The stench of strawberry sugar bursts out of the minivan as Temrash opens the door. He was still savoring the lingering taste of bacon, yet now the smell of the sugary slush that his driver is slurping down has ruined it.

"Morning." The other controller does not use a proper greeting, not within sight and possible earshot of the uninfested family member who strolls down the street towards his bus stop. Temrash glances at Jake's receding back. Ordinarily, Tom's relief at the growing distance between his little brother and Temrash would be swirling around in their shared headspace.

Now, the still slumbering consciousness sinks the short-lived relief that Temrash felt at finally leaving the house.

Slurp goes Arress 179 as they roll down the block in sight of Tom's home. Temrash waits, his fingers not digging into the armrest with concentrated effort.

"So, looking forward to—" They turn the corner where it is impossible to see the minivan from any of the windows. Temrash snatches the Styrofoam cup out of Arress's hand and throws it out of the opened car door. It splatters against the sidewalk as he slams the door shut.

"...this afternoon. I guess that's a no." Arress's voice stays level while the minivan rolls forward at the ridiculously slow speed that these streets have in place.

"What?" Temrash growls out "No, it's not that. I look forward to our mission under my Visser's command."

Arress casually glances back at the pink sludge splashed across the sidewalk. "Yeah? Well, I'm terrified to be honest." The other controller's knuckles are white against the steering wheel even if his voice comes out steady. "I heard that he cut a guy's head off once for sneezing when he was talking."

That is incorrect. The controller's arm was sliced off and then he was left screaming for the Taxxon pilots to feast upon as Visser Three continued his introduction speech. Admittedly, that incident happened almost two years ago when the Visser had first transferred in and the other yeerks hadn't yet learned the proper behavior to conduct around their commanders. It is doubtful that Arress would appreciate that clarification of the incident, though.

"As long as you act competently and do not draw attention to yourself, Visser Three will ignore you." Temrash doubts that the Visser will suddenly gain a newfound interest in conversing with the scientists and engineers of his crew. "Your immediate superior for this mission is Efflit 1318, so there should be no reason for you to have to directly interact with him."

Pain stabs right through Tom's temple, and Temrash winces. This is ridiculous; he didn't even touch it so the injury shouldn't be bothering him right now.

"So, yeah, good to know." The other controller's edgy tone cuts in and out. "Yeah, so, recruitment is coming along nicely." Arress's voice rises sharply in positivity as he switches topics. "Hailey's coming along quite nicely. I think that she'll even be ready for full membership after this weekend's barbecue."

As Arress rambles, he fails to notice Temrash's grimace at the faint pulsing in his head, which suits Temrash just fine. If the talkative controller's nervous chatter prevents him from noticing his momentary weakness, then let him babble.

"If I can get her on-board with joining the Sharing, then I'll probably be able to start working on Tobias before someone else swoops in."

"Who?" The question escapes past clenched teeth.

"Oh, uh, Tobias is one of the new junior high kids. He transferred in about a month ago and has been harassed by Andy and Tap-Tap ever since." Smugness curls around Arress's tone as he smiles faintly. "A few more days of that, and he'll be latching onto the whole membership, found family spiel, guaranteed. Anndd, I don't think anyone else has noticed him yet, so—"

Why did Temrash even ask who that child was? The downtrodden offspring of the humans meander the school halls in such numbers that they are not even worth distinguishing from each other. The host's habits at civilly contributing to a conversation must be rubbing off on him. Either that or the fact that anything would be a welcome distraction from the pain must have prompted him to speak.

"He's a friend of Jake's."

Temrash jolts as Tom's mental voice unfolds back into awareness. A flicker of an image and Temrash sees a blond-haired boy trailing after Jake as he enters the house. The yeerk lunges for the memory, expecting a trailing tattered edge to an incomplete instance. Instead, the boy in that moment glances up at him with brown eyes before quickly looking back to the floor in submission.

Temrash remembers this day alongside of Tom. Jake had brought the kid home only a few weeks or so ago. The kid had been quiet and folded in on himself, his grey sweatshirt blending into the plaster walls of their house while he watched Jake play video games.

He was unnotable and inconsequential. Nothing more than a potential recruit of the Sharing if Temrash's other projects happen to wrap up before Arress claims the child.

Tom says nothing even as Temrash pulls up the short string of memories about the boy Tobias. The sense of panic that whirls off of the human when Temrash has rifled through his memories in the past never materializes. Tom only listlessly lets the flow of memories wash over him.

His emotions are nearly as lacking as the simple-minded gedd that Temrash had worn so long ago.

"So, um, we're here." Arress's uncertain tone yanks Temrash back into the external world. The car sits idling in the school parking lot fifteen minutes before they should be here...Unless time has once again slipped through Temrash's grasp.

"Are you...Tom's involuntary, right? You might..."

"Shut up, Will. I'm fine." Temrash snaps once again...No, no he barely knows this other controller and he has never used his host's name. The wisps of familiarity, the annoyance at the predicable nosiness of Arress that Temrash has never encounter before do not belong to him. These echoes are not his memories, not his feelings.

They are not Tom's either with how faintly they are pressed into the human's mind. But when Tom catches the same whisp of memory, his human heart skips a beat. Fear, dull of any true sharpness but there all the same, surges through the boy's apathy until the human's anxiety lies coiled beneath Temrash's own.

"Okay, Tom." Arress says calmly.

Temrash looks over to the other controller, and Arress stares shrewdly back. The nervous, bumbling fool is gone, tucked away behind the face of something else.

And then Arress breaks eye contact to casually open the car door and step out. Once out, the other controller turns back. His hand rests on top of the car door while his hazel eyes watch Temrash with Arress' thoughts hidden behind the calm mask of his host's face.

Neither yeerk says anything as they size each other up.

What? Is Arress one of the bottom feeders who will report any controller that they think is having unusual difficulties with their hosts? Is that it? The thought is so amusing that Temrash almost lets it curl into a snarl. Let him try that then and we'll see how far that takes him with Visser Three when Arress accuses one of his most loyal lieutenants of being that weak.

The Visser will most certainly be receptive to an accusation coming from a yeerk raised under Visser One's reign. He may even let him finish his allegation before passing judgement.

"You know, you can leave the car whenever you want." Arress 179 says before—

A grey blur slams into Arress, bouncing off of him as the controller staggers into the open car door and then to the ground.

"Get back here you little freak!" shrieks a voice out of sight as the grey blur trips, falls out of Temrash's view before springing up again and scrambling to the side of the car parked in front of the minivan. As his blond strands whip around, the boy in the grey hoodie looks back as he disappears past the car.

Temrash is already out of the minivan, stepping past the fender as two other boys come running up. They nearly crash into Arress who curls up tight against the side of the vehicle to avoid them as they race past. Both of their expressions are overcome with rage, but one boy has several jagged red lines marking his face.

"You're going to pay for that!" the boy screams, his voice cracking as Temrash stares at the back of his head.

The scratches across the boy's face are too thin. Temrash stills, the odd confidence with which he makes that observation is far too certain for a situation he knows nothing about. Of course those scratches would be thin; they were made by Tobias's human fingernails...Why is he so sure that they were made by Tobias's...Why does it seem plausible that Tobias, for that is who the boy was now trapped in a memory of running past where Temrash sits, again and again and again the boy looks up and away before fading into the background while he sits and watches Jake—Tobias's always watching, always looking down on them al—

Tom surges out and the hand that rests by Temrash's side rises up and slams into Arress's face. Tom raises his other hand before he's even done burying his knuckles into Arress's cheek, grabbing the controller's shirt collar and pulling him back up to—Temrash tears through the desperate, shuddering relief at finally being able to move and rips past the burning rage at these slugs, these things, how dare they, how dare they—No, NO, NO, GET OUT, STOP.

Muscles spasm down Tom's arm as Temrash wrestles back control. The face is twitching, but that doesn't matter because the host's scream is shoved back down in a groan that's too quiet for anyone else to notice. Except for Arress, who pushes Temrash away.

Both controllers stagger away from each other. One still twitching as he roots himself to the spot; the other hunched half over, his body trembling from pain but his gaze riveted to every little movement of Temrash's fight with his host.

Unlike the subordinate stupor of before, Tom thrashes against Temrash's control. The voiceless scream of everything the boy is surging forward again and again, trying to control just one limb, something, anything, so that he can hurt them, fight them instead of sitting encased in his own body.

Even when the twitches still and the only movements Temrash makes is to breathe hard and fast, Arress keeps staring while one of his eyes tears up over the swelling mark on his face. Why was Arress in front of him? There shouldn't have been time for him to even get up, let alone move around the van... Wait, time must have slipped past Temrash again when those memories of Tobias...

No, no, they were nothing like normal memories. Something was wrong with them, a reverberation that loosened the boundaries between them and—What? There were emotions that didn't belong to those moments. Threads of feeling that thickened and frayed in pulses when Temrash tried to peer closer.

He finds himself teetering again. The edge of those fragmented images pulling him down into—NO.

Temrash staggers until he slips past the hood of the car. Tom's knees folding as he hits the ground. Asphalt digs into his palms as he stops himself from falling over completely to the side. The solidity of the ground under his hands is wrong under the unravelling pieces in his mind that are shredding his grip on the outside world.

Arress is too close to him; his red hair aglow under the light of the morning sun. Even hunched, he towers over Temrash's place on the ground. Temrash's hand twitches as Tom tries to throw himself up to attack again, but even the boy stops and stills as the maelstrom of fragments tear into him too.

The other controller stares at Temrash with the same shrewdness that he had before getting bowled over by the human child. And then the words that make so little but too much sense reach through.

"When was the last time you fed?"