by Dayton Ward
Lona shrugged. “Not yet, anyway. Sit down.” Locking the door behind them and pressing the control on the keypad to override any further access attempts from the outside, she took the opportunity to relieve him of his weapon before using her own pistol to gesture toward the computer workstation. Reading the name on the ID card hanging around his neck, she said, “Agent Keith Osborne, I want you to get on that thing and log in.”
“Network’s down,” Osborne replied, the first bead of perspiration running from his dark hairline and down the right side of his face. “No one can get in until security lockouts are lifted.”
Unimpressed with the man’s weak attempt at lying, Lona raised the .45’s muzzle until it was pointed at his face. “Then you’re of no use to me, are you?” To emphasize her point, she cocked the pistol’s hammer.
“Okay. Okay!” Reaching up to wipe the sweat from his brow, Osborne turned and moved toward the desk. With Lona directing him, he tapped his access ID and password into the computer’s keyboard and the image on its monitor shifted from an NTAC log-on screen to a series of columns featuring directory names. “What do you want?” he asked.
“Nicholas McFarland,” she replied. “Everything you have on him.” This was not her preferred method of obtaining the information she needed, but circumstances had limited her options. Reiko’s capture and NTAC’s response to it would without doubt entail a complete revision of whatever protection scheme for McFarland was already in place. Obtaining those amendments directly from NTAC was therefore a necessary step, after which—if everything proceeded according to her plan—Lona would be able to track down and eliminate McFarland before his custodians had a chance to modify their own protocols yet again.
Osborne protested under his breath, but said nothing else as he tapped out a set of instructions. Moments later, a list of file names began streaming across the screen.
Reaching into another pocket, Lona produced a compact flash drive and handed it to the agent. “Copy all of that to this.” When he hesitated, she pressed her pistol’s muzzle into the back of his neck. Nothing else was said as she observed the files being copied to the portable storage device. As that was being accomplished, she tapped Osborne on the shoulder. “Now, I want a complete roster of the 4400, as well as copies of all case files for those who’ve demonstrated special abilities.” She was not looking for anyone or anything specific at the moment, instead figuring that the information would prove useful in the future.
Lona and Osborne, engrossed as they were in the task at hand, both flinched as a deep male voice boomed from the room’s intercom speakers. “Intruder alert. Security teams to S4-6. A guard is down near EWTAC. Be advised that the guard’s weapon and access card are missing. Intruder is to be considered armed and dangerous.”
“That’s me,” Lona said, unable to suppress a small chuckle as Osborne handed her the flash drive. She tucked the device back into its pocket on her hip before gesturing to the agent once again. “Now, can you erase any record of what you’ve done here?” She knew it was a long shot, or perhaps even a temporary measure, but if successful the ploy might buy a crucial bit of extra time to find McFarland.
Before Osborne could answer, the sound of someone attempting to gain entry to the room caught their attention and Lona spun on her heel, leveling her pistol at the door. Her override of the lock had worked and the door remained closed, but she knew that would only alert others that something in here was amiss.
Time’s up.
Motion flashed in her peripheral vision an instant before a fist slammed into the side of her head. Lona staggered from the force of the blow as Osborne pounced on her, one hand reaching for the pistol in her hand while the other punched her again, this blow landing just above her left ear. The gun was pulled from her hand and she grunted in pain even as training and reflexes took over, grabbing Osborne’s arm and twisting her body in an attempt to pull him off his feet. Another punch struck her right shoulder and she lost her grip on him.
Light glinted off metal and she lashed out at Osborne’s hand as he tried to bring her pistol around to aim at her. The gun dropped away, clattering to the floor, and she kicked it out of reach before driving her knee into the agent’s groin. Air expelled from his lungs like a punctured tire and he moaned in protest, his knees buckling as he fought to keep his feet. He struck her again, his fist landing a glancing blow along her forehead as he stepped into his attack and attempted to wrap his arms around her. Their combined weight was enough to push Lona off balance, and both of them crashed to the floor. He landed on top, using his larger frame in an attempt to pin her down, but she kicked and squirmed enough to keep her arms free. Her mind was racing, a gentle heat beginning to radiate through her body as she fought for control. The longer this went on, the more likely help would arrive. She had to end this. Now.
The time bubble flared into existence. Osborne seemed to sense that something was happening, his body shifting enough that she was able to reach for him. She grabbed him by the throat, a guttural cry escaping her lips as she pulled him close.
Osborne released a cry of pain and terror, now trying to fight free of Lona’s grip. The pitch of his screams changed with each passing second as she watched his skin age and wrinkle and his hair lengthen and whiten. Teeth rotted and fell from his mouth, and his muscles atrophied as his body shrank inside clothing that was fading and fraying. His skin dried and withered until cracks appeared, pushed aside as white bone and shriveled muscle tissue emerged, before it began crumbling to dust that rained down upon her.
The field weakened before disappearing altogether and Lona felt herself slip back into normal time. Her heart racing and her breathing coming in deep, greedy gulps of air, she tossed aside the brown, shrunken skeleton that was all that remained of Agent Osborne. She pulled herself to her feet, aghast at what she had just done. It had been more instinct than anything else, not unlike what had happened with the vines in her bathroom.
“What the hell am I?” Lona cried, her words echoing across the small room.
THIRTY-ONE
NTAC
SEATTLE, WASHINGTON
GRIPPING HIS GLOCK in both hands, Tom Baldwin let the pistol’s muzzle guide him down the corridor until he reached the four-way intersection at the center of Sub-Basement Level 5.
Armed entry into an unknown and potentially hostile environment was, like anything else, a learned skill, and as such there was a point when training gave way to instinct and hard-won field experience. Just as he had while progressing every inch since descending from the ground floor into the depths of the NTAC headquarters building, Baldwin scrutinized every doorway, every bend in the passageway, every shadow large enough to conceal a man-sized target. He listened for telltale sounds that would be out of place in an otherwise deserted hallway and even sniffed the air in the hopes of catching the scent of anything abnormal. Without his conscious thought and wherever he looked, the barrel of the Glock followed, his right forefinger confidently resting alongside the weapon’s trigger guard yet aching to take up any slack the instant a target became visible. It had been a while since he had faced a similar situation, but all of the old, trusted reflexes were responding as expected.
Just like riding a bike.
Pausing to glance around the corner, Baldwin verified that the passageway ahead of them was empty. He rested against the wall, nodding toward the three security officers making up the rest of his team. “Clear,” he said, his voice low and soft. Bringing his left shirt cuff closer to his mouth, he whispered into the radio mike affixed there. “Diana, we’re at the main intersection on Five. So far, nothing.” He and his team had seen no one else in the passageways, owing to the order issued just minutes earlier for NTAC personnel to evacuate all of the sublevels.
“We’re in the east stairwell, Tom,” Skouris replied, her voice sounding tiny as it filtered through his earpiece, “passing Sub-Level 3. We’re moving a few stragglers, but we’re on our way.”
“Okay,” Baldwin s
aid, “we’re moving. We’ll meet you at Archives.” Security had detected Agent Osborne’s access to NTAC’s computer network via the workstation in Archives, and it was Nina Jarvis who quickly pointed out that Osborne had no reason to be in that section today, particularly while lockdown procedures were in effect. Attempts to contact or enter the room had proven ineffective and left Jarvis with precious few options, the least favorable of which was sending teams to try surrounding and containing a fugitive with the apparent ability to move faster than the human eye could follow.
No pressure, right?
Drawing what he hoped was a deep, calming breath, he looked over his shoulder to the other members of his security team. “Let’s move,” he said, his Glock once more leading the way as he stepped around the corner, hugging the wall to his left and wishing he could see around the next two turns in the corridor.
“Tom, Diana,” said the voice of Nina Jarvis in his earpiece, “heads up. Security network’s showing that the door to Archives has just been unlocked.”
“Here we go,” Baldwin said, more to himself than anyone else, and feeling his grip tightening on the pistol.
Then he flinched at the sounds of gunfire from somewhere up the passageway ahead of him.
“Diana?” he called into his mike, muscles tensing as he quickened his pace. More shots echoed in the corridor, followed by shouts of warning. An alarm Klaxon began wailing again, loud enough to drown out everything else. Baldwin broke into a sprint, rounding the first corner on his way toward the intersection that would lead him to Archives. “Diana, are you there? Can you hear me?” He winced when Skouris’s voice exploded in his ear.
“I think one of us hit her, Tom! She’s running toward you!”
Her warning came an instant before Baldwin detected movement at the far end of the hallway near the T-intersection. He stopped short, leveling his pistol at a figure, Callahan, just barely visible in the dim illumination. Dressed from head to toe in black, she staggered into view, hugging the wall, and appeared to be favoring her right arm.
Wounded? Diana thought she or one of her team might have hit her. If she was injured, was it preventing her from using her ability?
“Federal agents!” Baldwin shouted, taking aim at her head. “Drop your weapon and show me your hands!”
Callahan lurched from right to left across the corridor. Whatever had impaired her a moment earlier was either gone or under control, her form now seeming to blur as she moved. Seeing the distinctive silhouette of the pistol in her right hand, Baldwin fired without hesitation.
And missed.
“Don’t move!” he warned again, but knew it was a useless gesture. Callahan was moving faster now, gaining speed with every step. Baldwin fired again, this time accompanied by his security team. At this distance someone had to find their mark.
No one did.
The hammer beats of weapons fire consumed the passageway, accentuated by the metallic pings of spent shell casings dropping to the concrete floor. Baldwin’s eyes stung from the expended gunpowder, and fear chilled his blood as he watched Lona Callahan, or whatever it was that she had become, dodge, duck, and weave back and forth across the passageway, her body stretching and bending to avoid every single bullet Baldwin and his team unleashed upon her.
“Damn it!” Baldwin yelled as he fired his last shot and the Glock’s slide locked to the rear. Then the dark blur in front of him disappeared altogether, and he felt the sensation of air moving past him. A grunt of surprise and pain came from behind him, and he turned to see one of the security officers thrown off his feet and flung into the wall, striking a bulletin board and knocking it free of its mounting hooks. Both the man and the board crashed to the floor, but Baldwin ignored them as he exchanged his pistol’s empty magazine for a new one, struggling to catch any fleeting glimpse of the escaping figure he knew had to be moving up the corridor. He slammed the magazine home and chambered a round, raising the Glock once more in search of a target.
The passageway was empty.
“Diana,” he said into the mike on his wrist, “we lost her. Nina, notify security teams at all exits to be ready. She’s got to be making a break for it.”
“Too late,” replied Jarvis, and Baldwin could hear the frustration in the director’s voice. “Network’s showing the service entrance on Sub-Level 1’s been opened. Nobody at that section is answering us. I’ve got other teams on the way.”
Just how fast could she move, anyway? “Anything on the exterior cameras?” he asked, knowing the answer to the question before the words even finished leaving his mouth.
“We’ve got nothing,” Jarvis said.
Son of a bitch! “Any idea yet what she got away with?”
“Not yet. Looks like she tried to cover her tracks, but I’ve got Galanter and his gang going over everything. We should know something in a minute or two.”
In the meantime, Baldwin knew, Lona Callahan was still on the loose, with whatever information she had managed to retrieve. “You want to lay odds she was after information on McFarland?” he asked. “That has to be it. Why else would she run the risk of breaking in here?” He almost laughed at that remark, considering the fact that Callahan had walked into a secure government facility as easily as one might stroll up to a roadside hot dog stand.
That’s gonna look real good on the after-action report.
“Tom!”
Turning at the call, Baldwin saw Skouris and her team coming up the corridor toward him. Though his partner appeared uninjured, one of the security officers accompanying her, a large Latino man whose name tag read “Ortiz,” sported a small gash near his left temple, from which a line of blood trickled down the side of his face.
“Are you all right?” Baldwin asked.
Skouris nodded, gesturing to Ortiz. “Julio managed to block her for about a second when she started to run, but that’s as close as any of us got.” She turned to the security officer. “You fell pretty hard. You should have Dr. Hudson look at that.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Ortiz replied before turning and heading back down the passageway.
Holstering her pistol, Skouris said, “Tom, we found Osborne, or what was left of him, anyway.” She paused, grimacing as though reliving the memory of what she had seen. “There was nothing but a skeleton, in an advanced state of decay. It looks like he’s been dead for years.”
“What?” Baldwin said, trying to wrap his head around what he had just heard. “How is that possible? Callahan?”
“If so, it’s a different facet to her ability than we’ve seen to this point.” Her brow furrowed and she looked away for a moment, seemingly lost in thought, before adding, “You know, we saw her in the hallway, before the shooting started. She wasn’t moving fast enough to mask her actions yet, and I could swear the expression on her face was one of shock. What if what she did to Osborne caught her off guard, too?”
Baldwin shrugged. “I guess it could’ve rattled her, but that’s assuming she gives a damn about who she kills.”
“She never fired at us, Tom,” Skouris said. “Not once.”
It took Baldwin an extra moment as he recalled his own encounter with Callahan. “She never fired at us, either. She had a weapon, but she never so much as aimed it at us. She wasn’t moving at full speed, either, at least not right away. Maybe getting shot hurt her enough to throw off her control of whatever it is she does to move that fast, at least for a minute or so.” He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. We can’t count on her being so nice to us the next time we run into her.”
Before Skouris could say anything else, the voice of Nina Jarvis sounded in their earpieces.
“Galanter just confirmed your guess, Tom. Callahan has everything we’ve got on McFarland, along with ID information on every 4400 and copies of all our open investigations into those returnees who’ve shown special abilities.”
“That’d make sense,” Skouris said. “If she’s targeting specific 4400s, it’d probably be helpful to know what they’
re capable of doing. For all we know it’s just part of whatever plan she’s following.”
Baldwin shook his head. “Let Marco and the guys figure that all out. We don’t have that kind of time right now.” Into his mike, he said, “Nina, we need to move McFarland now. Full security escort.”
“Already on it,” Jarvis said. “I’ve also got Dr. Hudson here. He says he may have come up with a way to deal with Callahan.”
“I’m all for that,” Baldwin said. So far as he was concerned, he and the entire NTAC staff had shown their asses enough for one day. The idea that anyone, let alone a 4400, could enter a restricted government facility and wreak havoc was unacceptable. An enhanced security presence was needed, possibly even a military contingent whose sole mission would be defending the complex against any such future attacks. That would be his recommendation to Jarvis once all of this was over.
But for now, it’s all on us.
“We’re on our way,” he said into his mike before glancing toward Skouris. “Let’s go. I want to be there when they move McFarland.” He knew that it would likely be their best opportunity to capture Callahan, while at the same time reminding himself that it could just as easily be a death sentence for McFarland if she found the CIA director before he could be moved to a secure location.
Skouris grabbed his arm, stopping him from jogging up the corridor. “Tom, are you worried about McFarland, or catching Callahan?”
“Both,” Baldwin answered, feeling his jaw tighten as he answered. “She’s gotten away from me twice now, both times by vanishing into thin air. That’s not going to happen again.”
Time to put this case to bed for good.
THIRTY-TWO
SEATTLE, WASHINGTON
THE MOSQUITO LANDED on the back of Lona Callahan’s left hand, moving about the exposed skin until it found a comfortable spot before plunging its proboscis into her flesh and commencing to gorge itself on its fill of her blood. Watching the insect as it went about its business, she did not flinch, did not react in the slightest fashion. The smallest of movements might attract unwanted attention, and that was unacceptable now, when the situation required her complete focus on the task at hand.
