Regenesis (Book 1): Impact (40 page)

“Why
not?”

“Their
attack in DC was stopped, which should spawn debates as to how I could do that,
considering Strom and I are the only ones who have ever countered Dáfù
attacks.”

“Which
reminds me to ask you how the hell you knew they were going to go after
President Monroe in the first place?” Strom asked.

Mizuno
didn’t answer that question. “I didn’t know whether the attack at DC was
scheduled after the attack on the President’s life or not. If it was then that
means the Seattle attack should happen, along with the other two scheduled
attacks that were planned to happen between now and the attack at the Seattle
Art Museum.”

“So
what does it mean if it does happen?”

He
sighed and admitted that he wasn’t sure. “It could mean anything of a thousand
possibilities, including one where they’re aware of the existence of people who
can actually hinder them and they don’t care. There is one other thing that
worries me though; if they do attack as scheduled and we do counter them, then
they’ll become aware of the fact that I know their plans. From there what they
do would define where we stand against them.”

“So
it’s all in the air right now?”

He
only nodded.  “Nick,” Mizuno finally looked at him, “Just worry about training
with Strom for now. All of this is something I need to calculate; please focus
on what Strom can teach you.”

Mizuno
asked Strom to take Nick home using the car he’d stolen, though Strom told him
he’d brought his own ride. Mizuno slowly started off into the shadows of the
building while he removed his small notepad from his jacket along with a pen.
Nick watched him disappear and asked Strom if he knew what Mizuno wrote in his
little book. Strom only said he didn’t and led the way out.

---*---

Chapter
15

September
7
^th
, 2029

9:31
AM

Tokyo,
Japan

Drake
had only been in jail once, though he wasn’t detained. He was in the sixth
grade when his class toured the Bothell Police Station. His class got to see
the bulletproof glass that separated the secretaries from the outside, they saw
the holding cells deep inside the building (and were introduced to a character
Drake didn’t realize for years was a police officer disguised as a drunkard to
tell the kids to stay out of trouble), and his class even had their
fingerprints taken and recorded.

Japanese
prisons weren’t as lighthearted as it was in Bothell Washington. From what
little he’d seen he could tell the halls, rooms, and offices were spotless. The
small cell he was kept in when they weren’t interrogating him only had a chair
and a small futon for a bed, which he wasn’t allowed to even touch unless told
to sleep.

His
situation wasn’t what he dwelt on though, as he needed to figure out who set
him up and if his father was truly dead. It’d been nearly three days since he
stepped off the plane and faced his arrest. As per Japanese penal code, he
hadn’t been allowed to call anyone or even get himself a lawyer, (though he
only knew of a few lawyers and they were all in America and completely
inaccessible).

His
windowless door opened outward and two detectives he’d spoken to earlier joined
him. Drake recalled their names were Amano and Obata. Obata carried a thin
laptop with him, though it was closed and he couldn’t see what was on the
screen.

Detective
Amano began by asking him in English, “Do you want to start by telling us what
your ability is?”

Drake
shook his head. “I don’t have any power, so I can’t admit anything.”

Detective
Obata asked Drake to stop lying. “We’re aware of the fact that the sudden
appearance of abilities is foreign to everyone, however we here in Japan have
already discovered a handful of traits that are found in each and every
individual who bears an ability.”

“Like
what?”

“The
first is an ailment of some sort,” Amano told him. “It can range from epilepsy
or insomnia to cancer or dyslexia, so long as the ailment wasn’t self-induced.”

“Though
that last part is only speculation,” Obata told him. “We haven’t found anyone
who has lung cancer from smoking and has an ability and nothing else wrong with
them.”

“How
many people have you found?”

Amano
chose not to answer him. “The second trait is much simpler to identify,” he
told Drake. “It has to do with your thumbprints.”

“They’re
symmetrical,” Obata finished. “When someone gains an ability their left
thumbprint becomes a mirror of their right thumbprint.”

Drake
looked at his own thumbs and realized that they were right. He never noticed it
but saw the symmetry. He confessed again that he didn’t know what power he
could possess. “I honestly didn’t know about this until today.”

Amano
only nodded. He asked Detective Obata to show him the document on the laptop.
It was Drake’s fingerprints from his sixth grade field trip. Upon inspection of
his thumbprints he found them to have been symmetrical since that age.

“Apparently
you’ve had these abilities for quite some time Mister Winchester.”

“I
didn’t know.”

“You’re
still claiming ignorance?” Obata scoffed. The detective closed the document and
showed Drake security footage from the night his father was killed.

The
security footage showed Drake in his father’s office in Seattle at eight in the
evening on the fifth of the month. It wasn’t really him though, as Drake was on
a plane on his way to Japan when the video was recorded. Drake’s father walked
into the room and stopped when he saw his son in his chair behind his desk.

“Drake?”
his father asked. “What are you doing here?”

The
imposter shrugged and told Drake’s father that he was on the no fly list. “I
tried to board, bags, ticket, passport and all, and they only told me I
couldn’t go because I was on the no fly list.”

Tony
examined the charlatan and shook his head. “You’re not my son.”

“What
are you talking about?”

“Drake
would have called me from the airport if he couldn’t make the flight.”

“My
phone died.”

“You’re
lying,” Tony told the fake. “Who are you?”

Drake
grinned, “Y’know, I never quite understood how you dealt with losing mom and
Aunt Annetta on the same day…In fact, how on earth did they both die on the
same day?”

Tony
only shook his head and muttered, “You wouldn’t know because you are not my
son.”

“I’ve
talked to people about it though.”

“Drake
might have but you never did.”

“You
told me they died together in a car accident,” Drake spat.

“They
did.”

“Now
you’re lying.” The poseur tossed a file on the desk between the two of them;
Drake couldn’t see what the files were from the angle of the tape. The imposter
continued, “I read here that mom and Aunt Annetta were a part of some
experimental test for a drug called Regenesis.” The charlatan looked Drake’s
father in the eye and asked, “What is Regenesis?”

Drake
watched his father shift his weight and slowly reply, “Regenesis was a project
this company worked on for years until the untimely death of my wife and
sister. They both had an incurable strain of cancer and had this experimental
drug worked they would have been cured.”

“Then
Regenesis is a cure for cancer,” the charlatan surmised.

But
Tony only shook his head. “It was a far more powerful remedy than that.”

“So
it would have cured all cancers?”

Tony
only shook his head. “I can’t say anymore.”

The
charlatan only smirked, chuckled, and retrieved a handgun from the back of his
jeans and took aim at Tony’s chest. He slowly asked the man again, “What is
Regenesis?”

It
was at that moment that Drake first saw it, but on the fake’s left arm was the
tattoo of a serpent. Drake recalled Ian telling him of a tattoo he saw on the
man who killed Victor. He wasn’t sure what the snake Ian saw looked like, but
Drake believed it was the same assassin.

Tony’s
breathing slowed down. Drake saw his father try to remain calm while he
attempted to dissuade the aggressor from shooting him. “You need to calm down.”

“No,
you need to tell me what it is.”

“It
doesn’t matter anymore,” he told the fake, “The project’s been completely
scrapped and all materials used have been destroyed.”

“You’re
lying.”

“I
swear,” Tony confessed. “After my wife died I never wanted to risk the drug
backfiring the way it did before.”

“How
is that?”

Tony
looked at the gunman and only shook his head. “You’d better just finish this
now; I’m not going to tell you.”

The
charlatan twitched. He shot Tony in the left shoulder and slowly walked over to
him while he bled on the carpet between his desk and the door. The fake set the
gun against Tony’s left temple, held him down tightly, and told him, “You will
tell me everything there is to know about Regenesis.” He then added something
in a low voice which the recording failed to properly record.

Drake
couldn’t see his face very well, but he thought he heard his father weep before
he admitted, “It’s nothing more than a genocide waiting to happen. Please,
please don’t hurt my family.”

The
charlatan smiled and thanked him. “That’s what I thought.”

All
there was afterwards was the final shot from the gunman before the video ended.

Detective
Obata closed the laptop and asked for his thoughts. “You were there, you
interrogated and killed your own father, and you evidentially have an ability
but are unwilling to admit it.”

Drake
asked if he could point some things out before they continued. “Firstly, my own
father said that wasn’t me, which you should take into consideration. Second,
did you happen to notice the tattoo on his arm? I don’t have one and even if I
had it removed there would still be a scar from getting it removed so
recently.”

“And
what about the gun?”

“What
about it?”

“Is
it registered to you?”

“I
don’t own a firearm.”

“But
you do know how to get one, don’t you?”

Drake
rolled his eyes, “Every teenager in the United States knows how to get a gun,
we practically sell them on the street corners.”

Amano
rubbed his eyes and muttered in Japanese, “kid.>”

“doesn’t matter,>” Drake replied, “find the gun that charlatan had with him and cross check the fingerprints on
the weapon with mine and that should help clear my name.>”

Amano
agreed. He looked at his partner and mentioned, “residue found on him when he was brought here.>”

Drake
asked them, “”

Amano
said they’d found a gun multiple flights below where the crime was committed,
but added that there still wasn’t any results as to who’s fingerprints were on
the gun. “Since there wasn’t any gunshot residue found on you, that does helps
your case, but your ability as well as the revelation as to who held that gun
are your only keys to freedom at this point.”

“But
nothing’s guaranteed, is it?”

“Of
course not,” Obata scoffed.

Drake
lowered his eyes and concentrated. He asked whether he’d be imprisoned in Japan
or if he’d be extradited back to the United States. The short answer was that
he’d be extradited when the time came, but for now he would remain in Japan.

Both
of the detectives left shortly thereafter; once they were gone Drake spent his
time trying to figure out what sort of ability he could possess. He started by
imitating what Ian showed him, moved on to trying to punch a hole in the wall
of his room, and even tried to lift his futon up off the floor with his mind.
None of it worked though.

---*---

10:05
AM

Bothell,
Washington

Coop,
Wally, and Ian sat in Ian’s room in front of his thirty-six inch television,
each with a controller in their hands and a portion of their attention on the
video game they played. Wally and Ian didn’t mind having their character’s
limbs blown off, but Coop took it to heart that their team didn’t fare too
well.

“Are
you sure you don’t want to practice anymore?” Wally asked Ian.

He
nodded. “I think I’ve got the general hang of everything, so there isn’t really
any sense in mastering it.”

“What
do you mean?”

“It
isn’t as if I’ll ever need a mastery of them,” he mumbled. “I don’t have any
intention of fighting with any of the others like me.”

“But
what if they want to fight you?” Coop asked while he never lost focus on the
game.

“I’d
just flee or try to talk them down.”

Coop
rolled his eyes and muttered, “You’d chicken out then?”

Ian
told him it wasn’t like that. “I just don’t see any reason for me to help.”

Wally
paused the game and scowled at Ian. “What the hell do you mean by that?”

“I
mean I don’t think London’s heroes will need me.”

“You’re
joking, right?” Coop asked him. “You have seen what those guys look like,
right?”

“Yes.”

“They
look like complete douchbags.”

“Yes
Coop, we get it,” Wally interjected. “Seriously Ian, any guy on the planet
would die a thousand times just to land in your position for a moment. You’ve
got the opportunity to help the world in possibly the coolest fashion ever, yet
you’re hesitant…Why is that?”

Ian
let his gaze meet the floor when he admitted his fear in the matter. “What if I
fail to save someone?”

Coop
only shrugged. “Then some people die and you just be sure to save the next
one.”

“What
he means to say is that it’s better for you to lose a few and save a lot than
fail to save anyone because you never tried,” Wally explained. “No one’s going
to blame you if you do fail Ian, no one can single handedly save the world.
People slip through the net all the time and there isn’t any way to stop that.”

Ian
admitted that Wally had a valid point. “So you both believe I should get a
costume, a new name, and save the world?”

Coop
didn’t wait to answer, “Duh. That’s what I’ve been saying this whole time.”

Wally
agreed.

Ian
nodded and smiled. “So what do you think the super hero persona should be
called?”