Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Author's Note: I neither own nor ever will own Animorphs by K.A. Appelgate and Scholastic. (And thank god for that because my mind is a mess and I would do terrible and bizarre things to the canon...) My props and infinite gratitude to AppelGrant for making the books free everywhere and enjoying it so much when we play in their beautiful, terrible world.

I have no idea where I'm going with this or IF I'm going anywhere with it; I guess that's up to whether people like it. There's a conceit in the writing which is my reference to the odd fact of the Animorphs books all apparently being journals even though that never made any sense, but which I had fun with. See if you guess it before I reveal it.

Additional Note: I guess it's more likely that the Visser would assume an Andalite had *morphed* Tobias if he failed here, but I'm going to handwave that for now. XD

---

<So...When did you learn of it?>

My name is Tobias. The cold, soundless thought-speech voice belonged to Visser Three, leader of the invasion of our planet by a parasitic race called the Yeerks.

I honestly didn't know what the point of his question was, and I really wasn't feeling it. You see I, Tobias, was having the worst day of my life.

You want me to be straight with you? I'm not sure why I'm writing this either. I guess it's just helping me think through the absolute insanity my life has become.

I had gone to a meeting arranged by the Visser himself, after he discovered to his surprise that I was the son of his old nemesis, the Andalite Prince Elfangor-Sirinial-Shamtul. The idea was to convince the Visser that it wasn’t worth it to infest me, that I didn't know anything about the war at all and wasn't connected with the Andalite resistance he'd been facing. The problem was that it didn’t work.

You see, I loved my father. I’m sure of it now. I only knew him for about an hour, but it was the most meaningful hour that had ever happened in my entire life.

And so, because for one second one tear dropped down my normally expressionless face, the Visser and his waiting entourage of guards seized me. I am now a prisoner onboard the Blade ship of the most evil creature in all of space. And for once in the entire time my comrades and I have had dealings with him, I have no idea what he wants. None at all.

But explaining that has to start here.

"Just figure it out for yourself," I spat. "Have one of your lieutenants infest me."

<Ah, but I want to hear it from you, boy,> said the Visser, in a tone I couldn't place. <When did you meet them? Was it there, at his landing place? Did you see him?>

I would give him nothing. Absolutely nothing. He'd have to take it from me kicking and screaming. Or, more likely, just screaming. Trapped in my own head. So I said nothing.

<No matter,> said the Visser. <I suppose you will tell me eventually. But...I am curious. You played well. But not good enough. You're experienced. Clever. ...I...> He stopped, suddenly, and held up his hand for his guards to stop. <...I am pleased. Yes. That's it.>

What? What did that even mean? "Pleased about what, the fact that you've got a kid who can't even pass gym?"

<That you are, in every way, his son.>

I didn’t know how to respond to that. Why did the Visser care? He was the same person who, on the same night that I had met him, had eaten my father alive.

If I really thought about it, I realized that he did care. The entire way that the Visser had planned this suggested it. After I contacted DeGroot, Visser Three could have gone, “Better safe than sorry” and just taken me. He already knew that I had no family who cared for me left. What did he have to lose? It would barely even look suspicious. Another no-account kid who’s fallen off the grid. I might even be right back on it again as a Yeerk.

Yet that’s not what had happened. Instead he put on an elaborate show for me and the others just so that he could personally show up and read my father’s will to me. Personally. Even for the purpose of tricking the Andalite bandits (why the Yeerks call them “bandits” I’ll never know) it was too much effort. His whole plan got weirder and weirder the longer I thought about it.

<You haven’t responded,> he said, breaking up my thoughts.

“Because I have nothing to say to you,” I snarled back. “Maybe I am my father’s son, but you’re his murderer.”

He laughed. It wasn’t a good sound. <I did kill your father, yes! And while it was indeed a satisfying end to a long and fruitful relationship, I…> He stopped for a moment, but I could feel emotion in the absence. A vibrating…confusion. Loneliness. <…I suppose I miss him.>

“What?” I barked, unable to contain myself. “What do you mean you miss him?! You killed him! You don’t get to miss people you eat!”

<Well that’s what’s happening, now isn’t it?> He snapped. <I miss him, and as enjoyable as I found it I regret it!> Even he seemed vaguely surprised by what he had said, and his main eyes turned away from me, although his stalk eyes still tracked me from behind.

“You…You regret? Like, at all?” I questioned, in disbelief.

However, we had reached the end of the hall. The Blade ship was more labyrinthine than I had figured, even having been on it before, and this area was more so. There seemed to be dozens of little doors around, all of them labeled with markings in a language I realized I couldn’t read. I’m not sure why, but part of me half expected it all to be in English. This must have been Yeerkish, or something.

One of the guards walked up to the door and waved his hand in front of what looked like a translucent cube. The cube beeped and the door opened, and the guard shoved me inside.

It wasn’t a cell, to my surprise. It was just a normal room, with what seemed to be a bed and a table inside it. There was no question I was a prisoner, but at least I could count down on the morphing timer in relative comfort.

I probably only had minutes left, anyway. Not that the Visser knew that, yet. This wasn’t really how I had pictured the circumstances of remaining human forever, but this was what they were. I would have to accept it.

The Visser stared back at me. I half expected him to scream at me in his usual psychotic rage for making him vulnerable for even a moment, but that wasn’t it at all. <I will not have you infested yet. Instead, you will be made to tell me what you know of the Andalite bandits from your own lips,> he said.

“So you’ll torture me until I tell you?” I said, glumly. I didn’t have a great opinion of my chances. I was pretty sure this guy could torture anyone into saying anything.

<…No. You will simply tell me,> he said.

And with that, he shut the door, leaving me alone with my thoughts. And this computer, which absurdly he left an access point for.

Now you’re caught up, I guess. I’ll write more entries to the extent that I remain alive and if I feel like it. If you’re the Visser and you’ve gotten bored enough to check what I’m using the access point for, good for you. You’re more curious than I’d figured.

Not that you’ve learned much from it. If you ask about the morph, I have no intention of explaining it, except to say that you already know I am not an Andalite. If you’re anyone else, make of this account what you will.

I’ll be dead soon anyway.

Chapter Text

So. It looks like you are reading these. I don’t know whether to stop writing them or if I’ve just accepted it. After all, there was only one time I decided to do something because I wanted to. It was fight you.

Still, here’s my version of what happened.
-

Before I wrote that first entry, I got a different idea in my head. You see, I couldn’t allow Visser Three to get information about the Andalites from me. I really, absolutely couldn’t. The future of my entire race depended on me not saying anything. So as long as he was going to put up this pretense of not having me infested, I was going to do everything possible to stop him from getting it.

The longer I was here, the lower the odds were that I’d manage to keep what I knew hidden. Visser Three wasn’t a patient Yeerk. Eventually he was going to get sick of…whatever this was. Whatever ridiculous plans he had.

Which meant I had two options for how to solve this, and time was rapidly running out for using one.

Option One: Assume that the Andalite team would understand I had failed and would attempt a rescue mission. Morph and escape before the team comes for me.

Option Two: Morph into something that was useless to the Visser and get stuck as a nothlit. Die.

Both options probably would seem nuts to a Yeerk. Option One wouldn’t make sense because if an operative is that deep in enemy territory and gets caught, it’s better to leave them for dead, right? Well, sure, but this is a close-knit unit, and somehow, I’m lucky enough to be considered part of it now. I believed they would try to come for me.

Problem is, it’d be a disaster. See, I would have advised them not to go. The odds of them being able to break onto and off of the Blade ship again after barely having pulled it off the last time, when the Visser had almost certainly heightened security, didn’t look good at all. But I also knew the team strategist would say the same thing, and he’d get overruled. They were coming. A confrontation was inevitable, and I wasn't sure at all whether or not they'd succeed.

If it came down to it, I was willing to die. A Yeerk probably would never think of Option Two. Our leader, the Prince, told me your race just doesn’t go there. You’d give up to save your life, eventually. But humans and Andalites do think of it. Some things are more important than whether I’m alive or dead.

Both of those options had the same starting point: demorphing and then becoming something else. So I closed my eyes, fought my live-wire nerves until they settled, and tried to concentrate on that.

Except nothing happened. My forehead scrunched up as I tried to force myself back to my true body. I physically shook a little. But it was like walking through a tar pit. I could see the exit, but my mind wouldn't reach it.

I tried over, and over, and over again. Finally, I slumped against the wall, exhausted, holding my hand against the wall. So that was it. It was over. I would never be able to morph again.

Still, my options were nearly the same. I had to either trust the team’s skill, find some way off this ship, or find a way to kill myself. It had just been made a lot harder now.
-
I don’t know how much time passed before I decided to try the access point and wrote the first entry. It feels like I was trying to process what to do...longer than I would have liked. At some point after though, I don’t know when, I smacked my head into a wall to see what would happen. Nothing did. The metal wall pulled harmlessly around my head rather than let me slam it into anything, giving me the weird feeling of being in liquid rubber before it flattened in less than a second.

I should have guessed from the last time we were stuck here. The whole ship is made of living, reactive metal and is tuned to the will of a brain-stealing parasite who, on top of being that, sometimes refuses to let his victims just die. Of course it wouldn’t let me hurt myself.

It wasn’t too long after that that there was a knock on my door. That surprised me a bit. I didn’t think the Yeerks had a similar custom. I opened it.

There was a Human-Controller on the other side of the door, a man with striking bright hazel eyes wearing one of the uniforms I’d seen earlier. He looked tired.

“What?” I snapped.

“Two things,” he said, holding up two fingers to begin. “One: Don’t be stupid; You’re obviously being watched. We know you probably tried to morph. We know you tried to hurt your body. If you try anything like that again, we are going to be a lot less nice. The Visser gave us strict orders. Even if you could still be an Andalite nothlit, in my opinion. The fact that you’re being treated like this is absurd. Two: The Visser wants to see you. You’re coming with me.”

I nodded. I probably didn’t really have a choice but to go with him.

The Human-Controller put me in cuffs, and we headed down the hall. Whenever now was, it was a lot busier now. There seemed to be something happening that I couldn’t quite make sense of. A number of the Yeerks were coming down from farther along the hall and greeting other Yeerks, either by saluting or chatting between themselves. When groups parted, they’d switch places. The part of the group that didn’t come from the hall would go up there and the other part would come down towards the rooms in this area.

Whatever it was, it didn’t matter to me, but it was pretty disruptive. At this point, my chauffeur got interrupted by a younger, blonde-haired man running excitedly down the hall.

“Dekket! Dekket 858, Renak ilu sol! Narane teo van Renak solha. Kandrona-ke theral, Dekket?” the man said, eagerly, chiding the man I was with his tone near the end. Whatever he was saying, he was not saying it in English.

The Controller I was with – I assumed Dekket 858 was his name – sighed. He responded in the same strange language as the other guy, shrugging and trying to explain himself. The other Yeerk – Renak, it sounded like – continued to cajole him, even tugging on his arm.

Have you ever met your teacher in the grocery store, or at the mall, doing something normal? Did it feel like you were seeing something you didn’t expect, even though of course teachers do that stuff? It was like that. It felt weird seeing two Yeerks play out a scene that could have been two people at school nagging one another about completing their homework.

The new guy looked me up and down for a second, but didn’t pay that much attention. Once he’d said his piece with his friend, he just left, whistling to himself. I guess some kid in chains wasn’t that weird to this guy.

Dekket and I hit the dropshaft not long after that, after passing by gaggles of pleased as punch looking Yeerks headed back the other way. I was still confused. Dekket wasn’t.

It was when I got to our destination that my heart sunk into my stomach. Because now I knew that unless the Visser moved, the Andalites were never going to be able to rescue me.

The Visser had turned the entire side of the room he was standing in transparent, which showed us where we were. We weren’t on Earth. We were sitting inside the hangar of what was probably the Pool ship.

That meant...It meant I had to do this. I had no idea how long the Yeerks were going to be up here. The Andalites had no ship to reach us. And the longer I was here, the greater the risk that the Visser would learn what I knew. So I had to get Visser Three to kill me. How hard could that be?

“High-Gunner Dekket Eight-Five-Eight arriving with the prisoner, Visser,” said Dekket, making a quick gesture where he crossed his arms over his heart.

<Excellent. Leave,> the Visser said, his voice echoing in both our minds.

Dekket left pretty fast. I guess no one wants to be near Visser Three if they can help it. Just my luck.

<Come forward,> he said.

“Piss off,” I said, in a bad impression of a tough guy, which was the voice I had used at the meeting with DeGroot.

<I don’t need to, and don’t be pointlessly contrarian. I said come.> He didn’t sound like he was about to cut my head off. He just sounded tired. That wasn’t good.

I came up to him. It was time to ask the only question that I really had for him, other than the thousands about why he was doing this. “Why are we on the Pool ship?”

<To feed,> he said. <Blade ships and their ancillary fighters travel with the Pool ship as its destroyer complement, so that it has a first line of defense against any attack. Blade ships return to the Pool ship when their crews feed while they are in space.>

I didn’t know exactly what he meant. The Andalites on the team know more about warfare than I do. I did get enough information to figure one thing out, though. “Wait, so we’re not near Earth?”

<No. We are temporarily journeying elsewhere. A perfect opportunity to get to know one another, wouldn’t you say?> He sounded downright chipper about this. I had to get his mind on killing me instead.

“So, what, you didn’t save enough of your own hard-earned psychopath dollars to invest in a pool for your own ship? Some evil commander you are,” I said.

The fur on the Visser’s body bristled. <I have a private pool on the ship, but not a public one. Public pools are large.>

“I noticed,” I said glumly. “Come to think of it, do you even have more than one? We never really figured that out.”

<Not as of yet, but that will change very soon,> he thought, calm and confident. I hated it. I wanted to wipe that eye smirk off his face.

“Doesn’t seem like it’s changing very fast, honestly. Being part of a resistance outfit has taught me one thing, and it’s that you are weirdly bad at this,” I said. “You’ve got a whole army and you’re being repeatedly thwarted by – what – two kids and four warriors?”

<Don’t test my patience,> the Visser hissed, crossing some of the distance between us. That’s it, Visser, I thought. Come on. End it. Do the only thing you know how to do.

“I’m not really sure how I could avoid it, because you don’t have any,” I said, shrugging. “You kill anyone who so much as looks at you funny. Not that it helps you much. I swear if you actually left someone alive long enough to do their job, this invasion would be going faster than molasses, but maybe your ego’s so small and precious that you just can’t.”

<You do not know the first thing about me or this war, human,> he said. His voice was still calm, even if he did sound more annoyed. But why? Why was he acting like this? <You won’t get very far here or anywhere speaking ill of your betters.>

“You’re the one who kidnapped me. I’m going to say whatever I want,” I said.

<Kidnapped you? No. At least, not according to your human authorities,> the Visser said. <Would you believe me if I told you I am preparing to make the necessary arrangements?>

“Arrangements?” I questioned.

<Yes. To take you. I have heard from my lieutenants that that there are certain rules I must follow to avoid attention. While I do not abide by your race’s insipid, meaningless customs, I am doing so nonetheless,> he said. <Once we return, I will complete the process.>

The way I figured it, he just couldn’t mean what I thought he meant. Could he? I asked anyway. “To ‘take me’ … Wait, don’t tell me you were serious about…“ I shook my head. “That’s impossible. You aren’t even human.”

<No I am not, but I can become one temporarily, and many of those humans involved with you seem quite interested in being rid of you,> he said. <It seems that you are not wanted by anyone.>

I knew he was right, and it stung like he’d struck me, even though it was coming from him. I goaded him right back. This couldn’t take that much longer, could it? It had to end. “Oh come on, where do you get off with this? No one wants you either! You walk into a room and people cower and run and do anything they can just to get away from you.”

<That’s correct, Tobias,> he said, using my name for the first time. Once again, I couldn’t place that tone in his voice, but it sounded...sad. <No one has ever wanted me.>

“Oh boo hoo. I’m not going to feel sorry for you,” I said, glaring up at him. “You’re a tinpot dictator who’s killed thousands, who loves nothing more than the sound of his own thoughts.”

<I would be upset with you if you did. As, I imagine, you are upset with what human friends you have, and with the Andalites, when they feel sorry for you,> he said.

The fact that Visser Three of all people was trying to relate to me didn’t escape me. This was insane. I was running out of ideas. “What…What do you even want? Why did you call me up here? You knew exactly how this was going to go, and you did it anyway.”

<Everything and everyone I have had any interest in, I have had to take. This is no different. I’m interested in you, and so you are here.> He fell silent, but then spoke again, apparently when he’d found the words he was looking for. <What I want is to have and to know you, and for you to know me. I did not get that chance with your father, and so I will have it with you instead. Everything you say is more that I can learn about you, however you intend your pithy, pathetic little words.>

“That’s never going to happen,” I said. “I am never going to let you know anything about me.”

<Well, we shall see, now won’t we? We shall see.>

Chapter Text

Chapter Three

Can…Can we talk about it? About what happened?

Because…because I don’t get it.

Why, why, WHY did you do it?!

I have seen you kill your own people like they were nothing! Nothing!

You don’t care about anyone but yourself!

So why did you … Why would you … What do you even WANT from me?! What do you want so badly that you would risk -

Okay. Okay. I guess we have to back up a bit. It might take me a while to get there anyway. It’s taken this long for the ship to pull itself back together.

If you’re awake, I think I left off when we were up at the observation deck.

--

“We’re not going to see anything,” I said. “I meant what I said.”

He laughed a little. I noticed that there was something a little bit ‘off’ about it. Something was missing. Really, I should have noticed it was missing hours ago.

“Wait…Where is …” I questioned, cocking my head, straining to detect it as if it was something physical around the Visser’s body.

<Where is what?> he asked, curious.

“Your, uhm…” I had no idea how I was supposed to explain this to him. His… evil? The feeling of pants-shitting terror that happened whenever he was around? Maybe he didn’t know. It was possible. “…you feel wrong. Off somehow. Not like you. I just noticed.”

<Wrong? I feel perfectly content, human, I don’t know what you are – Oh.> He laughed again, a little. It was weird hearing him be so happy. It felt wrong, like waking up one day and finding out the Sun was crooked. <I didn’t realize. Do you mean this?>

With those four words it suddenly slammed back into me. My heart began to beat faster. A chill ran down my spine. I looked at him and felt a deep dread in the pit of my stomach.

“Y-Yeah, that’s…that’s it,” I stammered.

It immediately disappeared, as quickly as it had appeared. It was almost more terrifying than it being there at all. I felt like my mind was being hacked. “Wh-What?”

<It is thought speech. Andalite captains project it. Usually, they practice a projection of calm, serenity, authority, and generosity, for an Andalite captain is a herd leader and a patriarch to his men. I choose to give my enemies a preview of their immediate future: the ending of their lives in terror and pain.>

“Of course you do,” I muttered. “Figures that you’re not actually that scary. You just put on airs like makeup.”

Visser Three twitched again, his tail swaying behind him before settling. His voice was tense and angry. That one thing had gotten to him. <I could kill you right here and right now, in less than a second if I am feeling generous.>

“Go ahead and do it,” I said, in a voice that was more confident than I felt. "We both know how this ends.” I wouldn’t care much if you ate me, I thought. Did to Elfangor’s son what you did to Elfangor. Just so long as they are beyond your reach!

The Visser’s tail whipped behind me, and I felt his blade curving close to my neck. I closed my eyes and shivered.

Have you ever felt the specter of death? …I have, plenty of times. It’s…It’s like everything slows down and closes in around you, at that one singular moment. I felt it then. I was terrified. I had to die, and yet I was scared to die. Maybe everyone who’s alive, on every planet, is.

But the Visser retracted his blade, and his foul mood seemed to radiate off him. There was an anger humming in the air, like Andalites mumbled to themselves, but he wasn’t directing the mumbling at me specifically. He paced for several seconds, and then finally turned to me, all smile in the eyes now. An idea must have occurred to him. Which was just wonderful.

<Let’s make a deal,> he said.

“Let’s not,” I said, scowling.

<Listen to what it is first. You’ve seen that, for my own reasons, I don’t want to have you infested. I want to know you and for you to come around. See the world as we do, for a while. So that when I make you an offer, you will understand it. But you’re not going to make that very easy on me, are you? You are determined to refuse the opportunity. I think I know why that is.>

“It’s because I freaking hate you, Visser. That’s why. That’s it, that’s the end of it, we’re done here!” I snarled.

<It’s because you want to protect the secret of the Andalite bandits. The location of their scoop in the woods, their resources, their plans. I don’t know whether it is for your people or for them. If I kill you, I won’t find out what you know. And I want to know where they are, Tobias. I want to know very, very badly.>

His thought-speech practically vibrated with desire, but still he continued. <Having you infested now poses little risk … but it’s not what I want. So…Let us do…this. You agree to go along with me enough to let me show you around while we’re on this trip. Bend, a little. I won’t have you infested at all during the duration. And if, when we are finished, you still refuse to cooperate or…appreciate…anything, I will kill you, as you wish. I have full confidence that even without you, I will learn the location of the bandits eventually. And I will be pleased enough to have forgotten the whole matter.>

“What, but…but you could do it whenever you want, you have me by the –“ I started.

<Exactly. And if you refuse, I’ll simply have my guards take you in right now and give you to a trusted lieutenant. I’ll be disappointed, but I imagine that a unit of dead or captured Andalites will improve my mood,> he said.

I realized then that he had me. The two brain cells in his skull had rubbed together long enough to give him the obvious. I had no choice. None. Stall and escape, Tobias. Stall and escape. “Fine,” I said glumly. “Fine I’ll stop.”

<Excellent,> he crowed. <I already know what the first thing I will show you will be.>

“How do I know you’re going to honor that? Kill me at the end if I refuse? You told me about your plans to, to –“ I left it unsaid. Pretend to take me in. Have me infested and pretend that counts as my family. “So I might be…I might be screwed no matter what I do,” I said.

He cocked his head. <I believe I will win, and so I will keep my future plans, but I never have and never will betray an oath.>
-

It turned out that Visser Three wanted to bring me up to the bridge. We passed down the winding ship hallways towards the dropshaft together and took it up a deck to the hallway leading to the triangular tip of the ship.

I had never been here before, although I’d heard that the Andalite kid had. No, I’m not telling anyone his name. I looked around and saw numerous consoles staffed by humans, Hork-Bajir, and Taxxons, each of them with their hands on square pads that seemed to function as ship controls.

That guy from earlier – Dekket 858 I guess – was at a console that looked a little different from the others. It almost reminded me of an arcade cabinet with a joystick, although there was a square pad too. He looked up at me and seemed almost as annoyed to see me as I was to be here.

The others just stared at the Visser. It would be funny if it wasn’t so incredibly insane. Yeerks just desperately hoping their boss would explain what seemed to be the world’s weirdest Take Your Prisoner To Work Day scenario.

Visser Three didn’t explain anything, of course. <High-Tactical. Contact the Red Shroud. Request permission to patrol.>

“Visser, kai,” said one of the Hork-Bajir, nodding. The Hork-Bajir typed several commands into a console and an image of a different Hork-Bajir appeared on screen. The two talked for about two minutes, and then the Hork-Bajir spoke to the Visser again.

<Excellent,> Visser Three responded, sounding pleased. <High-Control, get us through C2, level out to Burn 2. I will have new orders just before we rendezvous with the Executioner. High-Tactical, send a hail to Executioner to tell Sub-Visser Twenty-Five we will be briefly delayed in making the circuit with him.>

The Hork-Bajir nodded and began tapping away at his console. That uncanny feeling started again. Routine patrols were of course a thing that ships did, and of course a thing that a warship guarding a mothership would do, but the team had never seen them happen. I had never seen them happen. And I wasn’t sure why, but now that I’d seen it, it bothered me.

<You will enjoy this, I think,> said Visser Three. <I am about to show you one of my favorite things in all the galaxy. Something no free human has ever seen. It is an innovation of our own, although it does not yet work on smaller ships.>

All around me, I heard the ship’s engines roaring to life. It was a sound somewhere between a generator turning on and a car engine. I felt a tingling run up my spine. I saw the perspective of the ship’s front holoscreens rising upward. I saw the soldiers running away from the landing pad. It was weird. I’d seen spaceships plenty of times before now, but it was still exciting to see the Blade ship take off, like a hot rod preparing to sear across the Daytona 500.

VRRRRROOMMM! When we were high enough in the air, we lurched forward, speeding towards an open square in the middle of the hangar wall. I stumbled a little, but the ship seemed to have a way to make us shake around less. I stared in wonder as we hurtled through a red corridor and then shot out of the hole in the ship and into space.

Billions upon billions of stars were on those screens, as far as the eye could see, blue and purple and white, the river of our galaxy flowing to the apparent right of us, brighter than it could ever be on Earth. Sometimes I wonder how the Yeerks can see this every single day and decide that they want to enslave and hurt others.

We had leveled out and were cruising at a good distance from the Pool ship now, but still pretty close to it. We were not even close to the only ship out here. There were dozens of Bug fighters out there, accompanied by at least four other Blade ships in line of sight. This was a traveling army.

<High-Control, new orders. Connect my console to interface; I will pilot us,> said Visser Three.

High-Control, who seemed to be a Taxxon-Controller, didn’t object. Neither did anyone else. You didn’t object to Visser Three. It also seemed as though they didn’t want to this time. Even Dekket 858 was smiling.

The Visser walked to his console, and I followed him. He had one of those pads we’d seen in the Bug fighter, the ones you moved on and sent thought-speech commands into. It must have been more common for the captain to fly the ship than we had realized.

Visser Three placed his hand on the pad and closed his main eyes, his stalk eyes still scanning the room. I couldn’t figure out why. Wouldn’t that make it harder to focus on the holoscreen?

Still, the ship roared to life, and I heard (Burn 3) in Visser Three’s thought-speech voice. We shot ahead fast. We made swift and sudden turns, and yet were perfectly stable. We moved with incredible ease between the mess of ships. I rolled my eyes, because he was showing off, but he was good. Very good.

When the Visser was done with his little joyride, he opened his main eyes. He looked at me. <Many of our more advanced ships use interfacing technology that does … a bit more than the Andalite equivalent. Controlling a ship can be much like controlling a host. The ship’s data is fed to you, and it becomes like your own body.>

“So it's -" I started. But I stopped when I saw the bridge's reaction.

The Controllers around me seemed startled. Maybe even a little offended.

<Do not respond now, you fool!> the Visser hissed. <I have been speaking with you in private!>

So his asides to me weren’t just out there for everyone to hear, like everything else he’d ever said. I think I kind of understood. He’d parade around his weird little trophy, not feeling the need to explain himself to anyone, but showing interest in my opinion in public was a step too far.

Whatever this game the Visser was playing was, he didn’t want others to know more about it than he needed them to.

To be continued …

Chapter Text

(continued from Chapter Three)

Sub-Visser Twenty-Five of the Executioner turned out to be a Hork-Bajir Controller with a missing eye. There was this scar right along the right side of his face. That was pretty strange in a military that usually killed hosts that got permanently injured.

<Sethis Six-Four,> said Visser Three curtly.

“May the Kandrona shine and strengthen you, Visser,” said Sub-Visser Twenty-Five, not even skipping a beat when the Visser used his real name. Apparently Visser Three just did that.

What was more interesting is that this guy was speaking English, and he was only the second person who had in the whole fleet. I figured that meant that Sethis had been to Earth, and very recently. That seemed to be why the Human-Controllers did it on the Blade ship sometimes.

<And also you, Sethis, although I do believe it seems only to shrivel you further into a disagreeable husk,> Visser Three said, a bit of amusement entering the thought-speech.

The kid was always a lot more careful about getting rid of his feelings than Visser Three was. The Visser didn’t seem to care who knew what was going on in his head…unless it was about me and why I was here.

Sethis smiled back. Hork-Bajir smiles were always a little scary, but I knew what it was. “The Kandrona and I are doing fine; You needn’t worry so much.”

<Oh, but I do! From time to time. The usual full circuit, I assume?> asked Visser Three, still amused.

“Certainly. Red Shroud is our center point, inner circle of quadrants is mine and the outer is yours,” Sethis said.

They spoke like they’d done this over a hundred times, which they probably had. They also spoke like friends. I didn’t know Visser Three had any friends.

<Of course. Be well, and Glory to the Yeerk Empire. Though I do not expect to find enemy blood to spill, let it be spilled by the Butcher,> said the Visser.

Sethis smiled a nasty little smile. “Indeed, Visser. Let us commence.”

So Visser Three’s friend was some kind of monster. That explained it.

Visser Three closed communications and within two seconds was barking orders again. <High-Control, you know the circuit. Complete it. High-Tactics, scan for any incoming signals per patrol circuit protocols. If we encounter hostiles, enter attack position with Executioner. I will call positions this time, with support from the gunners.>

“Ralnit-ke veerha Sub-Visser phaleni Visser? Tsa, tsa,” said a casual-sounding Human-Controller sitting at one of the consoles. I realized that it was the blonde guy from earlier, the one that Dekket had been talking to. Renak. That was the Yeerk's name. He was right next to him, at the nearest station. He was speaking pretty quietly to him. Problem was, I heard him. So the Visser heard him too.

Now, I have to point out here that I have no idea what this guy said. It could have been something really rude. What I do know is that Visser Three, less than five seconds later, had come down from his console and sliced open Renak's hand. My eyes widened.

Renak cried out and held onto his bleeding hand, wincing an eye shut. I couldn’t see exactly what damage had been done, but it looked bad. He was holding something extra in his palm. Maybe a finger. Dekket immediately stood up and grasped Renak's shoulder, steadying him. Renak was holding it together weirdly well.

"Visser heke,” said Renak, bowing his head. It sounded like he could have been saying “Thank you.” After getting mangled hideously.

<Get off the bridge. You’re lucky I didn’t take it off,> the Visser hissed.

Renak saluted weakly with just his working hand, covering the wounded hand so he could still hold it by the front, and got out of there fast.

Dekket looked with fear at the door and said something that sounded like he was asking for something.

<No, you fool, I need you here! Without Renak we’ll have to call positions alone, with just Illim and Carger in the bay,> Visser Three said, like he wasn’t the one who had cut Renak open on the bridge himself. Like it was all Renak’s fault he wasn’t there.

Dekket said something else, and the Visser’s eyes narrowed.

<However unlikely it is, we cannot take the chance,> said the Visser. He then said, <Commence the patrol; We have been delayed by this nonsense long enough.>

Everyone got to work in a hurry, and pretty soon the ship was moving again. A boiling kernel of anger rose in my chest. How could he keep treating his own people like this? These soldiers lived in constant fear of him. Even Yeerks probably deserved better. I glared at him. I couldn’t help it.

<They would do the same to me if they were in my place,> the Visser said to me, probably in private thought-speech. <Don’t act as if you can judge me. Why is it that someone always has to make a snide remark or question my orders?>

So, the Visser would maim his own gunner for whispering under his breath, but he felt like he had to justify himself to me. Me! It was insane. Infuriating.

There was an unknown vulnerability in a cruel and unforgiving monster, and I didn’t know whether it would help me escape or trap me here forever.
---

The Visser eventually got bored of having me in the bridge because the patrol was uneventful. All that violence and posturing in front of that Sethis guy for nothing, was the thought that popped into my head. So he had his guards send me back to my cell, or room or whatever, and let me free of my restraints. The guards were wary. They’d picked up on the Visser’s special treatment of me.

Once I got there, I wrote the second entry and then tried to puzzle it out. Visser Three wasn’t willing to hurt me. He was weirdly calm in front of me. He wanted to explain himself, show me what he loved. He wanted me to like him, but he didn’t care if his men did.

Maybe he really did want to be my father, but it was weird. Yeerks didn’t survive the act of reproduction. There were no living Yeerk parents. And Visser Three was the last Yeerk who would ever go native. I sighed. It was no use. I still didn’t have enough information to figure it out.

I set my mind on other things. For example: was there anything I’d seen that could lead to a way out when we returned to Earth? I thought of at least one thing, but I’m not going to tell anyone what it was.
-
I tried to take a nap afterward (there was nothing else to do), but it got interrupted. I woke up to red lights and an alarm blaring. I stood up, looking around quickly. The ship was under attack? When had that happened?

I waved my hand in front of the door panel. It didn’t open this time, probably because there was no one on the other side to come get me. That was bad. Very bad.

I started pacing in circles, only for the floor to shudder. I stumbled backwards and slid onto my butt. The ship had tipped backward and gravity hadn’t adjusted. We must have taken a hit, I thought as I stood back up. Ohhh no no no. …wait. My thoughts stopped racing. Wait, this is fine.

If Visser Three got shot down, that would slow down the Yeerk invasion of Earth. Any new Visser would know even less about the Andalite resistance than he did and would have to take time to get the lay of the land. Granted, we knew how this Visser operated, so a new one could spell doom for us. But the Visser's death - and mine - would still solve the problem I faced.

I felt the ship shudder again and tried to keep my balance. I closed my eyes, calmed my racing heart, and waited to see if the ship would survive or fall. But I didn’t have long to wait before something happened.

I heard the door slide open. There was a low growl coming from outside it. I turned, opening my eyes.

There was what looked like a huge, hairless black dog - spider dog - standing outside my door. I saw its front paws and its head. Its eight eyes burned with green acid. Saliva pooled in its mouth. I was a little surprised by its sudden appearance, but I knew who if not what it was. “…get out, right?” I said.

<Yes. Go,> Visser Three insisted.

He wasn't going to give me a choice. I went out the door after the creature backed out. This thing wasn’t as big as one of his usual rogues’ gallery, but it looked tough. I could see fire in the hallway. People were dead, or at least unconscious. I saw the ship’s automatic coolant and sealing systems try to deal with the fire. It sizzled as the wall melted to contain and put it out.

“What the –“ I started.

<There is no time. We will attempt to preserve the ship, but I need to get you to the hangar just in case an evacuation is necessary,> said Visser Three.

The dog-spider nightmare monster physically shoved me forward with its nose and I started heading down the hall with him. I figured he’d pick me up if I didn’t.

I started to see why Visser Three would morph the further we got on the way toward the dropshaft. Whatever the soldiers were fighting was not Andalite, or Yeerk for that matter, and it had boarded the Blade ship. There was strange, grey-black goo attached to some of the walls of the ship. Whether it was dead or alive I didn’t know, but it wasn’t moving. It coated the arms, faces, and uniforms of fallen soldiers, too.

I doubted the Yeerks knew that much more about this than I did. I looked at the Visser, hoping he would give me some kind of answer. He shook his huge monster head. <We don’t know yet,> he said. <We’ve brought down the enemy craft, but there is damage and interference throughout the ship. My soldiers have split into teams to deal with the incursions, on my orders.>

“You must not be in a part of space you know,” I said.

<We are. It’s these people that are unknown! The ships looked Yeerk, but their weapons and assault caught us by surprise. Do the Andalite bandits - > The Visser didn’t get to finish his thought.

The gunk-coated wall in front of us, you see, had lunged sharp, pointed tendrils of matter at us. We’d missed a creature standing in front of it, hidden by its color. The Visser slammed me backward with his large, hairy back legs as hard as he could. I cried out and fell onto my back.

And so Visser Three, the evil slug who abused his own men and once burned innocent people alive before our very eyes, was impaled in the stomach while trying to save my life.

(To be continued)

Chapter Text

(continued from Chapter Four)

For a couple of seconds I couldn’t even process what had just happened. I felt my own body dodge out of the way, shift out of alignment with the Visser’s spider morph, but it was unconscious. As I stared, I cocked my head, as if paying closer attention to what I was seeing would make it make sense. But it didn’t.

Visser Three was impaled by a black tendril more than a foot long, emerging from a rapidly congealing batch of black, viscous liquid. It seemed to be taking an Andalite-like form – four legs and a nasty tail. The tendrils emerged from where its arms should be, and the four open holes where the Andalite’s “eyes” should be gleamed, the edges of the ship’s red emergency lights shining right through them.

Visser Three’s spider dog looked at me, its beady eyes seeming almost desperate. <Run, you fool, run…Don’t waste yourself on heroics again… Aaarrrrgghhhhh!> I heard the howl of the Visser’s pain in my head and clasped my hands to my ears. His agony was nearly on the edge of being felt. Just like my father’s had been that night.

He didn’t need to tell me twice. I started running for the dropshaft as fast as I possibly could. I wasn’t athletic. I never had been. Fear gives you speed, though. A lot. And I had run from more bullies than I could count.

I heard a crash from behind me and I nearly turned around. I saw it out of the corner of my eye. The horrible black thing that had probably killed Visser Three. Its tendrils whipped the air just behind me. I ran faster, nearly stumbling on my own shoelaces in my hurry to reach the dropshaft.

CRASH! A tendril slammed into the ground right where I had been, cracking the floor. I yelped in surprise before skidding in a single motion down the corridor.

I could see the dropshaft. It was right in front of me! All I had to do was reach it.

Unfortunately Black, Four-Legged, and Ugly was within firing range. My lungs burned, but its hooves kept clattering through the hall after me.

CRASH! This time I jumped ahead and didn’t stumble, but the tip of the tentacle still nearly nicked my shoelace. If I stopped for even a second, I was dead.

Hangar, hangar, hangar! I thought in a hurry, preparing myself to jump into the dropshaft.

Suddenly, the sound of Dracon fire blazed just behind me.

TSEEW! TSEEW! TSEEW!

I turned around momentarily and saw it. Hork-Bajir and Human-Controllers firing sizzling blasts of red energy for the creature, creating holes in its chest and sides. The creature bellowed as one of its tendrils dropped to the floor. It lunged its remaining tentacles at its attackers, and its tail blade extended, impossibly far from its back, to slice at the hand of the Human-Controller who had hit it. The Human-Controller screamed and backed behind their fellow soldiers, who kept trying to push it back.

I didn’t have time to stick around. I leaped into the dropshaft, and as I floated thought desperately: Hangar hangar HANGAR!

I was in luck. The dropshaft’s systems were still working fine and sent me spiraling down and south, a floating bullet headed right towards the hangar bay. My heart was beating so loud I could still hear it in my chest. I looked toward where I had come from but saw no sign of either the Yeerks or the monster. The sound and sight of the alarm blared even in this gravity-less cavern.

My feet hit the cold metal of the hangar’s entranceway, and my heart rate showed no signs of slowing down. There was less Dracon fire here, but you could definitely still hear it off in the distance. I walked slowly to the hangar bay doors and saw them. Yeerk soldiers, embattled, guarding the entryway, arms and legs and faces marked with black goo. Not as much. They’d confronted the creatures and survived.

I wondered about something, there in that hallway. I wondered why I had been following Visser Three’s instructions. Why I was headed to the hangar bay. There had to be escape pods on other floors, aren’t there? I thought. Or something. Maybe a Bug fighter. The Yeerk military was in total disarray. I could have stolen away and tried to tell the ship to head back to Earth. Those coordinates had to be in there; These couldn’t be as simple as lifeboats. If I survived, it would take weeks before anyone came back for me. Long enough to tell the Andalites to go to a different meadow, pack up their stuff. If the Visser was dead, maybe no one would try and come back for me.

It was enough time. In fact, it was the only chance I’d had at any point during my captivity.

Yet I couldn’t get Visser Three’s face out of my head. The way that thing he’d become had looked at me, like I was the only thing on the whole ship whose life he cared about. “Don’t waste yourself on heroics again.” I wondered who he had really been talking about in that moment. Who he had seen in my place.

…I was pretty sure that I knew. And that thought confused and disturbed me.

I shook my head. It didn’t matter. I turned to head back up the dropshaft to a different floor. That was, of course, the exact moment when the guards in front of the hangar bay doors spotted me. I muttered some mean human swear words under my breath.

“Human,” said the nearest soldier.

Here it comes, I thought, as the soldier walked toward me. Idiot. Idiot idiot idiot. I got ready to put my hands up. If I lunged at him, I’d be dead before I could cross the distance.

The soldier sighed. “Will you come willingly?”

“I…” I wasn’t sure how to answer that, but the soldier continued.

“When the attack began, we were ordered to protect you by Visser Three himself if you came here. No one disobeys Visser Three,” he said. “Your permanent body is underage and unable to morph. You may even actually be a human child, as he believes, although this makes your morphing failure unexplainable. Whatever you are, human or Andalite, we do not doubt that you could fight once. But you do not have the skills necessary to fight as you are. If the worst occurs, we will give you a Dracon, but that is not ideal. Will you come willingly?”

His words made me feel strange, but I understood. Visser Three had been trying yet again to do whatever he could to protect me from harm. I was beginning to accept it.

I nodded. “Fine.”

The soldier nodded. He pressed a few buttons on the outside of the door and gestured for his head for me to walk into the hangar. I walked inside.

The Yeerks were doing a pretty good job of turning the hangar bay into a temporary base camp. They’d set up makeshift tables using supplies from the Bug fighters and were treating wounded soldiers in the central area just above the tractor beam. The ship’s crew was in poor shape. Broken limbs or horns, chest wounds, and a ton of that awful black goop. The Yeerks were taking care to remove every trace of it and either vaporize or collect it for scientific research.

The soldiers led me over to the makeshift treatment facility, where I was greeted by, of all things, a Taxxon in a green coat. I shuddered.

“I’m nnnnot goooiinngg to biiittte,” said the Taxxon in bizarrely articulate if drawn-out English.

“S-Sure you’re not,” I said, teeth chattering. I wasn’t afraid to die, but getting eaten alive wasn’t high on my list of ways to go, whether by Taxxon or shapeshifting goo monster.

The Taxxon asked me to lay down in what looked like a makeshift Star Trek scanning device, which I did. Holoscreens popped up around the Taxxon, which they clicked through with incredible speed. I had to hand it to the creepy worm; They were more dexterous than they looked.

The Taxxon looked back at me and said, “Minooorr abbrrassssssionnsssss. Nothhhing sssseriousss.”

I choked out a laugh. I couldn’t believe the absurdity of what was happening. “Great. Fantastic.”

I got up out of the scanning device, and the Taxxon – I don’t know how to explain it – looked at me with concern. Or at least I thought it was that. “Donnn’t rrrrun yourrsssssssself into thhheee tunneeelssss too deep, yessss?”

“You mean…don’t push myself too hard?” I said.

“Yessssss,” said the Taxxon.

I threw up my hands. “I’ll try not to, Mr. Taxxon Doctor. I’ll try not to.”

I sat down on one of the uncomfortable Hork-Bajir sized chairs they’d dragged over and looked around. There were people laying in beds, wincing or crying out in pain. Taxxon Doctor and his subordinates were attending to each person dutifully, asking them questions and manipulating medical instruments and drones. There was that guy Dekket again, who was trying to pull the whole operation into order, barking out orders or calmly directing incoming soldiers. Engineers rushed from one side of the hangar bay to the other, taking to the dropshafts to deal with higher floor problems or performing Bug fighter maintenance just in case. Human-Controllers leaned on each others’ shoulders and chattered with their fellows, making quick cross-armed salutes.

I knew what I was thinking when I saw it, but I didn’t want to admit I was thinking about it. Then Renak, the one missing his thumb, came over. He’d bandaged it and sat down next to me.

“I know English; It’s fine. This guy’s family is from Cali themselves,” Renak said. “I just don’t like it much. Your language is terrible. It just sounds bad.”

I laughed, a bit bitterly. “Maybe it does. I never thought of that.”

“We’re actually all a little bilingual in it since base camp was established out there,” said Renak. “It pays to know it since you can direct more people around that way.”

“I guess it does make it easier to order your slaves around,” I hissed.

“Yeah,” said Renak, not skipping a beat or even reacting.

I scowled. “…how do you even…”

“How do I justify it? It’s a war, kid,” said Renak. “Your Andalite friends want to kill us. They want to kill us so hard they have been chasing us across space for hundreds of light years, everywhere we go. We do what we have to do to survive.”

“By stealing the bodies of others,” I said. “Sure the Andalites did chase you, but you started this! You had hosts on your own world, and then you got greedy and slaughtered the people trying to help you! Stole Andalite ships!"

“Is that what you think happened?” mused Renak.

“Of course a Yeerk would say it didn’t,” I scoffed.

“I won’t deny that we killed them good; That’s a matter of public record. Not surprised they told you. But did you ever ask yourself why we did it?” Renak asked, shrugging.

“What…What do you mean?” I asked, warily.

“Why we slaughtered them. We didn’t have to; We could’ve just killed them regular. See, soldiers are usually on the up-and-up, but that doesn’t mean everyone on an expedition team is,” said Renak. “Prince Seerow was kind and gentle, but not all his scientists shared his ‘Kindness,’ eh?”

I frowned. “So, you Yeerks…You believe something different about the way it happened than what the Andalites told me.”

“Course we do!” said Renak with a grin. Something about this Yeerk bothered me. He was so casual, but it…it was like it was a mask. He was different from Dekket or the Taxxon Doctor. “Doesn’t mean it’s true, but we believe it. Every Empire needs its propaganda. Ask Visser Three to tell you the story sometime. He’s taken quite the shine to you.”

Renak then got up and left me alone, called away by his duties. It didn’t matter to me what the Yeerks thought. It didn’t change anything. The Yeerks still wanted to enslave the entire human race!

Still…it was starting to matter to me that they were people. And right now, they were people who were in big, big trouble. Whatever had just happened hadn’t been expected, and had done a lot of damage to the ship. Was Visser Three prepared to handle this? I wondered whether he was even alive.

That question was answered very suddenly. The doors to the hangar bay slid open, revealing a staggering Visser Three, demorphed but with huge portions of his fur coated in black ichor. His main eyes were unsteady, and his breathing was visible and heavy.

The Visser’s soldiers ran to him, saluting, but the Visser didn’t seem to notice them except to allow them to support his arms and back. His main eyes scanned the room blearily, and then settled on me.

I looked back at him, uneasily. He must have been glad I was here. Glad, I now thought, that his proxy for Elfangor was still around.

<Good,> he murmured.

His eyes fluttered shut, and his soldiers struggled to support his weight.

Alloran was unconscious now, but both he and the Visser were still very much alive.

Chapter Text

Chapter Six

If you take nothing else away from any of this record, take this away:

Renak is a crook. He’s dangerous and you should know that.

He seems like he’s one of your favorites, maybe because Dekket likes him, but whatever he wants with you and the Invidion can’t be good for you.

I don’t know why I’m telling you this. Maybe what you said is getting under my skin. I’ve been too honest on here. Dangerously honest.

Or maybe it’s because whatever he is bothers me even more than your war of cruelty and bloodshed. He’s not like you or Visser One. The Devil you know…Of course, you don’t even know who the Devil is.

Ah well. I left off in the hangar bay. That’s where we had that conversation.
-
Visser Three took a long time to wake up, almost as long as the ship took to settle. It seemed like the Blade ship had fought off its strange invaders, but the Yeerks were pretty battered, and also spooked. I watched their soldiers shudder, explaining in Galard or Yeerkish what they saw with trembling hands and claws. Cots and blankets were being laid out in the enormous room, different from the medical beds. Apparently a lot of the crew quarters were damaged, and so many people were sleeping here while the ship was cleared out. From what few snatches of English there were, I worked out that the Red Shroud – the Pool ship – had also been attacked and was struggling too. The Invidion – which was the Blade ship’s name at the moment (it changed names a lot) – had been sending people over there for a while now. Some to their deaths. Still, they’d clearly been getting more organized over the last several hours.

At some point a Hork-Bajir Controller handed me a tablet and commanded me to write, saying “Enjoy afarat fit Visser Three.”

“Wait – Wait, is he awake?” I asked.

The Hork-Bajir nodded. “Writing Visser nara-ke. Useless van helps.”

I couldn’t help but laugh. So the Visser liked my writing, did he? It would help with his recovery if I talked at him? I looked at the tablet and sighed, beginning to write. I had a lot to cover. And a lot to rant about.
-
Night on a ship doesn’t work like night on Earth. There’s no sign of a time difference, no context clues you can use to figure out when anything is happening. I didn’t know Galard, either, so if the time was anywhere, I still wasn’t able to tell when it was. How did the Yeerks decide what time it was in space with no Sun around? “Spaceship Standard Time?”

I’d gotten what I felt like were a couple naps since I’d gotten here (probably they were longer), stewing in my own misery, but I felt the weariness in every part of my body. I had to get real sleep. Luckily, I wasn’t alone in that. The Yeerks around me were bedding down too, switching out their guard duties with other Yeerks who looked if anything just as exhausted, their usual rhythms destroyed by the attack.

I found myself being hustled onto a cot by an attentive Human-Controller, who told me I was “required to sleep,” but it wasn’t hard. I was out within minutes of my head hitting the pillow.

I had normal dreams for the first time in a long while. Let’s just say there’s a reason my dreams have been abnormal up until now. Still, most of these new dreams were vivid nightmares, mixtures of what I’d seen. Renak’s missing thumb morphing into a horrible black monster with holes for eyes. DeGroot inviting me into his office, but instead of a chair there was just a sheer drop into outer space. And - worst of all - Visser Three, being impaled to save my life.

When I awoke, everyone else was still asleep. They’d darkened the hangar bay a bit to help the tired humans get there faster, but the stairs and dropshafts were still lit up, and I’m sure the ship’s cameras could still see us. I groaned and sat up on the cot. These nighttime awakenings used to happen to me a lot.

I got startled when I saw him. Visser Three, standing there at a wall, looking out a window he’d opened up in the hangar. His posture wasn’t his usual self-assured arrogance. His tail blade dipped a little, and his arms fell at his sides.

I got quietly up from the cot, careful not to wake any of the people next to me, and walked up to Visser Three. He saw me coming from a good distance away, his right stalk eye tracking me, but didn’t move a muscle. I came up next to him and looked out at the stars with him.

It turned out he wasn’t just watching the stars. Outside the hangar was the side of the Pool ship. Crawling all over it were these four-legged, four-armed white machines, different from anything I’d seen the Yeerk Empire produce so far except for how much they looked like spiders. The machines were using torches, tiny claw-like precise hands, and other tools to repair the jagged rips and holes on the Pool ship. The Pool ship was big enough that they could’ve been manned craft, for all I knew, but they were uncannily efficient.

<Karatha,> said Visser Three, like he knew what I was thinking. <Eight-legged, four-armed insects of our world. They are one of the six classes of insect species that live there. Our world is much more refined. Simpler.>

“Yeah, I’d heard. And you want to make Earth like that. Destroy everything on it except what feeds us,” I said glumly.

<I actually am not certain I want to,> he said, not taking the bait this time. <If I retain control of the planet myself, I would create nature reserves, I believe. Places where the beautiful, deadly creatures of your world would thrive and hunt, where you couldn’t see the sky through the canopy of green leaves and rich brown earth.> The way that he talked about it reminded me of something I’d learned about Yeerks, but I can’t talk about it much here.

I laughed a little. “You’d seriously go against prime directive just so you could have a weird little nature reserve full of morphs?”

<Why yes, I believe so,> he said, his thoughts full of mirth, for just a moment.

It didn’t last.

I sighed and shrugged. It took about a minute for the words to come. “So…why’d you do it?” I asked. “I…I remembered what you said. That it’s all got something to do with my dead Dad. The Dad that you murdered in the first place.”

Visser Three fell silent. I guess he had to think about what he was going to say next too. <Your father was…I fought him many, many times. He was admirable. Brave. Prone to impulsive stratagems with little thought behind them that still worked. He did not have what you would call brute strength, at any point in his career. Rather, he was…small, precise…and attractive.>

I coughed. “Excuse me?” He couldn’t have meant what I thought he did.

<You really think that my ideal Andalite was an aging, bitter, tired War-Prince who hated my people with everything he had for - among many other things - a blow dealt that I was not even born for?> the Visser chided. <No, of course not. I was young once too, Tobias. Even if I do rather enjoy Alloran’s company now.>

I shivered. So he didn’t mean that. He meant something worse. “Infestation. You wanted to infest my father.”

<Yes. I even asked him if he would surrender when we first met,> said Visser Three. <He refused me, of course, but I simply had to try. Of course, he became “Beast Elfangor” in the end, bloodthirsty winner of a thousand battles against our people. I had to kill him, or I would appear weak.>

I backed up a few steps. Understanding was slowly dawning on me. “So…This…What this is about, you want to…But you already have a host.”

<I despise the current slow invasion, where we attempt to sit humans down and persuade them through lies and pretty words to become our slaves. It’s a waste of time. I dislike your kind, but it’s a bit of an insult to you, even still. You were born of warriors, weren’t you?> He shrugged. <And yet a truly willing host, one who fully rejects their own people to join another…How could that not be delicious, desirable?>

Disgust welled up inside me. I could practically feel the Visser’s greed. He wanted and would have both of us, in his mind. The son of his enemy as his confidant and his unwilling Andalite slave. Alloran. The Andalite who had lost more than almost anyone else in the war.

“You sick freak!” I cried out. “You risked your life for – for some twisted fantasy of getting to have your cake and eat it too?! Of getting to control what was left of my father?! You’re psychotic! Insane!”

<Is it really so sick to want something to care about, human?> he hissed, his voice simmering. <To try and cling to the few things that matter in a cold, empty void that has done very little besides reject you?>

“You can’t protect something by controlling it!” I insisted. What popped into my head was an image of a bird, at that moment. A beautiful predatory bird from Earth, flying free. “It will kill it! Suffocate it!”

<I have no other choice!> he roared.

We glared at each other, there in the dark. I saw his lungs draw in deep breaths in both his upper and lower body. <Sympathy with a subject species is prohibited by law in the Yeerk Empire. I have managed thus far by being utterly unimpeachable. Relentless in my dedication to the Empire. So dedicated and so clear in purpose that no one would ever believe that I have…>

“Feelings?” I scoffed.

<I am Visser Three. I kill any fool who defies me. I make an example of the incompetent and selfish. I have no tolerance, no love for traitors and weaklings! ...And I must continue to be so, forever and ever.>

He looked so tired then. So exhausted from living up to expectations. And I don’t know exactly why, but I felt like I understood something more about him then. He’d never looked like that when he fought me and the Andalites. He’d always hidden it behind this…mask of self-interest and pettiness and hatred. And he really was all of those things! He was greedy and petty and selfish! The mask wasn’t a lie. But that didn’t mean it wasn’t hiding something.

My anger started to die out. Even though I wanted it to stay forever. Even though I had every reason to be furious with him.

I walked closer to him. I crossed my arms. “Ever thought about going soft, Visser? I had to go hard as a sacrifice in this war. Parts of it I loved.” The glory of flight, of freedom, of being greater than a scared kid with a family that didn’t want him. Escaping into the stratosphere with only the clouds as my witness. “Parts of it I hated.” Doing ugly things to survive, the eyes of someone I cared about when she looked at mine, the distance from the rest of humanity…If I’ve ever been fully human at all. “I don’t think I recommend it.”

The Visser looked frustrated. He refused to face me directly, instead gazing at me with his stalk eyes. Eventually he said, <…and what do you think would happen to me if I did? I have many, many enemies. Too many to count. The moment I show weakness – that I attach to anything – it will be used against me.>

“But aren’t you part of the reason that’s true?” I asked, knowing the answer. “Isn’t it like that because you refuse to trust anything you don’t control?”

The Visser’s silence, his hard gaze at the stars before us, seemed to be his answer.

I nodded. I pointed back at my cot. “I’m…I’m gonna go back. I was just…I came by because I was wondering…You know, how you were doing. After you…almost died.” Almost died so that you could continue to believe in a world where it was possible for the son of Elfangor to become your willing slave, I thought.

The Visser turned his main eyes to me. <We currently have many problems onboard the ship. And tomorrow, we must solve them.>

That was clearly the end of this little conversation. I nodded, returned back to my cot, and drifted back into an uneasy sleep.
-
The next day on, everyone in the hangar bay was called over to the center to hear from Visser Three. He showed no signs at all of the melancholy that had gripped him last night. He couldn’t from his perspective, I supposed. That was what he’d told me, after all.

That weird, intense fear that he made come out of him was back in full force, like it had never left. He’d sharpened it to an attention-grabbing point this time.

Falling back on your habits, Visser, I thought. You can’t let anyone get close.

<I want a full report of the damages, Ertran,> he snapped, speaking to a tall, ordinary-looking man with dirty blonde hair, that looked almost like my own. He could've passed as my father, if we didn't all know my father was dead.

Ertran explained, luckily in English, “Visser, the Red Shroud has sustained significant damage on the port side of the vessel, particularly close to the port engine, which is out of commission. Life support is intact, but the unknown lifeform seeped in through the docks. Casualties among Red Shroud crew members number around twenty-six personnel from the second shift, whose bodies had to be ejected lest the lifeform contaminate the living. Lifeform clearance has been slow going –“ He was interrupted.

<How soon can it be completed?> the Visser asked, sounding annoyed.

"Within the next three hours," said Ertran, sounding a bit worried that the Visser would attack him over this.

<Too long. Cut it down to two hours,> spat the Visser. <We have to fix the damage to the Shroud before we travel to Amara. We don’t want to explain to Sarher what happened until we get the ship out of this wretched state!>

I had never heard the name “Amara” before. That must’ve been where we were going. It sounded like the Visser wanted to keep up appearances there. Make it not look as bad as it actually was.

“But what happens if we can’t solve it ourselves?” asked Ertran, crossing his arms. “We’ve conducted full interviews of all survivors on both the Invidion and the Shroud, of course. We understand some of the substance’s characteristics, but not who the enemy is or what their weapon truly is. We might need to contact outposts to see if anyone has encountered them before.”

<For now I want this situation kept within the fleet,> the Visser said. <We’ll want to have as much information as possible before we bring it to Sarher or to any local Sub-Vissers along our route, so that we do not look as if we were caught unprepared. We will also want memory dumps so that we can alter them and then report the local hazard to the Council of Thirteen…eventually.>

“Understood, Visser,” said Ertran, saluting in that way Yeerks did.

It was surprising. Ertran had questioned Visser Three to some extent, and he was still alive. I wondered who this guy was. Some kind of engineer?

The next person to approach was a tall, imposing Hork-Bajir carrying a lethal-looking rifle-like Dracon beam. Something about this guy seemed familiar, but I couldn’t place what. I mean, you’ve gotta understand, most Hork-Bajir look the same to humans, but I’ve seen more of them than the average person. And whatever it was that was familiar about him, it sent a chill down my spine.

The Hork-Bajir saluted. "Visser. The personnel shortages put us in a difficult situation. Thirteen people can crew each Invidion shift, but many Invidion crew members also died during the attack. We may have enough for only two shifts."

<Ugh, I imagined as much,> groaned the Visser, rubbing his temple. <Siren, I believe the only thing to do here is going to be to assign some of your remaining soldiers to third shift. Almost all of you have enough crossover skills to manage, even if it isn’t ideal. We need both ships as close to fully crewed at all times as we can get.>

Dekket came forward next, with what seemed to be a much more hopeful report about how they had almost cleared the Invidion’s living quarters and hallways of black slime. That got a sigh of relief from the entire ship, because it meant that everybody could finally go back to their rooms and duties. Taxxon Doctor and another member of the med team said something, and Dekket told them that the medical bay was clear, too.

While all this was going on, nobody was paying that much attention to me. I was still the Yeerkless human on a ship full of them, but they had way bigger things to worry about. Which was probably why I saw him. Renak.

Renak wasn’t standing in the middle of the rest of the group. He wasn’t talking to anyone there. Instead, he was holding his hand to the side of his head and speaking quietly.

I heard Renak as I was walking past him. I didn’t exactly know what he was saying, since he really doesn’t like to use English much. But here is what I think I got out of him:

“Makata-ke ereta Red Shroud, arosoka Invidion, afa tera theral Red Shroud ilu teat Visser Three. Black Hand maka-ne solha nara-ke ilu."

Renak wasn’t acting like his usual goofy self when he said this, by the way. He was super serious and intense. It bothered me. It still does. And I've got no idea what "Black Hand" means.

He wasn’t the one who saw me, however. No, that honor goes to the guards at the dropshaft, who brought me back to Visser Three once they realized I’d wandered off from the main group.

Visser Three faced me when we’d returned, the guards holding onto my arms tightly. <So. You thought you would just wander off and no one would notice?>

“Yeah, I was kind of hoping as much,” I said, giving him an uneasy grin.

Visser Three gave me this…look that read pretty clearly as “After everything we talked about last night?” I wanted to say “Yeah, Visser, after all that I am even more determined to never let you near me,” but I didn’t. I just shrugged. I still needed time to process what I felt, and my feelings didn’t change a thing.

They didn’t close the chasm between one of the few people who had fought for the human race and the person – for that was unfortunately what he was – who wanted to enslave it.

<Well, I won’t allow you to get free of me quite so easily,> he said. <In fact, I could use a pair of eyes untainted by knowledge of either ship, that can see what we do not. So, you and I are going to the Red Shroud. We will see if we can solve any part of this mystery…together.>

Chapter Text

I had to hand it to Dekket: the crew quarters really were completely clear of black goop. I didn’t see a single speck of gunk as the guards forced me back towards my room, or cell, or whatever you want to call it. When we got there and the guards keyed the door open, I saw something on the bed.

It was laid out neatly, as if by a Yeerk maid service. It was in nearly all black, but with red lining near the opening of the jacket, collar, and cuffs. There were these little metal futuristic space man shoulder pads that looked kind of cool. It would have been awesome if I didn’t know exactly what it was. It was a Yeerk uniform. The kind of uniform worn by Visser Three’s men.

“No way,” I protested.

“Makarat sit dirty,” one of the guards hissed. “Change. Orders.”

I knew he was right, but I still hated the idea. “I don’t care!” I cried. “They’re my clothes! I am not one of you!”

The guard let out a huff-huff-huff Hork-Bajir laugh. Hearing it was not comforting. “Change not, solha kera for you.”

Of course I had no choice. “But why?” I insisted. “I’m a prisoner.”

“Dirty. Orders,” the Hork-Bajir Controller repeated again. “Red Shroud kera-vathan normal not, too. Hraka van.” He shook his head.

I was losing the ability to make sense of the Hork-Bajir pidgin at that level, but I thought I got what he was trying to say. Visser Three probably wanted to pass me off as one of his soldiers on the Red Shroud. I guess I did agree to go along with his nonsense, I thought. At least until I can set up a better escape attempt. Not happening right now.

I sighed. “Fine. Get out and I’ll change.”

The Hork-Bajir nodded and left the room, leaving me inside with the object of my disgust. I stared at it. I knew I had no choice, but it felt like it was a step towards being stuck here for good. As if working with the Visser to solve this problem – any problem – would slowly but surely, like a pond filling with rainwater, lead to me becoming his. It wasn’t rational. I knew it wasn’t. But there it was.

Still, I pulled on the black shirt, the pants, and the black jacket, buttoning it from the side. I stared at myself as the finished product, a picture-perfect Yeerk soldier. I wanted to puke.

The Hork-Bajir Controller returned. He looked me up and down, and said, “Look good.”

I glared at him. “Let’s just go.”

The guard kept his hand on my upper arm the whole time as we went back down the hallway towards the hangar. Just because I was dressed like a soldier didn’t mean I really was one. I felt like a sack of potatoes being hauled around between shipping depots.

When we returned there was a Bug fighter ready to go in the hangar bay. I don’t know how to explain “ready to go” in a hangar with other fighters in it, exactly. It was just set apart from the others and facing a port in the hangar wall. It had a red streak going across the side of it, which I guessed meant that it was Yeerk Air Force One.

Visser Three was there of course. His stalk eye was turned behind him to look at us. <I approve.>

“I look like a Nazi,” I complained.

<I am told by Iniss that I would enjoy having that effect on humans,> Visser Three said, stepping up onto the open hatch and into the Bug Fighter.

“Of course you would,” I said, sighing as I was led into the fighter myself by my Hork-Bajir babysitter.

I heard the Taxxon driver exchange a bit of incoherent hissing with another Taxxon after I sat down, and then heard a string of clipped Galard or Yeerkish over the intercom. “Arec-ke YNRR Makhirata-na kira Invidion teat kel…” You get the idea. I had no clue. The only thing I’d figured out so far was that the suffix “-ke” was on the verb and that “teo” was probably the root word for “to be.” I should’ve paid more attention in English class.

It wasn’t too long before the Bug fighter left the Blade ship’s hangar, however, shooting off out of a round port on the ship’s side and into space. I couldn’t help but grin at the speed, the smoothness. It was just like it was with the Blade ship. It was exciting, okay?

The Visser noticed my grin and smiled back, in that way Andalites do with just their eyes. I sighed. I didn’t do it to make him happy.

It was weird, traveling that short distance between the Blade ship and the Red Shroud. The Blade ship had been lit up, active, filled with recovering soldiers. Even though I was sure the Pool ship was too, half the lights on the big round bulb were dead. The damage Ertran had mentioned was really obvious. Those Karatha spider things were swarming all over the leg-like engine. Each one narrowly avoided bumping into the others as it made adjustments or sealed up a breach. The black gunk was also nowhere near being cleared off that side of hull.

It all felt…I don’t know, ominous. Like something was waiting for us, crouched inside that ship. I shivered.

We came in along the lit-up side of the ship, sliding into the Pool ship’s enormous hangar through a rectangular slit in the wall. A group of harried-looking Gedd-Controllers in brown uniforms waved us down, directing us to land in an open parking space. It was just as massive in here as I remembered, only there were a lot fewer uniformed soldiers lined up.

Visser Three wasted no time. Within two seconds he was down the ramp, and the guards were hassling me into following him. Coming up to the Visser, flanked by Hork-Bajir, was a Controller of a species I had never seen before.

The alien was shorter than me, which was funny because I wasn’t that tall. He looked almost like an orange and blue gecko standing on four legs, with two shorter arms where they would be on a human. His tail trailed behind him, turning more blue-green than orange. He had two dishpan-sized eyes with striking, star-like pupils, both of which were pointed first at the Visser and then at me.

“Visser esserek, silha Kandrona rajei-ke eil narak-ke,” the little gecko man said, performing the Yeerk salute. Something about the gecko man’s voice sounded slimy or slippery, but for all I knew maybe they all sounded like that.

<And to you as well, Littran Seven-Nine-One,> Visser Three said. <Have you been practicing your English? My associate is quite fluent.>

Littran laughed, a weird gurgling sound. “I have been doing my best, Visser.”

Littran kept up with the Visser and I despite how short he was. Those little legs were faster than they look. He kept wringing his hands, in a gesture I swore was obsequious even though the mannerisms couldn’t be the same ones cross-species.

“Human-yeerkthena aka teis-ke?” asked Littran, looking at me again. Probably “Who is the human-Controller?”

<An associate, as I said,> said the Visser. <Get to the report, Littran. In English, just to prove you truly have been practicing.>

The alien squirmed. Clearly he hadn’t practiced as much as he would have liked.

“Well, Visser, progress…Yes, progress on the…on the engine is…going ahead, but we’re…we are…There are – Ghhhkk!”

Visser Three had pressed his tail blade to Littran’s throat. <You have not been “doing your best,” Littran. Lie to me again and I will find a different Sub-Visser to manage the Red Shroud.>

“Visser nakira mea,” Littran sputtered.

Visser Three withdrew his blade. <Give. Your. Report.>

Littran then started again in Yeerkish or Galard, and Visser Three began privately translating for me. <He says that progress has been made on repairing the Red Shroud’s broken engine, but there are complications. The engineers have been able to use their Karatha to fix the tears they can reach, but it has been very difficult to remove the black substance from the engine. More difficult than it was for Dekket on the Invidion, and there are other problems. The black substance appears to be able to command the ship to act, sometimes in dangerous ways for the crew. The gravity turns off at a critical repair juncture, sending crew members floating up toward the ceiling. The lights cut in a crowded or still-uncleared corridor, confusing the teams sent in.>

<That’s a mess. No wonder progress is so slow,> I thought-spoke at Visser Three.

<So you can speak this way!> he declared, amused. <Good. One more way for us to communicate without anyone being aware of it. Is it time to tell me about how yet?>

<I’m never going to tell you about the morph, Visser,> I snapped back at him.

Visser Three seemed to smirk with his eyes. <I will learn in time.>

He was so smug! It was going to drive me crazy! But there it was, the question that had probably been there since the moment he’d started reading my entries. It should’ve been impossible, but here I was. He was confident he could get me to open up. Figure me out. And then figure it out.

Not a chance, Visser, I thought only to myself.

Littran said something. Visser Three twitched. <Of course I can meet with the science team. That is half the reason I am here at all. Don’t waste my time.>

Littran bowed his gecko head as he led us both towards the Red Shroud’s med bay. <Littran is a Mak,> the Visser explained. <His host’s species was one of our early conquests. But there aren’t that many of them on my team. Only a spare few. Visser Nine and I do not necessarily get along.>

<So…You think the little guy’s a spy,> I thought back. There was no point in refusing to talk this way. <Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.>

<Yes,> he said.

We came through a set of double doors that led into the medical bay, which I guess was in the same general space as the science labs. The medical bay was so huge it was almost like a hospital. There were at least five different wide hallways that sprung out from this central area, giving it a wheel-like appearance from our angle. A secretary at the front – human – made calls in Galard or Yeerkish. Doctors hurried down the halls at our approach, likely out of fear.

I nearly retched as I entered. I’d seen something ugly.

Two Hork-Bajir were wheeling a gurney with a human lying on it past me. Half the human’s face was taken up by an enormous, pulsating, vein-like black tumor, running from the inside of where one of his eyes should be to his chin. His other eye bulged out of its socket and stared at me. I’d seen worse, but this was still pretty high up on my mental list of horrific stuff.

<Are you frightened?> the Visser asked, probably misreading my expression. <They will kill him and then dissect his body. He won’t live much longer.>

I shook my fingers as we walked. I felt like the gunk on the man’s face could cover me just from looking at it. But it didn’t matter. Other than grossed out, how did I really feel? <No, I’m just...alone. Tired,> I answered. But I wasn’t sure what I actually felt, if I was being honest with myself. About anything.

<Take your time. You will learn this world, Tobias. If you decide to live. It is your birthright.> His voice sounded gentle. Supportive.

<It is not my birthright to turn into a slave of the Yeerk Empire, let alone your slave,> I scoffed.

<Mm, I’d disagree. To live as a decorated soldier among the stars, strong and filled with pride? I would say that is exactly what the son of Prince Elfangor is owed.>

I sighed. He meant every word of that, and it was starting to make me like him against my will.

There were these big old metal double doors that separated the science labs from the medical ward, probably so that whatever they did in here didn’t contaminate the hospital, but they could still take stuff out of it. Visser Three, Littran, and I stood in front of the door, and the door scanned us with what I’m pretty sure was a Gleet Bio-Filter. Probably the Bio-Filter didn’t know or care that I had no Yeerk inside me, because it passed us.

The doors slid open and we all walked inside. The machines inside were like nothing I had seen before, ranging from huge MRI-like machines to floating, bug-like medical drones to tanks filled with fluid. Visser Three’s scientists attended to each machine, and many of them were working with the black, sludge-like samples.

I watched as a gloved, masked Human-Controller carefully dropped a liquid via an eye dropper into an otherwise closed-off container, and the liquid was almost immediately attacked and consumed by the black gunk. I shuddered.

Littran began speaking, and Visser Three translated some of it as he could. <He’s saying that they’ve discovered a few things through experimentation. One: it doesn’t matter if the substance is organic or metallic. The black ichor can consume it.>

Littran suddenly stopped us in front of another of his scientists, a Taxxon-Controller. I still couldn’t get used to there being Taxxons in labcoats everywhere. The Taxxon-Controller was standing in front of one of the largest tubes in the laboratory. I stared in wonder at what was inside.

Inside the tube was an enormous piece of metal, like a broken-off part of the Blade ship or the Pool ship itself. There was a partition that bisected the metal. One half of the metal was unchanged and inert, just a piece of debris. The other half had turned a completely different color, going from a deep black to an incredibly vivid purple-red, with a striking new-paint sheen and a few writhing tendrils on its underside. The tendrils were attached to the partition, squeezed against it, desperately trying to pry their way to the other side.

<Two: The ichor changes whatever it comes into contact with, and enlivens it if it is necrotic or dead,> said Visser Three, still translating.

<What the…> I thought toward him. <But why? What decides what form it becomes?> I questioned.

<Littran, what are the properties that cause the substance to change into any specific form? Is it the same one each time?> asked the Visser.

Littran asked the Taxxon-Controller scientist what was clearly that question, and the Taxxon-Controller’s gesture clearly meant that they didn’t know. Not that I know Taxxon or how to read their body language. I know that’s what it meant because not twenty seconds later he was dead, his innards sliced open and spewed upon the ground.

Littran immediately jumped backwards. He seemed a lot less shocked than I was. I was still standing there, Taxxon goo having hit my brand-new uniform, when nearly all of the other Taxxon-Controller scientists in the room arrived to tear the offending scientist’s corpse apart.

I watched Taxxons slurp down green slurry and rip open a huge, oversized organ. It could’ve been a human. It could have been one so easily. It just wasn’t this time by sheer chance. I felt my body shake.

<The next time you report, Littran, I expect your men to understand exactly how the substance works,> Visser Three’s thought voice snarled. <And if they do not, this will be you. Remind me again how much incompetence I tolerate on my vessels.>

“Visser rana,” Littran said, or probably “None, Visser.”

The next thing Littran showed us – and it was unbelievable how fast this guy bounced back – was the black substance in a small rat-sized maze, using portions of infected machinery to open its way through.

It was an exceedingly clever little experiment, cleverer than I could have come up with in only a few days. But I now knew exactly why they were able to work so fast. Maybe I’d be a genius if I had to be to stay alive, too. I felt like crawling out of my skin.

<Three,> Visser Three translated. <The substance can solve complex navigational puzzles. This could be a sign of distributed, genuine animal intelligence, or it could be a sign of mindless but intelligent behavior, such as the kind seen within slime molds on Earth and tharavita at the foot of Stoola trees. But given your reports from the Invidion, Visser, the sudden presence of your attacker, and our own experience, we suspect the ichor is somehow the invading aliens itself.>

I glared up at Visser Three. The second eyelids of Littran’s eyes blinked and his gecko hand touched his head, making it look like he was surprised. It didn't matter. <Who cares?> I snapped.

<I care,> the Visser snarled. <You should care. This black substance nearly killed everyone on the ship! I brought you here to see if we could figure it out!>

< I dunno, I think there’s something killing people on the ship way faster,> I said, my voice dripping with sarcasm.

<Why do you care if I discipline one of my men?!> he argued, sounding exasperated.

<Because every time I get close to maybe, actually not hating you, you reveal that you’re a monster all over again!> I angrily said. <That everyone has to be absolutely, impossibly perfect around you or you’ll just kill them! I don’t even LIKE Taxxons!>

“…Avira-ke teo micafit?” asked Littran.

Without realizing it, we had both been tense and staring daggers at each other for several straight minutes while Littran just watched us in silence.

Visser Three drew in a breath and regained his composure, almost like a cat pretending it hadn’t fallen off a ledge. <If this is all we know, then we need to do better. But its movements on both ships suggest quantity might play a role in its development of a mind. We need a better experiment.> He glanced at Littran. <And I expect your team to come up with one.>

I don’t know exactly why, but I wanted to help. Not for Visser Three, but for the sake of that scared, slimy, weird little Mak and his men. He was trapped. Trapped doing everything he could to please a parasite in an herbivore’s body that was hungrier for blood than any wolf. It didn't matter if he was a spy at this point to me. No one should have to live like this. Not even the enemies that I had hated for a year.

<Tell him I’ve got an idea,> I said to the Visser. <Tell him that if it’s really got a mind of its own, that we can make a trap for what’s left of it.>

The Visser did. Littran leaned towards me eagerly. “Vassathis lire-ke, Sub-Visser.” That was probably “tell me your plan,” but I couldn’t suppress a grin at the irony that that was what he thought I was.

So I told the two of them my plan. I really, really hoped it would work. Especially since, after all, it involved the Visser himself.

To be continued...