Post by gabriel on Aug 8, 2009 14:12:44 GMT -5
Suji didn’t come to until she was already crawling alongside the wall. She knew she’d pin pointed the location as her owl, and waited. She must have. There was no other explanation. But her memory was one giant hole. One moment she was climbing up unto a pier with tired, aching muscles, and the next moment she was here. There was no in-between. And she had no time to search for it.
And she didn’t particularly want to.
There. The guards. Standing outside the holding cell. Two great, big, lumbering Hork Bajir, armed with dracon guns. The roach could sense them, and didn’t appreciate going towards them. Suji pressed forward anyway. The door was thick steel, undoubtedly heavily locked.
But she didn’t need any keys. All she needed was less than a quarter’s width of space. She found it, and slipped under the door without pause.
Instantly she tested the air with her antennae. Everything was still, save for the calm, low drone of a machine in the center. Without waiting, Suji began to dimorph. She had seen them approaching. She remembered that. As her owl, she’d seen the group that was bringing Fin in. Did she remember that? Or was she making it up? It was all a mess. Maybe it had been some kind of dream. Had she been asleep? No, impossible.
Her body grew and grew and grew until she was finally human. If there had been any Controllers in the room, she would have been cut down easily. But there weren’t. They’d all been locked out. This was supposed to be a special christening. Some lucky slug was getting a major upgrade.
Suji turned towards the quiet hum and it took her a few moments to realize what she was looking at. It was a Yeerk pool, only much smaller in scale: hell, it could have fit in the truck of a car. Portable Kandrona, her mind instantly supplied the words. They weren’t her words. They came in a different voice. A memory of a voice. Hard to tell. It kind of sounded like her voice.
She took a few steps towards the contraption, and inside she could see a single Yeerk floating through the pool, basking in the Kandrona rays. Suji looked around. The room was otherwise empty, white, clean, sterile. No place to put the slug. She reached in, and it took two tries before she successfully grabbed the plump, yielding body.
Poor thing. Had probably already been tasting the power of a host with morphing capability. Was likely reciting acceptance speeches and victory calls in its slimy brain.
Without wasting any more time, Suji tilted her head back, and ate the Yeerk. It took many more bites than she would have wanted, and she curled to her knees when she thought she was going to vomit. Though she could taste the bile that rose in her mouth, thick with the rotten, yolky belch of Yeerk, she refused to throw up. There would be no way to hide it, let alone clean it.
When the nausea (mostly) passed, Suji climbed up, into the Kandrona pool. It was raised maybe four feet off the ground, but it was sturdy, set into a pillar. This must have been the feeding room of really important people. Like the one she’d just eaten. The pus from the thing’s body was still slick on her back molars. She could feel it squelching against her tongue.
With that thought speeding her progress, Suji began to morph. She had time to look down and realize she was completely naked. That was odd.
It wasn’t much longer before her teeth dissolved, her eyes dissolved, her fingers and toes dissolved. Suddenly she could feel the warmth of the Kandrona rays. She felt blissful. Happy. Content. On her outsides, at least. Her insides felt…
Suji sensed vibrations as the door was unlocked, and swung open.
Two Hork-Bajir guards were securing his arms behind his back but they didn't have to try very hard, Fin wasn't fighting them. He was more concerned with making sure his bare feet weren't cut on the rough rock of the yeerk pool as they led him through the complex. Apparently he was quite a catch and they wanted to make sure that everyone knew he was here. They had even been preparing to lead him up onto a podium of some sort to show him off to the whole empire but something had gone wrong. He wasn't sure what, they had just quickly shuffled him away as some sort of fight broke out in the complex itself.
Fin didn't care. He wasn't dead yet. That was all he cared about.
"Well, any last words?" The woman, the Inspector, asked him as they came to a stop in a small room that contained a murky pool of water. Fin's blank stare was his only answer. "What, no clever last act of defiance? You were so chatty before?" He sighed and looked away, looked towards the pool where he could just barely make out the form of a slug swimming through the water-like liquid.
"Why you doing this?" He asked, looking back up at her. She raised an eyebrow as if she had expected something slightly more intelligent from him. She pulled out a dracon beam and pointed it at him before waving the guards away. The two Hork-Bajir bowed and let Fin's arms drop. He crossed them in front of his chest in a vain attempt to protect himself from the chill of the cavern like pool. The two Hork-bajir left the room and the woman motioned for Fin to go over to the pool.
"I'm serious," Fin said as he began to walk towards the pool, dragging it out as much as possible. "Why are you doing this? Why are you letting whoever this is," he said motioning towards the nameless slug swimming through the sludge, "take me instead of taking me yourself? I thought I was valuable." He looked up at her. She had a thoughtful expression on her face as she continued to point the beam at him. He hoped that she would fall for it. He didn't know if this would help him at all. But he did know how this situation would end if he did nothing. Better to stir things up a bit and hope for an opportunity to show itself.
"I've thought about it. But the truth is I have my orders just like anyone else. If I take you myself they will know, no way to hide it, and right now their good favor is worth more than your body." She motioned towards the pool. "Sorry, looks like you'll have to entertain someone else in your head, now move."
He walked towards the pool. "You know we have a saying on Earth. Possession is 9/10 the law. You know what it means? It means-"
"One more word and I'll shoot you. It won't kill you but it will shut you up and my friend there will just morph it away when they take over." She didn't look like she was joking as she turned the dial down on the dracon beam.
"I thought you wanted my last-" she fired the weapon and he didn't even have time to try to move away as the beam hit his shin. He had never been shot as a human before but the sensation of having a piece of your body torn apart down to its component molecules was the same. He began to scream as his leg disappeared below the knee but the scream was cut off when his head slammed into the side of the pool as he fell.
He lay on the ground in a daze induced by shock and pain. "You just don't know when to shut up do you?" The woman appeared in his line of sight as she looked down at him. There was a slight smile on her face and then she reached down and buried her fingers in his hair and began to pull his head up. He felt hair ripping out of his skull and he scrambled to support some of his own weight with his arms just to make it stop. "I hope your yeerk isn't as chatty as you," she said almost to herself as she dragged his head high enough to shove it into the pool.
More vibrations. Talking, maybe, though there was a piercing, brief hum that she couldn't place. Suji waited. It wasn't a matter of being patient or not: there was nothing else to do but wait. Or think, perhaps, but no -- that would be too tricky. Couldn't fumble now. You just had to go, and go, and go, and go, and really, Suji knew there would be a wall somewhere, like the edge of a fish bowl, a big reptile tank, and then, then you stopped. And that would be that.
The water rippled and surged and something entered the pool. It's like you're a pro at this now, Suji mocked herself, feeling for the ridge of the ear. The canal was there, she felt the structure of it, the slight pliancy of the bones. Suji did not hesitate or waste time infesting Fin. The law of the universe (Go. Go. Go. Go.) was a command in her head, and she listened.
Fin was not unconscious, but he was dazed. Suji steeled herself, her thoughts. When she'd infested Jack back at the Temple, when she'd learned about his history as a Shepard, she'd learned the thought-sharing could be a two-way thing with hosts and Yeerks. It was heavily slanted in the favor of the Yeerk, and they always had ultimate control of shutting the host off from their thoughts, but if you weren't careful, it could slip. Suji knew all about control, all about masking facial expressions, vocal tones, choosing her words carefully--this was just one more game. One more thing to hide behind, manipulate, strategize.
But it was also Fin's head. Fin was not Jack. Fin was an ally.
And I'm saving him. But still, there would be consequences to this. Not yet, though.
GO, the universe ordered, and Suji went.
Turning the lights on in Fin's brain brought up unexpected, acute pain. She was used to that by now, more startled than scared, feeling her surprise more than agony of, what -- she looked down -- a partially missing limb. She -- he? -- stumbled forward, grunting in pain but not crying out.
You're a high-ranking Controller, Suji scolded herself. Act like one!
Yes. Pretend to be a Controller, from inside Fin's body, from inside this temporary body. Suji didn't bother righting herself. She snarled, though the other Controller at least moved to support her. "Why is my body damaged?!" She raged, seething. Then, she looked down at herself. The voice coming from her throat sounded so strange, deeper, it all felt terrible, like wearing a ill-fitting Halloween costume. How could this woman not realize she was an imposter?
She blocked out Fin completely. Jack had fought her, she had some experience with that. It took an iron will, but that, that was something Suji had. It wouldn't last. But the first few seconds would be critical. She could keep her mind separated from his for that long. She didn't dig. Didn't look for memories. Going for morphs would, of course, open them up whether she wanted to look or not. For now, she just needed the baser functions. Just needed to pull the puppets strings, not plod around inside its head.
"I'm unarmed. Give me your dracon beam. Now!" The woman, who had at first seemed smug -- it must have been some honor, presenting Fin to whatever Yeerk Suji had killed (swallowed fucking whole, all gone, sloshing in a gut that had disappeared like magic). Now the Controller looked appropriately submissive, fearful. Suji might have relished it, if she could be bothered to feel anything. That was the thing that she liked about pretending to be a high-ranking Yeerk, and getting away with it: when you said "Jump," people were already in midair by the time they asked "How high?"
"I- he wasn't cooperating-" She fumbled slightly, handing Suji the dracon beam butt first. Suji felt woozy -- no, Fin's body felt woozy -- but she held onto consciousness with a firm grip.
"The first Animorph taken alive, you insolent slug. I wanted this to be special." Suji didn't know why she bothered staying in character for that. The Controller only held a brief look of wide-eyed fear before Suji shot her, at point blank range, and maximum power. She vaporized. A image, powerful, accompanied by a mix of emotions but no connecting thoughts, exploded in Suji's mind: rage, fear, duty, self-loathing, desperation, guilt, guilt, guilt.
The image: a girl vaporizing, though that was a forest, raining, colder than hell. The Controller in front of her might as well have been that girl. In her madness, in the sludge of her mind, Suji didn't even remember the girl's name.
The barrage of intense emotions was too much, burning for a white hot moment like a a breath of air igniting in a vacuum. No emotions preceded it, no emotions followed. But it was enough. It blew open the door she'd closed between her consciousness and Fin's. And underneath she could sense all of his emotions, surface thoughts, for the first time.
Suji slid to the floor, unable to support herself on the single leg.
"Hello, Fin," she said, in his voice, aloud. "I think it's time to get the fuck out of Dodge."
Fin felt the slug drilling through his ear and he struggled against the hand holding him down. Despite the wound he was still stronger than the woman and he quickly got his head above the water line but it was too late. The slug was already in his ear and he could already feel his ability to fight back starting to drain away as the natural tranquilizer kicked in.
Fuck. And with that one mental exclamation Fin backed off. He wasn't going to fight a losing battle and if a human could overpower a yeerk one would have done so by now. Maybe the yeerk could be bargained with. They weren't all assholes. Liam had been decent and Tisoc hadn't been so bad. Then again, the chance that he had one of those yeerks was pretty much zero. Still as bad as this was Fin was still alive so he considered himself to be on the upside of this catastrophe for now.
He waited, anxious, for some mental contact from the yeerk, He had no idea what being controlled was supposed to feel like but he quickly found out. "Why is my body damaged?" he heard himself asking except he hadn't asked anything. It was the most disturbing and weird feeling, listening and feeling himself speak words that hadn't passed through his own mental filter first. There was no internal echo of the words before they came out. He had no idea what he would say next and, in this case, Fin was finding he didn't like surprises.
<<Hello, hello. Can you hear me?>> he tried asking, thinking of it as thoughtspeak but there was no response. The yeerk had closed itself off from him and Fin couldn't get through. He decided to look around and tried to close his eyes but they didn't respond. He was slowly moving down his body, testing what was under his control and what wasn't (and coming up with a lot of negatives) when his hand came up and shot the controller with the dracon beam she had given him...or it or whatever.
"Hello Fin," the yeerk said out loud. "I think it is time we go the fuck out of Dodge," it continued. Fin paused a moment, wondering what was happening. Was this some sort of yeerk political thing? And if so could he use it to his advantage? Would it matter if the thing was watching his every thought as he had it? He tried to not think anything but that was stupid and impossible. Ok, so the thing could read his thoughts. Did that mean he still couldn't use the little yeerk political drama to help him?
<<Who are you?>>
"Suji," she responded, still talking in his voice. It was weird as hell, but... but she didn't want to turn inward. She knew she'd be able to talk to him internally, a lot like thoughtspeech. She'd done that with Jack. But that would be crossing a barrier. She'd gonna for his controls of his body the way a driver instinctively went for the gas pedal and the steering wheel. Anything more would be like popping the hood and fiddling around. God, she didn't want to do that.
But he had to morph. He was hurt, and they needed to get out. A couple of hork bajir guards entered the room, regarding her strangely. "The imbecile that lead me in damaged my host, as you can see." Suji used Fin's face to glare at them. "I am going to morph to heal the injury. I suggest neither of your interfere in any way." The latter probably didn't have to be added, but Suji added it anyway, making Fin's voice drip with enough venom to suggest that if they so much as breathed too loudly, they would find themselves in a dire situation.
<<Wings,>> Suji said inwardly, feeling the barrier between them crumbling. <<What's your flying morph?>> She instantly dug through his memories, tearing, looking for the morph in the way that one looks for lost car keys when they're already late for work. She shoved anything unimportant aside, though everything she touched she immediately recognized as a memory that wasn't hers, with emotions that weren't hers. She wanted to turn away, but you couldn't look for something with your eyes closed or your hands tied.
And she couldn't risk letting him have control. There would be questions. Confusion. The act needed to be seamless. Even if the other Controllers wouldn't suspect anything (at least not for a while, not when the idea of an Animorph Controller was so untested), Suji couldn't let him have control. There was no telling if he knew the way out, which she remembered coming in through. There was no telling what his mental condition was, after being abandoned.
His mental condition? Suji thought with a sneer, pushed that thought away. There. The bird. Finally.
The morphing didn't take too much longer than her usual body: she'd had some practice at this earlier. Eventually she was the bird, Fin's knowledge told her it was a sooty falcon. <<Marvelous,>> Suji broadcasted at the guards. <<I will be testing these wings. Flight will be superb.>> Suji made the word breathy. It wasn't so hard to do: flying was amazing, and she would be hard pressed to believe that it wouldn't entice a slug.
"The speech..." One of the guards said, obviously kicking himself for having mentioned even that much. Suji trained the sharp falcon's eyes on him. Speech? Yes... that made sense. Was she giving a speech? Or just attending one? The first Animorph Controller...
<<Do not so much as think of denying me. I will be there. But this comes first.>> With that, Suji spread the falcon's wings and took off. It handled differently than the vulture, that was sure. It was more agile, took more work to propel itself. It was better for navigating this area anyway. It wasn't too long before Suji saw the open sky.
With it came the sounds of screams, sirens, and dracon guns searing through a crowd below.
Something enormous bolted down from the sky, crashing less than 300 feet from the pool. The explosion was enormous, and the shock of it reverberated through the ground like an earthquake. A bug fighter. Suji looked up. The sky wasn't as open as she'd thought: dozens of spacecraft were lifting into the air. But far, far above, more deadly looking craft, flying in formation, were shooting them down.
<<We need to go back to the Temple,>> Suji said, voice sounding far away in her head, weak. It was like hell on Earth, only it rode from above, not digging itself way through the ground. <<The others->>
She watched as some ship plummeted from the sky. It seemed to fall away, but before it ever hit the ground, or a building, it exploded as if it had crashed into a wall. But there was nothing there. The spot of the collision glowed red with heat for a second, the air looked somehow curved. An image of dead birds along the ground of an Indonesian forest flooded Suji's brain.
<<Forcefield. They've quarantined the city. Put up a bit invisible wall->>
Drake. Drake had almost gotten eaten. Fuck, he HAD gotten eaten, the same day she'd first seen one of these. She'd watched him get swallowed. Watched the horrifying creature that rose out of the mucky water and killed her mission partner, as if he were nothing, as if he really were just another fish in a pond somewhere.
Suji felt herself panicking inside of Fin's head. Her control loosened, and the falcon's flight began to waver. <<Drake... we have to go back to the Temple. We have get to them. They might not know. They might not know that they can't get out.>>
Another spaceship careened out of the sky, crashing in the distance, and setting several buildings ablaze.
It would have made as much sense for the yeerk to claim it was Santa Claus as far as Fin was concerned. Suji being here, in his head, was so improbable that...that, he couldn't even come up with words adequate to explain how ridiculous it was. First of all it was impossible. Secondly she wouldn't do it. It made no sense, going on some sort of kamikaze rescue mission. It just wasn't Suji's style.
For the first time Fin began to feel afraid. He had been prepared to be controlled but he hadn't understood how much the yeerk would be able to fuck with him. It could tell him anything and how could he deny it? It had access to every thought and every emotion. Every fear and every hope. And, if it wanted, it could continue to shut him out and make it impossible for Fin to keep touch with reality.
<<What->> he began to ask but the yeerk was already on the move. It handled the hork-bajir guards that came in to investigate the dracon fire and then it was digging through his mind looking for the bird morph it wanted. As it did so it ripped through every memory Fin had attached to flying. It found the bat first and the night patrols he'd spent flying around Vancouver. Fin felt a moment of panic as he realized it would know where Vancouver's hide out was but no one was there anyway and the yeerk didn't seem to be stopping to really take stock of what it was seeing.
It found the falcon next and Fin briefly relived his first moments in the falcon morph and the battle with Matthias. Fin hoped that it had what it wanted because he was finding the intrusion deeply disturbing.
He was remembering things he wasn't choosing to remember and he couldn't move anything. God. He hadn't realized what it would be like to have no control. He began to regret this choice. For the first time in his life the words, "give me liberty or give me death," made an inkling of sense. Living like this too long would drive anyone mad.
Fin let the thing take off and thought about telling it that the bat may have been better for flying around inside of a building but the falcon was handling the hallways decently well and they soon got to open air so it didn't matter. Fin had to wonder at the ability of the yeerk to control the morph. It had taken him many hours behind these eyes to get as good at handling the morph as he had. The yeerk wasn't as good as he was but it wasn't half bad either. Anyone that could fly inside a building with nothing but dead air to work with without crashing into a wall deserved props. If Fin had been in a more gracious mood he may have complimented it. But as it was he was still getting used to the fact that it wasn't him flying.
As they spiraled up over the yeerk pool complex they found out the sky was not as empty as it should have been. Ships kept crashing down around them. <<The sky is falling,>> Fin remarked to himself in a sarcastic tone but there was no real bite to it. Too much had happened today for Fin to really be surprised or horrified by anything else. He was pretty sure he wouldn't flinch if the damn city blew up.
<<What is this, plague number six or number seven?>> he asked, thinking of the first Mummy movie and trying to compare it to his memory of the Prince of Egypt. <<I think we already had blood,>> he remarked thinking of the YPM. <<Has there been a large invasion of frogs lately,>> he asked the yeerk. <<If so Crayak may be mad with you.>> His partly internal dialogue was cut off.
<<We need to go back to the Temple.>> If Fin's mouth could have dropped open it would have. The mental voice was not his own as it had been when the yeerk had been using it to talk to the hork-bajir guards. No, clear and as familiar as Ray's or Aubrey's, Suji's voice rang in his head. <<The others->> she continued, losing her train of thought as another ship exploded. It had looked like it had run into an invisible wall and Suji made his eyes follow it down. <<Forcefield. They've quarantined the city. Put up a big invisible wall->>
Suddenly Fin was again rememberimg something he hadn't chosen to remember but this time it was not his own memory. He watched through eyes not his own as Suji's crocodile morph rose up and swallowed a small fish. Suji's own mind was providing the details he couldn't understand by just seeing a picture. Like replaying any of his own memories, he was getting the context, not just the image and sound. The fish was Drake and that crocodile was not a morph but a real animal. In fact it was the same animal Suji had gotten her own morph from.
<<You acquired the thing that ate Drake!>> he blurted out halfway through. <<Oh that's interesting,>> he remarked as he felt the spike of utter fear, powerlessness, loss and...hm, caring that accompanied the memory. Fin kept his discovery to himself, filing the useful bit of gossip away for later. Not that Suji was paying attention to him anyway. The mental barriers between her mind and his may have slipped for a moment but soon they were back in place and she was back in mission mode. <<Drake...we have to go back to the Temple. We have to get to them. They might not know. They might not know that they can't get out.>>
<<Fuck that,>> Fin said as another spaceship got shot out of the sky and there was a large explosion below them. Fin tried to contest her control for the first time and turn the falcon body towards the edge of the city. <<The others are on their own just like us. They aren't going to wait for us. They don't even know if we're alive and we don't know if they're alive either. But if they are they are going to be trying to get out of the city. We have to do the same.>>
<<I left them to come back for you. Getting one person back doesn't justify leaving the rest of them. We're going back to the Temple,>> Suji said, and it was more forceful than before, undoubtedly an order. An order that Fin likely wouldn't follow, if he had a choice, something in Suji snarled. And she remembered leaving him. It stung, deep, and the guilt was powerful -- practically overwhelming. But she'd come back, hadn't she? She'd ignored the odds and went on with it anyway. Didn't that make up for it? Didn't that make it a little better? The questions were desperate, needing, echoing in her head.
Remembering that moment must have opened the same moment in Fin's mind to her. It was horrible, to be seeing it from each side. It was so hard to separate who was who: it shouldn't have been, she had enough sense to realize that, but everything felt jumbled. Ever since Liam, she hadn't had her head on straight. Now she saw and felt Fin lying there, too dazed to demorph properly. Felt herself run away, felt herself be abandoned.
What came next was new. Swarming up was a choice, Suji could feel that before she scene actually made any sense. A choice between life or death. Death or enslavement. Death or betrayal. Fin didn't get captured as a human. Fin could have nothlited himself. Could have died rather than give them up -- rather than become the first Animorph Controller. What would she have chosen?
You can't blame him, Suji thought, her -- his -- wings pushing her towards the Temple with a new fervor, the heat from the blasts feeling for all the world like the day at the Hoover Dam. You can't blame him. But she could. She knew what she'd choose. Death, of course. Or life as a snake, if death wasn't on the table. A snake -- the same snake as Sophie, wasn't it? She didn't know the details surrounding that, but that showed that someone was making it by as one. If Suji couldn't blame him for choosing enslavement over death, something in her refused to absolve him for choosing to betray them.
As much as she didn't want it to, as much as she wanted the rescue to be clean, righteous, good, it never would be. That wasn't all Fin's fault. It couldn't have been from the beginning. Not with what she'd sacrificed to get to Fin in the first place. The crimes might be different, and one might be more forgivable in war than the other, but if Fin was guilty, so was she.
Suji blocked off his mind the best she could, blocked off herself. She couldn't console herself that he didn't know that she knew. Of course he saw her seeing that. Probably even saw it from her point of view. She had to get under control.
Powered by the heat, and straining the bird's wings as hard as she could, they were approaching the Temple. There was no time to land and demorph. The ships were falling out of the sky with alarming frequency now, and there was something ominous in the air. Not just from the screaming hell on the ground, either, but something worse. Suji looked up again, as if she'd see some monstrous fiend looming over them: she didn't see that, but she did see something almost as interesting.
Three turkey hawks, apparently too startled to even scavenge the corpses below (and who knew, perhaps they were too infected to eat) were flying away from the direction of the pool. At the edge of the forcefield, two fell, necks broken. The other though, had been flying slightly higher. It slowed, wings pushing air like it was water. But then it must have passed through. It got to the other side, and righted itself.
Of course. Suji and Drake had swum under the forcefield in Indonesia, but this explained all the takeoffs. No one would be able to drive out; the only escape was up. Maybe the forcefield naturally got weaker there, or maybe they were designed that way. In any case, that was their ticket out.
<<Drake! Aubrey! Sophie! Andre! Aida! Zane!>> Suji called out as they came into range of the Temple. No responses. <<SOPHIE!>> Even if the others weren't in morph, Sophie would be. Again, silence. Suji strained the falcon's eyes, searching for any detail, any sign of life. <<Anyone! It's Suji! Say something!>>
Suji circled back around, then once more. They must be gone. They couldn't be dead. Right? No. The virus hadn't taken to them, because they could morph. She knew that they had made it back. Suji felt a tiny pang of guilt and shame that she hadn't called for Ray or Lizzie, not even instinctively. Suji had accepted their deaths when she wasn't looking. After the third circle back, Suji began to climb into the air. The falcon's wings ached, but she paid that no mind. She'd flown under worse conditions.
<<If any of you are left, we're going skyward. The forcefield gets weaker, maybe even disappears up there. Stay away from the pool area, there are ships dropping out of the sky ever couple of seconds over there. I...>> Suji's mental voice choked, hard, and she didn't think that was possible, but it happened. What could she say? I'm sorry? I had to? Forgive me?
<<I'll see you guys in Vegas.>>
They would go there. It was the closest faction. And Drake knew Rian. Drake would go. He was leading them, after all.
Fin felt an odd emotion surge through his brain and he felt like he was choking on it. After a moment he realized it wasn't coming from him at all it was coming from Suji and he tried to push it away. He had no idea what was causing it but after comparing to his own feelings he finally realized the emotion flooding their shared brain was guilt. Except it was so far beyond any guilt had ever felt. Even when he'd left Aida to that random religious nut he'd never felt that guilty and he didn't understand why Suji did either. Sure, she'd left him and it'd sucked. But she'd saved herself so, in the end, as far as Suji was concerned, hadn't she gained more than she'd lost? He had no idea how the hell she could feel so guilty for doing the smart thing and if this is what she walked around feeling like all the time he was glad he wasn't like her.
When they reached the Temple and heard no response Fin couldn't help making a sarcastic comment. <<Oh you mean they aren't here? They didn't wait for us? I think leaving your comrades behind is becoming an Animorph tradition. Now can we go?>> He got his answer as she began heading up in his body, which felt like it wanted to drop out of the sky. Then again it wasn't even his body, it was the falcon's. The poor bird mind was confused and disturbed by the two minds communicating with it, both more complex and suffering emotions it couldn't comprehend. It just wanted to fly away from the danger and maybe catch a nice rodent or two.
Fin silently showed Suji how to use the falcon's body to get more altitude, sharing the memory instead of trying to talk. Birds with bigger wings like eagles and vultures were made for soaring but the falcon was designed to ride the wind and it was harder to just ride a thermal up. It was better to try to supplement riding the thermal with riding the winds they were crossing through. Suji adjusted her flying without comment, focused on getting them out.
At one point she tried to cross the forcefield but Fin was about %75 sure that they were too low and he balked, freezing the falcon's flying muscles in an effort to backwing but not being able to because of Suji's control. Still he managed to mess up her approach and they dropped a couple of feet in the air before she regained control. He felt a flash of annoyance as she began fighting for altitude again and when she tried to cross they were higher than last time.
There was an odd sensation as if they were trying to fly through molasses instead of air. They must have been just high enough for the forcefield to be penetrable at all and didn't have to say 'I told you so' since he was feeling smug and he figured she would pick up on it.
She guided them to a gas station just on the other side of the barrier and she carefully guided the tired falcon in through a broken window. The maneuver took skill and he wondered where she had learned that but as they passed through the window he got a flash of insight as he remembered flying in through a window set into a cliff. He wasn't sure what he was seeing but he knew it hadn't worked out very well the first time. Still, it worked well enough this time and they landed on the top of a shelf inside the abandoned gas station before fluttering down to the ground.
Suji began demorphing and soon Fin felt himself standing in his own body but again having no control. <<If you don't mind getting out now that would be good,>> Fin said, already sick of the sensation of powerlessness. He had no idea how he had planned on dealing with it 24/7 and he ignored what he was feeling from Suji's mind as the thought and it's implied betrayal passed through his mind. He was tired of feeling her thoughts. Tired of her judgements and then her weak attempts to hide them from him and herself. But more than anything he was tired of her guilt. He felt sick to his stomach and it wasn't even his own. He no longer wanted to live with such an emotion. He wanted her out.
He felt her begin to disengage from his mind and as he regained control he walked down the aisles and found a bottle of water inside one of the broken freezers and a pair of scissors down another aisle. He poured some of the water out and then cut the top of the bottle off and held it below his ears as she crawled out. The small slug fell into the container of water with a plop and he held the container up and just looked at the bloated form inside. The antennae waved slowly through the water and it scrunched it's body and moved slightly, bumping into the side of the wall.
Fin had a moment when he realized that he had almost as much power over Suji as she'd had over him a minute ago. He savored the feeling for a second, letting it balance out the past hour or so under her control so that he wouldn't end up holding a grudge before he set the bottle on the ground and overturned it so that the slug ended up on the convenience store floor.
As soon as Suji felt her Yeerk's body touch the coolness of the linoleum floor, she began to demorph. For a dizzying moment she wondered how long she'd been morphed. Not too long. No. Of course not. She couldn't be stuck like this. Thankfully, the demorphing process came smoothly, bringing her up, and up, and up.
Or at least until she was on her knees, curled over on the floor. When it was finished, her forehead rested on the floor, and she felt the cracked, peeling tiles against her skin. It took her a moment of deep breathing to be able to think anything remotely clearly. Memories were all jumbled in her head, too hard to tell what was hers, what was Fin's. And, though her stomach twisted, she was also a little relieved to find that Fin's memories made her sicker than her own.
...at least the memories she could clearly tell were his. There were other ones, dark ones, that floated just out of reach. Suji remembered saying something to Aubrey as she left the Temple, and then she remembered running through the Yeerk pool, and then there was heading to where she'd met Fin. Too many gaps. Too many blank spaces to fill.
Suji her an noise of discomfort behind her. Oh yeah. Fin. Which was also when she realized something else: she was naked. No morphing suit to speak of. How the hell had that happened? She'd always been a fairly decent morpher -- at least, she'd taken to the skin tight morphing outfits as quickly as anyone else. Had she just been so far gone that she hadn't been able to morph it on her mission to rescue Fin?
That didn't really matter right now. Right now she just wanted some clothes. "Oh. Um." Suji looked up and down the adjacent aisles, and then up at the anti-theft mirror, checking other aisles beyond those. Finally she spotted something useful. "I'll be back." With wobbling limbs, Suji pushed herself up, and headed to where she'd seen a couple racks of clothes.
It took a while of digging, but eventually she came up with a t-shirt and sweat pants. Then she rifled through a nearby cart filled with ugly shoes. At least she was clothed, though she certainly wouldn't be winning any fashion contests. Suji wasn't sure why she'd bothered with the shoes at first -- or why she went for the sweat pants instead of the leggings. But deep in her gut, she knew. She wasn't going to be morphing again.
Ever.
Suji walked back to Fin.
Fin watched with interest as Suji demorphed. This was the final test and he saw, as a human body grew out of the slug's, that it really was Suji. She had come back for him. The thought felt like it should touch him somehow but it didn"t. Fin couldn't really believe that she had come back because she cared about what happened to him or even because it was the right thing to do. Suji wasn't a hero, certainly not his hero, and she certainly wasn't a shining example of humanity. She was just a girl and the truth was she'd felt guilty. That was the only reason she came back.
Fin grunted when he saw that she was naked. It had been supposed to be a laugh but it he was too tired and the grunt was all that came out instead. He wondered what Aida would say if she found him alone with a naked Suji. No doubt her odd hatred of the group leader would only intensify. The thought made him smile. When Suji's act of "bravery" had no power to reach him the thought of Aida's jealousy made him smile. He didn't know why.
Unlike with Aida, Fin didn't offer Suji the shirt off his back, those days were over. Besides, she was perfectly capable of finding clothing for herself which she soon did. His only comment on her choice of outfit was a practical one. "You can't morph in that. Plus, its too hot for sweatpants and I'm guessing Nevada is no cooler than here." As he said that he felt and odd rumbling under his feet and then the windows of the gas station blew in and the ground shook. Fin instinctively ducked and curled into a little ball to protect himself from the flying glass and falling merchandise.
When the shake had passed Fin stood up and looked towards Dallas only to see nothing but a large cloud of dust and fire being contained behind the forcefield. "That's all folks," Fin said quietly, watching the air burn.
"I'm more worried about the sun burning me than the heat," Suji began to reply, when the windows blew out. She didn't duck, didn't cover her head. She just turned and stared towards Dallas. Her eyes did naturally wince against the sudden, impossible brightness of a bomb going off -- and then several more. The windows imploded, but not flying shard did much damage to her. The overbright glow lit up her face, and Suji just stared and stared and stared.
An entire city evaporated before her eyes. She didn't know if the others got out in time. Millions upon millions of people -- Controller, free, Yeerk, YPM -- were dead. More than the dam. And the lose wasn't nearly one-sided. But for the first time, those numbers were just numbers. She didn't bother picturing all the lives that were gone. Suji might have been calculating, but there had always been a purpose, a certain compassion -- as buried as it was -- behind it all. That was gone. Now she cared only about the other surviving Animorphs. They could be gone just as easily. Cooked underneath that big dome of a forcefield.
Suji opened her mouth to say something. Something useful like, the dust will blot the sky for a while, or, lets get some supplies together. But instead she just slowly sank down. She didn't collapse. It was just like watching someone sit down on the floor, though a little slower. Her eyes were still open, not really seeing anything, still imprinted with the flash.
How could this happen? How could any of it happen? A week ago there hadn't been any Liam, any Hive, any faction deaths. No suicide missions. No bombs falling over the city she was supposed to help protect. Suji didn't bring her knees to her chest, or cross her arms, or any other defensive gesture. She just sat there for a moment. Her eyes were hollow, the strain of the past few days making her look haunted.
"Alright, so how are we getting to Vegas," Fin asked looking over at Suji, so used to following her orders after all this time, only to find her sitting on the floor like someone had knocked her out and her eyes just happened to be open. Fin looked around the gas station awkwardly, not sure what to do. For some reason seeing Suji like this was more revealing, and so more embarrassing for him, than seeing her naked. He wasn't sure what to do with her.
"Right, I'll just," he turned around and walked away. Not really having a destination in mind he just wandered the aisles picking up stuff that looked good. He was surprised to find that he was famished. He hadn't eaten since before they had gone to Sootman's shop. It felt like forever ago. It was forever ago. A lifetime.
He walked back down Suji's aisle, hoping that that look was off her face, a bag of Oreos in one hand and a bottle of Yoohoo in the other, sipping the chocolaty goodness through a straw he'd picked up by the cashier window. "You...uh...better?"
Suji saw Fin walk away out of the corner of her eyes. She felt paralyzed. Not just her body, but her mind too: like she couldn't move the necessary stuff around in her brain to start a thought, let along hold one. Then, over and over, the same question rose in her mind.
How had it come to this?
Liam, smiling and dripping sweat, singing her Johnny Cash. No, no, no it ain't me babe...
How had it come to this?
Drunkenly morphing Mr. Gato the mangy kitten somewhere on a free human camp in Mexico.
How had it come to this?
Hiding in the trees, flying miles and miles as her tiny owl, all the way from NYC to Chicago.
How...
The war had always been real for her, hadn't it? She wasn't stupid. Wasn't naive. She'd murdered two kids, a brother and a sister, because of this war. She'd committed -- hell, orchestrated an act of genocide. But the war hadn't been real... or maybe it'd been real then, but it wasn't now. No, it certainly wasn't. She'd gone completely insane at some point. This world couldn't exist. Alien slugs that took over your mind? Nothing but a few dozen teenagers that could turn into animals, defending the world? Dallas city -- millions upon millions of lives -- obliterated?
This wasn't real. It couldn't be.
Fin came back. Suji watched him for a moment, silent. In the distance, there was no sound. It must have been trapped behind the forcefield. The sonic force alone was probably enough to level a small town. Everything was still, save for a generator humming around back. The world might not have existed, save for this gas station.
Suji stared at Fin until she recognized him again. The war was real, as real as ever.
"But not for me," Suji said under her breath. "Not anymore." She climbed shakily to her feet.
But first, this. And then the war, for her, would be over.
She didn't bother getting supplies. She didn't even think of it: the idea that her body could need nourishment might imply that she was living, not just passing through like a bit of errant wind. She couldn't think of herself, or of Fin, who was nothing more than she was. For whatever reasons, they were a pair: two pawns.
You couldn't tell which was white, which was black, or even they were both the same. Sometimes they stood next to each other, sometimes they faced off. But in the end, they were alike. They were both being controlled by some very real High Powers. And Suji would play her part. She would do what she was called to do. But only once more. Then she was giving up, and walking off the fucking chessboard.
She went into a backroom. There was a truck stationed in the parking lot when they flew in, and that meant that there might be keys around. When she opened the door to the employee's area, the site of the body didn't phase her. The clerk, some young guy, had hanged himself. The noose hadn't been so good. His neck hadn't broken from the fall -- he'd strangled to death. Suji simply searched through his pockets, and was grateful he hadn't slit his wrists. Blood would be a mess to look through. She came up with a pair of keys, and left, closing the door behind her. It never occurred to her to wonder if he'd been free or a Controller. In the end, a dead human body was just a dead human body.
When she stepped out, Suji only looked at Fin long enough to get his attention. Then she grabbed one of the road maps next to the magazine stand, went outside, and started the truck.
Fin just waited while Suji did...whatever it was Suji did. Whatever it happened to be this time, steal this, find that, make this out of sticks and tape, it would get them out of here. It was simply a gift she seemed to have. She never found the nicest things but she always seemed to come up with what was necessary to get them out of a sticky situation. He probably could have contributed nothing to this search of hers and they would have been ok but he decided he wanted some Oreos and Yoohoo for the road so he grabbed a shopping bag and began stuffing it with his favorite snack foods.
A couple of minutes later Suji came back and, sure enough, she had something useful with her. A map and a set of car keys. "Anyone ever tell you you're dependable," he said conversationally as they walked out to the car. "Kind of like Lassie or Old Yeller. Of course Old Yeller went crazy and who ever knows what happened to Lassie. I guess she lived a long life with a happy ending since you never hear about her dying." They were at the truck and Suji hadn't said a word in response but Fin wasn't really looking for a response anyway. He just threw his stuff in the passenger side, already assuming that Suji would want to drive, and turned around looking for a spare gas can and wondering if the gas pumps still worked so that they could get some spare gas for the road.
In the end he had to go back into the store to find both the can and the mechanism that turned on the gas pump but he filled up the tank and an put an extra can in the back before climbing into the car. "Viva Las Vegas?" he asked as he closed the door.
While Fin was in getting whatever he was getting, Suji tried the ignition. The truck came to life, making a few rattling noises -- it was old, but it would work. She watched Fin carrying a red plastic container, heard it thump into the truck bed. Inside of the truck's cabin wasn't exactly spacious, but it'd seat two comfortably enough. There were candy bar wrappers and chip bags piled on the floor.
Suji looked over at FIn as he climbed in. There was a problem, but she was so far gone that she couldn't even feel that slight tightening in her chest that always came with having to rely on other people. She just looked at him blankly, asking dully: "Can you drive a stick?" Very slightly, she gestured towards the manual transmission.
Maybe she could. She probably could. At least, she could probably get them to Vegas, considering it didn't matter if they wore the truck out. But her nerves were shot. Easier to ask.
"Sorry I don't go that way," Fin replied making the easy, automatic joke as he buckled his seat belt. It was only when he looked up at Suji that he realized she was serious. She actually didn't want to drive. Well maybe want was the wrong word, she looked like if someone made her drive she'd do it...just very very slowly. "Sure, whatever, I can drive," he responded, unbuckling the seat belt again and climbing out of the truck.
He walked around to the driver's side and opened the door since Suji had yet to climb out. It was like she had mono or something. Or actually it was like what Fin thought a person with mono would look like since he had never actually known anyone who had suffered from it himself.
She climbed out and walked around as Fin hopped into the driver's seat and began trying to figure out how to operate the car. After a few tries he managed to put it in first gear and he hit the gas. The car jumped forward and then stopped abruptly, throwing Fin into the steering wheel and leaving him with a nice bruise on his chest. "I've only driven stick, like once," he said as way of explanation as he tried again. "But I know the theory behind it so it should be easy. Just give me a second."
It was going to be a long trip to Vegas.
Suji sat back in the passenger seat. Her hands automatically fastened the seatbelt, less out of concern for her safety, and more as just as ingrained motion. Funny, she hadn't driven, or been driven, in a car in at least a year. But old habits died hard, as they said. You couldn't ignore that many years of car safety training.
She got out the map, and occasionally let Fin know when to adjust his course. Night came quickly over the desert. She hadn't eaten anything in over a day, and more importantly, hadn't had anything to drink, either. But still, she didn't feel it. Or if her body did, she paid it no mind.
They were traveling close to 80 miles an hour -- the roads were clear, and they would have gone faster, if the truck didn't violently shake and threaten to fall apart from under them when they hit 90 mph. Suddenly there was the sound of a loud explosion, like a gun shot, and the truck careened off road. The ride was bumpy, and if it wasn't for the seat belt, either of them might have gone through the windshield.
The front tires must have caught in a ditch, because suddenly the whole world turned upside down. Suji had the time to think, Are you kidding? Pretty anti-climatic. Then there was the sound of glass shattering somewhere. Not the windshield, which crumpled but didn't really break, but something more fragile.
The truck flipped again, and again, and Suji was knocked out.
Fin poked Suji again as he sipped on an unbroken bottle of Yoohoo. He'd woken up about an hour ago but Suji was still out and Fin couldn't move her until she woke up. Well he could try but he saw no reason to when she would be able to use her own two feet as soon as she opened her eyes.
"Suji. We're way beyond beauty sleep here. Wake up." No response. Fin sighed and reached behind him for another Yoohoo. He'd gathered all the unbroken ones he could find along with the scattered snack food as soon as he'd woken up and dragged Suji out of the car. His hand encountered empty air and he turned around to see that he'd finished them all. He turned around again to look at his unconscious team mate. "Alright, now you really have to wake up because we're out of Yoohoo."
Suji slowly came out of what seemed like an unnatural darkness, for the second time in a day. She remembered entering the Yeerk pool area, remembered being chased, and then... then she was in the room where Fin was supposed to be infested with some high-powered Yeerk. Coming awake slowly, she found that pondering what happened between those last two events was terrifying for some reason. Pushing that away, Suji woke up.
She was still held to the seat by her seatbelt, though her body was twisted a bit funny in the seat. Thankfully she didn't seem to be too hurt. No broken bones or anything. At least it seemed that way till she touched the back of her head. There was a gash there, and as she fingered it, warm blood seeped onto her fingers. It could probably have done with some stitches, and it was definitely still bleeding, running between her body and the back of the seat. A shard of glass -- the bottom of a Yoohoo bottom, actually -- fell to the floor from behind her chair.
It wasn't a life threatening wound, let alone a mission threatening one. It wouldn't be pretty if it got infected, but that would be thinking ahead, which Suji wasn't currently capable of. Fin was saying something next to her, and though she didn't pay much attention to what he was saying, the tone sounded calm enough. Suji looked over at him, and let her eyes stop swimming. If she was in her right mind, she might have checked for a concussion. Staunched the blood that was slowly running down the back of her neck with something. As it was, she unbuckled her seat belt, and searched for the map, and opened her car door.
There was, thankfully, not a cloud in the sky. It would have been impossibly dark otherwise -- there seemed to be no man-made light sources for miles. As it was, there was enough light for Suji to make out the thick, black line of sharpie ink which Suji had used to mark their way to the base. The map itself was drenched in Yoohoo, so the ink bled, but not too far.
Turning, Suji only had to look back to see the problem. The entire back right tire was gone. "Whhh-" She tried to start, but her voice was cracked, dry. She wet her lips, and found that there wasn't all that much moisture in her mouth, either. Still, she got the words out. "We can just follow the road." With that, Suji started walking.
