Blood Ties

by Robert J. Crane

  “But you see,” Friday said, ignoring his extraneous and pointless commentary, “now that you’ve fired me...” He swelled, adding muscle and growing another foot. “I don’t have to play nice anymore.”

  Reed’s eyes showed the first sign of alarm. “Friday, don’t do anything stupid.”

  “You think I’m stupid?” Friday asked, adding another few inches of muscle on his biceps. “Well, I think you’re a girl, and not just because of that hair. You’re too sensitive, and you worry about stupid nit-picky things, like proper use of a salad fork—”

  “When have I ever cared about you using a salad fork?” Reed raised his hands in exasperation. “I’m mostly concerned about the horrifying things you say to the people around here.”

  “You’re worried about what I say?” Friday asked, staring down at him.

  “Yeah,” Reed said, looking up, a hand ready at his side. He was getting twitchy, Friday could see it. “Have you heard yourself? You give offense pretty much everywhere you go.”

  “Who cares?” Friday asked. “Why so sensitive? You’re all such little bitches, being so sensitive.”

  “Uh, the people who receive your off-putting insults and offensive comments care,” Reed said. “You get that, yeah?”

  “No, I don’t. And not ‘yeah,’” Friday said, and looked at the wall to his right. “The parking lot’s just out there, isn’t it?”

  “Uh...” Reed said, eyeing the wall to his left. “I think so. Why?”

  “Not ‘yeah,’” Friday said, as he lifted his phone in one hand, smiling. “It’s...” He turned to the wall, raised his other hand—

  “OH YEAHHHHHHH—!” Friday smashed through the drywall, stone facade and busted right out, taking the one-story drop to the grass that surrounded the building, taking a selfie as he did so. Coughing as he waved a cloud of plaster dust out of his face, he looked back up. “Suck it, loser! You may still be the boss of this place, but you’re also a girly man. And I can get another job.” He thumped his chest. “Hell, maybe I’ll finally have some time for my music career again.” He crossed his hands over his crotch in an X, and took a selfie while he was doing that, too, before shouting, “Suck it!” And off he went, shrinking as he walked across the parking lot to the car.

  “Good riddance,” Reed muttered, looking out the hole in the wall. It was quiet, but Friday heard it, of course.

  Friday had almost made it to his car when he realized something. “Hey!” he called up.

  Reed peered out at him through the mighty hole in the wall. “What?”

  Friday stared up. “Can you give me a reference?”

  Reed stared back at him, slow incredulity dawning across his face. “You just Kool-Aid man’d through my wall after calling me a girl like twenty-seven times. And accusing me of sexually harassing you.”

  “Yeah,” Friday said. “But we’re like family.”

  Reed stared at him for a long moment more, then sighed, rolled his eyes, and said, “Sure.”

  “Totally kittens,” Friday said, and headed for his car, uploading the photos to his Socialite account. It hadn’t gone like he’d planned, but hey, busting through a wall. This video had some real awesomeness to it. Maybe it would go viral.

  This could still the best day ever.

  2.

  Sienna

  Queens, New York

  Three Months Later

  I was not having the best day ever.

  “Movement ahead,” FBI Agent Georgia West said, sliding up to the door frame opposite me. She had a modified Glock 17 in hand, barrel pointed straight up as I hugged the wall a couple feet from her, my own gun drawn and pointed at the ground.

  “Copy that,” I said. “I can hear ’em.” I could, too. Loud crashing echoed through the hallways of this office complex.

  Trouble.

  We’d been called to this section of Queens by the NYPD, who’d gotten a report of a metahuman incident at a software development company. I’d been skeptical when we’d received the report. I mean, a software development company in Queens? But we’d gone, and sure enough, there was a company apparently developing some kind of software here.

  Oh, and also a metahuman crashing through walls. That had been obvious from the holes in the wall when we’d pulled up.

  “Back-up is ten minutes out,” West said, pushing her pixie haircut out of her eyes. I know, I was shocked too that a pixie haircut could get in your eyes, but hers did somehow. Needed to trim her bangs, I guess. “Holloway and Hilton.”

  “You want to wait for ’em?” I asked. Another crash suggested our runaway meta had busted down another wall.

  West grinned. “Hell no. You ain’t afraid of a little trouble, are you?”

  “Not if you’re covering me,” I said, and swept off the wall, heading in. West was a hell of a shooter. She could just about pick a flea off a dog’s back with a pistol at a hundred yards. And she wasn’t even a meta.

  “On your six.” She fell in behind me, and down the hall we went.

  There were definitely signs of this meta’s passage. Doors knocked off the hinges. A computer on a cart overturned and destroyed. Looked like this troublemaker had stomped it for good measure, electronic guts blasted all over the hall along with shards of the monitor.

  “Somebody had a good time here,” West opined. I could not disagree. If I was visiting a software company criminally, trashing it sounded like proper fun to me, too.

  I locked my eyes on a shadowed lump on the floor ahead under a flickering light bulb. Traces of crimson streaked out from it, leading beyond and around a corner. “Got a body here,” I said quietly, keeping my gun up.

  Holes in the ceiling showed evidence of something ripping through it, tiles knocked asunder as though whatever had left this mess had thrown someone up. I stooped to check on the pulse; none was evident. The face was streaked with red; serious gashes in the face made it impossible to tell if it was male or female. White skull peeked out from beneath dripping blood, the signs of a heart long stopped.

  “Moving,” West said, two steps behind me as I cleared the corner, Glock pointing forward. No dislodged lights or ceiling tiles ahead, but the thundering sounds had died down, leaving us in the quiet. It felt eerie, walking in this place with this inherent danger lurking somewhere out of sight. “See anything?”

  “Just signs of passage for something big and angry,” I said, glancing at a deep scarring on the wall to my right. It looked as though something strong had buried three fingers into drywall and gouged it out in a five-foot line that shredded the painted surface. Blood-soaked footprints led down the corridor, strangely shaped. I knelt to take a closer look.

  “What the hell made those?” West asked from over my shoulder. Her breathing was steady, and the only noise I could hear other than my own.

  The footprint arrangement was truly strange. It almost looked human, but was at least twice the size of a normal man’s footprints, and correspondingly wider. There were also bloody points an inch or two out of every toe print and off the back of the heel, as though claws radiated from each of those places.

  “This is new,” I said, keeping one eye firmly on the hall ahead as I examined the bloody footprint.

  “What do you mean, new?” West asked. She sounded calm, mostly, though there was an edge of unease beneath it.

  “New, as in nothing I’ve ever seen before,” I said. I stayed right in place, thinking for a second. “You know, it might behoove us to call in some additional backup.”

  West shuffled behind me. “Local help?”

  “I was thinking Gravity, yeah,” I said, lifting my cell phone out of my pocket. Gravity was Staten Island’s own superhero, but she worked all over the five boroughs. I had talked to her once or twice since arriving in New York six months ago, and I had a feeling she’d be more amenable to showing up if I called for her than, say, Captain Frost. Who was a douche-bag, and whom I’d talked to zero times since getting here. A trend that would continue into perpetuity, hopefu
lly. I dialed the number and waited as it rang. “Come on, pick up.”

  “Holloway and Hilton are five minutes out,” West said, keeping her Glock pointed past me.

  Gravity’s voicemail picked up and it was a standard, electronic voice greeting. I waited for it to finish and beep and then I started with, “Hey, Jaime, this is Sienna. I wouldn’t normally call you, obviously, but I’m up in Queens and I’m running into something really weird—”

  The wall in front of me exploded in a shower of drywall, steel beams and a metallic desk, and I dropped my phone without thinking about it. Both my hands went to steady the Glock for aiming as something stepped through the wall—

  Something...huge.

  Twice the height of a normal human, its head dragged across the ceiling tiles as it landed a massive, bloodstained foot on the tile, cracking it. The flesh almost looked human, except...more yellow-hued than any I’d ever seen, as though they were suffering from a wicked case of jaundice. The chest was as wide across as a Cadillac grill, and attached by a thick neck to a bald head that bore no resemblance to a human being’s. It was squat and bereft of hair and set with eyes even more yellow than the skin surrounding them. They found me, like little pinpricks of corn in a sea of grain as the massive creature—monster, really—knocked down a couple more ceiling tiles before stopping in the middle of the hallway to stare at me.

  “Whoa,” I said, taking aim at the head.

  “What the hell is that?” West asked, and now all the panic had left her voice. She sounded like a surgeon asking me to pass her a scalpel.

  “That,” I said, staring at the thing before us, “is what we’re here for, I’m guessing. But as for what, specifically, it is?” I looked at it, it looked at me, and I could see some kind of basic intelligence behind those eyes, some rudimentary process of consideration as it cracked its knuckles—

  Oh, man. Its knuckles.

  Bones stuck out of the joints on its hands like claws, six or seven inches of craggy, rocky sharpness, and suddenly those marks in the wall made total sense.

  “Hell if I know,” I said, as it raised its hand and lowered its shoulder, cocking them as though ready to charge. “But I’m thinking we’re about to find out.”

  3.

  It came at us in a bull rush, quickly, and we found out that bullets did absolutely nothing. They ricocheted and spanged off the beast’s yellow skin, embedding themselves in the walls and ceiling, the roar of gunfire almost lost under the roar of that thing. The smell of dead flowers filled the corridor, sickly and sweet, rushing up my nostrils as I moved.

  I shoved West sideways and didn’t quite get clear of the charging path of the beast in time. It caught me in the shin as it went by, its kneecap catching me like a baseball bat to the bone. West and I landed in a tangle denoted with another gunshot as hers fired off into the ceiling about a foot from my ear before she could pull her finger off the trigger. Landing atop her, I rolled, coming back to my feet and emptying the rest of my Glock’s mag into the monster’s back.

  The bullets did nothing.

  The creature turned on me, teeth glinting in the flickering light. Either his bony head or stray shots had wrecked the nearest fluorescent lighting fixture, casting this part of the hallway in an alternating white light followed by shadowed darkness. The tiles where the thing had stepped were cracked and crushed from its sheer weight and power.

  “Holy shit, what are you?” I asked as it came around, looking at me with those yellow eyes. I caught a glimpse of anger, and there, below the belt, un-bridled male anatomy. “Geez, guy. Put on a loincloth, maybe?”

  It didn’t answer. Instead it bared its teeth and roared, coming at me again. I hooked a foot on West’s leg and, with no time for politeness, landed a foot in her crotch and shoved her down the hall before trying to get clear of the damned beast as it came at me again.

  I didn’t quite make it.

  The thing caught me with a low punch as I tried to roll clear, burying its clawed hand in my shoulder in a barbed punch that made me shout my displeasure to the world as I flew sideways, droplets of blood trailing after me like I was in space. They all hit the floor shortly, as did I, but for a moment it seemed like time was slowing down.

  I managed a rough roll, bumping the back of my head as I came down. My shoulder was screaming, but I didn’t have time to do anything but tell it to take a number and wait. The beast was already coming back around from his latest bull charge, my blood dripping down the bony protrusions from his hand.

  “What’s your name?” I asked, setting my feet so that my injured shoulder was back. He’d gotten me on the right side, which was my dominant hand. That’d put me at a slight disadvantage for the rest of this fight, but not an insurmountable one. I often practiced “disabled arm” drills. This was just the real-world test of those training sessions. “Is it Doomsday? Tell me it’s not Doomsday.”

  The thing snorted, and I felt like I could see the rush of air out of its over-sized nostrils, and that dead-flowers smell nearly gagged me.

  “So you’re Gardener Satan, then?” I asked, waving a hand in front of my nose. It was watching me with those yellow eyes, assessing, planning its next attack. It was strong, brutal, had a killer instinct. I’d never seen this kind of meta before, but it wasn’t so radically different from a shifter like Glen Parks. It’d just chosen something other than an animal form. Which was probably not possible for a shifter.

  So...different. Yeah.

  It came at me, and this time I stood my ground. I had to assume it was stronger than me, at least with my right shoulder at less than maximum effectiveness. It seemed like we were evenly matched in terms of reaction speed over this short of a distance, and so I had to use that to my advantage.

  As it charged, I readied myself. There was no subtlety to its movement; its plan was “Get her!” and nothing more sophisticated. What it did when it “got her” was something I wasn’t eager to find out, but continuously dodging around the hallway wasn’t going to be a viable strategy forever. I had backup coming, but backup wasn’t going to do diddly shit against this thing unless they brought a Javelin missile launcher with them. Which they probably wouldn’t, in spite of my constant carping to add it to our arsenal.

  Stupid FBI and their concerns about firing explosives in the US mainland. This was the problem with working for the government; always so worried about managing their downside risk that they didn’t let me play with the fun toys.

  I noticed for the first time that this monster had bone protrusions out of his knee joints, too. They were smaller, but present, like yellowed calcium-deposit knee pads. I needed to avoid those in my next move, as I threw myself, feet-first, into the monster’s legs, like I was sliding into third base.

  It was not my most elegant plan. When fighting monsters, seemingly unstoppable creatures, or invincible men, I had a few cardinal rules. Number one was “go for the weak points.”

  This thing was huge. Its balance was a key thing. Taking the legs out meant dropping it to the floor.

  To that end, I collided with its left leg, twisting to wrap my own around it as it was mid-stride. It swiped low as I passed, trying to annihilate my head before I could crash into it, but it failed because it couldn’t stop in time.

  Once I had my legs in a nice figure-four pretzel with its, I twisted my entire body to put pressure on the back of its knee. And when I want to put pressure on something, I don’t do it in small amounts. I threw all my meta strength into it, and it was the equivalent of being knocked in the knee with a sledgehammer. By Superman.

  The beast collapsed in a slow-motion crash as he tangled in my legs. The thud was epic, like an earthquake beneath me, running through my bones as we ended up in a pile of limbs and torso and all else. He got mad when he landed, panic translated into a wild thrashing, and I hurried to remove my legs from harm’s way.

  It didn’t work.

  One of his knee spikes laid open my calf, and I let another small shout as I jerked aw
ay like he’d burned me. It certainly felt like it, nerves on fire as I tried to get to my feet. “West, tell backup to stay the hell out of here,” I said, unable to actually see my wing-man. Wing-woman. Whatever West was.

  West didn’t answer, or if she did, it got lost in the screaming roar of the beast. It kicked out at me and I jumped, missing a flailing, bone-clawed leg as it swung under my feet. It only missed me by inches, and when I came down my wound let me know of its displeasure at all my life choices up to this point.

  I ignored it. Not dying was more important than answering pain.

  The beast surged back to its feet, clearly pissed off but lacking the two bleeding wounds that I was laboring under. I took a couple steps back, but it roared as it lunged at me. My leg faltered a little; not much, just enough wobble to slow me.

  And the damned thing caught me.

  It buried its bony knuckle protrusions in my gut and ran me into a wall like a runaway freight train bearing me down the tracks. The pain was indescribable, analogous only to the other times people had shoved sharp objects into my guts. I hit the wall and it battered my head, my entire nervous system overwhelmed.

  The beast’s face was right there in front of me, and I spiked a punch into it.

  It hurt. Me, not him.

  Blood slicked my knuckles and dripped down its flat nose, which was hard as a stone and sharper than one. My hand hurt, but it was the least of my pains.

  The beast shoved its fist deeper into my belly and I gasped. My hands stopped working, and I stared into those yellow eyes, saw the rage and malice mingled with the beastly uncaring.

  Whatever this thing was...it was not human. At least not now.

  It was anger, pure and unmitigated, unstoppable fury given a disastrous form. Blood bubbled to my lips and I tried to form words.