Blood Ties

by Robert J. Crane

  “You make it sound like this robotics company is a toy or a hobby for him,” I said.

  “It is,” Berniece said, and she looked over at Hollister. “See, he’s the genius that keeps us running, from a technical perspective. But if he focuses on only one thing for too long, he starts to burn out. His optimal performance comes from being a little more diversified in terms of things he can turn his attention toward. That company is one of those distractions for when he gets overwhelmed with Inquest. He’s consulted with them on a couple of projects, and it’s a nice recharge for him to get his mind into other domains. Right, Hollister?”

  He grunted.

  “See?” She smiled.

  “No, but I’ll take your word for it,” I said. They had a strange dynamic going on. Was he ever going to look over at us? I’d heard Hollister was on the spectrum, but I didn’t know he was that eye-contact averse. Maybe he was just really interested in what he was doing. “What was stolen?”

  “What was it, Hol?” Berniece asked.

  “Cutting-edge robotics,” he said, voice rough and hoarse.

  “I’ve got one of my assistants working on a manifest,” Berniece said breezily. “They’ll get it to you.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “That’d be helpful.”

  Berniece dazzled me with her smile. “We like to be helpful. It’s our whole business ethos. Helping people find what they’re looking for, but more efficiently.”

  “Great,” I said, already sounding a mental retreat. “Is there anything else that—”

  The building quivered slightly, and I felt it through my boots, rattling subtly up into my bones. A moment later, a howling klaxon like a fire alarm filled the air.

  “Earthquake!” Friday shouted, grabbing Berniece in an over-sized arm and covering her with his giant body. She made some sort of noise, but I couldn’t tell whether it was all the air leaving her body from the force of his movement, or something else.

  Whatever it was, it was buried beneath the sound of the office doors bursting open. Chase and Veronika stood framed in them, plasma and lightsaber ready to go.

  Uh oh.

  I steadied myself. The rumble had faded, no aftershock to the initial quiver, and I stared down the two bodyguards as they swept into the room.

  “Friday, let her go,” I said, thumping him with the long edge of my case. He did.

  “Ma’am, we have to move,” Veronika said, clipped and efficient. She was standing next to Berniece a second later, and had the CEO’s arm firmly in her grip.

  Chase snatched up Hollister, yanking him from his computer without an ounce of ceremony. She looked over at Veronika. “Call the ball.”

  “Motor pool already has a car moving,” Veronika said. She lifted one of her sleeves up to her face. “Back exit, sixty seconds.”

  “What the hell is going on?” I asked as they dragged the CEOs toward the doors. Berniece had a shocked look on her face, but I couldn’t even see Hollister McKay’s, his black hair hanging lank over his face.

  “Your villain just crashed into the lobby,” Veronika tossed over her shoulder. She shot me a look as gunshots sounded below us, like distant thunder, and my stomach sank. “He’s tangling with security downstairs right now.”

  21.

  “No chance in hell your security wins that contest,” I said, trailing behind Veronika and Chase as they hauled ass out into the top floor rotunda on the executive level, Berniece Adams and Hollister McKay slung over their respective shoulders.

  “You seem to have survived it,” Chase said, barely slowing enough to toss me a contemptuous look past Hollister McKay’s squirming, skinny upper body.

  “Ah, no, I actually was killed by it,” I said. “Paramedics at the scene revived me.”

  Veronika skidded to a stop in a scene reminiscent of how she’d almost collided with Friday earlier. “No shit?”

  “Wait, you died?” Friday’s question was shouted, rather gracelessly, at the top of his lungs.

  “Uh, yeah,” I said. “I’ve told you that already. Repeatedly.”

  “Oh, right,” Friday said. “I forgot because I was thinking of very important song lyrics.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Whatever. This Grendel is no joke.”

  “Shame that whole death thing didn’t take,” Chase said, giving me a contemptuous once-over. “Maybe this Grendel wouldn’t have followed you here.”

  “Followed me? Bullshit,” I said. “It didn’t follow me to your boss’s Chicago subsidiary. It didn’t follow to me to where I clashed with it in Queens. It went over my dead body, not because of my dead body. Don’t post hoc propter ergo hoc me, Chase.”

  “We gotta get out of here.” Veronika steered toward a side door, pushing through into a piece of Inquest HQ’s metal superstructure. A staircase wended its way down, cleverly hidden inside what looked like a simple support pylon. “Extraction in forty seconds.”

  Chase put on the afterburners and leapt down a flight of stairs, bouncing off the wall and leaping down another. McKay screamed at the sudden, violent motion. It probably felt like he was on one of those rollercoasters that launched into a dramatic spiral. His voice echoed all the way down as Chase continued to fling herself off the walls to shorten the route to the bottom.

  “You going to cover our retreat?” Veronika asked, Berniece over her shoulder, clearly about to imitate Chase’s shortcut. She was only hanging back to discern my intentions.

  It wasn’t even a question. “Go, I’ll cover you.” I lifted the silver case in a kind of rough salute.

  Veronika smirked back, then leapt, bouncing off the wall and down, out of sight.

  I shot a look at Friday. “Get Mendelsohn out of here, then come join me.” I started to head for the stairs but stopped, because I suddenly saw that Friday’s eyes were unusually...wet?

  “This thing killed you last time you fought it?” he asked, lower lip quivering.

  “Yeah, but this time will be different—” I said, swinging the case up to show him I had something new up my sleeve.

  He didn’t even notice.

  Friday let out a howl that almost knocked me over, then leapt past me with a speed and fury that almost sent me to my knees from the wind rush that followed. He hit the wall like Veronika and Chase, but this time it cracked as he bounced off, leaving a giant, smashed-in segment of drywall that looked like it had been hit with a wrecking ball.

  “That’s...not going to be good,” I said as Mendelsohn stepped up to join me.

  “Doesn’t look like it, does it?” Mendelsohn asked, peering over the edge of the railing down the staircase. Friday bounced back and forth the ten floors to the bottom, howling so loud the whole way down that I had to stop and cover my ears until he shattered the doors below, leaving the staircase echoing with his anger.

  “Dammit,” I said, and grabbed Mendelsohn around the waist, yanking him to me like he was a heroine from some 1940s adventure movie. “Hang on.”

  I caught his gulp as I leapt into motion, silver case in one hand and Mendelsohn in the other, leaping down the stairs to face the thing that had already killed me once.

  22.

  I entered the lobby on my last bounce, shoving off and dispensing with my forward momentum as I came down. I almost rolled my ankle in the process, my silver case thumping against the ground as I stumbled, shoving Mendelsohn aside as I thudded to a stop.

  “Sorry,” I said, getting back to my feet.

  Mendelsohn was cringing, a nice road rash forming on his forehead. He shook his wrist out like he’d hurt it a little, then pointed past me toward the giant rock in the center of the lobby. “Uhhh...”

  “Get out of here,” I said to him, leaping for the silver case, which had slid halfway across the foyer during my botched landing. I’d been carrying too much, what with Mendelsohn and the case in my hands as I’d flung myself bouncing off the staircase walls, covering ten floors down in ten seconds.

  Mendelsohn didn’t need to be told twice. He hustled toward the g
iant hole in the glass front of the building without any pretense of heroism. Which was smart, because trying to be a human and a hero in this fight was a sure way to die.

  I couldn’t see the Grendel or Friday as I reached the silver case, but I could see the bloody smears where security guards had tried to stop it and failed miserably. I was about twenty yards from the giant rock in the center of the lobby, and there were grunting noises coming from behind it, which suggested that one or both of them was back there.

  Take it easy.

  Be cool.

  A steady hand and steady breaths will be a lot more help here than going wild.

  I nodded along with that brilliant assessment. Good idea, way better than plunging into another fight with this crazy Grendel without my cool intact.

  Catching my breath as I reached for the snaps that kept the case shut, it became a game of seeing if I could get my calm back before whatever was going on behind the rock spilled into the main area of the lobby where I stood.

  Or Friday got killed by the Grendel.

  That thought didn’t steady my hand any.

  Breathe.

  Breathe.

  I flipped up the latches, opening the silver case to reveal—

  Oh, hell yes.

  “Let’s see how you like this, you giant, jaundiced pile of dog crap,” I muttered, slinging the weapon up into my waiting hands.

  It was heavy, at least to most. No surprise, since I’d been carrying it in the case all day. But heavy to humans was not heavy to me. To me it was probably like carrying a work briefcase, albeit a really bulky one.

  It was an M134 Mini-gun, a Gatling gun in 762 x 51mm NATO rounds. Designed to rain 2,000 to 6,000 rounds per minute down like hell being unleashed on earth, it had probably never been purposed to putting holes in a Grendel-type metahuman before.

  But then, I was in Silicon Valley, so it was time for me to become an innovator.

  “All-the-all-the-outs-and-free,” I muttered under my breath, carrying the Gatling gun as I strode toward the edge of the big rock. A combo ammo drum and battery pack the size of a small table was firmly attached to it by both wires and an ammo belt, strapped to my back. “Hey, Grendel-wald!”

  There was some serious scuffling going on behind that rock. I only hoped I didn’t round the corner to find my uncle Friday being pounded into wet mutton by the damned Grendel. Because that would really suck.

  I didn’t.

  A roar just as I rounded the rock clued me in that Friday was still alive, and as I came around the immense lump of stone, I saw Friday with bleeding fingers, locked up with the Grendel in a wrestling hold. He had his hands interlaced with the Grendel’s and was pummeling him with a series of raised knees to the Grendel’s guts, which lacked the bony protrusions that covered the rest of his body like an intermittent exoskeleton.

  With another yell, Friday lifted his knee and slammed it into the Grendel’s exposed throat, jarring the creature loose from him. I blinked, trying to hold back my surprise.

  This thing had dominated me in our fight, and my idiot uncle had just staggered it.

  Huh.

  “Friday, move!” I shouted as I circled to my left. I wanted to ensure that the Grendel was backstopped by the giant rock, which would conveniently keep the bullets I was about to spatter it with from over-penetrating and wiping out some idiot bicyclist half a mile away. Because unless he was riding on the road, he didn’t deserve to be killed today.

  Friday barely gave me a glance before turning back to the Grendel. But a second later his brain must have internalized what he’d just seen, because he double-took a look at me again, mouth agape in the hole in his mask. A second after that he launched to the left like he’d been ejected from the floor, rolling clear as the Grendel steadied himself and looked—

  Right at yours truly.

  “Remember me, asshole?” I asked.

  Then I pressed the Gatling gun’s trigger.

  A Gatling gun is six rotary barrels of pure destruction, spitting inch-long bullets at the rate of two thousand rounds a minute at the lowest squeeze. If I squeezed harder, they’d come faster. I had a canister with two thousand rounds on my back, and even though I knew I was going to go through it fast, I was going to make every one of them count.

  Usually, Gatling guns are carried by a vehicle, a plane, a boat. Something that can handle the recoil, the fury, the physics of that many explosive chemical reactions channeling pieces of lead down six spinning barrels at high speed. In spite of Jesse Ventura carrying one in Predator, that shit did not happen in real life with normal humans, I don’t care how much of a hardy Minnesotan you are.

  Unless you’re Sienna Nealon hardy, in which case game on, bitches.

  The gat sounded like someone had parked a car on my eardrum and was now peeling out, trying to go from zero to a hundred in a quarter second. I ignored the instant ringing and deafness and agonizing pain in favor of watching the occasional tracer streak from the barrel to let me know I was on target. My eyes vibrated with the thrumming frequency of the Gatling gun. It was like a continuous cannon as I bombarded the Grendel with a volume of fire that would shred the flesh of an entire army if they were standing in a straight line.

  The Grendel, though...

  He took it.

  “Oh, shit,” I said, but I couldn’t hear it over the roar of the gat.

  I kept the weapon on target, peppering the Grendel with a steady chattering wave of projectiles rushing out at over 2,800 feet per second. Bone chips flew from the places on his exoskeleton where the bullets struck, and left yellowy welts everywhere else, but...

  They didn’t break the skin.

  I let my fire drift down to his belly, where it did nothing more than bruise him. When that didn’t work, I walked it up to his collarbones, which protruded out of his skin, then up to his neck, and finally...

  The tracer rounds seemed to pulse out every second or so, bullets streaking their way like angry, fiery hornets toward their target and letting me know where my shots were going. Now they were hitting the Grendel full in the face, in the chin, in his open and roaring mouth, in his damned nose—

  In his eyes, which were squinted shut in the face of overwhelming fire. I was painting his damned face with bullets and—

  They did...nothing.

  “Oh shit oh shit oh shiiiiiiiiit,” I said in a continuous stream as I listened to the gat’s magazine go dry. I still couldn’t hear my own words, couldn’t hear Grendel’s roar, couldn’t hear anything. The only reason I knew the Gatling gun was out of bullets was because the tracers had stopped and the vibrato caused by the thousand bullets being lit off at the rate of approximately thirty-three per second had stopped rattling my body.

  Grendel’s eyes were still shut, clear bruising and pain going on there. He’d brought up his hands to cover them at some point during the volley, but now that it was over, he pulled his hands away and opened them as I watched. Yellow pupils stared out at me through narrowed slits, bruised with darker amber colors across the lids.

  And he. Looked.

  Pissed.

  “Rut roh,” I said, the fluid in my ears settling enough that I could now hear my own voice again, though it sounded underwater and far away.

  Grendel roared and charged me, and I had seconds to decide what to do about it. He moved like a train at full speed on a downhill slope, and my reaction time was already going to be impaired by the weight of the Gatling gun and mag pack.

  Rather than waste valuable seconds discarding said gun, I decided that I needed to do something dramatic, because outrunning the big guy was not going to be a viable strategy. Not with him moving that fast.

  I pulled back the gat, then shoved the barrel forward as I leapt ahead. If he wanted to come at me like a charging horse...

  I’d spear the yellow bastard like a knight in a jousting tournament.

  His arm was long, but my Gatling barrel was longer. And also several hundred degrees.

  I thrust my weapon
into his gut and it made him wheeze at the force of impact. My momentum plus his had to be right up there, maybe in excess of what a bullet could generate given our super strength. He tried to swipe at me, but lacked the reach. I kept him stuck there, Gatling barrel buried in his midsection for a second, then two...

  He screamed a moment later, jerking back from the barrel.

  On his belly, where it had rested, there was a welt bigger than any of the others.

  Ah-hah, you bastard. His skin might be super hard, but it was sensitive to heat.

  That would be useful to know...if I survived this fight.

  The Grendel took a couple steps back, surveying me with that raging intelligence that had been so frightening in our first battle. “I...killed you,” it said, speaking for the first time in my presence.

  “Yeah, well, I guess you suck at your job,” I said, retreating a little myself. He was going to come at me again, for sure, and I needed to be ready. The Gatling barrel was cooling down by the second, but hopefully it’d still be murderously hot for a while yet. Because I needed something to keep him off me. “Not exactly a brainiac, though, are you? I mean, thinking you killed me yet here I am? Glad you’re not something important, like a rocket scientist.”

  It was at that moment that I realized my usual strategy of taunting my enemies to the point of rage was maybe not the best idea with the Grendel who had already killed me once. Still, old habits die hard, and he growled like a savage beast, his bony eyebrows pointed down as he reached fury. Not an unusual reaction for my foes, I’ll grant you, but with him...

  I might have flinched a little.

  He came at me again and tried to bat the gat’s barrel away. I knew he’d try it, though, and when he did I swung it around in a 360-degree arc as I dropped low, then thrust it back up into the same area of his stomach where I’d already burned him. He let out a scream and recoiled.