Chapter Eight – Marco:

How do I get myself talked into these things?

We were in The Gardens, quietly acquiring deadly animals, when we were interrupted by an employee who looked old enough to be my grandfather.

"Left!"

I dodged right, sliding on the tarpaulin which lined the employee walkways. Cassie, Tobias and Cori had split off in one direction, Branden in another, while Rachel was left behind at the elephant enclosure. Jake and yours truly were in a fourth group, running for our lives.

I chanced a glance behind me. Grandad was gasping for breath, radioing in for more back-up, I presumed. Either way, we needed to get out of there.

Coming across another intersection, I veered left, putting my hands out in front of me to stop myself from slamming into an unexpected wall. Catching my breath, I heard Jake turn into the alleyway, also gasping for breath.

"And now, it's our contestant's final choice. Will he go for door number one, or door number two, Steve?" I joked.

We were in a dead end, with two options: a door labeled P-201, or another door labelled P-203. No doubt Cassie would have known what was in each one, but we weren't in a position to call her and ask.

We did have a third option: let ourselves be caught by the guards. The worst that could happen would be Cassie getting grounded for three months, leaving us a person short.

Unless the person who caught us was a Controller. A very suspicious Controller, who had reason to doubt the fact that we weren't just delinquents taking a dare by poking our heads through the doors containing dangerous animals. A Controller who suspected we were Andalites.

Ensuring we'd be taking a walk to the Yeerk Pool, leaving the Earth defenseless.

"Door number one," Jake managed to say, walking over and opening the door labelled P-201.

A blast of bright light hit our eyes, and we both blinked rapidly to clear our eyes.

The rhinoceros blinked too.

"Wrong door," Jake said, slamming the door closed before the rhino could class us as its enemies. "Door number two then."

Jake opened P-203, and all we could see were trees partially blocking out the sun, leaving dappled patches of ground where grass was growing.

"That is one high barrier," I muttered, catching a glimpse of it. High up, it must have been ten meters or more, people were leaning over a railing, looking down a steep incline to whatever was in this enclosure. And let me tell you, with something that high, I was beginning to doubt that whatever was in here bore a resemblance to Bambi.

"Whatever's in here is just a good jumper, right?" Jake asked nervously. "I see a ladder, that's gotta be our way out of here."

"I'm just wondering where the guards are," I said, looking at the door behind us. "I mean, they know where we are, why not just bust down the door and catch us? There can't be that many enclosures around here to check."

"Maybe there's nothing in here. Maybe it's a plant exhibition," Jake added, squatting down. That's when we found it.

The animal in the enclosure.

Jake must have felt the heat emanating from it when he sat down, because he looked up at me, and asked me the question I really, really didn't want to answer.

"Um, Jake? You're sitting on a tiger."

A male Siberian tiger, probably the largest tiger in existence. Three meters long, three hundred and fifty pounds of sinew and muscle.

And it was looking at us, seeming extremely peeved.

I started running away, breaking out of the shade of the trees and into the grass, right into full view of the spectators. Only then did I pause, realizing that Jake wasn't with me.

He was back with the tiger, his hand on it. He was acquiring it.

"Jake, get away from there, now!" I yelled, and Jake seemed to take note. Unfortunately, unlike all the other animals we'd acquired, the tiger didn't lay there lazily for a few seconds before waking up.

Instead, he leapt over Jake, running towards me!

"There they are!" The guards, great. I either had the choice of becoming tiger chow, or a Yeerk's body at worst.

I probably made the stupidest decision ever.

I ran towards the tiger.

Yelling and flailing my arms, the tiger paused, unsure of what to do next, which gave me just enough time to run past him, get to the back of the enclosure, fling the door open and run into the safety of the employee walkway, Jake following very close behind me.

Slamming the door shut, he slumped to the ground. "Never…ever…are we going to do that again."

"For once, I agree."

ooooooooooooooo

We crept into the rhino enclosure next door, making sure to keep hidden from both human and rhino, until we were sure the commotion had died down. After that, we sauntered out of there and back to Cassie's barn, where we had agreed to meet up before we started this whole escapade.

"What held you up?" Cori asked, who was drinking Coke when we finally got back. "You guys have been gone ages."

"For some reason, we attracted the attention of all the guards nearby, and managed to get caught by tigers in their enclosure. After acquiring one, we hid out in the enclosure next door, and then made our way back here." Jake caught my look. "What?"

"You'd never be a good storyteller. You don't draw out the drama, the suspense! The fact that people will have to keep reading to see if we survived or not! With you, a story is over in three pages."

"Why would we need suspense? You're back, alive and with no missing limbs, sadly in the case of Marco," Rachel said. "About the only thing you could draw out would involve you using all the extraneous details, like what color shirt the guy who was chasing you had on."

"Brown, but does that really matter? We stared death in the face! We were in an enclosure with two fully-grown tigers and we're here to tell the tale!"

Cassie appeared, carrying a bucket and wearing gloves. "Oh, you're back," she said, a tinge of concern in her voice.

"'Course we are, do you really think two tigers could finish us off? It was a battle between might and intelligence, and intelligence won flat-out. The tigers, with their mighty grace were nothing compared to the humans with their huge brains. The tigers were easily outwitted and soon –" I stopped, not because I wanted to, but because Rachel had clamped a hand over my mouth.

"We've already heard about the encounter from Jake, we don't need to hear it again."

"But he omitted the most important parts, like how we dodged death and got a new morph into the bargain," I added, after pulling Rachel's hand away. "What kind of story is it where there's no guesswork, no wonder, no fear?"

"One where we know you survive."

"Well, to start a new topic of conversation," Branden said. "We've got the morphs, how are we going to attack the Yeerk Pool?"

"We need to get Tom out," Jake said determinedly. "We'll set up a call system, where I'll inform you when Tom heads to the Yeerk pool and –"

"How will you know if he's just heading out?" Cori asked.

"Tom doesn't have much of a social life outside of The Sharing, so if he's heading out, it's to one of those two places. I know the major meetings of The Sharing, so if he leaves on a night with no meeting, I know he's going to the Yeerk Pool."

"Let's hope," Rachel said.