Disclaimer: I do not own Animorphs, it belongs to K.A. Applegate, and whoever else. You know the deal.

Five

I had made it to the island okay. Long story short: it was boring. In case you haven't figured yet, I don't like going into detail about things.

I caught a travel craft from the airport out to the island. A travel craft is kind of like a weaponless Bug fighter, used for flying small distances. I had to wait at the 'customs' tent, where my luggage was checked right through, and I had to walk through Corinth device (Andalite technology), a sort of x-ray machine, so that they could tell I was totally clean.

Why bother? I hear you ask. Hey, just because the Yeerks were chased off Earth doesn't mean they were destroyed. I mean, the Yeerk Homeworld is still covered in the slugs, and, as far as I know, the Hork-Bajir Homeworld is still writhing with them.

Yeah, so that took the good part of an hour, but once it was over, I was told that my mother was outside waiting for me. And there she was, right outside the tent.

"Hey, sweetie!" she cried, breaking into a grin.

"Hey, Mom," I smiled back, and ran toward her, grabbing her in a tight hug. Yeah, it'd only been a few months, but my mother and I are pretty close.

"I have so much to fill you in on," she said. "I know you love to see all of this stuff, and this is sort of special."

She was kidding, right? We'd just been reunited after almost six months, for a few seconds, and she wanted to take me straight to the dig?

I guess she saw the look on my face, because she immediately apologised. "Sorry, honey, but this is really important. You don't mind catching up later, right?"

"I guess not," I muttered.

The site was nothing special. It just looked like a few rocks scattered around a clearing, with a row of trees surrounding the area in a square. It didn't look like much at all, except the fact that two Earth Council agents stood just outside the clearing.

Yeah, you heard right. They stood there, arms crossed, looking like they'd just stepped out of a movie. They wore black trousers, with a black jacket over a white shirt. A pair of black sunglasses and a shredder hanging off their belts topped it all off.

Mom and I stepped up to them. They glanced at her, as she walked straight over to them. She flashed some sort of card. "Hey, boys. This is my son, Alexander."

"It's just Xander, Mom," I said for the millionth time.

They nodded their heads, and we walked between them. But after just a few metres, mom stopped and turned to me. "Alexan - I mean, Xander, you're about to see something pretty amazing."

I looked around at the rocks. "Yeah, I bet."

"Just don't say I didn't warn you," she laughed, and stepped into the clearing.

She was gone. She had stepped into nothingness.

"Mom?" I called cautiously. No answer. "Mom?"

"You coming or not?" She scared the crap out of me, as her head seemed to pop out of thin air!

"Uh, sure." I stepped toward where she has disappeared. I'd never actually seen a hologram in work before. "Wholey!"

'Wholey' was just about the only word for it.

Before me was a small stone . . . castle?

All around me, there were people working; digging through dirt, sketching pictures, sorting out objects.

"Mom, what the hell is all of this . . . ?" I whispered. Don't ask why.

"This is . . . or was . . . a colony. It had humans living here, but also an unidentified, until recently, alien species. Its about sixty million years old." she explained. Sixty million? Humans hadn't even evolved then! "But here comes someone who can explain things more clearly than I can."

Walking toward me was a man, about mom's age. He had brown hair, and was pretty fit looking. I knew this guy. Erek King.

"Hey Xander," he said in his strong voice. "Wow, you've grown."

"Hey, no offence, but stuff the small talk. What the hell is this place?"

"Come inside, and I'll explain things more clearly." He guided me into the building. It was kind of dark inside, but nothing special. It looked pretty normal for an ancient building. I guess he saw my expression, because he said "Yeah, nothing special, right? Just wait until you get to the next room."

Once again, he guided through the place, until I reached another room. Or garage, I should say. In the center of the room was a ship. Beautiful, but dangerous looking. It sat right in the centre of the room, dormant and dust covered. Vines that had grown in from the outside had began to cover it. But even from where I was, I could see that it was badly damaged.

"Whoa," I repeated.

"That, Xander, is the Rachel, a Yeerk vessel."

"Yeerk? On Earth? But that thing is millions of years old!"

"It's a long story, and could take a little while to explain," he said.

While he was saying that, I reached out to touch the beautiful craft. But before I got a chance to:

FLASH!