Under My Skin (Wildlings) (29 page)

"Well, you know," Cory replies, "I once asked my uncle that same thing and he said it didn't matter what he believed. What mattered was what I believe."

"So what
do
you believe?" Elzie asks.

"That instead of that every-man-for-himself mentality dividing the world up into smaller and smaller pieces, we should come together to protect and share what we still have."

Chaingang frowns. "Are you a communist?"

"Communists think the state owns everything. I'm saying no ownership. We're here to take care of each other."

"But we don't," I say.

"No," Cory says. "We don't."

Just then Barry pulls up in his old Honda. It's only been twelve minutes since he hung up. I know the exact time because I've glanced at my watch a hundred times in the interim. He bounces out of his car and hurries over to us, laptop under his arm.

"Hey, Marina!" he calls. "So are you part of ..."

His voice trails off as it registers that we're a larger group than he expected. His eyes go wide when Chaingang looks up at him.

"What does he know?" Chaingang asks.

Oh crap. Chaingang wasn't here when I suggested we should use discretion around Barry. Desmond and I exchange worried looks.

"Um, that we're trying to rescue Josh?" I say.

Barry holds up his free hand in a peace sign.

"Look, man," he says. "You know me. Didn't I fix your little brother's Game Boy last week? But you don't want me here, I'm gone."

Chaingang shakes his head. "My bad. I'm feeling a little edgy today. Show us what you got."

"Sure," Barry says.

But he's still glancing around, taking in Auntie Min and Tomás and Cory, and I can tell he's more than a little freaked out. I stand up and take his arm.

"Chill," I tell him. "We're all here for the same reason."

He nods. "Right, right."

But his gaze keeps flicking from face to face, then quickly looking away.

"Let's see those plans," I say. "Sit here. I'll go around behind you."

"Right."

He takes my seat and puts his laptop on his thighs, fingers fumbling as he tries to get it open. Chaingang lays a meaty hand on his shoulder.

"Do you know why I'm here?" he asks, his voice mild.

Barry shakes his head. "It's cool. I don't need to know anything."

"I'm here because I told Josh I'd have his back. I give you props for coming out here to help us, so now I'm telling you the same thing. Anybody messes with you, give me a call. We'll have Ocean Avers all over their ass."

"R-really?"

"Really, bro."

Desmond gives me a significant look, but I just roll my eyes.

"So let's see what you found for us," Chaingang says.

Barry nods. He opens his laptop. Desmond, Elzie and Cory get up and join me behind the bench to look over Barry's shoulder. At first, it's just a mess of complicated blue lines, but then he changes the view and I understand what we're looking at. There's ValentiCorp in the middle, surrounded by parking lots and box stores.

"Here's where it gets interesting," he says.

He makes an adjustment and now the image is in 3-D.

"What the hell is that?" Chaingang says, leaning in closer.

He points to this big angular diagram under the parking lots.

Barry seems uneasy about Chaingang leaning over him. "It's … it's a huge service area, just like under, you know—"

"Disneyland," Desmond finishes for him.

Chaingang frowns. "Who builds something like that in earthquake country?"

Barry looks toward the ValentiCorp tower.

"The same people who built that," he says.

"Point taken."

Chaingang moves his finger above the screen, tracing out what looks like one of a series of big corridors running all the way from ValentiCorp to a bunch of the box stores. It's as though the building is in the center of a spider web.

"Are these what I think they are?" he asks.

Barry nods. "Access tunnels. Big enough to drive a truck through." He points to a large building on the east side of the lot. "See the service bay on that side of Pep Boys?" His finger touches the laptop's screen. "I bet that's an entrance to this tunnel."

"That's not part of Pep Boys' automotive bays?"

"Nope," Barry says. "Those are on the other side. ValentiCorp just rents them one part of the building. Makes a perfect cover for their own entrance at the other end."

Chaingang nods. "So it would be the same for all the rest of these corridors we see."

Barry nods. He points at the screen again, finger hovering over one side of ValentiCorp.

"Here's where they have their own above-ground delivery bays," he says. "I'll bet they use the others outside of business hours—when they don't want anyone to see certain shipments."

"I don't get it," Elzie says. "What kind of shipments? What are they even doing in there?"

"I have no idea. Research and development—whatever that means. It could be anything. They've got a public website, but it focuses on stuff related to this retail complex. There are vague references to government research contracts, but no specifics. I heard they do contracts for the military, but I don't know what."

"Can you do anything about their security system?" Chaingang asks.

"Maybe. I've been running a protocol to get through their firewall ever since I got off the phone with Desmond, but they've got some serious encryptions and I haven't been able to get in yet. Makes sense, if they've got military contracts."

"I thought you said you tried to get into their site before," Desmond says.

"Yeah, but I know stuff now that I didn't then." Barry throws Des a smirk. "I've developed some code that theoretically can get me into anything, given enough time."

"Time's something we don't exactly have," Chaingang says. He studies the screen a little longer. "So what are you saying? That the best we can do is sneak in through one of those secret entrances?"

"Pretty much. And then you'll still have to get by their security cameras and guards."

Chaingang gives another nod. "Not a problem. We can do it the hard way."

Barry can't know what he means, but I can guess. We're Wildlings. Stronger. Faster. Chaingang expects us to take on the guards with whatever small advantage the animals living under our skins can give us.

"I guess," Barry says. He hesitates, then adds, "Can I ask why you're not calling the cops? SWAT would be able to storm the building legally—you know, without our having to go through all this spy stuff."

"They'd have to go through a whole chain of command," Cory says. "Find probable cause, get a judge to sign off on a warrant."

"And by the time they finished dicking around," Chaingang says, "Josh could be long gone."

He doesn't add,
or worse
. Like maybe dead. He doesn't have to.

"So no cops," Chaingang continues. He looks around at us. "Let's get ready. Who's in?"

Far to the west of us, the sun has set over the ocean. Surfers have gone home after catching their last few waves. Lovers are walking hand-in-hand along the boardwalk. Skaters are messing around in the lit parking lot by the pier. It seems like a whole other world. Twenty-four hours ago, that was
my
world—well, except for the lovers part. Now I'm part of some half-assed commando unit that's probably going to get itself killed.

"I'm still in," I say.

Everybody else speaks up except for Auntie Min and Tomás, who've remained on the other bench. I'm surprised. I had no expectations with Tomás, but I thought Auntie Min was a tough cookie and I'd like to have her with us.

"I'm coming, too," Barry says.

That really surprises me. I know why Desmond is coming—and we wouldn't be able to stop him anyway. But Barry? And he doesn't even know about the Wildlings under our skins.

"Why?" Cory asks.

"Josh is my friend. He'd do the same for me. Hell, he'd probably do it for somebody he didn't know if he saw they were in trouble."

Cory smiles. "Good answer."

Chaingang stands up. He takes out his phone and makes a call. A few moments later we hear his crew's motorcycles approaching again. By the time Chaingang has swung his leg over the seat of his own machine, the other Ocean Avers come cruising to where we are. Stragglers on their way to their cars from the various stores pause to watch the gang arrive. I glance over to ValentiCorp. The guards way over there are paying attention, too. Alert. The shoppers are nervous. I can smell their fear from where we stand.

The Ocean Avers pull up in a ragged line behind Chaingang's chopper.

"Let's saddle up," he tells us. "Buddy up and play nice."

As we start for the row of motorcycles, Chaingang calls over to me.

"What's the matter, sweetcheeks?" he says. "Lost your love for me?"

I aim myself in his direction, relieved that he's already forgiven me for that look I gave him earlier.

"Don't call me that, babyface," I tease as I get on behind him.

He laughs and revs his engine.  He waits until everybody is in their seats except for Auntie Min and Tomás, then he gives the signal and we're off.

The bikers take us out of the shopping complex. Chaingang leads his crew back toward the beach, but turns off onto a side street once we can't see the stores anymore. The Ocean Avers with passengers follow him. The others keep going in the other direction.

"I thought you weren't involving your crew," I say.

I don't have to lean forward. I know Chaingang can hear me just fine, the same way I can hear his reply.

"They're strictly transport," he tells me.

A few more turns and Chaingang pulls over again, killing his engine. He puts the chopper up on its stand. The other bikers let off their passengers, then continue on down the street.

"We're close to the Pep Boys now," he says. "Don't bunch up. We already created enough ruckus with the bikes. Ritzy neighbourhood like this, we don't want to make anybody nervous."

Following his lead, we walk in pairs on either side of the street until we join up again, slipping in behind a jade hedge that separates the garden wall of a row of condos from the sidewalk.

Peering through the waxy leaves, we can see the Pep Boys building. It's starting to hit me that in another few moments, all hell could break loose.

"You ready for this?" Elzie asks, glancing over as we crouch behind the hedge.

I turn my head slowly to glare at her. "Sure. Don't you think I'm up to it?"

I'm insulted that she assumes I can't handle it. Being circumspect has never been my strongpoint.

"No, no—of course you are. Forget that I said anything. I was out of line."

I have to bite my tongue from saying, damn straight.

But to be honest, she's touched a raw nerve. I'm not the bravest person in the world. Sure, I've ridden some big waves and when Josh was being kidnapped, I was ready to go all mother-bear fierce. But that's instinct kicking in. I'm not like Elzie, who always seems ready to take on anybody. And I'm sure not like Chaingang, who's probably carrying a gun and God knows how many knives on him. Not that he needs weapons, considering his size. I saw him fight a couple of guys at school once and he decimated them. Really. It was brutal. And that was before he became a Wildling.

"Okay," Chaingang says.

An electronic beep from Barry's computer interrupts whatever Chaingang was about to say.

"Hang on," Barry says. "This is good."

He crouches down and opens his laptop. A couple of keystrokes later he looks up, grinning.

"I'm in," he says. "Here, look. This is the camera feed that's monitoring the street in front of us."

We all crowd around. The screen is split into a number of black and white windows. They show interior hallways, stairwells, the underground service space, the parking lots. The views in the various windows keep changing. Barry hovers his cursor over one and it fills the top portion of the screen. The rest of the views scroll right to left below it.

I give the expanded window careful study. There's the street we've come down. There's the hedge. But I can't see us. We're hidden from the camera's view.

"Look!" Elzie says, stabbing a finger at one of the smaller views.

Barry brings it up. We seem to be looking at a hospital or infirmary. There's a line of cubicles, separated from each other by floor-to-ceiling glass. Each one has a mattress on the floor and a stainless steel toilet. The camera feed shows two figures
in adjoining cubicles, sitting on their mattresses. It's impossible to make out any features.

"Is that Josh?" I ask, pointing to one of them.

Elzie and I both press against Barry, trying to get a closer view.

"I can't tell," she says. "He doesn't have Josh's dreads."

"They could have cut them off," Desmond says.

I'm still trying to figure out the room itself. It looks sort of like a hospital. But it also looks like a laboratory. It's hard to see from the camera angle, but I think there's the edge of an operating table at the bottom of the screen.

"Why would they have a place like that in an office building?" I say.

"Research and development," Cory says.

I turn to look at him. "Seriously, what's that even supposed to mean?"

"They want to figure out what makes them tick," Cory explains. "What makes a Wildling. You can't find that out in a jail cell. But in a lab like that?"

My heart goes into overtime.

"Wildling?" Barry says, but no one answers him.

"
Is
that Josh?" Chaingang asks.

Nobody can confirm it.

"Hard to know, but it makes sense that it would be him," Cory says. "Or that he'd be in the same area. The body shape is right."

"Okay," Chaingang says. "It's probably him. That's good. Half the battle was figuring out whether or not he was even in there." He holds up a hand before Cory can respond. "Yeah, I know Auntie Min already told us. But I needed to see for myself what they've got going on in there."

"And now?" Cory asks.

"Now, assuming that's him, we need to get him out," Chaingang says. He turns to Barry and adds, "Where is that room?"