Signal boosting the next fic in my Animorphs series!
>Five kids cut through a construction site. And one Yeerk...
>A year has passed since Cassie was first infested by Aftran Nine-Four-Two. A year of secrets and lies, pain and hardship, fear and horror. But in that time, Cassie and Aftran have managed to start something. A covert movement against the Yeerk Empire, a resistance dedicated to ending the invasion before things can get out of hand. It's small...but it's growing. But the Yeerks are not the only threat to humanity - the Andallites are coming. If they win, they will burn Earth.
On the eve of battle, Cassie is determined to give her best friend Rachel one last normal night - because if the Yeerks win, then it will finally be time for Cassie to tell Rachel about her secret, about Aftran, about everything. But things have a way of not going according to plan, as Cassie and Aftran learn when a dying Andalite prince crashes to Earth...
The Subversion is rated PG-13 for intense subject matter. It contains canon-typical violence and trauma...but also canon-typical seeds of hope. Like the Animorphs books themselves, it is written so that someone who has not read the previous story in the series, should still be able to jump right in and enjoy.
As with the previous book, it will update on Sundays. And you can count on that - the story is already completed, so provided I still have a pulse, it will update on time every week.
Questions, comments, criticisms and critiques over on AO3 are always welcome!
And, as before, I present a special treat for Reddit: a preview from Chapter Two!
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Chapter Two - Preview
>!A F T R A N!<
>!Cassie wanted to tell someone about us. About my people. About everything. For a while it had been a desire mostly focused on her pool sister – best friend, whatever – Rachel, but increasingly I felt a familiar desperation when talking to Jake as well. I could feel her desire pressing more on me every day. Pretty soon she might be trying to convince me to let her unload to a random person on the street.!<
>!Her desperation showed most of all in her idea to potentially get a someone friendly to the Peace Movement to infest Rachel. Personally speaking, I saw the merits to it, and definitely would bring the idea up with Methit Six-One-Three the next time we spoke in the Pool, coordinating to get unhosted Peace Movement members into hosts who would accept them and be willing to join in our cause of covertly working against the Empire.!<
>!The problem was, while Cassie had come to accept me and even called me a friend, she still had an instinctive revulsion to the idea of her friends being infested, no matter the circumstances, seeing it as an invasion – which it certainly would be at first, since I don’t know how else we could get Jake or especially Rachel down into the Yeerk Pool other than having them be dragged down there kicking and screaming, and then afterwards having to try and rebuild things.!<
>!I don’t think Cassie would ever acquiesce to that, not unless there was literally no other choice – not unless the Empire marked them for infestation and she had to find someone who wouldn’t hurt them. But the fact that she was even considering the possibility as a means of being able to just talk to a fellow human she knew and trusted about everything, showed how desperate she was starting to get.!<
>!On top of that, we had another problem on Cassie’s hands, one that ate at her at least as much.!<
>!His name was Tobias.!<
>!As Jake and Cassie stepped off of the school bus and started towards the school’s entrance, Jake stopped after a second, looking to a trio of school kids standing near one of the decorative shrubberies that framed the school’s entrance.!<
>!“Hang on a second, Cassie,” he said, breaking away from Cassie and heading over to the group, two larger kids standing on either side of a smaller, much skinnier boy with unkempt blond hair that reached to his chin. Tobias was backed against the shrubs as the two other boys said something to him. He was cringing, but his pale eyes lit up when he spotted Jake getting closer.!<
>!Whatever was said between Jake and the two other kids was too quiet for Cassie to overhear, but they eventually backed off and walked away. Jake gently put a hand on Tobias’ shoulder, and the kid nodded and then followed Jake back over to Cassie.!<
>!Cassie looked the boy over. “Andy and Tap-Tap again?” She asked.!<
>!Tobias nodded. “Yeah,” he said, sighing. “I’m pathetic, I know.”!<
>!“No, you aren’t,” Jake said, instantly.!<
>!Tobias didn’t really look like he believed Jake. From what I’d been able to gather about the boy, I don’t think I believed Jake either. Tobias was the new kid in school, meaning he had no real social group to belong to yet. He was timid. He had first met Jake when two bullies had cornered him in a boy’s bathroom and held him upside-down in the toilet water, giving him something called a ‘swirly’. He had been abandoned by his mother, his father was dead, and even Tobias admitted that the uncle he lived with didn’t care about him at all.!<
>!It meant he was absolutely perfect recruitment material for the Sharing – no matter how uncomfortable that thought made me these days. He was exactly the sort of weak-willed, pliable, easily influenced human that my people targeted to recruit into our cult on Earth, mold them and manipulate them until they would willingly give up their freedom for the chance to host a Yeerk. A voluntary host was so much easier to reside within than an involuntary one; my people actually went to great lengths to secure them.!<
>!As if to emphasize the risk the Sharing posed, when we walked into the school the first thing we saw was someone putting up a huge poster on the wall for the Sharing club on one of the walls, a custom one that showed the entire middle school Sharing club at some barbecue they’d gone to over the summer. There were over fifty kids smiling and laughing and waving at the camera, as well as a half-dozen teachers. The glossy paper caught the hallway lights, making all those smiling faces look unreal.!<
>!Only twelve of the people in the poster were actually Controllers. Well, twelve that Cassie and I knew of. Which was part of the problem: there were now enough Controllers in school that Cassie and I couldn’t keep track of all of them.!<
>!“Hey,” Cassie said, before Tobias could look at the poster. Unfortunately, her thoughts didn’t go any further than just wanting him not to notice the community and sense of belonging that my people were offering, that Tobias wanted.!<
>!I nudged Cassie, and she let me slip in. “Do you have any pets?” I asked.!<
>!“Oh,” Tobias said. “Yeah, actually. A cat, named Dude. A gray tabby. I mean, sort of.” He brushed some of his hair behind his ears. “I mean, I say pet…he was a stray. But my window was open and he just jumped in one day. He still spends half his life outside though.”!<
>!Cassie nudged me, taking back over. “But he comes home to you? He really trusts you, Tobias.”!<
>!“I’m more of a dog person,” Jake admitted. “I have one, named Homer. But cats can be cool too. Dogs just love you from the moment they meet you, cats, I guess you have to really earn it.”!<
>!I’m not sure Jake noticed, but Tobias’ face actually fell a little when he mentioned being more into dogs, but then rose again when he continued and complimented cats. Although I don’t think that Tobias cared about Jake’s opinion on human pets, specifically, so much as caring about whether or not he and Jake had anything in common. That sense of belonging and connection that he needed so desperately.!<
>!Cassie noticed it too. If anything, she’d probably noticed it before me, the way Tobias’ whole posture shifted as Jake spoke.!<
>!“What about you?” Tobias asked Cassie. “Any pets?”!<
>!Cassie nodded. “Sort of. I live on what used to be a farm. We have three horses, and a chicken coup.” She steeled herself a moment. “And my father runs the Wildlife Rehabilitation Clinic from our main barn. I guess the animals there aren’t my pets, really, but I do care for them.”!<
>!“Wow.” He seemed so genuine in his admiration. And of course, Cassie had just let him know that, like him, she had animals she cared for.!<
>!The first bell rang, and we had to all go our separate ways to our homerooms. As we went, Cassie looked back at Tobias for a moment…and just before he went into his own class, we saw him stop and glance at another Sharing poster that had already been hung up...!<