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“We need to go,” he told the sea of silver-and-white visages before him. “They need our help.”
Maria (Ionos) stepped into his way, her face inches to his. “They do not deserve our help.”
“There are people up there,” Erek shot back. “People who had nothing to do with Animorphs. Hork-Bajir, human, Taxxon, Yeerk. Animals trapped and buried, lives hurt and dying. Would you leave them there?”
“You helped them of your own will before. Now, they use your programming against you.” She stamped one foot, agitated. “Why should we not leave them to fend for themselves? Why should we betray our ancient secrets and principles for those who'd use us?”
“Because we can help,” he told her, softer. “Now, will you get out of my way?”
She didn't. He went around her.
In the end, it was their resistance—the relatively few Chee who'd abandoned their thousand-thousand-year creed of non-interference to help the humans—who went with him, to help the humans again.
No one took notice of a few extra packs of Hork-Bajir shifting rubble and searching for the wounded.
They all attended Rachel's funeral in their various personae—even Maria, even those who'd stayed. Their disagreements with humans, with Animorphs aside, the Animorphs had done a great service for humanity, and a great favour to the Chee.
The Chee would live. The dogs would live. They, the last of the Pemalite legacy, would survive in the shadows for the coming years.
Besides, he wanted them to see. He wanted Jake to see. The Animorphs had only interacted with the Chee through him; they had never known how far the resistance went. How deep. How, despite only a small fraction of the Chee participating, the Chee resistance had made many sacrifices of their own.
Jake saw him, Erek knew. He didn't meet Erek’s eyes. Neither did Tobias, though Erek didn't expect such from him.
Cassie did; she gave him a sad, distant smile. Marco did as well, and tossed a grim, sardonic salute.
Marco stopped by the impromptu animal shelter a week after The Hague. He was as surprised to see Erek as Erek was to see him.
“Erek? What are you doing here?”
Erek gestured towards the rebar he was bending into makeshift cages, strengths he wasn't trying to hide. “Helping.” An ironic shrug. “School's out, anyway.”
Marco's gaze followed the gesture and Erek watched it click. Marco relaxed a fraction. “I'm looking for Homer.”
“Jake's dog?”
“Yeah. After...well, you know...the Yeerks weren't too concerned with keeping up fronts anymore, much less caring for a dog. Homer got out before he got starved or killed. And Jake...I was hoping that maybe something...familiar...”
Erek searched his memory banks and nodded. “He's in the back. Give me a sec.”
A Hork-Bajir had delivered Homer to the makeshift shelter a few days back, half-starved with a broken leg. Jenny'd set the dog’s leg and fed him, but after the end of a war, shelters had limited resources and space. Maybe the heroes of the universe could command enough resources to keep Homer fed.
Erek gathered up Homer and a blanket and brought both out, passing by—and ignoring—Jenny’s glaring contest with Marco.
“Here.” Erek deposited the dog into Marco's hands. “He'll be fine, but that leg will be weak for a while; keep him off it.” He tucked small bag into Marco’s jacket pocket. “Painkillers. We don't have enough, but that should take the edge off the worst days.”
Homer whined softly; Erek’s heart would ache if he had one. Marco nodded, “Thanks.”
Jenny finally exploded: “Thanks? That's all you can say? After what you—”
“Jenny.” It was as even as he could make it.
“Don't, Erek—Maria was right, they just take and take—after everything, after all you did—thanks for the dog, not for you.” Her holographic eyes blazed. “Before humans, no Chee had ever—”
“Enough,” Erek snapped, icy cold.
Marco raised his brows at Jenny, shooting a mocking look at her forehead as if he could see the Yeerk that was still there. Jenny flinched.
“Marco. Homer's waiting.”
Marco turned swiftly for the door.
“Aren't you sorry?” Jenny burst out, just as Marco was about to cross the threshold to the bright sunshine outside.
The freedom to walk boldly on a hot summer day, the wind in your face and laughter between your lips, to breathe and see and live and love by your own power—there was little wonder as to why humans would kill for that (and was he faulting Marco for being able to make that choice, or for using him in the pursuit of that choice? Could he fault the humans who were willing to go all lengths for their freedom, when they were unwilling to go for theirs?).
Marco’d kill for that. Sometimes Erek wished he could, too.
Marco paused, but didn't turn around. When he replied, his voice cracked: “Yeah, I am.”
“Take care, Marco,” Erek said despite himself.
Marco walked away. But Erek thought he heard a mumbled “you too.”
“Now what? We can't keep them forever,” Lourdes said plaintively.
Erek shrugged. They’d had this argument many times; each time no closer to a resolution than the last. There was no alternative: the Chee couldn't release their Yeerks. Whatever tentative peace (if a defeated race could have any say in peace) the Yeerks had arranged with the rest of the galaxy didn't reach them.
The Chee couldn't take that chance. Even as nothlits, the Yeerks were sapient; they were aware. They could communicate and reveal the Chee’s existence (because no living, biological being could resist Yeerk control). Some Yeerks had even seen the Chee before, but they had been too distracted by the Animorphs and their Yeerk-Andalite war to focus on the androids’ capabilities.
These Yeerks, their Yeerks, knew—knew too much and nothing at all. It didn't matter that their Yeerks were imprisoned in android bodies, unable to see or hear or even think without the androids knowing. The Chee could neither end them nor let them go.
No more openness, no more alliances. One betrayal was enough.
Marco had guessed, of course—ruthless strategist that he was. That knowing, savage look. He had seen that bright, clear line.
“We can't keep them forever.” Lourdes was still pleading.
Erek shrugged again. “We'll keep them for as long as we need to.”
That was forever—for as long as those Yeerks' biological lifespans would last. They’d feel the Yeerks’ terror, helplessness, desperation everyday until they didn't.
The Chee were awfully Yeerk-like, when it came down to it.
For all the thousands of years they had observed and lived amongst humans, humans remained mysterious and volatile and beyond understanding. The Animorphs had told him that morphing a new form kept that form's most base instincts.
Erek wondered—more than once—what the base instincts for humans were, when they were capable of so much good and evil.
Androids didn't have instinct. They had programming—alterable, malleable. And yet, still not as varied as humans.
Sentience was a very fine line. Morality, even more so.
The Chee had wanted the war to end too, after all.
“No, no, sir. Trip's on me,” he said, as the man pulled out his wallet. “And...I'm very sorry.”
Dan Berenson didn't even bother parsing why or how his cabbie knew who he was before he bolted from the taxi.
He left the bright orange basketball on Jake's shattered porch, waiting for the Berensons to come home. It was perhaps the last thing Tom enjoyed that was purely for himself.
Loren (and by extension, her family) was the only one to not be publicly identified after the war. There was no point allowing the public to harangue a woman who had no memories of her son. All her medical records were carefully altered, and “Cassie” had advised her to move before her neighbours recognized her physical changes.
“Enjoy your new apartment,” Erek told her as he carried the last of her things in.
All the Animorphs had all lived so, so briefly. Even those that survived would never really come home, marked and scarred as they were.
In another life, they might've shone so brightly on another stage.
They would never get to live that life.
Humans only lived once.
“...would you make us killers, too?”
“Yes ma'am, I guess I would. We're in a fight for our lives here. Our parents, our brothers and sisters, our friends—they are all going to be slaves of the Yeerks, if we don't win. So I'll do whatever it takes...”
Erek remembered the battles. Bladed corpses crumpled together. Necks snapped, bones shattered, bodies gutted in the blink of an eye, all by his own hands. Two bright Dracon beams lancing through the darkness. Seventeen thousand sentient, sapient shards in the vacuum of space. He remembered. He'd always remember.
Erek admired the Hork-Bajirs' resilience. As peaceful as Chee, as Pemalites—and, once upon a time, as ignorant of war. And yet they were now as much a warrior race as any, fighting skills and hardened blades, howling “FREE OR DIE!” to brave deaths. They had constitutions, alliances, ambassadors.
Freedom must be fought for.
The humans were willing to go all lengths for their freedom...the Chee were unwilling (unable) to go to all lengths for theirs.
Freedom must be fought for, and defended to the death.
The Chee did not die. They did not fade. For them, death was only the beginning.
Erek King died at age 17, in a five-car accident that involved speeding and DUI.
Two cities away, a young boy with brown eyes and hair waved shyly at his new classmates.
“Hi. My name is Jake.”