by K. E. Rocha
“Mom!” he yelled at the top of his lungs, pounding his fists against the glass. Mom turned, her blond hair whipping across her face. Her eyes locked on Spencer.
“Spencer!” she cried just as a door banged open somewhere far in the distance in the underground aquarium.
Spencer ran down the length of the glass window that stood between himself and the empty tank where Mom, Dad, and Uncle Mark were trapped. He was searching for an opening—a locked door, or a passageway of some kind. Anything that might get him to his family. But there was no way in from the viewing tunnel. All Spencer could do from here was look at Mom, Dad, and Uncle Mark standing inside the cement basin of an empty whale tank. The walls were smooth and high. There were no footholds, no ladders or tools anywhere in sight.
Mom and Dad’s mouths were moving inside the tank. They were talking to him, trying to tell him something, but the glass was too thick and the alarm was still blaring, Spencer couldn’t understand what they were saying. He stopped running and banged on the glass with both fists as the alarm’s red lights flashed over him.
“Someone’s coming, Spencer!” Aldo growled urgently. Heavy footsteps echoed through the viewing tunnel, mixing with the harsh Errrr! Errr! of the alarm.
“We have to get them out of there!” he shouted.
Mom and Dad both looked exhausted. Their faces were drawn and thin. Mom’s glasses were gone, and her usually sleek blond hair was falling out of a messy ponytail. Spencer had never seen Dad with a beard, but he had one now and his hands were bandaged. He was hurt. Spencer wanted to be with them, in the tank. He didn’t care about anything else. He didn’t care what happened next, as long as he, Mom, and Dad were together—
“We have to get out of here, Spencer!” Aldo growled, cutting into Spencer’s thoughts.
In the empty tank, Uncle Mark had started to yell. He looked afraid, and angry. Mom and Dad were looking past Spencer, to the flashing lights, and the viewing tunnel. Spencer pressed an ear to the glass.
“GO NOW!” Uncle Mark was yelling.
“Is somebody here?!” a deep voice shouted. Spencer jumped back from the glass. It was a guard, yelling from around a bend in the viewing tunnel.
“Spencer!” Aldo growled.
Spencer looked at the bear, then at Mom and Dad in the tank. He was panicking. He couldn’t think. What was he supposed to do?! If the guards saw them, Pam and his staff would know part of Bearhaven’s team was still here.
“Spencer, let’s go!” Aldo stepped between Spencer and the bend in the tunnel, as though preparing to protect Spencer when the guards turned the corner.
“I don’t see anybody, Guy!” one of the guards yelled. “It’s probably Pam’s bear like he expected!” The heavy footsteps continued to get closer.
Aldo crouched low, ready to stop the guards. He would fight them if he had to, blocking Spencer from them. But the guards could have weapons. Spencer and Aldo had to make a break for it now, or they would be discovered and then they might never escape. As an operative, Spencer was making the same mistake as B.D. had, putting his team at risk. He couldn’t do that to Aldo. If Aldo got captured at Hidden Rock Zoo, he’d be shipped off right away to whatever horrible animal dealer had bought him at the auction last night.
“Let’s go!” Spencer hissed. The viewing tunnel hooked to the left behind him. He guessed it made a loop, leading back to the entrance at the bottom of the cement ramp. If they could outrun the guards, staying just far enough ahead to be out of sight—
Aldo turned and paused beside Spencer. Spencer jumped onto Aldo’s back. He grabbed two fistfuls of the bear’s fur, and the second he did, Aldo launched himself forward, taking off at top speed through the viewing tunnel.
Spencer plastered himself to the running bear. He pressed his face into Aldo’s fur and told himself the tears welling in his eyes were from the force of the air whipping into his face as Aldo hurtled forward. But the truth was, Spencer had found Mom and Dad. He’d seen them. He’d been just a few feet away from them. Then he had left them behind. Now he knew exactly how Dora felt.
Before Spencer could think much more about being separated yet again from his family, Aldo was coming to the end of the viewing tunnel. Just as Spencer had thought, it made a wide loop around the underground aquarium and brought them back to the doors they had first come through. One of the doors was open a crack. Aldo barreled straight through it, forcing it open wide with a powerful thrust of his head. The bear rushed through the door, out into the morning sunshine with Spencer holding tightly to his back. He ran up the sloping walkway, hurtled over the low cement wall beside the iron gates, and headed straight for the Reptile Lodge.
Spencer and Aldo sat on the floor of the Reptile Lodge, planning their next move. The doors on either end of the building were rigged shut with a network of Spencer’s ropes and knots, and they hadn’t risked turning on the lights. So far, there hadn’t been any sign the guards had spotted Spencer or Aldo as they fled from the aquarium, but they had to be more cautious now than ever.
The Hidden Rock Zoo map was laid out on the ground between them, and a flashlight was propped on the jar of nuts, shining a beam of light down over it. Spencer had a black pen clutched in one hand. They had seen all of Hidden Rock Zoo now. It was time they updated the map.
“Okay, let’s start from the beginning,” he said. “The front entrance is the same, but there’s a guardhouse here.” Spencer drew a black square next to the front gates. “The Woodland Walk turned into Pam’s gardens.” Spencer added the big marble courtyard at the center of the Woodland Walk area of the map, and the waterfall.
“He turned the Shetland Pony Shed into a garage.” Aldo pointed to the stables with one claw. Spencer crossed off Shetland Pony Shed and wrote garage.
“He built his house, and Dora’s where the Tropics used to be.” Spencer drew the two buildings onto the map. “And the pear grove is here now. And here’s the entrance to the underground aquarium,” Spencer drew the iron gates and ramp underground in the open space beside the Airy Aviary.
“What’s this?” Aldo asked, pointing to a building between the pear grove and the Savanna.
Spencer frowned. “It’s labeled Aqua Theater,” he said. He’d looked at that building on the map at least a hundred times by now, but he’d never thought much about it since it just looked like an empty glass greenhouse when he and Aldo rushed past it. “We’ve seen it. We were right next to it the first night we were here, when we were searching for Uncle Mark and B.D., but I thought it was just a greenhouse. It looked empty. But why would it be called the Aqua Theater?”
Aldo and Spencer both fell silent. Could the Aqua Theater have something to do with the aquarium? Spencer thought back to the one time he’d been to an aquarium. He’d gone with his two best friends from home, Cheng and Ramona, and Cheng’s dad. They had walked all throughout the aquarium, looking through the thick glass windows into tanks filled with fish and sea turtles and eels and all sorts of water creatures. Then Spencer remembered the dolphin show. They’d gone to a little arena above the dolphin tank, and watched the dolphins do tricks.
“Wait a second … ” Spencer whispered. “Aldo, when we were in the aquarium, wasn’t the tank Mom, Dad, and Uncle Mark were in different than the others?”
Aldo was quiet. “Yes,” he said after a second. “It had daylight! The others were dark. But their tank opened up to the outdoors somehow.”
Spencer looked down at the map. He traced his finger from the parking lot where Dora had attacked B.D. to the Aqua Theater. “That explains why Margo and Ivan took Uncle Mark and B.D. over there when they captured them. And why you suddenly lost their scent!”
“What?” Aldo asked, trying to follow Spencer’s logic.
“Okay, so at aquariums, they do these shows where dolphins and whales perform tricks. And people sit in the stands above the tank and watch. The Aqua Theater must have been built for shows! And the tank inside is where they’re keeping Mom, Dad, and Uncle Mark!” Sp
encer started to get excited.
“And this is good news?” Aldo asked.
“Yes! It means we know how to get to them! The tank has to be open at the top. It opens into the Aqua Theater!” Spencer drew an X over the Aqua Theater and wrote Mom, Dad, Uncle Mark. “And we know B.D. is here.” He put an X over the Caves and wrote B.D. “And Dora and Darwin are here, and here,” Spencer finished, marking Dora and Pam’s homes for the last two bears.
Spencer put the black pen down. He had drawn four Xs on the map, and those four Xs represented the six rescues he and Aldo needed to make.
“I think we need more operatives,” Aldo said solemnly, staring down at the map.
“What did you say?” Spencer asked. A plan was starting to take shape in his mind.
“I said I think we need more operatives,” Aldo repeated. “Three humans and three bears need to be rescued, and there are only two of us.” The bear lowered his head closer to the map, obviously trying to come up with a plan himself.
“I think you’re onto something,” Spencer said slowly. “The thing is, we do have a lot of operatives here. Mom, Dad, Uncle Mark, and B.D. are all highly trained operatives. Plus you and me. We probably shouldn’t count B.D. because of his injuries, but just because three of our operatives are at the bottom of a whale tank in the Aqua Theater doesn’t mean they can’t help us on this mission!”
“What do you mean?” Aldo asked.
“I mean, I don’t think we have to rescue Mom, Dad, and Uncle Mark from the whale tank.”
Aldo looked at Spencer like he’d suggested they pack up and leave everyone behind.
“I mean we just have to give them the tools they need to rescue themselves!” Spencer explained.
“You’re right!” Aldo exclaimed.
“You said teamwork was going to get us out of Hidden Rock Zoo,” Spencer continued. “We just need to figure out how to activate the other half of the team.”
Spencer and Aldo sifted through the contents of Spencer’s mission pack. They had made their plan. Now it was time to make sure they had everything they needed to put that plan in motion.
“Okay, so let’s review,” Spencer said. “Step one, in the middle of the night tonight, you are going to run right past the guardhouse acting like a crazy escaped bear. You don’t need any tools, and you’ll leave your Ear-COM with me.”
“Right,” Aldo agreed. Spencer didn’t like the idea of being disconnected from Aldo, but he knew if anything went wrong, and Aldo got captured, they couldn’t risk the Ear-COM falling into Pam’s hands. Aldo is not going to get captured, Spencer promised himself.
“Step two, when the guards follow you, I’ll sneak into the guardhouse to shut down the signal blockers around the zoo so we can communicate with Evarita again. I’ll open the front gates and disable as many of the security systems as I can. I’ll need tools.” Spencer pushed a hammer, a screwdriver, and a pair of scissors into a little pile. “I’ll also tell Mom, Dad, and Uncle Mark to escape from the tank. For their escape, they’ll need a lot of rope, something they can use as a grappling hook, and an Ear-COM.”
Spencer grabbed B.D.’s Ear-COM from the pile of supplies and slipped it into his pocket for safekeeping. Both of his lengths of rope were tying the Reptile Lodge doors shut, and he would need them later for Darwin. “We need to find another supply of rope and a hook somewhere.”
“Right.” Aldo nodded.
“Step three, after Mom, Dad, and Uncle Mark are free, they’re going to the pool shed to hide out, since it’s the closest building to the front gates, and nobody will be there in the middle of the night. You’ll meet them there, after you lose the guards. Step four, I’ll go get Darwin out of Pam’s house and bring him to Dora, who can get them both to the pool shed. For that, I just need rope and an Ear-COM. I have two coils of rope, and I’ll have your Ear-COM by then.”
“Okay,” Aldo said. “The last rescue is B.D.”
“Yes,” Spencer agreed. “Step five, after I send Dora and Darwin to you in the pool shed, I’ll go get B.D. I’ll need the lock-picking kit.” Spencer dug the lock-picking kit out of the pile of supplies and added it to the tools he’d already set aside. “B.D. and I will get to the pool house. Step six, we charge the front gates as a team. Evarita will be waiting outside with a getaway vehicle.”
“We hope,” Aldo said.
“We hope,” Spencer repeated solemnly. He didn’t want to think about what they would have to do if Evarita wasn’t ready to evacuate them all … And he also didn’t know what kind of vehicle she would be able to find on such short notice that could fit three bears, a cub, and five people. Everything will go according to plan, he told himself, pushing his doubts away. It has to.
“So our first move is to find a supply of rope and a hook, probably in the pool shed,” Aldo said, breaking the silence. “Then we’ll drop it off for Jane, Shane, and Mark, and camp out near the guardhouse until midnight.”
“We’ll leave after dark,” Spencer replied, pulling his empty mission pack onto his lap.
“All right.” Aldo leaned back, settling himself against the wall, and closed his eyes. “I’m going to get some rest while I can.”
“Me too.” Spencer set the last of his food supply—two protein bars and the jar of mixed nuts—and his phone to the side, and started to put the rest of his things back into his mission pack with the tools he knew he would need tonight right on top. When his bag was totally packed, Spencer set the alarm on his phone for ten o’clock p.m. He leaned back against the wall to get a few hours of sleep. Aldo was already snoring beside him.
* * *
Spencer felt like he’d only just fallen asleep when the alarm on his phone startled him awake.
Aldo’s eyes shot open.
Pop! Aldo gave a jaw pop and lurched forward, getting to all fours. He quickly rose onto his hind legs and glared around the Reptile Lodge, sniffing hard. His ears twitched.
“Aldo!” Spencer cried. “It’s okay! It was my phone!”
“What?” Aldo dropped back to all fours.
“That sound,” Spencer explained. “It was just the alarm from my phone. We aren’t being attacked or anything.”
“Oh, thank goodness!” Aldo relaxed. “Next time, give a bear a little warning, okay? I thought we were done for.”
“I’m sorry.” Spencer stifled a laugh. “You fell asleep before I could tell you I set the alarm. I didn’t want us to oversleep.”
“Time to go?” Aldo asked.
“Almost.” Spencer unwrapped one of the protein bars and handed it to Aldo, then took the top off the jar of mixed nuts and dumped the nuts out into a little pile on top of the empty wrapper on the ground. The bear swallowed the bar in one bite, and wolfed down the pile of nuts before Spencer was even halfway through his own protein bar. He finished the rest as quickly as he could, then set to work untying the doors to the Reptile Lodge, and recoiling his rope.
Spencer could feel his excitement starting to build. Tonight, they were going to get out of Hidden Rock Zoo once and for all, and they were taking everyone they came here to rescue with them.
Spencer hung on tight to Aldo’s back as the bear made his way to the pool shed. They were sticking to the perimeter of the dark zoo, and though Spencer was trying to stay alert and watch for guards, security cameras, or anything else that might give them away, he could hardly see a thing, especially when they raced through the alleyway between Hidden Rock Zoo’s outer wall and the Caves.
I am definitely going to need the night-vision goggles tonight, he thought, glad for the millionth time that he’d brought the cool gear along on this mission.
Aldo broke out of the alley and headed for the Seaport Pools. On the hilltop to their right, Spencer could see lights on in Pam’s house. He hoped now, of all times, Pam wasn’t standing on his second-floor viewing deck, surveying his miniature world …
When they reached the shed beside the Seaport Pools area of the zoo, Spencer slid off Aldo’s back. Each pool was lit
from below, and each one looked like a moon, glowing silver into the dark night. The nearest pool cast enough light for Spencer to find the door to the pool shed. Remembering his impatience to enter the aquarium, and the alarm he’d set off in the process, Spencer paused, waiting for Aldo to smell the door.
The bear finished his scent investigation. “Nobody’s here,” he said. Spencer pushed open the door, bracing himself for an alarm to blare on, but the door swung open in silence. He let out a sigh of relief and stepped into the little building. He pulled the flashlight from his back pocket and flicked it on.
“This would have made a much better hideout,” Aldo whispered when the first thing the flashlight’s beam landed on was a pile of lounge chair cushions. “It would have been way more comfortable.”
“Okay, let’s look for rope and a hook.” Spencer maneuvered around the pile of cushions and a pile of folded-up umbrellas. It looked like all kinds of supplies were stored in this building. He scanned a huge set of shelves filled with cleaning supplies, then moved on to a tall stack of cardboard boxes. He pulled one of the boxes down and flipped the top open.
Black gift boxes were neatly stacked inside, each one imprinted with the silver crown logo. Spencer couldn’t look at it now without thinking about Darwin, even though Pam’s plan for the cub still puzzled Spencer.
He opened one of the gift boxes. Inside, surrounded by velvet cushioning, was a black stone bear figurine. Spencer felt goose bumps rise on his arms. The figurine looked so much like his own jade bear. The bear was standing up on its hind legs, just like Spencer’s jade figurine. A jeweled collar had been carved onto its neck, and on its head, in shining silver, was a crown.
Spencer lifted the figurine out of its box. It was at least three times bigger than his jade bear. Beneath the bear, the velvet was embroidered. King of Bears it read. Spencer thought of Darwin again, the living version of this stone figurine and suddenly he understood exactly what Pam’s plans for Darwin were. Pam is just going to use Darwin to show off his power over bears, he thought with disgust. “What a creepy party favor,” Spencer said aloud.
