Chapter Six – Cori:

"Have you found it yet?" I asked, causing Jake to hit his head on a low-lying shelf and begin muttering curses, mainly at the shelf but a handful at me.

"What're you doing here? Haven't you found…whatever it is yet?"

"I thought Cassie told you."

"She did, but I forgot." Jake glanced at his watch, but I stopped him. "Don't worry about the time, I told your parents that you were staying over my house. I think you've still got some clothes stored there."

"Yes, from when we got into a waterfight when we were thirteen, got soaked and your brother lent me clothes to walk home in while mine dried. I never saw them afterwards."

"Dez probably forgot. Either that or he saw them, thought they were old, and threw them away. Why do you care? You wouldn't fit into them anymore."

Jake stood up, combing a cobweb out of his hair. "I cared three years ago," he muttered, shaking his arms.

"So, you're looking for a gunge analogue lizard? Is that right?"

"Green anole lizard," Jake corrected. "I've been looking for one for hours, and had no luck."

I grinned. "Want some help?"

ooooooooooooooo

A couple of hours after that we managed to corner a lizard. Jake had taken the bucket and the torch, and I grabbed another torch. Between the two of us, we'd almost searched the whole barn when Jake found it.

A slam of metal against stone, then, "Ha! Cori, I got one!" Jake looked pretty triumphant for having just moreorless thrown a bucket onto the poor lizard and was holding it down with his hands.

"So…what happens now?" I asked, still unsure of the whole morphing process. Between the seven of us, we'd acquired nine animals, but only four of us had actually morphed: Jake, Tobias, Cassie and Branden.

"I stick my hand into the bucket, hope the lizard doesn't like fingers, grab it and acquire it." Jake then looked at me, an idea flashing through his eyes, and explained to me what he had in mind.

It looked like my first morph would be a lizard.

Oh, goody.

ooooooooooooooo

"Are you sure this is a good idea?"

"You mean us becoming a group of teenage shape-shifters in order to save the world?"

"No, sneaking in to middle school, hiding in some way-too-small lockers, changing into lizards and finding the entrance to a Yeerk Pool which, I might add, we have no idea what it looks like."

Jake said nothing, just continued standing watch as I broke into someone's locker the next night. Well, 'broke in' was an exaggeration: I'd managed to locate my old locker, hoping that the combination hadn't changed in a little under two years.

It hadn't.

"Okay, yours next," I said, pointing down the hall to where I remembered Jake's locker used to be. "I'll see you in ten minutes," I added, stuffing myself into the locker and slamming it shut.

As soon as I heard Jake's retreating footsteps, I concentrated on the lizard. Its black eyes, scaly skin, creepy twitching tail…I shuddered, then tried to make myself look at it from a more scientific perspective, and failed.

I found myself shrinking, so much so that I wasn't huddled up in the locker any more. That feeling didn't last as I grew smaller still, my tattered jeans rushing up to meet me, and envelop me in their denim depths. I was tiny, the size of the lizard, but a tiny human.

I felt my hair being sucked intro my scalp, and saw my hands turning green and scaly, followed by my arms and, I assumed, the rest of my body.

I was forced into a four-legged position, and a tail sprouted from my butt, twitching and writing as much as the one on the lizard we'd caught. I was finally fully-changed.

Then the lizard instincts kicked in.

I was pushed to the back seat…no, to the boot, and the lizard took over, screaming in my head that it was trapped. Trapped in the darkness, with nowhere to do. It scrambled up the walls, across the floor, trying to find an exit. Then, seeing light flickering through the slits, it headed there.

Poking my head through one of the slits, the lizard brain finally calmed down enough for me to take control of it. I crawled out of the slit and was gripping onto the side of the locker, my head pointed towards the floor, my tail pointed towards the ceiling.

<Jake?> No answer. <Jake, are you morphed yet?> With no answer to that either, and the lizard brain growing restless once more, I dashed to the floor, then began to move across it at breakneck speed.

I was like a Formula One racer: nothing the same size or smaller was faster than I was. I could have sworn paper fluttered in the draft I left behind, and that I was leaving tiny dust trails ala the Road Runner.

I came to an intersection and headed right, just in time to see Jake gulping down a large spider. It was almost fully in his mouth, with only two kicking legs still visible. As I watched, Jake swallowed the spider, still kicking, and turned to look at me.

<Jake? Oh -> I caught myself before I swore. <Jake, the lizard instincts have gotten hold of you! Snap out of it!>

<Cori?>

<Finally…>

<…Do I want to know what's kicking its was down my esophagus?>

<Well, would you rather know, or would you rather have nightmares about what you ate?>

<I'd rather know, then I can go into abject panic before we even start this mission.>

<It was a spider. Looked pretty big and juicy.> Jake muttered something. <Hey, you eat the equivalent of eight spiders a night while you're asleep…or is that a year? A lifetime?>

<I don't think I want to know.>

After that, we scuttled off to the janitor's closet like…well, like a pair of green anole lizards scuttling off to the janitor's closet. On more than one occasion we had to hide underneath the lockers as someone walked past, completely ignorant of us. We'd almost reached the janitor's closet when –

<AAAHHHH!>

<Jake! What's wrong!?> I yelled, peering out from my hiding place. Someone was standing on Jake's tail, someone who looked…I glanced up quickly, trying to sort the distorted image into something my human mind could easily distinguish.

<Someone's standing on -> Before I could finish the sentence, Jake's tail had been severed and Jake rushed towards me, his tail still flicking and writhing, as if it was still attached to his lizard body.

<Are you all right?>

<I'll be fine…in a century,> Jake said as the person walked off, not even taking a glance at the floor to see what he had stepped on. Guess feeding is on a tight schedule. <Come on, we're nearly there.>

As we reached the janitor's closet, the Controller was already there, doing a complex sequence…well, complex if you're looking through unfamiliar eyes.

Tap the left side of the room, turn the second hook to the right, Jake said, and only then did I realize he wasn't with me. I saw movement, and turned back to see the back of the janitor's closet slide upwards, revealing a set of stairs leading down to the basement.

And, leading up from those stairs.

Were screams.

Human screams.