Under My Skin (Wildlings) (25 page)

"But if you send Danny after us again," Elzie adds, "you'd better make sure he's got an army with him, because the next time I see him, I'm going to pop him one."

Solana tries not to smile. "It's not wise to make threats, young lady. But by the time the Chief gets through with him, Reed is going to have a lot more on his mind than you."

"Just give him my message," Elzie says, undaunted.

Auntie Min takes her by the arm before she can go on.

"Help an old lady home," she says.

"I thought you just said you weren't feeble."

Auntie Min looks at Solana and shakes her head.

"Young people," she says.

Then she sets off, not so much leaning on Elzie for support as walking her away from the building. Desmond falls in behind them. I would follow, except that Agent Solana touches my shoulder.

"Back in the office," he says. "What happened there? When she said her name, I thought I saw ... I don't know. Something. And I know you did, too."

I hesitate for a moment, then nod. I know I shouldn't trust him, but I find myself liking Solana, so I decide to be honest.

"I don't know," I tell him. "It was weird. Like there was a big moth behind her." I wait a moment, then add, "You've heard the stories."

"Of course I have. I grew up in the barrio—not here in Santa Feliz, but the stories don't change."

"Mamá told me that
Mariposa de la Muerte
can pull aside the veil between the worlds."

"In the ones I heard, she was the Angel of Death." He looks down the street. "You don't think she's really ...?"

He can't bring himself to say the words and I don't blame him. It seems so implausible.

"Maybe she just did it for effect," I say. "To freak us out."

"If that's the case, it's working. I felt like I was seven years old again and listening to Tía Margarida's spooky stories."

I see that Desmond has stopped and is waiting for me, looking mildly annoyed.

"Your partner doesn't like us," I say to Solana, before I go to catch up to Des.

"Agent Matteson takes his job seriously," Solana says. "To serve and protect are more than just words to him. In the Bureau, we know that the kids who've changed aren't evil, but ever since it began, there's been a hell of a lot of collateral damage. It's our job to keep people safe and that includes Wildlings. And your friend Josh."

"Then why are you harassing Wildlings?"

"We're not. We're simply trying to protect everyone from harm. Sometimes that means taking dangerous people off the streets and doing what we can to teach them not to hurt anybody, or themselves."

"I don't know ..."

"Just think about it."

I want to defend Wildlings, but that would risk exposing my secret. So I leave it at, "I will," and hurry off to join Desmond.

"Getting all chummy with the fuzz, are we?" says Des as I get to him.

"I don't know," I say. "Maybe it really wasn't them who took Josh. I mean, three guys Tazed him even though he was surrendering. He's just a kid. Even with all the bad cop stories you hear, that seems way over the top."

"So if it wasn't the cops, then who the hell was it?"

"I don't know, Des, but we've got to find out and we've got to save him."

Josh

I wake up disoriented. I'm lying on my back. On the other side of my closed eyelids, everything looks white—like I'm under a bright spotlight. I have this vague sense of déjà vu.

My mouth is dry, my throat is really sore, and my tongue feels swollen, too big for my mouth. There's a dull ache in my head, just behind my eyes. My whole body is tingling with that pins-and-needles feeling you get when your foot or your arm goes to sleep. I smell strong cleaners and antiseptics, glass and steel. I'm lying on some kind of thin mattress. I can hear the soft murmur of machines but there's only one person close by. A little
ping
of recognition tells me it's another Wildling. It's no one I know.

I have a vague recollection of hearing screams, and another of being strapped to a table, but the last thing I remember with any clarity is getting an injection in the van. I can't even begin to guess how long ago that was, where I am, what's going to happen next. I'm thinking I should play dead a little longer. Just because I can't smell or hear anybody close by, doesn't mean I'm not being watched.

I decide I don't care.

I open my eyes and sit up, and immediately wish I hadn't. Everything goes spinning around me and I think I'm going to hurl. I put out a hand to the mattress to regain my balance and my whole arm feels clunky—like it belongs to someone else. I manage to get it in place before I topple over. I find if I don't move, the spinning and nausea finally start to go away. The pins-and-needles feeling takes longer. The headache sticks around.

The other Wildling is in the cell behind me. His breathing is so even, I think he's asleep.

The cell I'm in—I don't even know if I can call it a cell. It's more like a glass box. I can't tell where it opens, or how. There's a row of them in the direction I'm facing. Five more, all empty except for mattresses and stainless steel toilets. No pillows or sheets or even a blanket. No taps, no sinks.

That reminds me that I'm thirsty. Wanting something to drink makes my stomach rumble, but the nausea's too recent for me to want any food.

Beyond the glass cubicles, the rest of the room seems to be some weird combination of a science lab and a hospital operating room. It's all gleaming steel, the walls white. Rows of fluorescent light above leave no chance of shadow anywhere except for under the operating tables.

I take the chance that moving won't give me vertigo again and turn around to find the Wildling sitting up on his mattress, looking at me. He's like me—just a kid—dressed in some kind of white cotton pants and a shirt. I'm dressed the same, I realize. That's kind of creepy. People I don't know and never saw took off my clothes and put me in these. That's even creepier.

He's a skinny white kid with a fading tan, sharp angular features and big blue eyes that have a world-weary look that doesn't really go with his age. It's hard to tell, but I think his hair is blond—his eyebrows certainly are. His hair is cut so short it might as well not even be there. It's not until I see his shaved head that I realize my own head feels light. I lift a hand and all I find is stubble as short as his. My dreads are gone.

I hear a growl. It takes me a moment to understand that it's coming from me. It's not my stomach. It's the mountain lion under my skin, reacting to my anger. I remember what Chaingang told me.

If the Feds pull you in, don't let them see you change. Not even if they lock you up. Don't ever change where they can see
.

I push the mountain lion away so that it's not so close to my skin.

"Whu—" I have to stop and clear my throat. "Where are we?"

"I don't know. I'm Rico."

"Josh."

"How do you feel?" he asks.

"Like crap. Dizzy. Nauseous. Thirsty."

He nods. "That's the drugs."

"Drugs? What kind of drugs?"

"I don't know. Some kind of tranquilizer."

"I don't feel very tranquil."

"That's 'cause they're wearing off. They shot you up so that you wouldn't bust free."

"Do I look like I could take on a bunch of grown men?"

"They think you're a Wildling."

"Well, I'm not."

He gives me a thin smile and nods. "Yeah, me neither."

"How long have you been here?"

"I'm not sure. A few weeks. There've been others, but I don't know where they are now. A girl was locked up in your cell for awhile, but they took her away yesterday and I haven't seen her since. She ... she wasn't doing so good. They'd taken a lot of blood from her."

Chills crawl up my spine. "What do you mean?"

He shrugs. "Like I said, they kept taking blood … and … tissue samples. After awhile she kind of started to lose her mind. She was screaming a lot and really freaking out. Yesterday they moved her out."

"
I'm
freaking out," I say. "How can our own government treat us like this?"

"I don't think this is a government lab."

"Then what is it?"

He shakes his head. "I have no idea. But they're pretty determined to figure out what makes a Wildling tick."

He shifts his position and I see he's missing his right leg from the knee down. He catches me looking at it.

"Like I said, they've been taking blood and tissue samples ever since I got here," he says. "A couple of days ago, they decided they needed something more substantial."

I can't look away from where the cloth of his pants goes flat past his knee.

"Are you ... are you saying ... did they ...?"

It's so insanely horrible I can't seem to get it out. My stomach does a flip and I taste bile. I want to throw up.

"Yeah," he says. "They cut it off two days ago. I think that's what made Jenny really lose it. She knew what was coming."

"Jesus. How can you be so calm?"

He shrugs. "I went crazy when I first got here, but it didn't do me any good. Now I'm just trying to make it through, one day at a time."

I can't imagine ever being able to do that. Right now, all I want to do is let the mountain lion take over. It could smash its way out of this glass cage and rip apart anybody who got in the way of our getting out of here. Screw Chaingang's advice.

But what if I can't break the glass? What if I change and all it does is give them what they want?

I force myself to breathe slowly.

"Why would they cut off your leg?" I finally manage to get out.

"Like I said, they needed a bigger tissue sample. They're also interested in seeing if my leg grows back."

"That's insane."

He shrugs. "Some lizards can grow back their tails. Since I don't have a tail, they're curious to know if the leg'll grow back instead. But that was just an afterthought. They took my leg because of their experiments." He points to a refrigerator unit I hadn't noticed before. "They store it in there when they're not working on it."

Now I really want to hurl.

"That ... that doesn't make any sense," I say.

"They think my Wildling shape is a lizard. I think one of the others told them that."

"But you're not a Wildling," I say for the benefit of the invisible audience that might be watching.

"No more than you," he says. "We're just really unlucky kids."

"I can't believe that this is happening. What about our civil rights?"

"I guess they figure we're Wildlings so we don't have any. And we don't know whose lab this is. Could be government. Could be some mad scientist."

I shake my head. "No, look at all of this equipment. It's got to be worth a fortune. This isn't somebody working on his own."

"It doesn't really matter who it is," he says. "We're still stuck here."

Not if I can help it, but I don't say that aloud.

Marina

Desmond and I have caught up to the others and we're now several blocks away from the FBI field office. It looks like we've eluded the media by taking a circuitous route along back streets. No one seems to be following us.

Now we're heading back toward the sea, rather than the overpass. I have no idea why, or where we're going. There's been so much rolling around inside my head that I've just followed Auntie Min's lead, but I'm getting more worried with every step.

The sky is barely starting to turn that lovely combination of pink, orange and purplish blue that we so adore in Santa Feliz. There are bunches of people who sit by the ocean and actually applaud the sunset nightly. Normally I love it, too, but today it just reminds me that in another hour or so, it will be dark and we're still no closer to finding Josh.

"We should never have stopped to listen to Danny," Elzie is saying. "I should have kicked his ass the moment he showed up and we could have motored out of there along with everybody else."

The homeless people and Wildlings under the overpass really did do a quick disappearing act as soon the FBI arrived.

"But we learned such interesting things," Auntie Min says.

"Yeah, nobody knows zip. Big whup."

"That, too," Auntie Min says. "But it seems we have unexpected allies. Or, if not allies, then at least five-fingered beings who are willing to listen to reason."

"Who cares?" Elzie says. "What we need to focus on is finding Josh."

"Oh, I've been working on that," Auntie Min says. "Let me go check on how the search is going."

She walks across the street to the far side of a convenience store parking lot. The raggedy jade hedge there seems to be filled with birds—mostly sparrows, finches and doves. On the telephone wires above, a pair of crows loiter in that nonchalant way crows excel at. Auntie Min walks up to the hedge and pauses, apparently having a conversation with some invisible presence.

"What's she doing?" Desmond asks.

"Looks like she's talking to the birds," Elzie tells him.

"Yeah, right."

"Well, could be she just wants us to think that," Elzie adds. "She's a master of subterfuge."

Desmond rolls his eyes. "And what are the birds saying?"

"I don't know. Tweet, tweet?"

"Very funny."

"But it really does look like a conversation," I add.

We all cross the street, but wait on the sidewalk, keeping a respectful distance. I turn to Elzie and Desmond.

"I'm worried," I say. "Auntie Min doesn't seem real down with the idea of rescuing Josh and it's driving me nuts standing around like this."

Before they can respond, Auntie Min heads back across the parking lot toward us.

"I've got news," she says when she joins us. "Do any of you know of a company called ValentiCorp?"

"Sure," Desmond says. "They're in that big shopping center out on Cerritos Drive. You can see it from the freeway. Computerland is in there, and Target and a bunch of other stores, but ValentiCorp is that huge place in the middle. You can't miss it."

Auntie Min nods. "That's it."

"So what about them?" Elzie asks.

"That's where they took Josh—a half-dozen men in black vehicles wearing black suits. Does that sound right? Sparrows aren't good at counting."