The 4400® Promises Broken (6 page)

“What about our automatic backups?” Meghan asked.

Tom shook his head. “Nothing ever got that far. Whatever set off the bells, it got wiped before our system had a look at it.”

Looking in over Meghan’s shoulder, J.B. asked, “Now what?”

A devious look played across Meghan’s face. “Maybe we don’t have a record of that data, but I’ll bet the NSA does. I’ll call in a favor with an old pal, see if we can get our hands on the original intel.” She knocked on the wooden doorjamb for luck, then slipped away to her office.

Tom, Diana, and J.B. traded wary glances in the moments after Meghan’s departure.

Diana broke the silence. “Isn’t it illegal for the NSA to share internal surveillance with us?”

“Back to work,” J.B. said, too smart to try to answer that question. He stepped away and walked back to his own office.

Still awaiting an answer, Diana looked across the adjoining desks at Tom, who picked up his doughnut and coffee. “Don’t look at me,” he said. He bit into his doughnut and added through a mouthful of chocolate, “I just work here.”

M
AIA
S
KOURIS FOUND
it hard to concentrate on what her tutor was saying, because she kept finding herself distracted by visions of the woman bloodied and dying in someone’s arms.

“I’m sorry,” Maia said. “What was the question?”

The tutor, Heather Tobey, frowned in mild reproof, then repeated her query. “What is the Ninth Amendment to the United States Constitution?”

A teacher by profession, Heather was one of the original 4400. She had been gifted with the ability to nurture others’ innate talents to their full potential. It was sometimes a slow process.

As Maia looked at the score she had just received on her humanities test, however, she had to conclude that she had no hidden talent for understanding U.S. history.

“The Ninth Amendment,” Maia began, then let her voice trail off to buy herself time to think. “It … uh … outlaws alcohol?”

Heather’s frown became a scowl. “No,” she said. “That
was the Eighteenth Amendment. We’re still on the Bill of Rights.” Softening her countenance, she said in a coaching manner, “Even the framers of the Constitution knew they couldn’t think of everything. And they didn’t want that to be held against other people. So how did they safeguard against that?”

Searching her memory, Maia found the first half of the answer, which she blurted out in the hope of shaking loose the rest of the answer. Quoting the text, she said, “‘The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to …’” As she paused to dredge up the end of the sentence, another horrific vision momentarily filled her sight.

Shadows dance in a darkened room lit by scarlet flames. The floor sparkles with shattered glass and is sticky with blood. Smoke lingers, thick and sharp. A dull roar muffles distant voices full of fear and sorrow. Then comes a heartbreaking sound: a young man weeps. Heather is cradled in his arms; the light in her eyes fades, blood pours from her mouth and seeps from ragged wounds in her chest and stomach …

“Go on,” Heather said. “You can finish it.”

It was eerie, the sensation of talking to someone she had just seen at death’s threshold, but Maia had experienced this too many times before to let it show. Fixing her mask of calm, she said simply, “… ‘shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.’”

“Excellent,” Heather said. She started gathering up her books and papers. “We’re out of time today, but if you’d gotten that question right on your test, you’d have earned a B-minus instead of a C-plus.” Loading her things into
a satchel, she continued. “But I’ll tell you what. If you can write me a two-hundred-word paper on why the Ninth Amendment is important, and give it to me tomorrow, I’ll raise your grade on the test to a B.” Heather stood and slung the satchel at her side. “Deal?”

Maia nodded. “Deal.”

“Great,” Heather said. She walked to the door of Maia’s suite, and Maia stayed a few paces behind her. The tutor opened the door, and as she stepped out she smiled and said, “See you tomorrow!” With a friendly wave, she made her exit.

Waving back, Maia forced out a smile of her own, then closed the door behind Heather and locked it.

Pressing her back to the door, she heaved a sigh of relief. It was never easy foreseeing the death of someone she liked, and she had witnessed far too many—more than she had ever said, and more than she ever would admit. She was only thirteen years old, and already she felt as if she had a lifetime of secrets.

She trudged in heavy steps across the residential suite that Jordan had made available for her private use. Located on an upper floor of the Collier building, her apartment was much larger than the one in which she had lived with Diana, and it was more expensively furnished. There were lots of glass tables and pale leather upholstery and stainless steel and polished granite. Everything was gleaming and perfect. She even had a king bed to herself.

Her accommodations’ luxuries didn’t end with the suite itself. Twenty-four-hour room service was a phone call
away, a housekeeping staff tended to her dishes and her laundry, and until she had moved in she had never known how many satellite television channels there really were.

All that Jordan had asked from her as a concession was that she accept private academic tutoring from Heather, so that her education wouldn’t stagnate. Maia had protested that it was summer and that school could wait until the fall, but Jordan had held his ground and made it a mandatory condition of her residency at his headquarters.

She drifted into her kitchen and opened the refrigerator, driven partly by a mild appetite and partly by boredom. A pale-green Golden Crisp apple caught her eye, and she plucked it from the shelf. Biting into the firm, slightly tart fruit, she let the refrigerator door thud closed. She ambled back into the living room and collapsed onto the couch with her snack.

An uneasy feeling nagged at her. When she thought of Diana, her heart swelled with resentment. After all that Maia had done to prove herself to her adoptive mother, and to everyone else, it filled her with rage to be treated like just another kid.

At least Jordan and his people treat me like an equal
, she thought bitterly. But there was no denying that she missed her home. Most of all, she missed her mother. Being treated as an equal was a pleasant change, to be sure—but it wasn’t the same as being loved.

An idle thought gave her a twinge of guilt: Who could have loved her more than her real parents? Ethan and Mary Rutledge had been dead now for decades, but for Maia it had been only four years since she’d last held her
mother’s hands and felt the warm safety of her father’s embrace.

Maia’s friend and fellow returnee Lindsey Hammond had introduced her to another 4400, whose ability had enabled Maia to see and touch her dead parents again. Even knowing that they were an illusion, a mental or physical trick of some kind, had not made the experience any less powerful or moving. Seeing them had brought her to the edge of tears. Walking away from them to go home to Diana had pushed her over that edge.

She’d gone home after that encounter feeling racked with guilt. After all the love and devotion that Diana had shown her, was it fair to compare her to people who were dead and gone? Was it right to long so badly for another afternoon in the company of illusions when she had abandoned Diana in an empty home?

Her loneliness and her yearning for what she’d lost was too powerful to resist. Maia got up from the couch and walked to the closest phone, which sat on an end table near the window. She would call Lindsey and ask her to arrange another meeting with the 4400 who summoned the shades of the dead.

As she lifted the phone’s handset from its cradle, another vision seized control of her senses.

A warship, on the water but close to land, fires a missile. White smoke blooms like a flower, then smudges the sky as the rocket hurtles away, a low-flying blur
.

It darts and twists between the buildings of a familiar cityscape. Then it finds its mark, zeroing in on the top corner of a building. Impact.

Fire and thunder. Screaming. Bodies.

Jordan vanishes in a wall of white flames
.

The vision ended, leaving Maia in cold sweat. Her finger trembled above the phone’s keypad. She had been told what to do if a moment such as this came to pass.

She pressed the red emergency button at the bottom of the keypad and hoped that her warning would arrive in time.

K
YLE
B
ALDWIN ENTERED
the Collier Foundation’s de facto “crisis center,” a conference room on a protected sublevel, shadowed by Cassie—his promicin ability personified as a redheaded vixen from his subconscious, an advisor whom only he could see or hear.

Palming sweat from his forehead and back through his close-cropped dirty-blond hair, he announced his presence to the four people who had answered his urgent summons: “Listen up.” The others turned to face him. He recited what Cassie had told him to say. “Maia says we’ve got a missile inbound. It’s coming from the water, so it’s a good bet it was fired from a ship. Job one is stop that missile. Let’s huddle up.”

He sensed Cassie looming behind his shoulder as he draped his left arm over the shoulders of Lucas Sanchez, a dark-haired and mustached gestalt telepath in his mid-forties, and rested his right arm on the back of Renata Gaetano, a young Italian woman with long, dyed-blond hair and a pear-shaped figure. Renata, who had acquired
her skills months earlier during what Jordan called “the Great Leap Forward” and the rest of the city called the fifty/fifty epidemic, was an electrokinetic with a knack for controlling and destroying electronic equipment and systems.

On her right was Hal Corcoran, another willing recipient of the promicin shot. Just shy of his sixtieth birthday, he was a heavyset man who had been robbed of his eyesight by diabetes. In what seemed to Kyle like an expression of karmic justice, the man whose eyes were hidden now by opaque black glasses had acquired the ability of remote viewing; his particular skill enabled him to visualize large areas and then home in on targets of interest, even those moving at great speeds.

Completing the circle was Kemraj Singh, a slightly built young man from Pakistan. One of the original 4400, Kemraj was a powerful hydrokinetic. As he clasped his dark hand around Lucas’s, he closed his eyes. Kyle did the same, and Lucas put his gift to work.

Participating in gestalt telepathy was one of the oddest sensations Kyle had ever known. Everyone in the circle became part of a group mind, linked by Lucas’s ability. The first feeling of connection was physical. Each member of the circle became aware of the others’ breathing. Within seconds their respiration had synchronized. Five minds became one. Thoughts passed instantaneously from one person to all of the others. Yet within the merged persona, distinct voices remained.

“Find the missile,” Kyle whispered, knowing that he would be heard even if he didn’t speak aloud.

Hal was the first to reach out, casting his special vision high above Promise City. Turning west, the cloudy sky was reflected on the cobalt waters of Elliott Bay. Hurtling forward, they raced away from the city, over West Seattle, and out into the sparkling beauty of Puget Sound.

Against the cerulean surface of the water, Hal spied a swiftly moving white contrail. He fixed his focus on the nose of the missile that was speeding toward them. “There,” he said.

“Got it,” Renata replied. Kyle felt her mind reach out to the missile and make contact with its sophisticated electronic guidance systems. As she prepared to coax it toward a fatal dive into an open patch of Elliott Bay, Cassie’s breath was hot on the back of Kyle’s ear as she whispered to him, “Stop her.”

“Stop,” Kyle said. From past experience, he knew the others could neither see nor hear Cassie, even in the gestalt link.

As if seducing him, Cassie continued. “Don’t waste this opportunity, Kyle.” He turned his head to see her smirking at him, leading him to wonder what sinister plan she was hatching.

Through Hal’s remote sight, the skyline of Seattle heaved into view, growing larger by the second. “Kyle …?” he asked.

Renata added, “What do you want me to do, Kyle?”

Cassie stroked one fingernail down the center of Kyle’s back and cooed, “Say it with me, Kyle.” The next moment, he heard his voice speaking in synchronicity with hers, as if he had become her puppet. “Let the missile buzz the
city,” they said in unison. “Then turn it back at the ship that fired it.”

He couldn’t believe the words that were coming out of his mouth. His feelings of shock and hesitation were mirrored on the faces of the others in the circle.

“Do it,” he and Cassie said.

Focusing her thoughts, Renata took control of the missile. Kyle felt it bow to Renata’s commands, and she guided it through a wide turn over the city that was daredevil-close to the taller buildings downtown. Then it was on a return trajectory, streaking across Elliott Bay, flying so low that Hal could see its blurred reflection on the water’s surface.

Kyle spoke more words as Cassie put them into his mouth. “Renata, keep the missile on target. Hal, find the ship it came from.” At the speed of thought, Hal projected his sight across Puget Sound, and followed the missile’s dissipating contrail to a U.S. Navy warship. “Kemraj,” Kyle/Cassie said, “move all the water away from its propellers—hold it steady.”

Cassie directed Kyle’s focus to a specific point on the ship’s hull and told him what to do. “Hit the deck near the forward gun,” he said to Renata. “And scramble their defenses.”

“Okay,” Renata said with obvious reluctance.

Everyone obeyed Kyle’s orders. There was nothing left for him to do but sit back and watch—and listen, horrified, as Cassie giggled with malicious glee.

T
HERE WERE NEARLY
thirty officers and enlisted personnel in the combat information center of the U.S. Navy guided-missile destroyer U.S.S.
Momsen
, and the ship’s executive officer, Commander Alim Gafar, was convinced that not one of them knew what the hell was going on—himself included.