Robert Crane - Family

Mother stood above me, arms crossed, calm and collected, unmoving. “You’ve got spirit,” she said, looking at the black gloves she wore, the same kind she always forced me to wear, “but spirit won’t get you anything save for a nasty death.” She squatted next to me, and I felt her glove on my arm. “Discipline. Control.” I looked into her eyes as she stripped my glove off, baring my bandaged palm. “Obedience.” She shifted position and gripped me under the armpits, lifting me up. I saw the box in the corner, she faced me toward it, its wide maw open as if ready to swallow me up, and I tensed in her arms.

She gripped my wrists, lifted my hands above my head and I felt the pain begin to subside, deep breaths flooding into my lungs. It still hurt, I still had trouble breathing, but it got better. “Breathe,” she said, as I stared at the box, taking deep breaths, all through my mouth, every one of them. “Get your breathing under control. You don’t want to hyperventilate.”

Her grip on my wrists faded and my legs took up their own weight again. I stared into the box, into the shadows and darkness inside, and realized I couldn’t see the back of it, not even with the lights on. It waited for me, a silent mouth ready to devour me whole. I turned my head, slow, fearful. Mother was still standing directly behind me, close enough that I could smell her sour breath, like rancid milk.

“Spirit won’t get you anything but killed,” she said to me again, and her face was blank, an empty reservoir of no emotion. “You use your strength by putting your emotions on a leash.” She looked down, then back up at me again, and I could have sworn she shifted her feet, as though from nervousness. “You will obey. You will listen. There are rules for a reason.”

“I just…” I choked out. “I just…I needed to…I felt…”

“I don’t care,” she said with a slight shake of her head, and by the total neutrality of her voice I could tell she meant it. “Feelings are irrelevant. Feelings won’t change anything; action will.” She took a step back from me, and turned toward the stairs. “Follow the rules, not your feelings.” She cast a look back as she reached the bottom of the stairs. “Your feelings will lead you to make stupid decisions – like they just did. Listen. To me, to the rules. Ignore your instincts; they’ll get you killed.” She cocked her head at me. “Like they almost just did.”

I watched her head bob back, as though she were looking down her nose at me, surveying me coldly, and then she disappeared up the stairs, head first, then torso, until her feet receded from view and I was left by myself in the basement.

Now

“You jackass,” I said, and Mormont raised his other hand to reveal a gun. “You didn’t have to do that.”

“I think I did,” he said, and I watched Mom writhe again as he pushed a button on the grip of the taser. “This is a taser built specifically for metas, so it holds a lot higher charge than the civilian models sold for use on humans.” He seemed to be talking to my mom. “It has a over a dozen charges, so I can keep you writhing in pain until you pass out, or you can just accept that I can drop an elephant with it and we can go on about our business without me having to push the button again.”

“Oh…okay,” my mother said, from her hands and knees. “But gosh…I sure was enjoying…those lovely…zaps of electricity.”

“And she wonders why I smart off at her?” I asked.

Mormont’s grin faded and I saw him thumb the trigger again as my mother jolted and fell to her face. “No one likes a smartass,” he said when she finished writhing. “You done?”

“I’m ready to start if she’s finished,” I said.

He waved the gun at me. “I hear so much as a word out of your mouth, I’m just going to fill you full of bullets and drag you to the car. I’ll let them sort you out later.”

I stiffened at his words. “Your car? You’re not planning on taking us to the confinement cells?” I watched him, and something connected before he even reacted. “You’re the spy! Oh, you bastard!” His eyes narrowed and his gun stopped waving at my insult, pointed instead at my heart. “Did I say bastard?” I felt the heat of emotion run through my veins. “Yeah, well, I meant it. You ran that interrogation on me and messed with my head when all along it was you?”

He rolled his eyes. “You sound surprised.”

I opened my mouth to answer, then after a moment’s thought: “I probably shouldn’t be. So, you work for Omega?” I felt my nostrils flare in irritation. “You turned the vamps loose too, then?”

“Yes,” he said with a narrow smile. “My boss won’t be too happy that they died before I could stop you, but I’ll smooth that out a little by delivering a second succubus.” He stroked the trigger again and Mom rolled in another jolt of electricity. I started to make a move toward him and he cocked the hammer of his pistol. “Watch it. You can take a lot of bullets before you die, and every one of them will hurt, I promise.” He gestured with the gun. “Drop the sword.”

I felt my fingers clench on it, not wanting to surrender my only weapon. “Why? You afraid you can’t shoot it out of my hands before I jump at you and slice your face off?”

“Don’t insult us both by patronizing me,” he said, and I heard the threat in his words. “Drop it now, or I’ll put you on the ground and drag you out of here in a bloody heap.”

I smiled thinly as I held out the sword and dropped it to the mat. “But you’d rather do things the easy way.”

“Always,” Mormont said, and reached down with the hand that held the taser to fetch something off his belt: heavy duty handcuffs I recognized from when he had placed them on me came up in his hand, two pairs, and he tossed them at me. I caught them easily and held them up. “Put them on your mother, then put the other pair on yourself. Slowly. Any sudden moves and you’ll be picking lead out of holes in your body for the next two weeks.”

I sauntered forward, trying to convey defiance with my posture as I came up to my mom but kept my glare firmly rooted on Mormont. “I hope you’re at least getting a big fat cash bonus for this.”

Mormont smiled tightly. “You have no idea.”

“Oh?” I leaned down to where my mother lay, her face pressed against the mat. “I’m worth a lot to Omega?”

“An inconceivable amount,” he replied. “About ten million.”

I paused and looked up at him, letting out a low whistle. “Dollars?” When he nodded, I arched my eyebrows in surprise. “Wow. Wonder how much they’ll pay you for two succubi?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “This one has some miles on her.”

“And yet still,” my mother said from all fours, “I’ll find it in me to run you over, you pr—” There was a hissing noise as Mormont pulled the taser’s trigger again and Mom collapsed onto her face, writhing.

“Even if it’s not double,” Mormont said, as casual as if he hadn’t just run voltage through a living, breathing human being, “it’ll be enough to live comfortably for a nice long time, far from whatever petty disputes you’ve got going on here.”

“You can’t run far enough or fast enough to get away from this,” came a voice from the broken door. I saw a hand reach in as a figure followed. I tried to breathe a sigh of relief but I caught myself. Dr. Quinton Zollers stepped onto the broken glass, feet crunching with every step, a pistol aimed at Michael Mormont. “Unless you think you can outrun a bullet?”

“Doc,” Mormont said with a grim look that never left him, even as the gun still pointed at me, “don’t make me kill this girl. If she comes with me, she’ll at least be alive – that’s how Omega wants her.” He thumbed the hammer again, for emphasis, and I heard it click as he decocked and recocked it. “But if you push me, I’ll put her brains all over that wall before you can—”