Blood Ties

by Robert J. Crane

  In spite of all that uphill-both-ways-in-the-snow bullshit, I’d managed to humble the bastard. Once with the aid of Friday (amazingly) and Veronika, and once with my own guts and a distraction assist from Veronika’s Inquest gang.

  But now I’d lost my phone, my ride, my FBI backing was pulled due to Friday’s idiocy, I’d as good as quit my job just now, and Veronika and friends were definitely leaning against me in this whole matchup. Plus, Grendel had gotten whatever the hell he was aiming to get, and hanging out there about to move to the next stage of...whatever the hell Michael Bermudez had in his revenge-addled brain to do.

  And I’d just walked out on that? For pride? Because I was angry about the government acting like a bunch of bureaucratic, ass-covering toolbags, more concerned about the effects of pissing off people than saving lives?

  Shit.

  Seriously...what the hell was I supposed to do now?

  84.

  Michael Bermudez

  He didn’t bother taking his computer with him, because soon he wouldn’t need it. All he did was type in one last message:

  Ready?

  And when he got the response:

  Yep.

  He grinned at the message, threw on a t-shirt and pants, and headed for the door. Didn’t even bother to log out first, he was so jubilant and distracted.

  This was it. Everything he’d planned. With help, of course. Everything they’d planned. If everything went according to that, well...

  Revenge would be had.

  They’d get mega wealthy.

  Life would be good.

  With one last look around, Michael Bermudez closed the door to his apartment—and his old life—and prepared to go create a new one.

  “Time to reboot the system,” he whispered with a smile. Because it really was.

  85.

  Sienna

  I’d lost steam after I realized the depth of my screwup. How I had thrown out my job and all my plans for the sake of assuaging my stupid pride? Well, no one had ever accused me of being the coolest, calmest of individuals, but I had to admit:

  Yeah, I messed up on this one. Hard.

  Walking over the last hill to leave the Wittman Capital property, I reflected that this tree-lined campus was just a little too big, just a little too shrouded, just a little too far from the damned road. I had a long walk to the nearest cell phone store, where I’d hopefully be able to secure a new phone, with which I would promptly call Shaw and apologize. Then Chalke. Then go on a mea culpa internet tour, or whatever they needed me to do.

  Whatever got me in place to stop Grendel/Bermudez from doing whatever he had it in mind to do.

  “Sienna?” A voice reached my ears, pricking them up, from the road, which was about fifty yards to my left. I was high on a hillside, and I looked down to find a mid-grade BMW parked on the side of the entry drive. Aaron Mendelsohn sat there, window down, waving up at me.

  I looked left and right in case security was watching, then ambled down the hill. “Hey,” I called back. “You might want to just roll up the window and drive on in.”

  Mendelsohn frowned. “Why would I want to do that?”

  “I don’t know if you’ve heard,” I said, closing the last ten yards or so to reach his door, “but Wittman cut me off. Kicked me out. Whatever. I’m persona non grata around here.”

  His frown deepened. “He left me a voicemail mentioning the basics, but I didn’t quite understand the genesis. What happened?”

  “I had a bad night and kinda picked a fight with him,” I said, deciding, what the hell, own it. “Turns out he’s meta. Did you know that?”

  “Yeah. We talked about it when he took the serum,” Mendelsohn said, nodding like it was nothing. “He asked my opinion, I rendered it. For him, it makes a lot of sense. He’s a very wealthy man, security is an issue, kidnapping threats are a problem, especially in some of the developing countries where he’s done business, so—”

  “So you advised him to become superhuman,” I said. “Good advice for him. Didn’t work so well for me.”

  “Doesn’t sound to me like it worked well for anyone if he’s cutting off support for this investigation,” Mendelsohn said. “I’ll have a talk with him if you like. By the by, did you get my voicemail?”

  “Ah, no,” I said. “Friday shattered my phone this morning, so I’m operating in the dark at the moment.” I waved my hands to indicate my mode of traversal. “Also lacking a car, and seeking a phone store without a GPS? Not the easiest thing I’ve ever done. I mean, not as tough as, say, running across Scotland without that, but still...not easy.”

  “I can give you a lift,” he said, reaching across his seat and throwing open his door.

  I adopted a pained look. “I don’t want to cause you friction with your boss. Wittman is super pissed at me. Not without cause.”

  “I’m sure he has very good reasons, in his mind, for being so,” Mendelsohn said. “But I’m not him and he’s not me, and he respects me enough to respect my decisions. I have quite a bit of latitude in determining my personal time off, and I feel a day coming on now.” He smiled. “So...come on. I’ve got some exciting developments to share with you based on my part of the investigation in any case.”

  “You...kept investigating?” I asked. “Last night?”

  He nodded. “I managed to get a line on finding Uruk. You remember? The—”

  “Homeless totally non-Sumerian in the footage from your server robbery downtown,” I said, smiling. “Yeah. I remember. Distinctive name and all that. How does this help us, though? Because I have the actual name of Grendel now. Left you a message about it.”

  “I got that and called you back this morning,” he said. “What’s the name?”

  “Michael Bermudez. Sound familiar?” I circled around and got in the BMW while he thought about it.

  He pursed his lips, deep in thought. “Can’t say it does, but this is a big town. Bio?”

  “Veteran of Socialite, where he said something to get himself internally blacklisted,” I said, ticking off my fingers, “and then Inquest, where he might have discovered that their search engine’s success is actually a giant sham to disguise that they’re using traffic assignments to look bigger and cooler than they are.”

  Mendelsohn’s eyes widened slightly as he three-point turned the car. “That was a popular rumor for a while. You confirmed this?”

  “With Brittle Bruce, yeah,” I said.

  “Oof,” Mendelsohn said. “That’s going to affect Wittman Capital’s investment.”

  “Oh?” I tried to sound nonchalant, but a little question mark had just popped up in my head relating to Mendelsohn’s interest here. “Does that mean you’ll sell it? The company holding, I mean?”

  “I’ve wanted to sell it for quite some time,” Mendelsohn said. “Long before the rumors came out. Their revenue model never made sense to me, but Cameron had a feeling about it and overruled my recommendation. Even if they are doing what you say, there’s still some underlying value thanks to some recent acquisitions, but it certainly slashes the price of the company. By a lot. Cameron’s investment might end up closer to a break even when it’s all said and done. Anyone who got in on the later funding rounds is going to—forgive the colloquialism—‘lose their ass.’”

  “Let me warm up the world’s smallest violin to showcase my deep concern for the hit to Cam’s profit margin,” I said, putting my thumb and forefinger an inch apart. “Meanwhile, we’ve got Michael Bermudez out here doing shady shit for a reason we can’t quite get a finger on, other than revenge and possibly robotic AI—”

  “Indeed, I’m hard-pressed to find logical things he could be working on other than this,” Mendelsohn said. “But there are other possibilities, I suppose. It’s all very murky.”

  “Yeah, I’d like to clear it up,” I said, “but unless I can find this Michael Bermudez, I doubt I’ll be able to.”

  It only took a beat before Mendelsohn brought up the logical question. The one tha
t any idiot would ask: “What happens if you run across this Bermudez now?” He looked over at me, eyes lined with concern. “I mean, forgive me, but...it hasn’t gone particularly well for you most of the times you’ve challenged him. Do you have a plan to change that?”

  I drew a deep breath, then let it out slowly. “No, not really. But I have to do something, don’t I?”

  Mendelsohn shifted his eyes to the road as we wended our way out of the corporate park where Wittman Capital’s Headquarters lay. “I suppose you do. Can’t the FBI help?”

  “I’m not so sure they can,” I said, a little carefully. “Take me to the cell phone store?”

  “Okay...” he said, nodding along. “And then?”

  “And hopefully by the time I sync the new phone with the cloud, I’ll have a voicemail waiting from the local FBI office with a last known address for Bermudez. After that...” I gave it a moment’s thought.

  Nope. Still no idea what to do.

  “After that, I guess we’ll just have to puzzle something out,” I said. Mendelsohn gulped, and I knew exactly how he felt.

  86.

  “You have four-hundred and twenty-seven new voicemails.”

  “Sonofabitch,” I muttered under my breath as I held my new phone. My contacts had already populated, and looking through visual voicemail was a huge lifesaver.

  “Inbox zero appears to be a far-off dream for you,” Mendelsohn said, his own phone up to his ear as we hung out in the parking lot of the phone store. “Yes, Kelvin? I’m not going to make it in today. Bit of a Ferris Bueller thing, yeah...”

  I skimmed the voicemails, scrolling down. I flat-out ignored the ones from Chalke, Shaw, or anything with a DC or New York number. Which was basically all of them.

  Aha.

  A 415 number stood right in the middle of them all, and I clicked it. It took a second to load, then launched into the message with several seconds lopped off the front.

  “...with the San Francisco FBI office. The system shows one subject with that name in the area.” They rattled off a short address that wasn’t familiar at all to me. “Thank you, and please feel free to call with any additional inquiries.” Click.

  I repeated the address a couple times in my head, then once out loud before popping it into my phone’s GPS. I motioned to Mendelsohn, who wrapped up whatever the hell he was doing with his call. I caught the last of it.

  “...really ought to prepare to accept a markdown on that Inquest stock, Cameron. Trust me on this.” Pause. “Traffic assignment, yep. The rumors are true.” He looked right at me. “Yes, I got it from a reliable source.”

  I rolled my eyes at that. Likelihood Cameron Wittman considered me a reliable source: zero. Cares I had about Cameron Wittman losing money on Inquest’s bullshit stock shell game? Also zero.

  “All right, thanks,” Mendelsohn said. “Talk to you later.” He hung up. “Where are we headed?” I repeated the address, and he nodded. “Downtown, not far from our location there. And also not far from—”

  “Where Uruk hangs his battle scythe?” I asked, heading for the BMW.

  Mendelsohn chuckled. “Weren’t spears more the thing in that era?”

  “All I know is they were probably, what? Bronze? Stone? What age was it?” I shrugged. “My pre-historical knowledge is just not comprehensive for some reason. Probably because my mother didn’t offer that course.”

  He tsk-tsked me. “It’s never too late to learn. And you really shouldn’t knock your education. As I’ve said before, you’re quite bright and well-read. A college degree, especially in these days, is less a sign of actual knowledge than it is a hint that you might be socially connected in the right ways and have yourself blessed by an academic elite that is somewhat insular and disconnected from the majority of our society. To their peril.”

  “Oh, have we come full circle?” I asked. “Has the power of education and the revolt of the nerds been eclipsed, the wheel turning back to coolness radiating from the mal-educated and ignorant?”

  “Education and ignorance can, sadly, go hand in hand,” Mendelsohn said. “Trust me on this. I have met some of the most educated idiots you could possibly imagine.”

  “I have come in contact with a breathtaking lot of stupid,” I said, slamming the door behind me. “So I can imagine quite a lot of it. Also, I’m related to Friday, so...”

  Mendelsohn hesitated, chagrin bleeding out. “Yes. I heard he broadcast his thoughts on the disposition of lesbians after our conversation yesterday. Very unfortunate.”

  “Thanks for still sitting next to me, then,” I said. “A lot of people are inching away right now.” I looked out the window. “I know for a fact my bosses at the FBI are.”

  “Why wouldn’t I?” Mendelsohn asked, and he sounded genuinely curious.

  “I don’t know if you’ve noticed,” I said, “but these days in our society there exists a little something called ‘Cancel’ culture. A less nice way to put it might be ‘twitchmobbing.’ Where the whole point is to find some offense someone’s committed online, and then a large group of people bombard them on the internet until they apologize and accept their exile from polite society.”

  “I am going to suggest something to you,” Mendelsohn said. “Something you probably already know. First, that any mob of human beings is naturally calloused to the feelings of their target, righteous cause or no. That, in fact, when operating as a mob, humans are the least empathetic they can be, the least rationally judgmental and most heinously short-sighted and unforgiving. Furthermore, that anyone who abandons or criticizes you because of something you didn’t even say—well, they’re being either deeply disingenuous or flat-out malicious. Regardless, they are no friend of yours.”

  “Yeah, I don’t have that many friends lately,” I said.

  “You should work on that,” Mendelsohn said. “But I’d be happy to count you among mine.”

  “You might not be so glad you said that.” I gave him a rare-ish (these days) smile. “People who stand too close to me lately tend to have a target painted on their backs.”

  “Well,” Mendelsohn said. “Maybe I’ll just stand a little farther away. Not right next to you. A small, reasonable distance, but where I can still proclaim my support.” He smiled.

  “That’s the best offer I think I’ve had all day,” I said. And I meant it.

  87.

  Friday

  “Socialite!” Friday shouted at the pyramid, throwing the empty Arby’s potato cakes cardboard container at the building. “Unban me! Chapmannnnnnnnnn!”

  The building didn’t answer, of course. Security was buzzing around behind him. They were right on the edge of the parking lot, and Friday was standing next to the building’s ledge, the start of the pyramid. He was going to begin climbing it soon, too, if Chapman didn’t come out and answer for this indignity.

  “Sir, the police have been called,” a security guard with a megaphone broadcasted to him.

  “You can’t call the police on me,” Friday said, slapping his own chest. “If they try arrest me, I’ll arrest them! I’m with the FBI!” He banged a hand on the concrete side of the building, shattering one of the panes of glass above. “All I want is my account reinstated so I can upload my tasteless nudes and win back my followers!” He slapped his hand on his chest again for emphasis. “I have to get them back, see? They have to...to see.”

  He took a doddering step, suddenly lightheaded. His muscles were so hugenormous. That happened every once in a while when he was embiggened. Lightheadedness.

  He shook it off. The pencilneck with the megaphone was saying something into it.

  “If you give up now, we won’t have to tase you.”

  “If you tase me, I’m going to jump-start your heart with it. But rectally.” He made a move toward them, and the little bitches scrambled like tenpins hit by a bowling ball. “That’s right, run, you little girls. I am way too much man for you.”

  He laughed. How could they stop him now? They’d have to see, da
mmit. Give him what he wanted and he’d show them—show them all. The whole world, even.

  “I will not be deterred!” Friday shouted. “Heh. De-turd. Get it?” He blinked, lightheaded again. How big was he?

  Whatever. He had a job to do. He had to get his account back. He was as big as he needed to be for that.

  “You can’t stop me!” he shouted, top of his lungs. “I’m going to make shit happen around here. I will drop deuces on you people, you understand me? You can’t threaten me. I can’t be intimidated—”

  The crack of gunshot hit the wall next to him, shattering chips of concrete and showering them in his face, and sending Friday’s pulse up into the nuclear high zone.

  “AIIIIIIIIEEEEEE!” he screamed and ran for it, sprinting along the side of the building and rounding the pyramid in seconds.

  He didn’t stop running for a while, and while he was, he certainly didn’t pause to consider how he shouldn’t be intimidated. Someone had just shot at him, after all. With a gun. That shit could kill him.

  He just kept running, and didn’t spare a thought about how far he should go, just that he should get the hell away from here.

  88.

  Sienna

  Michael Bermudez’s apartment was empty, something I determined in about a pulse-raising thirty seconds as I swept it with my Glock 19. I looked for signs of movement, listened for any sound that indicated he was here and preparing an ambush in which to gut me.

  But he wasn’t, which left me in an apartment that was cluttered with electronics equipment, and...little else, really. It was kind of sad how one-dimensional our villain’s life looked at first blush.