It was a small thing. It lasted only a second. And then the Yeerk was using my mouth to say, “Hey, Ax. You did great back there when —”
In a movement too fast for me to see, Ax whipped his tail forward. In the blink of an eye, his scythe blade was leveled a quarter-inch from my throat.
Ax! What are you doing?” Cassie demanded.
“Are you NUTS?” Marco cried.
“What’s your problem, Ax?” my voice asked the Andalite.
But he did not waver. And he did not pull that deadly tail away from my throat.
“What?” Rachel snapped. “Back off, Ax. You’re crazy.”
“This is crazy.” The Yeerk tried a disbelieving laugh. “Marco … Cassie … would you please tell this nut that I am okay?”
But I saw doubt in Marco’s shrewd eyes.
“Yeah, I’m sure you’re fine, Jake. But, Cassie? Didn’t you say Jake seemed zoned out? Like he wouldn’t answer for a few minutes, even though he was awake?”
Cassie nodded her head. She, too, was looking suspicious. “Yeah. He seemed normal and all, but he wouldn’t answer me.” She shrugged. “Sorry, Jake, but you did act funny.”
I swear, I could have kissed the Andalite right then. I wanted to yell “Yes! Yes!”
“You guys can’t possibly believe this,” my mouth said. “I mean, okay, we have to be careful. But it’s me. It’s me, Jake, all right?”
“Being Jake and all, you’ll understand if we take a minute to think this through,” Rachel said. “Ax? How are we supposed to know one way or the other?”
Tobias answered for him.
Now I felt just the slightest edge of fear from the Yeerk. He was measuring the odds. Trying to decide what to do. But with Ax’s tail blade at my throat, the Yeerk kept my body very still.
“We can’t hold him for three days,” Cassie argued. “His family would go ballistic. They’ll call the cops. Chapman will realize he’s not in school. The bad guys will put two and two together.”
“Look. Hello. Hello-o-o? It’s me, Jake. Remember? I am not a Controller.”
Marco shook his head. “If he is … if there’s a Yeerk in his head, then he knows all our secrets. If he gets in touch with any other Yeerk, we are all dead. We can’t take the chance. Maybe Ax is right. Maybe not. But we can’t guess wrong.”
Tobias said.
“Rachel?” Marco asked.
Rachel met my gaze. “Sorry, Jake. But we have to play it safe. You know that.”
“Look,” I argued. “It’s like Cassie said. My folks will go nuts. They’ll call the police. They’ll go on TV asking if anyone has seen me. They’ll be putting up posters all over town. I mean, no offense, Tobias, but I have an actual family, not some messed-up aunts and uncles who didn’t want to be taking care of me in the first place. People will notice if I disappear.” I turned to Cassie. “Cassie, come on. Explain it to them.”
Come on, Cassie, I thought. Come on, be hard for once. Don’t feel for me. Don’t be sweet, just this once.
“There is a way,” Cassie said hesitantly.
“To be sure whether he’s a Controller?” Rachel asked.
“No,” Cassie said. Her voice grew stronger. “A way to keep his family and the school from knowing he’s gone. Ax could do it. Ax could morph into Jake.”
Cassie. The amazing Cassie. She had hit on the one possible solution. I wished so badly I could tell her right then what an amazingly smart, incredibly cool person she was.
The Yeerk in my head was not happy.
Ax reached one of his delicate, many-fingered hands toward my face. He pressed his fingers against my forehead.
he said.
The Yeerk could not stand it anymore. The Andalite’s touch made him so furious it was like a physical illness.
“Get your hand off me, Andalite filth!” he screamed aloud in a distorted version of my voice.
But Ax’s tail was still within an inch of my jugular. And the Yeerk knew very well how deadly fast that tail was. He did not move.
The others all stared, wide-eyed. “Well,” Rachel said. “At least now we’re sure.”
“No, you’re wrong,” my voice pleaded. “He’s just making me mad. Hey, it’s been a stressful morning, all right? Give me a break.”
<‘Andalite filth’?> Tobias repeated the Yeerk’s words.
“Jake,” Cassie said, looking into my eyes. “I know you’re still in there. I know you’re probably afraid. But we will get that thing out of your head, Jake. We will.”
Okay,” Marco said. “We need a place to keep him.”
“We can’t use anyone’s home,” Cassie said, thinking aloud. “We can’t use my barn. My dad is in and out of there constantly.”
Tobias said.
“We can tie him up,” Rachel said. “But we’ll still have to have at least one of us there all the time, to make sure he doesn’t get away.”
Ax said.
“Okay,” Marco said, “then the rest of us, Cassie, Rachel, and I, will rotate shifts, along with Tobias. Tobias can stay the whole time, except when he has to go hunting.”
“Okay, let’s go,” Rachel said. “Come on, Jake. Get up. We’re out of here.”
Cassie came over and gave me her hand. She helped pull me to my feet.
It was an odd moment, because I could feel Cassie’s touch. And yet I had no power to squeeze her hand, or give her any assurance.
The Yeerk did that for me. He deliberately held her hand an extra few seconds.
I felt sick. The Yeerk was opening my mind at will. Reading whatever he wanted. I had no secrets from him. None. He already knew everything I knew about my friends. If he got away …
My feet began walking. Tobias led the way, appearing and disappearing in the trees above.
Rachel walked ahead of me. Behind me, Marco and Ax. Cassie stayed at my side.
“From all we know, Jake, you can still hear me and understand me,” Cassie said. “I know you can’t answer. Or if you do answer it won’t be you, anyway —”
“But it is me,” said the Yeerk. “Who else would it be?”
“The Yeerk,” Cassie said calmly.
“You think I’m a Controller just because I yelled at Ax? Like I’ve never lost my temper before? Come on. It was a bad day. For all of us, but especially for me.”
I could feel the Yeerk boiling with rage. It was shocking and bizarre to feel so much emotion. It was something he could not hide from me. I could feel his emotions, even though I could not penetrate
his thoughts.
“Ax,” the Yeerk said, “I’m never happy when any creature has to be destroyed. But I don’t feel any pity for those Yeerks. They are out to enslave us. We did what we had to do.”
It was perfect. Exactly what I would have said. Because it was exactly what I felt.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Cassie looking at me with a puzzled expression.
Was he right? Would all of my friends stand firm? How could they, when every word I spoke sounded exactly like me?
We marched through the woods for what seemed like a very long time. None of us could move very fast because we were without shoes. Tobias knew these woods well and led us around brambles and rough patches, but still, my feet were tender after an hour of walking on pine needles and twigs.
But the pain was so far away…. I was feeling it from a distance. It was like I was shackled. Chained to a wall. I could not move a hand, or even a finger. I did not blink my own eyes. I did not decide which direction to look, or what sounds to focus on.
The Yeerk’s control was absolute.
“You heard Tobias, right, Jake?” Cassie asked. “Almost there. It’s a good thing. My feet are killing me. I need to walk barefoot more often. Like I did when I was little. Toughen up, for times like these. Getting home will be easier. I can just use my osprey morph and fly home.”
“Cassie, listen,” the Yeerk said. “I know you guys think you’re doing the right thing. But there’s no way Ax can pull off being me. My parents will figure it out. Or worse yet, Tom will figure it out. Then we’ll all be dead. Don’t you see what’s happening here?”
“Shut up, Yeerk,” Rachel snapped. “I’ve known Jake all my life. Marco has known him since they were kids. And Cassie has known him for years. Between the three of us, we can teach Ax to pass for Jake.”
“It will never work,” the Yeerk said.
Rachel stopped walking. She turned to face me, blocking the way. She was smirking, but she seemed to be looking past me, over my shoulder. “No? You don’t think so, Yeerk?”
The Yeerk stopped walking. “Rachel, you don’t have to try and impress me with how tough you are. I know you’re too smart to really believe any of this. And you know as well as I do, this is not going to work.”
“I disagree,” a voice behind me said. “Humans believe what they see.”
The Yeerk whipped my head around.
There, standing a few feet from me was … me.
Totally, absolutely, me.
He was a perfect copy of me. Like looking in a mirror.
“I morphed a while back,” Ax said. “I’ve been watching the way you walk and move. To copy you better. Ter. Bet. Ter.”
The Yeerk grinned. “You may look like me, but that isn’t going to be enough. I give it an hour before Tom figures it out.”
Marco looked at Rachel and cocked an eyebrow. Rachel looked at Cassie, who sighed and nodded her head.
“See, that was a stupid way to play it, Yeerk,” Marco said. “If you really were Jake, you might be frustrated that we wrongly suspected you. But you’d figure the smart thing would be to help Ax play the role. If you were you, so to speak, you’d have to hope Ax pulled it off.”
Rachel curled her lip contemptuously. “You just blew Final Jeopardy. You’re still trying to make us let you go. By now Jake would have realized he had to help us succeed.”
The Yeerk said nothing. I think he knew he’d made an error. But I still sensed absolute confidence from him. Like a poker player holding an extra ace.
We reached the shack. It was a depressing, half-fallen-down mess with a wood floor and log walls and a roof that only covered half the place.
There was a bird’s nest of some type in the rafters. Bushes had grown in through a hole in one wall. There were beer cans and soda cans strewn around, but they all looked pretty old. Nothing recent.
Tobias had chosen well. We would probably be left alone for the three days.
Tobias, with his laser vision, had found a few feet of rope in an old campground. He flew back with it in his talons, and Marco and Rachel tied my hands behind my back.
“Sorry, Jake,” Marco said. “But that’s the way it is. If you’re still in there, you understand.”
“We’ll loosen the rope every couple of hours so the circulation isn’t cut off,” Rachel said. “I’ll be here for the first shift. Cassie and Marco are going back with Ax, to get him prepared to play you.” She smiled. “He already has the serious, responsible-sounding thing down. They just need to give him a sense of humor and stop him from playing with every sound he says.”
It sounded fairly good to me. But I was nervous that only two of them would be around to guard me.
Of course, one of those two was Tobias. I could never run fast enough to hide from him. And Rachel could morph into a wolf and run me down.
But it bothered me that the Yeerk in my head had not lost his cockiness.
In fact, he was reveling in a fantasy of promotions and power.
But it was more than just talk. I could see the pictures, too. The images his mind conjured up. They were sketchy, but I saw Visser Three nodding his head as my Yeerk, still in my body, showed him my friends. They were all bound and gagged and lying helpless on the floor of Visser Three’s Blade ship.
Why was I seeing this? The Yeerk was able to shield his other thoughts. Was this fantasy too emotional for him to hide from me? Or was he actually showing off for my benefit?
And then, to my horror, I was no longer in the cabin. It was a bright, huge gymnasium. But not exactly a gym. A sports arena. Yes. With thousands and thousands of fans.
I felt like crawling away. I knew this fantasy. It was kind of lame, I guess. But I could not escape. The Yeerk could play my fantasies as easily as watching a video.
In my fantasy, people were cheering. And there I was. In a pro uniform. I was older. But I still looked pretty much like myself.
The game clock was at five seconds. Four. Three. I set up and took an incredible three-point shot from mid-court.
Swish!
The stadium went crazy! Cheering. Horns sounding. People chanting my name. And there was Cassie, in the stands. Smiling at me. She was sitting with my parents.
And there was Tom.
He walked out onto the court and threw his arms around me. He patted me on the back.
“Great game,” he said. “As usual.”
End of fantasy. The images disappeared.
I felt very small suddenly. Very unimportant. Very weak.
he said.
It was as if a third mind had joined us. It was real. So completely real. Not like a vision or a movie or something. I felt this. I felt it exactly as if I were there.
My brother’s mind. His thoughts. His memories, as clear as if I were seeing them myself. Tom … some piece of Tom that the Yeerk still carried with him …
It was from just a few days earlier.
He was sitting at the breakfast table, across from me. I saw myself through his eyes. I looked … distant. Distracted. Preoccupied.
“Hey, midget. What’s up?” he asked me.
“Not much. What’s up with you?”
“Oh, I’m going to a meeting.”
“The Sharing?” I asked him.
“Yeah. We’re doing some cleanup in the park. You know, do our part for the community and all. Then we’re having a barbecue afterward. You really should join, you know. We’d get to spend more time together.”
It was just as I remembered it. Except that now, I felt Tom’s emotions, not mine. The real Tom. The true Tom who was crushed beneath the Yeerk’s control.
He was crying. Sobbing, helplessly, silently.
The Yeerk waited while the full impact of direct contact with Tom’s mind sank into my own. Tom was defeated. Desperate. He spent his time wishing he could die.
He had given up any hope of escape. Given up.
Animorphs #6: The Capture Page 7
