Animorphs: 2010 - Chapter 9
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Character Sheets
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Nine (18+)Cassie still technically lived with her parents, but when they’d built the new Center buildings, they included a suit of rooms connected to the offices to give her some privacy. I parked close to her door, still mildly tipsy and somewhere between grateful and worried that I hadn’t been pulled over for it. In the field between the Center and the trees, I thought I saw Ax galloping, but when I looked again he was gone. Marco’s warning that he would run off given the first chance rang in my head, but I couldn’t really bring myself to care.
She opened the door before I had a chance to knock. She wore my old basketball jersey and a pair of cotton pants for pajamas and her eyes were bright with unshed tears. “You came.”
“Uh-huh.” I just nodded dumbly, staring at her, stamping down the urge to wrap her up and never let go.
“Oh. Um, come on in.” She stepped aside so I could enter and shut the door behind me. Her suite was really one giant room, with a partition put up between the bed and the sitting area. She had a microwave and a mini-fridge instead of a kitchen and a shared a bathroom with the office on the other side, where we’d been earlier to pick up the rifles. Everything was neat and tidy, decorated in earthy tones, but a little bland. As if she didn’t spend much time in the place and didn’t care much what it looked like.
“I didn’t know you still had that,” I said, nodding to the jersey. I’d only been on the team one year, and I’d been the worst player. But sitting on the bench while the team won state championships meant I still got a jersey out of deal, and since I’d been dating Cassie at the time...
“Yeah, I...ah, I found it the other day.” She played with the hem of the jersey and wouldn’t look up at me.
It was moronic, the way we danced around each other. On some level I’d always known that. But today especially, after everything that had happened, it just seemed even more pointless than ever to stay away from her, to lie about the fact that I still felt drawn to her. Hell, brain stealing aliens could knock down our door at any moment. I couldn’t care that we’d had a fight in high school, or that she would never be able to deal with my military lifestyle. Three days ago the biggest thing hanging between us had been the fact that I would move away in a few months and that she was happiest staying put. Now?
Now it didn’t seem like near a good enough reason not to kiss her. I caught her face in both hands and leaned down to press my mouth against hers. She wrapped both her arms around me without the slightest hesitation, as if she’d been waiting for just that, and for several glorious minutes we stayed like that.
I didn’t notice when embracing turned to clinging, or when she stopped kissing me and instead pressed her face into my shoulder. I nudged and pulled at her, walking us over to the couch without letting go of her in the slightest, and sat down with her gathered in my lap.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, her hands twisted into my shirt. “I just-”
“I know.”
I did know. There’s something about fear, about real fear, that sticks with a body. Not the kind of fear that can be laughed off once the danger has passed, but the kind that tears you down and makes you realize for the first time that you’re mortal, than you can be hurt, that you’re in the middle of something that could chew you up and spit you out and not even care. It’s a good kind of fear, a useful kind, but there’s no getting around the fact that it leaves you vulnerable and hollow afterward.
And it doesn’t ever go away. I knew what she was going through. There were many nights in Afghanistan or Iraq where I’d stay up all night with my platoon joking and playing cards, just because none of us could stand to be alone with our thoughts. The infantryman’s version of sitting in someone’s lap, I suppose. Even now, even having felt it before, I wanted to curl up around Cassie and let her weight and her warmth ground me in reality.
“Jake?” Her voice sounded tight. I wondered if she’d been crying before I’d arrived.
“Shh.” I hugged her tighter, ran my hands up and down her arms slowly. “It’ll pass.”
“Do you...get used to doing stuff like that?”
“Not really. You just learn how to deal with it.”
She wrapped her arms around my neck and rested her forehead against my collarbone. “I can’t get it out of my head. I keep thinking about how anything, any little thing, could have gone wrong and we’d all be dead right now. Or worse.”
“Yeah.” I pressed my cheek against the top of her head. “That’s normal. It’ll...it’ll fade.”
It wouldn’t ever stop. I had moments still where I would think back on the various things I’d done and wonder what would happen if it had gone just a little different. I’d already accepted that Bull would be added to that list. It wouldn’t ever stop, but eventually it would fade, and I wouldn’t obsess about it.
Although that wouldn’t happen any time soon.
She turned her head and her lips brushed against my neck. Not content with that, I put my fingers under her chin and made her look up at me so I could kiss her again. God, I’d missed that. Missed holding her and feeling her hands creep around my neck and pull me down lower. She used to always joke that I was entirely too tall to kiss comfortably. I leaned into her and held her tighter.
She gave a muffled squeak of protest and shoved at my chest, causing me to let go suddenly. As soon as my arms were no longer around her, she jumped off my lap, her cheeks flushed, one hand pressed against her lips. “What are we doing?” she asked, more to herself than to me.
“Thought it was pretty obvious.”
Cassie just shook her head and wouldn’t look me in the eye. I felt oddly cold and breathless without her body. I wanted to reach out and touch her, more than anything, but I knew better than to pressure her.
A very hard temptation to resist, since I also knew all the things that would make Cassie turn boneless and start purring.
“Cassie-”
“No. No, we can’t keep doing this every time you come home. It’s...it’s not healthy, Jake. Every time. And then you’re gone in a few weeks and I can’t...I can’t...” She wrapped her arms around her midsection and turned away from me. She might as well have slapped me in the face.
I didn’t mean for things to turn out like this. I’d always attributed our first break up to the fact that we’d been high school sweethearts; those relationships never last. If only we’d been able to leave it as that, but every few years, when we both found ourselves home at the same time... But it only ever ended one way: a night or two together, then a lot of regrets and me on a plane heading back to my unit. We always told ourselves that we’d just keep it platonic, just be friends. We always failed.
“Do you want me to leave?” I asked quietly.
She shook her head ‘no’ but didn’t say anything.
I got off the couch and went to her, touched her gently on the shoulder. She leaned back against me automatically and I hugged her from behind. “It doesn’t have to be some big, sweeping relationship statement, you know. It could just be...what we need tonight. And that’s it.”
She tensed and stayed silent for a long moment, and I worried I’d insulted her horribly. When she pulled away I let her go, but all she did was turn around and wrap her arms around my neck, pull me down to her level. When she kissed me, she poured so much unspoken need and desire into it that I thought for a moment the room would spontaneously combust.
Never breaking contact with her lips, I pulled her steadily backward to the bed.
Early the next morning, I woke to a pounding at the door. I groaned and rolled over, ready to tell Cassie to go answer it and make them go away, but I was alone in the bed. Grumpily, I burrowed further under the covers. I wasn’t about to go answer it myself and have to explain to Cassie’s father why I was in his daughters room without pants on.
“Jake, damnit, I know you’re in there. Your truck’s out here!”
It was Marco. I would have preferred Cassie’s father. But since he didn’t seem inclined to stop pounding, I dragged myself out of bed and pulled my pants on. I couldn’t find my shirt, but I did find the basketball jersey, so I put that on instead.
“I’m coming; hold your horses.” I opened the door and found Marco wearing a comically disappointed look, as if he couldn’t figure out whether to rip me a new one or start snarking at me. “What’ya want?”
“Honestly, you could have left a note or something.” Marco muscled his way past me into the room. “Thought you’d run off to do something really stupid.”
“Why...are you here?”
“Oh, come on. It couldn’t have been that good. Did you forget we’re all supposed to meet here and figure out what to do with ET?”
I hadn’t forgotten. Not exactly. I just hadn’t quite remembered yet. “Oh. Is it time for that already?”
“No, I just showed up early to make sure you weren’t off trying to go mano-a-mano with your captain or some such. Where’s Cassie?”
“Dunno. Get out of here before she comes back.”
“Why?”
“Because I know you and you’ll make an ass of yourself as soon as you see her.”
Marco just grinned impudently at me. “You guys shouldn’t give me so much to work with.”
“Work with what?” We both turned to see Cassie in the open doorway, pulling off a pair of muddy overboots. “’Morning, Marco. I thought we agreed to meet at noon?”
“We did. I just-” I kicked him in the shin and he reconsidered whatever he was about to say. “So, I’ll see you then, yeah?” He waved as he all but sauntered out the door.
Once he was gone and Cassie was in the room, I tried to lean down and give her a kiss, but she turned her head. I kissed her cheek instead, confused. “Something wrong?” I grimaced and added, “I mean, more than there was already?”
“No. Just...would like to keep things in perspective, that’s all.”
I felt like she’d punched me in the gut, but I backed up all the same and didn’t try to kiss her again. She must have been more offended than I’d thought by me ‘just what we need’ comment the night before. I didn’t regret what had happened, couldn’t regret it, but at the same time it hadn’t solved anything between us. And as good as the sex had been, as great a comfort for both of us, it wasn’t all of what we really needed.
“Yeah. Okay.” I scratched my neck awkwardly. “So, is Ax still with us?”
“I saw him out this morning. Told him he should probably stay hidden in case Dad or one of the others comes in early. It’s my day for the morning rounds, so they shouldn’t be coming in, but just in case.”
I nodded absently, not really processing much of what she’d said. “At least he’s still around. Hopefully we can work something out.”
Although what we would work out was still unclear. We’d lost the ship, which would have been a huge boon in convincing others our story was true. After considering it for a while, I didn’t think we could convince Ax to come out to the rest of humanity. Even if we controlled the setting and introduced him to just a few critical people, I couldn’t guarantee that it wouldn’t go wrong. That he wouldn’t land in Area 51, or whatever. I was equally doubtful that we’d get any of his technology without stealing it; if he carried things that couldn’t fall into enemy hands, it would probably be an even worse infraction for him to give it away to us.
“I should probably go home and change,” I said, feeling beat and defeated. Fighting and drinking and sex all piled on top of each other had not exactly left me refreshed. Or clean.
Before she could make an equally awkward reply, something slammed hard against the door. I pulled Cassie behind me reflexively, but it was just Marco, barging in again once he’d stopped long enough to use the door handle. “Guys, come on, you have to see this.”
He ran off again before either of us could yell at him and we had no choice but to follow.
We ran into the barn where Ax was hiding. Cassie had given him one of the storage rooms in the back where the other Center workers weren’t likely to stumble across him. Only, when we arrived at the room, we didn’t see Ax. Instead we found...
Another Marco. Stark naked and looking like he would fall over at any second.
I looked back and forth between the two Marcos, completely stumped, until it finally occurred to me. “Aximili? Is that you?”
“Theeeeese bodies are not-t-t stable. Able.”
Cassie covered a noise that could have been a giggle or a squeak and walked quickly out of the room.
“How...?” I looked between the two again, waiting for an explanation. Ax seemed preoccupied with teaching himself to walk.
“I was heading out, and he comes up and asks if he can borrow my DNA,” Marco explained. “So I, well I didn’t really know what that meant, but I said yes, and then he grabbed my hand and...and...well, and then he did that.”
“Did?”
“Turned into me! Look at him!”
I did look. He’d more or less figured out how to stand without falling over and was now preoccupied with trying to look in multiple directions at once. “Your oth-th-ther friend said I would not want to -nt-to nnnntttto - want to be discovered. I thought -th th- it best to take a human appearance.”
“But...you...turned into...you...” I pointed first at Ax, then at Marco. I knew what had happened, I just couldn’t quite accept it yet. Even with the result standing in front of me.
“Technically, I assumed the form of an exact biological copy while leaving the original organism unharmed and autonomous.”
“Hey, I’m not an organism!” Marco thought about what he’d said, then scowled. “I mean, I am, but don’t call me one.”
Ax tipped his head to the side and almost fell over. “Is this not an accept -pt-pt-pt- able way to avoid -oooiid- detection? Kshn. K-k-k-shun.”
“Stop doing that. And no, you can’t go around looking just like Marco. People will notice that.”
“Especially if you go around as Pantsless Marco,” my friend pointed out. Although he didn’t sound particularly embarrassed by the prospect.
Personally, I didn’t see that he had over-much to brag about.
Cassie came in just then carrying a pair of faded overalls. She held them out to Ax, carefully not looking down, but Ax just stared at the clothes and then back over at me and Marco. She left as we helped Ax figure out how to dress.
“Man, he can’t stay like that,” Marco said as we stepped back to see the result. “I’m insulted just looking at me.”
I had to admit, Ax in Marco’s stocky frame and shirtless overalls did look like a Hollywood hick. It wasn’t exactly my top priority at the moment, though.
“So, is that...that changing into things, is that something all Andalites can do?” I vividly remembered the monster Visser Three had turned into on the night Elfangor had died.
“No. The tech-tek-k-k-technology was only discovered four and quart-quarter years ago.” Ax paused and looked up again, though the act made him stumble back a step. “About thirty five of your years.”
“Technology?” Marco asked. “You did that with science?”
“Of course.”
Marco had no come-back to such a bland reply.
Cassie came back into the store room, making sure that Ax was dressed before she fully entered. “I call the other two,” she told us. “We might as well get started early.”
Boys and their Toys
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