Impact (Book 1): Regenesis

by Harrison Pierce

  Jason burst through and sped inside. Joshua Todd sat on the edge of a table with a needle in his right arm connected to a bag of blood. The room was dark and barren beyond the table and medical supplies Todd spread around him.

  What little color Joshua had in his face left him. He tried to move away from Jason but Jason wasted no time in capturing the elderly man. Todd choked and couldn’t breathe with Jason’s hand around his neck.

  Todd struggled and made a vain attempt at speech before Jason cut him off. “All I want is the girl Todd. Don’t tell me you’ve killed her. Don’t tell me I’m too late.”

  Jason released his grip only enough to illicit a response between Todd’s rushed and uncontrollable breaths. “The girl…the girl is gone. Another…she was taken by another like you.”

  “Who was it?”

  “I-I don’t know. I swear Jason–”

  “Who was it Todd?” His grip tightened. “What did they look like?”

  Todd failed to answer him. He asked, with terror in his eyes, “How, how did you survive?”

  Jason didn’t reply. Instead he threw the old man across the room and into a support beam. Todd cried out but Jason muffled his voice with his left hand. Jason balled his free hand into a fist and drove it square into the Todd’s chest and broke most of his ribs. Jason proceeded to take the man by his elbows and crushed them into splinters. He tore the limbs from the man and quickly finished him by driving the flat of his hand through Joshua Todd’s forehead and clear through the other end.

  Jason remained still afterward. Todd’s blood dripped onto the floor from his hands and from the bag Todd used earlier to give himself new life. After a moment Jason started for the door. He rose into the sky and once he was above the building and on his way home he ignited the building from its roots and allowed it to completely engulf Todd’s remains. Jason headed home without a backwards glance.

  ---*---

  7:08 PM

  Baltimore, Maryland

  Mia and Bryce sat in Detective Sage’s old office and waited for their turn to report to Chief Johnson about the damages to the Washington Village area. The city only worsened in the short period of time since all wireless transmissions became lost. People realized the severity of the situation, from both the abrupt reality of Cladis to the awareness that salvation would not come for anyone who called for help, and as such anarchy erupted in the form of heightened gang wars, looting, arson, murder, armed theft, and other crimes.

  The entire police force of Baltimore tried to manage the situations on the streets, but the crisis wasn’t in an isolated area, and because of the panic and violence throughout the city even the riot squads were met with extreme resistance from gangs like the Delta, who carried armor piercing rounds to meet the squads. There were deaths on both sides of the skirmishes, but the crisis had yet to find a lull or moment of rest.

  Gangs saw it as an opportunity to take control of the city with little to no resistance, thieves saw it as the perfect moment to take what they wanted, rapists knew no one would heed anyone’s cries, and even though there were the few who tried desperately to flee or to remain separated from the chaos, blockades of burning cars, tires, and other rubble made escape nearly impossible.

  Bryce sat slouched in a chair and stared dejectedly at the floor. “Do you think we’re ever going to be able to fix this?”

  Mia said she wasn’t sure.

  One major part of their forces protected the hospitals from looters looking to steal medical supplies as well as pharmaceutical drugs while another part of their forces that were not on the streets guarded the police station from the rioters.

  “Do you think this is going to get worse?” he asked her. “I mean, why haven’t things calmed down yet?”

  She shrugged and said she didn’t know. “This is chaos Maguire, so I’m not sure we’re going to see things calm down unless we manage to get outside help. They’re scared because they communication is gone and now they know there’s a serial killer on the loose, and I imagine part of them realize he has powers of his own, and all of this frightens them. It’s panic, that’s what it is.”

  Bryce let out a sigh and muttered his disdain for their job. “I never thought something like this would happen.”

  “Neither did I.”

  “What do you think we can do to fix it?”

  Mia said she heard a rumor that the National Guard would intervene in an hour or so assuming the matter didn’t show progress. “I’m just glad they’ll be here soon, considering how bad last night was.”

  Bryce agreed and massaged the back of his neck with his right hand. He listened to the sirens and screams right outside their walls and regretted his inability to amend it. “Do you think we’re useless?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean do you feel worthless as a cop?” He looked into her eyes and reminded her that they couldn’t stop or even hinder Cladis, they couldn’t curb gang violence throughout Baltimore, and they couldn’t control their panicked city. “I feel like we don’t have any power anymore.”

  Mia frowned and said she often felt that way. “Aside from my identity theft crisis I’ve never worked a true case before, and even in that situation I’ve yielded poor results, so yeah, I do feel sort of worthless.”

  Bryce asked if she knew of anyway they could change that. “I don’t want to look back in ten years and wonder if I could have done more…or if I did anything at all for that matter.”

  She told him she was in the dark as well. “If I knew how do that, I wouldn’t be here now.”

  He nodded and muttered that she was right.

  Mia shifted in her seat and suddenly asked him what his blood type was.

  “O positive.” He noted her trepidation and asked her why she brought it up.

  Mia bit her bottom lip for a moment before she admitted she had O negative blood. “If those other two people are a part of the pattern, wouldn’t O negative be next in the cycle?”

  Bryce glanced at the floor, gave the matter a second of thought, and questioned if forensics ever informed her of the Jane and John Does’ blood types. She slowly nodded and told him they fit the pattern. “Why didn’t you say anything?” he asked.

  She shrugged and said it wasn’t important at the time.

  “Not important?” Bryce repeated. “You might be on death row, how the hell isn’t that important?”

  “There’s no guarantee I’m going to die.”

  “Yeah, well there isn’t any surety of you making it either.”

  “It isn’t that serious.”

  “Yes it is,” he spat. “What if you’re next?”

  “Then we’ve only got a few days to figure out how to stop him.”

  “You know we’ve got no chance then.”

  “Then I’ll die,” she snidely told him.

  Bryce looked away from her and scowled at the wall. “This isn’t a joke you know.”

  “Why do you care?”

  “I care because you and I…We’re sort of a team.” He left a short pause for her to say something, but Mia failed to utter a word. Bryce waited for something, anything; even recognition of their partnership, but Mia remained silent. Maguire rubbed his eyes and mumbled his additional concerns, his personal wishes for her wellbeing, but dropped the subject as soon as Chief Johnson joined them and asked for a brief update on the area they patrolled.

  ---*---

  6:01 PM

  Seattle, Washington

  Nick sat at the edge of one of the cots and failed to tie his tie properly. He’d only ever worn one on very few occasions, those being funerals and the rare occasions when he’d accompany Ian to church, which he hadn’t done in over three years. He found the tie at a second hand shop three blocks from where he, Strom, and Lauren stayed, and though it was relatively inexpensive it proved to be a quality find, despite Nick’s inability to wear it presentably.

  “You tied it wrong,” Strom noted as he flipped a page in his copy of Franny and Zooey.


  Nick said he didn’t know how to and asked if Strom wouldn’t mind helping. Lauren intervened and fixed it for him. “It’s not something that’s overly complicated Nick.” She explained each of the steps to him as she adjusted it. Once the knot was satisfactory, she tightened it, brushed his shirt off, and told him he looked nice before she walked away and retook her seat against a wall a few yards from Strom.

  “Thanks.”

  Strom’s cell phone vibrated on the cot next to his left hip. He set his book down, checked the number, and quickly answered it. “Yes?” Strom remained still and listened intently to the caller. He didn’t say anything for nearly a minute before he asked if anyone else was aware of the issue. “No? Why not?” His question preceded another pause before Strom sighed and told whoever called that he’d relay the message and thanked him. Strom hung up and told them that Mithra and Melanie were dead.

  Nick and Lauren both stopped where they were and processed the information. “How did it happen?” she asked him.

  Strom said he wasn’t sure on the details. “Bruce called and told me about the situation in Baltimore, which was where their mission was, he told me something went wrong and they were killed.”

  “Is Mizuno alive?” Nick questioned him.

  Strom said he was unsure.

  “Why should you care?” Lauren spat. “He’s a jerk, so what difference does it make if he lives or dies?”

  Nick shrugged and simply said it was a question.

  He kicked off his tennis shoes to swap them for dress shoes, which he also acquired at the thrift store with his tie. Lauren helped him get pants, a shirt, the tie, and his shoes, and much to his chagrin she forced him to try on nearly a dozen different combinations before they left the store with the outfit for his and Amy’s homecoming date.

  They missed the school’s football game the night before because Nick didn’t feel like traveling all the way back to the Kenmore area for a single football game, but he told Amy he couldn’t get work off. She wasn’t happy about his continued distance from her, but Nick convinced her that he had to work the night of the game to ensure he had the night of the homecoming dance off. It was an obvious lie, and it didn’t help that he told it while Lauren was within earshot. She didn’t say anything, but he knew she wasn’t pleased with his natural ability to lie.

  Nick finished tying his shoes and after an apprehensive breath told them he’d be off. Strom stopped him and asked Nick if he felt well enough to go out for the evening. Lauren tried to object to Strom’s query, but he defended his question and reminded her that two of Nick’s associates just died. “He might need to take it easy,” Strom said.

  “And what about his girlfriend?” Lauren asked. “He can’t simply ditch her, that is, unless he wants her to flat out dump him by tomorrow morning.”

  “The question remains, do you feel up to riding around on that bike of yours and spending the entire evening going from here to there with your girlfriend and back?”

  Nick told them both that he was fine. “Either way, I can’t really disappoint her anymore as is.”

  He told them he would be back around one or so and promised to enter quietly. He took his helmet from off the stairs that led into their make-shift home, climbed the steps, quietly unlocked, opened, and closed the door before Lauren asked Strom if Nick was truly alright. Strom told her he’d be fine and resumed reading Franny and Zooey.

  ---*---

  6:20 PM

  Seattle, Washington

  Jonathan walked at a brisk pace toward his office while he read through a document that cited the Kitayama Corporation’s prior work history in joint ventures with external companies. An offer for a cooperative project surfaced and Jonathan felt he needed to judge whether business with the generally distant company would be a sound investment or not.

  He opened the door to his office and nearly shouted when he found Drake within and sitting in his chair. The man took a moment to compose himself and asked why Drake stopped by. “No one informed me of your visit, otherwise–”

  “I just sort of dropped by,” Drake told him. He looked at the papers in his hands and asked what it was.

  Jonathan adjusted his glasses and told him it was just a compilation of documents that mentioned general effectiveness of the Kitayama Corporation. “They’ve made some offers to join us in a few joined projects in our gaming department, as well as extending an offer to encode our software for nearly a decade as a sign of good faith.”

  Drake frowned and asked why they had such a sudden change of heart. “They’re normally cold toward us if I remember.”

  Vane nodded and said it was true. “I’m trying to see what angle they might have, but I can’t see anything except for a future project that will inevitably provide both of our companies with extremely fruitful results.”

  “Have you talked with Sho about this?”

  “I have. He’s quite eager to begin working with them.”

  Drake smiled and said he thought he would be.

  Jonathan cleared his throat and asked what Drake stopped by for. “I can’t imagine you want to be here on a Saturday evening when you could just as well spend your time with one of your friends or your girlfriend.”

  Drake laced his fingers together and said he wanted to talk about Regenesis. “I know you’re trying to avoid mentioning it and giving me all the details, but I feel like I deserve to know, considering my father may have died because of it.”

  Jonathan let out a breath and admitted that he never wanted to bring it up. “It isn’t a simple matter Drake.”

  “I assumed as much,” Drake said, “Considering the fact that I’ve already tried to find out everything I could, but every trace of it seems to have vanished from the company’s past.”

  “That would be your father’s doing.”

  “Why would he do something like that?”

  Jonathan asked if he saw the video of his father’s death, which Drake said he had. “Do you remember that your father said it was a genocide waiting to happen?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well that was what it turned out to be.” He rubbed his eyes and added that they never wanted it to end up that way. “We tried to create Regenesis as a panacea, a cure-all drug.”

  “To cure all cancers, or all diseases?”

  He shook his head and said it was supposed to cure everything. “It would have cured every disease, virus, addiction, wound, and pandemic. Regenesis would have even cured deformities, mental diseases, and even toxins and venoms. And it wouldn’t have simply applied to humans; it would have cured plants and animals as well.”

  “You could have cured everything,” Drake whispered while he stared at the floor.

  Jonathan nodded and continued, “It would have been the end of disease, of illness, of famine, starvation, and through time it would prolong life and promote peace throughout the earth.”

  “It was basically the key to utopia…” Drake paused through his concentration to ask what the side effects were.

  “The drug’s nature was…complex, to put it simply.”

  “Please, explain it to me.”

  “The drug would kill the user and revive them three days later, cured of whatever ailed them previously.”

  Drake said he followed him thus far, but stopped and asked, “Did my mother take it? And if so, why didn’t she recover?”

  Jonathan hesitated to say anymore, but reluctantly revealed that the drug only had a twenty-percent success rate. “Myra, your mother that is, and your Aunt Annetta had very aggressive cancers and unfortunately there wasn’t time to increase the probability of the test. At the time one of the major and only known side effects of the drug was death, as it would kill the subject regardless of success or failure. However your mother and aunt were running out of time and options and agreed to be a part of the first and only wave of human test subjects.”

  “But it failed and they never came back to life.”

  Jonathan nodded. “There was only e
ver a twenty percent chance they would survive and sadly they did not, which is why your father deemed it a hazard and discontinued the project altogether.” Jonathan adjusted his glasses and added that there was one final effect of the drug. “If the user managed to survive the initial three days of death and revive, they would completely lose their memory.”

  Drake looked and him and asked why that was the case.

  Jonathan said he wasn’t sure. “That was one of the reasons we called it Regenesis.”

  Drake furrowed his brow and focused on the thoughts that raced through his mind. He asked, “Since you know of that other side effect, does that mean there was a successful human trial?”

  “Only one. Her name was Olivia Moore.”

  “David Moore’s wife I assume?”

  “Yes. However, because of her memory loss she failed to remember who David was and the two separated months later. She was a part of the same test group as your mother and aunt, and even after one successful human patient, your father decided to terminate the project.”

  “When did my father begin working on Regenesis?”

  “He thought of the concept for Regenesis a few years before you were born. However it wasn’t until two-thousand and sixteen that he truly began formulating the remedy,” Jonathan told him. “He had quite a group that helped him with the project, all sworn to secrecy given the nature of the drug. But he abandoned it after your mother died in two-thousand and twenty-four.”

  “But he started the research up again, didn’t he?”

  Jonathan nodded. “A year ago actually, though this time he only employed a few people.”

  “David Moore, Mark Ross, and Victor Jacobs?” Drake asked.

  “Yes, except for David,” Jonathan corrected him. “David worked as part of the first wave of engineers for the project. After his wife left him he and your father had a falling out and he left the company.”