Impact (Book 1): Regenesis

by Harrison Pierce

  The lights were off and though he tried the switch it failed to respond. All he had to work off was the light from the hallway, which would disappear once the door closed, and the ambient light from the city beyond the open windows.

  He whispered Amy’s name in the darkness with no reply. Nick checked the bathroom first, followed by a small closet, and failed to find her on either of the beds, though he noticed a small area of blood on the center of the sheets of the bed closest to the window. He walked over and briefly examined the stain before he noticed a body on the carpeted floor between the bed and the wall.

  Amy lay collapsed, still, and bloody. Her wrists and ankles were bound behind her with steel wires that cut well into her joints and allowed a weak trickle of blood from her wounds to collect on the floor next to her. More blood covered her ripped blouse as well as her skirt, which was pulled down around her calves. Whatever undergarments she wore were torn away from her and tossed aside.

  His heart raced and though he hurried to help her, someone intervened and dug a thin blade into his shoulder. Nick lost his balance and control and allowed his new opponent to throw him into the wall away from Amy. Nick struggled to focus on the assailant, but couldn’t bring himself to get to his feet or create a weapon with which to defend himself. All he could do was watch the Hispanic housecleaner he passed in the hall shift into his stepfather, who then retrieved another blade from his pocket.

  Paul walked over to Nick, leaned the young man against the wall, and pressed a four inch switchblade against Nick’s throat. “How’d you manage to beat Dalton?” Paul asked in a quiet voice. “He’s not dead is he?”

  Nick lowered his gaze and admitted that he didn’t kill him. “Who are you really?”

  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 gr
oup 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.”