The 4400® Promises Broken (3 page)

“And you’ve done such a brilliant job of it,” Eva said, casting a sour glare in the direction of the inferno at the north end of the island.

Glossing over Eva’s verbal jab, her partner, Jim, replied, “We got a tip about the attack.”

“From who?” asked Diana.

Jim shrugged and shook his head, prompting Eva to frown and roll her eyes in disgust. “Just tell her,” Eva said. “She’ll find out when she checks our phone logs.” Jim aimed a pointed stare at her, but she ignored him and continued. “It was your future-telling daughter, Maia,” she said to Diana. “She warned us about the attack an hour ago.” Grimacing at the swath of destruction, she added, “Not that it made much difference.”

Eva and Jim turned and walked north, away from the
shore and from Tom and Diana, who stood and watched them go.

Tom felt the tension in his partner’s silence and knew that Diana was seething over Eva’s revelation. He waited for her to snap. It didn’t take very long.

“How many times have I told Maia not to talk to Jordan’s people?” she asked rhetorically, her voice pitched with anger.

“I know,” Tom said, trying to sound sympathetic.

“How many times, Tom? How much clearer could I be? I
told
her not to talk to Jordan, or to
any
of his people in Promise City, not even that girl Lindsey she hung around with.”

He knew that playing devil’s advocate would be risky, but he tried anyway. “Look, it’s not like she’s a traitor, Diana. She was just trying to help.” He lifted his chin toward the boat trapped in the ice. “And maybe she was right. If Jordan’s people hadn’t been here, that guy would’ve gotten away.”

Diana took a deep breath. Closed her eyes.

Exhaled slowly. Opened her eyes.

When she spoke, her voice was calm—which made the fury behind her words all the more frightening.

“Tom, I know that what you’re saying makes sense. You’re right: without Jordan’s people, we’d have lost the suspect. But right now, I don’t give a damn about that. What I care about is that my daughter did
exactly
what I told her
never
to do.” She took another breath, then added, “I’m going home now, Tom. And when I get there, I’m going to have a
very
long talk with Maia.”

J
ORDAN
C
OLLIER STOOD
at the window of his seventy-sixth-floor corner office. He stared southwest, across Elliott Bay, at the raging inferno that had engulfed Harbor Island. It had been ablaze for nearly an hour, growing brighter as the sky dimmed. The conflagration was mirrored on the rippling water.

There was a knock on his office door.

“Come in,” he said.

The door opened and closed. Footsteps followed.

Reflected in the window was Kyle Baldwin, one of Jordan’s top advisors, walking toward him. “You asked to see me?”

“I did,” Jordan replied, his tight-lipped frown barely masking his fury as he turned to face the towheaded younger man. “What happened down there?”

Kyle stopped in front of Jordan’s desk and bowed his head. “You’re upset about Harbor Island.”

“Yes, I am,” Jordan said. “People died out there tonight, and there was no reason for it.” He picked up a singlepage report and waved it angrily. “You didn’t even consult
me before sending our people into NTAC’s territory. You knew the island was under their jurisdiction, Kyle. What were you trying to do?”

“Save their lives,” Kyle said. “We had a reliable tip that a bunch of fifty/fifties with a grudge were going after the fuel tanks. I thought if we moved fast enough, we could prevent the attack.” He paused as Jordan pivoted and made a show of looking out the floor-to-ceiling window at the burning spectacle in the distance. Rolling his eyes, Kyle added, “I know we failed.”

Jordan tossed the paper onto his desk, then settled into his chair. He ran a hand over his dark beard while he recovered his composure. “Most of NTAC’s agents are p-positive, Kyle, just like us, and they’re trained to handle situations like this.” Dismayed, he clenched his fist. “The real tragedy is that all those people died for nothing. So what if they blow up the fuel? We have people who can transmute fluids into anything we want: drinking water, gasoline—”

“Promicin,” Kyle interrupted.

That drew a scowl from Jordan. Pointing a finger, he continued. “We’re not going there, Kyle. This is not the time. We’re surrounded by the U.S. military, and we’ve got rogue p-positives all over the city. The last thing I want to do right now is start a war with the government.”

“You’ve already got a war with the government,” Kyle shot back. “One that they started.”

Exasperated, Jordan got up and walked to a wooden cabinet that housed a small selection of premium liquors and some lowball glasses. “I think you and I have different definitions of
war
. I’d call our current situation a standoff.”
Jordan opened the cabinet’s front panel, which flipped down to provide a shelf, and he chose a glass.

“Sure, Jordan, but for how long? You think the Army’s gonna wait forever while we plot our next move?”

“Provoking them won’t buy us more time.” The self-styled leader of the Promicin-Positive Movement opened a bottle of twelve-year-old Glenmorangie Quinta Ruban single-malt scotch whisky and poured himself a generous measure.

One perk of having rechristened the now exiled Haspelcorp’s former headquarters (which previously had been known as the Columbia Center, the tallest building in Washington State) as the Collier Foundation building was that Jordan’s new base of operations had come fully furnished and generously stocked with luxuries.

Pushing the cork stopper back into the bottle, Jordan continued. “In any event, we’ve moved beyond guerrilla tactics. Diplomacy is our true show of strength. Only from a position of power does one have the option to negotiate.” He sipped the amber-hued liquor and savored its forceful overtones of port.

Kyle stepped closer to Jordan as he replied, “Great. While you’re busy negotiating, the Army’s gearing up to blow us off the face of the Earth. We need to start thinking in terms of ‘divide and conquer.’ If we put promicin in the water of six or seven major cities, we’d force them to split their focus.”

“And we’d probably kill forty or fifty million people,” Jordan said, wondering when his youthful shaman had become so hawkish in his worldview. He carried his drink back to his desk. “Not exactly a recipe for winning hearts and minds.”

“So what? You knew before you started giving it out that
promicin would kill half the people who took it. When nine thousand died last year, you called it ‘the Great Leap Forward.’ So, what’s the matter? Fifty million too big a number?”

“The problem,” Jordan replied, his tone sharp with wrath, “is that no one was ever supposed to be
forced
to take promicin. Your cousin Danny’s viral ability was an accident, not part of the plan.” He set down his glass. “Did it ever occur to you that maybe we could build a future in which those of us who are gifted with promicin could live in peace with those who aren’t?”

Kyle turned and paced in front of Jordan’s desk, shaking his head in bitter denial. “Dream on, Jordan. Regular people hate us. They’re terrified of us. They want us dead.”

“Some do,” Jordan admitted. “But only because people tend to hate what they fear, and fear what they don’t understand.” Settling back into his chair, he added, “I refuse to believe that mass murder is the solution to that problem. Our war isn’t with the people of the world, Kyle, or with their governments. The war we have to fight is the one against prejudice.”

The young man let out a derisive huff. “If you say so.”

“Yes, I
do
say so. And I expect you to abide by it.”

A sullen look conveyed Kyle’s grudging surrender.

“You can go,” Jordan said, gesturing toward the exit.

Kyle walked quickly, clearly eager to be away from Jordan. He yanked open the office door. It rebounded off the wall with a dull thud as Kyle made his ill-tempered exit.

As the door slowly drifted shut, Jordan reclined his chair and sipped his scotch. He wondered, not for the first time in recent months, whether Kyle might soon go from
being an asset to a liability. When the young man had come in search of him the previous year, he had proved his value as a visionary. Kyle and his invisible-and-inaudible feminine spirit guide, Cassie, had helped Jordan and his followers navigate the difficult path toward their goal of transforming the world and fulfilling Jordan’s prophecy of a better future for humanity.

Alas, in the months since they had transformed Seattle into the promicin-friendly redoubt known as Promise City, Kyle had started ignoring Jordan’s agenda of diplomacy in favor of heavy-handed and sometimes violent tactics.

Jordan wondered how much of this recent turn was Kyle’s will, and how much of it was Cassie’s—and whether there was any distinction to be made between them. So far, Jordan had been able to keep his hotheaded senior advisor under control, but he feared that this tenuous grace period would soon end.

His office door began to click shut when it was pushed open a crack. After a quick, soft knocking, his assistant, Jaime Costas, poked her head in. “You have a visitor, Mister Collier. One of the people on your short list for the leadership council.”

Beckoning his invitation, he said, “Okay.”

Jaime pushed the door open.

His visitor stepped into the doorway.

Jordan’s jaw went slack. He blinked in surprise. Put down his drink. Stood and greeted his guest with a gentlemanly nod.

“Please, come in,” he said, his heart swelling with hope. “It’s an honor.”

D
IANA
S
KOURIS PUSHED
open the door to her apartment and tugged her keys from the lock. Telegraphing her mood, she slammed the door behind her and stormed across the living room. “Maia!” she yelled, her voice reverberating off the walls. “Get out here!”

She was beyond upset, past angry, and deep into irrational fury as she pulled off her jacket and flung it onto the sofa. There were so many things she wanted to shout at her adopted daughter that she didn’t know where to start. After all the years they had been together, and all the risks Diana had taken and sacrifices she’d made to protect Maia, she felt as if she had a right to expect more respect from the girl than this.

Dammit, I’ve told her a hundred times to steer clear of Jordan and his people
, Diana fumed as she shrugged off her shoulder holster and set the weapon on the kitchen counter.
All the 4400 have ever done for her is put her in danger—so why is her first loyalty to them and not to me?

That rhetorical question nagged at her as she opened
the refrigerator and took note of the leftovers available for that night’s dinner—which Maia might or might not be allowed to have.

The apartment was quiet except for the hum of the fridge. Diana heard no sounds of movement coming from Maia’s room.

It didn’t surprise her that Maia was in no hurry to come out and face the music, but after all the stomping, screaming, and sulking that had followed Diana’s fiat that Maia cease all contact with Lindsey Hammond— her friend and fellow teen 4400—she at least expected to hear Maia defiantly drowning out her commands with Frank Sinatra music.

She’s probably either spooked or sulking
, Diana figured. She let the fridge door close, then walked toward Maia’s room. “Maia? I’m serious: you need to come talk to me.”

There was no response.

Diana stepped through the door into her daughter’s room. Maia wasn’t there. The bed was made, and through the open closet door it was obvious that many of Maia’s favorite pieces of clothing were gone. Also absent was Maia’s diary, which contained her alarmingly unerring visions of the future.

Oh, my God
. Fear washed through Diana like ice water in her veins. Though her little girl was now thirteen years old and no longer required a sitter to stay at home, Diana had remained afraid that someone might try to take her. Everyone from the 4400 to the government to random kooks seemed to have an agenda for “the girl who could see the future.”

Her heart raced and her breaths came short and shallow
as she searched Maia’s room for clues. No sign of a struggle, no note. That was good, but Diana was still panicking. She felt her pulse thudding in her temples. It was a battle to keep her mind clear as a hundred terrified thoughts welled up at once from the darkest corners of her imagination. Images of Maia trussed up, or gagged, or drugged unconscious in the back of a van.

She felt light-headed almost to the point of vertigo as she lurched out of Maia’s room and bounced around her home like a silver sphere in a pinball machine, ricocheting off the doorjambs and walls, weaving from her own room to the bathroom and back down the hallway, to the kitchen and then the living room.

Then she saw it, on the floor in front of the television.

A handheld digital video recorder. There was a pink adhesive note affixed to it. A single cable linked the device to an input jack on the side of the high-definition flat-screen TV. Diana hurried to the camera and picked it up.

The Post-it had a two-word message, scrawled in Maia’s distinctive block capitals: PLAY ME.

Pushing past the dreadful, sinking feeling in her stomach, Diana grabbed the remote off the coffee table and turned on the TV. As soon as the screen powered up, she saw that the display was already set to the auxiliary input. She activated the digital camera; the screen flickered blue and showed a zeroed time code. Diana took a breath and pushed the
PLAY
button.

A blurred picture flickered onto the screen, then sharpened into focus. It was Maia, sitting on the living room sofa, exactly where Diana was sitting watching the tape.

“
Hi, Mom,
” Maia said in the recording. She pushed a lock of her honey-blond hair from her face and continued.
“Since you’re watching this, you’ve probably figured out that I’m not home. I decided to leave and go stay with Lindsey at the Collier Foundation.”
Diana muttered vile curses under her breath as the video kept rolling.
“I know that you know I told Jordan’s people about Harbor Island, and I know you’re coming home to yell at me some more, and I’m sorry, but …”
The girl rolled her blue eyes.
“I’m sick of it, okay? So I’m leaving, which I know you’re also mad about. But don’t bother being mad at Lindsey, because this wasn’t her idea, it was mine.”
She glanced away from the camera for several seconds as a guilty look played across her innocent face. Then she looked back with a remorseful expression.
“I love you, Mom, but that’s where I have to be. I’m sorry. Bye.”