Blood Ties

by Robert J. Crane

  There was a moment of silence. “You were involved in this, too, Agent Nealon?” Chalke’s voice was tense.

  “No!” I almost shouted. “We were in a limo after the fight yesterday, and Friday talked out his thoughts about...” I sighed, wondering how I’d gotten dragged into this stupidity. “About lesbians being angry due to—I don’t even want to say this; it’s stupid, and I don’t believe any bit of it—”

  “So you were involved,” Chalke said.

  “Because I was a witness, I’m involved?” I asked. Now my voice was rising. “I didn’t endorse what he said! I was arguing against his idiotic position! That is my only involvement!”

  “This just keeps getting worse,” Shaw said, half under his breath.

  “This is not a—how am I responsible for—” I felt a wicked stutter take over, splitting the rage and fear. Rage that I was dragged into this because of a dumbass conversation I’d had with Friday in which I hadn’t agreed with a single thing he’d posited.

  And fear, because I was supposed to be stopping a big yellow monster who was actually killing people, and this sideshow was sucking away my valuable time like the years-of-your-life machine from Princess Bride.

  “If you were having the discussion, you’re involved in this,” Chalke said gravely. “Complicit, whether you want to admit your culpability or not.”

  “Lemme get this straight,” I said, trying to ground my sense of the absurd so as to avoid yelling. “I’m complicit in Friday’s saying of something I don’t agree with, in a forum I’m not even on, because he said some stupid shit off the top of his head in my presence and I argued against it.”

  “I realize that probably sounds a little...hard to swallow,” Bilson said, smug yet mildly conciliatory, somehow the voice of reason in the middle of this ludicrous call. “But this is the world we’re in, you see. Reputational effects move out like ripples in the water from a central point, such as Mr. Jacksen. As SAC Shaw has previously made you aware, Mr. Jacksen...has been tying himself heavily to you in his social media presence of late.”

  “I have no control over that,” I said, just steaming. “I mean, unless you want to authorize me to break his fingers or take away his phone or something. Which I’m fine with—”

  Something brushed my elbow. I looked back to find Friday offering me his phone. I took it and tossed it on the bed. He kept his hand extended, fingers out. “I’m not breaking your damned fingers right now, okay?” I said, elbowing his hand away.

  “Why not?” Friday asked. “I deserve it.” He perked up a little. “Maybe you could livestream it. Call it my penance, then break them.”

  “I—what?” I shook my head. “We don’t do corporal punishment for crimes anymore, okay? And certainly not for...whatever the hell this is.”

  “Hate speech,” Chalke offered, oh so helpfully. “And you can sugarcoat however you like, but when the report is released on this, you will be implicated for your actions. There’s no avoiding it.”

  “How am I implicated for—grrrrrrrrrghhhhhh.” I shoved my entire fist in my mouth before I said something hideously unwise. I bit down—gently—on it, and it seemed to help, though the taste of my own blood came furiously a moment later and it was not pleasant.

  “Rage is not going to be a productive emotion at this moment, so I appreciate your efforts to temper yourself during this difficult time, Ms. Nealon.” Bilson just bled empathy, as I bled in my mouth. “Whatever your feelings about your involvement in this...incident...the rest of the world, based on the social media reaction and posts, clearly feel you are tied to it.”

  I yanked my hand out of my mouth. “The rest of the world for the longest time felt I was involved in murdering a bunch of prisoners and trying to kill journalists. That didn’t make their dumb, ignorant, uninformed asses correct then and it doesn’t now, either.” I stuck my hand back in my mouth and sucked on the blood like the vampire I was. I didn’t enjoy it, though, because my vampirism was really limited to souls. Blood tasted icky.

  “Perception is reality, Nealon,” Chalke cut in again, abrupt, slightly ragey. “You can’t let these sort of perceptions get out of hand or they get cemented in peoples’ minds. Like what you’re talking about, actually. Fantastic example.”

  I twitched to keep from saying something unwise. Well, further unwise.

  “I’ll do whatever you want me to do,” Friday said, still almost whispering. “Apologize. Fall on a sword. Throw myself out a window.” He looked around, eyes alighting on the window. “There’s a window right here, in fact.”

  “Hey, hold up there,” I said, yanking my hand out. Blood was dripping down my lips. Man, my bite was strong. Maybe I should have tried that on Grendel. Yuck. His yellow blood probably tasted worse than mine. “I don’t see how self-defenestration is going to solve this problem.”

  “I agree,” Bilson said. “There’s an established playbook for dealing with this. An immediate apology, removal of the offending post in question, plus firing Friday—”

  I blinked. “Wait. What?”

  “Of course Friday’s going to have to be fired,” Chalke said. “We can’t be seen to have anything to do with him going forward.”

  “Yeah, no, I get the tactical—whatever, there,” I said, a little lump of panic rising in my throat. “But see, here’s the thing—he’s the only other meta I have to help deal with Grendel—”

  “The bureau is not going to be accused of harboring homophobia,” Chalke said, and boy, was she putting her foot down.

  “I don’t think ‘homophobia’ is the right word,” Friday said, swelling a little. “I don’t fear lesbianism.” He kept growing, and I wondered what the hell was prompting that. “I embrace it. I mean, I watch lesbian videos literally all the time—”

  “Okay, maybe don’t go to that as your defense—” I said.

  “This is not going to be productive if you persist in this manner—” Chalke said, snipping.

  “But I love the gays,” Friday said, and boy, was he growing now. His Bale-Batman voice was back, his arms were getting to be the size of my thighs, and his head was back up, eyes focused on the phone. “I have a lot of respect for the gay people. I embrace gaiety. That’s why I hate un-masculine men. I want a manly man—you know, when I’m in that kind of mood—”

  “What the f—” I started.

  “None of this is acceptable,” Chalke said. “This is not a discussion, and he is clearly not contrite—”

  “Maybe I’m not sorry anymore,” Friday said, and he completed his swole, now the size of a small shed. “Maybe anyone who got their little feelings hurt was just being too sensitive. Bitchified.”

  “Or maybe you were being a dick,” I shot right back. “Friday, can we please keep our eyes on the prize here? Grendel is out there—”

  “You don’t need to worry about that anymore,” Chalke said, snapping me back to reality. “It’s clear from this conversation that we have much bigger problems at hand.” I didn’t have a chance to butt in with the argument that when you had a homicidal, near-invincible killing machine on the loose, there were no bigger problems, at least in my view. Chalke slammed the door on that pretty quick. “You’re both suspended from the case. This—”

  “You can’t suspend me!” Friday shouted, lifting up my phone and holding right up to his face as he shouted. “I am unsuspendable!” He swelled a little more. “You can’t even lift me! But I can lift you, see?” He picked up my phone, held it aloft.

  “Nealon, take his gun—” Chalke crackled over the phone.

  “He’s not armed,” I shot back, taking a step from Friday to keep from getting clobbered by his oversized, Popeye forearms, which were now the size of a tree trunk.

  “I am so hugely armed,” Friday said, waving the phone. “Look at these GUNS!” He flexed. “Now, I suspend you—you people, whose names I neither remember nor care to!”

  And he flung my phone at the wall. It struck, shattering on the drywall and showering us with pieces.
/>
  I looked at the remainder as it rained down on the hotel carpet. “What the hell did you do that for?” I asked. After a second, I had to concede, I knew exactly why he’d done it, and I kinda wished I’d beaten him to it.

  “These people are clowns and they understand nothing,” Friday said, swiping his own phone and waving it in front of me. “I’m a superstar in the making. They can’t stop my ascendancy with their petty jealousies just because my reach is huge, my arms are huger and my junk is hugest.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Don’t be a dumbass. You shit the bed, Friday—”

  “I don’t shit the bed!” Friday shouted at me, and I felt like one of those cartoon characters who was being blasted by a foghorn as he yelled right in my face. “I’m a big boy!”

  “Shrink back down, dumbass,” I said, trying to keep the thin leash on my annoyance. “You’re making everything worse.”

  “No, you make everything worse!” Friday shouted back.

  “How do I—” I started to ask.

  “I came here to help you!” Friday shouted, waving his massive arms around, nearly clobbering me with one. “The minute you called I was like, ‘Album? Release party? Art? Pffft! To hell with those critical priorities, Sienna needs help!’ I shoved it all aside. For you!” He pointed a finger the size of a summer sausage at me. “Because we’re family. Because family’s there for you when you need them.”

  “Okay, fine—” I started.

  “But where were you when I needed you?” His eyes were wide under the mask, manic and crazed. “Huh? When your femme brother fired me, where were you?”

  His accusation hit me like a tank round. “I...I was...”

  “Don’t answer.” He waved a hand at me, again nearly clocking me save for my superior reflexes. “I know where you were. With your new friends in the FBI.” He waved a ham-like fist at the wreckage of my phone. “They think they’re too good for me. They all do.” His gaze settled back on me. “You do, too. But you’re wrong.” He pounded his chest, then grew even more. “Well, I guess I’m learning the lesson here that my mom tried to teach me when she abandoned me: family is a shit show, and I don’t owe you a damned thing.” He flashed a two fingered salute at me. “Peace.” Then he narrowed it to one finger.

  Then he did a standing broad jump out the window, taking a good portion of the sill and frame with him.

  I rushed to the edge as he came crashing to the earth below like a falling meteor. I heard him sniffing—or maybe sniffling—as he broke into a loping, leaping run. He was over the hill and out of sight in seconds as I stood there, in the wreckage of my hotel room, staring after him.

  What the hell do you say to that?

  “No, Friday, don’t go,” I said, utterly without enthusiasm. He couldn’t hear me, anyway.

  “I can hear the irony in the way you said that!” His voice carried over the hills between us.

  I just stared after him, and soon enough, the sound of his heavy footsteps receded from my earshot. I looked down at my phone, which was definitely unsalvageable, and sighed.

  What the hell was I supposed to do now?

  79.

  The map I got in the lobby from Dominique (who gave me a stinkeye that told me that she was apparently one of the displeased people that had so worried Chalke and Shaw) suggested that I was a long way from the nearest cell phone store. Fortunately, I recognized that Wittman Capital was about a fifteen-minute walk, so I set out, catching a lot of glare in the lobby, and not for the destruction of my room or my current hairstyle, neither of which were particularly good nor in my control.

  Ten minutes’ walk did little to fix the latter and absolutely nothing to improve the former, but it did find me at the entrance to the parking lot of Wittman Capital. I estimated it was a little after nine in the morning by the sun’s position and also my hasty check of my clock before I left the hotel room.

  The security guard gave me a suspicious look but did not try to bar my entry, so in I went, meandering through the open work bay and sun-drenched tables, catching more frowns and displeased looks, along with a lot of whispers.

  “Did you hear what she said on Socialite?”

  “I didn’t say a damned thing, I’ll have you know,” I shot back at one stunned person, half a room away, when I caught their whisper campaign. “I’m not even on Socialite, and I have nothing to do with that idiot and whatever he posts.”

  My rage quieted the room, which I gauged to be about half full. My impression of Silicon Valley was that nine to five was for other parts of the country. Or at least that was the view from Wittman Capital. Noon to midnight might have been more accurate shop hours for them here.

  I steamed my way over to Mendelsohn’s desk, which was abandoned and looked like it had been since last we’d been here. I stood there quietly for a moment, then glanced over at Kelvin, who was stealing looks at me between typing something on his computer. “You know where Mendelsohn is?” I asked.

  “Not in yet this morning.” His voice was calm yet steely, and he avoided actually making eye contact with me. I guess my non-post had somehow offended him, too, despite my not having anything to do with it.

  “When will he be in?” I asked, trying not to fume too loudly. Oh, hell, who am I kidding, I have an RBF when I’m not even mad. When I seethe, as I was then, my face screams my aggravation loud and clear.

  “No idea.” Kelvin still did not look up. He seemed to be making a studious point not to.

  “Fine,” I said, and caught a glimpse of motion in Wittman’s office. “I’ll just ask your boss.” And I headed for his door.

  “What—? No, you can’t!” Kelvin was on his feet in a second, almost overturning his chair, he bolted from it so quickly

  “Too slow,” I said, and turned the knob. It was locked, and broke under my grasp. I threw it open on a stunned Cameron Wittman, who wore a headset and stared at me from behind his desk. “Hi, Cam. We need to talk.”

  “Mr. Wittman, I’m sorry,” Kelvin said, edging up behind me but not daring to lay a hand on me.

  Cameron Wittman just stared at me hard for a second, then said, “I’ll have to call you back,” and terminated his call. To Kelvin, he said. “It’s okay. Leave us alone for a minute?”

  “Should I call security?” Kelvin asked, letting a trill of pleasure enter his voice, possibly at the thought of security doing...whatever they would try to do to me. I kept quiet at this, but rolled my eyes so Wittman could see it plainly.

  “That won’t be necessary,” Wittman said. “Just close the door.”

  Kelvin did. Or at least tried to. It clicked and clanked where I’d broken the mechanism. He fussed with it for about a minute while Wittman and I stood in silence, waiting for him to leave. “I’ll just...leave this and call maintenance,” he finally said, giving up.

  “Thanks,” Wittman said. When the final clanking of the knob subsided, he remained standing, facing off with me. “So...what can I do for you?”

  “Glad you asked,” I said, stepping around his desk to look out his window, not bothering to give him the grace of eye contact. “I’ve got a line on Grendel, but my idiot partner, who has screwed things up so monumentally as to create a virtual stink around me that is apparently smellable all the way back in Washington, broke my phone. I need a car and Mendelsohn’s help.”

  Wittman folded his arms in my peripheral vision. “I don’t see how any of that is my problem.”

  Well, hadn’t this just been a great start to the day. “If I was in a charitable mood,” I said, trying to keep my voice steely calm, listening to the voice in my head that said, Peace, chill, instead of the one that suggested, KILL, “I might just point out that the only reason I’m here, Cam, is because some metahuman douche decided to raid your facilities and kill my partner as well as myself. That I’ve done my utmost, within the parameters given to me by the FBI and you Silicon Valley incels, to try and solve this, and that, indeed, I have, in spite of a breathtaking lack of cooperation on many fronts. No
t yours, at least up until now. You’ve been incredibly cooperative. If I wasn’t in a shitty mood, I might thank you for that, most effusively, in fact.”

  I wheeled on him, bringing my best glare. “I am not in a great mood though, Cam. I have been killed. I have been beaten. I have been harangued. I have apparently gone viral for things I neither said nor believe, on an internet platform which I am not even present on. For apparently endorsing the beliefs of an idiot who I can’t even count on to hang with me in tough times. Somehow the last of these—the ones whose consequences are hurt feelings and possible offense—seems to be the primary concern for the rest of the world, while the former—the ones that actually risk my life and limb—are not. This is deeply disconcerting for me. I’m feeling a little offended myself, in fact, by the breathtaking lack of worry about my life being in jeopardy on a constant basis during this case.”

  Wittman didn’t even blink. “Again, that’s hardly my problem.”

  “The big yellow monster seems kinda like he might be your problem, Cam,” I said. “He’s not shy about killing his way through Silicon Valley. He’s not happy with you guys, and I’m beginning to understand how he feels.” I took a menacing step toward him. “Now listen to me. I don’t have a beef with you, but it looks to my inexperienced eye—oh, who’s kidding who, I know beef when I see it—that you’ve got a problem with me. So why don’t you just stick it up your ass for now and we’ll work it out later, after I save the damned day.” I got right up in his face. “Again, I might add.”

  “Please take a step back,” Wittman said, looking me right in the eye. Unflapped, too.

  Something about the way he said it, something about the challenge, right then, was like the proverbial straw joining the Hoover Building on my shoulders.

  Something broke in me.

  I lifted a hand, jutted out one finger, and prepared myself. “Listen up, Cam—” I brought it down, ready to poke him right in the chest as I lectured—

  And something exploded in the air between us, blasting me back across the room as though a bomb had gone off between us.