Regenesis (Book 1): Impact (10 page)

Chapter 4

August 17
^th
,
2029

4:37 AM

Paris, France

Streetlamps
illuminated the Pont Neuf, which Lauren felt was a lovely sight and had she
been slightly more sober, and not felt a twinge of anxiety about being out at
that hour, she would have enjoyed it that much more. She knew her parents would
kill her if they found out she’d been gone so late, especially since she never
told them of the party or the boy she was with.

Lauren’s
not-quite boyfriend David walked her home, though both of them were slightly
tipsy and not exactly in the mood for the evening to end. David was a young man
with curly brown hair he chose to wear down to his ears. He wore rather
expensive designer clothes Lauren never believed she’d be able to own, a
confident smile that endeared him to many, and he kept a kind demeanor that hid
his excellent skills of both fighting and fencing, something both she and David
excelled in.

That
was how the two of them met, in a fencing class three years prior to their walk
across Pont Neuf. Both of them had quite a few non-educational quarrels with
various citizens throughout Paris and over time a mutual respect and intimate
friendship bloomed. And even though Lauren believed she’d be fine against
anyone who tried to mess with her, David made her feel safe, that if anyone
tried to hurt her they’d have to fight him first, and in all the years they’d known
each other she’d never seen him so much as take a single hit. The same couldn’t
be said of any of his opponents.

They
walked with a slight gap between the two of them; something Lauren wished to
close yet didn’t want to startle him by taking his hand or anything so forward.
She wanted his arm around her, their fingers laced together…all in all she
wanted nothing more than to be with him.

She
slowed their walk and looked out over the bridge and asked David, “ever look out at Paris and wish you were somewhere else?>”

He
looked at her and smiled, “This city’s so alive, so busy, and it’s the heart of the world if you asked me.
Anywhere else must feel so sad in comparison.>”

She
agreed. “”

“Yes. But live? No..>” He looked at her, “really wouldn’t want to be anywhere else than right here.>”

Her
eyes lit up, her heart raced, and just as she was about to reply a light behind
them illuminated the area so intensely that neither of them could keep their
eyes open. Once it began to fade away they turned to find that light fading
around the silhouette of a young girl. The young woman collapsed on the bridge
once the light disappeared.

Lauren
and David stood immobile. Neither of them was sure what they’d just witnessed
but after a moment Lauren cautiously approached the young girl and tried to
wake her.

David
slowly joined her and asked Lauren, “”

The
girl regained consciousness and immediately panicked. She frantically spoke to
both Lauren and David, but neither understood her.

Lauren
looked at David and asked, “”

Alarmed,
he replied, “the hell she got here.>”

She
scowled. “here.>”

He
held his breath and asked, “”

Lauren
sighed, “stay with her if–>”

“isn’t exactly the best place for us to take some random stranger,>” David
told her. He pulled her aside and mentioned, “heroin user. What if this girl’s part of the police? Or worse, what if Reine
doesn’t give a shit about her house guest and shoots up with this girl
there?>”

“well how about we just take her to the police then?>”

David
shrugged. “though.>”

“would they do that?>”

“how do you expect them to react when we tell them about her sudden appearance
here?>” He glanced at the terrified girl and back to Lauren, “sound prejudiced, but a Middle Eastern girl pops up literally out of thin air and
she doesn’t have any documentation on her. What do you expect the police to
assume?>”

“we just say we found her on the street collapsed,>” Lauren suggested.
“from another angle.>”

“don’t have any way of convincing this girl to keep quiet about the incident, so
our stories won’t match up at all.>” David crossed his arms and only gave a
moment of thought before he let out a sigh and told Lauren that they should go.
“to discover this. I think It’ll just be easier if we take off in some direction
with her and make a plan on the way.>”

David
walked over to the young girl and tried to get her to walk with them, though
she panicked and would not listen. Lauren tried to help as well but the result
was the same; the young girl wouldn’t budge and frantically cried out for what
they both assumed were cries for help.

Lauren
asked, “”

“police are probably the best bet since I doubt either of us knows of anyone we
could leave her with who speaks whatever she’s speaking.>”

“won’t we end up having to answer dozens of questions once we’re there?>”

“”
he admitted, “and leave her here if you don’t want to deal with–>”

Lauren
stopped him. “” She took the girl’s
arm and started walking back across the bridge. David cursed under his breath
and followed after her.

---*---

August 16
^th
,
2029

8:03 PM

Redmond, Washington

Sho
sat in his living room, actively engaged in the game he played through. He wore
a tee-shirt that displayed one of his favorite manga characters. A forty-five
inch, flat screen plasma TV he had mounted in the wall before him showed his
fluid game play and beneath it stood a small cabinet where three of his video
game consoles resided, one of which worked actively for Sho. In front of the
couch where he sat was a small coffee table, and the newest addition to the
table was his
Creeping Darkness 2
figurine. His den was filled with
different video games, DVD’s, video cassette tapes, comics and manga, and
posters of different characters, people, and places he was fond of. It was his
own little space that his wife allotted to him on the condition that the rest
of their home remained presentable.

Sho’s
wife came down the stairs and spoke to him in Japanese, “ready in about fifteen minutes. Hurry up and save so we can watch our
show.>”

“course. I’ll save as soon as I hear your sweet footsteps coming down the stairs
Misa,>” he said to her, which only caused her to roll her eyes.

“only say that because I’ll have your favorite food with me,>” she returned
as she walked up the stairs.

“wound me, my love!>” he joked.

“up!>” Misa said with a laugh.

Sho
returned to his game but only for a moment; his cell phone buzzed which caused
him to pause and answer, “

“This is Drake. Could we talk in English?>” he asked.

“Yeah,
sure, what’s up?”

Drake
took a moment to answer that question. “My friend’s brother was killed this
afternoon.”

“Oh…Geez,
I’m sorry Drake.”

“I
am too,” Drake told him, “But I was wondering if you could help me out.”

“Help
you how?”

“I’d
like to know exactly what the police suspect in this case,” Drake said. “I want
to figure out what’s really going on, seeing as I don’t think this was a random
killing.”

“And
what makes you think that?”

“He
was a high school English teacher,” Drake informed him, “Not too many people
are gunning down instructors right now, for starters.”

Sho
walked upstairs to get his laptop and brought it back downstairs with him. He
opened it up, logged on, and asked, “What exactly do you need from me?”

“I
hoped you might be able to tell me of any leads the police might have,” Drake
explained, “And assumptions, and clues…anything for that matter.”

“Alright,”
Sho cracked his knuckles, “Give me one minute.”

He
opened an internet browser and found his preferred search engine and typed
‘complete wood overhaul’ into the search bar. Once it loaded a second later he
chose the third result from the top and accessed the website it advertised. The
website was about how to perform a complete resurfacing of one’s home to make
all doors, floors, walls, cabinets, and counters wood. There was a login on the
right side of the page which Sho utilized. He typed in his username,
‘kirasho52,’ and then his password. It immediately registered as an error,
which Sho knew was a routine procedure. He logged in once more though with a
different password than before, which opened a separate program.

The
entire screen went black and remained that way for nearly twenty-five seconds
before a single word in white text focused into view in the center of his
screen, REFOIA. He entered his login information for a third and final time,
with another separate password, and afterwards REFOIA became accessible to him.

REFOIA’s
layout was initially similar to a standard web browser. The homepage was akin
to a social media website, with email messages and notifications stored on the
left hand of the page, recent trending and important news articles in the
center, and a list of friends who were currently online and available listed on
the right hand side of the window. At the top of the page was a search bar that
allowed the user to search REFOIA’s database for anything from video games and
music to full television episodes that ranged back as far as recorded television’s
origin and full length movies. REFOIA offered complete libraries of both
fictitious and factual books in every language, including audio versions of
almost everything within the library. The program also offered live streaming
news articles from across the world as well as archived news pieces that dated
back to the mid-nineteenth century in some instances. But above all, REFOIA was
a massive and ever expanding multilingual encyclopedia that stored information
on everything from political figures lives to differing methods for lawn care.
It also had a biography for nearly every single person on the earth, although
some of these were brief and contained little more than a photograph and
information surrounding their birth and any possible marital status. REFOIA was
open-ended in regard to the possibility for anyone to update and submit
additional data or photographs or videos about any matter or any one, though
the submissions were always subject to the higher powers of the program.

Sho
saw that he had quite a few messages and notifications from his contacts,
though he ignored them and asked Drake for the murdered man’s name.

“Victor
Jacobs.”

“You
don’t happen to know his middle name, do you?”

“No,
but is that really needed?”

Sho
let out a small sigh, “Well yes and no. You see, the system searches through
billions, possibly hundreds of billions of names to gather anything remotely
close to that, so it’ll bring up all of the Victor Jacobs that are out there,
including anyone who might have the middle name of Victor and the last name of
Jacobs…so we could be looking at tens of thousands of entries. I can narrow it
down to the Seattle area, but that could still render a couple hundred
options.”

“He
wrote a book called
Origins
,” Drake told him, “So that should help
target what we’re looking for.”

Sho
grinned, “Well then…” he entered his search terms into REFOIA and immediately
produced a few dozen results about the man. He sifted through and added that he
wanted information about the death of Victor Jacobs and it produced only two
items, the first being a brief paragraph written by one of the enigmatic
masterminds behind REFOIA, who tended to write a brief line in anyone’s
biography unless someone else beat them to it. It merely read: ‘Victor Jacobs.
Shot dead in main entrance of Bothell Senior High School, Bothell Washington,
on August sixteenth, twenty-twenty-nine.’

Beyond
that brief sentence it gave the link to the main article about Victor Jacobs,
which Sho opted out of and instead selected the second gathered search result,
which was a detailed police report of the case behind the death of Victor
Jacobs.