Under My Skin (Wildlings) (30 page)

"But … um … okay, let's see."

Barry does something with his cursor and a small window pops up with an identifying code.

"Fifth floor," he says. "But that's the fifth floor going
down
—like basement levels."

The big access tunnels underneath are one thing, but this is
really
weird. I don't know any building with a basement around here and certainly nothing like this.

"Let's see what's in front of us again," Chaingang says.

Barry reduces the image of Josh and brings back the street view from the Pep Boys building.

"Can you shut the cameras off?" Cory asks.

"Do we really want to? That'll let them know they've had a breach and the whole place might go into some kind of shutdown mode."

Chaingang nods. "How about redirecting the feed from just that camera? Can you do that?"

"Let me see."

He starts tapping keys. I have no idea what he's doing, but after a few moments, he smiles.

"Somebody walk out there," he says, motioning toward the street.

Desmond gets up and pushes through the hedge before I can grab his arm. It should be a Wildling doing this. Somebody better equipped to handle it if things go wrong.

My gaze fixes on the screen. The street looks bare, even though Desmond is right there, out on the sidewalk. A couple of cars go by and Desmond slips back to join us.

"What did you do, Barry?" I ask.

"I've got it repeating a loop of footage. Unless someone notices, you can't tell what's happening now on the street."

"Good job, bro," Chaingang tells Barry. "See if you can rejig the rest of the cameras along that corridor."

"No problem. I've got the protocol down now. But I can't do anything about human eyes. Anyone around here or down there will see you."

"Let us worry about that," Chaingang says. "Give us fifteen minutes, then shut everything down. Cameras. Security. Locks. Lights. The works."

"You'll just have gotten under the building itself by then."

"Yeah," Chaingang says. "But in the dark, the advantage is ours."

Barry frowns. "I don't get it."

I touch his arm. "It's okay, Barry. Just do what he says."

But Barry isn't stupid. He looks around at us.

"You guys are all Wildlings, aren't you?" he says.

Everybody goes tense. Chaingang's eyes narrow.

"No, no," Desmond says. "It's not like that, dude."

"You think I care?" Barry says. "What happened to Josh isn't right. Those guys need to be stopped and now at least I know you've got a fighting chance."

The tension holds a moment longer, then Chaingang smiles and extends a fist to Barry. They bump knuckles.

"Fifteen minutes," Chaingang says.

When Barry nods, Chaingang gets to his feet and looks around at the rest of us.

"Let's do this thing," he says.

He pushes his way through the hedge and the rest of us follow, jogging across the street toward the big garage door on the right side of the Pep Boys building.

Josh

The man and woman are both dressed in white lab coats. The man's short and slender—or maybe he only looks short because the woman's so tall. She's over six feet and scarecrow thin. Her hair's short and the eyes behind her glasses are scary cold. He looks like one of those old dot-com guys—thinning hair pulled back into a small ponytail, blinking in our direction like we're a line of code that's not doing what it's supposed to.

They seem surprised to see me standing, Rico sitting up, both of us watching them come in.

"Are they supposed to be awake?" the man asks.

The woman shrugs. "No, but I'll take care of it."

"This is it," Rico says as she walks toward a bank of computer monitors.

He's standing now, too, balancing steadily on one leg.

"When I give the word," I tell him, "go to the far side of your cell and bang as hard as you can on the wall."

He lifts an eyebrow, but nods.

I focus on the mountain lion under my skin. I bring up the memory of that moment in my bathroom, how I called it up. There's no room for error. I've thought about this a hundred times since it happened, looking for the Wildling in me, weighing its presence, seeing what I'd have to do to let its body replace mine. I just hadn't actually taken the final step again. I'd felt like I was under a microscope, watched everywhere I went. And I'd been too scared.

I'm still scared, but now I don't have a choice. I've got one chance to do it. If I screw this up, I could be joining Rico in the one-leg brigade.

"Now!" I tell him.

He lunges over to the side of his cell, launching himself against the hard plastic, then bangs on it with both hands. He adds a scream that they probably can't hear. The two researchers immediately look in his direction. I grab that momentary distraction and let the constraints go.

I don't know why I was so worried. The change is instantaneous—just like it was before.

I feel strong. Powerful.  I fit inside the mountain lion as though I've always been under its skin.

I'm also angry as hell.

For being in here—caged in their private zoo. For what they did to Rico. For what they want to do to me.

I bunch my leg muscles. Turning my anger into energy, I throw myself at the plastic wall, claws extended, ready to rip it to shreds. But I don't have to. The force of my impact makes the wall pop out of whatever was holding it in place. It comes crashing down and I'm riding it like it's a board, leaping off just before it smashes onto the floor. It takes down tables and cabinets along the way and sends their contents flying in a jangle of broken glass and metal implements that clatter across the marble floor.

The man screams. He drops to his knees and starts scrabbling for the door. The woman keeps her cool. She turns, finger stabbing out at some control on the keyboard by the computers. She's fast—I'll give her that—but I'm faster. I bat her away with one paw, not even thinking about my strength. I hear something snap. Her neck, maybe. She flies across the room. There's another snapping sound as her back hits the edge of one of the stainless steel surgical tables. Her body drops to the floor and settles in unnatural angles, blood trickling from the corner of her mouth.

I want to taste that blood, but then I hear the man. He's at the door, trying to escape.

It takes me one leap to reach him. My jaws are open, extended wide so I can take his head between my teeth. I can almost hear the bones of his skull shattering under my bite.  But before I can crush his head, something slithers between us.

I register scales. A flat head. Dark unblinking eyes.

I'm slow on the uptake, but the mountain lion in me immediately recognizes the rattlesnake ready to strike. Before I can assimilate the information, I've already jumped back out of the snake's striking range. I roar my displeasure.

The snake becomes Rico. He's wearing jeans and a T-shirt, high tops on his feet—feet plural because he has both legs now. I don't understand and that makes me angry again. How did he get out of his cell? How'd he get his leg back? The growl starts up low in my chest.

He hold his hands up, palms out, before it develops into another roar.

"Easy," he says. "Easy. Cousins don't eat cousins."

The man behind him scrambles to his feet. Rico turns just long enough to sweep his legs from under him. As the man falls back onto the floor, arms flailing, Rico faces me again.

"Why don't you let the boy come back?" he says to me.

The boy? What boy?

But then I get it. I will the change. A moment later I'm standing there in my own shape.

"Aw, come on, man," Rico says. "I don't need to see your junk."

The hospital clothes I was wearing a moment ago didn't come back with me when I left my Wildling shape behind. I'm stark naked. In normal circumstances, I'd be mortified, but my gaze goes to the dead woman and I can't pull it away. I don't even bother to cover my dick with my hands. There's a weird whine in my ears and I'm finding it hard to breathe.

Dead.

At my hand.

Not hand.
Paw
.

I killed her like it was nothing. Like it was an afterthought. Just swept her out of my way.

I drop to my knees and throw up until I can only dry heave.

I lift my head and my gaze immediately locks on the woman's body again.

I hear water running, then a wet cloth lands with a splat on the floor in front of me.

"Wipe your face," Rico says. "We don't have time to screw around."

"She ... I ..."

"Yeah, she's dead. She also cut off my leg without even thinking twice. Get over it. It's not like you killed a nun."

I finally look away from the body to him.

"Your leg ..." I begin.

"It was gone, now it's back. I know. I'll answer your questions if we get out of this place, but can you just focus for a minute?"

I nod. I pick up the cloth and wipe my face. The cool rough cotton helps settle me.

Don't look at the body, I tell myself.

"They keep the clothes in that cabinet," Rico says, pointing.

I walk over to the cabinet on shaky legs. I pull out a white shirt and drawstring pants, put them on. It's hard to concentrate. I'm numb and everything seems unfocused. I start to button the shirt, then realize that Rico has a scalpel in his hand. He's holding the man up by the scruff of his lab coat.

"You get one chance to answer my question," Rico says.

He lets go and gives the man a push. The man's eyes are wild with panic as he falls back against the wall.

"I didn't do it," he says, voice pitched high with panic. "You know I didn't do it. It was her idea. I was just ... please … I didn't want any of that to happen."

Rico slaps him. "Shut up. I don't care who was here or who gave the order. Just tell me what happened to Jenny."

"Juh—Jenny?"

"The girl who was in here with me."

"I don't know anything—"

He breaks off as Rico moves the scalpel in front of his eyes.

"Remember what I said about you getting one chance to answer?" Rico says.

"She's down the hall!" the man cries. "She's just down the hall!  Second door on your right."

"Your key card opens her door?"

"Yes, yes."

"That's all I need to know," Rico tells him.

Then he slices across the man's neck and pushes him away so that the sudden spurt of blood doesn't get all over him.

"Jesus Christ!" I yell. "Are you nuts? What did you do that for?"

I run toward where the man's clutching his neck, blood spurting out between his fingers. Rico blocks my way. I don't know what I'd do anyway. Try to stop the bleeding, I guess.

"He's a monster," Rico says. "He doesn't deserve to live."

"And what does that make us?"

Rico shakes his head like he can't believe me.

"Trapped animals," he says.

He picks up the man's key card. There's blood on it, which he wipes away on the man's pant leg. The man has stopped twitching. He slumps where he fell, blood pooling on the floor around him. I look away, bile rising back up my throat.

"You coming?" Rico asks.

I shake my head. "You're nuts. I'm not going anywhere with you."

"So you're going to stay here and let them run their experiments on you? Since I'll be gone, I guess they'll only have you to cut up."

"No, I—" I'm so confused. "I don't know what I'm going to do. But I'm not going to go around killing people."

"Fair enough. If we're lucky, we won't run into anybody else."

He turns away and slides the key card down its slot. The inside of the door whirs and when he pulls on the handle, it opens. I look back at the chaos we're leaving behind. Dead bodies. Broken glass and lab equipment. The wall of my cell crushing the tables and cabinets it landed on. The front walls of the cells on either side standing askew off the floor. Which, I realize, is how Rico got out.

"Tick-tock, tick-tock," Rico says. "If you want to get out of here, we need to get to the ground floor and we need to get there fast."

"And then what?" I ask.

He shrugs. He turns away, letting the door close. I have to sprint to catch it before it locks again. When I slip through, he's at the second door on the right, sliding the key card through its slot.

"I thought we had to go?" I say.

"Not without Jenny."

The door unlocks. He turns the handle and pushes it slightly open, but then just stands there. He doesn't go in. He doesn't even try to look at what's inside. Instead he leans his head against the doorjamb.

"What's the matter?" I say.

"You don't smell it?"

I didn't. But as soon as he says it, I do. A foul, ripe odour mixed with something sweet and cloying. I don't recognize it.

"What—what is it?" I ask.

"The dead." He pushes himself upright and squares his shoulders. "You might want to stay out here," he adds, then opens the door and steps inside.

I don't want to follow him, but I do. I need to know everything, even though I wish I wasn't part of any of it. Killing that woman. Watching Rico kill her companion.

For a long moment, I don't know what I'm looking at. It's a much smaller room than the one we were held in, but just as sterile. Marble floors. White walls and ceiling. One wall is taken up with a bank of large steel drawers, the other has a long table with a computer and microscopes on it. It's cold in here—cold enough that I can see my breath, but for some reason, I don't feel the chill on my skin. The only chill I feel is inside. It's like I've got ice water running through my veins instead of blood.

In the middle of the room is another operating table. There are lights above it—turned off at the moment. Beside it is a small metal table on wheels that holds a bunch of surgical equipment. On the table ...

I want to look away, but I make myself join Rico where he's standing at the table, looking down at the body.

"Is—is this …?"

"Yeah," he says. "This was Jenny. She was alive when they took her away. Scared out of her mind, but alive."

Making myself look at her is one of the hardest things I've ever done. I want to pretend I'm watching one of those CSI shows on TV. That this isn't real. But it's all too real.