THE 4400® WELCOME TO PROMISE CITY (25 page)

She got up and took his arm. “You shouldn’t be so hard on yourself. You’ve done everything you can.”

“Not yet I haven’t.” A sudden decision gripped him. Pulling free of Cassie’s grip, he snatched his winter coat from a rack by the door. He pulled it on in a hurry, then rummaged through his desk until he found the address of the plasma center. “I’m going down there myself.”

Cassie reacted with alarm. “That’s not a good idea!”

“Oh yeah?” he challenged her. “Why not?”

She got between him and the door. “It’s not safe.”

That wasn’t good enough. “How come?”

“You don’t need to know that,” she said stubbornly. “Just believe me, you shouldn’t go there. It’s too dangerous.”

“Then maybe you ought to help me out a little more!” The bitterness in his voice surprised him and he took a second to calm down. He didn’t want to argue, especially when he really needed her on his side right now. He took her gently by the shoulders and looked into her eyes. “Please, Cassie!” he begged hoarsely. “Don’t you understand? I’m all on my own here. Until I find out what’s going on, I can’t trust anyone at NTAC or in the Movement. You’re all I’ve got left. I’m counting on you, please!” His eyes desperately searched her face. “Do you love me or not?”

“That’s not fair, Kyle,” she protested. “This isn’t about us. It’s about what’s best for you—and for the future.” She cradled his face between her hands. “You’re too important to the Movement. I can’t let you put yourself in jeopardy for your father’s sake.”

“Tough. ’Cause I’m going anyway.” He swung her out of the way, then stepped past her toward the door. “Which means you can either stay here and sulk, or you can help me stay alive.”

She glared at his back. “You wouldn’t!”

“Try me.”

Quaking with frustration, her fists clenched at her sides, she watched impotently as he took hold of the door-knob. He opened the door and left her behind.

“All right,” she said petulantly. “You win!” She hurried after him. “But you owe me one!”

T
HE PLASMA CENTER
was in a bad part of town. Kyle glanced around nervously as Cassie grudgingly led him down a dingy alley behind the derelict building. A cold rain drizzled down his neck. Dark clouds obscured the fading sunlight. Greasy puddles spilled over onto the pavement.

“For the record, I’m doing this under protest,” Cassie reminded him. A vintage fur coat and mittens protected her from the cold, or at least presented the illusion of doing so. Her entire wardrobe was just as fictitious as the rest of her. Kyle sometimes wondered what part of his unconscious mind picked out her clothes and accessories whenever she appeared to him; they always seemed to suit the occasion.

At the moment, though, he had more pressing questions on his mind. “My dad is here? And Diana?”

“Yes, but we’re going to have to be sneaky about this.” She slunk up a short flight of steps to a loading dock at the back of the building. She kept her voice low, even though
nobody else could hear her. “There are four dangerous people inside, and they’re not going to be happy to see you.”

Kyle joined her at the back door. He wished he had thought to bring a weapon of some sort, although he had no idea where he would have found one. Jordan frowned on guns in Promise City; he preferred positives to rely on their abilities instead.
Fat lot of good that does me now.

“The lock is broken,” Cassie revealed. “Your dad’s handiwork, as it happens. But you can’t just barge in. You need to wait until the right moment, when the people inside are distracted and looking the other way.”

Kyle shivered upon the loading dock. He hugged himself to stay warm. “And how am I going to know when that is?”

“That’s what I’m here for, silly.” Cassie lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Now listen carefully. Here’s what you need to do… .”

“We have promicin!” Grayson declared triumphantly. He waved a metallic wand under Carl’s arms, like an airport security employee scanning a potential passenger with a metal detector. A thin electronic cable connected the wand to a handheld air quality monitor. Grayson stared at the monitor’s illuminated display. “Carl is definitely exuding promicin from his pores. I’m detecting roughly three hundred sixty parts per million.”

Abby clapped her hands. “We did it! Finally!”

“I knew it would work!” Carl sat atop the vinyl couch, his legs dangling over the side. A terrycloth bathrobe hung open, exposing his bare chest. The IV and electrodes
had been detached from his body. He rubbed his arm where Rosita had injected him with promicin earlier. His uncanny resemblance to Danny continued to unnerve Tom. Now that, mercifully, the real Danny’s body had been wheeled back into the freezer, it was easy to forget that the young patient was an imposter and not really his nephew. Danny seemed to have risen from the dead, just like Jordan Collier.

This is a nightmare,
Tom thought.
And it’s just getting worse.

Carl looked at Tom, who was still strapped to a couch beside Diana. He frowned impatiently. “How come he’s not reacting yet?”

“The effect is seldom instantaneous,” Abby observed. “I didn’t develop my own ability until days after I was infected. Plus, it’s possible he still has too much ubiquinone in his system.”

Tom prayed that was the case.
Am I infected already,
he fretted,
or are the U-Pills protecting me?
According to Kyle, he was doomed to become positive. Was today the day that prophecy finally came true?

“Easy enough to find out,” Grayson commented. He put down the sensor wand. “A simple blood test will measure his ubiquinone levels and tell us if he’s positive or not.” He nodded at Rosita. “Would you do the honors?”

“Of course, Bernard.” The Filipino woman rolled a metal cart over to Tom’s couch. She extracted an empty hypodermic needle from a drawer beneath the cart, along with gauze and other supplies, and laid them down on a
sterile silver tray. She rolled up Tom’s sleeve and tied a rubber tourniquet around his upper arm. A pudgy finger palpated the vein at the crook of his arm until it plumped up. She swabbed it with antiseptic. “You have good veins.”

“Thanks,” Tom said wryly. He strained once more against the restraints binding his wrists and ankles, but with no luck. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

“Don’t worry,” Abby assured him. “Rosita used to work as a phlebotomist here, before it went out of business. That’s how we found out about this place.” She strolled over to observe the procedure. “You’re in good hands.”

That’s debatable,
Tom thought. Before he could say as much, however, he was startled to see Kyle creep into the room from the rear, the same way he and Diana had. Confusion and hope both bounced around inside his brain.
What’s he doing here?

Raising a finger to his lips, Kyle edged along the back of the donation floor toward one of the unoccupied couches. Tom grasped that his son was going for the guns Carl had carelessly deposited there earlier. Unfortunately, the weapons were all the way across the floor. Could Kyle make it there without being spotted by Abby and the others?

Tom’s face froze as he struggled not to betray his son’s arrival. With luck, his momentary flash of surprise would be taken as anxiety over his impending bloodletting. He resisted a temptation to look at Diana, who had surely spotted Kyle as well. At the moment, all eyes were upon Tom, so that his captors had their backs to Kyle.
I’ve got to
keep it that way,
he realized.
Long enough for Kyle to get to those guns.

Rosita’s hypo was poised above his elbow. “You’ll just feel a pinch.”

The needle penetrated his skin. As promised, it only stung a little, but Tom screamed bloody murder anyway. “Ow! What the hell are you doing to me?” He grimaced in mock pain. “You call yourself a phlebotomist!”

“Don’t be a baby,” Rosita scolded him, sounding mildly offended. The Vacutainer tube filled up with blood. “That was a perfect stick.”

“What a wimp!” Carl sneered.

Grayson headed over to collect the blood sample.

“This is monstrous!” Diana added to the uproar. No doubt she realized what he was up to. “You’re like Nazis, performing obscene medical experiments on human subjects. You should be locked up for good!”

“Jesus, Diana,” Abby exclaimed. “It’s just a stupid blood test. Don’t be such a drama queen.”

Rosita withdrew the needle from Tom’s arm. She pressed a cotton ball down on the puncture site. “There! You see, that wasn’t so bad.”

“Oh yeah?” Tom snarled. “Tell that to my damn arm!” Peering past her shoulder, he saw that Kyle was still a few paces away from the guns. His son looked horrified at what was being done to him.
Don’t worry about me,
he thought.
Just get those guns!

“What did you do?” Tom accused Rosita. “Spear right through the vein? Or did you hit the bone, too?”

“I’ve never done that in my life!” the woman said indignantly.
She removed the Vacutainer from its plastic holder before handing it over to Grayson. “I’m a professional!”

“A professional sadist maybe!”

Keep looking at me,
he entreated them silently.
Don’t turn around!

“What’s next?” Diana ranted, doing her part. “Are you going to dissect us for parts?”

The guns were right where Cassie said they would be. Kyle held his breath as he crept along the back of the room, even as the bad guys tortured his dad. Despite Cassie’s warning, it had come as a shock to see both his dad and Diana at the mercy of Grayson and his accomplices. His father’s angry cries scraped at his nerves.
What are those slimeballs doing to him?

“Don’t get distracted,” Cassie whispered. She tiptoed after him. “Stick to the plan!”

Easier said than done,
he thought. It wasn’t her father being experimented on only a few yards away. Still, at least he knew now that he had done the right thing coming here this evening. From the looks of things, he had arrived just in time. Maybe.

He inched across the room, wincing at every minor creak and tread. Thank God he hadn’t stepped in any puddles on the way here; he could just imagine his sneakers squishing loudly with every step.
Too bad I’m not invisible like Cassie.
The room was uncomfortably warm compared to outside. Perspiration glued his shirt to his back. It felt like hours before he finally reached the unattended weapons.

He spotted his father’s modified Glock. His sweaty palms grabbed on to the grip of the gun. Suddenly, he was very grateful for the firing lessons his dad had given him when he was growing up. He bit back a gasp of relief.

Made it!

“Good job,” Cassie said. She pointed at the nurse bending over his dad. “That’s Rosita. You need to shoot her first, before she can use her ability.”

In the back?
Kyle didn’t want to shoot anyone, let alone an unsuspecting woman. He clumsily released the safety on the gun.
Is Cassie serious?

She frowned at his hesitancy. “This is no time to be squeamish, Kyle. You wanted to be the hero. Now do what you have to.”

Kyle’s arm trembled as he raised the gun. He didn’t think he could go through with this. He had never shot someone before—if you didn’t count the time a disembodied intelligence from the future had taken over his body to assassinate Jordan. This time was different, though. He was in charge now. The blood would be on his hands …

“Do it!” Cassie ordered. “Pull the trigger!”

Kyle listened to his dad and Diana shouting. He wanted to save them, but …

“I can’t!”

He didn’t even realize that he’d spoken out loud until the bad guys spun around in surprise. Kyle recognized Grayson from his file, but it was the young man in the bathrobe who really shocked him. Kyle’s jaw dropped. His heart missed a beat.

“Danny?”

His dead cousin was standing only a few yards away.

“It’s not Danny!” Cassie yelled. “He’s fake.” She shouted in his ear. “Shoot the old lady!”

But he was already too late. The nurse scrunched up her face. Her solid-looking frame shimmered like a mirage before vanishing completely. She disappeared right before his eyes.

“Huh?” Kyle stammered in confusion, his gun aimed at empty air. Now what was he supposed to do?

Cassie took charge as usual. Grabbing on to his gun arm, she swung it to the right. “Over there! Now!”

He squeezed the trigger.

The deafening report of the gun pounded his eardrums. The recoil jolted his arm from Cassie’s grip. At first it looked like he’d fired at nothing, but then Rosita shimmered back into existence, clutching her side. Blood seeped through her fingers. Moaning, she crumpled to the floor.

Oh my God,
Kyle thought. Cassie had known right where the invisible woman was.
I just shot someone. For real.

“Rosita!” Grayson started to rush to the injured woman’s side, then remembered the smoking gun in Kyle’s hand. He halted halfway to Rosita. “Please, you’ve got to let me help her!”

“Careful, Kyle!” his dad shouted from the couch. “He’s armed, too. Don’t let him do anything until you get his gun!”

“Fine!” Grayson said, before Kyle could even follow his
dad’s advice. He drew a small handgun from beneath his lab coat and slid it across the floor toward Kyle. He looked anxiously at Rosita, who was whimpering in pain upon the floor. “Is that good enough for you?”

A crimson pool formed beneath the fallen nurse. Kyle swallowed hard. He swung the gun back toward the fake “Danny” and an attractive blond woman who looked only a few years older than he was. He struggled to keep an eye on all the players. “Go for it.”

That was all the agitated mortician needed to hear. He grabbed a first-aid kit from a cart and rushed over to the writhing victim. “Somebody call 911!”

“No!” Diana shouted. Still tied to a couch beside her partner, she raised her voice to get Kyle’s attention. “That clone has Danny’s ability. You can’t let anyone else in here. This whole place needs to be quarantined!”

“Don’t listen to her, Kyle,” the blonde said. She was a stranger to Kyle, but she clearly knew who he was. “You don’t want to stop us. We’re only trying to spread the blessing of promicin to the entire world, just like Jordan Collier wants.”