Regenesis (Book 1): Impact (3 page)

Drake
stopped him, “willing to take that kind of risk right now.>”

Sho
placed his head in his hands and released a large sigh, “I could have been there to try and convince them.>”

Drake
stretched a bit, then told him, “there.>”

Sho
grinned, “Creeping
Darkness 2
?>”

Creeping
Darkness
was a video game series produced by their company. The game was a widely
popular horror/survival game that included many elements of blood and violence.
The main character of the first game used a variety of weapons to fight his
opponents from sawed-off shotguns and pistols to crowbars and home-made
explosives. The first
Creeping Darkness
title received a nomination for
the game of the year award in twenty-twenty-seven.

“I have.>” Drake sat up in his chair and opened a file on his computer, once
he had found it he turned his monitor toward Sho, and let him see what he had
been told about the game, “States, at eighty dollars, with the mature rating of course. And let retailers
know two things: firstly that since this game will take place in Japan this
time around, it’ll have Japanese audio, with English subtitles. The second
thing is that we’re offering two versions of this game. One that’s just the
game, and another collector’s version which includes the first game along with
the second and varying difficulties.>” Drake paused a moment to retrieve a
six-inch figure of a Japanese boy in a school uniform, who held a large handgun
in his left hand, and a steel katana in his right. The boy protected a girl,
who wore a uniform similar to what he wore. The two figures stood on one stand
that had shadowy arms reaching toward them. Drake set it on his desk and
watched Sho’s expression, “is one-hundred dollars, they’ll receive one of these figures.>”

His
eyes widened. “” Sho asked.

“think they’ve already begun at most stores…but I’m not sure.>” Drake pulled
another copy of the figure out from his desk and handed it to Sho, “worry, I made sure to get two.>”

“Thanks Drake!>” Sho took the figure and stared at it for a while, “this is so cool.>”

Drake
laughed, “are in charge of this game, you really should be involved in that
department.>”

“just hope that
Creeping Darkness
is still around by the time I get
there,>” he told Drake without moving his eyes off the figure.

Someone
nearby cleared their throat to catch Drake and Sho’s attention. A curly haired,
portly man stood a few feet from them with a disapproving look upon his face.
His eyes darted from Sho and then to Drake. “Is it safe to assume you two
weren’t discussing work related things, right?”

“Actually–”

“It
was rhetorical, Winchester.”

“Sorry
Barry.”

“It’s
Mister Sanderson.”

“Sure.”

“Now,
would you both please get back to work? Or am I going to need to
confiscate…whatever that is,” he said with a wag of his finger at the
statuette. “What is it?”

“It’s
a model going out to anyone who buys the deluxe version of
Creeping Darkness
2
. Sho is going to forward photos of this figure to different companies to
inform their branches to start advertising about the new, more expensive
version that this figure comes with,” Drake explained.

“Right…well,
that’s fine, but let’s skip the chatter and try to stay on task.”

“No
problem Barry…” Drake muttered while his manager left them “doesn’t even realize who handles that level of marketing.>”

Sho
chuckled and agreed. “ad campaign. Anyway, thanks again Drake.>”

Drake
watched Sho leave and then immediately set his head in his arms on his desk.
Business related items mainly covered his desk, from his computer and phone to
a stapler and various documents. The only things on it that were not standard
issue were his
Creeping Darkness 2
figure and a small hourglass. The
hourglass consisted of two glass chambers, the inside contained fine sand that
drained down into the lower half of the object the outer was a cylinder that
protected the inner chamber. The top and bottom of the item were made of wood;
the two ends were connected and held in place by four long shafts of wood.
Drake checked the time, 3:25 pm, and he flipped the hourglass.

His
phone rang once before he answered, “Drake Winchester.”

“Drake
you have a visitor.”

“You
don’t have to call me for this, y’know? You can just send them over okay?”

“Oh,
sorry Drake,” the secretary apologized.

“It’s
fine. Just send them down.” He hung up, counted to twelve and pointed at the
opening in his cubicle, where his unscheduled appointment arrived.

The
young man had dark shoulder length hair and brown eyes. He wore jeans, a loose
shirt from their high school, and loosely tied black tennis shoes. He was a bit
taller than Drake, but not physically larger.

“Ian,
take a seat.” Drake told his friend as he rubbed his eyes with his thumb and
forefinger.

“Didn’t
get much sleep?” asked Ian.

“No…”
He replied, and looked past Ian to find Sanderson scurrying toward them,
“Great…one moment.”

Drake
rose from his seat to intercept Sanderson, but to his surprise a lanky
bespectacled coworker stopped Sanderson and turned him away from Drake and Ian.
Taken aback, Drake returned to his conference with his friend, “Never mind.
We’ll have to make this quick though. When are you planning on moving to
London?”

“The
twenty-sixth.”

Drake
nodded. “Alright, then that means we need to throw a farewell party,” Drake
told him.

“No.
Not after the Fourth of July fiasco.”

“Nick
and Jordan put the fires out.”

“Yeah,
well I sprained my wrist and you guys pissed off about half of the town because
of what happened to the football field.”

“Hey,
a replacement was donated by an anonymous group concerned about the well-being
of our great football team,” Drake reminded him with a wry smile.

“Which
consisted of the three idiots who burned the first field down, three idiots who
were only trying to spare themselves the wrath of an angered city,” Ian said.

Drake
set his head on his desk and added, with a yawn, “The explosion was worth the
money if you ask me.”

“Why
are you so tired?” Ian questioned him, as Drake’s behavior began to wear on
him.

He
groaned, “I was up ‘til around three watching a colony of bats flying through
the night sky.”

“Didn’t
it rain last night?”

“Not
until two,” yawned Drake.

“Why
didn’t you go inside?”

“Bridget
Williams was keeping me up.” Drake grinned.

“You
were busy I take it?”

Drake
only smiled. “I’ll let you know more about the details once I know more about
the party,” he looked out and felt that his coworker wouldn’t be able to hold
Sanderson off much longer. He turned back to Ian, “I’ll call you later, but you
need to go.”

Ian
agreed and snuck out of Sanderson’s sight by crouching as he left. By the time
Ian was well beyond the parking lot Sanderson approached Drake and interrogated
him as to who he was talking to.

Drake
looked at him, confused. “What are you talking about?”

“I’m
not an idiot Winchester, who was he?”

“He?”
Drake looked about, completely perplexed, “Mister Sanderson, I have no idea who
you are talking about. I was talking to Sho Kazeke but you interrupted us and
now he’s working in his cube on the other side of the room.”

“Not
him,” Sanderson barked, “The other one.”

“What
other one?” he looked past him at the lanky coworker who tied to conceal his
laughter. “I’m sorry Mister Sanderson, but I think I need to get back to work
before I waste any more time. Besides,” he looked at the man behind Sanderson,
“I think Mister Dalton wants a word with me.”

Startled,
he whipped around and examined the man. He nodded, looked at Drake and muttered,
“We’ll talk about this later Winchester.”

Drake
smirked, “Of course we will.” He looked at his coworker and chuckled, “What’s
up?”

Jeremy
took a seat and laughed, “I do love messing with him,” he told Drake with his
slight German accent. He stopped a moment to recall why he’d even dropped by,
but suddenly realized it, “Oh! Do you happen to have the sales reports for the
last quarter? I’ve been looking for it but I can’t seem to get my hands on it.”

Drake
shook his head, “Sorry, ask Sho, he might have seen it.”

Jeremy
nodded and thanked him, but stopped at the end of the cube and asked, “Might I
be able to persuade you to lend me a set of headphones? The right ear of mine
just died on me.”

Drake
agreed (as he felt obligated for the stunt Jeremy performed to give Drake the
leeway to have his brief talk with Ian) and fished a set of black earbuds out
from his desk and tossed them at him. Jeremy failed entirely to catch them, but
thanked him anyway as he picked them off the ground. As soon as Jeremy left Drake
cursed his luck as he watched Sanderson make his return approach.

---*---

7:05 PM

Baltimore, Maryland

Detective
Ryan Sage sorted through a few pages of notes he’d collected on a case he
wasn’t overly convinced existed. His office was small and didn’t offer too much
room to think, let alone pace as he did on more than a few occasions, but it
did allow him a bit of respite from the cacophony outside his walls. The office
only signified that he was the head detective and allowed him a bit more wall
space than he would normally usurp to plot out investigations. His newest case,
one he’s stumbled upon and one he wasn’t even approved to investigate, utilized
nearly all of the desk and wall space he had, even though he knew a majority of
it was caused by his own ineptitude toward traditional organization.

He
glanced outside his window at the city of Baltimore. His second story view
showed him very little of how bad it truly was in the city. Detective Sage took
a breath and watched the shadows of a few birds that streaked across the amber
sunlit windows of a nearby tower. Sage gathered his thoughts and left his
office and intercepted his partner on his way out.

“You
ready?” Detective Chuck Felton asked him.

Sage
nodded, “As ready as someone can be with this sort of plan.”

They
had been partners for nearly half a decade. Detective Felton was partnered with
the previous head detective, but that man died during a failed drug heist.
Three weeks later Detectives Sage and Felton interrupted the same group who
they had previously attempted to bust and successfully stopped one of the most
notorious East coast gangs’ spread of illicit drugs throughout the city. The
arrests made headlines nationwide, though the press quickly died down, to both
detectives’ relief. Sage was promoted to head detective at Detective Felton’s
recommendation, though the two remained partners afterward.

“How
sure are you again?” Detective Felton asked.

“You
read it over didn’t you?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s
unfortunate, but probably the case.”

“You
do realize this will put us on the case, right?”

Sage
nodded, “Of course, that’s the whole point.”

The
pair walked up to the Chief of Police’s office and knocked on the door. Once he
told them to enter they did. Chief Martin Johnson sat behind his desk with a
concerned look on his round face. His short gray hair complemented his thick
black moustache, which only held traces of gray. The man weighed a bit more
than both of the detectives believed he should, for someone in his position,
but neither of them, nor anyone within the station ever made mention of it, out
of respect for both the man’s position and his feelings.

He
looked at the two of them, and asked hesitantly, “What is this about?”

Sage
began, “Sir as you know, there have been a number of murders all over Baltimore.”

“You
gotta be specific here, Sage,” Johnson told him while he rubbed his head with
his dark hands.

“A
string of murders related to an assassin who burns a crescent into his victim’s
right forearm.”

Irritated,
the Chief interrupted, “Sage I’ve told you that there’s no case, this is
probably some rising gang trying to get some territory or street credit or
something.”

Sage
tossed a file onto Johnson’s desk, “Eight bodies in the past forty days, all
with the same mark on their forearms.”