THE 4400® WELCOME TO PROMISE CITY (6 page)

The black guy turned to the woman. “Your turn.”

She obliged by cracking her neck loudly. At first Richard thought she was still stretching, but then the guards clutched their own necks in response. Their faces contorted in shock. They dropped limply to the floor. Grogan landed only inches away from Richard. Only his ragged breathing assured Richard that the unconscious guard was still alive.

Sanchez nodded in satisfaction. He spit a mouthful of blood onto the floor of his cell. He glanced at the boy, who appeared to be no more than twelve years old. “Billy?”

“I’m on it,” the kid chirped. A pair of horn-rimmed glasses were fitted over his ski mask. He dashed forward and searched Keech’s body until he found the guard’s keycard. “Bingo!” Hurrying over to unlock Sanchez’s cell, he had to stretch to reach the scanner. “Bet you’re anxious to get out of there!”

“You have no idea.” The prisoner exited the cell. He gave the boy a friendly slap on the back. “And I hope you never do.”

Meanwhile, the woman scooted into Richard’s cell. Stepping over Grogan’s sprawling form, she helped Richard to his feet. “You okay, Mr. Tyler?”

“I—I think so.” His battered brain, which had been coming to terms with death only moments ago, struggled to catch up with events. “Who are you people?”

“Your guardian angels,” the woman replied. “Sorry for calling it so close. We just got wind of your danger.” She extracted a slender carrying-case from a pocket of her vest. The container opened to reveal a syringe of glowing chartreuse fluid.

Promicin.

She uncapped the tip of the syringe and squirted a droplet from the tip.

“Wait a second,” Richard said. “What are—?”

Before he could finish, the woman jabbed the needle into his upper arm. The sharp pain jolted Richard out of his daze. He clutched his wounded arm as she withdrew the needle. “What was that for? I’m already p-positive!”

“Just a booster shot,” she explained, tossing the empty hypo aside. “To help you overcome the inhibitor.”

Was that possible?
Maybe,
he thought, recalling how a similar shot had woken Shawn Farrell from a coma last year. Richard closed his eyes and concentrated. Was it just his imagination or could he already feel a peculiar tingling at the back of his brain, like a sleeping limb waking up after being inactive too long? His bleary eyes spotted the torn halves of the photo on the floor, and he tried to lift them with his mind. Once again, nothing happened, but the prickling sensation grew stronger. Bending over, he rescued the pieces with his fingers.

He was still trying to figure out where his rescuers had come from. “How … ? What was that with the tooth?”

Sanchez gestured toward one of the men. “Adams here can fold space in ingenious ways, enough to fit four people into something way too small to hold them. Like a phony tooth maybe.” He massaged his bruised jaw. “Think of it as a Trojan molar.”

Was that possible?
Richard had trouble wrapping his head around the idea that the entire strike team had been hiding inside Sanchez’s tooth. Then again, when you
thought about it, how more far-fetched was some of the other stuff he had witnessed over the last few years? Like Isabelle growing from a toddler to an adult overnight? Or Jordan Collier returning from the dead?

“Remind me not to do that again,” the woman groused. “I’ll never complain about my tiny apartment again!”

“That’s enough chatter,” Sanchez said, taking charge. He dragged Richard out of the cell. “We need to get you out of here, pronto.”

By now, the entire cell block was in an uproar. A blaring siren assaulted Richard’s ears. All the lights came back on. Roused by the disturbance, the other inmates rushed to the doors of their cells, pleading to be released as well. They reached through the bars, desperate to get the intruders’ attention. “Please!” Orson Bailey called out. The middle-aged businessman was one of the first 4400 to be detained against his will. “Take me with you!”

The frantic cries tugged at Richard’s heart. “What about them?”

Sanchez shook his head. “Another time. We’re just here for you today. You’re not safe here … obviously.”

Richard couldn’t dispute that. His throbbing head and ribs attested to the truth of Sanchez’s words. Steeling himself against the piteous entreaties of his fellow inmates, he fell in behind the strike team as they sprinted down the corridor. Adrenaline fueled his legs, despite his recent beating. A heavy steel door, with an unbreakable glass window embedded in its frame, blocked their path. Sanchez tried Keech’s keycard, but the door didn’t budge.

“Damn,” he cursed. “The override’s kicked in.” He
looked at Adams, who appeared to have recovered from his earlier exertions. “You up to this, man?”

“I can give it a go,” the other freedom fighter volunteered. He stepped forward and laid his palms against the steel door. A grunt escaped his lips as he focused his ability on the unyielding barrier, which instantly took on that same photo-negative effect. Solid steel seemed to turn inside out, tearing free from its hinges, as the entire door compacted into a luminous black marble, leaving the doorway open before them. Adams scooped up the marble. He was breathing hard. “Open sesame,” he gasped.

They weren’t out of the woods yet, though. An entire squadron of guards came rushing toward them, clutching automatic rifles. “Freeze!” a uniformed officer commanded. “Get down on the ground with your hands on your head!”

“Don’t shoot!” Billy shouted over the alarms. He rushed to the front of the team. “I’m just a kid!”

The guards hesitated, reluctant to fire upon a child, which was all the time Billy needed. His jaws opened wide and a high-pitched shriek issued from his mouth. The guards staggered backward clutching their ears. Rifles slipped from their fingers. The sonic assault drowned out their screams, but Richard could see how the inhuman wail was affecting them. They flailed about in agony. Even standing behind Billy, with the punishing sound waves directed away from him, Richard got a taste of what the guards were enduring; the echoes pounded against his eardrums. He clamped his own palms over his ears.

The other team members joined the attack. What few guards had managed to hang on to their weapons suddenly
found them as hot as blazing coals. The woman cricked her neck again and a handful of guards collapsed onto the ground, like marionettes whose strings had been cut. Adams hurled the glowing marble at the flailing guards. Another blinding flash of light preceded the abrupt reappearance of the massive steel door as it crashed down between the escapees and their pursuers. The uprooted door formed an impromptu roadblock in the narrow corridor.

These people are good,
Richard realized, impressed by their obvious skills and teamwork.
The guards didn’t know what hit them.

To his ears’ relief, Billy’s sonic scream trailed off. The boy turned back toward his teammates. His pride and excitement were visible even through his ski mask. “You see that? What I did to them?”

“Way to go, Billy,” Sanchez encouraged him. The team leader hadn’t displayed any ability of his own yet; no doubt he had been dosed with the inhibitor, too. He pointed to a corridor on the right. “Now move it, everyone!”

They ran through the prison, past the laundry and exercise rooms. Sanchez definitely seemed to know where he was going, which gave Richard hope that this whole escape attempt had been planned out in detail. But even with his new allies’ remarkable gifts, he wasn’t sure how they were going to get away from the prison. Blaring alarms chased them down the halls. Emergency lights strobed crimson. By now, Richard figured, every guard on the premises had been mobilized, with reinforcements already en route. If they didn’t get past the outer walls soon, he’d be back in his cell in no time.

If I don’t get gunned down first …

To his surprise, they didn’t head for the front gates, but toward the rear of the prison. Still groggy from his beating, he lost track of where exactly they were until Adams warped another locked door out of existence. A cold winter breeze chilled his face as they burst out into the prison’s sprawling exercise yard. High concrete walls, topped with razor wire, girded the open area. Watchtowers surveyed the scene from above. The rough pavement made him wish that he had thought to snag his shoes before leaving his cell.
What are we doing here?
He knew every inch of the yard by heart. There was nowhere to go but up.

Floodlights targeted the fugitives. Richard threw up his hands to shield his eyes. “Now what?” he asked Sanchez.

“Wait.”

The woman did her neck trick again and the sentries on the walls fainted. Exhausted, she steadied herself against the nearest wall. The rest of the strike team was looking fatigued as well. Billy screamed at the watchtowers, but his voice sounded hoarser than before. Richard wondered what their limits were.

“Look!” Sanchez shouted. “Right on schedule!”

A sleek black helicopter descended from the heavens. Richard was surprised by just how silent the copter’s rotors and motor were, and by the total absence of any headlights. He had ridden copters back in Korea, but this kind of stealth technology struck him as astounding even by twenty-first-century standards. If not for the evidence of his own eyes, he wouldn’t have even known the copter was approaching.

Who are these people?
he wondered again.
And what exactly am I getting into?

The spinning rotors stirred up wind and dust as the copter touched down in the middle of the yard. An automated door slid open, revealing the passenger compartment, which looked just large enough to transport the entire team plus Richard. He understood why liberating the other inmates hadn’t been an option. They would have needed an entire fleet of copters to rescue all the prisoners.

“Our flight is boarding!” Sanchez shouted. “Scramble!” He shoved Richard ahead of him. “We’re almost out of—”

A gunshot cut him off in midsentence. A crimson fountain erupted between his eyes and he toppled forward onto the pavement. Blood sprayed Richard’s face and chest as he spotted the sniper standing in the doorway behind where Sanchez had just stood. The guard swung his rifle toward Richard.

Acting on instinct, Richard flung out his arm like a conductor leading an orchestra. An invisible wave of telekinetic force slammed into the gunman, sweeping him into the door frame with bone-jarring impact. Richard glimpsed more guards heading for the yard from inside the prison. He bowled them over with another burst of psychic energy. All at once, he felt like his old self again. Clearly, that booster shot had done the trick.

But what about Sanchez? Blood pooled around the team leader’s head as he lay motionlessly on the ground. Richard moved to check on him, but the woman restrained
him. “It’s too late,” she said as she tugged urgently on his arm. Violet eyes blinked back tears. “He’s gone …”

She was right, damnit. As much as he hated to leave Sanchez behind, he let the woman drag him toward the waiting copter. Airborne dust and grit stung his eyes as he clambered into the passenger compartment and strapped himself in, while the rest of the team piled in after him. The copter door slammed shut.

“Everybody set?” The pilot glanced back over his shoulder. A sudden frown dragged down his lips. “Where’s Sanchez?”

Richard was startled to see that the man’s eyes were clouded over with milky white cataracts. The pupils were fixed and unmoving.
Wait a second,
he thought.
The pilot is blind?

“We lost Sanchez!” the woman shouted. “Take off … now!”

Gunfire and racing footsteps outside the copter added emphasis to her plea. Without argument, the pilot turned back to the controls and instrument panel. The engine emitted a gentle hum. Richard’s seat lurched backward as the aircraft noiselessly lifted off from the prison yard. It climbed toward the top of the outer wall. He leaned forward anxiously while, a few feet away, the guy with the thermokinetic ability tried to comfort little Billy, who seemed to be taking Sanchez’s death hard. Tears leaked from beneath the boy’s glasses as he sobbed loudly. A cloudy night sky beckoned to them, offering the promise of freedom.

I don’t believe it,
Richard thought.
We’re going to make it.

Bullets thudded into the underside of the copter. Glancing out the window, he saw muzzles flare in the upper windows of the prison. The purr of the motor halted abruptly. The copter dipped alarmingly.

“We’ve lost power!” the pilot shouted. “We’re going down.”

No!
Richard thought. Visualizing the rotors in his mind, he imagined them spinning fast enough to blur in his imagination. Instantly, the copter leveled off and regained altitude. Cheers erupted from the pilot and surviving team members. The woman tugged off her ski mask, revealing the face of a young Goth chick. Kohl lined her dark eyes. Her frizzy black hair was streaked with blue dye. She gave him a thumbs-up.

The rat-a-tat of automatic-weapons fire swiftly faded away as the copter soared above the watchtowers and ascended into the clouds. Settling back into his seat, Richard closed his eyes and concentrated on keeping the ebony aircraft aloft.

He hoped it wouldn’t be a long flight.

O
RDINARILY,
E
MERALD
H
ARBORS
Cemetery was an island of serenity amid the unrest of Promise City. Marble monuments studded grassy slopes. Carved angels watched over manicured lawns. Weeping willows offered shade in the summer. A wrought-iron fence usually kept the rush and tumult of the outside world at bay.

But not today.

A backhoe noisily tore up the earth in front of Danny Farrell’s headstone. The granite marker was inscribed simply
BELOVED SON AND BROTHER
. An earlier headstone, bearing Danny’s full name, had been vandalized in days. Too many angry people still blamed poor Danny for the deaths of their loved ones. His mother’s marker, adjacent to his own, now bore only her maiden name: Susan Baldwin.

“You don’t have to be here for this,” Diana said to Tom as they watched the mechanized hoe carve deep gouges in the earth. Loose dirt spilled onto his sister’s grave. The sky was gray and overcast. An industrial crane stood by to lift
the casket once it was exposed. Diana spoke softly to her partner. “Meghan and I can handle this.”