Regenesis (Book 1): Impact (79 page)

Paul
looked at him and asked what he meant. “I’m your stepfather you–”

“Who
are you?” Nick asked with streams of tears down his face. “You’re gonna slit my
throat in a moment anyway, so what the hell does it matter to you?”

His
stepfather only let out a breath and told him there wasn’t anything left to
say. “This isn’t anything more than business kid; all I need to know is where
you’re keeping Lauren Facet.”

Nick
didn’t say a word. He stared at Amy’s bound ankles, which was all he could see
of her, and asked what he did to her.

Paul
rolled his eyes and asked where Lauren was again. “This can all end right now
and you won’t even–”

“You
killed Victor,” Nick stated. “And Drake’s dad, and Lauren’s parents…Why?”

Paul
took the knife in his hand and slammed the blade into Nick’s already injured
shoulder. The boy screamed and cried and begged for him to stop. Paul quickly
removed his weapon, though he left the first knife where it was in Nick’s
shoulder, and asked where Lauren was. “I can do this all night if I have to.”

Even
though he tried to stifle his tears, Nick still wept. He trembled and asked if
he was going to kill her too. “Who wants her dead? Why do they want you to kill
her?”

Paul
glared at him and frankly told him he wasn’t about to reveal anything about his
employer. “Everything I do is confidential Nick; you realize that by now.”

“Why
are you trying to kill her?”

His
stepdad rolled his eyes and said it was all for money. “It’s a very simple
concept Nick; people want people dead but don’t have the stones to do anything
about it.”

“And
who–”

Paul
took a fierce hold of the young man’s shoulder and dug his thumb into the wound
he’d just created. Nick yelled for him to stop and continued to shout until
Paul let up. Nick sobbed more, muttered his fears under his breath, and felt
himself about to vomit from the pain and sight of his own blood.

He
heard Paul repeat his question once more even though Nick’s resolve hadn’t
changed at all. Nick tried to control his heart rate and breathing when he
asked, rhetorically, why he should even say a word as to where she was. “You’ll
kill me one way or another; your partner told me that much. So why should I
turn on my friend?”

His
stepfather proceeded to kick him in the chest and stood by idly as his stepson
strove to catch his breath. Nick lay on his side, teeth grit, eyes shut
tightly, and clutched his chest with the one good arm he had left.

“Where
is she?”

Nick
opened his eyes and saw Amy on the floor seven feet from him. He didn’t look
away from her but asked what Paul had done to her.

The
man groaned and said he kept himself busy. “It’s been a few months since I’d
last gotten off on your mom, so I thought–”

Nick
snapped at the man and told him to keep his mouth shut. He pulled himself off
the ground and lunged at his stepfather only to have the brute strike him
across the face and send him back to the wall Nick had just occupied.

“I’ve
had more than enough of this shit,” Paul barked as he retook Nick by his neck
and pressed his blood-covered blade against Nick’s throat, “Now tell me where
she is or–”

Paul
missed the moment where Nick created a Daewoo K5 in his good hand. Nick waited
until he knew he had a sure shot and took it as soon as his stepfather’s
shoulder, the shoulder of the arm he used to hold the knife with, was nearly
impossible to miss.

The
shot rang out in the room along with Paul’s scream. Nick didn’t waste the
moment to get off the ground and rush Paul. He struck the man in the chest and
throat as many times as he could with the basic hand to hand combat Bruce
taught him. Pain shot through his arms with each movement, but Nick persevered
and continued to pummel his stepfather. Paul stumbled back toward the front
entrance, though he hardly moved an inch that Nick didn’t follow and persisted
to savagely attack him. Nick only spent a short period of time sparring with
Yong, but he utilized the kicks he was taught to knock the wind out of his
stepdad as well as crush the man’s groin.

There
wasn’t an opportunity or simple way for Paul to cry out, since the man couldn’t
breathe and Nick proceeded to take the man who started to fall to the ground
and shoved him into the bathroom and through the plastic shower curtain and
into the tiled wall. Nick didn’t give him a moment of rest as he dove onto the
man’s back, took him by the shirt, and beat him half a dozen times before Paul
collapsed and stopped resisting.

Nick
shook, couldn’t breathe, and felt off balance. He got out of the shower and
started back to see to Amy, though he stumbled and had to stop to ensure he
wouldn’t be sick. Nick finally managed to kneel beside her and checked for a
pulse. He didn’t move for over a minute in hope that somehow she would still be
with him.

Nick
felt hot tears reach his eyes and couldn’t help but sit there and weep. He
tried to untie the bands around her wrists and ankles, but couldn’t undo them.
Instead he only pulled the quilt off the bed and covered her with it.

He
removed the thin blade his stepfather left in his shoulder and dropped it near
the foot of the bed as he walked to the door. Nick was almost out of the room
when he looked back at the man in the bathroom and discovered a changed person.
The individual had their back to him, as Nick left him that way, but Nick
walked back into the room to finally have an answer to the identity of his
brother’s murderer. It wasn’t easy for him to flip the man over with only one
good arm, but he managed, and cried again when he saw who it was.

Jordan
lay unconscious in a small pool of blood in the shower.

---*---

Chapter
27

October
3rd, 2029

10:54
AM

London,
England

News
about the rescue of Lily Meyers by Voltage spread throughout London in a matter
of hours. The hero Voltage flew Lily to her home at Roehampton University where
they intruded on a small vigil of students who prayed for her safety. The
sudden reappearance, let alone the presence of a flying costumed hero, shocked
the entire crowd and though Voltage left the girl’s side in a hurry, the crowd
took plenty of photographs to plaster the front page of many newspapers and
websites.

Jason
sat with Audrey and Suzy at a small table outside of a bistro they met at for
brunch. Their group was alone and it allowed them to chat unabashed. They had
their beverages while they waited for their meals to arrive. Audrey and Jason
had talked at length about the events of his first night out as Ilion, as well
as the blood and damage to his costume. Jason didn’t lie to either of them,
even about his hallucinations and how he killed Todd. He wasn’t remorseful, but
his conscious begged him to confer with the two people he felt he could trust.

“He
was a butcher Jason,” Suzy told him through the smoke from her first cigarette
of the morning. “I don’t condone murder, or violence really, but I feel like it
was warranted here. I mean, he wasn’t a helpless old man.”

Audrey
agreed but kept her comments brief.

Suzy
finished her cigarette and after a sip of her iced tea fished a second one out
of her pack. Audrey frowned and asked, “Do you have to smoke right now Suzy?
While we’re about to eat?”

She
stuck her tongue out playfully and placed the cigarette on the table near her
drink.

“What
I’m worried about is how easily he drove me to that point,” Jason continued. “I
mean, I-I believed he’d amputated my bloody arm.”

“He
just got under your skin Jason.”

He
shook his head and said it was more than that. “He hurt me Suzy, he actually
hurt me. I haven’t felt pain like that since the fire, since I was in the
hospital. I’m worried about that too.”

“That
you have some sort of weakness?”

He
nodded. “It’s obvious that I’m not completely impervious, but I didn’t think he
would be able to cripple me that easily.”

Audrey
frowned and asked them to stop talking about it. “Can’t we just be glad you’re
unharmed Jason? Do we need to analyze everything? He’s dead and he isn’t going
to harm anyone again, isn’t that enough?”

Jason
apologized. “Is everything alright Audrey?”

“Of
course not,” she relented. “You could have died Jason,” she reminded him as hushed
as she could manage. “I was worried sick about you, and it turns out you killed
him? Jason, I never thought you would have gone so far.”

“Audrey,
it wasn’t him,” Suzy tried to remind her. “Whatever Joshua did to him must have
caused that change. It won’t happen again. That wasn’t him.”

Audrey
nodded and tried to control herself. She lowered her gaze to the table and
studied the patterns on the tabletop that led from her drink to Suzy’s
cigarette and onward to Jason, who sat hunched forward with his elbows on the
table. He kept glancing at her and then back down to the table between them.

“I
thought this was a blessing,” Audrey sighed. “I saw this as an opportunity for
you to make an impact on the world, to help people, to save them.”

“And
he has Audrey,” Suzy stopped her. “He may not have saved Lily Meyers but he
saved who knows how many people from that man’s rampage. I don’t agree that it
should come to that, but Todd did deserve what happened to him.”

“I
know, and I hear you both telling me this won’t happen again, but I’m afraid.”

“Afraid
of what?”

“I’m
worried Jason could get hurt, or killed. And I’m worried he can’t keep his
power in check and that he might kill someone else.” She didn’t look at him but
apologized, “It’s how I feel Jason, I’m sorry.”

He
told her it was understandable while he rubbed his eyes. “I know murder is
unacceptable and cruel Audrey and I won’t let it happen again. But Todd
deserved death, whether by my hand or another. I’m sorry I killed him Audrey
but it wasn’t a crime. It wasn’t wrong.”

Their
waiter joined them and brought their entrées out which ended their discussion.
Suzy and Jason started in on their food while Audrey looked up at the morning
sky, clouded in gray. Audrey followed a few birds that flew above them and for a
moment she imagined she felt rain. She refocused her attention on her plate and
dispassionately took up her fork and started her meal.

---*---

6:16
AM

Baltimore,
Maryland

The
situation throughout Baltimore didn’t resolve well. The National Guard intervened
near the end of the week, instituted a complete curfew over the Baltimore area,
patrolled the streets vigorously, and met any and all opposition with heavy and
swift retribution. Fortunately the citizen’s fear and panic dissipated and
neutrality came over the city. Mia and the rest of the Baltimore Police force
continued to aid the National Guard as they could, although it was primarily
through attempts to right the radio interference that blocked all wireless
communications. Unfortunately there wasn’t any way to correct whatever
manipulated the transmission. The theory Detective Felton purposed was of a
hero who controlled it. He guessed that finding them and convincing them to
release sanction of the radio waves was the only option to restore communication.
However none of their group knew who that individual might have been. Mia and
Bryce examined the repeating transmission and made the assumption that the hero
was a part of the group that kidnapped James Resnik. More so they guessed it
was the young woman whose corpse they found atop the Transamerica Tower, which
made restoring communications a near impossibility.

Mia
sat naked in her shower with her back against the wall opposite the showerhead.
She let the water soak her and plaster her hair to her face and shoulders while
she contemplated what possibly lay before her and her city. She watched the
steam rise from off her drenched skin and followed beads of water as they
trickled down her body.

She
earnestly believed her death was imminent, though Cladis had yet to burst
through her walls and kill her. What struck her though was how calm she’d been
about the entire situation, as she believed her heart should have raced and she
should have been in tears, praying for some sort of salvation, even though she
wasn’t religious.

Her
thoughts only returned to Baltimore and how little she could do to save it from
itself.

Mia
let out a breath, stood up, washed herself and her hair, and shut the water
off. She toweled off, wrapped herself in the same towel, and headed out of her
bathroom and toward her bedroom. She stopped when she found a familiar face
waiting for her.

Twelve
stood with his back to her as he examined a document she’d left out on her
coffee table. “You solved your identity theft case?” he asked her.

Mia
said she had, even though it was hardly her own ingenuity that resolved it.
“The young woman who Cladis killed over the weekend was named Mia Hendricks,
even though she wasn’t Mia Hendricks.”

“Who
was she then?”

“Melanie
Washington.” Mia walked over to his side and selected another document from the
pile of papers on her table and showed him the scans of multiple methods of
identification they found on Melanie’s person at the site of her death. “Case
closed.”

Twelve
nodded and then asked if she wanted to put something on. “I can occupy myself
enough with perusing your notes if–”

“Why’d
you stop by?”

He
took a moment to take a few steps away from her and over to her wall and
muttered that Eliot Packer was dead. “She was found by a member of the National
Guard this evening. Packer was stabbed from behind on her doorstep as she tried
to unlock her front door. The mark is on her arm and she has O negative blood,
so she fits the pattern.”

Mia
kept quiet for a moment. She felt a small amount of relief with the news he
brought, but felt she only had more questions and too few answers. “Why do you
think Cladis leaves the bodies behind only to take them later?”

Twelve
admitted that he wasn’t sure. “If he took the bodies right out there could be
too many missing persons cases, which could prompt anything from a pointed
manhunt to bounty hunters and generally unneeded attention.”

“He
has the attention now though,” she reminded him. “I mean, we knew about him and
there was obvious speculation about his existence after rumors spread through
the internet, but this is actual proof of his presence in Baltimore.”

“I
know, and that brings us back to the few clues I mentioned a few days ago.”

“Which
are?”

“Firstly
that he is able to regenerate, which makes him an even larger threat. Secondly
we now know that removing the individual we believe to be the next victim will
only result in the death of another possible victim.”

“What
are you talking about?”

He
asked if she listened to the broadcast, which she said she had. “Cladis revealed
how the pattern isn’t set in stone, which helps explain the difficulty in
defining who the true twelfth victim was.”

“Then
why didn’t Cladis just find and kill one of the other possible targets instead
of Resnik?”

Twelve
told her that the answer was within the final and most alarming clue. “Do you
know why the leader of the group that kidnapped Resnik gave their position
away?”

“No.”

“It
was because Cladis couldn’t find them.”

“Then
why give it away?”

“Because
he needed to prove something.”

“Which
was?”

“Cladis
has someone working with him.”

Mia
stopped and asked him to repeat what he told her. “Someone’s helping him?”

Twelve
nodded and told her it was true. “It actually makes sense. Cladis would leave
the corpses behind to alert the individual of the death and the assistant would
then find the next victim for him. And as for Cladis finding another victim
over the weekend, I’d go so far as to assume whoever’s informing Cladis of
targets was sure about Resnik staying in police custody until his death, which
means he didn’t anticipate any complications and failed to find a replacement
in the event that complications arose.”

“But
if this informant knew about Resnik’s stay at the station, wouldn’t that mean
the informer is within the police force?”

Twelve
nodded and said it was the most likely possibility.

“But
who is it?”

He
said he wasn’t sure and needed more time to analyze the evidence. “If there’s
any consolation, I know you and Officer Maguire are innocent.”

“What
about Felton, Murdock, and Chief Johnson?”

He
shrugged and said he was uncertain. “They’ll be the first people I watch for,
as they’re so close to this case as it is.”

“You
don’t think it is them, do you?”

Twelve
only told her he hoped they weren’t. “It’s too soon to tell. But Mia, don’t
breathe a word of this to anyone.”

She
agreed and watched as the man headed for his exit at her window. Mia only
stopped him to ask what they should do about the city, but Twelve said it
wasn’t his greatest concern. “Things are still unstable and I’m at a loss of
what to do. I imagine all of our jobs will become far more frenetic than they
were just a week ago.”

Mia
asked if he still believed they could save the city but by the time her
question escaped her lips, Twelve was gone. She only cursed under her breath,
shut the window and locked it, and quickly walked back to her bedroom to dress.

---*---

12:13
PM

London,
England

Ian
slept soundly on his couch in his Voltage costume, even with the mask on. He’d
only returned seven hours ago and since he didn’t have any pressing engagements
for the following day he elected to crash on his couch without so much as
removing his outfit. Sadly he neglected to shut his phone off and someone felt
obligated to wake him. He woke startled, confused, and slightly disoriented as
he flipped his phone open and asked who it was.

“It’s
Drake. I’m on the roof of your building.”

Ian
let out a breath and asked why he didn’t just meet him inside, but Drake only
told him to join him. Drake hung up before Ian could object.

Ian
hung up, rolled of his couch and hit the floor. He stood up and walked over to
his refrigerator to grab two sodas, one grape and one orange, and then Ian left
for the roof through his window. Drake sat on the ledge of the building with
his legs over the edge. Ian climbed up the fire escape and took a seat next to
him. He gave Drake the grape soda and asked what Drake wanted to talk about
before he opened his own drink.