The rest of the article continued to mention the victim’s personal life, family and friend’s reactions, and further theories from interested parties. More crazies. Who kills someone and takes skin? I’ve heard of these psychopaths taking hair from their victims, but skin? Jason frowned. And this is so close to home too. I didn’t even know about this. Jason folded the paper under his arm, took his groceries, and continued home.
After a moment Jason heard some panic a few blocks from where he was. Groups of people rushed past him both to and from the area in question. What on earth? He looked for himself and saw smoke billowing into the night sky from a building near his home. No. No no no no no, damn it no. Please. It can’t be. Jason dropped his things and sprinted toward the fire; his home stood engulfed in flames from the ground up.
Audrey, where are you? Please. He called her name out amidst the fleeing crowd. Jason questioned other tenants he knew from passing but no one knew if she was outside at all. A pit of fear grew within him and he turned his attention toward the building. Shit, Audrey. Why the hell’d I have to go out tonight? Why can’t I just sleep like normal people? If I’d been there you and I would be… He shook his head. It’s too early to regret anything, she’s going to be fine, and I’m going to make sure she’s out of there and we’re going to be safe. He took a breath and without recognition of other’s words or warnings he dashed into the firestorm in search of his wife.
Their building was an inferno; flames poured out of the walls and smoke followed Jason up the stairs as he counted the floors to their floor. Jason wasn’t sure how much longer the floor would support him after planks smoldered away behind him.
Once he reached his floor he ran down the hall to their room, where he tried the door, but recalled that the lock was still in place. “Audrey!” he yelled as he choked on the smoke. He slammed his fist into the door and called out again, though there wasn’t a response.
Damn it, this isn’t going to work. Even if she can hear me, the locks and the knob have got to be scalding hot by now. He changed tactics and took a step back. He took a breath (of what air he could find), kicked their door right where the knob and lock were and broke into their home.
Audrey wasn’t anywhere in sight. Have to be sure Jason. You can’t assume here, be certain. He coughed and hoarsely called her name out. With what little vision he had he searched their closet, bathroom, kitchen, and bedroom until he knew she managed to escape without him.
What a bloody idiot I’ve been Audrey. Please forgive me, if you can. I shouldn’t have gone, I-I didn’t know this would happen. I’m so sorry.
Jason turned his thoughts toward his flight from the building next. Just run Jason, you know the way out. No time to secure anything, jewelry, photos, computer, leave it. He made for the hallway with a final glance for Audrey, to satisfy his fear. But after a few steps Jason felt the floor beneath him begin to give way. He looked down at the wooden beams visible beneath the burnt carpet, all red hot between the charred wood. The floor crumbled beneath him and Jason fell to the floor below. It gave way as well and the debris collapsed on top of him. Jason blacked out and the heat, the smoke, the sirens, the commotion, and the fire faded out of existence.
---*---
3:43 PM
Kirkland, Washington
“How are you feeling?” Drake asked.
Ian stared back at him. He’d been distant since he woke up an hour earlier, as well as slow to react to any sort of question or inquiry. The doctor told Drake it was normal and that he was making progress, but it didn’t seem so to Drake. To him, Ian was only one part through the ordeal; he was still in the woods, and it worried Drake.
He finally responded, “I’m…I’m feeling much better.” Ian spoke slowly, cautiously, and carefully.
The doctor said Ian would act differently in his conversational skills and he assured Drake that this would pass too. Drake didn’t care what a normal reaction was; he only wanted his friend to return.
Drake and Ian sat alone in his room at the Evergreen Medical Center. Nurses and Ian’s doctor would occasionally drop in to check on him or run brief tests, but other than those intrusions they were alone. Ian’s mother was on her way, but because of her absence it allowed Drake time to confirm things he hadn’t been able to since Ian was struck by lightning.
“What do you remember about last week?” he asked Ian.
He only looked at Drake. After a moment he answered, “There was a football game, or a practice…a storm, lightning…” he tried to think, to remember something, but failed to do so.
Drake filled in the gaps, “You and I talked, do you remember that?”
“In the storm?”
“Yes, we talked outside in the rain.”
“Before I was hit by, struck by lightning?”
“Yes. Do you remember what we talked about?”
He shook his head. “What was it?”
Drake cleared his throat and asked, “Do you remember that Victor was killed?”
Ian frowned. He asked who killed him and Drake felt a twinge of relief. Drake told him the murderer still evaded the police and that the authorities still didn’t know who it was. Ian remained quiet for a moment. The revelation troubled him, but his expression changed from sorrow and concern into doubt.
He looked different than Drake recalled him last. Ian still seemed entirely scared out of his mind, but he was pale, weak, and completely listless. Even his mannerisms changed. He was cautious and nervous when they talked, even though Drake was one of Ian’s oldest friends. Drake knew it would take time for Ian to regain normalcy, but his alteration worried Drake.
Ian slowly asked, “Did anyone else die?”
Drake’s heart sank. He reluctantly nodded. “Principal Summers was also killed.”
With that confirmation Ian’s eyes widened and he shot up, “It was Nick,” he said without any inhibition.
Drake stopped him and promptly told him to calm down. “No it wasn’t,” he assured him. “Nick didn’t kill his own brother.”
“No, it was,” Ian cried out. “I-I was there. I saw it happen.” He looked away from his friend and more returned to him. “That’s why I was at…at your house. That’s what we talked about,” he looked at Drake, “Wasn’t it?” he asked him.
Drake only nodded.
“Then how can you tell me Nick’s innocent?” he questioned him.
Drake explained the events that took place at Jordan’s work and of the murder of his employer. He told Ian that the killer left one of Victor’s credit cards behind. “Nick was there, as was Jordan and a handful of other people, all who witnessed Crystal’s murder by someone who wasn’t Nick.”
Ian sat in his bed with a cross look on his face. He bitterly asked, “Why would anyone want to kill them though?”
Drake shook his head, “I’m really unsure Ian. You told me that the man who killed Victor and Principal Summers looked like Nick, whereas the man who murdered Crystal didn’t look anything like Nick.”
“And they don’t know who it was?”
“No.”
Ian struggled to keep up with Drake’s thought process, but asked, “Why did the second assassin have Victor’s credit card though?”
Drake nodded. “That’s also a perplexing matter. Unless the second killer was actually the same person who killed Victor, or unless he received, stole, or took the credit card from the one who initially stole it from Victor. But it still doesn’t make sense that the first would even take it and leave the rest of the wallet intact. From what I understand nothing was taken from Principal Summer, so why just steal one credit card?” Drake stopped and glanced at Ian, who tried to follow Drake’s reasoning. Drake asked, “Do you at least believe me when I tell you that Nick’s innocent?”
Ian agreed with Drake. He saw how convinced Drake was, and after their brief talk about all the events of the past week that he didn’t know about due to his coma, his previously unwavering testimony of the incident was shaken. He told his frie
nd he no longer felt Nick was guilty and Drake was relieved.
“Why did you fight this for so long though?” Ian asked.
Drake answered, “I knew Nick would never do something anything so heinous, especially not his own brother. Besides, if you told the police about what you saw it would only spell trouble for Nick. And after everything he’s been through in the past week he doesn’t need the additional stress.”
Ian hadn’t considered that, or any of the trouble Nick must have faced in the past week. He apologized to Drake, but Drake only asked that he refrain from telling anyone about what he saw at the high school when Victor was killed if he was asked. Ian agreed just as his mother joined them.
She had tears in her eyes and ran to embrace her son. Drake smiled and left them alone as he stepped outside of the room to make a call to tell his manager that he planned on taking the remainder of the day off.
---*---
Chapter 8
August 24th, 2029
7:35 PM
Seattle, Washington
Nick sat across from her and couldn’t stop the hammer in his chest from making him tremble. He looked at the beautiful young woman who appeared to be entirely calm, controlled, and well aware of Nick’s distress.
“Relax,” she told him with a smile.
Nick let out a nervous chuckle and admitted, “Th-This is my f-first d-date, so–”
She stopped him, “Really?” He nodded and felt his face redden. “How’d a good looking guy like you manage that?”
Nick saw through the compliment but thanked her anyway.
The two already ordered; he chose prawn yakisoba and Amy selected chicken teriyaki. Nick remembered eating at the small shop a few times with Drake and their friends and recalled Drake classifying it as ‘a hole.’ Nick however liked it each of the times he’d gone there and as it was inexpensive he hoped it would be an acceptable place to take Amy.
He wore navy jeans, a Silversun Pickups shirt he’d inherited from his brother months before Victor’s death, and his black leather jacket. Amy wore a white blouse, blue jeans, and a pair of flats which would have gone along well with Nick’s Converse, had his shoes looked at all presentable.
“How are you doing?” she asked.
“G-Good. How about y-you?”
“Better.”
He didn’t know what to say. Small talk wasn’t his strongest suit by any means. Nick believed she knew it as well when she asked him about school.
“Are you excited for September?”
“Why?”
“Because of school.”
“S-Sort of. I-I find it boring.”
“Why?”
“It doesn’t interest m-me.”
Amy nodded, “Then what does interest you?”
Nick didn’t have an answer. He never believed he’d amount to much, so that’s what he’d believed in watching his stepfather Paul work aimlessly for nearly two decades. It became something he never doubted would be for him, something inevitable, and the reason was simply because he wasn’t overly interested in anything to pursue anything. He thought about learning how to take care of cars, to fix them, change tires, inspect engines, but once he began learning it a year ago in high school he lost whatever enthusiasm he had for it. He gave thought to computers but couldn’t memorize all of the codes needed to create or edit anything, he pondered a career in food but soon found he couldn’t cook beyond saving himself from starvation, and it seemed every other avenue led to another cul-de-sac to merely return him to the empty space where he made his last choice to try it all over again.
He often believed that there were individuals who were not cut out for anything beyond the bottom of society. Nick didn’t feel like he’d done anything to deserve the bottom rung of society, unlike his stepfather, who rejected a formal education and was one who couldn’t hold down a job as a garbage man, or a janitor, or even a construction worker. His stepfather’s poor choice in habits didn’t help at all either. Nick recalled two occasions where Paul’s drinking cost him full time employment and nearly ruined their family on multiple occasions. If Nick was destined for mediocrity, he vowed to never follow in Paul’s ways.
Nick made something up and told her, “I-I like m-music, s-so I thought I m-might open a r-retro music store.”
“That sounds interesting.”
“What about you?”
“I’m thinking about journalism.”
“R-Really?”
She nodded, “But I have no idea about what field of journalism I’d want to cover or focus on…” Amy trailed off, “It’s a ways away so I’ve got time to figure it out.”
Their food arrived and the conversation met another lull. Nick wanted to reignite it, but wasn’t sure how. In the end he simply picked up his fork asked her what sort of movies she liked.
---*---
11:40 PM
Baltimore, Maryland
Detective Sage tacked up a small handwritten note card labeled ‘suspects’ next to the list of casualties of the Cladis investigation. There were a total of ten losses and one pending judgment in their building. Sage pinned a rough sketch of Agent Ryuzaki Miyaza up under the note card as their first and only suspect. Sage and Felton spent a great deal of time in search of the man through the bureau but merely learned that the man didn’t exist. More specifically, he lived and breathed, just simply was not ever a government agent. The detectives forwarded footage of the alleged agent to the Federal Bureau of Investigations to see whether they knew who the man truly was. The detectives had yet to receive an answer.
The mysterious man did give Sage one clue though about the rain in the security footage of the car accident. Sage looked again after things calmed down at the station and found that Miyaza hadn’t lied. A silhouette of a man could be seen in the rain as he shoved Angela’s car into the next lane and into Evanston’s taxi. She travelled at nearly forty miles an hour and the silhouette, presumed to be Cladis, moved the vehicle with ease and very little resistance.
The chief and Detective Felton joined him in his office. The chief took a seat and asked, “Agent Miyaza’s a suspect at this point, right?”
Sage nodded, “Though I’m not sure we should though.”
“Why?” asked Felton.
Sage played the security video and paused it when the silhouette was clear. “The figure here must be easily a head taller than Miyaza. But more importantly, why would Cladis waltz right into the station, completely visible, and give us this clue without killing all of us and Evanston in the process?”
“Then we still have nothing…”
Chief Johnson looked at all of the data Sage kept pinned up on his wall and asked, “Isn’t this getting to be a bit excessive detective?”
Sage shrugged, “Yes, but it isn’t like I can keep all of my notes catalogued in my computer since REFOIA’s apparently monitoring us.”
“Could they be tied into this?” Felton asked.
“It’s doubtful.”
“Anyway,” Johnson changed the subject, “What are we going to do about Evanston?”
“What can we do?” Felton asked rhetorically. “The guy’s a walking target; we can’t exactly take him anywhere.”
“And he isn’t exactly safe here,” muttered Johnson. “When Cladis does show up to try to kill him what level of havoc do you think he’s going to shepherd with him?”
“Do you want to move him?” Sage inquired as he wrote single numbers on small cards.
“I think it’d be in the best interest of the station and our fellow man to get his ass out of here,” Johnson told them. “What we need to think of is where to though.”
“Would he be safe in a high security holding facility?”
“The guy can shove a car moving at forty miles an hour into another lane,” Felton reminded them, “He could probably just break through walls or whatever else stood in his path.”
“Then what are we supposed to do?” Johnson asked.
Sage pinned the numbers he w
rote next to the corresponding victims. Felton asked what the numbers represented and Sage told him they were the lengths of days between the murders. He pinned a six, five, and five next to the second, third, and fourth victims. All of the victim’s pictures were pinned up in one vertical line that started with Red Irons and ended with Angela Walsh. Evanston’s photo was pinned below Angela’s.
“Why is that important?” Felton asked.
“It’s probably not important at all,” he admitted as he put an eight, two, and one adjacent to the next three photos, “But I’m still hoping that there is some sort of pattern in all of this, and I’d like to cover every angle.”
“Hey,” Johnson stopped their momentary deviation and tried to return to the matter at hand, “What are we going to do about Evanston?”
Felton shrugged, “What can we do? What day is it again Sage?”
“Day five”
“The fifth day,” Felton repeated, “Which means his time’s just about up and so is ours. We need to figure this out.”
Chief Johnson frowned while he contemplated their next move. “What if we try to get him out of the city?”
“What would that do?”
“All of the murders take place here in Baltimore,” Chief Johnson began, “If we get him outside of the city then Evanston won’t fit his method of operation. Serial killers are specific about everything they do, right? If we get him out of Baltimore then we can save him and disrupt Cladis’ killing spree.”
“What if it’s not Evanston though,” Felton asked. “What if we’ve got the wrong person and we take him away and miss that it was someone else?”
“Then they’re dead anyway because we couldn’t find them,” Sage answered. “I agree that this is probably the best plan that we’ve got.”
Impact (Book 1): Regenesis Page 17