"Do you trust them?"

"Yes."

He nodded again and walked over to her wall and examined her updated pages of information on each victim from the detailed reports that he gave her at their first meeting. The man asked where she came up with the method of laying out all of her information.

"The detective who headed up the case before me did this," she reported. "It seemed effective enough for him"

"Wasn't he killed by Cladis?"

"Yes," she mumbled.

"Then why do you want to travel down the same avenue he did?"

She shrugged and asked why the man cared.

The stranger stepped away from the wall and told her he didn't like watching people throw their lives away. "You know what you're doing and I admire that," he told her. "As such I don't want you to simply discard yourself in a useless manner."

"Detective Sage didn't die for nothing," she snapped.

He only looked at her solemnly and asked what he provided the group through his death. Mia couldn't answer. "There isn't any sense in dying just yet," he said. "There's still work that needs to be completed here before you can even begin to think about sacrificing yourself."

Mia scowled and asked him who he was. "You've been breaking in my home for weeks to examine what I know about Cladis, you took one of my hunches and dug up five graves, you found a pattern no one else managed to notice, you're aware of the small task force under Chief Johnson, and you seem to possess your own abilities," Mia fixed her eyes on him and asked who he was.

Her contact let out a sigh and said she could call him Twelve.

"Twelve?"

"Yes."

"Why Twelve?"

"Why does it matter?" He looked at her and said it wouldn't matter what he called himself. "Call me whatever you'd like, you will still question me no matter what name I gave you, so it doesn't matter what I call myself."

"Who are you really?"

"I am Twelve."

"Seriously."

He told her to figure it out on her own. "You're avidly playing detective, so piece it together yourself."

"Alright fine," she glared at him, "How do you know so much about Cladis and this investigation?"

Twelve walked silently past Mia and into her kitchen. He looked over her notes and the fifteen brief biographies of fifteen people she had previously suspected of being the next target. Twelve frowned and said she was looking at the investigation the wrong way. "I've already told you about the blood pattern, so why aren't you focusing on that?"

"Are you nuts?" Mia took a sheet of paper off of the wall next to Red Iron's bio and handed it to her ragged partner. "I ran the averages for the city and there are somewhere around sixteen-thousand two-hundred people who have AB negative blood."

"Yes, but only a fraction of those sixteen-thousand two-hundred people ever met Danielle McMinn."

"And I can't find any of them."

Twelve handed the slip of paper back to her and walked over to her window, "Then I guess number sixteen dies as well."

"You aren't going to do anything to stop it?" she mumbled.

Twelve told her there wasn't anything they could do until they picked the trail up again. "You all lost it after Sage died. In fact, you shouldn't have lost it at all, but now you and I and your friends are all playing catch up while Cladis rakes up a greater body count." He opened the window and let a cold wind in before he added, "You and I are going to stop this monster, believe me." He climbed out the window and told her to keep their meetings a secret until further notice before he shut the window and flew off.

Mia sighed, pinned her note back on the wall, and tried to figure out who the sixteenth victim would be.

9:39 PM.

Both.e.l.l, Washington Nick planned on talking to Mizuno about training less so he could spend more time with Amy, though Nick hadn't spoken to Mizuno since the end of his cla.s.s that past Friday. He tried calling him but never managed to speak to him. Nick suspected Mizuno already knew what he wanted to say and this was his way of saying no without needing to say a word.

Nick worked with Bruce from morning until late in the afternoon and spent the rest of his Sunday with Amy. They went out for dinner, talked, and he drove her home around nine-thirty, as her mother wanted her home early.

Nick pulled into an open parking s.p.a.ce in front of the hotel he stayed in, parked his motorcycle, and headed into the building. He walked past the clerk at the entrance without so much as a word and took the elevator up to his room. Nick hardly managed to step into the room before Mizuno greeted him.

Mizuno and Strom waited for him; Strom continued to read The Sun Also Rises while he reclined on Nick's bed and Mizuno sat in a chair in the corner of the room. Mizuno only looked up at him when Nick entered and asked how his day was.

Nick didn't answer. He looked from Mizuno over to Strom and asked why they were there.

Strom didn't say a word. He simply turned a page and continued to read as if nothing changed. Mizuno was hesitant to answer though, even Nick could tell, considering how Mizuno asked a simple question that hardly pertained to his project.

"Something's come up Nick," he started. "I looked into the murder of Crystal Valentine and after scanning each witness to the a.s.sa.s.sination as well as crosschecking my notes with Strom, I've realized that this entire situation with your brother's murder is far more complex than I originally antic.i.p.ated."

"What do you mean?"

He was apprehensive, but stated that the individual who murdered Crystal Valentine wasn't the same as the charlatan who murdered Nick's brother and Drake's father.

"Then who was it?"

"A man named Jeremy Dalton," Strom muttered, "A man also known as the MP3 a.s.sa.s.sin."

Nick felt an icy tendril run down his spine. "Th-That was...That was really him?"

Mizuno nodded and said it was. "You're missing something bigger though Nick. Jeremy Dalton was employed at Winchester Enterprises and worked alongside Drake Winchester."

Strom chimed in and a.s.sured Nick that Dalton hadn't been seen at his office since Drake's father's a.s.sa.s.sination. "I'm working on tracking him but Dalton and I have a propensity to avoid one another at all costs, not that he's aware I'm personally tailing him, but my guess is that he is aware of something nonetheless."

"In any case," Mizuno continued, "I'm certain that your brother's murderer is in league with Jeremy Dalton."

A delivery man from a nearby teriyaki restaurant knocked on Nick's door. Mizuno got up, paid for it, and set the three plastic containers wrapped in a plastic bag on the bed near Strom. None of them touched the food though.

Mizuno reclaimed his seat, folded his arms across his chest, and told Nick, "I went over the events at Crystal's once more and found more irregularities. Firstly, I originally a.s.sumed, like you, that the charlatan who killed your brother used the credit card he stole from your brother at the restaurant before he killed Crystal, though I couldn't understand why he would make such an obvious mistake. However it turns out that the killer was actually Dalton, which I could only confirm after seeing the security feed from the night Tony Winchester was killed. It appears that our shape shifter is unable to alter the serpent tattoo he has on his arm. Now, you might not recall this, but Dalton's sleeves were rolled up the day he killed Crystal and there was no tattoo. I could only a.s.sume the rule about the tattoo was true until I managed to lift a single matching fingerprint from the stolen card, which I managed to borrow from the local authorities who have the card held as evidence." Mizuno continued, "The fingerprint matched Dalton's. But this only begged additional questions, the first of which is why would Jeremy Dalton work with a partner? Why would they intentionally use a piece of stolen property and leave it at their next murder scene? And why would Dalton be so sloppy as to leave a fully identifiable fingerprint on the card as well?"

"You think they left it intentionally?" Strom asked.

Mizuno nodded. "But I don't know why. This should have been cut and dry in terms of a murder. Normally, in Dalton's case, he would have executed her in a private manner and there wouldn't be any trail and possibly not even a way to link the crime to him. This is especially true since Crystal Valentine was not a high profile target, which begs the question, why would Jeremy Dalton murder someone as unknown as Crystal Valentine?"

"I think you need to ask who would have the means to contact Dalton and the motive to kill Crystal," Strom said.

"And that's what's confounding me. Who would want Crystal Marie Valentine dead?" Mizuno asked rhetorically. "I've delved into who could profit from her death in terms of successor to her store, which was no one. She didn't have life insurance or a family member who could have benefited from her death...None of this adds up."

"But they also killed my brother and Drake's dad," Nick reminded them.

"As well as a man named Mark Ross who also worked alongside your brother and Tony Winchester," Mizuno added. "All of whom worked on the same project called Regenesis."

"So this is all tied into that?"

"It would seem so, but Crystal's murder doesn't add up."

"Could it have been a side job Dalton picked up?" Strom suggested.

"I doubt it, only because of the card they used in the slaying," Mizuno explained.

"Then maybe it's nothing more than a diversion?"

"Which would mean whoever hired them for the a.s.sa.s.sinations knows someone's trying to figure this out..." Mizuno paused and stared off while he gave the matter his full attention.

He didn't say a word for a whole minute before Strom set his book aside and opened the plastic bag to get to his meal. Strom gave Nick a chicken katsu meal while he took a chicken teriyaki and gyoza meal and left the prawn yakisoba aside for Mizuno. Nick ate with a plastic fork while Strom utilized chopsticks without any difficulty.

He took a few bites before he suggested to Mizuno, "What if they left the card behind as a message?"

"To whom?"

"Maybe to you?"

He shook his head. "I don't know why they would do that and I highly doubt they know about my existence in the first place. Plus I wasn't investigating Victor's death, or Crystal's for that matter, until after Nick joined my group. There shouldn't have been any reason to leave a clue."

Mizuno remained silent again and in deep thought while Strom and Nick continued with their meals. Strom ate nearly half of his dinner before he took a napkin, wiped his lips, and told them he was going out to get something to drink. He briefly asked Nick if he wanted anything, but Nick declined.

Mizuno looked up at Nick once Strom left and told him he didn't know what it meant. "This should be cut and dry, yet this bit about your brother's credit card doesn't make sense. I can't think of any reason for anyone to do something like this. It doesn't make sense."

"Do you have any thoughts on who would want to kill all of those people?" Nick asked Mizuno shook his head and admitted he was in the dark. "The Regenesis project was and is still extremely unknown, so much so that even I don't know much about it. I could understand someone killing for it if the drug was in a finalized state and ready for commercial sale, as a profit from this would be astronomical, yet it never reached early testing stages."

He stopped talking again and tried to concentrate in silence. It wasn't until Strom returned that Mizuno apologized to Nick and told them that he needed to leave and sort through some things. He took his meal with him and jotted down a few notes in his notepad before he left.

Strom retook his place on the bed, though he had a bottle of German beer that Nick wasn't familiar with. He also continued where he left off in his book, even though Nick interrupted him and asked to know more about Jeremy Dalton.

"There isn't too much to say," he muttered. "He's pretty much the same as me, only more ruthless, arrogant, and reckless than I was before I met Mizuno."

"What do you mean by that?"

"Do you remember what I told you about the military program in Germany?"

He asked if he meant the German Hostile Operative program.

"Yes. Well the German military started up round two of the program after I left, although, they decided to leave out the elimination round. Jeremy Dalton was one of the individuals in the program."

"I take it he was the best?"

Strom shook his head and said he was one of the worst. "It was simply because he was sloppy. He made a lot of mistakes, but he always managed to make it through whatever obstacle lay in his path, or so I've heard. He managed to learn about the past group, about me, and thought the elimination round sounded like fun. He killed all of the twenty-one other soldiers in the program as well as the initial leaders of the German Hostile Operative program."

Nick trembled slightly, though he tried to hide it. "Why did he do that?"

Strom shrugged, "Probably to ensure that there wouldn't be a third wave that could possibly be sent out to kill him, though I heard whispers that someone hired Dalton to kill everyone off and that was the real reason behind his actions, but it's impossible to say."

"Why would he betray his own"

"He didn't betray anyone Nick," Strom immediately told him. "He never gave a s.h.i.t about Germany, or anywhere for that matter, so he couldn't betray them since he never cared for Germany in the first place. h.e.l.l, I'm not even sure if he was German to begin with. Dalton is an English name...but then again, that might not even be his real name."

Nick looked at him and asked if he felt that he ever betrayed his nation, but Strom only shook his head briefly and said it didn't matter.

He continued, "Dalton created his alias a year or so later and immediately took jobs throughout Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. In fact, his body count is at least triple or more of what mine is." Strom flipped a page in his novel, took a swig of his beer, and said, "Dalton's one of the major reasons there aren't certain African tribes anymore. He was often hired to slaughter entire villages simply because someone didn't like them."

"And he would just do it?" Nick asked. "He didn't think about what he was doing at all?"

Strom forced a small chuckle and told Nick that Dalton only thought about himself and his paycheck. "He kills children, women, unarmed men...anyone. He doesn't care if you're sleeping, armed, disabled, blind, pregnant...you're just another couple of bucks to him."

"That's horrible."

Strom agreed.

"Why hasn't anyone ever tried to stop him?"

"People have," he muttered, "I have too. You just can't find him or get close enough to kill him."

Nick didn't say anything then. He looked away and asked whether Strom thought he even stood a chance of finding his brother's killer. Strom said he wasn't sure, but he told Nick it wasn't something he should pursue.

"But he"

"Killed him, I know." Strom tossed a slip of paper into his book, set it down, and looked Nick square in the eye and told him to let it go. "You're going to chase after him all of your life if you're not careful. And I know that he killed you brother, but you can't simply strive to find him, you can't. Revenge isn't worth wasting your life."

"It isn't for revenge," Nick mumbled.

"Vengeance, to avenge him, justice, whatever, it's all the same when you boil it down. It's you running after somebody you're never going to find. All you're going to get are wasted years, heartache, lost friends, and a steady habit or two."

Nick didn't look at him. He scowled at his half-eaten katsu and asked if Strom had any siblings. He said he didn't before he went back to his book and left Nick with his own thoughts.

10:35 PM.

Near Holden Village, Washington The three boys, Coop, Ian, and Wally managed to set up camp before a storm started up around noon. They spent the next eight hours playing card games, hand held videogames, talking, making jokes, and reading (though Coop was exempt from this category) before Ian finally asked if they wanted to see a part of his powers he hadn't shown them. Coop and Wally naturally agreed and after a miserable hike up to the nearby Spider Gap, Ian admitted that he could fly.

"Why didn't you tell us?" Wally asked. "It would have at the very least shut him up," Wally said as he gestured to a gobsmacked and freezing Coop.