Blood Ties

by Robert J. Crane

It didn’t take a genius to figure out what the moron was thinking. “Uh, no, bad idea. We need to wait for the cops and—”

  Friday grabbed me up and stuffed me under his arm as he broke into a loping, gorilla-like run, grunting all the way.

  So there I was, stuck in his under arm, the world bumping and swaying around me. At least my head wasn’t in his armpit. That honor was reserved for my abdomen, and based on the smell, I’d be washing for months to get the Friday stink out of my belly button.

  “Idiot,” I breathed as he leapt us into the air toward the Golden Gate bridge in a mad dash to outrun the cops. I had a feeling this was not going to end particularly well for...well, any of us.

  106.

  The landing almost jarred me out of being stuck in Friday’s armpit, but fortunately(?) for me, I didn’t come flying out and splatter on the roadway as he crashed down on a Hyundai.

  “Friday, watch out for people!” I shouted as a bevy of horns sounded as the midday traffic on the Golden Gate came to an abrupt stop.

  “Mrawwwwwr,” Friday moaned, sounding a little like a humpbacked whale. Well, because of the outsized growth of his deltoids, he did look a little humpbacked.

  I looked down into the crashed Hyundai. People were peering out from behind the deployed air bags in bleak astonishment. “Stay in your vehicles,” I said, waving a hand at them. “Please remain in your vehicles until the crisis has passed.” I glanced up at Friday. “Should be over pretty quick.”

  “Nooooooooo,” Friday moaned, leaping off the Hyundai and heading for the looming bridge tower, that immense red structure that held up the suspension cables. “Noooo ennd.”

  I patted Friday on the arm and kept it there. He’d already been touching my skin since he’d picked me up, thanks to his elbow accidentally lifting my blouse. I was losing my belly button’s mystique if anyone was taking pictures, but I was in solid contact with the moron’s skin. “It’s okay. It’ll all be okay.”

  “Noooooooo,” Friday moaned, and started to leap up to the first rung of the bridge tower.

  He didn’t quite make it.

  Which is to say he barely got off the ground.

  Friday landed on his tippy toes, weak and woozy. I could feel my skin burning against his. He made a noise similar to the cave troll in The Fellowship of the Ring after the arrow pierces its brain.

  “Nooooooo,” Friday moaned, voice getting lower.

  “Shhhh, just let go,” I said, keeping my arm firmly anchored on his. “Shrink. You can do it.”

  “Noooooooooooooo!” he said, even more mournfully as my powers really started to work—

  And I found myself pulled into Friday’s head.

  107.

  “You’re so small and pathetic.”

  The woman’s voice was distorted, but not from the memory. She sounded drunk, slurring her speech.

  As she came into resolution, I saw her face. It was pinched and spiteful, staring right at me.

  Except I wasn’t me.

  I was a five-year-old boy, and I was looking at her through a sheen of tears.

  “Uck, you’re crying again,” the woman said, making a slight gagging noise to accentuate the contempt that was etched on her face. “Could you be any more sad?” She took a slurp of her drink. It was neither elegant nor graceful, and I’d seen thirsty dogs hit their water dishes with more poise.

  “I’m sorry, Mommy.”

  “Always sorry,” she said. Her hair was almost pixie-like. “I’m not going to miss you while I’m gone. Not if you keep acting like this.”

  A sniffle. “Please, Mommy—”

  “‘Please, Mommy.’” her voice came high and mocking, her face twisted in malevolence. “Why don’t you try something new—be a big boy while I’m gone. Because I’ve had enough of this bitty baby shit. Be a big boy or I’m not coming back. You hear me?” She snagged him by the front of his shirt and shook him once. “I’m going to be gone for two to five years. When I get back—be big. Because I’ve had enough of you being a snotty, sniveling little turd. No one likes tiny, whiny little runts. Bigger is always better. You hear me? Enough of this shit. Be big.”

  “Yes, Mommy,” his little voice came out, utterly crushed and defeated. “I’ll be big when you get back. From now on. I promise.

  “I’ll always be big.”

  108.

  The sky was crying when I came out of Friday’s tragic backstory memory.

  Or maybe I was. Whatever. My eyes were wet. It doesn’t matter how it happened.

  He was grunting, down on one knee, that memory I’d seen—probably one of a hundred his mother had left him that had done an absolute effing number on the man-child before me—his eyes wide and pained as he looked at me.

  “You don’t have to be big, Friday,” I said. I’d taken that memory—a byproduct of me witnessing it—but I sensed a lot more pain, defensive pain, beneath the surface of his mind.

  His grip was loosening, but I was still pressed tight to his skin, my flesh burning with the succubus power where I touched him.

  “I can’t...go back to...being small,” Friday said, grunting it out as he tried to pull away from me.

  “She was a spiteful bitch, Friday,” I said, gripping him on the arm. He’d shrunk to half what he’d been seconds ago, but was still huge. “Some people are just like that.”

  “Hey!” His eyes burned, pain and tears showing at the corners. “That’s my mom you’re talking about!”

  “Sorry, she just was,” I said, not letting go as he sagged to his knees. “And she was wrong. You don’t have to be big all the time. Hell, half the problems you run into in your life are because you are too big, and your brain is fuzzy and you’re doing stupid things because you’re not in full control of yourself.” He tried to pull away, but I was anchored tight on him now. “When was the last time you just...let yourself be small for a while? Let you be...yourself?”

  He was down to skin and bones now, and he stared up at me through glassy eyes as I adjusted my grip to his sleeve, removing my skin from contact with his. That satisfying sense of soul-burn faded. The hint of craving inside me that longed to finish the job lingered, but I ignored it. “Long time,” Friday whispered. “But it doesn’t matter.” He tried to thrash out of my grip, but he was weak like this. “I know how you feel about me.” His voice was soft and broken. He was done with the Bale-Batman voice now. He sounded like a raspy recovering drug addict, exhausted.

  “No, you don’t,” I said. “I was angry with you, sure, because you threw a monkey wrench in the gears of my life. Again. But I forgive you, you know,” I said, holding him up. We were standing in the middle of the Golden Gate Bridge, a cavalcade of cars just honking like hell at us. “For...everything.”

  “I really made a mess of things.” Friday’s eyes were glazed with tears. “Why would you forgive me for...all that?”

  “Because we’re family,” I said, lifting him into a bear hug in which I was actually the bear. “And because as bad as you effed things up, I don’t believe for a minute that you were being a hateful asshole when you were doing any of it. I don’t think you hate lesbians—”

  “I don’t. I really love them,” Friday said. Maybe a little Bale voice there. “And I think Veronika is super cool.”

  “I don’t think you hate anyone,” I said, setting him back down. “And I know you didn’t mean to make a mess of things. But...” I tried to blunt the irritation I was feeling, mitigate my speech to be less ornery. “Maybe a new rule—no social media posting while swole?”

  “Yeah, that’s probably a reasonable precaution,” Friday said, sniffling over the chorus of horns.

  “Look at you with all the big words now that you’re not overmuscled,” I said, clapping him on the shoulder. “You really should stick to that for a while.”

  “Maybe I will,” he said, the sirens growing closer. He was still breathing very heavily. “Hey, so, um...am I imagining it or did something really grisly, uh...happen...to Grendel?”

>   I raised an eyebrow at that. Had he really forgotten that he’d killed the hell out of Grendel? “It was a little messy, yeah,” I said, understating it some.

  “Oh. Well. But I was okay to do that, right?” he asked. Felt like he was starting to squirm.

  “Oh, totally. He was about to kill me,” I said. “You saved my life.” I paused. “Not for the first time on this trip, either.”

  “Whew.” He let out a long breath. “Okay. Good. Because I was a little worried there for a minute. Thought maybe I was in some big trouble.”

  “Well...we’ll see how this thing all turns out, but...I think it’ll be okay overall,” I said, looking at the cars, still honking at us. “We should probably stop blocking the road and head back to the scene of the crime, though.” Sirens had stopped over at the parking lot, and I could see the flashing lights from where we stood.

  “That’s a good idea,” Friday said, getting a running start and hopping over the pedestrian barrier onto the sidewalk at the edge of the bridge. “Say...” He looked at me through his eyeholes, brow kind of pinching together beneath the mask. “Do you think Veronika and her little gang are going to be mad at me for...ummm...whatever happened back there?”

  My face pinched and I couldn’t help it. “Probably keep your distance from them. That’d be smart.”

  Friday just nodded. “Yeah. I’ll let you stand between us. Actually, I’ll just let you do all the talking so you can work it out however you have to.” He nodded slowly. “And if works out in my favor, that’s cool. And if you can’t make it happen that way...” He hung his head. “Well, I’ll understand if I have to go to jail for a while for...any of this.”

  “I’ll do my best,” I said as we walked along the bridge toward the cop cars and ambulances ahead. I had to admit, though, he might have had a point about the consequences. I dwelled on that and worried as we went, hoping for the first time today that nothing bad was going to happen to Friday.

  109.

  “My least favorite part of these adventures of mine is the after-party,” I said, sitting next to Mendelsohn on the edge of the van while he tinkered with the “EMP.” It definitely wasn’t an EMP, he’d determined after about five minutes of tinkering. Grendel’s partner had betrayed him.

  Kinda like everyone else in his life, I guess. At least there was consistency.

  “Oh?” Mendelsohn let out a grunt of concentration. “Why’s that?”

  “Paperwork, witness statements, blah blah,” I said. “This is why I’m letting the locals handle it.”

  “I thought it was because you were fired and/or quit?” He was wearing a trace of a smile as he dithered with some piece of electronic gear. “Brilliantly done,” he said, shaking his head at it.

  “I haven’t been fired yet and I am going to at least pretend I didn’t get pissed off and quit,” I said. “When I actually talk to my boss. Which I am not eager to do just yet.”

  “Biting the bullet is always hard,” Mendelsohn said, presenting me with a piece of...something. Stainless steel and plastic, it looked like. “You know what this is?”

  I only looked at it for a moment before favoring him with a worthy “stop being a doofus” look. “You know I don’t.”

  “I have no idea what you know or don’t know anymore,” he said with a just a little too much enthusiasm. “This is the rotational motor that spins the plate in a microwave.” He tossed it up and down in one hand. “This is the most sophisticated piece of electronic equipment in the shell of this thing.” He tapped the faux EMP. “And there’s no power source other than a nine-volt battery to light the dials. It’s all a sham, top to bottom.”

  “Yay, us,” I said. “Saving the Bay Area from being catapulted back to the Stone Age by a fake EMP.”

  “There are farther-reaching consequences if it had been real,” Mendelsohn said. “Silicon Valley, like or hate it, is a vital component and a huge sector of the world economy. Pull it out, and the Jenga tower falls.”

  “Makes me wonder,” I said, thinking, “if that wasn’t part of the point to Grendel. If Silicon Valley is reduced to nothingness, and Grendel stole all these algorithms and whatnot—”

  “Maybe he was thinking of using them to build his own little mini-SV competitor?” Mendelsohn squinted. “I mean, every one of these companies has backup systems and servers and offices elsewhere. The big ones, anyway. Silicon Valley goes offline, it doesn’t mean they do.”

  “But it would hobble them for a while,” I said, just kinda thinking out loud. “I don’t know. He was so into his rage, it’s hard to say exactly what he was up to other than striking back at them for how he perceived that they’d wronged him.”

  “What about his behind-the-curtains partner?” Mendelsohn asked. “And whatever it was he was trading to them for this?”

  I looked at the fake bomb. “Well, I guess they got ripped off. As to the identity of the mystery tech guru with the mad microwave rewiring skills...” I shrugged. “No idea. I doubt I’ll be learning anytime soon, either, because the likelihood I’m still assigned this case tomorrow? Near zilch, as far as I can tell.”

  “About the whole social media mobbing thing...” Mendelsohn cringed lightly. “A word of advice—don’t apologize for anything you didn’t do. When you do wrong, there’s nothing shameful about offering a genuine apology. When you haven’t, though...bowing to the mob is a sure way to throw yourself to remorseless hellhounds.”

  I grinned. “You don’t have to tell me not to negotiate with terrorists.”

  “Excellent metaphor.” He turned, looking over to where Friday stood, still shrunk, talking to a couple of the local FBI types. “What’s going to happen to him?”

  “I think he’s going to be okay,” I said. “I don’t think my bosses managed to push through his firing before this happened, so...I made him out to be a big hero. What with him saving my life and all.”

  Mendelsohn looked thoughtful. “You think that means he’ll keep his temp job with the FBI or...?”

  “Oh, hell no, he’s totally fired for that screed on Socialite,” I said. Friday turned and waved to me, big grin showing through his mask’s mouth hole. “But I don’t think he’s in any trouble for what he did here.”

  Mendelsohn’s gaze turned to the limo sitting across the parking lot. A few local cops were hanging out there, and a sullen and resentful a batch of metas as I’d ever seen were just malingering there inside their perimeter. Chase was casting burning looks at me and Friday. Phinneus Chalke and that Tyler guy were both licking their wounds and looking pissed off. Shadow lady Kristina was hanging out just inside the limo’s door, where the big bosses were staying out of the cool air coming off the Bay.

  And Veronika...

  Well, she was staring at me. Not as angry as the others, but not in a friendly way, either.

  “Where are you going?” Mendelsohn asked as I started to walk toward them. He traced my trajectory, then said, “Be careful.”

  I waved him off. When was I not careful?

  110.

  Veronika

  “That’s about close enough, Nealon,” Veronika called when she was twenty or so feet away. “I’ve got principals to protect here, and I don’t care who you work for; you’re still trouble I don’t need.”

  “The funny thing about my kind of trouble,” Nealon said, keeping her distance as requested, “is that nobody thinks they need it until a worse kind of trouble comes calling. Then suddenly it’s all, ‘Please, Ms. Nealon, save our day’!”

  “Don’t think any of us are going to be thanking you for today anytime soon,” Chase said at a low growl from just behind Veronika. Her lightsaber was out. Of course. “Pretty much the opposite, in fact. If I could shove this thing up your nose without the cops jumping all over me, rest assured, I would.” She flashed the lightsaber hand around.

  “I just wanted to get something straight with your bosses, that’s all,” Nealon called. “A few little details Grendel—aka Michael Bermudez—had delved into abo
ut how they became the number one search engine. But hey, if they don’t want to hear from me, it’s cool. I just need to go write this down in a report that’ll probably be leaked right to the media—”

  “Ms. Nealon,” Berniece said, grinning so fake, popping out of the limo like her ass was spring-loaded. She was past Veronika almost quicker than Veronika could react. “Thank you so much for saving our day—”

  Nealon had a flash of amusement run through those steely eyes. “Not a problem. Look, I think we can all agree that certain details of today’s incident would be best served if we kept them out of the papers. Things like Michael Bermudez’s theories about why he was so disliked. Or any of the more...silly, possibly embarrassing actions my associate Friday took while trying to bring Bermudez down.” Nealon stared right at Berniece and Veronika could feel the game of poker being played. “I assume, as an eminently reasonable person, you’d agree that it’d be best if we handled these details...quietly?”

  Berniece looked like she was warring with herself, but only for a moment. “Absolutely. Discretion is always a wiser course, especially when dealing with those vultures in the press.”

  “I agree completely.” Nealon smiled. “Best of luck in all your endeavors, Ms. Adams.”

  “To you as well, Ms. Nealon,” Berniece said, matching her fake for fake smile.

  “This isn’t over, Nealon,” Chase muttered. Veronika got the feeling that that sentiment was probably shared by at least Tyler. He hadn’t looked happy when they’d dragged him back after Grendel had booted him. He’d been laid open from head to groin, and Phinneus had stitched him up to keep him from bleeding out while he healed. Tyler seemed to be taking that wounding personally, and since Grendel was dead...

  Well, Nealon could handle another enemy or two. Kristina and Phinneus were pros; they’d pass on any stupid revenge games. Tyler and Chase, though...