The 4400® Promises Broken (10 page)

The streetlamp above Diana’s car went out, and the traffic signal—which had cycled through two changes while she had sat arguing with Maia—switched off as well.

Maia said simply,
“I have to go.”

She hung up before Diana could say “I love you.”

Sitting alone in her car, which was the only light source on the street, Diana was left to wonder what had gone wrong now.

J
ORDAN
C
OLLIER STOOD
on the roof of his headquarters and watched the lights go out in Promise City.

One neighborhood after another was swallowed by the night: the residential streets of Queen Anne and Magnolia Bluff; the bohemian enclave of Capitol Hill; the skyscrapers of Belltown; the bedroom communities in Broadmoor and Madrona; the industrial sprawl of Georgetown and the blocks of Beacon Hill. Streets that sparkled with lamplight sank into shadow.

Standing a thousand feet above it all, surveying it like a lord of the night, Jordan couldn’t help but smile.

The rooftop door opened with a loud squeak. He turned and clasped his hands casually behind his back as he watched his leadership council file onto the roof from the stairwell, which was lit by the dim, sickly green glow of emergency lights.

Leading the team of advisors was Kyle, whose tight-cropped blond hair still managed to be tousled by the breezes that never ceased this high aboveground. Behind
him were Gary and Maia, looking like a study in opposites—a brawny young black man in a charcoal-gray designer suit and an off-white silk shirt, walking next to a petite blond teenage girl in blue jeans and a pink top.

Kyle opened his mouth to speak. Jordan trumped him.

“Let me guess: the Army cut our power.”

“Along with our drinking water and our sewage removal services,” Kyle said without missing a beat.

It was almost enough to make Jordan laugh. “Naturally. It was only a matter of time.” He smiled. “Fortunately, we’ve been ready for this since day one.”

Folding his arms and putting on a dubious frown, Gary replied, “Ready to provide basic services, maybe. But you know that’s not what this is really about.”

Jordan nodded. “That’s exactly what it’s about. Proving that we can not only guarantee the basics of survival but do it
for free
is major public relations victory.”

Kyle looked past Jordan, toward the shadowscape. “Turning out the lights isn’t just some slap on the wrist,” he said. “It’s a setup for a military strike. And this time it won’t be just one missile aimed at you. They’ll come for all of us.”

“I agree,” Gary said. “They’re probably moving troops into the city right now.”

Noting the intense gaze of Maia, Jordan arched an eyebrow and inquired, “Something to add?”

“There will be shooting in the streets,” she said in her ominous monotone of prophecy. “People are going to die.”

There was no “unless” or “if” following her proclamation. The finality of it was sobering for Jordan. He nodded.

“Yes,” he said. “I know.” He turned west and breathed
in the faint scent of sea air. “The U.S. was never going to give up a city without a fight. But it’s like childbirth: the moment of separation will be painful and bloody.” He looked back at his three advisors. “But also completely necessary.”

Visibly discomfited by Jordan’s take on the situation, Gary shifted his weight and breathed a heavy sigh. “Maybe. But if so, shouldn’t we be getting ready for the battle?”

This time Kyle answered for Jordan. “We already are. Sentinels are in place all over the city. When the Army makes its move, we’ll make ours.”

“Isn’t that a bit risky?” Gary asked. “What if the Army comes at us with something we don’t expect?”

Tilting his chin toward Maia, Kyle said, “That’s what you’re here to prevent, isn’t it?”

She reacted with a steely glare at Kyle. “Even I don’t see everything. The future is always changing.”

“That’s what I’m saying,” Gary said, clearly unnerved by the detached manner in which Maia made her points. “We shouldn’t get overconfident. It’ll take just one mistake to bring this whole thing down on our heads.” To Jordan he added, “If the U.S. government really decides to play hardball, they won’t stop until they bury us. They’ll wipe Promise City off the map before they let us keep it. You know that.”

“Yes, I do,” Jordan confessed with a smile. “As a matter of fact, I’m counting on it.” He held his arms wide, as if to invite a crucifixion. “I know you might find this hard to believe, but this is all part of the plan.”

NTAC’s
OFFICES WERE
mostly empty. Only a handful of late-shift agents monitored the emergency action stations, and a single squad of uniformed security guards manned the main entrance and patrolled the ghost-town-quiet corridors. The monitors of logged-out computers filled the warren of deserted cubicles and vacant offices with a pale blue glow.

Tom Baldwin loosened the top button of his shirt and palmed sweat from his forehead. To conserve electricity, the building’s air conditioners had shut off automatically at precisely 8
P.M.
It was now more than an hour past that, and the atmosphere inside the facility had become warm and heavy.

The energy-saving measures had been implemented after the Army had taken the city’s electrical grid offline. In compliance with Department of Homeland Security disaster protocols, NTAC had switched over to its diesel-fueled emergency generators and lithium backup batteries, which were supplemented by a hard line to an array of
solar panels and a stand of six wind turbines hidden miles away on Bainbridge Island, across Elliott Bay.

Tom’s footsteps echoed off the concrete steps and walls of the stairwell as he descended toward the sublevel that housed the Theory Room. The elevator would have been faster, but the need to limit power usage meant that all personnel were encouraged to use the stairs whenever possible.

As he had suspected, the Theory Room flickered with the telltale glow of video playback. He knocked once on the door, eased it open, and stepped inside. The faint aroma of pizza lingered in the air.
Pepperoni, if I know Marco
, he thought.

On the far side of the room, Marco swiveled his chair away from the full-wall projection screen. “Hey,” he said, lifting his chin at Tom in salutation, then turning back to the video.

“Hey,” echoed Tom, walking past rows of computer screens scrolling with data as they crunched raw intel from countless sources. “I was heading home when I saw your car in the lot. It’s late. What’re you still doing here?”

“Watching the world come apart at the seams,” Marco said, squinting at the wall of video as Tom sidled up to him. The bespectacled theorist picked up a remote control, pressed a few buttons, and subdivided the screen into eight smaller images, each showing a different video feed. “This is footage from all over the world,” he said. “Raw network feeds ripped from the satellites, pirate broadcasts. Some of it is being sent by p-positives who can transmit what they see and hear in perfect high-def. Talk about cinema verité.”

Images of violence and destruction cascaded across the wall. Each subwindow switched its feed every few seconds, creating an ever-changing mosaic of chaos and unrest. It went by so quickly that Tom had difficulty taking it all in. “What am I looking at?” he asked.

“Promicin-fueled uprisings all over the planet,” Marco said. He began pointing at images as they flashed by. “Monks in Tibet. Refugees in Sudan. Women in the Middle East. Settlers in Gaza. Workers in Venezuela. Rebels in Kashmir.” He shook his head, then looked up at Tom. “The drug’s spreading faster than we can track it. We could be looking at tens of millions of p-positives in a matter of weeks.”

“Jesus Christ,” Tom whispered, his voice muted in horror. “That means we’ll also be looking at tens of millions of promicin deaths.” He imagined distant lands littered with corpses twisted in the bloodied throes of agony. “Are they insane? Don’t they know what this stuff
does
?”

Marco nodded. “They know. And they don’t care.” Reacting to Tom’s disbelieving glare, he continued. “People in the Third World see promicin very differently than we do. They live every day with disease, starvation, genocide …” He shrugged. “Most of them figure they’re as good as dead, anyway. They have nothing left to lose, so they roll the dice on promicin.”

Tom frowned. “Makes sense. Most of the people here who took promicin were outsiders. People who’d lost hope, or felt like they’d hit bottom, or that the system had given up on them.”

“Exactly,” Marco said. “Now multiply that by ten million.
Most people in North America, Europe, Australia, and Japan have it pretty good, even in the worst of times. Why would they want to play Russian roulette with only a fifty/ fifty chance of survival? But if you’re born poor in a place like Chad or Sudan, a fifty/fifty chance at getting a superhuman ability must seem like a good risk.” With a click of the remote control, he halted the rotation of the images on the wall. “And it’s working. In the last four days, new p-positives have defeated genocidal warlords in Somalia, forced the Taliban out of a dozen villages in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and declared Kashmir an independent city-state.” A dubious smile tugged at his mouth. “The meek are inheriting the Earth—as supermen.”

Eyeing the images with both wonder and dismay, Tom had a troubling thought. “If this is spreading in the Middle East, it won’t be long before groups like Al-Qaeda, Hamas, and Hezbollah get their hands on it. We could be facing militant Islamic terrorists with promicin powers. They could make 9/11 look like amateur hour.”

“Possibly,” Marco said, popping open a can of soda. “But that’s not what I’d worry about if I were you.”

“What do you mean?”

Marco sipped his soda, swallowed, then pointed at the screen. “Most of the people who are drawn to taking promicin are the have-nots: the poor, the oppressed, the enslaved. The ones who survive are hailing Jordan Collier like he’s the Messiah. Even more disturbing, they’re becoming the new elite of the world, and you’d better believe some of them are going to decide it’s payback time. And not just on a personal level. I’m talking about an upheaval
in the balance of power between nations—a global shift in the organization of human society.”

Tom looked again at the chilling tableau of video feeds: an emaciated African woman psychokinetically shredding trucks and felling helicopters in Sierra Leone; a young boy melting Chinese tanks in Shingatse; an ad hoc militia of poor civilians laying siege to the capital of Myanmar. Then he looked at Marco.

“Is this as bad as I think it is?”

“Worse,” Marco said. “Governments don’t give up power without a fight … This is how world wars get started.”

July 24, 2008
2:00
A.M.
PACIFIC DAYLIGHT TIME

J
AKES HUNCHED HIS SHOULDERS
against the frigid night air of the Nevada desert. He took a quick drag off his cigarette and craned his head back as he exhaled, the better to admire the starry dome of the sky. The stars had long been hidden in the future world that had sent him here to reshape the past. Admiring the constellations, those brilliant pinholes in the curtain of night, almost made him regret his mission.

But he had his orders. There was nowhere to go but forward.

He glanced over his shoulder at Kuroda. Her body was garbed in stained gray coveralls, her hands were covered with thick welder’s gloves, and a dark welding visor masked her face. A tightly wrapped braid of her blond hair stuck out from under the back of her protective headgear.

Electric blue flashes of acetylene light made a silhouette
of her, and white-hot sparks from her work bounced across the hard ground before fading away, as ephemeral as shooting stars.

Wells emerged from the entrance to the underground lab and shivered as he stepped into the bitter cold. Lifting one hand to shield his eyes from the blinding glare of Kuroda’s welding rod, he asked Jakes, “You sure she knows what she’s doing?”

“Better than either of us would,” Jakes said. He knew why Wells was nervous. Even a minor mistake could set off the dead-man’s switch on the antimatter warhead that Kuroda was securing to the cargo bed of a white sportutility vehicle. “Leave her be,” he advised his colleague. “She’s doing fine.”

“If you say so,” Wells replied. He walked toward the front of the SUV and nodded for Jakes to follow him. “Let’s go over it one last time.”

Jakes rolled his eyes. The plan hadn’t changed in weeks, yet Wells insisted on rehashing it ad nauseam.
Still
, Jakes reminded himself,
best not to take anything for granted, especially when we’re so close to the endgame
. He fell into step behind Wells, who took a road map from inside his jacket and spread it out on top of the truck’s hood.

“The good news,” Wells began, “is that the crisis with Jordan Collier has the U.S. government and its military focused on Promise City.” Casting a grim look at the map, he added, “But I’m still concerned that you’ll be too exposed, for too long. Flying would be faster.”

“Absolutely not,” Jakes said. Icy wind threatened to steal the map, which snapped and rustled under his and Wells’s
hands. “Air traffic in this part of Nevada is much too closely monitored for us to risk that. I wouldn’t make it more than two hundred kilometers before getting shot down.”

Wells frowned. “Then what about a less direct driving route? Something that keeps you off the major highways?”

“You’re being paranoid,” Jakes said. “As long as I obey the speed limit and rules of the road, there won’t be a problem.”

“Don’t be so sure,” Wells replied. “You borrowed that body of yours months ago. Someone must have noticed by now that he’s missing.”

“Noticing that he’s missing and actively looking for him are two very different things,” Jakes said.

Cocking his head to one side, Wells replied, “Be that as it may, the less you’re seen, the better.” He traced Jakes’s planned driving route with his fingertip. “This is more than twelve hundred kilometers of open road.”