"Well? Well? Did you get it yet?"

"Duh, Cassie. Of course I did. Feels like a waste of my allowance, but..."

"Well let's see it, then."

Rachel had been 'back' for a while now. The other Animorphs had been getting used to her being back as though the last mission never happened. And actually, everyone had been changing along with her – it wasn't just Rachel being back herself. It was as though time itself were reversing, and no one was very happy about the idea of re-committing to the war again. Jake had already seen his book, "THE INVASION." His face had darkened at the memories of the first visit to the Yeerk Pool.

"Yeah, but at least they changed the thought-speak error in the first few chapters, am I right?" Marco quipped. "Maybe they'll stop acting like I was the one that said you were in charge. I mean, it's pretty clear there in that book."

He shot a look at Tobias, and Tobias glared back with – for now – brown human eyes. Then they looked back over at Rachel, the person who had just made the trip over to Borders.

The book sat in her hand, a lenticular cover that changed from a cat... To someone that looked a bit more like her, if she changed the book's position. "THE VISITOR" it read in large, capital letters, with a strange design to the rest of the cover page.

"I don't get it," Marco said, "Why are they here? Shouldn't they be off in like, a parallel universe or something? Why do we see them?"

"Well, that's the funny thing: These books don't really exist."

Everyone stared back at Rachel.

Marco laughed bitterly. "Rachel, I'm afraid to tell you, but we're all seeing the cat cover. It definitely exists."

"No," she argued back, "I don't mean we're not seeing them or that they're not real for us. I mean no one else sees them. No one else knows. I went to the cash register for this, and the guy at the register totally thought I was buying another series book from the 'Independent Readers' section. These books are only real for us."

Everyone else mulled over that a minute or two.

Ax, at another time, may have offered some insight. Why the books were there. Why only the Animorphs could see the books, and how these books could tell the story they'd never shared with anyone else to stay safe.

But they had been unable to find Ax the last few days. The current guess, while everyone could remember he had ever been, was that he'd ended up back underwater in the Dome ship. But no one could remember where that was.

Had there been someone they could ask? No one remembered. In the back of Cassie's mind, there was an image, an inhuman thing that cruelly laughed and taunted them. Something that might have had answers. But the closest she could recall was a sort of cosmic minstrel following the lead of something even darker.

Cassie shook her head, shrugging it off. Clearly, there was no point in worrying about that. Not when nothing could be done about it anyway.

Marco grabbed the book and flipped through the pages. He dropped them at the end.

"Uh, what?" he said, looking at the back. The picture of a boy and a gorilla were clear. "What is that? Are they kidding? I look like Corey!"

Marco continued his tirade, oblivious to the rest of the group. The others snickered, the mood lightening just a little. Rachel had been waiting for Marco to get to that bit of information for himself.

"No, wait, so really – what's next?"

Rachel glanced over at Tobias.

"The Encounter is next. Tobias. It's your book. And I think... I think by then, things will have just about caught up."

"I wonder if we'll be able to see the books when we get to that point." Cassie mused, "Whoever's teasing us, they're not going to let us have the answers by the time we get back to... Well."

"Yeah. Well."

They had been losing their memories about so many things lately about the past few years – years that seemed to be vanishing before their eyes. It gave them that sense that they had walked into a room looking for something very important – but forgetting what they had meant to take. The book had reminded them, in its own words. But they only had a glimpse in their mind, now.

Fear. Violence.

And something honorable. Something blue.