Regenesis (Book 1): Impact (24 page)

“H-How
did you know that?” Nick questioned him.

The
man rolled his eyes, “How do you expect me to answer that Nick? Learning,
gaining information someone hasn’t told or has hardly told a soul?”

“How
d-did you though?” he pressed onward.

He
sighed, “Like I said earlier, I’m involved in a project I’d like you to join.
If you do you’ll find the answers you want and I’ll even help you find the one
who killed your brother.”

Nick
scowled at the man, “H-How are y-you going to do that?”

The
man’s eyes flashed. “You’re right handed, born November thirteenth of
twenty-eleven, have AB positive blood, you’ve had two major surgeries in your
life which were the removal of your wisdom teeth on January tenth of
twenty-twenty-eight and the replacement of your right eye at the age of three
on December seventeenth of twenty-fourteen and is the result of why you’re
colorblind in only your left eye.”

Nick
recoiled from the man. “H-How do you kn-know all of that?”

Nick
stared in awe of the man’s knowledge. “H-How can you know a-all of that?”

The
Asian man grinned, “I’ll tell you if you agree to help me.”

“I-I–”

“You
don’t know what I’m talking about,” the Japanese man finished for him.
“Listen,” he rubbed his eyes, “We don’t have time to get into details at the
moment. The short version is that you want to find your brother’s killer and I
can help, but I need you to help me first.”

“H-Help
you with what?”

“My
project,” the man told him. “I don’t have time to tell you now and since there
are still others who would like to know exactly what you want to know, I’d
prefer to wait and answer your questions at a later date. Otherwise I’m going
to repeat myself eight other times and I’d rather not waste my breath. Right
now I need to know whether you’ll agree to help me or not.” Nick hesitated and
the man barked, “Nick! Hurry up and make a decision. It’s simple, you agree to
help me and you’ll be able to avenge your brother. Decline and you’ll never
hear from me again and you can solve his murder on your own.”

Nick
took a minute to agree, but did nonetheless.

The
man smiled. “Good. Your school begins on the fourth of September, so we need to
get to work quickly.”

“Wh-What
do you mean?”

“We’re
leaving for Washington DC and then India. We have a lot of work to take care of
before then.”

“What
about–”

“When
we get back,” the man interrupted. “I need to train you first; otherwise you’ll
be running into a fight blind, which you’re not ready for yet.”

“A-Alright,
wh-when do we leave?”

The
man retrieved two tickets from his pocket and skimmed through them, “In an hour
and a half. Let’s go.”

“But
I–”

“Don’t
have clothes, money, food, a passport, and you still want to call your
girlfriend Amy who, by the way, is deeply infatuated with you.” Nick was
speechless so the man continued, “And don’t worry about your stepfather,” he
said as he turned his back and started out of the alley, “I doubt he’ll even
notice you’re gone.” The man took out two passports, airline tickets, and
wallets and handed one set to Nick, “You’re Isaac Jones now, please do the both
of us a favor and remember that.”

Nick
looked at the identification and found his license photo on all of the fake
documents with minor adjustments to each one. All of his age, weight, eye
color, and other necessary information was replicated or altered there on all
documentation.

“We
need to leave now.”

“Wh-Who
are you?”

“At
the moment, Ryuzaki Miyaza.”

--          --          --

“Just
one more dance, please!” Rachel begged.

Vladimir
took her hand, “Rachel, we have danced four times, and I really must be going,
as it is getting late.”

“Are
you sure you can’t stay for one last dance?” she asked.

The
pair danced to more than a few songs before Jordan caught up with them. He
hastily seized Vladimir by the wrist and pulled him away from the dance floor
and out from the party and into an alley nearby.

“You
can let go of me now Jordan,” Vladimir told him as he wrenched his arm free.

“I
don’t know who you think you are Vlad, but Rachel’s my girlfriend. So back
off,” he spat as he shoved Vladimir into a wall.

Vladimir
calmly brushed himself off and told Jordan he’d done nothing wrong. He started
to leave when Jordan kicked him in the back and into the nearby wall again. Jordan
grabbed Vladimir by his shirt and struck him three times in his face. The final
blow broke Vladimir’s nose and blood began to pour out.

Vladimir
immediately broke Jordan’s grasp and threw him, with ease, off of him and into
the alley. With one arm he pinned Jordan to the ground and with his free arm he
wiped away the blood. Vladimir muttered, “You are an irksome pest, Jordan.”

Jordan
watched as Vladimir’s nose mended itself, ceased bleeding, and after a moment
Vladimir looked as if Jordan had never laid a finger on him. Vladimir’s grip
tightened while his prey whispered in horror, “What are you?”

--          --          --

Rachel
rushed out of the party in search of Vladimir and Jordan, though all she heard
was a cry. She panicked and ran toward the alley only to find Jordan alone and
wounded. He was collapsed on the ground, conscious, but bleeding out of his
throat, chest, face, and arms. A majority of his ribs were broken and as such
his breathing was drastically inhibited. The blood from his throat wound caused
what little air he could breathe to be drowned out by the pool of blood that
formed in his lungs.

Tears
flooded her eyes and all she could do was cry out in terror while he lay dying
in her arms. She gripped him tightly, closed her eyes, and silently prayed for
help. The alleyway then illuminated in an instant and once Rachel opened her
eyes she discovered the unknown light came from Jordan’s wounds. His near-dead
body repaired itself, bones, organs, blood and all. The light faded as soon as
the young man was saved and left him merely unconscious in her arms.

---*---

Faith

Chapter
9

August
25
^th
, 2029

11:45
AM

Baltimore,
Maryland

Sage
slowly opened his eyes and through his blurred vision he discovered he lay in a
hospital bed. The fluorescent light flickered rapidly, faster than the present
swish from the ceiling fan. A machine kept a slow, harsh rhythm that he soon
discovered was the beat of his own heart. He traced the wires from the machine
to his chest.

He
looked around the room and found an empty gray bed adjacent to him on the left
side, a gray metal door on his right, the gray ceiling above him, the gray
tiles floor beneath him, gray chairs in the corner, and the gray painted walls
that surrounded him. After a moment, he realized he was the only thing in the
room with any color.

Sage
removed the wires from him and let them slowly fall away to the machine where
the cables retracted back inside the strange device. He set his feet on the
floor and was startled to feel nothing. They were not cold or warm or anything.
He hardly felt their presence at all.

He
tried to stand but fell to the floor and hit the tiled surface hard. Sage
struggled to lift himself but failed to do so. He looked at his legs but
nothing restricted him. After a moment of struggle he simply crawled over to
the door. Once there he found it without window, knob, or sign that it could
ever open. He pushed against it though it didn’t budge.

In
defeat he crawled over to one of the chairs and took a seat. He looked at his
room, the open window, the swirling fan, the ceiling lights on the floor in the
pool of black–

Sage
shook his head fiercely and the room righted itself. The fan twirled silently,
the floor was the floor again, and the lights were on the ceiling where they
belonged. More importantly a small rectangular window appeared on the door,
which excited Sage as he finally had a view of the outside world.

He
crawled over to the door and dragged the chair with him. Once he positioned the
chair, he climbed up and peered through the small glass rectangle. Outside the
door was Baltimore, his city, from a bird’s-eye view. Sage glanced at the room
and back through the window. He felt the room should have been on its side,
with the door and the wall as the floor and the bed and the floor as the wall.
But he remained where he was and the room remained as it was. Sage looked out
once more and found his city functioning as normal; cars crept along as ants,
it rained, and all seemed at peace.

A
cry pierced the silence. Sage turned and saw a lone crow perched on a
windowsill at the other end of the room. The window had not been present
before, and Sage discovered a neon green exit sign that floated above the crow.
The bird flew out into the darkness beyond the window.

Sage
tried to move to the other end of the room, but he fell from the chair and into
a viscous black liquid. The man tried to swim and to return to his bed or even
to the chair, all of which remained perfectly still among the top of the
liquid. He sank while the beat of the fan, his pulse, the machine, and the
flickering of the lights all synchronized.

---*---

3:45
PM

London,
England

The
injuries Jason sustained from the fire were far graver than Audrey initially
believed. His doctors were amazed he even survived. His entire body consisted
of second and third degree burns, along with one massive fourth degree wound on
his left arm which worried the doctors most of all. Yet internally he was
relatively fine, which confounded them and raised a few eyebrows. His heart and
lungs sustained smoke inhalation but the damage wasn't as destructive as it
should have been. They kept him in their burn unit, completely secluded, and
she hadn't had an opportunity to speak to him or see him since the fire.

She
sat out in the lobby nearest to the unit, lost in thought, foot racing away
devoid of her awareness or control. Her brother Jack and his wife planned to
stop by to be with her later that night, but all she had to comfort her then
was her mother, who only made her worry more. Audrey asked her to get some food
from the cafeteria so she could have a moment of quiet to herself.

Her
thoughts raced to when she first met Jason and how he gave up his seat in their
history course when she came in late on the first day of class. He left to find
another one without a single word and sat near her when he returned. From then
on she made sure to be at class early so that embarrassment wouldn't recur,
though she only managed to become friends and eventually more with that very
same young man who gave his seat to her. Audrey recalled their first date too;
Jason took her out to dinner to a small Greek restaurant on the opposite end of
town (only to later discover how atrocious the food really was). He wasn't as
confident as he later turned out to be, nor as cultured either. Their dates
ranged from concerts and movies to walks through museums and secluded parts of
London she hadn't ever known existed. After two weeks she kissed him and a few
weeks after that she made it a habit to always be near him, even if they could
only see each other for a few minutes. His proposal at her apartment near
Christmas over a candlelit and home cooked dinner took her by surprise, yet
garnered the ecstatic result he'd hoped for.

They
weren't wed until after their graduation date in twenty-twenty-five, though
they found their home two months after their engagement. Jason had lived with
three other guys he'd known from his youth, and Audrey lived with her best
friend Hannah then, so they had to find their own place. That same home lay burned
down and little more than charred rubble. All that remained were the two of
them and a safe Jason kept in their closet. Its contents were generally safe,
though Audrey's last thoughts were on her legal papers. Her husband lay near
death in a room less than one hundred meters from where she sat and the phone
call she received that informed her of the safe's retrieval hardly phased her.
Her husband lay in a bed nearby, burned and blackened from head to foot, strung
up to everything he could manage to be connected to, and from what a doctor
told her he was in unbearable and indescribable pain. Jason was however
comatose, which the doctors told Audrey was a blessing, as it helped him manage
the pain. Yet Audrey's mind raced back to stories of burn survivors who
remembered that pain from within their own comas. She even thought about all of
the ones who couldn't survive and questioned whether Jason was alive from
within and screaming without a soul to understand him or receive him, or if he
was gone and the shell of the man she loved wouldn’t ever reanimate again.

Audrey
cried for a long time after her mother left to get her a meal.

Everyone
in her family felt that they needed to be there for her, including her friends
and Jason's too, but all she wanted was a minute to cry. She wanted to be
removed from all of the hopes and well-wishes and comforters and simply scream.
She wanted to swear, to curse heaven and earth and whoever burned down her home
and her husband, and Audrey wanted to race into her husband's room and yell and
cry and smack him. She wanted to bring him back and felt completely powerless
in her chair in the lobby of the hospital.

There
were only a few others in the room and they tried to ignore her and give her
space. The room was big, with six couches and eight matching chairs. Two
televisions were mounted on the large walls that played old movies to distract
the unfortunate souls there, though no one paid any mind to what they played.
There was a coffee table with magazines piled high between each set of couches.
On one of the tables near Audrey lay a newspaper with an article open, titled
‘Dáfù Attacks London’.

Aug.
25 – On the night of August 22, multiple bombs were detonated inside of an
apartment complex within the Redbridge area of London late that night. The
bombs created a massive fire which engulfed the building, ten people perished
in the flames and one man was found in the debris, alive but in critical
condition and taken immediately away for further medical assistance. The next
day the Dáfù claimed responsibility for the attack. This marks the eleventh
attack worldwide since the attack on the United States President’s life last
week.

      For
the complete story see section A4…

She
couldn’t bring herself to read the rest of the article. All she could manage
was to toss it aside and cry. Audrey wept, alone.

---*---

11:45
AM

Baltimore,
Maryland

Ryan
opened his eyes again. It wasn’t difficult then, his vision wasn’t a blur, and
he saw everything with clarity. He lay on his back with the starry heavens
above him. There were two pulses he heard, one was his own and the second came
from the beating of the wings of a small group of crows that circled overhead.
He looked out and noticed a massive rolling black cloud beneath him, one that
stretched out for miles and that may have gone on for eternity. There was no
room, no wall, no floor, no ceiling, nothing else.

Ryan
looked at where he was and found himself in a dumpster filled with the remains
of his investigation. All of the documents, the food he’d eaten, all of the
wrappers, the evidence, the damage, and the bodies. All eleven corpses of the
eleven victims were there and they were each branded with the crescent scar on
their arm.

He
tried to yell but was drowned out by the collective cry of the crows above him.
Ryan fled the mass grave and fell onto a blanket of crows which prevented him
from falling through the black cloud beneath him.

Out
in the distance he saw a lone door, open and inviting, and he ran there. Each
step of the way there was held by a crow at his feet, almost as cobblestones.

Through
the door he found an apartment littered with clothes, garbage, bills, food, and
all manner of refuse. On the wall to his left was his investigation, though far
more detailed and further along than he was. Ryan looked at the photographs of
the victims and failed to recognize any of them.

A
short rectangular table was in the center of the room with two lit candles.
Beyond the table were two open windows. He walked before the first window and
saw Baltimore, completely deserted. There were no cars, people, sound, light,
or motion. Suddenly three winged creatures flew together, a bat, a crow, and a
dove. The creatures flew much faster than Ryan had ever seen winged animals
fly. The birds circled around one another and crashed into a tower. They
vanished into a plume of feathers.

Ryan
moved on to the second window but recoiled in fear. He only looked for a moment
but the image was burned into his mind. The completely decimated remains of
that same city stood beyond the threshold of the window. Hundreds and thousands
of dead lay strewn about in the streets and in the rubble of the fallen
buildings. Many more stood and were impaled by demonic hands.

Ryan
fled the room and ran back outside only to fall through the cloud and plummet
through the night sky. He saw his city beneath the cloud and fell through the
sky, past the towers, by the streetlights, and through the street into nothing.

---*---

4:15
PM

London,
England

“All
I’m getting at Audrey is that the city proves too stressful,” Jack told her.
“Why don’t you move home with mum for a while? Until you’re–er…that is, until
you and Jason have recovered. Audrey, I have been rather successful this past
year and I’d be more than happy to help in any way I can.”

Jack
sat beside Audrey in the waiting room with his arm rested on the back of her
seat; Audrey remained still, distant, and quiet. She kept her eyes fixed on the
floor, though her thoughts raced from memories to fears and from fear to
sorrow. It was bleak, she knew it, and they all hid it from her. As coy as they
pretended to be she saw through their collective ruse. Jack believed it was the
end, or at least the moment to restore his dominance in the affairs of their
family. He wanted to be the patriarch of the family once more, and the road
would be clear without Jason (as no one in the family saw Alan in such a role).

Audrey’s
eyes widened and she felt a tightening in her chest. Whatever her brother said
failed to reach her. She retraced her thoughts and found her cynical side had
crept in. Jack wasn’t the type to do something tasteless at such a trying time.
He might believe there was little hope for Jason but he wouldn’t say so; he
simply wanted to look after his little sister and she missed that.

Audrey
thanked Jack quietly.

She
stayed at a hotel close to the hospital with her mother and sister Suzy, who
tried their best to comfort her, though she only sought solitude. Audrey wanted
Jason, she wanted to see him and to hold him and to comfort and reassure him.
She didn’t care how disfigured he was or would be if he survived; all she
wanted was to see him again. Audrey knew she would willingly give up anything
to have him back safe, or even to talk to him.

“Audrey,
did you miss that?”

She
pulled herself out of her trance and looked at her brother with weary eyes.
“I’m sorry, what was that?”