Uncaged (18 page)

The tide came in, but it was too late for Shay’s whales. The young mother had continued thumping her tail fluke all morning in seeming reply to her daughter’s clicks, but for more than an hour now, the baby had been silent.

And when life finally left the baby, they all knew. They continued pitching buckets until a veterinarian who’d come up from SeaWorld in San Diego made it official. Time of death: 12:30 p.m. Shay sank to her knees and cursed; a moment later the veterinarian sank down beside her and started to cry. Cruz stood by, his face grim; no tears. He continued to pour water on the deteriorating mother.

A few minutes later, they helped Emily, Cade, and six other volunteers wedge and wiggle and roll the surviving baby male out into the surf. It went under, then tried to swim, then started to roll, and they steadied it, holding it upright. It seemed to know that they were trying to help, but when they freed it, it slowly turned, as though it were going to try to swim back to its dead mother, still on the beach.

They turned it again, shouting at each other, groaning with its weight, and kept it turned out to sea.

They took it deeper, and finally its flukes began working and the baby nosed out into deeper water.

Four helicopters were overhead, filming them: Emily, burned pink despite all the sunblock, said, “We’re all TV stars now. Oh God, this is awful …”

Shay joined another team of volunteers working on a juvenile whale. An hour later, it died.

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered. This time, she didn’t collapse on her knees or curse; there was too much death all around. One by one, the whales were going, nothing anyone could do anymore to stop it. She put down her bucket and told the others she’d be back after a short break.

Twenty minutes later, Cade walked up to where Shay was sitting alone on a beach boulder. He handed her a bottle of water and noticed she was rubbing the stone he’d given her on the roof. He asked how she was doing.

She shrugged.

He nudged her over so he could sit too. “I’m sorry this didn’t work out.”

Shay opened the bottle, took a long, moody drink, and said, “I never believed they were going to make it anyhow.”

“Huh,” said Cade. “I sort of figured you for one of those optimistic, sunshiny types.”

“Sunshiny?”

Cade said, “Yeah, I don’t know where that came from.”

Shay allowed herself a small smile. She hadn’t been sure she
liked Cade before, with his cocky, braggart style. Today, he’d been different.

“I’m more the chance-of-rain type,” she said, and continued working the small black stone between her thumb and forefingers. “Oregon, remember?”

Cade, nodding, paused her hand with his own and said, “You’re going to polish the spirit line right off the thing.”

Shay looked down, unaware that she’d even taken the stone with the odd white stripe from her pocket. “
Spirit line?
I’ve never heard of that. What’s it mean?”

“Supposedly, it connects the natural world—plants, animals, people, you, me, the whales—with the supernatural one,” said Cade, and she gave him a squint, unsure whether he was being sincere or a smart-ass.

“I’m serious,” he said, and told her a story about going to school for a while in New Mexico and meeting a man from the Hopi tribe, and about receiving the stone himself as a gift right before he took off.

“If someone gave it to you, I shouldn’t keep it,” Shay said, and pressed the stone against his palm. Then she heard it. She craned her head around. “Did someone just yell at me?”

“Not that I heard,” said Cade. “Maybe a whale? There’s still a couple of them making noises.”

Shay heard her name again and this time she was sure. She stood up and looked toward the bluff and there he was, waving at her.

“Odin!”

Shay sprinted across the beach, veering around volunteers headed back to their cars, and saw Odin stumbling down the bluff towing … a dog? She called, “Odin!” but her voice was lost to the surf.

Here came her brother, trailed by a big gray dog thuggishly outfitted in an eye patch and wire muzzle. Shay had only a second to wonder about that before she and Odin collided.

“I knew you’d come,” Shay said, and wrapped him in her arms. “Did you just get here? The situation’s so bad—”

The dog jammed itself between them, ramming its caged jaws into Shay’s bare thigh. She lurched backward and tumbled into the sand.

“Did he just try to bite me?” she asked as the dog loomed over her. Odin reeled in the slack on the dog’s heavy choke chain.

“It’s okay, boy, she’s my sister,” Odin said in a voice that seemed deeper—older—than the last time they’d spoken.

His voice wasn’t the only thing that had changed, Shay thought as she got back on her feet. He’d cut his shaggy brown hair short
and gelled it—unbelievable. His pale complexion was gone too, as if he’d shed it like a snakeskin, and in its place was a deep tropical tan. He wore fashionable sunglasses of the sort they could never afford in foster care and gingery whiskers that aged him out of high school.

“Sit!” Odin said to the dog. He said it again, “Sit!” and again, “Sit!” and finally, finally, the dog dropped back on its haunches. Its one-eyed focus remained on Shay, and it released a whispery growl through clenched teeth.

“You ran away and got a bad dog?”

“He was locked up in a cage with nothing, Shay,” he said, reaching down to give the dog a scratch between the ears. “They must have tortured him bad, he’s so down on people. I wish he didn’t have to wear the muzzle. It wasn’t my idea, he was already wearing it, but since he really
is
a biter—and you can’t blame him—we can’t take it off. He even eats and drinks with it.”

Odin’s words were coming at warp speed, the way they always did when he was worked up about animals. “They must have been experimenting on his eye ’cause it was patched and bloody, and even though he was doped up, he was telling me with his good eye,
Get me outta here
, so I put down the rat to help him out a window, but then, dammit, I forgot the rat—”

“He’s not from the research lab?” Shay clasped her head as though it might spin off. “Odin! Don’t tell me he’s from the lab?”

“The poor rat,” he continued, as if she hadn’t spoken. “They’d cut off three of her feet, she only had one foot left, what good is one—”

“Do you understand how much trouble you’re in?” Shay asked. “That dog has to be microchipped. Stealing a research animal is probably a felony; you’ll go to prison.”

“Definitely chipped,” Odin agreed. “That’s why Rachel says I
can’t take him to a vet. Something’s wrong with him. He started falling down last week like he was drunk. It’s happened twice since we got here and started looking for you—”

“That too! Why didn’t you answer me on Facebook?”

“You realize, as of six o’clock this morning, you had 1.7 million hits on YouTube? Radical action, though next time, I’d wear a ski mask, and definitely tuck in your hair, it’s pretty much a dead giveaway—”

Shay stopped him with a raised hand. “Stay on point.”

Odin looked over his shoulder, as though checking for faces, looking for threats. “I wanted to contact you as soon as I saw the video, but the situation wasn’t safe. Then, when we heard about the whales this morning, I thought,
Shay will go there because she’ll expect me to go there
. Didn’t even need your text to know that. I drove so fast it’s a miracle we didn’t have the cops all over us.”

“If you got stopped by cops and they checked your license—”

Odin dug through his cargo shorts and pulled out a California license with his face, but a new name—Dario?—a different birth date, and an address in Van Nuys. “Rachel said I should say I was twenty-one.”

“A fake license? God … Rachel pisses me off,” Shay said. “She’s made you do so much stupid crap!”

“Rachel hasn’t made me do anything, Shay. I do what I need to. I made this excellent license, and I inserted it in the DMV records, and I made the excellent security card that got everyone inside the lab because
I
decided to. Okay?”

“Yeah! You’re a big freakin’ genius, breaking the law to get a fake ID. That’s, like, ninth grade! Odin, they’re using you,” Shay said.

“And I’m using her! Did that ever occur to you?” Odin asked.
“She gets what she wants and I get what I want. I’m not just talking about sex, though that’s … pretty good. Okay? Get it?”

“C’mon, Odin, jeez,” she answered. “You’re a good-looking guy, you don’t have to—”

“I have a neurobiological disorder characterized by poor social skills, odd speech patterns, inflexible obsessions, and sensory sensitivity to odors and high-pitched sounds,” he said, starting to flail his arms at her.

“Stop! You’re right, I’m sorry.” If she didn’t stop pushing, he might run off again.

“You never fully get it, Shay, you’re neurotypical—”

She grabbed him by the shoulders and said it again: “Stop. I know your history. But you gotta tell me what’s going on now. Please.”

He nodded, looked around again, down the line of dead whales and gawking tourists and worn-out whale rescuers, lowered his voice to nearly a whisper. “Singular’s not doing Parkinson’s research, Shay. It’s a cover. Singular’s running a top-secret program: they’re experimenting with robotics and neural nets and nerve regrowth and biomechanical links. They’ve killed thousands of animals to do that; they’ll kill thousands more. But that’s not enough. They need people to work with. They need living humans for—”

“Whoa, whoa,” said Shay. “Slow down. Back up. Singular—isn’t that just a medical company? You’re talking like they’re a cult.”

“They’re a company and a cult and they’ve got connections with the military and with politicians,” Odin said. “I’m still decoding their computer files.”

“Odin!” Her voice went up an octave, and the dog stood up as if taking sides and fixed its large yellow eye on her again. “You took their computers?”

“Easy, boy,” Odin said, and held the dog back. “Just one computer, and some thumb drives with their backup files. Decoding them has been problematic since we’ve had to keep moving. I’ve cracked one so far. Once we’ve got them all, we’ll dump them on the Internet. There was this one baby monkey, she’s so traumatized she bangs her head against the wall nonstop and all this blood comes spraying out …” Odin choked up.

“You’re only going to make the situation worse,” Shay said. “If they get you for stealing their files, you could go to prison for years.”

“Whose side are you on?” Odin snapped. “What they’re doing is probably illegal, and completely sick—”

“I’m on your side, Odin,” Shay said. “That’s the only side I’ve got. But you’re scaring me. Why do you have to keep moving? Who’s chasing you?”

Odin looked away evasively, something he was lousy at. The dog grunted and suddenly collapsed on its belly.

“See what I mean?” said Odin. “You have to help me.”

“How? I’m not a vet, what do you expect me to do?”

Odin’s eyes came back to her. “I don’t know, but Rachel doesn’t care about him. And you’re good at helping me.”

The dog’s head was turned on its right side, the patched eye pressed into the sand. The seeing eye darted watchfully between brother and sister, and Shay found herself feeling sorry for the animal.

“Does he need water?” she asked, and picked up the bottle she’d dropped when he’d tried to bite. “Actually, can he even drink water with that thing on his face?”

“Yeah, he pokes his tongue through the spokes,” said Odin. “He’ll only eat or drink when there’s nobody around. We have to leave the room to get him to eat or else he’d starve.”

“What’s the patch all about?”

“Don’t know, but we decided it was better to leave it alone. He’s had some other stuff done, too. I’ll show you, but he doesn’t like having his head touched much, either.”

Odin reassured the dog in a gentle voice as he eased a hand into the thick gray fur behind the right ear. He felt around for something, then parted the hair and peeled back a flap of skin to reveal a hinged metal plate, about an inch square, set into the dog’s skull.

“My God,” Shay said with a shudder.

“Heinous, huh?” said Odin, and as he laid the flap back down, she noticed it was inscribed with a tiny red tattoo:
X
-5. “So far, I can’t say what it’s for,” Odin continued. “Maybe it’s explained in the files … speaking of which …”

He looked around, then reached into the pocket of his cargo shorts and pulled out a Ziploc bag full of thumb drives, stepped close, and said, “Hide these.”

“Are these them?” she asked, looking at the drives clustered inside the bag.

“Stick them in your shorts.”

He said it so urgently that she thrust them into a deep pocket.

“They’re the files from Singular—that’s why they’re after us, why they keep coming. These are copies; all of them but one are still encrypted. Now listen: the files are double encrypted. They automatically encrypt all their files, and probably store them somewhere up in the cloud. I don’t know where. But then they made these backups, and they saved them onto special thumb drives, which encrypts them all over again. I can copy them—but all I can see is gobbledygook. The thumb drives have their own passwords, up to thirty-two characters, although not all the passwords are thirty-two. When you get a password, the drive itself decrypts the first level.
Then you have direct access to the second-level encrypted files. They kept the second-level decryption software on a computer that we stole, and the red drive in that bag is the copy of the encryption software. You can use it to decrypt the second level after you crack the passwords. I’ve cracked one of them. I wrote the number ‘1’ on the side of it in silver ink. Look at that one first. Rachel and Ethan don’t know I made these copies, I decided not to tell them everything, not yet at least—”

“Odin—” A woman, screaming.

They both turned and looked up to see a slender figure at the top of the bluff, pointing down the beach.

“They’re here. Odin! Odin! They’re here! Singular, they’re here!”

“Rachel?” Shay squinted at the other woman.

“Yeah,” said Odin, looking to where his girlfriend was pointing. “Ah, shit. I gotta go,” he said, and pulled the dog back onto its feet. “But I gotta tell you—”