by K. E. Rocha
“That’s it,” Margo said. Spencer held his breath. “He’s focused now. He’ll perform well tonight.”
Spencer kept his eyes glued to the microchipped bear, who abruptly stopped weaving through the tightly packed pillars. The bear turned and broke into a run. His eyes locked on Spencer. His nose and ears twitched. He was heading straight for the boulder, straight for Spencer. Spencer froze. He wanted to scream and scramble away, but he couldn’t get himself to move.
“We’re here, Spencer,” Yude said into the Ear-COM urgently. “We’re coming in five … four … ” Spencer looked up. Yude’s eyes were locked on the bear. It looked like he and Aldo were going to drop into the room the second the bear got too close. Spencer tore his eyes away, returning his attention to the microchipped bear racing straight—no, the bear wasn’t racing straight at him.
“Three … two … ” Yude counted.
“Wait!” Spencer hissed.
The microchipped bear was running at full speed back the way he’d come. He was only a few paces away now, and though his eyes were on Spencer, his feet continued to pound in the direction of Margo and Ivan. The microchip won’t let him change his course! Spencer realized.
“Spencer?” Yude asked, his voice tense.
“He’s going to miss me,” Spencer whispered, hoping as hard as he could that he was right. He was. The bear ran past at full speed. He came within a few feet of Spencer, who crouched pressed up against the boulder, but never stopped running in a straight line, retracing his steps to Margo, and to his cage.
A moment later, Spencer heard the clanking sound of a cage door being closed.
“We’re done here, Ivan. Put a chain on him and let’s go,” Margo barked. “The boss and his special companion don’t like to wait.” She spat out the words “special companion” like they tasted bad, but that wasn’t what worried Spencer. What worried him was that Margo’s boss was waiting for her.
Margo’s boss was Pam.
Spencer listened carefully to the sound of the cage door being opened and the clanking of chains.
“Hurry up, Ivan,” Margo groaned. A few seconds later, Spencer heard the Lalickis open a door and the sound of a chain clattering out of the room. The door slammed shut.
Spencer took a deep breath and peered around the side of the boulder. On the far side of the room, the bear cage stood empty. The Lalickis and their microchipped bear were gone.
“That bear was microchipped,” Spencer reported through his Ear-COM. “Margo was preparing him for some kind of performance for Pam tonight.” He looked up into the skylight at Yude and Aldo. “They’re gone now. Let’s go.”
Spencer, Aldo, and Yude stood huddled in the dimly lit stairwell. Spencer had one hand wrapped around the jade bear in his pocket, and his lips were sealed shut. Now that he knew Margo and Ivan were here, it was taking all his willpower not to launch into a long string of questions about the possibility of Mom and Dad being somewhere at Moon Farm.
Yude’s voice rumbled in Spencer’s ear as the bear updated B.D., Evarita, and Professor Weaver on the new developments. Aldo looked as though he was listening to Yude intently, obviously eager to continue the hunt for Kate, and Spencer tuned out the messages coming through his Ear-COM. He already knew what Yude was communicating to the others. Instead, he silently reviewed the information they’d gathered on the mission so far. He wanted it to be a coincidence that Margo and Ivan were here training a microchipped bear—in the same place Kate was taken after her kidnapping. But he knew all the pieces must somehow be connected and that Pam, Mom, and Dad fit into the puzzle somehow, too. Spencer tried to make sense of everything, but, before he could, his thoughts were abruptly interrupted.
“Disconnect,” Yude said. “Aldo, Spencer.” The bear reconnected their Ear-COMs immediately. “With Margo and Ivan here, Moon Farm is more dangerous than we expected. We need to locate Kate quickly, and we need to start—” Yude suddenly stopped talking. His ears twitched back and forth.
“What’s—” Spencer started, but Yude cut him off.
“Quiet.” The bear stood alert. “Do you hear that?”
Spencer held his breath, listening.
Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump.
Yes, he heard it, too. It sounded like a drum beating.
“It’s coming from outside.” Aldo rushed down a few stairs to a window. Spencer and Yude followed, crowding in around Aldo to get a view of the courtyard behind the building. Spencer tried to stifle a gasp.
The courtyard on the back side of the building was surrounded by towering cement walls. It looked like a big stone cell, and it was filled with bears.
Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump.
There wasn’t a drum anywhere in sight. The sound was coming from the bears. They were lined up in perfect, even rows, and they were marching in unison back and forth. When the first bear in each column reached the cement wall to the left, a whistle blew, and they all stopped. A whistle blew again, they all turned. When the whistle blew a third time, the columns of bears marched until they reached the cement wall to the right. It looked like a drill, as if the bears were soldiers preparing to march into battle.
“How many are there?” Spencer whispered once they’d witnessed the bears make a few passes across the courtyard.
“I count eighty-eight. Eleven rows. Eight bears in each row. But Kate is not among them,” Yude answered.
Eighty-eight? The number sounded weirdly familiar, but Spencer didn’t know why. His eyes flew down the columns of bears. Was Yude sure Kate wasn’t one of them? No. All these bears were way too big to be a cub. He squinted. The bears’ movements were stiff, robotic.
“They’re microchipped,” he whispered. “All of them.” What could Margo and Pam possibly need eighty-eight microchipped bears for? His stomach flopped. Whatever it was, it wasn’t good.
Spencer tore his eyes away from the rows of marching bears. He searched the far side of the courtyard. He spotted Margo first. She was standing on a small platform with a whistle between her lips and a remote control clutched in her hands. She had a satisfied sneer on her face as she watched the bears march according to her commands. This was the performance she’d been preparing the bear in the training room for.
To one side of the platform, next to Margo as always, Spencer spotted Ivan, and behind him, a huge screen that covered the stone wall. Pam’s live image sat in the center of the video screen, surveying the courtyard below. He wore a satisfied expression on his face as he watched the bears marching back and forth in front of him. His throne framed him creepily. The row of bear teeth spiking the top of the throne gleamed like they’d just been polished. Each of the armrests ended in a hollowed-out bear paw, complete with space for Pam to slide his long, clawlike nails in where the bear’s claws would have been.
Now that Spencer had been told what bear-part trading was, he was sure everything Pam’s throne was made of had come from real bears. He shuddered. And, if the throne itself wasn’t bad enough, then there was Pam. The potbellied man sat perched on fur cushions. His glossy black hair was smoothed perfectly into place. He looked amused as the bears marched back and forth in front of him. He looked evil.
“I’ve seen enough,” Yude said. “We’ll tell the council everything when we return to Bearhaven. Come on.”
Yude and Aldo started to back away.
“Wait!” Spencer whispered. He kept staring at the screen. The last time he’d seen Mom she’d been with Pam, dressed as his maid. There was someone in the shadows behind Pam’s throne. Is it Mom? He wanted it to be her and didn’t want it to be her at the same time. He was desperate to see her again, but if she wasn’t there, maybe that meant Uncle Mark had rescued her and Dad already. His mind was racing.
“Spencer.” Yude’s voice was firm. “We’re moving now.”
Just then, Pam lifted a clawed hand. Yude and Aldo stopped. Pam waved to whoever was standing in the shadows behind his throne to come forward. A second later, a huge, jet-black bear stepped into the l
ight beside Pam. There was a gold, jeweled collar around the bear’s neck and a furless patch of skin at its jaw.
“His special companion,” Spencer whispered.
“Who is she?” Aldo asked.
“I don’t know,” Yude answered.
The huge bear sat back on her haunches. She surveyed the scene in the courtyard, her expression stony. Whoever she was, that bear was important to Pam. Spencer searched the shadows on the screen again, holding on to his hope that Mom might be there. She wasn’t. Spencer stepped away from the window. He didn’t know what Mom’s absence meant or where she might be, but he didn’t need to see any more of Pam, his bear companion, or the microchipped army in the courtyard below.
“The cage rooms are this way,” Yude said, starting down the stairs to the second floor. “Aldo, you’ll start by smelling for Kate at the entrance to each room. You should be close enough then to pick up her scent.”
“No.” Aldo’s voice was firm. His snout was twitching rapidly back and forth and he’d risen onto his hind legs.
“Excuse me?” Yude asked, turning back.
“I mean she’s not down there.” Aldo said. He slowly turned his back on Spencer and Yude. He took a step back up the stairwell, then paused, turning his head from side to side as he sniffed. All of a sudden, Aldo launched himself up the stairs, racing toward the third floor. Yude lumbered up the steps, trying to catch up to the younger bear. Spencer followed as quickly as he could. Aldo stopped at the closed door to the third floor training room. To one side of the door, a spiral staircase Spencer hadn’t noticed before led upward. The stairs to the tower!
“She’s up there,” Aldo growled. “I can smell her.”
“You’re sure?” Yude asked, his voice tense for the first time all night.
“What’s wrong?” Aldo turned back to Yude.
“If you’re sure Kate’s in this tower, then we got here just in time,” Yude answered. “There’s a helicopter pad on the tower roof, and all Moon Farm shipments—the illegal ones—leave by helicopter. If Kate’s in there, she’s already been sold. She must be scheduled to ship in the morning.”
Spencer reached into his pocket for the jade bear. “Sold?” he asked quietly. “You mean—”
“I mean that if Kate doesn’t leave Moon Farm with us tonight, she’ll leave on a helicopter tomorrow morning. There’s no telling where she’ll go or what shape she’ll be in, and we’ll probably never find out.”
Aldo growled and shook his head. “We have to get her out of there.” He put a claw on the first stair up into the tower, waiting for Yude to give him the signal to go.
“Spencer, check that everyone’s still assembled in the courtyard,” Yude ordered. “Aldo, stand guard while I update B.D. Disconnect.”
Spencer raced to the closest window. The scene in the courtyard looked the same. The harsh yellow beams of a few spotlights illuminated everything. The bears were still in formation, Margo was still poised on her platform, ready to issue the next command, and Pam and his enormous bear companion were still projected on their screen. Now, though, Pam was speaking. His voice was high-pitched and sickly sweet, just like Spencer remembered it.
“The cub you brought in was a promising catch, Margo,” Pam screeched from his spot in the middle of the video screen. “We’re closing in on them. Continue the preparations. When we find Bearhaven, we’ll be ready. Now,” Pam went on theatrically. “On to the next order of business.”
Spencer didn’t stay to find out what the next order of business was. What he’d heard was bad enough. It was Margo and Ivan who’d kidnapped Kate after all—and Pam, and his army of microchipped bears, were coming for Bearhaven. He rushed back to rejoin the team.
“Yude, Aldo,” he said, reconnecting their Ear-COMs. “They’re still assembled down there.” Spencer stopped himself from adding the details of what Pam had said. By now he’d learned that distracting from this mission’s goal—saving Kate—wasn’t what a trained operative was supposed to do. Bearhaven would have time to stop Pam later. It had to. But Kate only had until morning.
“All right, here’s how we’re going to proceed.” Yude launched into plans for the next step in the mission. “You two are going into the tower. Aldo, Kate will respond best to seeing you. Spencer, Aldo needs a human operative with him. I’m going back to the roof. I can stand guard there while I keep an eye on the courtyard and plan our evacuation with the rest of the team. We’ll need the others ready for the exit as soon as you have Kate.
“There are two ways into the tower,” Yude continued. “This stairwell and a ladder on the outside of the tower. Take the stairs now. But bring her down the ladder and meet me on the roof. It’s the fastest way out. We’ll leave from there as quickly as we can.”
“See you on the roof,” Aldo said, nodding to Yude. “Let’s go get Kate,” he added to Spencer, then turned and started up the stairs.
Before Spencer could reply to Yude himself, Aldo had disappeared around the first turn in the spiral staircase that led up into the tower. Spencer was afraid to lose Aldo in the dark. He raced up the windowless staircase after the bear, but it was no use. Aldo’s shadow sped farther and farther into the dark ahead, until Spencer could only barely hear the distant sound of claws hitting stone steps.
“Spencer, are you back there?” Aldo said into Spencer’s Ear-COM after a few moments had passed.
“I’m coming as fast as I can!” Spencer answered, already out of breath. “Aren’t you supposed to be protecting me anyway?” he added in a mumble, a little bothered by being left behind. He continued up the stairs. It was impossible for him to see anything farther than a few feet ahead of him. He squinted, searching the stone walls on either side of him as he climbed, but he hadn’t passed a single door yet. A moment later an enormous dark shadow rushed toward him.
“Ahhh!” Spencer yelled, then clapped a hand over his mouth, but it was too late. His scream echoed through the tower.
“What’s going on?!” Yude practically bellowed through the Ear-COMs.
“It’s me!” Aldo hissed. “I was just coming back for Spencer. Hurry, Spencer, climb on.”
“Sorry,” Spencer muttered. He wanted to be angry at Aldo for descending out of the dark with no warning, but he was too relieved to be reunited with the bear. He reached for the dark outline that he knew was Aldo and took two fistfuls of the bear’s fur. Spencer swung onto Aldo’s back. “Let’s go.”
Aldo lurched forward, and in what seemed like seconds, they’d reached the top of the winding staircase. Aldo leaped off the last step and slid to a stop. Spencer jumped off the bear’s back. An open door to the rooftop helicopter pad allowed the moon to light the small landing where he and Aldo now stood. Across from the door to the roof, there was a closed metal door. Aldo moved to crouch in front of it on all fours. He lowered his snout to sniff at the sliver of space between the door and the floor.
“She’s here,” he growled.
Spencer squeezed in beside the bear. He grabbed the doorknob and tried to turn it. Only when it didn’t turn did Spencer take a good look at the electric keypad above the doorknob.
Screech! Spencer flinched at the sound of Aldo’s claws scraping against metal.
Aldo’s muscles were straining as he attempted to pry the locked door off its hinges. His claws were hooked in the inch of space between the door and the floor. The door didn’t budge. The electronic lock sealed it shut. Spencer reached forward and pressed a few random numbers on the keypad. After he’d put in four digits, a red light flashed.
It’s a four number code. Now he knew that much.
Spencer was going to have to come up with the right four numbers in the right order before anyone discovered them. There was no other way in, but where was he supposed to start?
Aldo grunted and strained against the door. Spencer reached into his pocket and pulled out the jade bear. He needed a second to think. Kate was probably only a few feet away. Getting to her was up to him.
He exam
ined the familiar stone figurine in his palm. The jade bear was standing on its hind legs the way real bears did in order to see, hear, and smell better. Mom and Dad said bears weren’t trying to be aggressive when they rose into that position. They were trying to learn about their surroundings so they could protect themselves if they needed to. Spencer let his hand hover over the keypad, his mind starting to race. He knew a lot about bears. Mom and Dad loved to tell him facts about the eight different bear species, and plenty of those facts had numbers in them. Pam was clearly obsessed with bears. Maybe bears were the very key Spencer needed.
A brown bear has five claws on each of its four feet. 5-5-5-5, he typed. A red light flashed.
Male polar bears weigh up to seventeen hundred pounds. 1-7-0-0. The red light flashed again.
There had to be something more specific. Why hadn’t he counted the teeth that lined the top of Pam’s throne? Or the number of shelves in each tower in the warehouse? Anything that might help him now.
Frustrated, Spencer shoved his jade bear back into his pocket. Who was he kidding? A bunch of random numbers about bears was not going to open this door. He was just a novice, and between this electronic lock and the bear army in the back courtyard, Moon Farm was a fortress.
Wait! The marching bears! Yude had said there were eighty-eight of them. Suddenly, Spencer realized why eighty-eight had sounded so familiar when Yude said it. Eighty-eight was right in the middle of the license plate number that led them to Moon Farm! Spencer had read it out to Evarita himself. “M-0-8-8-0-N-F.” The number eighty-eight obviously meant something to Pam!
