(There must be ten of them!) Tobias shouted, the sight of the small school of sharks filling him with apprehension.

(Ten of them versus seven dolphins and a tiger shark,) Rachel said offhandedly. (Not a problem. We can take 'em.)

If they had been in the right form to do anything of the sort, Marco would have grabbed Rachel by the shoulders and given her a good, hard shaking. There were times he thought he admired her reckless, insane courage, but there were other times when he just wanted to slap some sense into her. They had fought a group of sharks once before, and had come out the winners by only a very narrow margin.

There were more sharks this time, and that meant less of a chance for any of them to come out unscathed.

(Take it easy, everyone,) Jake said, trying to be calm even with ten sharks bearing down on them. (We don't know if they're going to attack us.)

(Sharks don't usually attack dolphins,) Cassie pointed out. (Not unless they're really hungry and outnumber the dolphins.)

(Well, I count ten of them and seven of us,) Marco said, becoming just the slightest bit hysterical. (I'd say that makes us outnumbered.)

(Well, then I guess we have to hope really, really hard that all of these sharks are full,) Shara said, beginning to feel slightly rattled herself.

(Any of you guys have tips for fighting sharks?) Tobias asked. (I wasn't here the last time you guys had to do this.)

(Yeah: don't let them bite you,) Marco said darkly.

The sharks came at them like a well-trained squad of soldiers. Fearless and seemingly unstoppable. Marco, who had been on the wrong end of a shark's teeth one too many times, shuddered as the sharks came in on the attack; he could vividly remember what it had felt like to have his tail bitten almost completely off.

He could still remember just how it had felt when one of the sharks had chewed through the lower third of his body, leaving it hanging by a few shreds of flesh and stings of guts.

(Okay, look,) Jake said sternly. (We don't need this fight. Let's get out of here.)

(We're just going to run away?!) Rachel demanded.

(You know, you're perfectly welcome to stay behind, Rachel,) Marco pointed out.

(Hey, we're fighting the Yeerks,) Cassie said. (Not some sharks that just happened to swim by.)

(Exactamundo. And I am so out of here,) Marco said, turning to suit actions to words.

That was when he received the most unpleasant surprise of this, an already unpleasant day:

(Oh, my God!) Cassie shouted, Marco being too afraid to speak at this point. (There are more behind us!)

Four more sharks; making the match two against on in favor of the Hammerheads. Ax's shark morph provided something of a wildcard, but not enough to effect the odds in any meaningful way. Jake had given the order to retreat, and with what he had experienced before in a fight with sharks, Marco could easily be forgiven for what he did.

Forgiven, that is, by everyone but himself.

Turning at a right-angle to the two converging groups of sharks, Marco powered his tail and took off. Faster, he hoped, than any of the sharks would be able to follow.

(Move! Go! Get out of here!) Jake shouted, trying to get all of his friends out of harm's way.

Marco, for his part, was moving as fast as his dolphin tail could propel him. Frantically trying to leave behind the moving wall of sharpened teeth, all while the memory of being nearly torn in half by a fish very much like the ones he was now confronted with continued to play in his head. It was vivid enough that he could all but feel the flesh of his body ripping as the sharks tore into it.

(Head for shore!) Cassie directed. (They may not follow us into shallow water.)

The two groups of sharks, evidently seeing what their prey planned to do, turned to intercept the dolphins before they could escape to shallower water. They were not quite as fast as the dolphins they were pursuing, but they were fast enough to make up a great deal of the distance.

With Marco leading the retreat – something he would be ashamed to recall later – the seven Animorphs in dolphin morphs powered their way back to the shore. The sharks turned to cut the dolphins off, moving more quickly than any of the Animorphs would have expected them to. In less time than it would have taken to state their situation aloud, the seven dolphins were surrounded by their fourteen aggressors.

(Focus on one!) Jake ordered, knowing what it took to deal with sharks from his previous experience with the killer fish. (Try to draw blood; the rest will attack whoever is injured!)

Obediently falling in with the rest of the Animorphs as they prepared to assault one of the sharks to distract the others, Marco couldn't help but feel that something was wrong. Something about this situation – even more than the fact of what they were about to face – gave him the chills. He got the feeling that these were not normal sharks that they were about to face.

There was something wrong with the way they were moving; something he couldn't put into words, but something that made him want to keep his guard up all the same.

The shark Jake and the others had targeted, too caught up in the frenzy of the hunt, reacted too slowly to escape the dolphins that had suddenly decided to turn the tables on him. Jake rammed him with all the force his momentum had given him. One-by-one, Marco and the rest of the Animorphs did likewise, until the unfortunate Hammerhead was bleeding from his gills.

Trailing warm blood into the water; blood that would cause any normal group of sharks to turn on each other for food.

(Now's our chance! While they're in a feeding frenzy, let's get out of here!) Jake commanded.

Normal sharks, such as those the Animorphs – sans Slade, Shara, and Ax, of course – had faced once before, would have already broken off from their attack on the Animorphs to devour their fellow shark. Normal sharks would have torn their comrade to pieces for the merest promise of blood. Normal sharks, these were most assuredly not.

Ignoring what would have been an all-too-enticing temptation for any other group of sharks, the fourteen Hammerheads instead focused their attention on the seven dolphins and the single tiger shark that they were facing. On they came, lashing and churning the water with their bladelike tails ad they propelled themselves forward relentlessly. Each eagerly anticipating the taste of their dolphin prey.

(We have to break through and run!) Jake shouted, catching the attention of all the others before any of the Hammerheads could strike. (Bunch up! Bunch up in a wedge and we'll power our way through.)

(Don't stop for anything!) Rachel shouted.

(Let's just hope nothing stops us,) Shara muttered, not quite meaning to speak aloud.

The sharks, however, had seen what their adversaries had planed. They were already moving to cut them off. Turning to look behind them, Marco saw that the sharks had left some of their own behind to cut off any means of escape. It was then that he himself began to suspect that these sharks were not normal.

Something that they would find to be more apt than any of them would have expected.

(Keep going!) Jake urged, even as the sharks turned to attack their group.

The eight Animorphs continued on, swimming in a tight group even as the fourteen sharks broke formation and closed in on them from all sides; negating the effectiveness of their formation. Marco could all but count the teeth in their mouths, when they opened them in preparation to make a killing bite, and this frightened him more than anything. Shara, however, was beginning to have problems of an entirely different nature…

(Surface!) Marco shouted, coming to the notion through a burst of adrenaline-fueled thought.

(What?) Jake asked, confused.

(Sharks don't jump! Sharks do not jump!) Marco shouted, not sure at that point whether he was trying to reassure the others more than himself.

When the sharks were almost upon them, the seven dolphins leaped. Powering into the air and out of the reach of the killer fish that had aimed to devour them, they swam on when they felt water surrounding their bodies once again. They had not come down so far away from the sharks as any of them might have wished.

Six dolphins kicked their tails as hard as they could in an effort to put as much distance between themselves and the sharks that were still pursuing them, but the seventh…

(Shara, what in the hell are you doing?!) Marco demanded.

Shara would have probably ignored him anyway, if she could have heard him over the roaring in her ears. Knowing that she needed to be back in her own body to be able to protect her newfound friends from the monsters that were assaulting them – and she wasn't going to fail the way she'd done with the others she'd cared about – Shara demorphed at a speed that made even Cassie seem slow.

Once she was back in her human body, and hardly even noticing the cold or the oppressive airlessness of the water around her, Shara closed her eyes and summoned up the power that had been buried deep inside her. Slumbering power that she had never accessed before, but which she knew how to use without even the rudimentary training that Slade had provided for her when he'd given her the morphing ability.

The cold water boiled around her, flashing into steam where it came into direct contact with the energy burning in her skin. Energy that was being utilized in a most interesting way: beneath the rosette light being generated by the interaction between the energy of her transformation and the environment around her, sections of black, organic-metal armor were literally growing over Shara's body.

They started out from the circuit-designs imprinted into her body, directed by the changes that had been made to her physiology, and then quickly spread out to envelop her entire body in a quasi-impervious shell. This, however, was merely the under-armor. Merely that which would protect the joints and less vital parts of a Teknoman's body while still allowing them almost as much flexibility as an unarmored warrior would enjoy.

Layering itself over the under-armor, reinforcing it and giving the warrior wearing it a distinctive appearance, came the harder and thicker plates of colorful over-armor. The last pieces to form were the helmet and the faceplate. Unlike Slade's helmet, which gave him the appearance of a quasi-demonic insect, Shara's was more normal looking.

Drawing her weapon, Shara charged at the nearest of the sharks that were trying to attack them. Not being quite intelligent enough to realize that what it faced was far too much for any number of sharks to deal with, the Hammerhead continued on its course. It was the first one to die.

Shara's blade slammed into the Hammerhead's snout, and kept on going through the entire body without any appreciable loss in speed. In fact, Shara would later be heard to say that she had a more difficult time maneuvering in the water than she had dealing with the sharks.

The next two were dispatched in much the same way; cloven in half at the midsection or bisected when they foolishly tried to attack. The fourth and fifth, seeing the fate that was soon to be theirs, did what no normal sharks would have done: they turned tail and started to swim away.

Shara, however, was not about to let such dangerous creatures escape when they could still pose a viable threat to her friends. Her instincts differed from Slade's in that she was not as vicious as he would have been in her place. For all the blood that billowed around her, Shara's strikes were inhumanly precise; meant to cause the maximum amount of damage for the minimum amount of effort.

Once all of the sharks were dead, killed either by blood loss or beheading, Shara backed off and rejoined the other Animorphs.

(What was that?) Marco asked, not sure if he should be more shaken by watching the sharks – implacable killers that they were – be butchered by someone he'd never expected to have that kind of power, or pleased by the simple fact that those monsters had died without having the chance to butcher any of them.

(Nevermind that,) Jake said, though he was almost as unnerved by the slaughter he had just witnessed as any of the others; he hadn't known anything could blithely slice up sharks the way Shara had just done. (Does anyone else hear that?)

All of the others, Shara included, tuned their hearing and paused for a moment to listen to what Jake had heard. (It sounds like it's coming from somewhere behind us,) Shara said. (I'm not completely certain; but if I had to guess, I'd say that the siren's coming from that Yeerk facility we came to spy on.)

(Okay, so why are they broadcasting it?) Cassie asked sensibly.

(Maybe they're trying to call the sharks back,) Shara speculated. (They'd have no real way of knowing that the sharks ran into something they couldn't handle.)

You mean something like you? Marco thought but didn't say. Instead, bothered by what he was starting to see as his own cowardice, he said something else entirely: (We should go below, see what's trying to call them off.)

(I second that.)

It was Rachel's agreement, more than anything else, that convinced Marco that he'd just said exactly the wrong thing. But, there was no way for him to back out now without looking like even more of a coward than he probably already did. So he kept his mouth shut and surfaced to breathe with the rest of the Animorphs, excluding Ax.

Shara didn't need to surface to keep herself breathing, since her armor was designed to keep her alive even in the airlessness of space, but she breached the water all the same. Shedding her armor ten feet above the surface, she instantly lost her upward momentum and started to fall back into the ocean. Morphing even as she fell, Shara just managed to regain her dolphin form before she hit the water.