THE 4400® WELCOME TO PROMISE CITY (15 page)

Now the basement doors stood between him and his revenge. Reaching out with his mind, he located the padlock on the opposite side of the doors. His smarting arm made it hard to concentrate, but he pushed past the
pain. Tumblers shifted and the lock clicked open. The freed doors sprung apart. A murky portal beckoned to them.

“Now!” Richard ordered. He sprinted down a short flight of steps, ducking his head to avoid a low-hanging lintel. The toe of his boot kicked the fallen padlock aside. Abandoning stealth for speed, his comrades scampered down the steps after him. A single naked lightbulb, hanging from the ceiling, exposed what appeared to be a well-stocked wine cellar. Dozens of glass bottles were carefully stacked in sturdy iron racks.

Yul whistled in appreciation. “Quite a collection. And all highly flammable.”

“Later,” Richard said. A convenient blaze might help cover their tracks, but first they had to achieve their objective—without interruption. He glanced back over his shoulder. The cellar doors banged shut. A heavy wine rack scraped across the floor and wedged itself up against the entrance. A second rack fell loudly across a stairway leading up to the ground floor. Dislodged bottles shattered upon the hard concrete floor. A dozen competing bouquets polluted the air.

Evee clucked at the spilled wine. “What a waste.”

Richard couldn’t care less about the pricy vintages. All that mattered was eliminating their targets while they still had the chance. Seams of light outlined a reinforced steel door directly ahead. Strident voices sounded from behind the barrier.
That’s got to be them,
he guessed.
The Marked themselves.

Or so he hoped.

Unexpectedly, the door wasn’t even locked. It opened like magic before them as they charged into the chamber beyond. Richard’s eyes quickly assessed the situation. The rumored “panic room” looked more like a furnished basement apartment. Wood-paneled cupboards and pantries were mounted above a small kitchenette at the rear of the room. Shelves were stocked with a library of books and DVDs. A red emergency phone hung next to the door, beside a first-aid cabinet and fire extinguisher. Ventilation grilles ran along the top of the walls, just below the low ceiling. The overhead lights were painfully bright compared to the darkness outside. Classical music played softly over the sound system.

Six startled people stared at the intruders in alarm. An Arab sheik, a Tibetan lama, a Chinese woman, a U.S. general, a bronzed movie producer, and Wesley Burke himself were positioned around a round antique oak table in the center of the room. Richard recognized the Marked from the detailed dossiers they had worked up on all of them. The quorum appeared complete. They were all here, just as promised.

Pay dirt.

Gasps and curses erupted from the Marked’s stolen lips. Most of them had already leapt from their seats. Overturned chairs lay on their sides. Burke drew a Glock semiautomatic from beneath his jacket, but Yul was way ahead of him. The blue steel went red-hot in a heartbeat. Burke flung the sizzling handgun away from him.

“No!” the Arab pleaded. “Have mercy.”

Evee didn’t give Burke’s fellow conspirators a chance
to fight back. Her neck cracked audibly. The Marked collapsed like rag dolls.

The steel door slammed shut behind Richard. He didn’t want anyone else crashing this party. His somber gaze swept over the fallen men and woman. A nerve twitched beneath his cheek. He wasn’t looking forward to this part …

“So far, so good,” Yul commented. “Guess we didn’t need Billy after all.”

Over the boy’s strenuous objections, Richard had scrubbed the bespectacled twelve-year-old from this operation. Never mind the danger, this was no job for a child. It was bad enough that Isabelle had lost her innocence so horrifically. He wasn’t about to let another child get blood on his hands.

Not on my watch.

By now, the Marked’s hired thugs were raising hell outside the panic room. Richard heard them struggling with the uprooted wine racks. Frantic voices shouted at each other. Clearly, the team was going to have to fight their way out of here.

“Okay,” Evee muttered. She tried to claim Burke’s gun, but it was still too hot to touch. She glanced apprehensively at the closed door between themselves and the guards. “Let’s waste these fascist body snatchers and make tracks.”

“Not yet.” Richard approached the sprawled bodies. Before they killed these people in cold blood, and incinerated their corpses, he wanted to make absolutely sure that they had the right people. The helpless targets seemed to
match the profiles, but his conscience demanded that he make every effort not to kill the wrong people by mistake. They were talking about human lives here. There could be no margin for error.

Nasir al-Ghamdi was the nearest victim. Richard knelt beside the unconscious sheik. The Arab’s prone body was facedown on the carpet, so Richard rolled him over to get a better look. He tugged the man’s head cloth away from his face and scrutinized his features. Was he just being paranoid or did the young man’s face look slightly different than the one Richard had memorized? He touched the sheik’s cheek. Greasepaint came off on his fingers.

A sudden chill ran down Richard’s spine.
This isn’t Nasir,
he realized.
He’s a fake. A decoy.

He jumped to his feet. “Watch out!” he exclaimed. “We’ve been set up.”

He barely got the words out before the trap was sprung. Flash-bang grenades went off throughout the room, exploding from behind the shelves and cupboards. Blinding flashes went off one after another, disorienting the would-be assassins. Deafening explosions assaulted their ears. Strobe lights flashed overhead, adding to the chaos. The team could barely think, let alone use their abilities. Even if there was anyone to use them on.

Richard heard a hissing sound between detonations. Looking up, he saw thick white fumes pouring into the room through the ventilation grates.

Gas!

Placing his hand over his nose and mouth, Richard raced to the door. He grabbed on to the handle with his
free hand, but it refused to budge. A secondary blast door dropped down from the ceiling, nearly slicing off his fingers. They were sealed in tight.

The choking vapors quickly filled the gas chamber. Richard’s eyes watered. His throat burned. He tried to fan the fumes away from him, but it was no good. Nonstop strobes and bangs buffeted his senses. His telekinesis was no good against the formless gas. He couldn’t get a grip on it with his mind.

Whoever had devised this trap had thought everything out.

Evee was the first to succumb to the gas. She crumpled onto the floor. Yul was next. He toppled over, landing across the supine forms of two of the look-alikes. Within seconds, Richard found himself the last man standing.

The gas invaded his lungs. Dizzy, he grabbed on to the edge of the round table to steady himself. He tried to fight back against the narcotic fumes, but it was a losing battle. His legs buckled and he sank to the floor beside his comrades. His eyelids drooped. He coughed on the caustic fumes. The last thing he wondered, before oblivion claimed him, was what the
real
Marked were up to right now.

His head hit the carpet.

A
PRIL HAD MADE
it to Jordan Collier’s office at last.

Be careful what you wish for.

She perched anxiously on the edge of a high-backed Queen Anne chair in the middle of the impressive executive office. The two Peace Officers from City Hall stood to either side of her. Neither had offered her any clue as to what lay in store for her, although her fearful imagination had generated no shortage of dreadful scenarios, up to and including her being “disappeared” for good. She had heard unconfirmed rumors about what happened to 4400s who crossed Collier.

The room was uncomfortably warm compared to the outdoor plaza. Her hat, coat, and mirror shades hung on a rack by the door, but she still felt overdressed for indoors. She sweated beneath her fluffy mohair turtleneck and tight leather pants. Her mouth was as dry as Prohibition. She couldn’t stand the suspense any longer.

“Tie-dye pigeonhole emeritus?” she blurted.

Roughly translated,
What do you want with me?

The guards merely snickered in response.

Her maddening inability to speak clearly only made her involuntary confinement here even more excruciating. A frustrated sob burst from her throat. She gnawed nervously at her fingernails. A clock on the wall revealed that she had been held captive for nearly two hours now. She wasn’t sure how much longer she could take this.

Just get it over with, won’t you?

Finally, just as she felt that she was on the verge of a total meltdown, the office door swung open and Jordan Collier strode into the room. He walked over to face her, while his bodyguards closed the door behind him. A lock clicked shut.

April swallowed hard.

“Hello, Ms. Skouris,” Collier addressed her. Speechifying had left his raspy voice even hoarser than usual. He sipped from a plastic water bottle, whose label identified it as having come from the once-polluted Duwamish River delta. Cleansing those toxic waters had been one of the Movement’s earliest triumphs—and a demonstration of all that Collier intended for Promise City. “My apologies for keeping you waiting. I understand that you’ve gone to some effort to see me … despite my warnings to the contrary.”

His tone was stern and unforgiving. April felt as though she had been called into the principal’s office, an experience she was more than familiar with from her school days. She instantly knew what he had in mind for her.

“Sasquatch fax gravy!”

Terrified, she tried to leap from the chair, but the guards clamped on to her shoulders and shoved her back down onto the seat. Another sickening wave of dizziness sent her head spinning. She whimpered and closed her eyes until the sensation passed. Clearly, she wasn’t going anywhere. She moaned in defeat. “Fetal seraglio …”

Collier laid the water bottle down on a nearby table. He gazed down on her like a judge upon a bench. “It pains me that you chose to disregard my warning, and not only because I sincerely regret seeing any promicin-inspired ability wasted. I have great respect for your sister and her partner.”

You and everyone else,
she thought bitterly. Apparently even the great Jordan Collier couldn’t resist telling her how wonderful Diana was. April’s eyes teared up. She pounded her fists against the arms of the chair in anguished disappointment.
It’s not fair! I was finally somebody, too!

“The truth is indeed a thing of infinite value,” Collier lectured her, “but not when it can be exploited by those who would thwart destiny in order to preserve a future devoid of hope or justice. I have seen what this world will become if our Movement fails. Lifeless oceans of bone. Endless fires burning on the horizon. The stench of rotting flesh and disease. A sky blackened by smoke and acid rain. The never-ending screams of the dying and the damned.”

The frown lines on his face deepened. His eyes turned
cold and hard. He shook his head mournfully. Stepping forward, he laid his palms against her cheeks. His cool hands were surprisingly rough and calloused.

“I cannot allow you to interfere with what must be done.”

No!
April thought frantically.
Don’t do this!
She squirmed helplessly in her seat, held down by the looming Peace Officers.
I’ve changed my mind! I won’t bother you anymore. You’ll never see me again, I promise!

“Crunchy Teflon sublimes!”

But it was too late for words, meaningless or otherwise. Collier’s brow furrowed in concentration. A tingling sensation, like static electricity, sparked where he touched her. The buzz spread from her cheeks to deep beneath her forehead. A humming noise, like a swarm of angry bees, filled the inside of her skull. The bees started stinging her brain.

She thrashed convulsively upon the chair. The guards struggled to restrain her, and had to use both hands to hold her still. Her jaws clenched involuntarily. Her eyes rolled in their sockets. Flecks of white foam bubbled at the corner of her mouth. Her heart was going a mile a minute. Veins pulsed at her temples. The fierce humming roared like a hurricane. Jordan held her head fast between his open hands. April felt like her very soul was being blasted to bits.

Then, all at once, it was over.

Jordan released her face. The agonizing pain ceased. The humming died away. He stepped back from the chair, his face drawn and weary. His arms dropped to his sides.
He nodded at the guard on the right. “It’s done. There’s no need for the aphasia anymore.”

“Understood.”

The guard let go of April, in more ways than one. She felt something shift at the back of her head. Her tongue untangled.

“What have you done to me?” she sobbed.

Jordan replied without coercion. “Relieved you of a gift you proved extraordinarily unworthy of.” He walked away from her and helped himself to another gulp of water. “Let her go,” he instructed the officers, without even looking at her. It was like she was beneath his notice. “She’s no threat to anyone now … except, perhaps, herself.”

The truth had never been so hard to hear. Despair gripped her as she realized that her snazzy new life as a prized government asset was over. Collier was right; she was no good to anyone now. Ralph and Eric were going to have to find someone else to shadow, but that was just the beginning. How was she ever going to face Diana after this?

I screwed up again. Big-time.

“You smug bastard!” she shrieked at Collier. “You had no right!”

He turned toward her once more. “Not so. I have every right, and more. I gave the world promicin. Therefore it’s my responsibility to see that it is not abused by ungrateful, self-centered people such as yourself.” Water in hand, he headed for the door. “Now then, if you don’t mind, it’s been a long night. Good luck with the rest of your life,
Ms. Skouris. I hope this experience has taught you a valuable lesson.”

“Don’t walk away from me!” April shouted angrily. “Where is Danny Farrell’s body?”