The war was supposed to end in two years, with the return of the Andalite fleet that would prove to be our saviour. Two years stretched to three, and we still resolutely held on, denial telling us that the Andalites would come. That we were just holding on until the real fighters came back. That one day soon we'd be able to hand over the bloodshed and the horror to those more equipped to deal with it.
By year five, all of us knew with certainty we'd never see an Andalite that wasn't Ax. By year eight, we'd all stopped pretending that we knew where we now drew the lines we would not cross. By year thirteen, we've almost given up.
My name is Cassie. I wish I could tell you more about me – I wish I could tell you my last name, and where I live, and exactly where I work. I wish I could tell you about the parents I love so deeply but no longer have a relationship with, because to keep them safe I can't return their calls or visit them or even know much about their lives. I wish I could tell you everything I've been through since I was thirteen and hanging out in a mall with my best friend.
But I can't. We're not the only ones who have become desperate, daring and ruthless. The Yeerks want this planet more than ever. Visser One would give almost anything to have my friends and I dead, or begging for mercy as he tortures us endlessly. Thirteen years of built-up secrets and lies, and there seems to be no end to them any time soon.
And it's no longer just the six of us and a sprinkling of others that protect those secrets.
As soon as Jake, Rachel, Marco and myself graduated high school and headed to college, James and the other Auxilliary Animorphs took over the full responsibility of protecting our home town. Somehow, despite the growing might of the Yeerk Empire, our home was still the centre of all Yeerk activity. They have their hands full, but James is a good leader. A determined soul. And, so far, they haven't lost. We went to the same college, the four of us – one as close to the nation's capitol as possible. Visser One was trying to make his way into parliament, and we spent most of our college days fighting his advances. Tobias and Ax followed us to college, and stayed out of sight close enough to reach us even in an emergency.
We graduated only with some help from the Chee. All of us had done a lot worse than cheating during finals, after all.
And graduation was where we all parted ways for the first time since we got thrust into the war. There were different areas our skills were needed in, and it just wasn't possible to keep together any more. Or to keep our ranks as small as they were. I moved to the sleepy little town just outside where the new Hork-Bajir valley was created, and I opened my own version of the Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre my dad runs back home. I even have a barn full of animals to wake up to every morning. And, occasionally, there is talk of the secret war whispered between the bales of hay. I'm the unofficial second in command to the Governor, an iron-fisted woman who earned her title thanks to the Yeerk in her head's ambitions, the Empire's meddling and her General husband's good influence. As soon as her Yeerk, Exrim 334, became part of the Yeerk Peace Movement Toby and I revealed almost everything to her and asked with her help protecting the Hork-Bajir. She has done so for almost five years, now, and has proved to be a great source of inside knowledge, a strong ally and a good friend. There are three other humans who know our secret and who help protect and empower the growing Hork-Bajir population. It took many sleepless nights to come to the decision to let more people know, but with them we definitely made the right choice. They're all incredibly capable and eager to learn and do their parts, and they've become my friends and confidants over the years. Especially Ronnie Chambers, who is just under me in command. He's...
Well. Ronnie and I are close.
Rachel and Tobias moved to another big, important city where she immediately put her law degree to good use. She had a reputation within the first six months of her practising, and it's little wonder it grows by the day. Rachel is ruthless inside the courtroom, and somehow manages to wriggle things so she's only up against known Controllers. Despite the influence of the Yeerk Empire, there's very little chance of getting a Yeerk Kandronna rays every three days while their host is in jail. Those Rachel and Tobias manage to save from getting murdered are sent away to places that need friendly eyes and ears. Some of them even stick to their promise to stay in touch. Having Tobias as her never-tiring eyes and having the born personality of a lawyer are not the only reasons her success rate is so high, however. Rachel can still morph. So can Tobias. And planting evidence is nothing compared to some of the missions we've been on in the past.
Tobias tends to do the more dangerous missions, however, so that Rachel's daughter will not be left motherless. Rachel disappeared for a full week in our third year of college, and came back refusing to speak about what happened to her. A month later, I was watching my very drunk best friend sob for one of the first times in my life, holding her pregnancy test. Tobias admitted to us, once the fighting and him freaking out and running away for a short while had passed, that he'd been so glad she'd returned safely that they'd been stupidly reckless that night. I never told anybody that Rachel had drunkenly sobbed something about Crayak's powers, a rat and a temptation that was just too great. Nobody mentions how Sadie, now three, looks nothing at all like Tobias and very much like somebody none of us want to remember.
It's easier to live in denial, I've found.
As for Ax, Jake and Marco, they've all joined the US army. They're under my Governor’s husband's command and they're usually at the forefront of the important, dangerous physical battles against the Yeerks. Their position was the most dangerous to create. Even though General Wallace knew about the Yeerks thanks to his wife, we were still very unsure about letting his entire platoon in on the secret. We could always use the help, of course, but there were over twenty people who could either already be Controllers or who could be captured in battle. And all it would take was one mind to destroy all of us. In the end, after two months of careful surveillance, Jake made the call and introduced the soldiers to Ax. Despite it still being a risky situation, I'm under no false assumptions that its largely because of that small platoon that the very desperate Yeerks are still being kept at bay and out of parliament. And, despite the ongoing public act that says otherwise, there's no doubt in anybody's mind who's really in charge. There are twenty-three trained soldiers all older than any of us and a decorated general, all of them morph-capable and theoretically able to seize power (to become another David) at any moment. But they, like Marco and Ax and Tobias and Rachel and even me, jump as soon as Jake utters the command to jump.
Yeah. Even me. Even now. Even though I no longer feel anything but raw relief being tucked away, protecting without actually fighting any more. Even though I find myself starting to create distance between the twenty-six-year-old vet and the teenager who always had blood in her mouth. And on her hands. The war is not over, but we've started to give up in different ways. For me, that means trying to move on and trying to stay and do my duty to the planet at the same time.
I was the first to move away, because I couldn't contain my hatred for those who were my closest friends.
That still didn't stop me from nearly drowning in panic and fear as I raced toward the edge of the boarder, trying desperately to figure out a way I could pull off my mission without arousing any suspicion. I'd been feeding pills to a rather irate goose when I got the call.
“Cassie? Hi. It's Bill. From the ranch? You said to give you a call if I ever saw any injured wild critters out here.”
“Hi, Bill. Thanks so much for calling. What do you have for me?”
“Er... This is going to sound mighty odd, I know, but I swear I'm sane and sober as they come.” He paused. “It's a tiger. I think it's dead.”
I said a hurried thanks, hung up, and sprang into my truck, the panic setting in as soon as I'd started the engine. Of course, there was a small chance it was an escaped animal from a zoo and not Jake at all. But coincidences like that never seemed to happen to us. And it wasn't as though I was in good enough contact with the others to be sure where Jake was and what he was doing. I broke about three traffic laws as I sped toward the tiger I hoped desperately was a tiger, chanting pleas out loud that nobody else had gotten to the animal first. It would be difficult enough explaining what had happened to a tiger corpse that had been in my possession if Jake was still alive and able to demorph without many people being witness to me taking it.
Of course, if Jake was actually dead...
I had to close my eyes and clench my jaw to stop myself from being sick. We weren't close any more. Probably weren't really even friends any more. He wasn't the Jake I'd met and known any more. But it was still Jake.
For once, luck was on my side. The bloody, beaten tiger was only watched by Bill, who handed it over to me with a tip of his hat. The tiger was still breathing, but it was definitely on a solid spiral toward death. I put my hand on its mattered fur and tried to acquire it. Nothing. This wasn't a real tiger.
“Jake.” I stroked his head without thinking, horror and fear rooting me to the spot. “Jake, wake up. You have to demorph. Jake. Jake, demorph.”
I ran back to the truck, backed it up some and then hoisted the tiger body onto the back using the rigging system that had been designed specially for times like this. Covering the tiger body with a sheet and making sure nobody was around, I again began stroking his head.
“Jake, it's Cassie. Jake, you need to demorph. Can you hear me? Jake?” I morphed partially into osprey, just far enough for the thought-speak to kick in. <Jake.> I sent as many mental pleas his way as possible with the calls. <Jake, it's Cassie. Please. Please, you need to demorph. Come on, Jake. Demorph. Please. Jake, Jake, you need to demorph.> I was growing more and more desperate and scared by the minute. And I think that's what prompted my tone to change. <Jake. Come back to me. Come on, Jake. Please come back to me. Come on, Jake. Please. Please come back.> The changes began, sluggish and minute, even as he stayed unconscious. <That's it. Come on back to me, Jake. Come on, Jake. Please. Demorph.> I continued to talk him through it while stroking his head as he slowly struggled back to human. My fingers tangled in brown hair instead of fur, and still I didn't let go. Not until he was fully human before me.
I pulled the sheet all the way over his head, and drove back to my house at a slightly less reckless pace. As I went, I kept my head busy with explaining a disappearing corpse. My worry about it was not enough to drown out my relief that I had to come up with a story because Jake was still alive. Once back at home I rushed inside and picked up my discarded cellphone, only to realise I didn't have Marco's number. After staring at the screen for a while, I decided to take it with me for Jake to use once he woke up.
I stared at it for a long while, taking in the flecks of tiger blood as I clutched my phone hard enough for it to hurt. Either he'd been taken, which was unlikely, or he'd... Left. While I was inside. I was still trying to rationally convince myself that that was a good thing, when a voice sounded behind me.
I spun around, limbs locked and ready to morph, and found Jake standing before me, draped in my sheet. My first thought, after the instinctive surprise, was that it appeared that morphing 'remembered' muscle tone as well as haircut and piercings and age and all those other completely inexplicable things. Jake had always been tall and solid – it was why Marco called him Big Jake. But now, at almost twenty-seven, he stood at least two heads above me with broad shoulders and enough muscle for him to be a threat even out of morph.
“I... Um. Th... I got a call about a tiger and I...” Somehow, I couldn't speak.
“Right. Yeah, thanks for that. Uh... I'll need to phone-”
Immediately I thrust the mobile at him. He blinked, took it, and dialled. We looked pointedly away from each other. “Hi, Marco, it's me,” Jake said, forcing a calm and bright tone in case the call was being tapped or overheard. “Sorry I missed our meeting, bro. I ran into Cassie. But I'm on my way back, okay?” He listened for a moment, agreed to something and then handed the phone back to me.
“Well,” I said intelligently.
“Yeah... I better... Uh... Thanks, Cassie.”
Neither of us moved. It was as though the three years of communicating only through others for necessity had degenerated us back to those two kids who had sat in mortified silence beside each other on the bus. Jake squirmed uncomfortably, twitching his fingers in familiar awkwardness, and for a moment I forgot all he'd done and asked me to do and that he was no longer the Jake that I'd loved so much for so long. Then I met his eyes and saw the age and grief and darkness in them, and remembered exactly how we'd parted ways. What I saw before me was only slivers of the man I wanted remaining. And slivers were not enough. He was Jake, but not my Jake.
“Hey, Cass! I decided you've been working too hard, and I bought us both some lunch from that place-”
Ronnie rounded the corner and stopped in mid-stride and mid-sentence. We stared at him and he stared back, eyes focusing on tall, built Jake who was standing in front of me in nothing but a slightly blood-stained sheet.
“Ronnie!” To my mortification, my voice squeaked. “Uh... This is Ronnie Chambers. He's one of those that helps with Toby's people. Ronnie, this is Jake. Berenson.”
The surname had been unnecessary – as far as Ronnie was concerned, I only knew one Jake. The fast food packets he'd been holding aloof like a prize sagged to his side as he continued to look at Jake.
“Nice to meet you.” Jake had perfected calm politeness years ago.
“Yeah. Uh... you.... too.” Ronnie was not as good a liar.
They continued to stare at each other in frozen silence as I wondered desperately where to look and wished the earth would simply swallow me whole. I wasn't even sure why I was so horrified, or blushing so hard, or unable to unstick my tongue from the roof of my mouth, but the truth was I had absolutely know idea what to do or say.
The phone in my hand rang, making all of us jump, and I answered it at once. “Hello?” The relief was evident in my voice. “Cassie speaking.”
“Hi, Cassie! Marco here. Listen, is Jake still hanging out with you?”
“Yeah, he's still here,” I said brightly, as though Marco called every day.
“Great! I was thinking maybe I could just meet you guys there. I mean, we haven't seen each other for ages. And it's nice and peaceful at your place. Great place to spend our day off. We can, like, have lunch together and catch up.”
“That sounds great!” I enthused. “We'll sort it all out when you get here, okay? See you soon.” I hung up and met Jake's intense gaze. “Something's wrong. Marco's coming here to speak to you where he can't be overheard. He says to stay here.”
Jake's brow furrowed and his lips thinned but he nodded. “I'll... let you two have lunch in the mean time.”
He didn't look at Ronnie as he walked away, and I couldn't bring myself to listen to the part that wanted to call after him and ask him to stay. Ronnie and I ate together at the outside table, but the atmosphere between us was tense. He didn't crack a single joke, didn't flirt with me like he usually did or even look at my mouth as I talked as though he really wanted to kiss me. In fact, we passed most of the hour-long affair in total silence.
It was almost a relief when Marco and Ax showed up in duck morph. Both of them had grown even since I last saw them. Although Marco was still shorter than me, he'd also filled out a lot. The army buzzcut and the hard look in his eyes made him almost unrecognisable as the fifteen-year-old who'd gotten detention for placing fake poop in the staff's fancy lunch buffet during a school event. Ax... looked so much like Elfangor seeing him hurt a little. I wonder if he felt the same when he looked at his reflection.
“We have a situation,” Marco said, and it took me a second to realise he was talking to a point just over my shoulder.
“What happened?” Jake asked as he marched up, now dressed in jeans and a Tshirt. Morphing gear.
“First – what happened with you? It was supposed to be a scouting mission. Wallace was going ape-shit when you disappeared.”
“I ran into a bear. A real one. It wasn't really happy to see me,” Jake said tightly.
There was a beat of silence. “You got beaten up by a real bear,” Marco asked incredulously. “Yeerks and Hork-Bajir and Taxxon and Dracon Beams and Bug Fighters, no problem. He handles those weekly. An actual bear though?”
“To be fair, he must have done something to make it-” I started to say, automatically filling in where I would have in the past.
But Marco cut right across me. “I'm saving that story, Big Jake. Don't you think I'm not. But right now, we have problems. Rachel's in trouble.”
My breath caught. Jake stiffened. “What happened?” he asked again, voice dangerously calm.
“Human Controller lawyer started pointing out that she gets 'lucky' too quickly. He called a meeting to discuss her integrity. Tobias just called to say they were stupid not to check how many of the council are Controllers. The answer is: a lot of them.”
<We've already contacted Ellim 134,> Ax interjected calmly before Marco's irritation could bleed through any more. <He says he can insure one of his is the Yeerk sent to infest her, and that he can try to insure most of the Hork-Bajir guards are on our side as well.>
“But there's a lot of ifs in that plan,” Marco continued. “And if it isn't a YPM going into her head... we have to be ready to make sure our secrets don't get out.”
“Is Tobias with her?” Marco nodded. “Okay.” Jake strode forward, already beginning to morph to duck for the long journey. “We'll discuss logistics on the way.”
“Apparently she's being held-” Marco stopped, suddenly, and looked straight at me. “Is she coming?”
I felt rooted to the spot as Ax and Jake both glanced my way. My heart thudded in my throat as Jake's gaze met mine. Then he turned away and shook his head. Anger welled up inside me at once.
“I'm coming!” I snapped, and everybody turned to me again in surprise. I glared at Jake. “Rachel's my best friend. I'm still a part of this team. This is still my planet.”
I knew my rage stemmed from my guilt at being relieved that Jake had told me I could stay. I knew I didn't really want to go, that they probably didn't really want me, that they possibly didn't need me any more. But as much as I wanted to fight the truth, it was still there: I was an Animorph.
“Cass...” Ronnie's hand was suddenly clutching mine, a plea in his voice.
Jake and Ax looked away pointedly, but Marco's eyes zeroed in on our clenched hands, and his mouth pulled into an unfriendly sneer. The expression deep in his eyes was the same one from when we were kids. It was the reason that Jake and I had always been careful not to do PDA around Marco. The reason Marco shifted closer to Jake even now in an attempt to protect him from me, who was causing his best friend hurt. Gently, I pulled myself from Ronnie's grip.
“I'm sorry,” I told him sincerely. “But she's my best friend. I have to do this.”
We were all silent as we morphed duck and flew off. And then we started hashing out the plan, the other three using military jargon that threw me somewhat but luckily didn't keep me from understanding. Once the arguing and planning was done, we lapsed into silence again, flapping rather frantically toward Rachel and Tobias.
<Jake?> Finally, I couldn't take it any longer and contacted him in private. But after saying his name, my words ran out.
<You can still turn back.>
Something funny and painful happened in my chest. <That's not what I wanted to say.> My voice was cooler than I intended it to be. <We're all part of this fight, Jake. I'm doing my part, too. You're just->
<Poison,> Jake interrupted just as coolly. <Yeah, Cassie. You've already said as much.>
I remembered calling him that exact word before we parted three years ago, in the midst of the worst fight that had been our unspoken undoing. As it had then, my heart broke a little. But I couldn't find anything to reply to that.
We flew the rest of the way in silence.
The first thing a newly-freed Rachel did, after cussing and swearing at the Yeerks, kicking the body of a dead Hork-Bajir and furiously scrubbing her ear, was launch herself at Jake.
They didn't hug, but they bumped foreheads and gripped each other's forearms and shoulders in a way that was strangely intimate. Everybody looked away at once, finding interesting cracks on the walls to study while the Berenson cousins silently said their piece.
<We should go,> Tobias said eventually.<The babysitter will need to leave soon,> And then, without a shred of warning, he fixed his piercing gaze on Jake. Even slightly bedraggled in his old age – I'm privately sure it's only because of the morphing, somehow, that Tobias' hawk form is still alive – his gaze was still knifelike. <She looks nothing like you, you know.>
Jake met his gaze steadily, and held it for a few beats. “She wouldn't. She's just my cousin's child.”
Tobias gave the hawk equivalent of a nod and looked away from Jake. I can't blame him for suspecting Jake, really. I think he's always known Sadie isn't his, and the other possibility of who the father is is quite fantastical, even for people who fight aliens. And Jake and Rachel had, over the years of the war, grown...
Not close. Close implies that they tell each other everything, that they speak often, that they get on, that they never argue or fight or outright hate each other. They're not close. And yet, there's definitely something inexplicable in their relationship. Tobias and Sadie tether Rachel to her humanity; to the popular, shopping-crazed girl that had been lost so quickly. Jake? Jake tethers her to sanity and existence, even as he drives her deeper into the darkness inside herself. It's like they're one of the only reasons the other is still able to function, even after everything they feel and think and do.
Tobias and Rachel left us with an awkward goodbye. I got a hug, but I could tell it was slightly forced.
“Come on, Ax-man,” Marco said loudly. “We need to subtly disappear for a while so these two can say goodbye.”
Jake frowned at him, but Marco was already walking away. We were, once again, unable to look at each other. There was a myriad of things we could have – should have – talked about, but neither of us seemed willing to pull it out into the open. Finally, I dared to look at him and I found him watching me with an expression that was, for once, not distant or closed-off. He looked lost. And guilty. And... young. My heart ached again, and the anger and resentment and everything else that made my heart hard to Jake Berenson melted. He wasn't the Jake I'd met and known and loved any more. But it was still Jake.
“You know... some animals are immune to poison.”
He continued to look at me for a long while, even as I walked closer, and placed a shaking hand on his arm for a second. “Humans aren't one of those animals,” he replied softly.
“I'm not a human any more, Jake. Not in anything but biological makeup. And even then...”
Hesitantly, his hand brushed away a stray braid. I wondered, stupidly, what he thought of my hair long. Whether he preferred the short cut. Whether he thought I looked as pretty as he did all those times he'd murmured beautiful into my skin.
“You want to be. And... you have the chance to be, Cassie. You can...” He broke off. Lowered his hand. Shut himself down. The last sliver of my Jake disappeared in the eyes that looked like his, except a million years more haunted. “Goodbye, Cassie.” He kissed me on the forehead, lingering longer than he should have.
And then he was gone, leaving me alone in a warehouse that was only a few buildings over from the place Controllers were already swarming to clean up the mess. I knew, logically, that I had to move on from Jake. That loving him would be pointless and painful and damaging. That he'd gone too far to ever come back. That what I was feeling was based more on memories and fantasies.
But just because you know something doesn't make the emotion disappear.
I let myself cry only a few tears, let myself guilty remember all those times I shut my eyes and pretended Ronnie's hands and lips and arms belonged to Jake, and then I morphed and headed home. The war continued. The secrets stretched on. And we continue to carry them, all hoping that we were immune to the poison we created for ourselves.
