Regenesis (Book 1): Impact (29 page)

“An
assassin,” Strom plainly said. “Who was your father anyway?”

“He
was a man who worked tirelessly to find a cure for paralysis,” Mithra told him,
“He was weeks away from the cure and you killed him.”

Strom
chuckled, “Y’know, you’d be surprised at how many people don’t want anyone to
find that cure. In fact,” he paused for a moment, “Most of my clients don’t
want any cures to be found.”

“Wh-Why
is th…” Nick paused, took a breath, and restarted, “Why is that?”

“Privatization
of the drug means a single corporation can make billions in profit over a
single cure Nick,” Mizuno explained. “Medicine oftentimes has nothing to do
with humanity; it’s more so about corporate gain.”

“Still,”
Melanie finally spoke up, “He did kill Mithra’s dad.”

Mizuno
rubbed his eyes, “Yes, Strom did kill Mithra’s father, but we could get into an
hour long debate as to who truly killed him but we don’t have the time. We all
have flights to catch and we’re running out of time to get out of here before
someone notices us.”

“We
are not done here,” Mithra snapped. “I cannot allow him to simply walk away
from this.” Mithra retrieved a small playing card from his wallet and showed it
to Strom. The playing card had an image of a ghost on it and the suit was of
spades. “You left this on my father’s chest after you shot him in the head.
I’ve kept this with me for years to remind me that if I ever had the chance to
avenge him then I would.”

Mizuno’s
eyes flashed. “So you only joined this group so you would have the chance to
find and kill Strom if the opportunity ever arose…” Mizuno frowned. He glanced
over at Melanie and his eyes gleamed, “And you only joined because of the money
I offered you.”

“Oh
do not play this game Mizuno,” Mithra barked. “You knew very well of our
reasons for joining.”

“I
did and I still do.”

“Then
this isn’t a surprise.”

Mizuno
shook his head, “No, you’re right, this isn’t.” He stood up and walked toward
Mithra. He stopped in front of him and questioned him, “Do you think I didn’t
know about this? That I somehow didn’t realize what I was doing when I planned
to meet you here in Mumbai and at the same time have Strom meet us here?”
Mithra shifted uneasily in place as Mizuno continued, “I knew how you would
react, I knew you would want to attack him, and I knew that in the end this
would be good for you.”

“What
are you–”

“The
man who hired Strom Trenor to kill your father was a man named Teymour Farah.
He paid Strom approximately seven-hundred fifty-thousand American dollars to
kill your father on June sixteenth of two-thousand twenty-three. You joined
this group on March eighth of twenty-twenty seven and September twentieth of
that same year I hired Strom to kill Teymor Farah for what he’d done to your
father as well as some other atrocities he’d committed.” Mithra froze. He only
stared, wide-eyed, and as such Mizuno continued, “I would have done it myself
if I had the time and energy to do so, but I didn’t, so I hired Strom.”

The
German frowned. “The man who hired me to kill Farah was–”

“Motoi
Mifune,” Mizuno finished. “I hired you under that name.”

Strom
rolled his eyes and started to take his rifle apart. He muttered something in
German under his breath. Nick watched the man slowly and carefully take the
rifle apart, piece by piece. Strom meticulously stored everything in a bag with
the utmost care Nick believed an assassin might show to any sort of thing, living
or inanimate. Nick found it strange.

“Is
there a reason you did that?” Mithra asked.

Mizuno
nodded, “I knew it would hinder you so I took the liberty of ending that
constraint.”

“Why
didn’t you tell me sooner?”

He
shrugged. “I thought you might leave the group if that was the case and I
couldn’t have that.” Mizuno looked away from him and smirked, “You may not
realize this, but you’re actually a very valuable member of this group Mithra.
Now,” he completely turned away from Mithra and back to Strom and Nick, “Nick,
Strom is going to teach you how to shoot with a variety of firearms. I would
normally teach you but I’ve got another stop to make in the meantime and I feel
Strom will handle the task remarkably.”

Nick
sheepishly looked at the assassin as he finished with his weapons and set the
bag at his feet. “You expect m-me to–”

Mizuno
cut him off, “I expect you to trust him, to follow him, and to learn from him.
He’s solely here to teach you how to hit a target with a gun instinctively.” He
turned from them and spoke to the whole group collectively, “Strom and Nick
will head for Seattle while Mithra and Melanie will stop off in Paris to
collect another one of our members.”

“Is
it David?” Melanie asked.

Mizuno
glanced over to her and acted as if he was alarmed. “I’d nearly forgotten you
were even here Melanie. But yes, it’s David.”

“When
do we leave?” Melanie asked.

Mizuno
checked his watch, “I’d like to leave now, though Strom and Nick have time to
kill before they need to leave Mumbai. Your flight leaves in two hours though,
so you’ll need to leave now as well.”

He
walked away without another word and Mithra and Melanie left in a hurry after
him. Strom didn’t budge though. All he did was rub his eyes and let out a small
sigh.

Nick
looked at the man and asked, “Shouldn’t we be leaving?”

Strom
shook his head. “If we all left as one group there’s a greater chance that we’d
be caught or seen. It’s better to let them leave and exit later.”

Nick
nodded to signify his understanding of their plan, though he wasn’t sure what
to do or say after that point. Strom sat there on the ledge of the building as
if nothing was amiss. He scratched at his chin a bit, glanced at his watch,
looked over his shoulder at the streets below, and to Nick’s surprise was calm
about the entire situation.

“Do
you do th-this…Do you train a lot of people?”

Strom
shook his head, “Nope, you’re the first.”

“Why’d
you agree then?”

He
shrugged and said, “Someone offers you a quarter of a million American dollars
to teach a teenager how to shoot and there’s the added mystique of the kid’s
super power?” He chuckled, “Hell, the request was too interesting to pass up…”
His smile faded slightly and he admitted if anyone else made the request he
would have refused, as it would have been a trap.

“Why
d-d-do you trust…Why do you trust him?”

Strom
hesitated to give a straight answer, “It’s a bit of a tale, but…basically
Mizuno has a reputation with me and although I resent him a bit he’s proven
he’s someone I can trust, more or less.” Strom stood up, stretched for a
moment, grabbed his bag off of the roof, slung it over his shoulder and
promptly headed for the stairs. Nick followed after him, though he tried to
keep a few paces behind the man.

As
soon as the door closed and the two of them were in the much cooler stairwell
Strom stopped, turned to face Nick who stood roughly at his eye level once
Strom was two steps below him, and told Nick, “You can relax y’know, I’m not
gonna hurt you.” Strom could still tell how hesitant Nick was and Strom tried
to rationalize the situation with him, “Mizuno only paid me half, right? If I
want the other twenty-five-hundred thousand dollars I have to uphold my part of
the deal. Not to mention, I don’t hurt people because I like to,” he turned
around and continued walking down the stairs and muttered, “It’s just a job.”

Nick
frowned. “Then why did you decide to kill for a living?”

“It’s
something I’m good at and something that doesn’t require too much of my time
and pays very well,” he told Nick. “Besides, most of the people I kill aren’t
random civilians, so it’s not like I’m a monster or anything.”

“How
do you and Mizuno know each other?”

Strom
ignored the question.

Nick
asked another query instead, “Do you know anything about Mizuno?”

Strom
coughed. “You could say that. He’s hired me before for various assassinations
or jobs, but even before that I managed to learn to turn down any requests for
Mizuno’s head.”

“People
want him dead?”

Strom
smirked, “A lot of people do, though most of them don’t know they want him dead
specifically.”

“What
d-do…What do you mean?”

“There
are people who want him dead but they do not know who he is. They might have a
picture of him or an alias he used once, but nobody knows who he is.”

“But
people want to kill him?”

Strom
nodded, “Only a few have tried…They’re not alive anymore though.”

Nick
fell quiet. They walked down the staircase that clung to the walls of the
building and spiraled down toward the street level floor at the bottom. As soon
as they reached the exit Nick asked another question, “M-Mizuno…What do you
know about Mizuno’s group? About his project?”

“I
don’t really know anything kid. I’m not a part of it,” Strom told him. “I do
know, same as you, that his group utilizes people with super powers.”

“Does
he have a power?”

Strom
stopped. “No one’s told you much about him, have they?”

“No,
they haven’t.”

He
let out a breath, scratched at this face a bit, and tarried in the cool
stairwell to reveal a bit about the man. “His name’s Hiroshi Mizuno, or at
least that’s what he’s told those close to him to call him, and all I know
about him is that he came out of nowhere six years ago. I had someone offer me
thirty-thousand dollars to kill him and since I’d never heard of him I decided
to take the deal. I set everything up, took aim, but somehow things backfired
and within an hour I found myself looking down the barrel of his gun rather
than the other way around. Long story short, he let me go because he knew I
knew I couldn’t touch him, and he was well aware that I wouldn’t dare try to
either.”

“What
happened to the guy who hired you to kill him?”

“I
tried to contact the guy but found out he was killed soon after my meeting with
Mizuno. I didn’t realize it until years later, even though I assumed it, but
Mizuno killed him.”

“How’d
he know who to kill?”

“That’s
the simple part of it,” Strom told him. “He learned it from me.”

“You
told him?”

He
shook his head. “You don’t understand. Mizuno has two very unique abilities,
neither of which I was acquainted with until a year and a half ago. His first
ability has to do with his mind. His mental capacity is something I’ve never
heard of before. Basically, he never forgets anything, yet he can store
memories for recall later, so all of his memories won’t overwhelm him at once.
Now that ability by itself isn’t anything dangerous, it’s the other ability
that makes it so deadly.”

“And
what’s that?”

“Hiroshi
Mizuno has the ability to learn everything you’ve ever done, said, thought,
seen, heard, or learned in your entire life in the blink of an eye,” Strom
revealed. “And coupled with his ability to never forget anything he’ll remember
everything you know along with what he knows and he’ll put it to good use.”
Strom elaborated, “Basically, if you know a martial art, so will he, except
where you might hold some difficulty in the sport he’ll be perfect at it, as
you were taught how to do everything perfectly at one point and your body
messes things up.”

Nick
felt his heart race and his ears redden. He looked away from Strom and asked in
a whisper, “D-Do you think…Do you think he knows everything about me?”

He
nodded. “If the guy knew you had some dormant ability that you weren’t
consciously aware of, I’d say he does.”

Nick
frowned and asked, “Does it apply to other things?”

“What
do you mean?”

“Would
he know something like math?”

“Oh,
yeah of course. Same with languages, business, law, finances… pretty much
everything.”

“So
he’d be the smartest man alive then.”

Strom
slowly agreed with the statement, but added, “It also makes him the deadliest
man alive as well.”

---*---

5:19
PM

Bothell,
Washington

“Why
can’t we hang out tonight?” Rachel asked Jordan over her cell phone.

 “I’m
starting a new job tonight,” he told her. “I mean, it’s a freaking miracle I
got another job so soon, so I really can’t slack off at this point.”

Rachel
sat on her bed in her room and frowned at the news. “I guess you’re right. So
when’s your next night off?”

“I
don’t know yet, but you’ll be the first to know.” She heard Jordan let out a
sigh over the line and tell her he had to go since his shift was about to
begin.

Rachel
hung up and set her cell on the bed beside her.

Despite
her usual attire and demeanor Rachel was far from as gloomy as she pretended.
Rachel actually liked things neat and orderly, which was well represented in
her organized CDs, movies, art supplies, books, clothes and shoes. Everything
in her room had its place and at the moment everything was in its place, except
the bracelet she’d lost on the night of the party in Seattle.