Archive of Our Own ^beta

My name is Aftran 942, and I’m not a good person.

Another important thing to know about me: I’m a Yeerk. A small, slimy parasite with no arms or legs or eyes. Soft and weak and helpless, except for one talent: the ability to crawl inside another creature’s head and take total control of their brain. We choose when they move, when they blink, when they breathe. And they’re completely trapped, a prisoner in their own mind, unable to cry or scream for help.

And according to the rest of the galaxy, we love it. We’re bloodthirsty and evil, only living to torture and enslave our way across the stars. According to the doctrine of our very own empire, our natural gifts give us the right to conquer other species, to take their unique senses, and their worlds, for our own.

I was spawned into the empire, and raised to believe the propaganda. Like everyone, I soaked it up like Kandrona radiation. I believed in my right to take hosts of my own. I spent most of my relatively short life doing awful things, like torture and murder—all under orders, of course, in the name of a glorious Yeerkish future. I learned how to ignore the feeling of a host crying inside my head. I learned to ignore my own conscience. I could convince myself that both those things were just annoying obstacles.

Again, I’m not a good person.

But I never really cared much about that glorious Yeerkish future from the start, and after all of the fighting and death had worn me down enough, I didn’t care about it at all. But I was a soldier. What choice did I have?

Then I met a human girl fighting to save her planet from the empire, from me , and she saved my life. And then I killed her. Or at least, I thought I had. She wound up being okay. It’s a weird story. But anyway, she helped me see that there’s always a choice. And that people can change.

I was trained from grubhood to control aliens’ bodies, but I spent most of my life thinking that trying to change someone’s nature was at best stupid, and at worst, dangerous. People were who they were. Andalites were arrogant moralizers who couldn’t keep their fuzzy blue noses out of the rest of the galaxy’s business. Taxxons were dangerous barbarians, already enslaved to their insatiable hunger before my people got to them. Hork-Bajir were dumb placid animals who happened to be excellent weapons. Humans were ignorant of anything beyond their beautiful, resource-rich planet, naïve and ready for conquest. Yeerks were cunning minds trapped in weak, parasitic bodies, only following our nature by taking hosts.

And then I met Cassie. That little flicker of a feeling that the Empire and its teachings were wrong, that I didn’t like hurting people, or fighting—that had always been there, just weak enough for me to smother under fear and selfishness. Cassie saw who I could be if I let it surface, if I let myself change. She helped me see it, too.

I don’t believe that doing good things now makes the bad I’ve done go away. But if I can spend the rest of my life working towards a better galaxy instead of a worse one, that’s worth something. I’m not a good person, but good isn’t something you are —it’s something you choose to do, over and over. Anyone can do that. Better late than never.

The night Cassie rescued me was one unbelievable thing after another, and to hear her tell it, I was around for only a few of them. What I remembered was that one moment, I was drifting in a cage waiting to get every secret about the Peace Movement tortured out of me, and the next moment, I was flying through the air with my slime coat drying up and my life flashing in front of me ahead of schedule. And then I became the first Yeerk to go from treasonous prisoner to brain surgeon in a single night.

Cassie and I had a lot to catch up on, after we’d finished saving the Andalite’s life and marveling at how none of us were dead. And to catch up properly, she did more than I had hoped for, even after everything else: she held me to her ear, let me into her head, and asked me not to leave.

It was a relief, even though spending the night in a bowl of harsh, itchy tap water would have still been better than being in the Pool, properly pH-balanced but doomed. It was also another sign of the compassionate nature that another year of war still somehow hadn’t stripped away from her. We sat down together for dinner with her kind, oblivious parents. We stood at the bathroom sink and brushed her teeth. We talked into the night, and she let me open her memories when talking wasn’t enough. She’d been thinking about me, she said. Wondered what I was up to. If I was okay. I told her that I’d been thinking the same about her.

At last, she fell asleep mid-thought, and I pulled up nice memories for her to dream about instead of the nightmares that wanted to creep in. I liked her memories of the ocean the best. It was dark and calm, like an endless Pool. I didn’t want to leave, and it was hard to bring us up out of them when it was time for her to wake up.

Cassie’s parents were going to be out all day at some wildlife veterinarian seminar. It sounded a bit like some of the seminars I’d been made to attend back when I was hosted, except with fewer Hork-Bajir trying to maneuver their tails and long limbs into specially-sized chairs. They’d asked her if she’d be okay by herself, and Cassie had only hesitated a little bit before saying yes. Her parents probably thought she was just being honest, maybe taking a moment to remember the new red-tailed hawk in the barn to take care of along with the other animals and the farm chores, but I knew she was really just getting up the courage to lie. I was in her head, after all—she wasn’t actually alone.

She’d gotten better at lying since the last time I’d seen her. She wasn’t the girl who’d called herself Cindy Crawford to a bunch of Earth military anymore. I was proud of her.

Tobias, the bird who was really a human kid and who should have been a nothlit but wasn’t, was asleep in his cage, those fierce golden eyes shut tight. I felt Cassie’s wave of warmth and affection when she looked at him. <Let’s let him sleep for a bit,> she said. <We’ll give him his medicine when he wakes up.>

<Sure,> I replied. Let’s. We . She thought about us together so easily, it almost felt natural. Ever since she’d rescued me, I’d been rediscovering everything that had made me trust her a year ago.

Even the way we moved together felt natural. I didn’t take control, like I’d been trained to; I was happy to be a passenger in her head, looking through her eyes and feeling through her senses. I was getting used to asking for control, when I really wanted it. I’d give her a sort of mental nudge, and she’d let me take over, or she’d push back, and I’d stop.

I didn’t go rifling through her memories or reading all her thoughts, either. Some thought-mixing can’t be helped when you’re sharing a skull, but I didn’t try to read her mind on purpose, like a Yeerk is supposed to with their host. Instead, I listened only when Cassie thought at me, and only saw the memories she chose to share, like folding open a flap in a paper fortune-teller.

Our system was a work in progress, but so far, it worked.

She picked up a battered clipboard with a pencil dangling from a string tied to the clip, and started making her rounds, going from cage to cage and peeking inside. She checked up on a couple ordinary birds of prey, the kind that had never been human children, and then a scruffy-looking deer with a cast on one leg and big, wet-looking eyes. She was deliberately avoiding looking in a particular stall that seemed empty, but really wasn’t, until she couldn’t put it off any longer and set the clipboard down.

“I’m going to check on Ax,” she said. It took me a moment to register that she’d said that out loud, instead of just thinking at me, but before I could wonder why, the Andalite appeared in the stall out of thin air.

Visser Three would have happily slaughtered a room full of underlings for the secrets to hologram technology like that. Personally, I wouldn’t go that far, being a pacifist, but I was desperately curious. Cassie had made me promise to not ask her about its origins yet, though, or the mysterious beings that wielded it and had helped us last night, so I held off.

The Andalite was fast asleep, his long legs and tail folded around his lower body, his upper body upright but relaxed. His main eyes were firmly shut, and only one stalk eye was half-open, glazed and unfocused. He hadn’t yet woken up to morph, so the fresh wound on the back of his head was still there. The patch of shaved skin was bruised a mottled black and purple, instead of the blue-gray that Cassie’s memories told me was his normal, healthy skin color, but the stitches looked like they were holding. Looking at them made tears prickle Cassie’s eyes and her nose. She reached towards one of his drooping ears, maybe the same one she’d put me inside last night, and carefully stroked the fine, thin fur behind it. To me, with all my memories of a human sense of touch dim and faded, it was the softest thing I’d ever felt.

<I probably shouldn't pat him,> Cassie thought. <He’s not an animal.> I felt the prickle of her guilt. Her emotions bled into mine: she’d almost lost him, and part of her almost believed that he might still slip away, if she stopped touching his warm skin and soft fur. She had to touch him to believe he was alive.

I thought back to the night before, when the subject of the Andalite had come up as we sat with her parents at the table. <You know, you’re the second alien I’ve had over for dinner,> she’d said. At my wordless curiosity, she opened a memory for me and I saw the Andalite sitting next to her, first disguised as Jake, and after that in his smaller, curly-haired human morph. In between forcing down excessive amounts of Cassie’s parents’ home cooking, he was smiling and talking eagerly, his hazel eyes bright and unguarded.

I had wondered at this side of him. Earlier, I’d only felt his fear and hatred, and only heard his screams. Maybe that was an improvement over him wanting to kill me when we’d first met, but I didn’t see our relationship getting much better. Cassie’s memories were the only place I’d ever get to see him happy .

Cassie had noticed how quiet I’d gone, and she sent me a wordless question. <He eats too much,> I’d said dismissively. <It’s embarrassing.>

Then I asked her for more sweet potatoes, and felt her laugh inside her head.

Back in the present, Cassie had taken her hand away from the Andalite’s ear, the tears in her eyes turning him into a wobbly, indistinct blue shape before she blinked them away. I might only see him happy in her memories, but he at least looked peaceful like this. I could almost see him like she saw him: sweet and fragile and lost.

It was definitely better than him yelling about Yeerk scum and swinging his tailblade around, or whatever other typical Andalite things he did, but I kept that thought to myself. Cassie probably wouldn’t take it well if I said that I liked him better unconscious.

“You’re okay,” she whispered, and I knew it was to him. “It’s gonna be okay.”

We stood there and watched him breathing. His narrow chest moved out and in softly, and then the sides of his lower body, a beat later. He had two sets of lungs. He’d told Cassie that, once. I couldn’t remember if I’d ever known that about Visser Three’s host, but it made sense. Lungs were a practical kind of organ, and Andalites had plenty of room for a bunch of them.

I scraped together every ounce of compassion and sincerity I could, thinking of the warmth that enfolded the name Ax in her mind, and said, <I’m glad he’s okay.>

<Thanks to you,> she said. <You saved him.>

<You saved me first,> I said. <A human saves a Yeerk, who saves an Andalite. A story from this war that nobody would believe, even if they could hear it.>

<Maybe one day they can,> said Cassie. <And they’ll believe it.>

“Thanks,” she said out loud, towards a cobweb in the corner of the stall. Apparently the cobweb heard her, because at once, the Andalite vanished. If I’d been in control, I would have stood there gawking at the empty space, but Cassie turned away almost casually and steered us towards a pile of dirty blankets piled next to a stack of unused cages.

I found my voice again, and tried to sound as nonchalant as her. <Well, I guess it would really go, a human saves a Yeerk, and then she saves that Yeerk again, and then that Yeerk saves an Andalite. That’s the real story.>

I felt her smile in her mind as well as on her face. <I guess it is, kind of.>

<I’m glad your friends didn’t kill me.> I felt her flinch a little, inside, and hoped I hadn’t hurt her feelings. I was speaking from the heart. <I’m glad I didn’t kill you, either,> I added.

She snorted. <Yeah. Me too.>

She opened her memory of that day in the forest. I felt the leaves crunching under her knees and the sweat sticking her shirt to her back as she reached out to take a caterpillar from a little girl with dirty, tangled red hair. Then the memory was gone. I didn’t fight it when she cut them off like that, but it was always jarring, like she’d changed the TV channel on me. I almost felt like saying, hey, I was watching that! But this was part of our compromise for sharing her head: when it came to her memories, Cassie had the remote.

<You know what I could never figure out?> she said, starting to gather the pile into a cracked, battered plastic hamper. The cloud of straw dust and animal fur that came with it made her nose prickle, and the explosive sneeze that followed startled me—I’d forgotten human bodies did that.

<What?> I said, ignoring the way she laughed at me in her head.

<How you freed Karen,> she said. We set off back to the house. <How both of you got out of that whole mess. When I saw her at the mall later, after I...> she trailed off, hesitant.

<Came back from the dead?> I suggested.

She sighed and shook her head. <Yeah. After that. I really did believe she was free, when I saw her again. I was so happy. But then… it just seemed way too good to be true, you know? I stalked her for three days after that, just to make sure.>

<Good,> I said. After bracing the hamper against one hip to free up one hand, Cassie pulled open the kitchen screen door and let it bang shut behind us.

I breathed in the house’s smell with her, soaking up the feelings in her mind that she barely noticed: the smell of rubber and straw that hung around the entryway where she and her parents hung their jackets and kicked off their boots after chores. The lingering aroma of the strong coffee her parents brewed when they got up with the sun. The distinctive, little bit horsey, but mostly indescribable smell of the house itself. All of it smelled like safety. Like everything Cassie never wanted to lose to this war.

I caught sight of the coffee pot out of the corner of Cassie’s eye. <Hey, there’s some left!> I said.

<There always is,> she sighed, shifting the laundry in her arms. <They always leave that little bit in there to get cold. We’ll pour it out later.>

There was that we again. I soaked it up like a ray of Kandrona. <Do we have to?> I said. <I mean… can I try some?>

Cassie wrinkled her nose. <Uh-uh. I’ll rescue you from Visser Three, right out of his hands, but I’m not drinking cold coffee for you. It tastes bad enough when it’s hot.>

I pushed back, sending her a ripple of disbelief. <But it smells good!>

I really did like the smell: it was earthy and savory, and a little bit sour. It had filled the whole house this morning, when the coffee was still hot. Yeerks have a sense of smell, but no sense of taste. I’d given up any hope of tasting things again when I’d given up taking hosts. It wasn’t even my favorite human sense, but now that I had it again, I wanted to take advantage.

<Ax once said the same thing about scented candles,> said Cassie. <And then he ate a whole one anyway, even after learning they just taste like wax.>

Of course he did. I wished I had my own eyes to roll. I sent her my best thought-impression of the gesture, anyway. <Candles aren’t food. Coffee is. And I’ve never, ever gotten to try it before.>

She looked sidelong at the coffee machine. I could feel her resolve wearing thinner, until it broke. <...Fine. But I get to say I told you so.>

<Deal.>

<Laundry first, though. Then cold, leftover coffee.>

<Also deal,> I said, triumphant.

She bundled the laundry into the washing machine in its little hall closet with the squeaky folding doors, and we wandered back into the kitchen, the muffled, rhythmic sound of the machine following us and making the hardwood floor thump under her feet. She ran her hand along the wall, her fingers trailing over the little bubbles in the paint just so I could feel them, too.

She wound up being right about the coffee.

<I told you so,> she laughed as I spat it back out into our Horses Keep Me Stable! mug. Sure, it smelled nice, but it tasted like burned dirt. I felt deceived. While I sulked, she dumped the mug out in the sink and got us a Capri Sun out of the cardboard box in the fridge. She let me poke the little straw through the top.

The pouch had pictures of fruit on it, but the flavor was so overpoweringly sweet that I couldn’t taste fruit at all. It was delicious. Taste is a powerful human sense, and it triggered a memory so suddenly and strongly that Cassie saw it, too: a different, smaller pair of hands holding a Capri Sun pouch, pale and freckled instead of brown.

<Whoa,> said Cassie, caught off guard. This time, I changed the channel, snapping off that memory.

I swallowed hard. The sugary aftertaste almost soured in Cassie’s mouth. <She liked this flavor,> I muttered. I sipped at the straw again.

Cassie sent me a soft nudge of emotion, a particular blend of gentle, patient concern that I was coming to recognize as one of her trademarks. I admired it and dreaded it, because I already knew the question that came with it. Sure enough:

<Do you want to talk about her?>

I swished the drink around in her mouth, trying to wash away the last traces of bitter coffee taste, putting off answering. But Cassie had shared so much with me—I could share a little back. <Sure,> I said, already getting an idea. <Want me to tell you how she got free?>

A wave of curiosity, and under it, that same gentle patience.

<Okay. I’ll start there. But I can do better than just telling.>

<What do you mean?>

<I can show you,> I said. I sucked up a bracing mouthful of sugar, and I opened my memory to her.

After the Animorphs, one by one, had made the decision to not murder me and Karen, they took Cassie away with them and left us alone in the meadow. I had hoped that stupid leopard had decided it had had enough and wouldn’t come back, but lucky for us, a group of Controllers found us before it did.

The one who half-dragged, half-carried us through the woods to the road had some nasty-looking gashes raked across his face. He didn’t say a single word, but the number of rocks and tree roots he didn’t avoid bumping Karen’s body into said plenty. He shoved us into the back of a cop car, pulled his hat down low over his host’s eyes to hide all the blood on his face, and stomped on the gas hard enough to send us sliding across the back seat before I scrambled to buckle us in.

The drive back into town was miserable, and not just because of the cop’s driving or Karen’s collection of injuries. Thinking you’ve just murdered the person who showed you the deepest mercy you’ve ever known in your whole worthless, violent life will do that. I didn’t even have it in me to hold back Karen’s tears. I kept us quiet, but she was crying inside our shared skull, in rolling waves of sadness stronger than anything I’d felt since I’d first infested her.

<We killed her,> she moaned, over and over. <We killed her, we killed her…>

I swallowed hard around the painful lump in her throat and wiped snot from her streaming nose. < I killed her,> I said. < I did. It wasn’t your fault.> The world outside was turning from woods to the outskirts of town, but every blink sent it swimming into a meaningless blur of color.

<I can’t take it back,> I offered bitterly. <I want to. But I… I thought that...> I trailed off. I had always been bad at walling off my emotions completely from my hosts, and Karen felt my sadness bleed into her own.

I felt her take everything in. <I know,> she finally said. Her voice was small, but sure, and that sureness made me feel sick in a way I didn’t understand.

At the police station, our scratched-up cop-Controller and a knot of others from the search party half-dragged, half-carried Karen and me inside through a side door, through the Biofilter, and into the tunnel that led to the Pool. In between the cop parking his car and hauling us out of it, a last, desperate fantasy flared in Karen’s mind of a trustworthy human, a real police officer like the ones on Law and Order, shouting, Hey! What’s going on! and sweeping her out of the Yeerks’ grasp. But there was barely enough time to register the change in the ground from asphalt to fluorescent-lit linoleum to concrete, much less catch any real human’s eye, even if I’d let her. So down into the tunnels we went, leaving the surface and any possibility of rescue behind.

Our knot of human-Controllers separated, their job done, and all but our driver split off down other corridors or back up to the station. We were joined by a couple of Hork-Bajir, one of whom picked Karen up bodily and carried her slung under one arm like a sack of mulch. It was a relief to take Karen’s weight off of her bad ankle, but now we faced the risk of getting jabbed by any of several very close and very sharp blades. As I kept her body as still as possible, I watched the polished poured-concrete floor go by, taking occasional sideways and partly upside-down glances at our surroundings. I was seeing life from all kinds of new angles lately.

Soon, our tunnel opened up into the drywall maze of the main Pool complex. This was still a relatively busy sector, and we shared the hallway with plenty of human, Hork-Bajir, and Taxxon-Controllers, with the occasional shuffling Gedd. A Taxxon carrying a manila folder in one of its pincers paused to scan one of its red jelly-bulb eyes at a security panel, then scuttled through the unlocked door on its many legs. Another door was half-open on a scene of four adult humans and a Hork-Bajir seated around a conference table, looking up at a holographic map of some star system I didn’t care enough to recognize.

It would have been business as usual, except for me. Everyone who passed gave the three of us—or four, counting Karen—a wide berth, and heads turned and conversations hushed. Some gave me pitying looks, and some glared. I recognized something else in all of their eyes, something I was intimately familiar with: a blend of morbid curiosity, fear, and quiet relief that someone else was facing punishment, and not them. There wasn’t an Empire Yeerk alive who didn’t know that feeling.

“Clear the way,” our other Hork-Bajir escort growled, waving one bladed arm at a knot of human-Controllers who had paused to stare. With an inner jolt completely independent of the large muscular arm squeezing my host’s ribcage, I noticed that one was wearing a dirt-scuffed police uniform and holding an ice pack to the side of her head.

“ Aftran ,” she spat out. Her voice sounded a lot like the human Rachel’s though-speech had, before coincidence had kept her from trampling me to death.

“I said, move ,” repeated our escort, and she stepped aside to let us pass. I looked her right in the eyes as I was carried past, matching her glare for glare until the angle hurt Karen’s neck and took her out of sight. For good measure, I held up Karen’s hand and curled her small fingers into a gesture I’d picked up from Yeerks with older human hosts. After you’ve stared down a stampeding elephant, one ordinary human doesn’t scare you so much anymore.

Besides, we were about to face way worse than some dirty looks.

Our escort carried us to the medical sector. It was built for treating non-human and human hosts alike, especially when uninfested human hospital staff might ask awkward questions about large animal bites or severed limbs. The traffic around us stayed steady, but its look changed from Controllers in street clothes carrying folders and briefcases to ones dressed like human medical personnel, and injured Controllers moping around clasping different parts of their anatomy. Some sat in plastic chairs that had been dragged out into the hall.

Our escort wrenched open a door and dropped Karen inside, feet-first. Her ankle flared with pain, and I grabbed for the wall to keep us upright. <Wait here,> growled the Hork-Bajir, rolling her shoulder in a casual stretch, and slammed the door behind her with a clack of the lock.

There were a few chairs lined up against the wall, sized for Hork-Bajir and humans. I limped towards one of the human-sized ones, and awkwardly shifted Karen’s body into it. Her legs were too short to touch the floor, and her swollen ankle felt warm and heavy.

The room superficially resembled a human doctor’s exam room—I knew what those looked like from a check-up Karen had a few months after I’d infested her. There was a gray counter with a sink and soap dispenser, and rows of gray cabinets, prefabricated and generic like everything down here, but that’s where the similarities ended.

Instead of a human-sized platform covered in crinkly paper, a much lower and wider platform was bolted to the floor and far wall. The pieces of standing and wall-mounted medical equipment were centuries ahead of anything on Earth. Alongside a couple of human anatomical posters were ones depicting Hork-Bajir and Taxxons, bloodlessly bisected to show all the complicated bones and organs.

Some posters were less clinical, more motivational. Strong Hosts Build a Strong Empire: Keep A Regular Exercise Routine, read one featuring a Hork-Bajir lifting a barbell. Maintain Proper Nutrition: You’re Only As Healthy As Your Host! read another, the text splashed across a photo of a smiling human woman holding a raw head of broccoli in one hand and a carton of milk in the other.

My eyes—Karen’s eyes—lingered on the Healthy Host poster. Now that her body was less flooded with stress hormones, it was remembering that the last real food we’d eaten had been at the Sharing barbecue. Karen had missed two breakfasts, two lunches—I didn’t count a handful of mushrooms as a real meal—and one dinner. Definitely not “maintaining proper nutrition.” Karen’s body felt weak and shaky, and her insides were twisted up into a knot that pulled painfully tight if I sat up too straight.

I pulled my gaze away from the poster. I wondered if any of the cabinets had food inside, like the crackers in the school nurse’s office or those foil-wrapped ration bars they sent human-Controllers into space with. Those tasted almost as much like sawdust as the Hork-Bajir ration bars, but I’d still take one.

<Are they going to kill me?>

Karen’s voice, small and scared, pulled me out of my thoughts. I’d almost forgotten she was still in her own head.

<Of course not,> I said, reflexively. <They dumped us in the medical wing. They wouldn’t patch you up if they were going to kill you.>

They probably weren’t going to have us tortured, either, but I didn’t share that thought. It was cheaper to torture a Yeerk and host together. More effective, too—a helpless prisoner crying in your head really enhanced the experience. That they’d stuck us in an exam room instead of a concrete-walled interrogation chamber with a metal grate in the floor for easy clean-up was a good sign.

I felt Karen’s fear pull back, just a bit. I felt the faintest echo of hope. Then, sadness again. <What about you?>

I blinked. <What about me?>

<Are they going to kill you? >

Having that soft concern directed at me caught me off guard. <Why do you care?> I snapped, more sharply than I really meant to. <I infested you. I nearly killed you a bunch of times. I killed Cassie . You should want to squish me yourself.>

I felt her cringe inside her mind, and a memory bloomed open the way they always did when words weren’t enough. A boy, Garret, in her second-grade class last year, showing her a big bug on the wall during recess. Karen had reached out to let the bug crawl onto her hand, but Garret kicked the wall first, smashing the bug and smearing its bright orange guts into the brickwork, laughing when she shrieked.

She’d seen a lot worse since I’d infested her, but that memory still felt shocking and sour. Her voice was small when she asked, <would your guts come out like that, if I squished you?>

<I… I don’t know,> I said truthfully. I tried not to think too hard about what I might look like as a slimy smear on a wall. <I don’t really have guts.>

<Oh.> I felt a ripple of her relief. <I still don’t want to squish you, though. I couldn’t.>

<Why not?> I asked.

She didn’t answer me, but I felt the shape of her reason why anyway. It was a feeling too big for words. You’re alive.

<You’re soft,> I thought sullenly at her. Even after all I’d put her through, after everything I’d forced her to see, she couldn’t bring herself to want revenge. This was a conversation we’d had before: me, trying to force her to admit she hated me, and her, infuriatingly, not hating me. I hadn’t worn her down into a broken, listless shell, like some hosts were. Instead, she had too many feelings, and all of them together, especially the ones about me, were too complicated to understand. Simple hate would have been so much easier.

<You’re softer,> Karen thought back. <You’re a slug.>

<Ha,> I said. I pushed down my frustration. I couldn’t waste time worrying about why she wasn’t craving revenge, why she hadn’t ever craved it, when I just needed to be glad about it and move on to brainstorming a plan to set her free. Anyway, the why was her business, and letting her have her own thoughts without me pulling every one apart was part of treating her like a person instead of a slave, right? Cassie would probably have approved.

She pities you, Cassie had said.

Oh, it really hurt to think about Cassie.

A lot of things hurt, right now. Her whole body was totally worn out. She needed medical attention, and food. She needed sleep. If I gave up control, she’d probably crumple like a doll. I could feel how much she wanted to.

And a thought hit me: would that be so bad? To let her, just for a minute?

I could easily have moved her body for her, like always, but instead I pulled back from her motor controls, just a little. Just enough.

She wrapped her arms around herself and squeezed her shoulders. She curled over, her tangled hair falling over her knees, and started to cry again, holding in all but the smallest sounds, tears streaming down her face.

<You’re going to be free,> I said. <Maybe not tonight , but soon. Just keep thinking about that. I’ll figure something out. I don’t deserve it, but I need you to trust me.> I did something else a Yeerk is taught carefully to never do: I opened my mind completely to hers. I wanted her to feel how much I meant every word.

She’d done a lot of crying for someone who’d spent two days drinking rainwater, and now her head was pounding. Water—she needed water. So after a minute of letting her cry, once her sobs had trailed off into wet sniffles, I took control again, slowly eased us off of the chair, and limped to the sink, which I was relieved to see was installed at human height. I turned on the tap, and out streamed a perfect, clean column of water. I was sure that no matter how much longer we lived, neither of us would take indoor plumbing for granted again.

You don’t know how dehydrated your human host body really is until you taste water again. The water from the sink was freezing cold, enough to make me gasp, but it tasted amazing . It tasted like the first rays of Kandrona radiation soaking into your skin after three long days out of the Pool. There were no cups that I could see, so I slurped up scoops of water from her hands. It was messy, and water ran down Karen’s chin and down her arms all the way to the elbow. We didn’t care.

It took real willpower to stop drinking, and Karen said, <Hey!> when I did, but I didn’t want to still be standing at the sink when whoever was being sent to deal with us walked in. As I turned off the tap, I saw that the palms of her hands were washed almost completely clean.

<We probably drank all that dirt,> I said. <Gross.>

I wiped off her face with the bottom of her t-shirt, then shook droplets out of her windbreaker sleeves. The cuffs were damp.

I took a cautious glance at the door, then snooped in the cabinets I could reach. I found boxes of rubber gloves and who-knows-what else, plastic jugs of cleaning supplies, rolls of paper towels, and a sleeve of little paper cups. Of course. But I didn’t find food, sawdust-flavored or otherwise. I slammed the last cabinet door with a bang and hobbled back to our chair.

Once I’d sat us back down, I wiped her hands on her jeans to dry them, immediately covering them in a fresh layer of dirt.

<You’re really going to keep your promise?> There it was again, that fragile flicker of hope. <You’re going to set me free?>

All this hope was making me feel nauseous. Or maybe that was just from drinking too fast. <Yeah, I am,> I said. <Now shut up so I can think.>

She went quiet again. I slouched in the chair, folded her arms, buried her chin into the collar of her windbreaker, and privately went down the list of all my punishable offenses in the last two days. Going on an unauthorized mission away from my assigned location. Losing my weapon. Jeopardizing my cover. Wasting money and resources on the search-and-rescue effort to find me. There probably weren’t even official terms for some of the things I’d done. Even if I wasn’t going to be killed, the punishment wouldn’t be light. I could deal with that, though. The real trick would be convincing Sub-Visser 19 that after all I’d done, I still deserved to keep my host.

Even if I couldn’t free Karen tonight, there was still hope for another day as long as we could keep our secret. If I was demoted, the next Yeerk who crawled inside her brain would read her memories of the past two days like a picture book. Goodnight Moon. Goodnight Aftran. Goodnight Earth.

I felt a wave of bitter anger at Cassie for leaving us both alive, for leaving the fate of her team and her planet on my stolen little -girl shoulders. It wasn’t fair. I wasn’t some kind of cunning tactician, and neither was my host; I was just a rank-and-file soldier, a nobody, and Karen could barely remember the rules for chess.

Was the horse the one that could jump over other pieces? Or was that the one shaped like a castle? Before I could remember, the exam room door unlocked with a clack.

A human-Controller stepped inside. He was dressed in a human doctor’s white coat, over the matching green shirt and pants called “scrubs” that looked like pajamas but weren’t. He had short black hair that stuck out in weird directions, medium-light skin, and glasses with thin metal frames. He held a data pad tucked under one arm. As he shouldered the door closed behind him, he ran a hand through his host’s hair, leaving it sticking up in new, different weird directions.

I’d never seen him before. Most importantly, he wasn’t one of my direct superiors, which meant I didn’t have to sit up at attention for him. I slouched down farther in the chair and watched him from behind Karen’s hair, bracing for a sneer. But he didn’t sneer, or even look angry. There was something more in his host’s eyes than even just that glad-I’m-not-you look, something tired and almost sad.

It was weird. “What?” I said.

He blinked, snapping out of it. “My host is horrified that we ‘do this to children’,” he muttered. His voice was soft, and deeper than I’d expected. “I’m trying to tell him that you’ve done this to yourself.”

Both of us knew his host didn’t just mean my injuries. Seeing a child host always hit the adult humans harder. Karen being in such rough shape must have made a bad surprise worse. “Well, only some,” I said. “There was a leopard.”

His eyes widened. “One of the Andalites?”

I gave Karen’s head a quick shake. “No. A real, escaped zoo leopard. It’s still out there. Somebody should catch it before it eats a hiker or something.”

“...Ah.” He looked back at the door, like maybe he should go and get someone, but instead he cleared his throat and woke up his data pad. “Aftran 942 of the Hett Simplat Pool,” he read.

“That’s me,” I said into Karen’s windbreaker.

“My name is Efflit 446. I’m a medic. Your host will be transported to the human hospital after your interrogation, but I’m here to conduct a preliminary evaluation.” He unhooked a sort of small paddle from one of the machines on the wall. “Deep breath in.”

I breathed in obediently. He pushed on Karen’s shoulder to make me sit up straighter, then waved the paddle in midair over Karen’s front and her back. Both times, the machine made a small chirping sound.

<Is that bad?> she asked. I didn’t have an answer.

The chirping sound was longer and higher when he ran the paddle over Karen’s ankle, and he paused to tap something on his pad. Then he pressed a button on the side of the paddle, and a small panel at the end flipped up, revealing a lens with a bright, white-blue light built in. “Look straight ahead,” he said. I did, and he aimed the light into Karen’s eyes, blinding first the left, then the right. While I blinked and rubbed the spots from our vision, he clicked the little handheld whatever-it-was back into its cradle and took down some more notes from the machine’s display.

“Congratulations,” he said flatly. “Your host’s body isn’t shutting down, despite your best efforts.”

“Great,” I muttered.

“You’re actually in better condition than I was expecting,” he continued, “underneath all of the…”

“Blood?” I said, helpfully.

“...The dirt. And the blood.” He looked us over, then sighed. “Now, for the obvious. Hold still.” He knelt down and untied Karen’s mud-encrusted shoe, then started easing it off of her swollen foot. I gasped and clutched at the side of the chair as the pain washed over us.

“Hold still ,” he repeated, not looking up.

“I would, if— aah! ” I broke off, squeezing Karen’s eyes shut. “Be careful, you idiot!”

“I am,” he snapped, his temper fracturing. “It’s going to hurt no matter what. Just a little more— there .” He dropped her shoe, carefully peeled off her muddy sock and dropped that too, then pulled over one of the other human-sized chairs and eased her leg onto it. He looked pale, and his glasses were slipping down his host’s nose.

“This should be kept elevated,” he said. He wiped the mud off his hand and onto his white coat, and pushed his glasses back up.

I looked at Karen’s ankle warily. It was swollen and bruised a sick rainbow of colors, from yellow-green to dark plum-purple. The leopard tooth-marks were dots of dried blood almost dark enough to be black. “Is it broken?” I said. He shook his head.

“Sprained. But in no shape for walking on.”

“I didn’t have a choice until now,” I said. But inside, my heart leapt: Karen couldn’t walk, maybe not for a while. A handicapped host was a hassle the Empire usually didn’t want to deal with. I could use that.

“I heard.” He turned his back to us, his shoulders drooping. “Today is a mess. There were twelve casualties from that Andalite Bandit skirmish in the woods. Akdash 729’s host lost four fingers on one hand. He’s a librarian . He’s going to have to pass the injury off as some kind of freak accident.” He opened a cabinet over the sink and reached in. “If you asked me, I’d say you’re going to get reassigned.”

“Nobody asked you,” I snapped.

Efflit gave me a strange look, like he was trying to read something in Karen’s face. Then the moment passed, and he knelt down next to us again. “This is going to sting a bit,” He murmured, dabbing some liquid from the bottle onto a pad. He was right.

In minutes, Karen’s ankle was clean and wrapped up neatly in white gauze and a thicker, sturdier wrap that was, for some reason, blue. I was studying it absently when a new, sudden crinkling sound made me look up in time to see him tear open a snack-size bag that I guessed he’d had in his coat pocket. He fished out a small chocolate chip cookie, and popped it in his mouth whole.

When he chose another cookie, I stared, captivated.

“Give me some,” I said to him, trying to keep the longing out of my voice. “My host is starving.”

He tapped something on the tablet on the counter, deliberately not looking at us, and spoke through a full mouth. “My host is hungry, too. I’ve been on my feet for sixteen hours, and part of that’s your fault.”

I gave him what I hoped was a look of cold contempt, with my puffy eyes in my little girl’s face. “The real human hospital would give her something to eat. That’s where her parents think she is, right?”

“Then your host can wait until she’s transported there,” he said. “My job is to evaluate and stabilize her injuries. Nothing else.”

I watched him scroll through his report some more. “I won’t tell on you,” I said. He kept scrolling. “...Please?”

No reply.

The magic word clearly wasn’t going to work alone. I cleared my throat, finally making him look up, and slipped smoothly into “Karen.” It does take some practice and training, but it’s not hard to imitate someone else when you’re squashed up like play-doh against every wrinkle in their brain. I hunched her shoulders a little more, found his host’s dark brown eyes with Karen’s bright green ones, and gave them both my best sad child face.

Efflit stared. Then he rolled his host’s eyes away, and thrust the bag at me. Before he could change his mind, I took everything that was left: three cookies. I crammed two into my mouth at once. “If you choke, I won’t help you,” he said.

“I won’t,” I said around my mouthful. But to be safe, I swallowed before eating the third cookie. I eyed the empty bag in his hand sullenly as I brushed crumbs off of Karen’s face and her shirt. “Do you have anything else?” Apart from the lingering taste of chocolate, I felt just as hungry as before.

“No. This was my snack,” he said. He looked too despondent to be lying.

“Oh,” I said, feeling vaguely guilty. “Um. Well… thanks.”

An awkward silence settled between us, but I’d take awkward over hostile. Efflit was trying to be stoic, but so far, he was failing pretty badly.

I picked at a rip in Karen’s damp windbreaker sleeve, trying to sound casual. “Hey… what’s your host’s name?”

He looked up from the empty bag. “Why do you care?”

I shrugged. “Just curious. I haven’t seen you around before. Besides, you already know my host’s name. It’s only fair.”

Efflit still looked wary, but he answered me. “His name’s Brandon. Doctor Brandon Liu.” He tapped at the embroidered letters on his coat, and I squinted.

“Dr. Lee-yoo, Ee-mer… Emer-gen-cy Medick... Medicine,” I sounded out. “Huh.”

Efflit turned his back to me and started pulling open the cabinets under the counter. “What are you doing?” I said.

“Sometimes there are ration bars in here,” he muttered. He went to open one of the cabinets over the sink, the ones I couldn’t reach, but a sharp, loud knock on the main door made us both freeze.

Sub-Visser 19 pushed open the door and stepped into the room, carrying a clipboard with a thick stack of paper clipped to it under one arm. As Efflit stepped aside to give her space, he crumpled up the cookie bag into a ball and stuffed it in his coat pocket. She barely glanced at him. Her eyes fell on me, and I straightened up immediately, like I’d gotten an electric shock.

Her host was an administrator at the high school, or a secretary or something, helping students arrange their class schedules—and now, of course, promoting the Sharing. She was a large, middle-aged human with pinkish skin and fine, shoulder-length silver hair, who wore almost nothing but dresses and long skirts patterned with colorful flowers. She looked friendly and harmless, and maybe the real human woman who had bought those clothes, the human whose name I couldn’t remember, really was. The Yeerk inside her head was anything but.

“Aftran 942.” She looked down at me, her host’s blue eyes cold, her mouth a thin line. “You look like hell.” She looked at Efflit. “You. What’s your analysis?”

He cleared his throat and ran a hand through his host’s short black hair.

“No broken bones or internal injuries. Superficial scrapes and contusions.” He said something else with long words in it as he gestured at Karen’s ankle. “Puncture wounds are consistent with Aftran 942’s story about an attack by a large Earth carnivore. I have disinfected and wrapped the area, but I recommend—”

The Sub-Visser silenced him with a wave of her hand.

“These bodies and all their ridiculous moving parts. Just say sprained ankle. There’s obviously something wrong with it.”

“Um. The most significant injury is a badly sprained ankle, Sub-Visser.”

“That’s better. Now—what were you saying about a recommendation?”

He swallowed. “Immobilization of the ankle, and a course of antibiotics, Sub-Visser. For the animal bite.”

She waved her hand again. “Fine. Do what you want.” She turned her cold blue eyes back onto me, like she’d had so often before, and I braced myself for what was coming.

“You requested a non-combat assignment, despite your experience, and you were granted one. You were given every comfort, every privilege. And then you run away, get lost in the woods, and nearly get eaten by an escaped zoo animal.” She started to pace, her flowered skirt swaying. “And then you blunder into the Andalite Bandits themselves, turning a rescue operation into a battle!”

The secret Karen and I carried burned inside me. If I spilled the beans, I wouldn’t have to take another minute of Sub-Visser 19’s crap. The knowledge of what the Andalite Bandits really were, and how to destroy them, would turn the entire Earth invasion around. I’d go from a disgraced disciplinary case to a hero. I’d be promoted on the spot—maybe even to Visser. Instead of cowering under Sub-Visser 19’s glare, she’d be the one cowering from me.

It was an almost seductive thought. Even that morning, I might have given in to it. It would have been easy. It would have been smart. But now, nothing was easy, and I wasn’t smart; I was giving up my shot at the kind of power Yeerks schemed and backstabbed each other all across the Empire for, all for one little human kid and a promise. The Earth was probably doomed anyway even if I kept that promise, but the Earth was definitely doomed if I broke it. And then Cassie’s sacrifice would be for nothing, and I cared about that more.

I kept all these thoughts from Karen, but she must have still felt something, because she nudged up against my mind in a wordless question. <It’s nothing,> I said. <I just hate getting lectured.>

“This is a fiasco,” Sub-Visser 19 continued. Her host’s round, friendly face was turning a splotchy pink from the anger simmering underneath. “Are you aware of how many injuries your actions led to? How much expense? How much paperwork?” She brandished her clipboard, flashing the dense type covering the top page. Definitely higher than Karen’s third-grade reading level. If I had to fill any out, I’d need it printed in Galard. She tucked her clipboard under her arm again, then she regarded me with her head tilted to one side, like a curious bird of prey. A day ago, I would have maybe thought of a curious dog, or something else, but Cassie’s memories had given me lots of new animal analogies. “How long were you lost in the forest, Aftran 942? Remind me.”

“Two days,” I answered. It sounded so short, saying it out loud. In only two days, I had gone from a nobody to a secret conspirator against the Empire.

“You’re…” she flipped to the second page on her clipboard. “scheduled to feed tomorrow. Not starving yet, then.” She sounded almost disappointed. “But human children need to eat often. My host raised three. You must be uncomfortable.”

“It’s not so bad,” I said, as another cramp sank its claws into Karen’s insides.

She gave me a long, skeptical look. “It’s a miracle you lasted that long, even without the… leopard attack. However did you manage it?”

Karen and I thought of Cassie tipping a handful of mushrooms into our hands, Cassie leading us into a cave out of the rain. I pushed the memories away, because they were painful, but also because I needed to lie. “Girl Scouts,” I said. “My host is a Brownie. It’s a community organization for young—”

“I know what a Girl Scout is,” the Sub-Visser snapped. “But a child’s skill isn’t enough to survive for long. When you ran into the forest alone, deep enough to lose your way, did you have a plan for when your host grew weak and exhausted, far away from any help?”

“I…” I hesitated. “I was tracking the Andalites. I thought I could intercept one of them before it came to that.”

“Ah, yes,” she said. “And stun them all with the Dracon beam you lost.”

I opened my mouth to say that I’d only lost my weapon after I’d found my target, but I bit the inside of Karen’s cheek instead.

“We lost track of you after the Andalite Bandits attacked the Sharing gathering. According to the report your host’s parents filed with the human police, their daughter never returned home that night. I have a theory.” She glanced at her clipboard again. “You chased after the Andalites not out of patriotic zeal, but out of revenge. They killed one of your Pool-brothers. This was personal.”

I couldn’t help it—I glanced at Efflit. He was clearly too nervous to dismiss himself, especially since he’d have to push past the Sub-Visser to leave. I’d guessed Estril hadn’t been in his briefing about me, and from the wide-eyed look on his face, I was right. I ducked Karen’s head in a show of shame.

“I want you to tell me what happened between that night and when the recovery team found you,” said the Sub-Visser. “I’m very curious.”

<Wait,> said Cassie, interrupting me.

We were sitting on top of the dryer as it banged and rattled through its cycle and rolled the now-clean towels around inside. Cassie’s elbows were on her knees, and she was holding the empty Capri Sun pouch by the straw between her teeth.

<What?>

<You didn’t go back to Karen’s place after the attack? Did you sleep outside my house?>

<Well, yeah,> I said, a little annoyed at being pulled out of the middle of a memory. <It’s not like I could sleep inside. >

I felt more than saw a memory of Cassie brushing her teeth, glancing at the bathroom window uneasily, telling herself that the creepy being-watched feeling was just paranoia. <Oh my god,> she said. She let her head drop forwards into one open hand.

<I was trailing you!> I said. <It made more sense to stay out here than go back. Karen’s parents would have asked questions. Small human children don’t stay out into the early morning.>

<I can’t believe you slept behind the barn all night,> she groaned, like she hadn’t even heard me. <How did you spin that? Did you say you just… chased an Andalite into the woods?>

<Basically,> I said. <The Sub-Visser didn’t need to know I’d almost been mauled by a bear and a leopard. Or nearly drowned in a river. My plan was the same, either way.>

<Mm-hm.> Cassie chewed on the straw. <You were going to stun and capture an Andalite Bandit all on your lonesome.>

<That’s right,> I said, a little defensively. I could have done it. Maybe.

<So… what did you tell her?>

I thought back, trying to pick the thread of memory back up. <I had to leave you out completely, obviously. Everything else was nearly the same. I tracked the Andalite into the forest, then lost sight of it. Andalites are faster than humans. I followed the trail of broken branches and hoof-prints, and then the rain washed all the hoof-prints away, and I got lost.>

Cassie nodded along. <And the leopard? You fought it off by yourself, too?>

<It dropped out of a tree right on top of me,> I said, trying to picture the dramatic scene for her, but the made-up memory was hazier than a real one would have been. <I aimed my Dracon beam into its face. Just when it bit down—> I lifted her arm and shaped her hand into a gun, with the thumb and pointer finger straight and the other fingers curled in, and took aim at the opposite wall. <I fired, right into its mouth. The jaws crunched down on the Dracon beam and shattered it anyway, but the terrible Earth predator was stunned.>

Cassie took her arm back and crossed it under her other one. I had hoped she’d be impressed, but I felt her laugh, instead. <And the Sub-Visser bought that?>

<Probably not,> I admitted reluctantly. <But she didn’t push it.>

<Thank goodness,> said Cassie.

When I was done telling the story of my two days in the woods, minus Cassie and her Animorphs, Sub-Visser 19 took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. “Your foolishness could have put the entire invasion effort at risk. Do you know what happens when the only offspring of a human as wealthy as Burton Keaveney goes missing?”

She paused for effect, glaring down at me. Efflit stared at me from over her shoulder, still as a statue. Neither of us spoke. Neither of us were stupid enough to mistake that for a real question.

The Sub-Visser spread her hands for emphasis, and declared: “No expense is spared! If we had not found you today, human authorities would have come pouring into that forest. We wouldn’t be able to infest them fast enough to keep the situation in hand. Humans from the very upper levels of this country’s law enforcement would have been called in to investigate, and who knows what they might have uncovered when they began retracing Karen Keaveney’s steps?”

Efflit’s eyes went wide. “FBI,” he breathed, forgetting himself. Amazingly, the Sub-Visser didn’t scold him for interrupting; instead, she pressed her lips into a thin line and nodded stiffly. “Precisely.”

<Mulder and Scully,> said Karen. That sounded familiar, but there was no time to ask her what she meant; I had to find out myself. I dug frantically through her memories, looking for any information about FBI .

“What do you know about the FBI?” Sub-Visser 19 snapped at Efflit.

He swallowed. “They investigate aliens. My host says that they say they don’t, but that really, they do. There’s a television show about them.”

Efflit continued speaking just as I pulled a key piece of information from Karen’s memory: “ X-Files ,” we said in unison.

The Sub-Visser looked back and forth between us. “That television show is fiction. But it’s not as far from the truth as one would think, for a bunch of humans playing pretend.” She pointed at me. “How do you know about it? Your host is much too young for that show.”

I shrugged. I didn’t bother pointing out that Karen had already seen plenty of real things much worse than anything on television. When her parents had let her watch it with them, the scary parts used to send her hiding behind the couch with her hands over her ears, but it was a lot less scary now that her whole life had been turned into an episode.

Also, some of the made-up alien ships looked a lot like Skrit-Na ships, and there was nothing scary about Skrit-Na. I’d told her so.

The Sub-Visser sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose between two fingers. “Never mind. The real FBI, so far as Empire intelligence can gather, does not yet investigate aliens in this city. And my point—” She looked up at Efflit as he opened his mouth to say something else, and silenced him with a glare—“my point is. If they had come here, and looked too closely into the disappearance of Karen Keaveney, they just might have found something that would lead them to start.”

Neither Efflit nor I had a response. I tightened my grip on the edge of the chair.

She took a deep breath. “Luckily, we can all be grateful that this whole mess was resolved before things could come to that. Now...” She flipped idly through the papers on her clipboard. “Since none of what you’ve said has changed my mind, it’s time to tell you what’s going to be done with you.”

This was it. Karen shrank back inside her mind, both of us feeling queasy with dread. Hope flickered, then died:

“You are to be reassigned to the Pool.” The Sub-Visser continued after that sentence, stating the punishment I’d be receiving for losing my Dracon beam, among other things, but I’d stopped listening. I couldn’t hear.

<No, no —I’ll stop her, she can’t,> I thought, but I couldn’t tell where my panic ended and Karen’s began. I started speaking suddenly, cutting off the Sub-Visser in the middle of something about electric shock. “You can’t reassign my host!”

She gave me a look that could have shriveled me to a crisp. I pressed on desperately. “I know my host's behavior better than anyone else. Her parents—they’ll be worried about her. They’ll notice if she’s different. I’d be the best at convincing them nothing’s wrong.”

“Not all soldiers are filter-scum like you. Most grasp their hosts’ personalities very quickly, especially those of children. And if your successor is a little slow, well, the humans will be expecting a small girl to be disoriented, after the terrible trial she’s been through.” Her voice slid into fake, syrupy concern as she looked Karen up and down. “This is the perfect time to reassign your host.”

Begging was no good. Karen’s big, tearful eyes and shaky voice only tugged on heartstrings that were there in the first place, and the Sub-Visser was as heartless metaphorically as Yeerks really were physically. But I was out of other ideas.

“Please, Sub-Visser. Give me another chance!” I met her cold blue eyes. Her mouth was a tight line, the thin lips invisible. “I was trying to serve the Empire. I deserve—”

“What you deserve , Aftran 942, is exactly what you’re getting,” she snarled. “No Yeerk worthy of my rank would allow a soldier to keep a human host after such a display of ineptitude. I ought to add insubordination to your long list of charges, but, generously, I’ll leave it out. Demotion to the Pool is a mercy , and you will accept it with whatever dignity you have left.”

I snapped Karen’s mouth shut so fast her back teeth clicked together.

“You will be reassigned to the Pool,” the Sub-Visser repeated, enunciating precisely, “and good riddance. You’ll report to Sofrit 146—they’ll find some use for you. Your host will be reassigned promptly.” She looked back down to her clipboard, and flipped the top few papers over to skim the next one underneath.

Karen’s spirits sank with mine. My mind was racing, filled with static, coming up empty. “Wait!” I shouted without meaning to, not putting on any act, shrill and scared. The Sub-Visser’s eyes snapped up, and I froze.

“Aftran 942, control your host,” she barked. “What…? Oh, hell.” She’d looked back at her clipboard again, and flipped between a couple pages, back and forth. Her face grew stormier, her thin gray eyebrows pushing together. She groaned and let all the pages flop back down. “I told that incompetent fool to print forms C-5 and C-14. Kandrona shine and strengthen me.”

She glared at me, then at Efflit in turn. “I’ll be back. Finish patching that host up in the meantime,” she said, waving a hand at me. “It’s really in terrible shape.” She tucked her clipboard under one arm, slammed the door behind her, and was gone.

The pipes along the ceiling tick-ticked with changing water pressure. The air conditioning hummed. Karen’s ankle throbbed. Efflit and I stared at the door.

“Well.” The word rushed out of Efflit in a big, deflating sigh, like he’d been holding his breath. “That could have gone worse.” He worked another little paper cup out of the sleeve on the counter and filled it at the tap, then knocked it back like I’d seen grown-up humans do with alcohol in movies. He slumped against the counter.

I cleared Karen’s throat and held out my hand. He filled another cup and passed it to me. At some point in the last few minutes, I’d chewed through a scab on Karen’s lip, and the water tasted a little coppery.

“I guess,” I said. I let Karen’s body go limp, and balanced the cup on her leg so I wouldn’t drop it.

Efflit mistook my facing down failure and inevitable death for sulking, and frowned. “So you have to go back to the Pool. Big deal. It’s not the exile you chain-infesters make it out to be.”

“It’s not that. I’m fine with going back.” I gestured to Karen’s wrapped-up ankle. “You think I want to go through something like this again? This—this sucks .”

<Oooh,> murmured Karen. She wasn’t allowed to say words like that.

I looked down into my empty paper cup. “Just… I can’t go back tonight. Eventually, but...”

“Eventually?”

“...It’s complicated. Forget it. Forget I said anything.”

I thought he was obeying me, because he went quiet. But then I heard a soft tearing sound, and looked up to see him pulling a little pad of gauze out of a packet. He knelt next to my chair and started dabbing at a scrape on Karen’s knee through a hole in her jeans. The pad was medicated; I felt a cold drop of whatever-it-was roll behind her knee.

<Ask him.>

I gave Karen’s mind a confused nudge. <What?>

She nudged me back. <Ask him for help. He’s nice.>

<He’s not nice,> I snapped back. <You’re just a sucker.> Okay, he was nicer than I’d been expecting, but that didn’t mean he was trustworthy, especially not with a secret like this. I told her as much, but she didn’t waver.

She thought about Cassie.

I remembered Cassie clasping Karen’s head to hers, and me crossing over from one brain to the other, tasting Cassie’s fear for the first time. Her determination. She’d been so impulsive, so reckless—all for the hope of a fragile peace between one human and one Yeerk. Stupidity and bravery all in one. But it had worked. And she had given up her life for it.

And now it was my turn.

Karen’s heart was starting to race again. It felt like there was electricity under her skin. I could taste words that were either going to save us both, or doom us and the whole Earth. I stared hard at Efflit’s face, his dark eyes, his focused expression, the sweat still beading on his forehead, the way his glasses were slipping down his nose again. His host’s face. Brandon, a human doctor who hated seeing a kid get hurt.

Before I could change my mind, before I could stop and think, I said the stupidest thing I had ever said in my life. Or maybe it was the bravest. Or maybe it was both.

“I need help.”

He lifted his eyebrows and looked down at the pad in his hand, then back up. “That’s what I’m doing.”

“No.” Impulsively, I reached out and grabbed the sleeve of his white coat, and he froze. “That’s not what I mean. My host—I need to set her free.”

He stared. I stared back, cold all over, either on the edge of a miracle or as good as dead already. I was really swimming in deep water now, way past “breach of protocol” and well into “treason.” Karen was afraid, too, but her mind was blazing with hope, searing away a little of my fear. I pulled my control of her arm back, just enough for her will to push through, and, Kandrona shine on her forever, she tightened our grip on Brandon’s sleeve.

I kept Karen’s voice quiet, but clear. “I’m going back into the Pool. Fine. But—but Karen can’t get infested again. She has to go free.”

“I don’t…” he shot a panicked look at the door, then back at me. He could have broken Karen’s grip by jerking his arm, could have done it easily, but he didn’t even try to pull away. He also hadn’t screamed for security yet, which, in a world where soldiers obeyed their orders and Yeerks served their Empire, he should have done by now.

“Efflit—all those humans you treated today. That librarian who got his fingers cut off. Every host you’ve had to fix up down here.” Karen’s hand, both of us sharing it now, squeezed so hard the knuckles were white. “What if one could get away forever?”

“I…” he stared, his mouth open but no words coming out. His eyes had a glazed look, and his face was pale.

“I’m done, Efflit. Done with taking hosts. With taking slaves. I mean it.” I uncurled Karen’s fist from his sleeve. Her fingers felt stiff and numb. Efflit didn’t move. He didn’t even seem to notice.

<They’re talking,> Karen said. I realized she was probably right—the human doctor was fighting with his Yeerk just as Cassie had fought with me. But if my instincts had been right, there wasn’t much left to fight with, at all. Efflit had already been on the edge of full-blown host sympathy. I had just given him a push.

I decided to push a little harder. Keeping to a whisper, I said slowly and clearly: “what does Brandon think?”

Efflit blinked. His gaze sharpened, that faraway look vanishing. He met Karen’s eyes.

Something changed in his face. Suddenly he looked even more exhausted, but somehow softer. He folded trembling hands around Karen’s, and squeezed.

I didn’t believe what I was seeing. But the little girl whose body I controlled wasn’t so cynical, even after everything. <It’s him,> she gasped. <Not the Yeerk—it’s him. >

I was too shocked to squeeze back, to move at all, to do anything but stare. And then, before I could react, the moment was gone. Brandon’s hands steadied, and Efflit slowly pulled them away, his expression hardening again just that little bit more.

“I should report you,” he said, his voice shaking now, instead of his hands. “For host-sympathizing. For treason.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, probably.” I swallowed, Karen’s throat gone dry and sticky. “I could do the same for you. Bet I could do it first. I could scream.”

“You’re the one already facing disciplinary action,” he hissed back. “Nobody would take your word.”

I shrugged. “Maybe. But you didn’t answer me.” I looked up into his pale, anxious face, thinking of Cassie in a forest clearing looking into Karen’s eyes, searching for the little human girl trapped behind them. “What does Brandon want?”

Efflit and I looked at each other with our two pairs of stolen human eyes, four people in two bodies. All of us knew the answer. “I’ll help you,” he said softly. “ We’ll help you.”

Dimly, I felt Karen pull against my control, trying to—oh. Oh, right. I let out the breath I’d been holding too long, then took a couple more, deep and unsteady. When I went to speak, Efflit gave a sharp shake of his head, almost a twitch. “We’ll help you. But he’s doing it for her. He wants me to make that clear.”

“Yeah,” I whispered. “Yeah, that’s fair. Sure.”

“He’s so angry,” Efflit said. “He’s so sad. The shifts down here are harder than in the hospital topside. Treating host after host, and sending them right back out there.” He waved a limp hand at the door, and the labyrinth beyond. “He thought things were hopeless.”

“They’re not,” I lied. Maybe that’s another part of hope—telling a nice-sounding lie until you can make it true.

Efflit winced as he rose to his feet, the way grown-up humans do when they’ve been kneeling for a while. He tossed the pad into the trash and shoved his hands into his white coat’s pockets. “How… how do we do this?”

I shrugged. “You’re a doctor. Convince the Sub-Visser there’s something wrong with her—something worse than a busted ankle.”

“The ankle might be enough. She can’t get around on her own. Not to the Sharing, or the Pool. The Empire would have to infest her parents, or—“

< No! > screamed Karen. I clenched her hands around the edge of the chair. “No way,” I bit out. “Can’t happen. They’ll have to—to move away, after this. Upstate, out of state, as far away as they can get. To...” I reached into Karen’s brain for a far-away place. “To Canada . Their daughter almost got eaten by a leopard. Shouldn’t be hard to convince them.”

<You can do that, right?> I asked Karen. <Get your parents to move away?>

<Yes,> she said. Images flashed in her brain: a large, sunny bedroom completely empty of furniture, tall men wearing sweaty t-shirts and thick gloves carrying cardboard boxes up a ramp into a big truck. <But—Aftran, Dad moved us for work, last time. Work isn’t making him move this time. What if he doesn’t want to?>

<He loves you,> I said. It was the truth. <You almost died . He’ll do it.> I could still feel her nervousness, so I added, <and if he doesn’t, him and your mom are going to get infested as soon as the Empire figures out how to get to them. All of you have to get away.>

“I guess so,” said Efflit. He ran his hand through his short hair again, making it stand out in little spikes that Karen might have thought looked funny, if she wasn’t busy imagining her parents with their heads forced under Pool sludge. “Okay. That part’s up to her. But how do we…” he paused, swallowed what he was going to say, and started tapping his fingers on the counter. He was fidgety when he was nervous. How much of the fidgeting was Efflit and how much of it was Brandon, I couldn’t say. Maybe it was both of them. “The Empire won’t just let her go. She knows everything. About the invasion, where the Pool is… she knows everything , Aftran.”

He was right. Karen did know everything. She knew a lot more than Brandon thought. My heart—her heart—started sinking again when she spoke up. Her voice was hesitant, like a chess player reaching for the little horse when they weren’t sure if that piece could jump over the other ones, but about to try it anyway. <Well… I know everything about aliens .>

I froze. I looked up at Efflit, a revelation I couldn’t put into words yet dawning on my face.

< The X-Files ,> I whispered.

<Mulder knows the aliens are real,> said Karen. <But nobody believes him. Everyone thinks he’s crazy. And he’s a grown-up .>

“Mulder’s a grown-up, and nobody believes him,” I said.

Efflit blinked. “What?”

“Karen!” I said. Efflit shot a panicked look at the door, and I lowered my voice to a hiss. “Karen’s seven. If humans don’t believe other adult humans about aliens, why would they believe a kid?” I was leaning forward in the chair, practically falling out of it. “That’s it. That’s her out. It’s all we’ve got.”

“It could be,” he breathed. His fingers drummed on the countertop. “Who would believe a kid… right. Yeah, yeah. Hey, didn’t Sub-Visser 19 say something about her host having kids?”

“ Raising kids,” I corrected him. “They’re grown-ups now. There’s three of them.”

“So her host knows adults wouldn’t believe a little kid about aliens. About us. Especially a traumatized kid. As far as the humans know, she was lost in the woods alone that whole time.”

“Her host probably already feels for Karen,” I said. Brandon had gotten a nasty shock seeing Karen when he walked in earlier, and the shock had to be worse for a human who had three kids of her own, who liked kids so much she chose a job at a high school. “She also knows Karen’s parents won’t let her out of their sight, after this. They really won’t.”

Efflit nodded slowly. I could practically see his thoughts click together like Legos. Karen’s hands were sweaty and shaking. I wiped them off again on her jeans, streaking the dirt. He opened his mouth, but then the door latch clacked open, and he snapped it shut. He hastily tapped at the data pad lying on the counter and tried to look busy, but he forgot to turn it back on first, and the screen was black.

the Sub-Visser pushed the door open all the way with one floral-patterned hip, her eyes on the papers she was shuffling into the stack on her clipboard. Once she was grimly satisfied, she shoved the clipboard towards me, along with a ballpoint pen the same generic gray as the cabinets. “Fill out this packet. It’s for my official report, and your transfer records.”

I clicked the pen and balanced the clipboard awkwardly on Karen’s legs. The text was in Galard, but it may as well have been in Sstram logographs. I felt sick with nerves, and Karen’s eyes slid from one word to the next without comprehending a single thing.

“Pardon me,” said Efflit. I looked up at him, only daring to move Karen’s eyes. “I may need to amend my physical evaluation of Aftran 942’s host.”

She sighed. “What is it now?”

He gestured to Karen’s ankle. “It’s quite a severe sprain. Possibly months until it's fully healed. Any human doctor who treats her will recommend physical therapy. Possibly a specialist.” The Sub-Visser listened stone-faced. He swallowed. “A host who can’t walk un-aided, with regular appointments with other humans who may not all be Controllers, if any… it may be difficult for one of our people to go about their own business.”

“You’re a medic. You should be careful about weighing in on matters outside of your expertise, not to mention above your rank.” She sighed. “...But your point is not wholly unreasonable. This host will be compromised.”

She glanced at me with a new, thoughtful look in her host’s eyes. I quickly filled in a few of the blank areas on the cover sheet in Karen’s large, awkward handwriting. Name and Spawning Number. Pool. Rank. I kept listening.

“Yes, Sub-Visser. And furthermore...”

He hesitated. I assumed she waved him on, because he continued, “Aftran 942 told me how protective her host’s parents already are.”

“Did she,” she muttered. I kept Karen’s eyes down and flipped to the next page. The rustling paper sounded very loud.

“This incident… it will likely make them even more protective,” he continued. “Perhaps they’ll even keep her under surveillance.”

There was such a long pause that I stole a glance upwards. Sub-Visser 19’s round face was pale. Her hands were folded behind her back. “You’re suggesting that this host is a security risk.”

He gave a short, firm nod.

“You’re not wrong,” she said slowly. She looked down at Karen, then back to him. “In that case, we could plant our own people in place of uninfested human security. But who knows how many that would be—and we’ve racked up enough expense today, as it is. Akdash 729 lost a hand in the battle, didn’t he?”

“Four fingers,” said Efflit. “We saved the hand.”

“ Ugh .” She ran her host’s own hand over her face and muttered, “It’s a shame we can’t just dispose of her. This whole UniBank angle has been a waste of time and resources from the start. It’s really Sub-Visser 17’s stupid pet project, not mine. If he wasn’t so attached...”

She trailed off, lost in thought. Efflit cleared his throat again. “There may… there may be another option, Sub-Visser.”

She looked up, sharp-eyed. “You’re bold today. Go on, I’ll humor you. What would that be?” She pointed at me. “ You. Keep writing.”

I filled in a few more blanks: Previous Hosts. Initial Infestation Date. Species. Age. Specialty or Occupation. Karen’s sweaty fingers were slipping down the pen.

Efflit cleared his throat. “Small human children are highly imaginative. But ones who have been through traumatic experiences are especially likely to break from reality.”

“You’re suggesting we don’t reassign this host at all.” I looked up again. The Sub-Visser had her arms crossed in front now. A cold, incredulous smile slowly spread across her face, and she started to chuckle. “That we just release her! Back out into the human population!”

She ran a hand over her closed eyes as she laughed. Efflit and I shared a glance, and I saw the same hopelessness in his face that I felt. We’d gambled, and lost.

The Sub-Visser’s laughter ebbed into a sigh. She was still smiling. “Oh… oh, Sub-Visser 17 would hate that. It would just shrivel him right up.”

Or maybe we hadn’t.

“No human authority would entertain one traumatized human child’s wild delusions about aliens. Not without supporting evidence.” She was talking to herself in a low voice, clasping her host’s soft chin in one hand, not looking at either one of us. “And if the Keaveneys are worried about their precious daughter, there’s no child psychiatrist they can’t afford. Humans like them love to think they can solve every problem by throwing enough money at it.”

I felt Karen bristle. <That’s not true!> she said. But I’d been infesting her for months, and for once, I was on the Sub-Visser’s side about something.

She tilted her head as she looked down at me. This time, she looked like a seagull choosing the best angle for spearing a landed fish with its beak. “What if we let her go.”

I’d left off writing in the middle of a word. I didn’t dare finish it. I met her host’s eyes, hoping Karen’s face was as blank as I was trying to keep it.

“I know what I’ll do,” she said. “I’ll draw up a full expense report tonight. I’ll get the budget committee on my side. Sub-Visser 17 will have to give in once the numbers are in his face. I’ll wear him down. And then this whole headache will be over .” She waved a hand at me. “Go on. Send her up to the hospital. I’m authorized to order that, and it’s not stipulated that she has to be infested.”

She drew herself up, looking pleased with her own cleverness, then remembered the paperwork in Karen’s lap. “ Dapsen. Some of this is going to have to be re-printed. Give me that.” She snatched up the clipboard, plucked the pen out of Karen’s clammy hand, and slammed the door behind her.

I stared at Efflit. Efflit stared back.

“Did that just… did that just work?” He said. He looked like he was about to collapse.

“Don’t jinx it,” I breathed. “Don’t say a thing.”

“Jinxing isn’t real,” he said. But he shut up. He pushed off from the counter and sank into a chair.

I took a minute to just breathe, filling Karen’s lungs with air, slowing her heart rate. Things I’d never feel again, no matter what happened now. It was rotten luck that my last day in a human body would be such a painful one, but I wondered if I wouldn’t miss even the pain, a little bit. I listened to the water pressure in the pipes and the hum of the machines, and tried to commit them to memory. I’d never hear those things again, either.

I cleared my throat to make Efflit look up. “Find me in the Pool when it’s your next feeding day. We’ll talk.”

He nodded.

“And…” I swallowed. Karen echoed my next word in her head as I said it out loud. “Thanks.”

A weak smile pulled at his cheek, more of a twitch than anything, but it was enough. He and Brandon knew we meant that for both of them.

I’d saved Karen’s life, but I still had to fill out a stack of paperwork. Some things are inescapable. When I was done, a couple Hork-Bajir Controllers came by to collect me. Not me and Karen— just me.

One held Karen’s arms to her sides in an iron grip as a precaution, and the other raised a little inflatable bucket filled with sludge up to her head, tilting it ear-down and holding her hair out of the way.

I closed Karen’s eyes, and I thought about color. I thought about the swirling patterns on the big carpet in her living room, and how the little blown glass knick-knacks on the front hall table threw rainbow patches onto the walls when the sun hit them. I thought about brushing Karen’s soft, red hair in the morning before school, and how it shone gold where it caught the light. I thought about yellow wildflowers under a blue sky.

I thought about a dark brown girl, and a little green caterpillar.

<Bye, Aftran,> Karen said. Her voice was small and sad. Too close to how it would sound if she was saying goodbye to someone she’d miss, instead of her torturer.

<If anyone asks you any questions, just scream and cry your brains out, and you’ll be fine,> I snapped. I didn’t want her to miss me. <Just keep it up until you’re...> I couldn’t say safe . She’d be free, but she’d never be safe. Not really. <Home,> I said instead.

She started to say something else, but I pulled away from her brain before I could hear it. I numbed her ear canal, and felt my way out in the dark, towards whatever was waiting for me next. Alone.

<And you know some of the rest,> I said. I’d told her more about my time in the Pool and about the Peace Movement last night. <About a week later, I heard my old host’s family had gotten really into local philanthropy right before they moved upstate. Gave a bunch of money to some veterinary practice. I didn’t hear anything about the veterinarians being a couple of grieving parents, though, so… that’s when I started to wonder. Maybe some miracle happened, and you weren’t dead.>

Cassie bundled the warm laundry into her arms. Some of the towels still had faint, ancient stains on them, but they all smelled wonderfully clean. <It felt like a miracle,> she said. <At first, I was that butterfly, like it was all I'd ever been. Everyone else had to chase after me and catch me. They were shouting and shouting, and then suddenly I remembered I was Cassie.>

I didn’t want to linger on how close a call that had been. <I finally learned you were alive for sure after I met Illim. I tried to be casual, asked him if it was true that the girl whose farm had gotten that big donation from my old hosts’ parents went to his host’s school. He said yes, and then I knew you’d really made it.> Cassie had to rest her chin on top of the towels to keep any from slipping off the top, and we breathed in more of that clean cottony smell. <You were alive, and Karen got away. It really was a miracle.>

By the time we’d made it across the field to the barn, the top of Cassie’s head was warm from the sun. There was an adult male human inside, stacking big bags of feed on top of a pallet in the corner. Cassie smoothed over my stab of panic: this was just Mike Pendleton, a friend of her parents’ who stopped by to drop off supplies and help out around the farm sometimes.

“Hi, Mr. P,” she said over our armful of towels.

He grinned and strode over. “Hey, Cass! Want a hand?”

She didn’t really need help, but she tipped some of the towels into his arms anyway. As we walked past the occupied cages, Mr. P stopped and gave a low whistle. “That’s a beautiful bird.”

He was looking at Tobias. He was starting to wake up, and his golden eyes were open just a crack. The glossy feathers on his throat and shoulders puffed up, then settled back down.

<Rachel?> He murmured. Mr. P didn’t leap into the air or start screaming, so Tobias had managed to just send that thought our way.

“Shhh,” Cassie whispered to him. Nothing weird here, just the vets’ girl talking to the animals. “Yeah,” she said to Mr. P. “He’s really great. He’s getting over a cold.”

“Glad to hear he’ll pull through,” he said, beaming at Tobias. “It feels good to win one, doesn’t it, Cass?”

“Yeah, it does,” she said. She wasn’t just thinking about Tobias. She was thinking about Ax, and about last night’s mission. She was thinking about me, the Yeerk in her head who was going to live, too. I couldn’t help but think of a little red-haired girl, and four kids and a red-tailed hawk chasing after a butterfly with a human soul.

<It really does,> I added, just to her.

Artwork:

by Max (Chlorentine) on tumblr!

by Kara (Wheat Art) on tumblr!