Under My Skin (Wildlings) (27 page)

"And this is Tomás, who is visiting from the Los Angeles area. Elzie and Theodore, I don't believe you've met Tomás before, either."

Tomás barely acknowledges any of us. His attention is on ValentiCorp, too, where it towers in the distance. Several spotlights light up the structure and make it look even more dramatic than it does during daytime.

Desmond follows their gaze. "Ridiculously huge, isn't it," he says.

Cory nods. "With a lot of guards. They look like ex-military, or cops."

"Wow, dude, great eyesight," Desmond says.

My own Wildling vision lets me see what Cory means. Though it's not obvious from this distance, men are stationed around the building. Now I understand why Chaingang has left the rest of the Ocean Avers well out of sight. Motorcycle gangs attract attention and he doesn't want to tip off the guards. Or maybe he just doesn't want to mix Wildlings and gang business.

As for our little group, we're certainly an odd mix, but hopefully the dim light obscures us. We're probably too far away for them to pay us any mind.

"What's the plan, anyway?" Chaingang asks.

"This is where they brought Josh after he got snatched," Elzie says. "We're getting him out."

Chaingang removes his shades and cocks an eyebrow.

"We are," Elzie tells him.

"Yeah, well good luck with that. Black Key Securities has the contract for that place. Lots of bodies and fancy high-tech crap. You'd need an army to get in there or ..."

He stares intently at one section of the building. I realize he's using his own night vision. "Those vents between the first and second floors look big enough to let someone with a real small Wildling shape sneak in. Maybe they could take down their alarms from the inside."

"Exactly," Auntie Min says.

"But then you'll still need to get your people in. How're you planning to do this?"

"Well,
you've
got the army," Cory begins.

Chaingang just shakes his head. "Not happening. I brought my crew to get us through bandas territory in one piece. You're talking about Wildlings business and I won't involve them."

"Then we at least need someone with a small Wildling shape," Tomás says.

He, Auntie Min and Cory all look at Chaingang with obvious expectation. Then I remember. His Wildling shape is a grasshopper mouse.

"And how, exactly, would
you
know anything about me?" Chaingang asks Tomás.

Tomás frowns but makes no response.

"Hey," Cory says. "Take it easy. He's okay."

"He'd better be," Chaingang says, "seeing as how you've already given up my secrets to him."

Tomás bristles. "I don't need to be vetted by anybo—"

Chaingang cuts him off with a raised palm. "Don't kid yourself," he says. "If I don't know you, you need to be vetted." Returning his attention to Cory and Auntie Min, he adds, "But it doesn't matter. I'm not going in there."

Though he's only half Chaingang's size, Tomás isn't going to back down.

"I didn't take you for a coward," he says.

Chaingang turns to him. He moves at his usual slow and deliberate speed.

"You don't
get
to take me for anything," he says, his eyes dark with anger, "because you don't know dick about me."

Elzie, Desmond and I have been following all of this, but we haven't spoken up. Now Elzie does.

 "But you're the only one who can get small enough to slip in through those vents," Elzie says.

I think he might bite her head off the way he did with Tomás, but he only gives her a small, humourless smile and shakes his head.

"I like Josh," Chaingang tells Elzie. "Really, I do. He's stand-up all the way. And I'd have his back if not for the fact that this is a no-win situation. We can't get him out. If we go in, we're just giving ourselves up, too, and that doesn't help anybody."

"I thought being Wildlings made you guys into some kind of superheroes," Desmond says.

Chaingang studies him for a moment. Bad move, Des, I think. Chaingang's already in a grim mood. Antagonizing him isn't going to help anything.

I put my hand on Chaingang's arm and give him a pleading look. He looks back at me, then gives a slow nod.

"Sure," he says, holding my gaze for all that he's talking to Des. "I get how it seems that way. Wildling blood makes us faster and stronger when we're in human shape, which is cool, yeah. I'm down with that. But all it does when you're in animal shape is let you still think like a human. If you're just some little rodent or lizard, being a Wildling doesn't give you any advantage."

"So why did you come?" Elzie asks.

Chaingang looks over at her and then at Auntie Min. "That crow you sent reminded me I owed you a favour. He didn't say
what
the favour was." He looks away from Auntie Min and back at me. His face softens. "Besides, I have some other friends here."

I feel kind of warm and fuzzy inside, enjoying the same gentle attention that Chaingang has shown me before, but then I remember how bitchy I was to him on the beach. And all because I thought he'd been just as nice with Josh. God, am I really that shallow? I can't repress a shudder at the thought.

Chaingang gets a pained look and seems to pull himself up, away from that soft place. I realize I've just sent out the wrong signal and want to correct it, but the moment has passed because he looks around at the others and continues talking.

"Look, this is just a bad idea," he says. "They'll have cameras everywhere. Even if you manage to get Josh out, they're going to know too much. They'll know that it's not just kids who are Wildlings. That we can fight back. We need those aces in the hole, because things are going to get a whole lot worse around here before they get better."

I don't pretend to understand exactly what's going on. I know it makes sense to keep a low profile. Just being here out in the open makes me really uncomfortable, even surrounded by people like Chaingang, Auntie Min and Cory. But what I do know is that we can't abandon Josh.

"Could I do it?" I find myself saying. "Is a sea otter small enough to slip in?"

"And then what?" Chaingang asks. "Do you know how to disable their security system? Can you take down a squadron of armed guards when they come running?" He shakes his head before I can answer. "I don't think so."

He turns to Auntie Min.

"If you don't care about giving up our secrets," he tells her, "then you should be willing to give up some of your own. I know you old-school Wildlings can do all kinds of things that we can only guess at. It wouldn't surprise me if you had your own way in."

"Don't push your luck," Tomás says.

"You're really starting to piss me off," Chaingang tells him, taking a step in his direction.

Auntie Min frowns. "What is the matter with the two of you? We're all on the same side."

"Are we?" Chaingang asks. "Josh is a good guy, but what's the big deal about rescuing
him
? Other Wildlings have disappeared and I haven't seen you do squat to get them back."

"Not true," says Cory, looking pointedly at Chaingang. "We figured out a way to get a bunch of kids out of the Feds' place the other night, and seems to me one of them was a friend of yours."

Auntie Min interrupts. "Josh is Mountain Lion Clan," she says.

"And I care about that because …?"

"All the children who have been changed so far are little cousins," Auntie Min tells him. "Snakes and rodents, small birds and a few medium-sized animals. He is the first of the old clans to appear among you. So far, he's the
only
one."

"Still don't know why I'm supposed to care."

"We need strong leaders to see us through the times to come. Leaders who are part of both worlds, but powerful in a way that most of us are not. Those old clans—raven, mountain lion, bear, eagle, hummingbird, wolf—they command the respect of the little cousins
and
they have the capacity to force the five-fingered beings to treat us fairly and with dignity. Now that our existence has been revealed, we will need them for our dealings with the human world."

Chaingang shakes his head. "I don't know what it was like in your day, but that's not how the world works anymore. Power doesn't come from who or what you are. It comes from the money and resources you have access to, what armies you can put on the field."

"Perhaps we can change that," Auntie Min says. "Would that not be a fine thing? And don't you want to be standing with us when we do?"

Chaingang sighs. "I'm more for you than against you, but I don't really trust any of you—" He tilts his head toward me. "Except for maybe Marina."

Elzie and Desmond both look at me and raise their eyebrows.

Again I get that soft squishy feeling inside. I'm flattered that Chaingang trusts me, but I'm embarrassed that it seems to be coming from a place of attraction, rather than because I actually earned it. And I feel strangely like I'm cheating on Josh, which is weirder than hell.

Chaingang turns back to Auntie Min. "The Wildling in me tells me I need to give you props, Auntie Min, so I do. And we've got some history. Cory here did do me a solid by getting one of my crew out of that fed zoo they had out at the old naval base. But you—" His gaze shifts to Tomás. "You're just some little prick I don't want to know who's walking around like he's got an alpha's
cojones
. You think you're making with a thousand yard stare, but I've done my time. I know guys who would eat you for breakfast.  And just FYI, you're way too old to pull off that old school punk look."

"In L.A.," Auntie Min says, "Tomás serves the same function as I do here."

"Now see, you say that like it's a good thing, but I just see it as no better than the Feds or ValentiCorp or any other opportunist who comes sniffing around looking to see how they can turn a profit out of what's happening to us here."

"Hold on," Tomás says, "I am just here to help. All of the cousins have only your best interests in mind."

"But maybe we don't want the handout," Chaingang tells him. "I don't know your history, but my people came over here as slaves and we know all about struggles and broken promises. We had to fight for everything we've got right now and for a whole lot of us, what we've got is pretty much next to nothing."

"You've seen how the government is treating Wildlings," Tomás tells him. "Ours is not such a different fight. They give lip service to our rights as citizens, yet detain us for nothing. They ignore our civil rights, just as they did yours."

"And you think
Josh
can change this?
He's
your big hope?"

"Not at this moment," Auntie Min says. "But he could be. One charismatic leader could turn the tide. He could be accepted by both sides. Who's going to look to an old woman like me as a leader, or a gang member like you? But a good kid like Josh? With a white father and a black mother and Wildling blood?"

Tomás nods. "He's like a poster child for the cause."

"And what if being your figurehead isn't something Josh wants?" Elzie asks. "What if he just wants a normal life?"

"Normal isn't up for discussion," Cory says. "He lost that when he changed."

Elzie just scowls.

"We didn't want this either," Tomás says. "We've managed to go about our business unnoticed for thousands of years. But just as you can't change being a Wildling, neither can we go back to our own status quo."

"We stand to lose everything," Auntie Min adds.

Chaingang studies them for a long moment.

"Okay," he says. "So you're saying there's no other way into that building?"

"Not without frightening the humans even more," Auntie Min says. "If they knew everything that we do, they would stop at nothing to keep us all under their control."

"And you're not going to share what that is?"

"Not yet," she says. "It's too dangerous for you to know right now. Let's get Josh out, then we'll talk again."

Chaingang turns to Elzie and me. "So are you in?"

I nod. "I was never out."

Elzie nods as well. "Let's go," she says.

"Okay. I don't suppose anybody has a floor plan for the building?"

The older cousins shake their heads.

"Yeah, I suppose that would make it too easy."

"You need floor plans?" Desmond says. "Dude, that's what the Internet is for. We'll just go into that store and 'try out' one of their computers." He makes air quotations as he speaks. "Marina's almost as good at surfing the web as she is riding a wave."

Chaingang looks at the computer store before turning back with a grin.

"I knew you had to be good for something, bro," he says. "Why don't the two of you go for it. We'll wait for you here."

Josh

I don't feel like talking with Rico while we wait for things to settle down. Everything he's told me is so horrible that if I hear any more, I'm going to lose my nerve. But when I lie back down on the mattress, my mind fills with even more worries. Not just about this place and getting out, but what's happening outside.

What's Mom thinking? I've never pulled a no-show on her before. She's going to go crazy when she hears I've been grabbed, even if it is by the Feds, which now seems like a remote possibility.

What if these people came after her, too?  And Desmond and Marina—they were outside the school with me. What if they tried to stop what was happening and got hurt in the process? They could be dead and I'd never know it.

Where is Elzie? Did they catch her, too? How long can she keep fighting after everything she's been through?

When you don't know what's going on, it's way too easy to blow everything out of proportion. If only I didn't have all this time to think.

I look over at Rico stretched out on his mattress, staring at the ceiling. He's doing the same thing. One hand protectively cups his knee where his leg was amputated. I watch for a while, but he never even blinks.

"Are you sure there wasn't anything wrong with your leg?" I find myself asking. I don't know why—I guess I want a different answer than the one I already got.

He turns his head. "No. It'd be easier to accept if they did it to save my life, but like I said, we're just lab rats to them. They think I'm a Wildling. I told them I'm not, but they don't believe me. Before they cut off my leg, they told me I was doing a service to mankind—that if they can crack the Wildling code, they'll be able to cure all kinds of illnesses. But I get the feeling that what they're really aiming for is to breed themselves a bunch of pet Wildlings."