Midnight Squad: The Ties That Bind

by J. L. M. Visada

  “Well, the insurance company decided that it was gross negligence on the part of the hotel, and they refused to pay off the families. So the hotel had to pay them off quietly or the bad publicity would have crushed this place. Since the money had to come from somewhere, they told us all we could take a pay cut or turn in our two-week’ notice. Since then the place has been scrapping and clawing to just stay afloat.”

  “It had to have been hard keeping this place up without maintenance?” Grim asked.

  “Luckily, a temp agency stepped in and supplied us with a crew of maintenance men.”

  “Really? So how did that work out?” Grim was on to something, I just didn’t know what yet.

  “They were okay for the most part, a little rude and standoffish, but they worked hard. At least they did.”

  “Did?” Grim sounded uneasy.

  “Yeah, about two weeks ago the maintenance men just stopped showing up. Thankfully the hotel had already hired a few permanent maintenance men, so we weren’t left in the lurch.”

  Grim nodded, “Well, that’s good. So did you ever hear from any of them again?”

  “No, but it wasn’t exactly like they were friendly.”

  Grim smiled, “Thanks. Don’t forget; as soon as the nails dry, I’ll get you that hundred.”

  The rest of the time was spent joking with one another, and trying to talk Grim into getting a Brazilian. We had him going for it too, but unfortunately, the man turned out to be hairless. Katy had used her magic to remove his clothes once, and accidentally took his hair too. The only hair Grim had left was on his head, and thankfully, his eyebrows. If Katy had taken the eyebrows, then the big guy would really have looked like a grade-A psycho.

  The hotel employees finally left, and I had to admit that we all looked pretty good. Even Grim looked like he just stepped out of GQ. Of course I’d never heard of a GQ model with smiley faces painted on his toes, and purple fingernails, but strangely, Grim was able to pull it off. I stepped in front of the nearest mirror, and wow! Even I had to admit that I looked great. They gave me red highlights that were the same color as Penny’s natural hair, and then gave Penny lowlights that matched my natural black hair. They kept her hair long, but playful. The red highlights made my hair really stand out and look good. Penny’s black lowlights looked amazing, but that was because she made them look amazing. We could have put her in a potato sack and wrapped the rest of her in duct tape and she’d still look amazing.

  Penny wrapped an arm around me, “We look amazing. This was really a great idea.”

  “So, are you ready for the dance tonight?” I asked.

  “Will you save one for me?”

  “Only if you’re a good girl.” I whispered, and the grin on Penny’s face was a thing of beauty.

  Two hours later we were all dressed and ready to step out for the dance. Grim still demanded that we wear our body armor under our clothing. So that meant nothing short sleeved, and no miniskirts. Not that I had the legs for a miniskirt, but I sure would have liked to have seen Penny rocking a miniskirt and spiked heels. Unfortunately safety had to take precedence over fashion. We still all looked amazing, though. We rode the elevator down together, and then made our way to the ballroom.

  “It’s a shame Katy couldn’t join us. Did she say when she was coming back?” Niki asked.

  “No, she just said that she’d be out late. Hopefully, she’ll be back soon. I don’t like her being out late alone. It’s not safe.” Grim said, and then began to crack his knuckles nervously.

  “She’ll be fine. She knows this city, she promised that she’d just visit her parents, and then come back. She’s not gonna just wander around the city. Katy will be safe, just relax for a while…for me…please.” Penny was trying to soothe his nerves, but I had the distinct impression that Grim wasn’t going to feel better until Katy was safe and back with us. The best we could do was try to distract him in the meantime.

  “This is so cool!” Janine’s voice came out over my Bluetooth. She’d figured out how to sync with my phone, and now she could follow us anywhere. I was worried about it at first. What happens if my battery dies, or my phone gets stolen? We tested it out by pulling the battery on my phone. As soon as I pulled the battery, Janine popped back into the computer. It was unexplainable. There was no reason that she should just reappear on the flash drive plugged into my computer. It was like her soul was anchored to that one place. No matter what happened she would immediately reappear in the flash drive. So as long as the flash drive is safe, then Janine is safe.

  Janine had really been pushing herself on the computer, and she’d learned quite a few little tricks in a short time. So far we’d learned that she had complete access to the hard drive, and that meant she could almost instantly recall anything saved on it. So the first thing she did was download every book she could find on computers, computer language, and hacking in general. Now she could practically think in binary, if need be. Two days ago, our ghost could barely operate her computer to play an audiobook, and now she understood computer languages fluently. She just had to think the coding and the computer bent to her will. It was amazing. Computer programming done at the speed of thought…oh the possibilities. I was drooling over what we might be able to do if I had the time and resources to build a really powerful computer and let Janine design the operating system from the inside out. An operating system designed to function with the speed and natural flowing intuition of thought, for a techie like me, that’s almost a sexual fantasy.

  Unfortunately, that would have to wait until we could get back home at the earliest. In the meantime Janine was entertaining herself by rampaging through the internet like a bull in a china shop. She’d already accidentally crashed Amazon.com twice, and after tampering with some of the coding on Netflix, all the children’s movies were now playing steamy soft-core movies. If you clicked on Wall-E you ended up with Basic Instinct, and now Netflix had a new category of movie…craptacular. Killer Klowns From Outer Space was at the very top of the list. I’m sure Netflix’s programmers will have it fixed shortly, but we all had a good laugh when Janine showed us. She also “accidentally” tampered with Google so that whenever someone clicked on a porn site, a big wagging finger appeared on the screen and a robotic voice could be heard threatening to tell the viewer’s mother. It was funny, but I don’t think any of us were happy about her doing that. The last thing we needed was for some of this to come back and bite us on the ass, but it was just Janine being a little mischievous. Considering how much she’d learned in just a day, it was a miracle that she was able to restrain herself as much as she did.

  We stepped inside. There were a lot of people, but it wasn’t crowded by any means. Food poisoning had kept quite a few of them inside their rooms. The rest were ready to party, however. It was a little surreal. Some of the people showed up in their furry suits, and some were dressed normally. Meanwhile, we were all dressed nicely, but maybe we’d overdressed a little. I wasn’t complaining though. I mean, how often does a girl like me turn heads in a room? Sure, a lot of it was the company I keep, but it was still kind of nice to be part of something that made everyone turn and look.

  We milled around for a few minutes, and then the host took the microphone, “Ladies, gentlemen, and anything in between…We are proud to present you the dance tonight. We had planned to have a live reenactment of the Michael Jackson song Thriller, but unfortunately, all our zombies have come down with food poisoning, and they are unable to participate. Instead, we have decided to start the dance off with a short play. I wrote it, and it is titled, Doctor Who: Zombie Apocalypse. Let’s start off the festivities shall we?”

  It was clear that they’d put it all together pretty quickly. The Tardis was made out of a bunch of old boxes taped together and colored blue with crayons. Of course they ran out of the correct color crayon early by the look of things, and near the end it was just a mashup of any crayon they had left. It looked like they even used markers and colored pencils. In th
eir defense, it was a lot to have to color in a short time. The sonic screwdriver was a pen and a tiny lazer pointer held together by silly putty, and the Dalek that showed up was just a vacuum cleaner being pulled by a rope. As cheesy as all of it was, I think we could all forgive them for it due to the short time they had to put it all together.

  The play was way too long. It really just amounted to some really pathetic fan fiction story where Doctor Who came down just in the nick of time to save us from a zombie apocalypse initiated by the Daleks. He then gets bitten and infected. He becomes a zombie, is killed by our host in a cheesy overly dramatic death scene, and then is reborn just in time to tell our host and audience to beware any future zombie attacks. Then Dr Who said something about having to go off to find River at a gay gypsy bar mitzvah for the disabled. I didn’t understand the line at all, but apparently some of the audience did because there was actual laughter and clapping. Sadly, that was the only time anyone seemed to enjoy it, and I think the guy playing the Doctor ad-libbed it by the semi-irritated expression on the guy that wrote it. Maybe it really could have been good with some tweaking. It was just too long, and the dialogue was so cheesy that I kept wishing the Doctor would actually show up and take us away in the TARDIS just to escape this god-awful play.

  Mercifully, it ended. About fifteen minutes too long, but at least it did end. We all clapped, but it was that kind of barely motivated clap you might give to someone else’s kid at the school talent show. You don’t really mean it, and you want to be supportive, but they were just so bad you can’t really bring yourself to fake any real interest. Still, it could have been worse. They could have given us some kind of encore.

  The dance was pretty nice once it got started. I do have one question though. When did music stop having instruments? Everything was synthesizers, auto-tuned, and remixed digitally to make it sound pitch perfect even if the performance probably wasn’t. Oh technology, it’s truly amazing how you can take the sound of cats humping inside a blender, and then turn it into a digitally perfect voice. We don’t need singers, we have autotune. Also, is there a law requiring Pitbull to give a token rap verse on every song? Either he was rattling off something that really didn’t make any sense with the rest of the song, or it was a rap song with some random singer crooning a hook for the song that didn’t actually fit with the rap lyrics. Inside, I cringed because it was a sure sign I was becoming old before my time when I started actually complaining about the quality of modern music. First it starts with complaining about the music, then it’s complaining about fashions, then I’ll be talking about how much better things were in my day, then I’ll officially be an old lady.

  I giggled a little as I imagined telling kids to “get off my lawn”. I’m still in my early twenties and I was acting like it was time to fill out a card for the AARP. I admit that I had to grow up before my time, but it wasn’t like I needed to worry about breaking a hip, or finding my dentures. I was just being a little silly. The dance was just a nice opportunity to relax, but about twenty minutes in, the DJ had to leave. He’d made a brave effort, but food poisoning had him down just like all the others that volunteered to be “zombies” for the convention. The host, in a real panic move, asked if anyone would volunteer to be DJ for the rest of the dance.

  “I’ve got this. DD, take me up there and let me sync in to the computer.” Janine said in my ear.

  “Yeah, but who is going to stand back there and act like the DJ, because it sure isn’t going to be me.”

  “Please? This could be so much fun.”

  “No! I am not getting up there to be gawked at while you play God knows what.” I hissed into the ear piece.

  “Just tell them you can attach your phone’s playlist to the DJ setup. I’ll handle the music. Nobody has to even be up there then. Ple-e-e-ease!” Well, now that we’re going into four syllable pleases. I really didn’t have much of a chance of talking her out of it. Besides, she’d been a real trouper, all things considered. I know I’d still be freaking out about being trapped in a tiny piece of plastic. I made my way over to the host and volunteered my services. I was still kind of hoping he’d say no, or that they’d have already found someone. Instead I got shuffled up to the DJ booth, and given carte blanche.

  It took Janine all of about five seconds to sync into the DJ’s system. Suddenly the subwoofers gave a thunderous bark, and everyone was now staring at me as Janine’s started playing her first song. It was some popcorn song with a catchy tune that you could dance to. They all started clapping and cheering that I’d saved the dance. Of course, I hadn’t really done anything. Janine was handling it all. The extra attention spooked me a little, and once the nerves got the better of me I all but ran out of the booth. Of course, Janine was already hooked up and ready to roll. For the rest of the night, I was getting cheered on by any and every one, while she did all the work. I felt a little guilty, but it wasn’t like I could explain the situation to anyone.

  I slipped over to the corner of the room. I watched Penny dancing. She was lost in the music. Her hair whipped around like a flame in a tornado as she gyrated to the beat. Three furries were dancing around her, and if her smile was any bigger it might actually get stuck there permanently. I looked around for Grim, but he was nowhere to be seen.

  “She’s having a blast. This was a really good idea. She needed a chance to cut loose and relax a bit.” I jumped. Somehow, the big lug had gotten behind me.

  “Jesus, you scared me.” I gave his arm a playful slap that he completely ignored.

  “Why aren’t you dancing?” He asked.

  “I’m not much of a dancer.”

  “So?” He said it like that somehow was an answer.

  “Nobody has asked.” I felt my face flush.

  Grim smiled and spoke in a terrible English accent, “Well then, my dear, might I have this dance?”

  He stuck his hand out for me to take, and before I realized what just happened, he had me out on the dance floor. Grim is a big man, but amazingly nimble. “Where did you learn to dance like this?”

  “I have six sisters and a stepfather with a trick knee that just magically acts up whenever the girls want to go to their first dance. At least that’s the excuse he sticks with.”

  “You’d think he would want to go.”

  Grim smiled and gave me a twirl, “He does, but he’s super protective of them, and seeing some twelve year old running on caffeine, sugar, and puberty bumping and grinding against one of his daughters would probably send Dad into a berserker rage. So he stays home so that his girls can actually enjoy their dance. Of course, he always sent me to keep tabs on them. I can’t say that I’m much better.”

  “Now, let’s slow things down a bit. The song is Finally, and the artist is Kat in Concert.” Janine was really getting into being a DJ. She was actually using a cheesy radio voice.

  Even Grim laughed at Janine’s radio voice, “I think we’ve created a monster.” He swept me around a few more times, but then I felt a gentle tap on my shoulder.

  “Mind if I cut in?” Penny asked. I stepped aside and Grim took her into his arms. Penny glanced back at me and said, “Remember, I still want a dance before the night is over.”

  I nodded and watched Grim and Penny sweep away into the crowd. I sighed, and turned to make my way back to what I thought was going to be my official corner of the room for the rest of the night, or until Penny came back for me.

  “Excuse me, but would you like to dance?” I froze.

  It was like he had escaped from a romance novel. Piercing arctic blue eyes, broad shoulders, and a body that looked like it spent hours every day working in the gym. He definitely had his sexiness turned up to eleven. I nodded like a bobble head doll gone crazy.

  To say he danced would be to belittle his skill. The man honestly just flowed like water throughout the song. Grim was good, but this man was amazing. “What’s your name?”

  “Le-“ and then it was drowned out by some dubstep song.

&nbs
p; “What? Lewis?” I asked.

  “No, Le-“ The music cut him off again.

  Rather than stand there asking this over and over again, I just decided to shake my groove thing until a more conversation friendly song was played. Meanwhile the man was just exhilarating. His body was hard, and densely muscled. I could actually feel them ripple with each movement. Finally Janine played something soft and romantic. I rested my head against his chest, and we swayed to the beat.

  “What did you say your name was? The music was so loud I didn’t hear you the first time.” I asked as I snuck myself a quick grope of his bicep.

  “My name is Legion, for we are many.”

  My eyes snapped open and I started to pull away. “Hold still, we have much to discuss, and if you keep struggling, then we might just have to snap your neck like a dried twig.”

  I froze, but Legion was so strong that he moved us around the dance floor. Nobody would have known I was a hostage, and I was too afraid to say anything. There was no way Penny could get to me before he killed me. I was terrified.

  “Relax DD; we don’t really want to hurt you. Well of course,we do want to hurt you, but just not right now. We come bearing wonderful news.”

  “W-w-what?” I stammered, and did my best not to trip. My knees were shaking.

  “Well, it seems that our…boss has a deal for you.” Legion said boss as though it left a bad taste in his mouth.

  “Deal?”

  “Yes. Our…boss...well he would like you to just walk away. He’s willing to let you just walk upstairs right now while no one’s looking, pack your bags, and walk out of this nightmare right now. Personally, We’d be happier dragging you into a dark corner, stabbing you several times, and then using the wounds to pleasure ourself until you finally bleed to death. However, that is apparently not an option. So we’ve been reduced to being a simple messenger. Leave now, walk out on your friends, or stay and you can die alongside them. It should be easy, after all…you left them once before. So leaving them now should be no problem at all. It’s not like you could do anything to save them anyway.”