We were watching TV in my living room. Jake, Marco, Ax in his human morph, and me, Cassie. It was afternoon. My parents weren’t home yet, so we were safe, talking freely.

  The news was doing a special report. They had broken into a talk show to show film of what they described as a “freak tornado.” They were showing what was left of Darlene’s house. The reporter was standing right where we’d had the pool party. You could see Darlene in the background with her parents, picking through the wreckage.

  “The storm hit late this morning, just before noon,” the reporter said. “Some young people were having a pool party, and they describe a sort of funnel cloud that appeared quite suddenly out of a clear sky. Some of the kids who were here actually described it as seeming like a monster or a beast. But of course they were quite frightened at the time.”

  “They were frightened, all right,” Marco muttered. “They were wetting their pants. I know.”

  “The house was virtually destroyed,” the reporter went on. “Almost miraculously, there were only some minor injuries. A few of the kids suffered abrasions and minor cuts. The house itself was fully insured.”

  “That’s a good thing,” Marco said dryly. “Because we’re talking a lot more than a paint job needed there.”

  “Now let’s go out to the freeway where the same tornado — or possibly a second tornado — destroyed a tractor-trailer, holding up traffic for hours.”

  The screen showed a Ben and Jerry’s ice-cream truck that looked like it had been blown apart by a bomb.

  Suddenly I saw something familiar.

  “Hey! Look!” I said.

  “What?” Jake asked.

  “It’s gone now,” I said. “Are we taping this?”

  “Yeah,” Marco said. “What is it?”

  “Back the tape up. Back it up.”

  Marco reversed the VCR tape. I watched as the camera panned back across the wreck. Then …

  “Right there! Right there!” I said. “That girl. See? She’s only in the shot for a second. Can you freeze-frame her?”

  “Why?” Jake asked. “What is it?”

  Marco rewound, then advanced the tape a frame at a time. A blurry figure appeared. The frame froze.

  “What is the matter?” Ax asked. “Matt-ter? Ter.”

  Ax can be odd when he’s in human morph. Having a mouth and being able to make sounds just fascinates him.

  “Look at that girl,” I said. “Tall. Blond hair. Barefoot. Wearing a black leotard.”

  Jake’s eyes widened in shocked recognition. So did Marco’s.

  “Oh, my God,” Marco whispered. “It is! It’s Rachel. It has to be.”

  “She must have just come out of a morph,” I said. “That’s her morphing suit. And being barefoot and all?”

  See, when we morph we can’t morph much clothing — just something skintight. And shoes? Forget shoes. I’ve tried morphing shoes. They end up looking like an entire pack of dogs played tug-of-war with them.

  “What is Rachel doing out there?” Jake demanded. “She’s supposed to be up in the mountains at that camp.”

  “You know what this means?” Marco demanded. “That thing. That thing that came after Ax and me was also right where Rachel was. Coincidence? I don’t think so.”

  Jake shook his head. “No. Not a coincidence.” He looked at Ax. “Do you know what this is?”

  “No,” Ax said. “I do not. It is not any race that I have ever heard of. But I agree: It is no coincidence. Cidence. Co-IN-sid-DENSE.”

  “Well, what is it?” Marco demanded angrily.

  “Tobias told us that it headed toward the forest at a very high speed,” I said. “It was heading for Rachel. The timing is right. The location is right. It attacked Marco and Ax, but then it stopped and went tearing off for Rachel.”

  “Why? What is the point? If it’s some Yeerk weapon, it should have finished us off. I mean, it had Ax and me cold.”

  “We need to talk to Rachel,” Jake said. “Cassie?”

  “I’ll call.” I went to the phone, the one in the kitchen. I dialed Rachel’s number. I’ve probably dialed that number every day for years.

  On the third ring: “Hello?”

  “Hi, Jordan.” Jordan is Rachel’s younger sister. “Is Rachel home?”

  “Duh, Cassie. She’s at the gymnastics thing. The camp.”

  I felt a tingling up my spine. “So … so she did go?”

  “Sure.”

  “She didn’t come back early or anything?”

  “No. Why? Is something the matter?”

  “Nah. Nothing. I was just thinking maybe … never mind. Later.”

  I hung up the phone and took several deep breaths. I didn’t want to alarm the others. I went back to the living room.

  Marco was still yelling at the guy on the TV. “It wasn’t a tornado! Are people blind? A tornado does not have teeth.”

  Jake saw me first. I tried to conceal the fear I felt inside. But I can’t hide anything from Jake. He knows me too well.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “Rachel. She isn’t home. They think she’s at the camp.”

  Jake, Marco, and Ax all just stared for a moment. Then Marco rewound the tape and played it back.

  Tall, blond, a model’s body, wearing a black leotard and no shoes.

  It was Rachel.

  And she was definitely not at camp.

  Rachel

  I spent hours just walking in the woods. Walking and trying to remember.

  Who was I?

  What was I?

  I didn’t know. My mind would not answer me.

  I remembered how to talk. I remembered what things were called. I knew that the sky was blue, and the moon was white, and the ocean was deep, and that winter was colder than summer.

  I knew all the background things of life. It was like watching a TV show where you could see all the sets, but the characters were invisible.

  Of me — of who I was and what I was — I knew nothing.

  Or not quite nothing. I knew that I was some sort of freak. I knew I could have the feathers and beak and legs of a bird.

  And I knew that I had some terrible enemy.

  The pine needles and fallen branches made walking painful. But what else could I do? Where was I supposed to go? Some terrible beast was hunting me. Who could I possibly trust?

  “Answer me!” I yelled at no one but the trees. “Who am I?”

  The sound of my own voice reminded me I had to be careful. The beast from the sky might be out there. Might still be looking for me.

  I walked, always hoping the clouds would lift from my memory. I knew I had amnesia. I remembered the word “amnesia.” But how had it happened? That I could not remember.

  I stayed fairly close to the highway that sliced through the forest. I could see flashes of cars through the trees, a few hundred yards off to my right. But I stayed deep enough in the woods that no one from the road could see me.

  I could not afford to be seen. Not until I knew what danger I was in.

  Then, amidst all the greens and browns of the forest, I saw something bright yellow. It was deeper in the woods. Another few hundred yards deeper.

  I crouched down low and walked on bent legs toward the splash of yellow. I moved as quietly as I could, placing each bare foot carefully.

  It was a shack. The yellow was a cotton, ribbed top. From The Limited, probably.

  I froze. What? From The Limited? What did that mean? I squeezed my eyes shut and concentrated.

  FLASH! A store. It was a store. Clothing. Tables covered with folded tops in bright colors. I was there. I was there shopping with … I knew there was someone with me. I could feel the fact that someone was with me.

  But I couldn’t see any more. The memory fragment was only a brief snippet of time. It told me nothing.

  I looked again at the shack. It looked like it had been built a long time ago. It was made of logs, some of which were rotted out. Had I been here before? It felt familiar. This place … a place like it … but no. I was probably just imagining things.

  The yellow top was hanging on a clothesline. I duckwalked left to see through the front doorway. It was open. There was no light inside the cabin.

  Should I? Could I take the risk?

  “If you want to return the item you’ll need a receipt,” a voice said.

  “Yaaahhh!” I yelled, and spun around.

  A woman. Old. No, not so old. Just shabby. Wearing so many layers of clothing she looked fat. But she wasn’t. She was thin. Dragging a bulging canvas bag.

  Not a threat.

  I forced myself to calm down. I tried to let the adrenaline flow out of me, but my heart was pounding and my muscles were tensed.

  “You’ll need a receipt,” the woman said again. She stared at me in a challenging way and held out her hand.

  “What?” I asked. “Do you know me?”

  “If you want to return the item you’ll need a receipt,” she said again. She said it precisely the way she had the first time. The identical inflection.

  She was insane.

  “I don’t have a receipt,” I said.

  She looked past me at something. Or nothing. Then she headed for the shack. I don’t know why, but I followed her.

  She was mentally ill, but she didn’t seem dangerous. And I wasn’t exactly normal myself.

  I don’t know what I expected to find inside the shack, but it was a shock: clothing. Piles of it three feet high. In every corner, clothing. Much of it was dirty. Filthy. Some was stained or burned. Some seemed fine.

  The madwoman ignored me completely. She opened her dirty canvas bag and began pulling out more items of clothing. Stained shirts. Ripped jeans. One old sneaker.

  “Excuse me,” I said. “Ma’am?”

  “If you want to return the item you’ll need a receipt.”

  “Can you tell me your name?”

  She stopped sorting the clothing. She turned a sly grin toward me. “My name? Or its name? We are two, not one. Yes. Yes. If you want to return the item —”

  “Your name, please,” I said.

  “It’s gone now,” she said craftily. “But it will be back. Oh yes, they’ll be back. They never go away forever.”

  I guess normally I might have been frustrated. I might have even gotten annoyed. But I knew now what it was like to have your brain betray you.

  “Who does all this clothing belong to?” I asked.

  “MINE!” she shrieked suddenly. “MINE! It’s MINE!”

  “Okay, okay! Okay. It’s yours.”

  “I found it all. People throw it away. It’s mine.”

  “Yes, it’s yours. But I was wondering … I don’t have any shoes. I thought maybe you could let me borrow a pair of shoes.”

  “Will that be cash, check, or credit card?”

  “I … um …” I had an idea. Maybe it was stupid. Maybe it was even a little cruel. I bent down and picked up a chunk of pine bark from the floor. I held it out to the woman. “Credit card.”

  She took it. She looked at it in confusion. Then she looked up at me. There was something lost and desperate in her eyes. “Is this the store?” she asked.

  “It’s your store,” I said.

  She forced a shaky smile. “Let me know if I can help you find anything.”

  “I will,” I said.

  I began digging through the nearest pile of clothing. Shoes were stuck here and there. I dug each one out, one by one, and set them in a pile on the floor. I needed a size five. So far I had mostly men’s shoes.

  “Are you one of them?” the woman asked.

  “One of what, ma’am?” I replied.

  “The others. The ones who live in your head.”

  “I don’t think so,” I said. I was focused on my search.

  “There’s only one way to know for sure,” she said in a soft, silky voice.

  Success! One size six Reebok, and one size five Converse. They weren’t exactly matched, but they were better than being barefoot.

  I heard a creak of rusty hinges behind me. I turned to look. The old woman had opened a trapdoor in the floor of the shack.

  I started to rise from my crouch, holding the shoes.

  WHUMPF!

  Something hit me from behind. I tried to suck in a breath, but the blow had emptied my lungs. The woman was all over me, shoving, clawing, scratching, and screaming.

  “YEERK! YEERK! YEERK!”

  I struggled to fend her off, but she was strong and driven by her insane vision.

  I fell. Down through the hole in the floor.

  “YEERK! YEERK!” she screamed.

  I landed on dirt. I recovered quickly and leaped back up at the opening. The hatch slammed down on me.

  I ducked, just in time.

  “YEERK! YEERK! YEERK!”

  FLASH! A gray, sludgy pool. An underground cavern. Something in the pool, swimming. Many somethings. Seething just beneath the surface of the pool. Like fish. No … slugs. Gray slugs.

  “YEERK!”

  My head swam with the sudden vision. But I couldn’t focus on that. I had to get out. I pounded on the splintery wood of the hatch. “Lady, let me out of here! Let me out of here! I don’t want to hurt you.”

  No answer. I looked around. It wasn’t a basement. Just a space beneath the shack. Maybe long, long ago it had been some kind of way to escape. Or maybe it was a place to store food for the winter. But it had the feeling of great age.

  It was hard-packed dirt on three sides. The fourth side was a wall of vertical logs. I could see through the gaps in the logs. But I did not see a way out.

  “Lady, let me out of here. I’m not going to hurt you.”

  She spoke in a much quieter voice. “No, no. You don’t want to hurt me. You just want to crawl inside my head. Like you did before. Crawl inside my head … make me … make me give you my husband. Make me give him to you. My children. All for you. All for YOU. Controlling me. In my head. But you died, didn’t you, Yeerk?”

  I felt a terrible coldness. She was insane. Insane. And yet … why did her raving mean something to me? That word … Yeerk. It meant something. Something evil.

  Was I crazy, too? Was that the truth I was hiding from myself?

  Jake

  Marco and I took the bus to a place close to where the dust beast had attacked Rachel and destroyed the ice-cream truck.

  The bus stopped and we climbed off. We were at a combination gas station and convenience store just off the highway. There was a Denny’s across the street and a Dairy Queen not far off.

  The wreckage of the Ben and Jerry’s truck was at the gas station. It had been towed there to get it off the road. There wasn’t much left of the trailer. It had been chewed up and ground into splinters.

  “Well,” Marco said dryly, “that sure looks like the work of the same creature that ventilated Darlene’s house.”

  “You do realize you shouldn’t have been there in the first place,” I said. “Someone could have been killed.”

  “Like I knew some devil beast was going to come after me?” Marco demanded.

  I let it go. Marco knew he’d screwed up. At least, I hoped he knew.

  “Come on,” I said. “You have the bag?”

  “Of course I have the bag,” Marco grumbled.

  We headed for the woods. Once well into the trees we began scanning the tree branches.

  Tobias said in thought-speak.

  He was on a branch, preening his feathers. He used his beak to sort of comb through each feather.

  “Is this really the time to be worrying about your looks?” Marco asked.

  Tobias said patiently.

  “How do you even get dirty?” Marco wondered. “I mean, flying all the time …”

  Tobias said.

  I smiled as Marco turned slightly green.

  “Where’s Ax?” I asked.

 

  “Did you …”

  Tobias answered.

  “Okay,” I said, “Marco and I are going to morph now. You want to go up top and make sure we’re clear?”

  Tobias opened his wings and swept low over our heads before catching a headwind and rising up above the treetops.

  “Ready, Marco?” I asked.

  “Sure. I love this morph. It’s cool. This is what morphing should always be like.”

  We were planning to use our wolf morphs. For one thing, wolves ran in the forest, so we wouldn’t be totally out of place. But more importantly, wolves have a magnificent sense of smell.

  “Open the bag.”

  Marco opened the bag and took out a girl’s shirt. It belonged to Rachel. She’d left it at Cassie’s house. We hoped it would still smell like Rachel. We were going to play bloodhound. We shoved our clothes back into the bag and stood there in our morphing suits — bike shorts and tops. Needless to say, we looked just a bit out of place.

  Tobias called down from somewhere above.

  “Well, let’s do it,” I said to Marco.

  “You look so Ah-nold when you get that expression,” Marco teased.

  “So what?”

  “So Arnold. Schwarzenegger.”

  I smiled. “Oh, shut up.”

  “All ride den, led’s do id,” Marco said, doing a pretty decent Arnold accent.

  I focused on the wolf. We had first acquired the wolf morphs a while back, when we were on a mission to destroy a Yeerk truck ship.

  Wolf, I said to myself.

  The first change was the fur, gray and shaggy and as rough as carpeting. It sprouted from my human skin in a wave that rippled down from my neck all across my body.

  I could see my face bulging out, growing a long snout. It’s very odd, because when you’re a human you can’t really see your own nose. So it’s definitely weird to have this long thing sticking out of your face.

  Of course, that’s not exactly the only weird thing about morphing.

 

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