All right, guys! I ended up deciding to merge the last two chapters together rather than split them up. So this is the last chapter of Redux: The Pretender. I hope you all liked it as much as I liked writing it. I’m really tired right now after an all nighter of getting this done, but I’ll be back soon with the next book. Please keep letting me know what you think and what you’d like to see.
Enjoy!
Chapter Nine
We descended toward the sprawling storage facility. The place was surrounded by a nine foot chain link fence covered in green boards. There were three armed guards wandering through the rows of storage sheds. I had no doubt that all were controllers if this was a yeerk pool entrance. No way the yeerks would leave non-infested humans this close.
When we were about 100 feet away, we found a clump of boulders and demorphed while Melissa and Loren kept a look out. Moments later, the seven of us sprawled over the boulders, watching the fence below. Well, five of us sprawled. I perched on the edge of the boulder, reporting details to the others. They could tell there were three guards. I could read the title of the magazine stuffed into one guard’s back pocket. And Ax stood close by. Andalite bodies don’t sprawl very well.
That made me wonder. Was I half Andalite? Or a third Andalite if you considered morphing? Was there anything of Andalite DNA within me? If I was a child born of a human and and Andalite-in-human-morph who was trapped as a hawk and regained the power to temporarily become human, then what was I? How many different lives was I living? The better question was, how many different lives was I not living? In spending so much time thinking about what I wasn’t, how much was I losing of what I was? How much of my life was I missing?
I glanced sideways to Rachel. She had a determined look. Of course, that’s pretty much like saying salt has a salty taste. Rachel is always determined. Sometimes I think nothing phases her. Jake is our leader, and we follow his orders, but Rachel is our warrior. We all fight, but she is a fighter. There is a difference. Without this war, I don’t know what I would have become. I would like to think that I’d have found a place. Jake probably would have been a politician or something. Maybe he’d join the military. Marco would probably go to Hollywood. They find anything funny. I don’t know enough about Melissa to say. But Rachel, I think, would have always found a cause to fight for. She was that kind of person. Not the kind that goes looking for trouble. She was the kind that saw trouble already happening and did something about it, even if it didn’t involve her. Rachel was… - - was looking at me like I was deaf and waving her hand. I realized with a start that she’d been saying something and I had tuned completely out.
Flushing, I responded. <Sorry, sorry. What?>
She gave me a weird look for a moment. “I said, can you see anyone in the office?” She pointed toward the glass plated building near the front, where the gates opened to let cars in.
I turned my head and focused on the building. Now wasn’t the time to lose focus thinking about… that. Especially not with my mother six feet away. <Yeah, there’s one guy in there. He’s watching tv and eating nachos.>
That got Ax’s attention. His stalk eye turned toward me as he spoke hopefully. <Nachos? With yellow paste and delicious cardboard? He is not eating too quickly, I hope.>
Marco rolled his eyes. “Cheese, Ax. It’s cheese. And didn’t we tell you not to eat the cardboard anymore?”
<Yes.> Ax nodded solemnly. <I remember now. You humans have such peculiar ways of dictating what is to be ingested and what is to hold those things. It is a very hard list to keep track of. I hope you prepare your young early with sufficient memorization tests before abandoning them to the centers for food consumption and the gathering of artificial fur on what they may ingest and what is delicious but not meant to be eaten. >
Melissa spoke up from the other end of the boulder. “Yeah, everyone has to pass an ‘Eat cheeseburger, hold wax paper’ quiz before they get their mall license.”
“Melissa…” Jake pleaded. “Please don’t tell him things like that. We have enough trouble keeping him straight on human things.” He looked to me. “Three guards roving and one inside the office. I bet Marco’s allowance for a month that at least one of those sheds down there is full of hork-bajir, just in case.”
“Hey, why is it my allowance that has to suffer?” Marco complained. “And no bet. There’s definitely something like that. It’s gotta be that one at the back gate that’s set away from the others.”
Loren pushed her way to her feet, brushing her knees off. “I’ll take care of the guard in the office. That tv he’s watching is probably connected to cameras around the lot.”
<What? No.> I protested, turning a sharp gaze to her. <It’s dangerous. If he makes you, or figures out what you’re doing, you could be reinfested, or hurt, or… worse.>
“Tobias.” My mother smiled and reached out, putting her hand on my folded wings. “I know what I’m doing.” She crouched a little. “I want to tell you not to go down there. I want to hold you away from danger. But I can’t. Because the danger is everywhere and the only way that I can do anything about it is by helping you now. You have the power to fight them. You’ve been fighting them. You’ve done damage to the yeerks. You’ve frustrated them. They’re hurting here on earth because of you and your friends. As much as I want to protect you, if I stop you from doing what you’ve been doing, I’ll doom all of us. I can’t do what you can do, but I can do this. I trust you. Now trust me.”
I was silent for a moment before looking to Jake. <We need to take those guards down fast and silently, so the reinforcements aren’t alerted. What do we have that can take out three separate men that quick without making a lot of noise?>
Jake’s brow furrowed slightly as he thought. “If your mom can distract the guy watching the monitor, Marco should be able to drop each guard separately, since they’re all spread out.” He looked at Marco. “But you’ll have to be quick, because they probably report in regularly with those radios.”
Marco shrugged. “With Birdboy scouting directions so I don’t stumble into them, I could do that.”
“Great.” Jake nodded. “Get morphing. Ummm… Mrs… Miss… Loren? If you can start that distraction, we’ll take care of our end.” As my mother nodded and started off, he turned back to the rest of us. “Melissa, I need you to get airborne and let us know when that truck is close. Ax and I will try to find a way to seal those Hork-Bajir inside their boxes, just in case.”
Ax responded carefully. <There is probably a security console to lock the unit down in case of a breach, and so that it may serve as a detention cell as well as allow the leader of the site to lock his men inside. The yeerks trust no one, particularly themselves. I believe I can over ride it and lock them in. The building they are in may appear to be primitive human construction, but if it is a yeerk security center, it will be much stronger.>
Melissa started to morph alongside Marco, while Rachel frowned. “And what am I supposed to do?”
Jake smiled. “I’ve got another plan for you…”
A minute later, I was gliding over the storage lot. All the metal on those roofs made some sweet thermals. Thermals are updrafts of air that birds use to fly on, sort of like surfing in the air. You can fly without them, but it involves a lot more hard flapping. <Okay, Marco. Your first guy is right inside the fence. You’re almost right behind him. If the fence wasn’t there, you’d be able to see him.>
Marco hunched over in the weeds near the base of the fence, a male gorilla that could have broken Mike Tyson in half without exerting himself. <Anyone nearby?>
I did a quick check. My mother was in the office, animatedly shouting at the poor, confused guard in there after practically dragging him out from behind his desk for a thorough screaming match. The other two guards were at the far end of the lot. <No one in easy hearing distance. Just be quick. One of them is starting to walk back. But you’ve got a few seconds.>
A gorilla weighs a lot. You wouldn’t think it could get much of that into the air. But surprisingly, they are good jumpers. Most of them can leap three to four feet straight up. Marco leapt and grabbed the top of the fence, hauling himself over it with a rattle that startled the controller. If the guy thought the fence shaking had scared him, looking up reflexively to see an 800 pound gorilla landing on top of him probably gave the poor guy a heart attack.
A second later the guy lay crumpled on the other side of the fence after Marco dumped him back over it to be out of sight. <That was fun.> He started loping toward the rows of sheds. <Who’s next?>
I circled back around, taking time to check on my mother. She was still keeping the office guard’s attention on her. I didn’t know what she was saying, but she looked pissed off. I turned my focus back to the situation under me. <You’ve got a guy about two rows left from you. He’s coming your way. The other one is… he’s heading to the office. I think the guy in there called him. My mom-->
<We’ve got him.> Jake interrupted. I saw the guy step around a corner on his way to the office when an Andalite tail appeared from inside the half open door to the shed he was passing. It smacked into the side of his head, and he went down hard.
<Okay, just the one guy then.> I tried to keep the relief out of my voice. <He’s one row away from you now, two sheds up.> I watched as Marco cut between two of the storage units. When the guy passed, he stuck out a hairy arm and snagged him by the face. One quick yank and hard shove into the wall later and the last guard was down.
It was just in time too, because Melissa called down from where she was circling higher than me. <Truck! The truck is coming! My… my dad isn’t driving; he’s in the passenger seat. It’s some other guy.> I turned the way she was flying and sure enough, the armored truck was making its way steadily along the road. It would be here in another minute or so.
I saw Jake and Ax step into view. Jake was in his tiger morph. Ax ran off down the rows of storage units toward the back where those reinforcements waited. Meanwhile, Jake was looking toward the sky. <We’re not going to make you confront your dad, Melissa. Just keep circling and let us know before anything else can surprise us.> He was keeping Melissa out of the way. It was safer for everyone involved.
I watched Jake as he prowled to the edge of the cover that the last shed provided and waited. The truck would pull through the gate in a few seconds. Realizing a problem, I looked to the office and sent. <Mom, Chapman’s nearly here. You’ve gotta get out of there.>
Jake added. <Lead him down the first row. I’ll take care of it.>
My mother complied, stomping out of the office while she waved her arms in a fury. I caught a few snippets of her words as I flew closer. She was ranting about the new television and waterbed she’d stored at their facility that were now missing, and was going to show him where exactly her unit was. The human-controller was trying to explain to her that she wasn’t listed in the system for what was probably the fifth time when a vicious, 600 pound, snarling, man-eating tiger with teeth that could rip into him like a teenager into a taco stepped into sight and told him to sit down. It was a testament to my mother’s ability to intimidate that the guy looked somewhat relieved that he had the tiger to deal with now instead of her. Soon, the man was on his stomach, tied with rope that Loren found in the storage unit.
At the back of the lot, I saw Ax. He and Marco were standing next to the shed where we believed the Hork-Bajir guards were hidden. Ax’s fingers danced over what looked like an oddly advanced computer pad attached to the wall. Then Ax flipped the computer shut and Marco gave me a thumbs up. The yeerks were trapped, for now.
We were as ready as we’d ever be, as the armored truck pulled through the open gates and stopped, idling in the lot. I could see Chapman’s eyes moving over the storage units as he gestured to the driver. For a moment, I thought they weren’t going to go for it. We were all tense, half expecting the truck to suddenly reverse out of the lot and make us come up with some other desperate plan.
Thankfully, that didn’t happen. Eventually the truck shut off and both men stepped out. The driver started to walk toward the office while Chapman moved around to the back of the truck. <Steady.> Jake ordered. <Let the driver go until we see Karen, then Marco can take him. Ax, you and I will stop Chapman. Melissa and Tobias, you guys are back-up. Stay in the air. You ready, Rachel?>
<Yeah.> I couldn’t see where Rachel had positioned herself. <He tries anything and I’m on him.>
By now, Chapman had pulled Karen out of the truck by the arm. The young girl struggled, but he didn’t care. He was starting to pull her up into his arms to carry her. Meanwhile, the driver was almost to the office when Jake said tensely. <Now.>
Immediately, Marco loped off the roof of the nearest storage unit, leaping out to collide with the man. He caught the startled controller around the waist and bodily hurled him into the wall of the office. The guy wouldn’t be getting up for awhile.
As he heard the crash, Chapman whirled with the struggling and kicking Karen tight against his chest to find Jake and Ax advancing on him. “Andalite!” His surprise was obvious. “Stay back! Or I break the human child’s neck.” His arm moved threateningly over Karen’s neck, and I could hear her whimper.
<My dad…> It was Melissa. I realized she was talking privately to me, and heard the despair in her voice at seeing her father being this ruthless.
<It’s not him, Melissa.> I tried to reassure her, wishing it was Rachel doing so. <It’s the yeerk. Your dad’s powerless in there.> Yeah, probably not the best way to make the girl feel better. Like I said, I wished Rachel was talking to her. She went silent then, and part of me was relieved. I didn’t know what to say to her.
Jake growled low and stalked to the left while Ax started to circle right. <Let the human girl go, yeerk.> Jake’s voice was hard and low with his demand. <We don’t want to hurt her to get at you, but you are high placed in yeerk society. We could learn much from you. The death of one human might be worth it.>
There was a long, tense pause, and then Chapman called Jake’s bluff. “No you won’t. You Andalites think you’re the saviors of the galaxy. No, you might drop a biological bomb on this planet and condemn the entire race, but you won’t get your own hands dirty directly.” His voice was mocking. “So why don’t you back away before your sensitive Andalite morality is as broken as this child’s neck?”
Jake and Ax both took a step back as Jake ordered. <All right, Rachel. Plan B.>
There was a flurry of wings and a rush of movement. Before Chapman could react, Rachel perched on his right shoulder. For being so completely crucial to our plan, the animal she’d become was fairly small and frail looking. It was about nine inches tall, with a white chest and black wings, along with a bright red head. But the thing that mattered was the long, sharp looking beak. Rachel had morphed into the woodpecker that she had acquired at the resort where we had stopped another of the yeerk plans. <So.> She announced almost casually. <Ask your host what a woodpecker is. See if you can figure out how fast I can get through that ear and snatch you right out of there if you don’t let the human go. Think about the Vanarx. Yeerkbane. Do you want to face this planet’s equivalent?>
Chapman froze instantly. It was almost funny, seeing one of the leaders of the yeerk invasion held completely powerless and terrified by a tiny bird that wasn’t even a foot long. I guess the mention of the Vanarx, a creature that hoovered yeerks right out of the host’s heads for supper, that Rachel had seen the Visser become on hologram when she was snooping around the Chapman’s house had shaken him.
There are a lot of differences between human and yeerk. The most important one, in this situation, was the fact that yeerks won’t keep fighting against difficult odds. If surrender looks like the more attractive option, a lot of the time, they’ll do just that. They don’t understand the human will to keep resisting. A human might have kept trying to find a way out of the situation with his hostage. Chapman just decided to cut his losses and slowly put Karen on the ground. Marco started to move to help her.
But I guess some yeerks didn’t completely give up all the time. Because as soon as our attention was on Karen, Chapman’s elbow snapped back and knocked Rachel off of him. She crashed to the dirt and he spun with his foot up to stomp on her small, helpless body. Jake roared and leapt, and I started to dive, but neither of us was close enough.
Someone else was though. Chapman reeled back and cried out as Melissa swept down and raked her talons over his forehead, leaving long jagged cuts. As he staggered, Rachel reoriented herself and shot up into the air quickly. She was moving erratically though, and seemed to be mumbling to herself, something about carrots. I think his elbow hit her pretty hard.
Marco had picked up Karen, who was calling him the mean monkey. He carried her quickly away from the confrontation. Chapman recovered just in time to be knocked flat on his back as Jake plowed into him. The tiger easily held Chapman helpless with a single paw on his chest. <My advice…> Jake informed him. <Stay down!> This was accompanied by a roar that shook the surrounding sheds. Chapman elected to stay down. I think he also elected to wet himself.
I landed on top of the armored truck. <Rachel, are you all right?>
She responded a bit hazily. <Mmmfine, just gotta find the Green Giant and give him his jolly peas back.> She giggled. <Jolly peas.>
<Rachel.> I turned my attention to her erratic loop as she flew in an oval, favoring her right side. <Maybe you should stop flapping for a bit.> I winced at the subsequent thud. <I uhhh… I meant land.> I swept down and landed next to her, prodding her a little with my beak. <Are you okay?>
The woodpecker opened its eyes and I heard Rachel giggle. <You’re a pretty birdy. Pretty.>
<Right back at you.> I smiled inwardly, and then looked up as there was a commotion from the back of the lot.
Ax seemed to wince. <The reinforcement Hork-Bajir are attempting to escape their confinement. I do not know how long the inferior yeerk construction will hold them. We should leave as quickly as possible.>
“Yes, we should.” My mother had emerged from the shed. She stood over Chapman, who gazed up at her in wonder.
“It’s real.” His voice had taken on an amazed tone. “You’re her. The girl… the girl the host was taken with. Both of you. The dreams… the dreams are real. They must be. But how is this possible? There isn’t a real memory in this head. We should be able to access it if there was. He says he has hidden it. I don’t believe him. It is impossible to hide a memory from us. But the dreams are real. The dreams are there, so the memories must be there. But they’re not. I’ve seen you in the pool. Then you were in the dreams. You were at the human hospital, but he knew you before then. He knew you from dreams, but the memories aren’t there. What is happening? What is happening? Hosts cannot hide memories from us!”
“Shut up.” Loren told him and knelt down, grasping his shoulders. “I’m not talking to you.” Looking him straight in the eye, my mother said. “Hendrick.” Her voice was soft. “Hendrick, you did the right thing. Whatever happens, however this ends, believe that. You made mistakes. Everyone does. But in the end, when you had something to care about, you did the right thing. Stay strong. The Andalites will beat them.” Then she straightened up, and as Chapman started to sneer and open his mouth, brought her foot up into his face, knocking him silly. “Okay.” She announced. “Now we can go.”
Marco, who still had Karen in one hand, stooped to pick up Rachel from the ground. He carried them out of the lot. The rest of us followed. Once we were out of sight, Marco put Karen down and began to demorph. Once he was himself again, he prodded Rachel. “Time to morph out, Woody.”
She took one look at him and recoiled. <Ugly monkey!>
Jake, who had resumed his human shape as well, sounded concerned. “I think we need to get Rachel to demorph. She seems really out of it. She can’t even tell that Marco demorphed.”
<Actually,> The delirium in Rachel’s voice was gone. <I snapped out of it a minute ago. It’s just really hard to tell the difference between a big smelly ape and Marco.>
*******************************************************
It was three days following that insane day, where I learned that my father was an Andalite War Prince, the same Andalite who had given us the responsibility, and the power that we now held. Three days since I met my mother for the first time. And now, I was going to say good bye. At least for awhile.
I was human at the moment. The two of us were sitting on the hood of the station wagon that she had somehow acquired. We were sharing a sack of greasy french fries between us. We watched the cars pass on the freeway. After a moment, my mother spoke. “You know I want to ask you to come with me.”
My head shook. I’d spend a lot of time these past few days as a human, getting to know her, and getting to know my father through her. The old gestures were slightly easier to remember. “I can’t. I have to keep fighting. I… I can’t leave them.”
She nodded, acceptingly, but still sadly. “And I can’t stay. I have to keep moving. I can’t let Chapman or the other yeerks find me. Us.” She gestured toward the backseat of the station wagon where Karen slept. “Especially now that I have to keep her safe and out of their hands. If they find her, if they find either of us, it’s over for you. It’s over for earth.”
“Then we found the perfect person to trust with her, and with our secret.” I told her with a slight tremble to my voice that I didn’t even try to help. “I just found you, mom. I can’t… I want you to…” I trailed off.
“I know.” Loren put her arm around me tightly. “Tobias, you are my son. Whatever happens, you are always welcome with me. You have my number. If you need me, I’ll come to you. No matter what. And someday, when things are safe again… I… I want you to live with me.”
It was too much. I did a completely unbirdlike thing. I turned to my mother and put my arms around her tightly, burying my face against her shoulder. “I love you, Mom.” My voice shook with emotion.
Her arms held me tight, the french fries forgotten. “I love you too, Tobias. My son… I love you too.”
A few minutes later, I stood in the parking lot of the diner, watching as my mother pulled the station wagon out. She raised her hand in a wave, that simple gesture of both greeting and farewell that was so apt in this situation. I raised my own hand to her and stood watching as the car joined all of the others on the freeway. I watched the car drive off until long after I couldn’t see it any longer. This was why I hadn’t let myself be in my hawk shape at this point. Because if I had been, I would have continued to follow that car until I couldn’t fly anymore.
While I stood there, I slowly realized that I wasn’t alone any more. I turned to find Rachel standing beside me. “How are you?”
“I’m….” I started to answer, and then paused. “I’m a lot of things. I don’t know what I am. Happy. Sad. I forgot what it was like to be both at the same time.”
“She’s an amazing woman.” Rachel offered as we both turned and started to walk away.
“You’re just saying that because she’s a lot like you.”
Rachel shook her head. “Do me a favor. Never ever say that again.”
That made me blink. “Why?”
Her shoulders shrugged. “Because… because with the way I feel about you, that’s really weird.”
“Oh yeah?” I couldn’t resist poking the metaphorical bear with the stick. At least I hoped the bear stayed metaphorical. “How do you feel about me.”
Now she was really blushing. She glared at me, but it wasn’t an angry glare. Then she looked down. “I don’t know. How do you feel about me?” She nodded, and I looked down to see that my hand had somehow found hers. I wasn’t sure who had initiated it. Somehow, it didn’t matter.
“Rachel…” I took a breath. Wow, this was hard. “I… I don’t know… what exactly I’m going to be when this is over. Before I met my mother, I would have said that I didn’t see a future after this war. But now I have, and… I’m still not sure what’s going to happen. But I know that, whatever happens, I don’t want to regret being too afraid to do… to say what I want to. And…” She was watching me expectantly, and I was sure that my clammy palms were soaking hers. “Since I’ve been… a hawk, I’ve… forgotten a lot of human gestures. But there’s one I do know.”
My hand touched her cheek, and as she lifted her head, I kissed her. It was short, a little awkward, and still somehow beautiful. I looked away just as quickly and flushed.
She was quiet for a moment before asking quizzically. “So uhhh, is that your best offer?” When my head swiveled back to her with a look of horror, she winked and squeezed my hand with a snicker.
“You’re—“ My voice was tight as I tried to decide whether to groan or laugh. I settled on both. “You’re not gonna make any of this easy, are you?”
Rachel shook her head emphatically. “Nope.”
I snorted and then stopped. “Good. Cuz if my life was ever easy… I think I’d be bored.”
“Tobias…” Rachel said while turning to walk once more. “I promise you… I will never, ever let you be bored.” We walked, and then we flew. Together.
I am human. I am andalite. I am hawk. I am all and none of those. I am more. I am Tobias.
I am free.
END
Next… Redux: The Suspicion
My name is Melissa…