,” she began. The boy's eyes flickered towards her, and the Andalite in the corner, both fully demorphed. His face registered some surprise. Cassie thought she saw anger, maybe pain. He knew.
Even if I don't make it out alive, I want Pedro to have at least two hours of freedom.
Cassie was not James; she could not read his eyes. She didn't have to; she had a promise to keep, one no one else had remembered.
“Ax?”
Ax lifted the Escafil device and pressed it against the boy's slack hand. A moment later, he nodded; she produced a small pigeon that she'd captured on her way here, held carefully in osprey talons. She pressed the squirming bird against Pedro's hand.
(The auxiliaries' first morph had been a pigeon, too.)
“Concentrate on – ” but she didn't even have to finish. Pedro had not been one of James' chosen, but he had been James' roommate. And he had shown that he was aware and alert since even her first visit, and likely watched James morph a few times. The bird lay slack in her hands.
Then, Pedro morphed.
Spindly legs grew thinner. Feathers popped out of skin. His badly shorn hair zipped back into his skull. Rail-thin arms grew to wings.
Moments later, a small white pigeon stood on Pedro's bed.
“Pedro?” she tried. “You, you can talk to us. Just...um...think at us what you want to say.”
The pigeon swung jerkily to face her. Narrowed bird eyes. <Y-y-you.> A stuttering mental voice, someone unaccustomed to words – both aloud and inside his own head.
The others never had trouble speaking after they'd morphed. Maybe Pedro had a speech impediment? Or perhaps he was mentally disabled as well as physically. She never had time to ask, back then (there were other, more important, things. Always more important things). Perhaps that was why Pedro had not been one of James' chosen. How much did James actually tell him? How much did he understand?
But they'd promised James, and she would see that through.
<J-J-Ja. Ja..ya...yames?>
Cassie looked down into her hands. Ax stayed silent.
“I'm sorry,” she whispered.
I promise I'll be back.
Pigeons did not cry. But the boy's howl in their heads was more than enough to convey the grief. The pigeon charged them from the bed, tumbled, went wing over head and tangled into the sheets.
She frantically tried to pull him free, but he was a snapping, whirling ball of feathers; she got slashed twice for her troubles, and Pedro was still entangled.
FWAP! FWAP!
Ax's tail flashed twice and the sheets were shorn to ribbons. The pigeon immediately froze, hospital linens falling around him. He stared at the deadly Andalite tail, then back at her.
Sentient mental impedance mixed with unencumbered animal instinct. To the untrained mind, the instinct should be king.
These kids never failed to surprise her.
The pigeon stilled, stared hard at them both. Pedro's voice sounded in their heads again, stuttering and angry: <W-wu->
“Why?” she guessed. Fought back tears. “We...made James a promise. No matter what – no matter how it ends – we'd get you out. For two hours at a time, we would get you out.”
How much of that he understood, Cassie didn't know. Maybe that wasn't even the question he asked. He lifted himself from the bed, new wings flapping. Arced around the room. Distracted, briefly, by the wonder of movement.
Fourteen years, flat on his back.
She'd never known a pigeon's cooing could sound like joy and grief.
Pedro swung about, dove wildly at their heads. They both ducked, and Pedro sailed through the open window.
“No!” She dashed to the window to watch the white bird turn the building's corner, flight path arcing and off-kilter. A flutter behind her and the pigeon – the real one – sailed out after him. The pair fluttered into a cloud of real pigeons, and were soon indistinguishable.
<Cassie.> Ax laid a hand on her shoulder. Her rapidly feathering shoulder.
<We have to stop him!> The blue-furred hand on her shoulder did not move, did not change. <Ax!>
<Cassie.> Ax's voice was gentle. <I...do not think...Pedro will listen to us.>
<We can't leave him!>
<Can we force him to return? Can we force him to come with us, to acquire a new morph he desires? Can he even understand the time limit? Would he obey if he did?>
His logic was indisputable, but a cruel part of her wondered how much was fueled by the Andalite disdain for vecols. <He – he can't – what if he gets trapped? As a pigeon? I only – > She'd only grabbed the pigeon so she could speak to him. So he could come with them.
I want Pedro to have at least two hours of freedom.
Who was to say he'd have been content with just two, if he even understood the choice?
Ax squeezed her shoulder. She stared miserably at the sky, at the freedom James and his friends died chasing. Slowly demorphed. Leaned into Ax as tears welled in still-human eyes.
“He'll come back, right?” He had to. The kids couldn't lose another one.
Ax followed her gaze, looking solemn. One stalk eye peered towards Pedro's empty bed. <There are worse fates.>