“Honey, I spent months in a Mogadorian jail cell for my stupidity. I’ve earned my right to color commentate—ow.”

Ella slaps Nine on the back again and he shuts up. I stay focused on Six and the computer screen.

“Just tell me what happened.”

“One hour ago, this was posted in the comment section of a news story about the crops burning,” says Six, thankfully keeping it matter-of-fact. She opens up a window and drags it over to where we can all see it on the big screen.

Anonymous writes: Five seeking 5. Are you out there? Need to meet. Will be with the monsters in Arkansas. Find me.

“What does it mean?” asks Sarah. “It’s like a riddle.”

Six clicks open a web browser, bringing up the cheesy-looking website of something called the Boggy Creek Monster. “We found this on Google. It’s a dumb little tourist attraction in Arkansas called the Monster Mart.”

“You think Five is headed there?”

“We won’t know for sure until he stops moving,” Six answers, gesturing at the blue dot on the tablet. “But I’d bet yes.”

“Does he think the Mogadorians don’t have Google?” Nine spits.

“Speaking from experience,” Six says, “the Mogadorians monitor the internet like hawks. If we’re seeing this, then you can bet they’ve seen it too and are trying to figure it out. They’ll likely trace his IP address first and waste some time looking for his location, which is good because we can tell from this that he’s moved on from wherever he sent the message. Even so, they’ll figure it out eventually.”

“Then we better move fast,” I say.

“Hell yeah,” Nine says, hopping down from the wall and catching Ella as she tumbles after him. He sets her down and cracks his knuckles. “Finally, some freaking action.”

It’s like something in me clicks and, after days of overthinking our position, a plan just comes spilling out of me. “Our advantage here is that we know Five’s exact location. Hopefully, that gives us a head start on the Mogs. We need to be fast and we need to be sneaky. Six and I will go to Arkansas. With her invisibility, we should be able to sneak Five out without tipping off the Mogadorians. We’ll bring Bernie Kosar, too.”

“Oh, the dog gets to go?” Nine says flatly.

“His shape shifting will make it easy for us to scout ahead,” I counter. “And he can make it back to you guys if something goes wrong. If we’re captured, Eight, I expect to see you teleporting our violent friend Nine here into my cell within twenty-four hours. And, if the unthinkable happens—”

“It won’t,” Six interrupts. “We’ve got this.”

I look around the room. “Does everyone agree?”