The 4400® Promises Broken (29 page)

He felt the corner of his mouth turn upward in a contented half smile. “I feel good,” he admitted. “Like myself, only more so.” Looking at Kyle, he added, “It’s almost like the promicin knew who and what I am at my core, and then it amplified it.” He shook his head. “Does that make sense to you?”

“Totally,” Kyle said. “Diana said you were making force fields?” Off Tom’s nod, Kyle continued. “That makes perfect sense. You’ve always been about protecting people, so you got a power that lets you defend yourself and others.” He looked away, then added, “You have other powers, too. Did you know that?”

Leaning forward and listening with keen interest, Tom asked, “What
kind
of powers?”

Kyle turned away, as if he were listening to someone else. Tom wondered if his son’s peculiar ability amounted to hearing voices. “You’ll be immune to mind-control effects,” Kyle said. “No getting read by telepaths, or mentally attacked. Any power that works by affecting the minds of others won’t work on you anymore.” He grinned. “Pretty cool, huh?”

“Well, it certainly sounds useful,” Tom replied, secretly reveling in his newfound sensation of invulnerability. He and Kyle started walking toward the door to leave the commissary.

“You’re like that Simon and Garfunkel song Mom used to play all the time,” Kyle said. “You know the one: ‘I Am a Rock.’”

Tom chuckled, but in his heart he felt that Kyle was more right than he knew. Hearing the song in his head, Tom knew that for him it had become figuratively true: he was an island.

Diana opened her eyes to see Maia standing beside her.

“Hi, Mom,” Maia said. She looked freshly bathed. Her hair was wet, and her natural curls were reasserting themselves despite her attempts to straighten her tresses. She wore clean clothes: baggy jeans, pink-and-white sneakers, and a borrowed Rush T-shirt that was at least two sizes too large for her.

Sitting up on the sofa, Diana reached over, gently took Maia’s hand in hers, and smiled. “Hi, sweetie. Are you okay?”

Maia nodded. “The fighting’s over,” she said. With perfect surety, she added, “The military won’t try to come here again.”

“That’s good news, I guess,” Diana said.

She glanced around the small office, to which Shawn’s people had brought her after Tom had carried her back through a portal from Yellowstone. Most of what had happened after that had been a blur. Diana remembered
Shawn leaning in the doorway and watching her for several seconds, but he had never actually laid hands upon her. Still, her pain had vanished, leaving only exhaustion, and she had passed out.

Eyeing Diana with a combination of contrition and concern, Maia asked, “Are
you
okay?”

Diana nodded. “Yes, honey. I’m all right.” She stroked a wayward lock of Maia’s damp hair from her eyes and tucked it behind the girl’s ear. “You were very brave today.” Replaying their earlier arguments in her memory, she glanced at the floor. “I know I said some angry things to you. And I didn’t stop to think that maybe you are getting old enough to make some big decisions for yourself.” Gathering her courage, she met her daughter’s gaze. “That’s why I need to say I’m sorry, Maia. It’s not easy for me to admit that you’re starting to grow up—and that maybe you don’t need me as much as you used to.”

Maia hugged Diana and rested her head on Diana’s shoulder. The fragrance of soap still clung to her. “I never said I don’t need you. I just want you to be on my side, is all.”

Holding her away at arm’s length, Diana said, “Maia, I am
always
on your side, even when I don’t agree with you. That’s what being a mother is all about.” Pulling Maia back to her, she continued. “And being a family is about sticking together. Now that the fighting’s over, will you finally come home?”

Shrugging free of Diana’s tenuous grasp, Maia backed up half a step and stood, arms at her sides, chin bowed. “Not yet,” she said, looking and sounding mildly abashed.
From the front pocket of her loose-fitting jeans, she removed a syringe fitted with a capped hypodermic needle and filled with a luminescent golden fluid that Diana knew on sight was promicin. Handing it to Diana, Maia added, “Not until you take the shot.”

Diana looked at the syringe in her hand, dumbfounded. Years earlier, Dr. Kevin Burkhoff’s early experiments with promicin—which had used Diana as an unwitting test subject—had resulted in Diana developing a natural resistance to the substance, and Maia knew that. Casting a puzzled look at the girl, Diana said, “But, sweetie … I’m immune to promicin.”

In the uninflected, eerie monotone that she often reserved for her precognitive prophecies, Maia replied, “For now.”

T
WO MINUTES SHY
of midnight, Tom was the first of the NTAC agents to reach Shawn’s office. Tom had been about to go home when word had reached him of an actual phone call from someone authorized to speak on behalf of the United States.

“What’s going on?” he asked as he stepped through the door to find Shawn and Jordan waiting behind the big desk.

Shawn tilted his head at the phone. “We’ve been asked to wait until you’re all here.”

Impatient for an update, Tom replied, “Asked by who?”

Jordan lifted two fingers to his lips in a shushing gesture that made Tom want to kick him in the groin.

The door swung open behind Tom. Diana hurried in, followed closely by Jed and Marco. Diana asked, “What’s going on?”

“Funny,” Jordan replied, pointing at Tom. “That’s exactly what he said.” Before Tom could tell him to shut up and get on with it, Jordan reached down and tapped a command into a computer keyboard.

A flat-screen monitor mounted on the wall to Tom’s right came alive with an image of the secretary of Homeland Security, a round-faced, balding man named Andreas Ziccardi.

“Mister Secretary,” Jordan said, “they’ve arrived.”

“I can see that, Mister Collier,”
Ziccardi said. Turning his attention to the NTAC agents, he continued.
“You four have had one hell of a long day, haven’t you?”

The others all looked at Tom. As the ranking agent on the scene, the responsibility for answering to the Department of Homeland Security fell to him. “Yes, sir,” he said.

“Would you care to guess the reason for this call?”

Tom felt his face tighten with anxiety. “Not really, no.”

The ghost of a smile haunted Ziccardi’s fleshy countenance.
“Did you ever think that maybe I was calling to commend you all for a fine day’s work in the middle of a war zone?”

“No, sir,” Tom said, spotting the rhetorical trap that Ziccardi was so artlessly setting for him. “The thought never even crossed my mind.”

Ziccardi’s mien turned fiery.
“You’re goddamn right it didn’t, Baldwin! You four had direct orders to board that evac plane and report to D.C. for your new assignments. The minute you bailed from that jet you were all officially AWOL.”

Unable to suppress his ire, Tom shot back, “Yeah, ’cause that’s what’s important here. No need to thank me for saving the planet at Yellowstone, by the way. All part of the service, right? After all, you can’t let a little thing like Armageddon get in the way of slapping my wrist for going AWOL.”

The secretary frowned and nodded.
“Ah, yes. I heard about your little stunt at Yellowstone. Some tourists even got video of it. Didn’t know that, did you, Baldwin?”
He held up a piece of paper packed with small type.
“Know what this is? It’s a federal warrant for your arrest, for the illegal self-injection of promicin.”
He quaked, as if overcome with fury.
“This, I could’ve fixed. And if this had just been about going back for Skouris’s kid, I could’ve pardoned you. But guess what one of our long-range recon teams recorded earlier today?”
With a joyless smile, he added,
“Let me patch it in for you.”

The secretary typed some commands into his own computer. Seconds later, a shaky, grainy image replaced his visage on the wall screen. It was handheld video footage, shot with a long-range zoom lens, from an angle that suggested the camera operator had been on the roof of a low building.

The scene that played out was one that Tom recalled all too vividly: his and Diana’s altercation with the soldiers outside the Beacon Hill Library. The video showed the soldiers shooting the p-positive child and her family, as well as Diana killing three of the four troops responsible. It also showed Tom quite clearly firing the fatal shot at the fourth soldier.

As it played on, it documented Tom and Diana turning away from the carnage outside the library to face in the direction of the scout’s camera—making their faces unmistakably recognizable.

Tom bowed his head in shame as the recording ended.

Ziccardi reappeared on the monitor.
“Are either of you going to try to tell me that wasn’t you?”

Before Tom could reply, Diana shouted, “Are you gonna try to tell me those soldiers didn’t murder children in cold blood? They just gunned them down, unarmed civilians in broad daylight! Last time I checked, that’s called a
war crime
!”

“And if you’d wanted to file charges against those men, the case would have been investigated through proper channels,”
said Ziccardi.
“But instead, you both attacked uniformed American military personnel in an occupied territory of the United States. The second you did that, you became illegal enemy combatants. Along with your two accomplices, you’ve been declared enemies of the United States of America. If any of you ever sets foot on American soil again, you’ll spend the rest of your life at Gitmo, in a pit with no windows”
—he shot a pointed look at Jed—
”just like your carbon copy.”

Leaning so close to his webcam that it distorted his face into a grotesque caricature, Ziccardi added,
“Enjoy your stay in Promise City. Because the day any of you steps even one inch outside of it, your ass is mine.”

The screen cut to black. Stunned silence filled the office.

The NTAC agents turned in unison as Jordan cleared his throat. “Let me know if any of you are looking for jobs,” he said.

I
F THE PAST NIGHT
had taught Dennis Ryland nothing else, it was that it was always easier to drive into a war zone than it was to drive out of one.

Because fools rush in
, he chided himself. He shambled down the corridors of the new Haspelcorp headquarters in Tacoma. Morning sun slanted in through the southerly facing windows, bathing the hallway in golden light. It made him wince. Thanks to the tribulations of escaping from Promise City after dark, he’d had no sleep the night before, and now his eyes itched. Fatigue made his arms and legs feel rubbery and weak.

He was looking forward to a cup of coffee. Maybe a Danish.

Instead he opened his office door to a reception of stern faces and three men with drab suits, badges, and sidearms.

“Don’t tell me,” Dennis said in his best deadpan voice. “You’re here for an intervention?”

“That’s one way of putting it,” said Miles Enright. The gaunt, middle-aged man stood in front of the window
with daylight at his back, and Dennis glimpsed his own reflection in the man’s black glasses. Miles cracked a cold smile. “Dennis,” he said, gesturing at the man to his left, “this is Agent Brill of the NSA.” Of the man on his right he said, “This is Special Agent Roel of the FBI. The man by the door is Agent Wilson from the CIA. They’d like to ask you some questions.”

“Actually,” said Special Agent Roel, “we’d like to arrest you first, then ask you some questions.”

Agent Wilson added, “Which might or might not involve your head spending long periods of time being held underwater.”

“Depending on how well you cooperate,” Brill said with a menacing smile.

Roel stepped forward. “Mister Ryland, face the wall please.” Dennis did as the man said, and continued following his instructions. “Spread your legs, lean forward, and place your palms flat on the wall.”

The agent frisked Dennis quickly but thoroughly, then snapped a pair of handcuffs shut on Dennis’s right wrist. The steel was cold and cut into his flesh almost to the bone as Roel pulled Dennis’s right hand behind his back, forcing him to stand straight and take his left hand off the wall. Roel grabbed it and in quick, practiced motions, he had Dennis in cuffs.

“Dennis Ryland,” Roel said, “you have been charged with compromising the national security of the United States of America, misappropriating federal funds, aiding and abetting terrorist enemies of the United States, and illegally transporting radioactive materials into the United States.”

Miles interjected with more than a small measure of visible schadenfreude, “Oh, and Dennis? You’re fired.” To the men in suits he said, “Get him out of here.”

The worst part of being perp-walked out of the Haspelcorp building, as far as Dennis was concerned, wasn’t the gawking stares of the middle managers or the smug nods of the rank-and-file underlings who took such glee from seeing him in custody. No, for Dennis, the real disappointment of this turn of events was that he had been denied his coffee and Danish.

A few dozen cars—some marked as Washington State Police, some not marked at all—had converged outside the front entrance of the building. Dozens of uniformed state troopers were there to make sure that Dennis—with his flat feet, bad back, and desk jockey’s physique—didn’t make a run for it. Overhead, a pair of black helicopters pounded the morning air with the thumping of their massive rotors. It was such an exhibition of overkill that Dennis almost had to laugh as Roel pushed him down into one of the unmarked cars and took pains not to bump Dennis’s head.

This is the one thing the government’s always good for
, Dennis mused.
The one thing they do best: a circus.

Every window at Haspelcorp that faced the street framed one or more faces staring down at Dennis. He looked up and smiled back at them. He’d been down this road before.

He’d be back.

K
YLE STOOD AT
the closed door to Jordan’s temporary residence in The 4400 Center. He felt Cassie appear behind him. Her breath was warm on his neck. Her perfume was delicate and floral.