"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 a.n.a.lyze 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 entrees 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 dispa.s.sionately 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, inst.i.tuted 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 a.s.sumption 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 doc.u.ment she"d left out on her coffee table. "You solved your ident.i.ty 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 doc.u.ment 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 a.s.sistant 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 a.s.sume whoever"s informing Cladis of targets was sure about Resnik staying in police custody until his death, which means he didn"t antic.i.p.ate 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 a.n.a.lyze the evidence. "If there"s any consolation, I know you and Officer Maguire are innocent."
"What about Felton, Murdock, and Chief Johnson?"
He shrugged and said he was uncertain. "They"ll be the first people I watch for, as they"re so close to this case as it is."
"You don"t think it is them, do you?"
Twelve only told her he hoped they weren"t. "It"s too soon to tell. But Mia, don"t breathe a word of this to anyone."
She agreed and watched as the man headed for his exit at her window. Mia only stopped him to ask what they should do about the city, but Twelve said it wasn"t his greatest concern. "Things are still unstable and I"m at a loss of what to do. I imagine all of our jobs will become far more frenetic than they were just a week ago."
Mia asked if he still believed they could save the city but by the time her question escaped her lips, Twelve was gone. She only cursed under her breath, shut the window and locked it, and quickly walked back to her bedroom to dress.
12:13 PM.
London, England Ian slept soundly on his couch in his Voltage costume, even with the mask on. He"d only returned seven hours ago and since he didn"t have any pressing engagements for the following day he elected to crash on his couch without so much as removing his outfit. Sadly he neglected to shut his phone off and someone felt obligated to wake him. He woke startled, confused, and slightly disoriented as he flipped his phone open and asked who it was.
"It"s Drake. I"m on the roof of your building."
Ian let out a breath and asked why he didn"t just meet him inside, but Drake only told him to join him. Drake hung up before Ian could object.
Ian hung up, rolled of his couch and hit the floor. He stood up and walked over to his refrigerator to grab two sodas, one grape and one orange, and then Ian left for the roof through his window. Drake sat on the ledge of the building with his legs over the edge. Ian climbed up the fire escape and took a seat next to him. He gave Drake the grape soda and asked what Drake wanted to talk about before he opened his own drink.
"I found out who killed my father and Victor," Drake told him as he opened his soda.
"Who was it?"
"Jordan."
Ian looked at him and asked if he was joking. Drake didn"t make eye contact with him, repeated that Jordan killed them, and took a sip of his drink.
"How did you find out?" Ian asked him.
"Nick told me." He revealed Nick"s confrontation with both Jeremy Dalton and Jordan. "Nick knocked on my door, soaked in blood, and told me everything." Drake stared down at the street beside Ian"s apartment building and recounted how Nick cried for hours as he told him everything. "His girlfriend Amy"s dead too."
"Jordan killed her?"
Drake nodded.
Ian took an apprehensive breath and asked if Jordan was incarcerated, which he a.s.sumed to be the case until Drake told him Nick didn"t incapacitate him very well. "By the time the police arrive at the scene of the crime Jordan was conscious and bore the appearance of a young woman. He claimed a s.e.x predator abducted both he and Amy and raped them, though he was long gone by the time any examination could have started."
"Are they looking for the girl he posed as?"
He said they probably were. "I told Nick to stay with me for a while, seeing as he won"t go and live with Paul again and doesn"t have any money to live off of."
"I thought he was still living with Paul, even after that fight you mentioned."
Drake said it was a lie. "Apparently Nick"s been staying with this French girl he met through work, though they"ve parted company since the incident." Drake mentioned how the young woman was a target of the two a.s.sa.s.sins and how Nick felt vulnerable being anywhere near her. "He told her he couldn"t protect her any longer and told me he wanted out of his old life."
"What "old life?""
He appraised Ian of Nick"s unseen lifestyle, how he joined a group bent on stopping the Dafu, Nick"s obsession with hunting down his brother"s murderer, and how sick it all made him. "He told me he never liked it to begin with and felt that it"s what pulled him and Amy apart." Drake took another swig of his grape soda and added how guilt stricken Nick was. "Her funeral"s today actually."
"Is he going?"
Drake nodded and said he would be there as well. "The overall story is that Nick showed up for dinner with her in Seattle but she never showed herself." Drake sipped his soda once more before he added how he removed all traces of Nick"s blood, hair, and fingerprints from the crime scene and from the police"s possession.
"Why would you do that?"
He looked at Ian and asked how Nick was supposed to clear his name if they approached him. "Nick"s innocent and doesn"t need to deal with this; all I did was save him further grief and the police some wasted time."
Ian looked back out toward the city and let out a breath before he asked, "So no one knows the truth but the few of us?"
Drake said that was the case. "How the h.e.l.l was Nick supposed to explain that entire disaster and convince everyone that it was true? They"d think he was insane...or the killer himself."
Ian frowned and admitted that Drake was probably right. "So what"s next?"
Drake finished his soda and asked what he meant. "I have no clue how to find Jordan, a.s.suming he"s still in the state. All I want to do is help Nick recover from all of this c.r.a.p he"s had to deal with in the past few months."
Ian lowered his eyes and asked how so many terrible things could spring up in such a short period of time. "Things were so simple last year. What happened to that?"
Drake shrugged, "Maybe we just couldn"t see how horrible things really are. It is startling though," Drake added. "One of our best friends is a killer and we hardly knew it."
Ian muttered something about seeing the trees among the forest. Although Ian failed to quote the saying, Drake knew what he meant.
"I heard about your heroics," Drake started. "Did you ever find the guy who kidnapped her?"
"No. I looked through the tunnels for a few hours the next night but he was long gone I guess."
"Any idea who he was?"
Ian shook his head, "It"s not like I can really identify anyone from here though. Everyone"s anonymous to me right now."
"Then I guess you"ll just have to wait and see if he resurfaces."
"I guess so...hey, do you want to grab lunch?" Ian asked him once he realized how famished he was.
Drake declined the offer and promised to join him some other time. "I"m planning on heading to the People"s Republic of China to look at buying a sword or something."
Ian didn"t understand Drake"s seemingly random desire, but guessed it had to do with his inability to manage all of the time he possessed. He watched as Drake crushed his empty can in his hands, took aim at an open trash bin on the sidewalk below, and effortlessly made the shot.
"I"ll see you around Ian," he said as he waived and fell off the edge of the building backwards. Ian watched his friend fall, only to see him stop near the ground, become a blur, and vanish entirely.
Ian finished his drink, mimicked Drake"s shot into the trash, and flew off the building in search of a good meal. He didn"t manage to go far before he noticed a speeding car heading straight for a young woman who tried to jog across the street and failed to see the car. Ian dove toward her, swept her off her feet, and managed to save her easily before the car neared.