Welcome to Promise City

by Greg Cox

  Richard refused to be manipulated. “This isn’t about Collier. It’s about not giving you a pretext to declare war on an American city.” He peered past Ryland and his flunkies at the solid steel gate blocking his view of the rest of the prison. There weren’t even any bars to see through. “Where are the people who got picked up with me? What have you done with them?”

  He hadn’t seen Evee or Yul since waking up in captivity.

  “They’re enjoying similar receptions at the hands of my subordinates.” Ryland smirked at Richard. “You should feel privileged that you’re getting my personal attention.”

  Richard doubted that either of his teammates would crack. If anything, they were both more devoted to Collier and his cause than he was. They were true believers. “What makes me so special?”

  “Don’t underestimate yourself,” Ryland answered. “You’re much more high-profile than your accomplices. A decorated veteran, a former codirector of The 4400 Center, and father of the infamous Isabelle Tyler … Your testimony will carry a lot of weight. I can practically see the headlines now.”

  So could Richard. He would’ve spit at Ryland if his mouth wasn’t so dry. “Too bad there’s not going to be a confession.”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure of that.” Ryland turned to one of his associates, an anorexic teenage girl with spiky white hair, pale skin, and a bland, neutral expression. Icy blue eyes regarded Richard with clinical dispassion. A heavy down jacket looked uncomfortably warm even for the drafty cell. Bulky mittens hid her hands. Her breath frosted in the air. Ryland stepped aside to let the girl through. “Astrid, I think you need to apply a little more persuasion.”

  Fear contorted Richard’s face. He had already been on the receiving end of the girl’s ability several times before. Ryland sneered in anticipation. Despite his profound antipathy toward the 4400, the former NTAC bigwig wasn’t above using the enhanced operatives to carry out his crusade. Richard strained uselessly against his bonds. “No, not again …”

  Astrid appeared deaf to his pleas. She bent over to look Richard in the face. She took a deep breath, filling her lungs with the stuffy air of the cell. Richard braced himself for an all-too-familiar ordeal, which came upon him with merciless speed.

  She blew in Richard’s face, her breath like an arctic wind. Frost flowed over Richard’s entire body, coating his clothes and skin with an icy white glaze. He shivered uncontrollably, on the verge of hypothermia. His teeth chattered like castanets, no matter how hard he tried to clench his jaw. His lips turned blue. His own breath fogged the air. Frostbite threatened the tip of his nose.

  He hadn’t felt so cold since the last time she tortured him.

  Ryland held up his hand. “That’s enough.”

  Astrid sucked the bitter gale back into her lungs. She wordlessly stepped away from the chair. The frost instantly retreated, evaporating into the air. Within seconds, Richard was no longer frozen, but he kept on trembling. Goose bumps covered his skin. Each session with Astrid left him more chilled than before. It was impossible to get warm again.

  Ryland gave him no time to recover. “Now then,” he said harshly, abandoning any pretense at sympathy. “Tell me how Jordan Collier intends to weaponize promicin.”

  * * *

  Maia woke up, shivering. Huddling beneath her blankets, she hugged herself to warm up. The awful dream clung to her like a thin layer of frost.

  She grabbed her BlackBerry.

  Jordan needed to hear about this, right away!

  THIRTEEN

  KYLE CLOSED AND locked the door to his office.

  Feeling guilty, he crept back to his desk and sat down in front of the computer. It was seven in the morning, and most of the Collier Foundation was still asleep, but, just the same, he didn’t want anyone walking in on him while he looked up Bernard Grayson, just to lay his worries to rest. Jordan’s own office was only two doors down. Kyle had been relieved to see that Jordan wasn’t up yet, even though he kept telling himself that he wasn’t doing anything wrong.

  I just need a little more information, he thought. Before I can make any sort of decision.

  The Foundation maintained a top-secret database of every positive in the Movement. Teams of enhanced computer geeks protected the in-house network from government hackers and other security threats. Only the upper echelon of the Movement had access to the complete database. Kyle was a member of that elite number. To review the files, all he needed to do was key in his personal password.

  SHAMAN, he typed.

  The database flashed onto the screen.

  “Don’t do this, Kyle,” Cassie said.

  He didn’t even jump when she suddenly appeared behind him. By now, he was used to her materializing from nowhere. He sighed in resignation. No locks or doors could keep Cassie away when she had something to say.

  “I only want to look into this a little bit,” he said. “That doesn’t mean I’m planning to inform NTAC or my dad of anything.” He kept his gaze on the screen before him. “Chances are, there’s nothing to tell anyway. I just need to know that for sure.”

  She leaned over his shoulder. “I’m your ability, Kyle. I tell you what you need to know.”

  “Oh yeah?” He spun around in his chair to confront her. “Then tell me all about this Grayson guy. And where Danny’s body is.”

  She shook her head. “That’s not how it works. It’s about what you need to know, to carry out your destiny. Not what you want to know.”

  “Maybe you don’t know everything I need.”

  She sat down on his lap and wrapped her arms around his neck. “That’s not what you thought last night.” She wore a blue baby-doll dress over violet leggings. A devilish smile played across her face. “So, the door is locked, right?”

  He saw what she was trying to do. “Sorry, that’s not going to work this time.”

  He dumped her off his lap and turned back to the computer. His fingers tapped at the keyboard, plugging GRAYSON, BERNARD into the database. Sure enough, the fugitive undertaker was listed as a promicin-positive supporter of the Movement, having apparently seen the light right after the Great Leap Forward. His file, however, was surprisingly skimpy, listing only his age, contact info, Social Security number, and a few other inconsequential details. Not even his 4400 ability was listed.

  “What the heck?”

  “Leave it alone,” Cassie insisted. She paced back and forth behind him. “Don’t you see your father is using you?”

  “Maybe,” he answered. “But if we’ve got nothing to hide, what’s the harm in poking around a little?”

  Scanning the file more carefully, he noted that Grayson was listed as a “financial benefactor.” He clicked on a tab labeled CONTRIBUTIONS and discovered that the missing funeral director had donated over $150,000 to something called the “Global Outreach Committee.”

  The what? The name meant nothing to him. I thought I knew about all of Jordan’s initiatives.

  He glanced over at Cassie. “You know anything about this?”

  She gave him a dirty look. “You care what I think now?” She plopped down onto a sofa in the corner. Crossed arms rested defiantly atop her chest. “Don’t expect me to do your dad’s dirty work.”

  Kyle guessed that he wasn’t going to hear the end of this for a while. Hell hath no fury like an anima scorned …

  “Fine,” he said. “I’ll handle this myself.”

  A half hour’s search of the Foundation’s computer files yielded frustratingly little information on the Global Outreach Committee. Kyle had never paid much attention to the Movement’s finances, but now he found himself scouring budget reports trying to figure out just what Bernard Grayson’s extremely generous donation had been used for. Follow the money, he told himself, just like they say in the movies. He rubbed his eyes as a bewildering blur of debits and credits scrolled across the screen. Jordan liked to say that money would soon be obsolete, that miracles would be the currency of the brave world they were creating, but Kyle was surp
rised to see how much cash was required to keep Promise City running in the meantime.

  Finally, just when he was about to give up, he stumbled onto a payment of nearly a million dollars drawn upon an account identified only as “GOC Operating Fund.” GOC as in Global Outreach Committee?

  It has to be, he thought.

  But when he tried to call up more details on the fund, his computer beeped in protest. An ominous gray message box appeared on the screen:

  “ACCESS DENIED.”

  “You’re kidding me!” He was Jordan’s righthand man; he had never been blocked like this before. He impatiently keyed in his password again.

  “ACCESS DENIED.”

  “Crap!” He pounded his fist into his palm. This was getting more frustrating, and worrisome, by the moment. What’s so secret about this damn committee?

  “Having trouble, lover?” Cassie taunted him from across the room. She amused herself by doodling on a sketch pad. When Kyle had first encountered her, she had posed as a chatty art student before revealing her true nature. “Maybe you should leave well enough alone.”

  “Like hell.” He was going to get to the bottom of this mystery if it killed him, if only to prove that his dad was way off base with his accusations against Jordan. An idea occurred to him. If his computer couldn’t be reasoned with, perhaps he needed to try a more human approach?

  He picked up his phone and dialed a familiar extension. Alert to his action, Cassie put down her pad and eyed him suspiciously. Her eyes narrowed. “What are you doing, Kyle?”

  You’re the spirit guide, he thought. You figure it out.

  “Hi, Irene,” he said as the person at the other end of the call picked up. “Kyle here. Got a minute?”

  Irene Henkel was one of the original 4400. Once a 1960s flower child, who claimed to have danced for Jim Morrison and Jimi Hendrix, she had returned from the future with a photographic memory for dollars and cents. Irene was now the brains of the Foundation’s accounting department. She was the person to call if you had a problem getting an expense reimbursed. Kyle hoped that applied to the Global Outreach Committee as well.

  “For you, sugah, anytime.” A syrupy drawl betrayed her roots below the Mason-Dixon Line. “How can I help you?”

  “No big deal. He did his best to keep his tone nice and breezy, while Cassie glowered at him from the couch. “Jordan has me reviewing the books, and I’ve afraid I’ve lost track of what one big outlay was for. Maybe you can refresh my memory?”

  “You? Looking over the books?” Her incredulous expression was nearly audible. “Lord, what is that man thinking? Doesn’t Jordan know you can’t even fill out a petty-cash request correctly?”

  “I won’t tell him if you won’t.” He wiped his brow, grateful that Irene couldn’t see how edgy he was. His fingers drummed nervously upon the desk. “Anyway, about this pay-out … ?”

  “Go ahead,” she encouraged him. “Give me the particulars.”

  Cassie stalked across the room until she was right at his elbow. Fiery emerald eyes suggested that he would probably be sleeping alone tonight. She looked like she wanted to yank the phone from his fingers and hurl it against the wall, but, not being real, that wasn’t exactly an option. “You’re making a big mistake, Kyle.”

  He squinted at the screen in front of him. “Okay, it’s a payment for nine hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars, plus change, issued on December tenth.” He took a deep breath before pretending that he knew exactly what he was talking about. “It was charged to the Global Out-reach Committee.”

  Irene didn’t even need to check her records. “Oh right. That one.” To his relief, his mention of the mysterious committee did not seem to set off any red flags in the accounting wizard’s head. She seemed to assume that he was already familiar with the operation. “That was a down payment on a storefront downtown. An abandoned plasma center, I think, over by the old Greyhound bus station.”

  “Right!” he lied. “I remember now.” He decided to get off the phone quick before he gave himself away. “Thanks a bunch, Irene. I owe you one.”

  “You owe me a drink at least, and I mean to collect one of these days. Although I still haven’t found anything as good as this dandelion wine I had at Woodstock, right before that big ball of light carried me off.” A wistful tone suggested that the displaced abductee still pined for the bygone days of Flower Power and love beads. “Don’t be a stranger, hon.”

  “No way,” he promised. As he ended the call, he felt a twinge of guilt for taking advantage of Irene’s trust and affability, but at least she had proven more cooperative than his recalcitrant computer. He was finally getting somewhere.

  Still, a plasma center? One of those places where winos, and strapped college students, sold their blood for a little extra cash? Kyle remembered seeing such establishments downtown and in the U District, but that was before the Great Leap Forward. Ever since the plague, the FDA had banned Seattle residents from donating blood or plasma for fear of promicin contamination. Promise City was the new Haiti. As far as he knew, all of the city’s blood banks and plasma centers had gone out of business. So why would this Global Outreach Committee want to buy up one of those properties? And what, if anything, did Bernard Grayson have to do with it? Something doesn’t smell right here, he thought. Why work so hard to cover up a routine real estate transaction?

  A renegade mortician. A shut-down plasma center. Danny’s body …

  Kyle tried to put the pieces together, but all he got was a jumble. He stared bleakly at the cell phone in his hand. Should I call Dad? Let him know what I’ve learned so far?

  He was still kind of pissed off at his dad for putting him on the spot over dinner, but what if this Grayson character really was bad news? And how much did Jordan know about this Global Outreach Committee? Why was it so hard to find out just what it was up to? What was so hush-hush?

  And do I really want to know?

  He slumped into his chair, his arms dangling toward the floor. The cell phone felt like it weighed a ton.

  “Listen to me,” Cassie said. She knelt down on the floor beside his chair. Her warm fingers clasped his hand, hiding the phone within their joined grip. “Remember how angry you were at Shawn when he turned against Jordan? You don’t want to make the same mistake. NTAC is the enemy. You can’t share any of this with them.”

  “But my dad …” Indecision tortured Kyle. “He’s a good guy, Cassie. He only wants to do the right thing.”

  “I’m sure that’s true.” She adopted a more conciliatory tone. “But he doesn’t see the big picture, not like we do. He’s still thinking like an NTAC agent, not a visionary. Or a shaman.” She squeezed his hand. “Trust me, Kyle. Remember how far we’ve come together.”

  She has a point, he admitted. Cassie had never been wrong before. She had told him how to revive Shawn from a coma, guided him to the White Light prophecies, convinced him to join Jordan’s crusade, even brought Isabelle into his life, however briefly. What if she was also right about this?

  He had nothing but questions. She held the answers.

  “You have to keep your mouth shut, Kyle.”

  FOURTEEN

  MARCO’S APARTMENT LOOKED much as Meghan had imagined it. Posters for vintage science fiction and monster movies were mounted on the walls of a converted industrial loft. A short flight of stairs led down to a sprawling collage of work spaces and rec rooms. She rolled her eyes at the outlandish titles and lurid colors of the posters. Plan Nine from Outer Space. The Thing That Would Not Die. Laser beams shot from the eyes of retrolooking giant robots. Frankenstein’s monster wrestled with a dinosaur.

  To each their own, she thought. She preferred foreign films herself.

  Marco took her coat as she entered the apartment. “All right,” she asked impatiently. She had stacks of budget reports and crisis assessment sheets waiting for her back at NTAC headquarters. Usually, she had lunch in her office, but Marco had insisted that she trek out to his place instead. “What’s
so important that we couldn’t discuss it back in the Theory Room or my office?”

  “You’ll see.” His worried tone and expression made it clear that he hadn’t summoned her here to play World of Warcraft. “This way,” he said as he led her down the stairs to the main floor of the loft. No walls divided the bedroom, home office, and living room. Area rugs were scattered atop the green tile floor. Hanging white globes lit up the apartment. Curtains covered the windows. “The others are already here.”

  Others?

  She was surprised to find Maia Skouris, Tess Doerner, and both Jed Garritys waiting in the lounge. All four visitors looked tense and uncomfortable. Red or blue ties differentiated the two Garritys, who were otherwise completely identical. Once a single individual, Agent Garrity had somehow twinned himself after surviving fifty/fifty. Now two versions of the same dark-haired, thirtyish Caucasian male sat at opposite ends of a black leather couch. Both bore the same habitually dour countenance. Not even NTAC’s top scientists and doctors had been able to determine which one was the original and which was the copy.

  It was unusual to see both Garritys in the same place at the same time. In general, they tended to avoid each other, working separate shifts in order to share the same apartment and cubicle, which neither had been willing to cede to the other. The telltale ties were a concession to their confused coworkers.

  “Hi, boss,” Jed Red greeted her glumly.

  “Glad you could make it,” Jed Blue added.

  Even more puzzling was the presence of Tess Doerner and Maia. Meghan had never met the former before, but she knew of the mind-controlling 4400 by reputation. She tried not to let her anxiety show, but a chill ran down her spine nonetheless. The young brunette lurked ominously in the corner, watching the others with a guarded expression. In theory, she was no longer insane, but her loyalties remained suspect; at various points, she and Kevin Burkhoff had been associated with both The 4400 Center and Collier’s Movement. Had Tess compelled Marco to call this off-site meeting?