Author's Note: Hi there. The Pit isn't allowing me to upload documents at the moment, so I was a little bit stuffed... but then Boz4PM showed me a way to get chapters up without uploading documents! Basically, you export a chapter, and it's converted into a new document, which you can clear and then copy-paste the new chapter into. So this chapter is dedicated to her, as without her help it wouldn't be up yet!

Also, I sent the next chapters to my beta a few days ago, but I haven't heard back yet, so I don't know how long it'll be. Fingers crossed for a short wait.

Thanks to all my reviewers: I hope you're enjoying this story, and I can only apologise for the somewhat rickety updating schedule. And now... enjoy!

The Mistake

Chapter 8

After the blink-and-you'll-miss-it weekend, Monday dragged by at a snail's pace. It seemed hours before the bell for the end of first period rang, and an eternity before second period finished. Even break seemed to lag, with Uric chatting to Erika. He had no interest in the conversation, and neither, I guessed, did Erika's Yeerk. They were merely two actors putting on masks to fool the rest of the world.

The third lesson to bore our brains and numb our skulls was History. We were just finishing a topic on Soviet Russia, during which I had read much and learned approximately ten percent of it. We yawned surreptitiously and stretched our arms behind our back; it was a habit of mine that Uric had picked up. Question four was making us go cross-eyed.

We leant over to Jake, who was at the desk next to us. "Hey, how many factors have you got leading up to the collapse of Communism?"

He looked up, and an odd expression passed over his face as he looked at us, but it was gone before I could work out what it was. He shrugged. "I'm still working out how many ways Source Two's cartoon is reliable," he said under his breath, indicating the textbook.

"I only got like three points for that whole question," we whispered back.

"Oh, no, I think there are meant to be six for each part. Many of which probably involve the small cloud in the top left representing the Cold War or something similarly ridiculous."

"You two!" snapped the teacher. "Stop talking!"

"We're talking about the work, miss," Uric protested.

"Well, do it quietly."

Jake had gone back to his writing, leaving us to forge on by ourself. (Why do you even have to know this?) complained Uric. (It is completely irrelevant to your present life.)

(Well, I guess if I grow up and become President I need to know how not to start wars,) I suggested. (Something all good presidents should know.)

Nothing of note happened all day. A couple of guys had a fight at lunch-time, but then, I'll bet that happens at every school. That evening, Uric was fidgety, even more so than usual, unable to settle down and do the History work that we had so abysmally failed to finish in class. Dinner was sporadic: first picking at the food, then gobbling it down. Mum assumed I was nervous about the Sharing meeting. She was right, but for all the wrong reasons.

"Honey, if you want to give it a miss tonight, I'm sure they'll understand. After Friday night and everything."

We'd never even got the sleeping bag back. Mum had been annoyed about that: it was something normal for her to worry about, far less scary than mad wolves. When The Gardens had denied any animals escaping, the experts had been forced to conclude that the wolves had been short of prey lately, making them hungry enough to venture near humans.

"Mum, what did I tell you? I'm fine. We're in a different meeting place anyway." We grinned. "Besides, lightning never strikes twice, right?"

Mum evidently decided that if I was making jokes there couldn't be much wrong with me, because she let us go after that. I could practically taste Uric's relief.

Our neighbourhood's Sharing meeting-house was a long, low brick building with a tiled roof, near the river but far enough inland that we couldn't see the sea. I'd been there only once before, with Erika. She was there already, helping a couple of older girls lug a huge basket across the field. She saw us and nodded, but couldn't wave for fear of dropping it.

Uric waved and grinned at her. I was worried about the basket. (They're not going to try the same thing again, are they!) I demanded, shocked.

(I haven't been told of anything,) Uric replied. But then the girls dropped the basket with a collective sigh of relief, and we saw that it was full of balls: rugby balls, footballs, basketballs…

(Thank God,) I said quietly.

It was almost seven o'clock by then, and Uric steered us towards the huge, dilapidated shed around the back of the meeting-house. This ramshackle stone building was used to store the kayaks and canoes, the lifejackets, the big several-billion-watt flashlights, and all sorts of other odds and ends. A group of full members was already inside, moving around in the light of one of those torches. Erika was with them.

She looked around and saw me. "Hey, Joan! What took you so long?"

"Are we all here?" asked a dark-haired guy of about forty, who wore the badge of a Sharing leader.

There was a general chorus of 'yes's.

"Good." He selected a key from a thick metal ring of them and locked the shed door behind us. With the windows all covered with cloth, there was now no way anyone could see in. Then he kicked a shred of carpet away and, with another key, unlocked the trap door which had been revealed. This was made of metal rather than the stone and wood of the hut, and the concrete around it was lighter and newer.

He raised the door, and we filed down, down a long, steep, winding stair surrounded on both sides by hard-packed dirt that eventually gave way to dark rock. Smooth, cold rock that the slightest sound would echo off of to ten times its normal volume. And it was impossible to ignore the sounds coming from down below.

Screams. Screams of terror, of anger, of despair. Unfamiliar roars of some kinds of animals – some full-throated and furious, others hissing and chilling. A thick sloshing sound like a swimming pool, though the smell was nothing like chlorine. It was a stale smell, the smell of air that had been underground too long with little circulation, and mixed with something else – some bitter, sickening stink. The same stink that had come from the tank in the spare classroom, a lifetime ago – but amplified a thousand times.

(What is this place?) I asked in fear.

(It is all right,) Uric tried to reassure me. (We won't be here for long.) I could tell from his voice that he saw nothing wrong, but that was no comfort. Who knew what an alien might call home?

My question was answered sooner than I would have liked.

The walls simply dropped away, revealing a huge cavern. Enormous! Titanic! Infinite! It stretched far above our heads into a hazy rock sky, and below our feet we could distantly see what I thought at first must be the centre of the Earth. Countless staircases twisted down towards an entire underground city, almost an entire civilization, which grew like lichen up the stone walls. This was fronted by a bubbling brown pool which, as we drew nearer, I could see was rippling with Yeerks. But that wasn't what made me scream so loudly and shrilly that Uric shook my head in discomfort.

There were cages. Huge, strong, iron cages with thick bars. They were arranged into groups: humans in one area; gigantic scuttling centipedes in another; and creatures unlike any I'd seen before, creatures with serrated, snaky heads and long blades that raked back over their bodies, confined to prisons even larger and sturdier than the others.

(Hork-Bajir,) Uric named them for me. He turned my head away from the horrible panorama, but he couldn't stop me hearing the screams. (And the centipedes are Taxxons. Never trust a Taxxon: they are disgusting creatures, but great soldiers. They will eat anything. It's safest just to keep your distance.)

(Soldiers? What is this? What are you playing at!)

But Uric didn't reply, and now we were on ground level, marching towards a steel pier on the side of the pool. There were several of these little docks, poking out over the seething mass. On one side, the side closest to us, people walked calmly out and kneeled, lowering their heads over the pool. Then they changed. On one pier, they were simply standing and walking away, as coolly as they had come. But on the others, they would scream and kick, trying to escape, and would be wrestled into a cage by other controllers.

I and a blonde guy of about twenty peeled off from the main group and headed toward the queue at the first pier, whilst the others all lined up at the others. The Sharing leader guy yelled jovially over to us as he stood near the back of the line. "Lucky people! I'm going to ask the Visser for a voluntary too, this guy gets on my nerves."

"Keep hoping," the blonde guy laughed, his eyes twinkling. The leader laughed too.

And we two, we voluntaries (God, how I hated that word by now), stepped down to the pier and waited our turn to be uninfested. He went first; from my position right behind him I could see the Yeerk trickle out of his ear as if his brain was trying to escape, and snap back into its right shape just before it slid into the pool. The guy shook himself, nodded at me and strode away.

It was my turn.

I did not want to do this.

But at the same time, I couldn't wait.