BREATH . OF . LIFE . ~ { ReGenisis Chronicles Book I }

Chapter Six [Part 1/3]: False Reports

                      -Jake Aylesbury-

"It's not as if they left you contact details when they defected." Skinner grumbled, tapping his pocket. "They don't want to be found."

I nodded in agreement, pulling open one of my desk drawers. I kept a copy of the file documenting the night they decided to leave, nearby. Perhaps guilt persuaded me to keep it as a reminder of the lies I span to my superior officers. I tossed it onto my desk with the same lack of care as Natalia Swan had shown earlier. 

"True, but Griffin's been slipping. Getting too sure of himself as always. Maybe I can use that." I muttered to myself, staring down at that closed file as if it held the answers. I knew it didn't.

"How long's it been?" Hudson's eyes were locked on the file, too. "Two and a half years since they split."

Skinner refused to look at it. "Still you keep reminding yourself of their treachery." He sighed.

"Not just theirs. This whole place is built on it. Trinity Science, the ReGenisis Project, Andersen and Cole's little empire that they lost control of." I felt my chest heave, an unintended laugh filled with irony and some bitter taste in my mouth.

         * * *

I waited in the darkness of Rin's office, leant up against the wall next to the door. Nursing three slashes in my quickly healing arm and the blood that still came up into my mouth as some internal damage tried to sort itself out. I'd come face to face with a ghost that day, one who'd always been three times my size, and had it not been for a miracle I'd have had a collapsed ribcage and no hope of getting back to Trinity Science Head Quarters alive.

My mission had been simple, get rid of a potential ReGenisis Serum leak. One of the lab coats had made a deal with Ides which had been intercepted. The exchange was on neutral ground, near the Grand Union canal in Aspley. As big as the risk of allowing any of the serum out, those up top had decided they wanted to find out who it was being handed over to. They wanted both sides out of the way.

Our Unit was spread thin, Takeichi had been given orders to drive out somewhere discreet and dispose of the unwanted. Their bodies had to be burned once they were dead so nothing could be salvaged by the wrong people. Swan was negotiating a promotion, that saw Rin shooting up the ladder of power and Swan becoming Unit Zero Captain in her stead. Everyone else seemed to have some mission or other to tend to. So it was just me.

I had to wear sunglasses to stave off the glare of the sun and hid away in one of the baking canal barges. My skin rippled, adrenalin running through me from the moment I was told this was a solo mission. If they had as much confidence in my abilities as they did King's, it wouldn't have sent off so many warning bells. Only they didn't, in fact Captain Takeichi had tried to secure at least one Agent to work the mission with me in case the other side brought backup. She was overruled.

I recognised the lab coat the moment he arrived, a tall lanky man with dull hazel eyes, creased forehead and greasy, mid-brown hair that flopped in front of his eyes. Doctor Herod. Not one of the Trinity, but one of the first lab coats brought in once the project gained some traction.

He was very nervous, shaky hands, sweat glittering his forehead. Stood out in his casual clothes, a plaid shirt over a white t-shirt, corduroy trousers and muddied up hiking boots. The brown green of the canal reflecting his image back at him like glaring glass.

My eyes narrowed as I saw the man he was meeting up with, approach alone. He had always been a broad shouldered, suit wearing, smug ass agent. Now he'd donned sunglasses, from the scent coming off of him, because he had the same light sensitivity as I did. His olive tan had only faded a little in the six months he was supposed to be dead for. I stared at the forehead of the former Unit Two Captain, from my hiding place and clenched my jaw. He couldn't have had a bullet through his brain at close range, even ReGenisis Serum couldn't repair that kind of damage. Yet I'd read the report that detailed just that happening, heard directly from the one who claimed to have taken him out when he betrayed Trinity Science.