by Greg Cox
“I’m not sure,” Maia admitted. “Sometime soon, maybe.” She hoped they weren’t already too late. “We have to save him!”
Her mother frowned. “That could be harder than it sounds. I’ll notify NTAC right away, but Homeland Security has him locked up tight in a high-security prison in Virginia. That’s way out of my jurisdiction. To be honest, we haven’t been allowed access to Richard for months.”
Maia was frustrated by her mother’s response. What was the good of having an NTAC agent for a mother if she couldn’t use her badge to save a man’s life? Maia didn’t know Richard well, despite the fact that his psycho daughter had once tried to kill her, but the 4400 had to look out for each other. That’s what Jordan always said, and Maia found she agreed with him more and more as she got older. Even if her mother still had her doubts about Jordan.
“But, Mom, you have to get him out of that jail. He’s not safe there!”
“I wish it was that easy, honey.” She tugged her robe shut. “But, like it or not, Richard has attacked U.S. soldiers and NTAC agents in the past, so the government regards him as a dangerous terrorist. I’ll pass along your warning to the relevant agencies, but otherwise I’m afraid it’s out of my hands.”
Diana tried to give her daughter a comforting hug, but Maia pulled away from her. “Jordan wouldn’t write Richard off like this,” she said sullenly.
“I’m not writing him off,” her mother protested. A note of exasperation crept into her voice. “And don’t you even think of telling Jordan Collier about your vision. We’ve talked about this before. I don’t want you having anything to do with Collier and his cult. It’s too dangerous.”
Maia pouted and crossed her arms atop her chest. Why didn’t her mother understand that Jordan Collier was right about the 4400 and the other positives? We’re supposed to change the world for the better. That’s why we’re here.
“I’m not a little girl anymore,” she said defiantly. “I can make my own decisions.”
Diana shook her head. “Not about this. This is serious grown-up business.”
“Actually, I’m older than you are,” Maia pointed out. “If you look at the calendar.”
Born in 1938, Maia had been abducted by the future when she was only eight years old, then returned along with the rest of the 4400 in 2004. Technically, that made her old enough for Social Security, even though she hadn’t aged a day while she was missing.
“Don’t get cute with me,” Diana said. She had adopted the orphaned girl shortly after her return. “Emotionally and physically, you’re still only thirteen. And that’s way too young to be getting involved with stuff like this.”
“But I’m already involved,” Maia argued. “I’m one of the 4400. And I can’t ignore what I see.”
“I know,” her mother said sadly. Her voice and expression softened. “Look, I don’t want to fight about Jordan Collier again.” She stood up and rubbed her eyes. “I promise I’ll do what I can about Richard, but we should try to get back to sleep. Tomorrow is a school day.” Leaning over, she tucked Maia back and kissed her on the top of the head. “I’ll see you in the morning. Pleasant dreams.”
She flicked off the lights on her way out.
Maia waited until she heard her mom head back to her own room, then counted to a hundred just to be safe. Assuming that her mom was safely asleep, she crept out of bed and retrieved her BlackBerry from the top of her dresser. She felt a twinge of guilt for sneaking around like this—the bright pink smartphone was a birthday gift from her mom—but Richard Tyler’s life was at stake.
The glow from the BlackBerry’s screen lit up her worried face as she hastily texted her best friend, Lindsey Howard. Also a 4400, Lindsey had been involved with the Movement from the beginning. Maia knew she could count on her to get a message to Jordan Collier.
Somebody had to do something to help Richard!
The 4400 Center had been established by Jordan Collier before he turned into a self-styled revolutionary and messiah. The Center was now run by Tom’s nephew, Shawn Farrell. One of the original 4400, he had been missing for three years before he was returned.
“Hello, Diana, Uncle Tommy,” Shawn greeted the agents as they entered his luxurious king-sized office, which made Tom’s own digs back at headquarters look like a closet by comparison. An attractive young man in his mid-twenties, Shawn wore a tailored Armani suit that looked good on his well-built frame. His short blond hair was neatly trimmed. Tom was proud of what a poised and confident individual his nephew had become. He couldn’t help wishing that Kyle had turned out more like his cousin. Although Shawn had briefly fallen under Collier’s spell as well, he was his own man now.
“Good to see you,” Tom said. Even though they were here on business, he gave his nephew a friendly hug. Shawn had lost both his mom and brother to the plague, so Tom wanted to make sure that the young man knew that he was not alone, that he still had a family that cared about him. “Thanks for squeezing us into your schedule.”
Shawn chuckled wryly. “Trust me, that’s not as hard as it used to be. Now that my political career is defunct, I’ve got a lot more time on my hands.”
I’ll bet, Tom thought. Fifty/fifty had pretty much killed Shawn’s run for city council. The city was too polarized between positives and negatives to support a candidate who tried to bring both sides together, let alone the brother of the man who had unleashed the plague in the first place. “At least you still have the Center,” Tom said.
“I guess.” Shawn pointed at an empty in-box. “Although Jordan’s Movement is where the real action is. We provide support and services for positives who are uncomfortable with Jordan’s radical agenda, mostly folks who got infected during the outbreak, but, to be honest, there doesn’t seem to be much of an audience for a middle path anymore. I’m not sure how relevant the Center is these days.”
“Don’t sell yourself short,” Diana said. Her auburn hair was bound up in a ponytail. She wore a black leather jacket over an orange turtleneck sweater. “You represent the mainstream face of the 4400, and a sane alternative to Jordan Collier. That’s more important now than ever.”
“Maybe.” Shawn sounded unconvinced. “Mostly, I’ve been focusing on my healing practice, which Jordan tolerates because it’s good PR for the 4400.”
“Well, that’s important, too,” Tom reminded him. His nephew’s remarkable ability to heal all sorts of injuries and illnesses had saved a lot of people, including Tom himself. Shawn had played a crucial role in freeing Tom from the Marked. And had roused Kyle from a seemingly endless coma. “Never forget that.”
Shawn’s smile returned. “Thanks for the vote of confidence. I appreciate it.” He sat down behind his tidy black desk. An oil painting mounted on the wall behind him depicted the glowing ball of white light that had brought the 4400 back from the future. Fresh orchids sprouted from a vase below the painting. “So, how can I help you today?”
Tom hesitated. This was going to be awkward. “It’s about Danny,” he said finally.
“Danny?” A pained expression washed over Shawn’s face. He had been forced to euthanize his own brother to keep the plague from spreading. Tom could only imagine how hard that must have been for him. “What about him?”
Diana spared Tom from having to spell things out. “We’d like your permission to exhume Danny’s body.”
“What?” Shawn was visibly shocked by the request. “Why?”
“We have reason to be concerned that someone might try to replicate the airborne version of promicin that Danny exuded after he took the shot,” Tom explained. He didn’t mention that Ryland was the source of this rumor; Shawn had no reason to trust a man who wanted him dead. “It might be nothing, but we have to be certain.”
Shawn slumped against the back of his chair. “I don’t know,” he said. Hurt eyes gleamed moistly. His voice grew hoarse with emotion. “Can’t we just let him rest in peace, next to Mom?”
Danny was buried in Emerald Harbors Cemetery, alongside
Tom’s sister.
“I wish we could,” Tom said. He felt terrible for putting Shawn through this, so soon after he lost his family. “I really do.” If necessary, they could try to get a court order to exhume the body, but he’d rather get Shawn’s blessing instead. Besides, any legal proceedings would surely alert Collier to their intentions; many of Seattle’s judges and lawyers now reported directly to him. Tom extracted a document from beneath his jacket and slid it across the polished desktop toward Shawn. “But we can’t take that chance. Nobody wants another fifty/fifty.”
Shawn nodded, reluctantly accepting the truth. He reached for a pen.
Diana slipped out of the office to let Tom console his nephew in private. She knew how difficult the discussion had been for both men, but was relieved that they had managed to get Shawn’s consent for the exhumation. Before joining NTAC, she had previously worked for the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta; if it had been up to her, Danny’s remains would have been cremated immediately after his death, but, in the chaos following the disaster, this hadn’t happened.
I hope that wasn’t a serious mistake, she thought.
While her partner was busy with Shawn, she pursued a related errand. A brisk walk led her to the Center’s infirmary, where she found Dr. Kevin Burkhoff hard at work in an attached laboratory. The renegade scientist was crouched over a high-powered electron microscope as she entered the lab. Intent on his labors, he didn’t hear her approach as she came up behind him. An open bag of sunflower seeds rested on the counter beside the microscope. Brain scans glowed upon a mounted light board. A centrifuge whirred in the background. A medicinal odor permeated the air.
“Dr. Burkhoff? Kevin?”
Startled, he whirled about in surprise. In doing so, he sliced his finger on the edge of a test tube slide. A thin red line appeared briefly on the injured digit, then retracted as his accelerated healing ability kicked in. His alarmed expression relaxed as he recognized his visitor. “Oh, Diana!” He clutched his chest, which must have been beating rapidly. He wiped his bloody finger on the counter. “I didn’t hear you come in. You gave me quite a start.”
When Diana had first met Kevin Burkhoff three years ago, he had been confined to a mental hospital. Although he had regained his sanity with the help of the 4400, he remained twitchy and full of nervous energy. His lank black hair was in need of combing. Stringy bangs fell across his furrowed brow. Acid burns marred his white lab jacket. Chemical reagents stained his fingertips.
“Sorry about that.” She nodded at the microscope. “Anything interesting?”
He glanced around furtively, as though afraid of being overheard. “Don’t tell anyone,” he whispered, “but I’m still trying to perfect my promicin compatibility test.”
“Right.” Diana remembered that Shawn had been subsidizing Burkhoff ’s efforts to make taking the shot less of a life-or-death gamble, the idea being to develop a test that would determine in advance whether promicin would kill you or give you an ability. Back before fifty/fifty, Shawn had urged the public to refrain from taking the shot until the test was ready, but Diana hadn’t heard anything about the project since. “How is that going?”
Burkhoff rescued his sunflower seeds from the counter; the unsalted snacks were his sole vice. “It’s coming along, but I could have made much more progress by now if I had more support from the authorities. Neither Collier nor the government wants me to continue my work, for their own reasons, and I know they’ve been putting a lot of pressure on Shawn to shut me down.” He poured a handful of seeds into his palm. “I practically have to skulk around like a thief in the night to get any work done!”
“That’s too bad,” Diana said, sympathizing with the scientist’s frustration. She wasn’t surprised to hear that his work was unpopular in certain quarters. Certainly, the government wouldn’t be happy with any test that took the risk out of taking promicin; that would just lead to more positives in the long run. Collier, though, pretty much wanted the entire world to take the shot; he was more than willing to sacrifice half of humanity on the altar of his brave new world. “But I wonder if the test would really make the decision any easier for people? Even if you knew you were going to survive, you still wouldn’t know what kind of ability you were getting. And, frankly, some of them aren’t very pretty.”
Diana had been dealing with positives for years now, and had seen firsthand how gaining an ability could screw up a person’s life. For every individual who acquired an enviable new talent, such as the ability to heal the sick, there was somebody like Danny Farrell who wound up cursed with a ghastly affliction beyond their control. Or Jean DeLynn Baker, who had become the unwilling carrier of a lethal, Ebola-like virus. As it happened, Diana had a unique immunity to promicin, but she wasn’t sure she would take the shot even if that was an option. What if I ended up like Danny or some of the others?
“You have a point there,” Burkhoff conceded. “But plenty of people are taking that risk every day. And half of them are dying because my work is being suppressed!”
“Kevin?” a voice called from the infirmary. “Is everything all right?”
A waiflike young woman entered the lab. Haunting brown eyes graced her delicate features. Wavy light brown hair fell past her shoulders. A cashmere sweater and midlength skirt gave her a timeless appearance. It took her a moment to notice that Burkhoff wasn’t alone. A worried look came over her elfin face. “Diana?”
“Hello, Tess,” Diana said tightly. She tried to conceal her discomfort with the other woman’s presence. One of the original 4400, Tess Doerner had the unsettling ability to make people do whatever she asked them. Diana had personally come under Tess’s control before. It wasn’t an experience she was in any hurry to relive. “Kevin and I were just talking.”
Her words didn’t seem to reassure Tess, who stepped protectively between Diana and Burkhoff. The middleaged scientist and the much younger woman were an odd couple, who had met when they were both patients at Abendson Psychiatric Hospital, but they were unquestionably devoted to each other. Diana didn’t doubt that Tess would do most anything to defend Kevin from NTAC or anyone else who wanted to take advantage of his genius. “What are you doing here, Diana?”
The female agent cut to the chase. “You treated Danny Farrell during his final hours. I want to know what happened to any blood and tissue samples you took from him.”
Burkhoff averted his gaze from hers. He fidgeted nervously with his bag of seeds. “Shawn ordered me to destroy all the samples after Danny died.”
Diana knew the scientist too well to believe this. Burkhoff never let anything get in the way of his scientific curiosity. “Yes, but what did you really do with them?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” he hedged. Turning away from her, he fumbled with the microscope once more. “Didn’t I already answer your question?”
“Come on, Kevin,” she pressed him. “You discovered promicin. You seriously expect me to believe that you weren’t intrigued by a specimen who exuded the stuff from his pores?”
Burkhoff sighed and turned away from the counter. “Well, I may have kept a few samples for research purposes, but they’re perfectly safe and secure. I followed every applicable containment protocol.”
Now we’re getting somewhere, Diana thought. “I need to see that for myself.”
“All right,” he conceded. “Follow me.”
Tess tagged along as he led Diana toward a sealed metal door that resembled an airlock. A biohazard decal was prominently affixed to the door. A digital keypad was mounted above the door handle. Burkhoff shielded the keypad with his body as he keyed in a fifteen-digit sequence. “I’m the only person who knows this combination,” he insisted, “or could probably remember it. Not even Tess knows the sequence.”
Unless she asks for it, Diana thought. The mind-controlling waif hovered nearby as Burkhoff opened the door. A gust of chilled air whooshed from the refrigerated chamber beyond as the airtight seal was broken. Peering past the t
hreshold, Diana spotted a Class Three biological safety cabinet lodged against the far end of the cramped containment closet. A fan hummed atop the stainless-steel silver cabinet. HEPA filters trapped any harmful bacteria or viruses inside. Rubber gloves attached to ports in the cabinet allowed for manipulation of the enclosed materials. A thin layer of frost covered the transparent view window.
“You see,” Burkhoff said defensively. “I’ve taken every reasonable precaution.”
So far, so good, Diana admitted, reassured by the sight of the equipment. Burkhoff seemed to have spared no expense to protect his samples. We should probably confiscate them anyway. The samples needed to be in the hands of responsible authorities, not somebody as erratic as Kevin Burkhoff, who meant well but often let his scientific zeal overwhelm his judgment, as when he had experimented on Diana against her will.
She was already trying to figure out how she was going to get the samples away from Kevin, despite Tess’s worrisome ability, as he stepped forward to wipe the frost from the window. Maybe we need to come back later when Tess isn’t around?
A startled yelp escaped Burkhoff’s lips. “No!” he gasped, practically pressing his nose against the clear Plexiglas barrier. “It’s not possible!”
Diana tensed, alarmed by the anxious sound of his voice. “What is it?”
He spun around to face her. The stricken expression on his face was the last thing she wanted to see. He looked pale as a ghost.
“The samples,” he blurted. “They’re missing!”
FOUR
RICHARD TYLER COULDN’T SLEEP.
Lying on his bunk, the prisoner stared at the ceiling of his lonely cell. Muted fluorescent light spilled through vertical steel bars from the empty corridor outside. A rangy black man in his mid-thirties, he had worn nothing but an orange prison jumpsuit for months now. His shaved head rested against a lumpy pillow. His dark mustache and goatee were neatly trimmed. Although lightsout had been hours ago, he lay awake listening to the nocturnal sounds of the cell block. Muffled snores and sobs came from the adjacent cages; it seemed like more and more positives were taking up residence in the maximum-security prison every day. Rumor had it that both Collier and The 4400 Center had been lobbying aggressively for the release of Richard and his fellow “political prisoners,” but without much results. Richard hadn’t even laid eyes on a lawyer since he was apprehended in Seattle months ago. Chances were, he was going to rot in this cell for the rest of his life.
