"The captain has turned on the seat belt sign. We are beginning our descent."

"Guys ... I feel like maybe I'm getting weak," I said. "Woozy. My guts are all over the place. I think I may be dying."

"Demorph!" Cassie yelled.

"He can't!" Marco said. "He'll be seen. There are probably Controllers on this plane!"

"l don't care. It's Jake. I'm not going to let him die!" My mind started wandering at that point. Like I couldn't quite focus. I heard them arguing in my head. Voices . . . voices . . .

"Jake! Are you still with us?" someone demanded. I think maybe it was Tobias.

"Yeah. Uh-huh."

"He is dying," Cassie snapped. "Wait! I have an idea." Good old Cassie, I thought. Good old Cassie. She was so pretty. She didn 't think she was, but she was. Yeah. I remember back when I first met her. . . And Rachel was there. School? No, it was . . . it was . . .

Suddenly, monsters all around me. I saw them loom over me, hover in the air, then land. They had huge, bulging eyes that kind of sparkled from all the tiny facets. They had hideous faces with these long, vile tubes coming out, like tongues that could suck. Their wings were gossamer.

They grabbed me with their clawed feet.

"0h, poor Jake," a voice cried desperately.

"Do we ... do we scoop up the guts or what?"

"Just hurry!"

"Jake! Hang in there, man. Hang in there, man. Don't go away on us."

"Jake, hold on. Hold on, we'll save you."

And then a horrible jolt.

"Ahhh! Oh, man. The leg I was holding just came off!"

"l can't hold on! Too much turbulence from everyone's wings beating at once!"

"Don't you let him go! Don't let him go!"

I floated through the air. I was kind of serene now. Kind of peaceful.

Although when I realized half my body was gone, I felt concern. But it was a faraway concern. Like I was worried about something I was watching on TV. Not something that was happening to me.

"0kay, okay. It's the bathroom. Jake! De-morph!"

"Come on, Jake, back to human now."

What were they all yelling about? Yelling and yelling and bugging me.

"Jake, this is Cassie. Listen to me. You have to demorph. You have to do it now."

Cassie. Oh, yeah. Her. I liked her.

"Jake, do it! Do it now! Right now! Become human." Human?

Sure. Why not?

"There he goes!"

I began to change. And as I began to change, I became stronger. I felt life flow back into me. A human being began to form, dictated by the patterns of my DNA. Submicroscopic codes, making a human being the way words made a book.

The world swirled around me. Hazy images became clearer. I was in a tiny room. A very tiny room. An airplane bathroom.

I caught my reflection in the mirror as a shattered fly face melted and surged and warped to become a human face.

"Are you okay?" Rachel asked anxiously.

I worked my jaw. "Yeah," I said. "I guess so."

There were flies in the bathroom with me. And you know what's weird? My first impulse was to swat them.

Fortunately, no one seemed to notice that I hadn't been on the plane before I emerged from the bathroom. We were landing, so I guess the flight attendants were distracted.

Probably they noticed that I had no shoes and was dressed in a very odd fashion choice of bike pants and T-shirt. But, like I said, it was the end of the flight. They probably just wanted to land and go home.

We made it off the plane with about five minutes to spare. One shaken-up boy and five very impatient flies.

They morphed in the bathrooms. I sat on a black plastic chair and held my head in my hands and tried to stop my fingers from shaking.

After a while I noticed Cassie sitting down in the chair beside me.

She didn't say anything. She just put her arm around me and hugged me as well as she could while sitting.

I closed my eyes and let her hug me. And after a while I felt my hands shake a little less. My insides were still queasy, like I might need to throw up. But I stopped shaking.

"That was bad," Cassie said.

"Oh, yeah. That was bad. But I'm okay. No big deal."

Cassie nodded and let me go. "Yeah, right. Jake, it's okay to be scared."

"No, no, I'm fine," I said. I stood up, but my knees almost gave way. I reached back for the armrest of the chair. And then I pushed myself up more slowly.

Rachel had gone to the Western Union office. We needed clothing and it turns out you can send money by wire and pick it up by supplying a code word. Rachel went to pick up the money and get us something approaching shoes at an airport shop. Now you know where our allowances go.

The others were just coming out of the men's room. It had taken them longer, since Tobias and Ax both had an extra morph to do to get human.

"You okay, man?" Marco asked me.

I put on a sheepish grin. "Better than I was,"

I said. "I like having my guts inside me, as opposed to having them smeared all over."

"Yeah, guts should not see daylight," Tobias agreed.

"Okay, that was exciting, but now we're here," I pointed out briskly.

"We have a job to do. Let's get on with it. Marco? What's the plan?"

"We catch a bus from here to downtown. That's where the WAA Building is.

We bust in, enter the computers, get the information we want, get back here, and catch a plane home."

"That's supposed to be the safe, easy part, taking the plane," Rachel said. "Let's hope the WAA offices aren't as dangerous as the stupid plane."

"Hey, we'll take a different airline home," Marco said. "We'll get one that likes and appreciates flies."