The Doctor's partner (a doctor who/animorphs crossover)

Chapter 3:

RACHEL'S POV

<Ax, how long have we been in morth?> asked Jake. Somehow Ax was capable of keeping track of time and compass bearings without any visible indication as to how.

<You, Rachel and Tobias have been in morth for seventy-four minutes, Marco for one hundred and three minutes and Cassie for ninety-seven, I demorphed before you woke up so I have another eighty-three minutes to go.> His normal clipped, military style reply was strained, like all of us, he was worried about are new problem. What to do with these, possibly yeerk infested, humans, especially since they knew our names. We had all been listening to that conversation and we all felt roughly the same, if the yeerks found out our names then they would find our friends and families, when they did, they would take them down to the Yeerk pool based under the city centre, they would be dragged by Hork-Bajir controllers, kicking and screaming, to the edge. Their heads would be pushed into the pinky-grey sludge of the kandrona nutrients that the yeerks need to feed on every three days, a yeerk, which looks like a grey slug in appearance, would crawl into their ear and take over their body.

By the way, just so we sort this out right now, I'm not mad, crazy, weird. Actually, cross out that last one, I'm pretty sure someone who can turn into animals qualifies as weird, completely cuckoo or whatever you want to call it, I certainly feel it. Now that we have established these facts I may continue.

Yeerks are an intelligent extraterrestrial species, in their natural state they are completely helpless, they have no eyes or ears but can communicate through a series of ultra-sonic squeaks when in the pool. The Yeerk pool is very big but the cavern that contains it, enormous, all around the edge there are cages where they put the prisoners while their yeerks rejuvenate on the kandrona rays, there are also supply stores, weaponry storage and whatever else an alien invasion needs.

Humans, Hork-Bajir and Taxxons are usually used as hosts but there are countless others. Every three days controllers need to come back to the pool, when they do, they line up waiting for their turn, they kneel perfectly calmly on the edge of the disgusting sludge while two Hork-Bajir controllers grab hold of their arms. The controller then bends it's head down close to the surface, the moment the yeerk has wriggled out of the controller's ear, a dramatic transformation undertakes the kneeling person. As the yeerk is no longer in it's host's body controlling it's every movement, the person can now control it's body of it's own free will, this is the reason for the two Hork-Bajir. Some people just sag and cry while the controllers drag them to the cages, others scream and punch furiously at any controller they can, some just walk to their cages without a fight, tears streaming down their faces as they look around them, hoping against hope that they won't see their mothers or fathers, sons or daughters in this hell.

You see, it's not so bad if you think, 'oh no, it might happen to everyone else but it would never happen to me or anyone I love,' but Jake's brother, Tom, is one of them. Imagine if you were there and you saw your best friend standing in a cage with twenty other prisoners, beating at the metal bars furiously. Or if you saw your mum who had always had such a strong, proud character, sitting in a corner weeping.

And then the controllers would come to drag the prisoners on to the loading pier where their heads would be forced into the pool so that the yeerk could climb back into the ear canal and wrap itself around the brain. Once it had, it would have complete control over that person, it could flick through memories, taunting it's host with those embarrassing facts that everyone has, it would take control of it's arms and legs, getting it to go wherever it wants it to. The Yeerk would tell it's host to smile and laugh with it's family as the slug plots how to infest them. If you're a sane human being you'd be horrified by this, now instead of saying it, say he lost control of his body, say she couldn't even keep her thoughts private, now say, I couldn't stop the yeerk inside me infesting all my family. It changes things doesn't it, when you start thinking of it happening to you instead of to an unknown it.