"Rachel?"

"Yeah."

"We have to get out of here."

"What do you mean? Why?"

I didn't know why. It was a feeling. An instinct. But it was really strong.

"Just do it. Run! RUN!"

I grabbed Rachel's arm and yanked her along with me. We took about eight steps, then . . .

TSSEEEEEWWW! TSSEEEEEWWW!

A blinding light! Brilliant and intense as a flashbulb-in-your-face light! The light was coming from above. From the sky.

The very rocks split open. The ground itself seeming to explode!

My face hit the dirt before I even knew I was falling.

Chapter 3

X was on my back. I was indoors. I opened my eyes. Staring down at me was an alien. A pale, ghostly oval face with two enormous eyes. It looked like a little kid, with weak arms and legs.

It looked like one of the aliens from that old movie, Close Encounters of the Third Kind.In fact, it looked exactlylike one of them.

I blinked and looked again. It was a life-size cardboard cutout. Standing just behind the alien was Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation.

I sat up. All around me were shelves piled with Star Warsmasks — Wookiees and Darth Vader and Imperial stormtroopers, along with Star

Trekhandheld phasers and Spock ears. There were posters everywhere — Mulder and Scully from X-Files,Mike, Crow, Servo, and Gypsy from Mystery Science Theater 3000,Jane Fonda as Barbarella, and movie posters from Plan 9 From Outer Space, The Day the Earth Stood Still,

Invasion of the Body Snatchersand, of course, 2001: A Space Odyssey.

But mostly there were posters, mugs, ashtrays, pencils, and T-shirts, all emblazoned with a red-and-white logo dominated by the stencil letters spelling "Zone: 91."

"She's awake," Rachel said. She sauntered over, carrying a short stick in one hand.

"What's going on?" I asked her.

"You were knocked out. You know, when that totally unexplainable explosion happened." She arched one brow and gave me a meaningful look.

I understood. Rachel was reminding me that we had not seen what we had seen — there had been no Yeerk crawling from a horse's ear. There had been no Dracon beam.

My father came rushing over, followed by Crazy Helen. He knelt and began feeling my head.

"Ow!"

"Looks okay," he muttered. "Superficial cut. Serious bruise, but I doubt there's a concussion.

Still, I'll take you by the hospital emergency room on the way home.

Have the doctors there check you out."

Rachel winked. "Doctor Carter may be there. Noah Wyle. Oh, yeah."

"What happened?" I asked my dad.

"Well, honey—"

"It was the aliens," Crazy Helen interrupted. "They have these exploding rocks they spread around out there. BOOM!"

My father rolled his eyes. "We're on the edge of an Air Force facility.

They have a base way back in the Dry Lands. You see the jets flying over all the time. I suspect they may have lost a bomb or a missile or something. That snake-bit horse must have set it off. The blast caught you."

"That sounds logical," I said.

"It was the aliens!" Crazy Helen screamed. "They keep the aliens out at Zone Ninety-one! That's why it's all so secret out there. That's why the Air Force won't talk about it. Zone Ninety-one is the secret base where the government keeps the aliens it has captured. They have'em out there in cages. They get secrets of technology from them. You think computers just happened? All that stuff was from aliens. Here, have a souvenir mug.

Normally ten-ninety-nine. But you can have it because you got hurt."

Helen grabbed a mug from the shelf, wiped it off on her sleeve, and handed it to me.

Rachel held up her stick. "I got a pecan log," she said.

"You want a mug?" Helen asked her.

"No, the pecan log is great. But I don't really believe in aliens." Rachel said this with a perfectly straight face.

Helen just smiled. "Lots of people do,young lady. Very smart people, too. Out at Zone Ninety-one they know. Oh, theyknow! The government doesn't want us telling. They watch me. They listen in through the microchip they implanted in my head. They're listening right now! One of those black helicopters of theirs is listening in and transmitting everything we say to the New World Order headquarters in the Azores, which is where Atlantis is, you know."

This tirade left us all temporarily without anything much to say. We just kind of stared.

"Well, we may as well get out of Helen's hair," my father said, breaking the spell. "Cassie, honey, do you feel okay? Can you focus your eyes?"

"Urn, yes," I said. "But how about that horse?"

My father shook his head, mystified. "Strangest thing. There isn't a trace left of her. Not a trace."

"Hah. It's the Martians," Crazy Helen said. "It's all the fault of those darned aliens."

Rachel and I exchanged a look. We were both having the same thought: It'sa very strange world where a person called Crazy Helen is at least partly right.

Chapter 4

“You've never heard of Zone Ninety-one before?

It's the Holy Grail of conspiracy nuts," Marco said in between slurps of a Mountain Dew. "Man, don't you ever go on the Internet? The Internet is full of people who think there are aliens at Zone Ninety-one. It's called the Most Secret Place On Earth."

"I go on the Internet," Rachel said. "I just don't hang out in chat rooms, call myself 'Studboy,' and try to convince people I'm an incredibly handsome thirty-year-old millionaire."

"Excuse me," Marco said, "but I do not use 'Studboy' as my screen name. Give me some credit. I use BaldwinBoyFive. You know, the missing fifth Baldwin brother. The really cool-looking one."

We were all at the mall food court, the day after the incident in the Dry Lands. I was clutching a shopping bag. Inside were several smaller bags from The Gap and J. Crew.

It was all Rachel's doing. Despite everything, she had actually remembered my stupid promise. Now I owned outfits. Not just clothing, mind you. Outfits.

"Even I've heard of Zone Ninety-one," Jake said. "And unlike Marco, I'm a fairly normal human being."

Marco threw a french fry at Jake. Jake ducked. And with a quick movement, Ax snagged the french fry out of midair, popped it in his mouth and said, "Mmmm. Grease. Greassss and salt!"

Just then a boy walked up to the table. He seemed nervous, edgy. Like he was a little scared by the experience of being in the mall. He looked over his shoulders a lot. And when he looked right at you he squinted, as if he was nearsighted.

"Hey, Tobias," Marco said. "We were thinking about ordering some pizza. You want mouse meat on yours?"

Maybe I should back up a little and explain who all these people are.

Because otherwise you'd never guess that this bunch was the Animorphs.

First, there's Jake. Jake is pretty much the leader. Not that anyone really treats him that way. And not that he'd want anyone to treat him that way.

See, that's part of the reason Jake isour leader — because he's the kind of guy who doesn't need anyone sucking up to him.

Then there's Marco. What can I say about Marco? Not as much as he would say about himself, that's for sure.

Marco is our sense of humor in the group. But he is not the class clown.