Chapter Text
Cassie sits in a cage staring out at the hell that is the Pool. The sounds of screaming, begging, sobbing, echo through the dimly lit cavern blending into a single cacophonous cry of pain. The yeerks — both those in the sludgy, kandrona-rich water and the ones puppeting slave bodies — seem oblivious to the noise, carrying on as if nothing is amiss, as is if they weren’t orchestrating one of the greatest crimes against humanity in history.
Not just against humanity, Cassie thinks, glancing over at the reinforced cages where the enslaved hork-bajir are kept to await re-infestation. After a couple months of infestation, Cassie has stopped seeing them as terrifying alien monsters and started thinking of them as fellow prisoners, cursed with this terrible fate. She wishes she could talk to them, get to know the hork-bajir on their terms, as living beings with thoughts and feelings and hopes and dreams of their own. (Cassie knows they have them, she’s seen her yeerk’s memories of when she had a hork-bajir host. The yeerk had been comparing hosts, almost seeming to wonder why Cassie was different.) But of course, the humans and hork-bajir are kept separate. The yeerks don’t want the hosts to start fraternizing — it might increase the chances of host rebellion.
Cassie turns back to the other humans in her cage. There’s about a dozen of them, shoved into a space barely thirty square feet in area. Cassie thinks of diagrams of slave ships she’s seen in her schoolbooks. At least she only has to endure the cramped confines for a couple hours every three days. Unlike her ancestors, however, she doesn’t have control of her body when she’s outside the cages.
Cassie crouches down next to a young red-headed girl, probably only seven or eight in age. The girl is crying softly, whimpering for her mom. Cassie lays a hand on her shoulder. “It’ll be okay,” she lies. “We’ll survive this.”
The girl curls up next to Cassie, still whimpering, but huddling closer for warmth. Cassie gives what comfort she can, even knowing that it’s pointless. In a few minutes the girl will be dragged off to have her mind invaded and her body stolen. Why then does she continue to offer hope in the face of such utter hopelessness? Perhaps it's the principle of the thing. If Cassie didn’t try to at least do something for the other hosts, then she’d become nothing but an empty shell — and she sees too many like that. Men and women, even some children, staring sightlessly, unable to move or speak on their own any more, like marionettes with their strings cut, simply existing, waiting for their yeerk to return to puppet their living corpses. No, Cassie refuses to become like that. Her sanity is the one thing she has left.
Other hosts, usually the newer ones, behave differently. They scream and shout and hurl abuse at the yeerks from the inside of the cages. Occasionally, someone will try to fight back, but that never ends well. The yeerks will beat the host into submission, or if that fails, stun them with a low-powered Dracon beam. They never kill them though — a host body is too valuable to be wasted. Even freedom through death is denied them.
Cassie sometimes wishes she could be like those more rebellious hosts. To be able to fight, no matter how pointlessly, seems to give them life in a way that she sees in few other hosts. The fire that blazes in their eyes is one of hatred, but it seems to give them purpose. But Cassie can’t seem to muster up the animosity to hate the yeerks in that way. She despises what the yeerks are doing of course, and she detests their whole empire, but as individuals? For some reason she just doesn’t have it in her.
She’s never been a particularly hateful person, she can’t even bring herself to hate her own yeerk — Aftran nine four two. Even though the yeerk has enslaved her, stolen her life and her body, Cassie still can’t find it in herself to hate another living being. She’s seen enough of Aftran’s life — both through memories and as an unwilling passenger — that she can’t help but sympathize, just a little bit, with the young yeerk soldier.
And Aftran is nice to her. She listens to what Cassie has to say, doesn’t torture her with memories the way other hosts say their yeerks do, even takes Cassie’s suggestions for how to play her life. They even have conversations together in Cassie’s head, about animals and life among the stars, about the Yeerk Empire and its war with another alien species, the andalites, and about the moral and philosophical implications of infestations. Of course, even a nice slaver is still a slaver, Cassie thinks to herself. She knows she shouldn’t be empathizing with her captor, she knows that her sympathies should be with her fellow humans — the victims in this interstellar conquest, not the oppressors.
Almost without meaning to, Cassie’s eyes flick to the far side of the Pool cavern where the voluntaries hang out. The humans (and taxxons, but Cassie doesn’t want to think about those worm-creatures right now) who have agreed to enslavement in exchange for a slightly easier confinement. The voluntary controllers don’t fight, don’t resist, even when the yeerks have left their heads. Instead of being sent to the cages, the voluntaries head over to the cafeteria to socialize and watch TV. They are the worst, the scum of humanity, and everyone in the cages despises them, either for selling-out to the enemy, or out of envy for what little creature comforts they’ve earned through their sycophantry.
Becoming a voluntary is Cassie’s worst fear. It terrifies her even more than losing her mind and becoming a lifeless husk. Because even if she does lose herself entirely, she won’t be siding with evil. She won’t be an Uncle Tom. But isn’t that what you’re becoming? a voice whispers in the back of her mind, Wanting to help Aftran, Seeing the war from her side? Face it, Cassie, sooner or later you’re going to turn your back on these people and you’ll think of nothing more than how best you can be a good little host for the Empire.
Shuddering at the thought, Cassie wraps her arms more tightly around the little girl still shivering next to her. No, she promises herself, I’ll never think that they’re right. Even if I die, even if every human is infested, and the Earth is conquered, I’ll know that what the yeerks are doing is wrong. They can’t take that away from me.
She stays there like that for a time, bearing witness to the anguished pain of injustice of the highest order. Eventually her name is called and she is hauled out of the cage and marched down the infestation pier. As she is forced to her knees, Cassie inhales under her own power for the last time for another three days. Her head is forced under the water and a slimy body pushes its way through her ear canal. She feels her muscles freeze up, and a horribly familiar presence returns to her mind.
<Hello, Cassie,> Aftran says.
<Hello, Aftran.>
* * *
As Aftran puppets Cassie’s body out of the Pool complex, she sees. She sees the world in color that is denied her in her natural state. She sees the hosts locked up in cages. She sees the suffering and the misery. And unbidden, the thought comes, This is wrong.