Chapter Four

Quail put down the telephone and looked up. Somehow, without him noticing, four people had suddenly appeared in his office; a pair of men and women. He looked them all over, noting that one of the men was taller with blond hair and the other more skinny with black hair styled distinctively. One of the women was shorter with wavy blond hair and stunning features; the other woman had a more classic look, with her red hair tied back in a pony tail behind her head. They all looked purposeful in their intent to be here, and Quail guessed that they were more of Collier’s people. Somehow, he didn’t know how, but somehow they had to have found out about the bomb and they were here to take him out as a retaliatory measure.

“Governor Quail,” started the blond woman, stepping forward. “I am Meghan Doyle, head of NTAC based in Seattle.”

Quail looked shocked. He hadn’t expected her to say that, and he wasn’t sure if he wanted to believe her.

“Behind me,” she continued, seemingly ignoring his shaken expression, “are my best agents, Tom Baldwin-”

At this the tall blond man stepped forward and held out his hand for a handshake. Without thinking, Quail grasped the proffered hand and shook it.

Tom looked deep into Quail’s eyes, and could feel Quail’s sense of alarm. From deep within him, his voice resonated the air waves.

“It’s okay,” his voice said. Quail relaxed instantly, and Tom’s voice said, “That’s odd.”

Quail returned Tom’s gaze, and Tom looked confused. Quail wanted to ask what was wrong, but his mouth wouldn’t form the word.

“There’s no light,” Tom’s voice said. “We’ll just have to put it there, then.”

Suddenly, Quail’s head felt as though it were going to split. The pressure within his skull increased, and he wanted to scream in agony, but he still couldn’t get his mouth to move. He clenched his eyes shut and prayed for the worst to go away, but the pain simply would not quit.

“Sshh,” Tom’s voice echoed into the pain, and it began to subside. “Open your eyes, and wake up.”

Slowly, as though not sure if his eyes would be there when he opened them, Quail opened his eyelids. The pain in his head lingered dully, and Tom smiled.

“There it is,” he could hear Tom saying. “Nice and bright.”

The world seemed to return to the present, where everyone was looking at Tom as though he had ripped Quail’s arm off when he shook it. Tom was smiling, seemingly unaware of everyone’s stares. He looked around at the shocked expressions on everyone’s faces and shrugged.

“What?” he asked. Tom turned to Meghan. “Aren’t you going to introduce the rest of the group?”

Meghan blinked, as though not sure what to say. She gestured to Diana. “This is Diana Skouris.”

Diana made no move to shake Quail’s hand, and Quail seemed satisfied by this. The governor shot a sidelong glance at Marco. Meghan caught the direction of his gaze and introduced Marco.

“We are here on behalf of Seattle,” Meghan stated. “Not Jordan Collier. We have no reason to suspect Collier of being linked to the blackout, however. We wanted to see what could be done about preventing an invasion of Seattle.”

“That won’t be necessary,” Quail said.

Meghan was stopped in her tracks. She looked as though she had prepared several complex and logical reasons as to why the national guard should be called off, and she wasn’t sure she liked the governor’s tone.

“The president has just informed me that he wishes to nuke Seattle,” Quail informed the team from NTAC. “Since all other conventional efforts to capture Jordan Collier have failed, he seems convinced that the best way to get him and his terrorist cohorts out of the States is to blow them off the map.”

“The president authorized a nuclear strike on Seattle?” Diana asked. The news hit the NTAC agents like lead slamming onto a gravestone. “That seems drastic! One nuke for one person? What about all the innocent people living there who are going to lose their lives?”

“You think I don’t know that?!” shouted Quail, rising from behind his desk. “I just got off the phone with General Lanstrom, the man in charge of the battalions stationed outside Seattle. He’s been ordered to evacuate everyone from the city, in direct violation of a presidential order. The president wants only the negatives evacuated.”

“This is sick,” Meghan said. “The American people won’t stand for it.”

“You’re goddamn right they won’t,” said Quail. “Which is why he’s going to have a good alibi. I’m sure his people have already come up with some fool-proof way to blame it on one of Collier’s promicin-abilities.”

“How much time do we have left?” asked Meghan, thinking quickly.

“A little under four hours,” said Quail. “Even in the best of circumstances, that’s not enough to evacuate a quarter of Seattle. And we don’t even have proper communication.”

“Well,” Marco interjected from the back of the room. “It’s quite possible that Jordan prepared for something like this.”

Everyone turned to look at him as though he were mad. He looked at each of them in turn as though they should seriously consider the possibility.

“I mean, a man like Collier has to know that as he pushed on the US Government they would flex their nuclear muscle eventually,” Marco said simply. “It’s likely that he’s had a plan in place from square one.”

“So we’d be relying on that Collier man to save Seattle?” asked Quail incredulously.

“Not exactly,” Marco said. “More like relying on Seattle to save Seattle. With all of those new abilities, I can’t believe that no one will be incapable of reversing the bomb’s direction, or teleporting it away, or even turning it into a kitten. There are endless possibilities.”

“So what do we do?” Meghan asked Marco. Marco shrugged.

“There are a few options,” said Marco. “One, we stay the hell out of Seattle entirely. I don’t really like that plan. Two, I go in, grab as many people as I can, and come to a safe spot, say here. Even then there’s not going to be a whole lot of good, because it’s likely that I’ll get tired from transporting so many people.”

“Are those our only options?” Diana asked. “It seems like there should be more we can do than just sit back and watch Seattle get blown to pieces.”

“Well,” said Marco. “We could always travel into the belly of the beast, and try to warn Collier it’s coming. That’ll be the best way to try to organize a retaliatory move. With any luck Collier’s people are closer to tracking down the guy responsible for the blackout by now. If the blackout is gone before the bomb drops, we could get a message out to the people: either stay or run.”

“Either way,” said Tom, “there’s not much time to do anything. Collier said his team wouldn’t be ready for a few hours yet.”

“I vote we warn Collier,” said Diana. She tried to look as resolute as she could. “He’s the one whose organized all of those people, and whether he’s a terrorist or not, if anyone can stop it, Jordan Collier can.”

“I have to agree with Diana,” Marco said. “It seems like the most logical plan.”

“Alright,” said Tom. “So if we go with this plan, and it looks like it’s going to fail do we just sit there and die?”

Everyone digested this for a moment, unable to come up with a reasonable answer.

“Once we get there,” Marco said, “I can start gathering people as quickly as I can and remove them from the city.”

“Wouldn’t that be dangerous?” asked Meghan. “What if we took away the one person with the ability to save the city?”

“I think the statistics would be in our favor,” said Marco. “I could go anywhere so long as I have a picture and gather people from there. It’s more likely that I’ll be saving more lives by getting people out of Seattle.”

Quail looked at the four strangers, discussing this in his office. He sat down slowly, his head still reeling a little with dull ache.

“It seems to me,” said Quail, “that you have made a decision. Whatever you do, I want you to get as many people out of Seattle as you can.”

---

Maia walked down the halls of city hall, past all of the people going about their business, and straight into Jordan Collier’s office. Jordan’s office was large, but dimly lit, with rows of judicial textbooks covering shelves on the walls. Jordan himself was sitting behind a desk, conferring with a woman.

“There just aren’t enough places inside Promise City to put the bodies,” the woman was saying.

“I’ll take care of it as soon as I can, Christine,” said Jordan, and he noticed Maia. He looked back at the woman and dismissed her. She left the room quietly, and Maia took a seat opposite Jordan.

“Good evening, Maia,” Jordan said amiably. He was always pleased to see the young clairvoyant, believing her a valuable girl to have around.

“Hello, Mr. Collier,” said Maia. She smiled, but her smile vanished as quickly as it had come. “My mom wouldn’t be happy if she knew I was talking to you right now, but I have to tell you something.”

Jordan nodded. “I would imagine she wouldn’t. Your mother and I don’t always see eye to eye, but I’ll keep this meeting a secret if you will.”

Maia’s smile disappeared. “I had a very bad vision,” she said. “You have to promise that no matter what happens, you don’t do anything dangerous. Don’t hurt anyone.”

Jordan kept his countenance friendly. “It seems like I’ve had this warning before,” he said. “But I can’t just keep wagging my finger at the threats of the government. They know what we are capable of, and if they strike first I will strike back.”

“You can’t strike back,” Maia said. “I can’t tell you anything else. But promise me you won’t strike back.”

“Maia,” Jordan said, but Maia’s eyes bored into him. She looked sad, as though something truly horrible were about to befall him. She had looked at him in that way before, before he was going to be shot. While a great part of him deeply wanted to heed her advice, he sighed and said, “It’s far more complicated than that. If the government declares war on Promise City, on the world we’re creating, we will have no choice but to defend ourselves.”

“When I was in school,” Maia said, “I learned about this man named Mahatma Gandhi. He stood up to people with guns, and he did a lot of great things without hurting anyone else.”

“Very wise words, Maia,” said Jordan. “But I have a lot of things to get done. Why don’t you run along, and I’ll see what I can do, okay?”

Maia looked defeated. “Okay,” she said finally.

Jordan watched as the young girl left in a few morose footsteps and silently closed the door behind her. He thought about what she had said, but no ideas came to mind. Maia’s advice had always been accurate, but she had never used her predictions as warnings; rather, she simply took the best route of action for herself or those around her based on what she had seen. He shrugged. That means that whatever happens, he concluded, was supposed to happen that way.

“You’ve already lost,” said a voice from behind him. Jordan didn’t turn immediately, so confused was he by the voice he had heard. It was strikingly familiar, and he couldn’t help but find himself in disbelief. “Your one true hope killed himself to prevent you from killing thousands of people.”

Jordan rotated in his chair slowly, coming around to face an exact likeness of himself who leaned casually against the bookshelf. It was the old Collier, the one with a short business-only haircut and those crafty eyes.

“Shawn’s brother,” said the old Jordan, “had the ability to induce promicin in anyone around him. Why do you think all of this happened? The entire of Promise City, everything that is now yours, happened because of that boy.”

Jordan thought for a moment. “Why are you telling me this?” he asked carefully.

“It’s not too late to save Danny Farrell,” the old Collier said, and he walked towards Jordan.

“Okay,” Jordan leaned back in his chair. “So you would have me bring this boy back to life to use as a tool for the spreading of promicin. That’s very clever; whoever thought of that should be commended. But I’ve never heard of any promicin ability that allows someone to come back from the dead.”

“Of course you haven’t,” said the old Collier. “That’s because he doesn’t know he can do it yet. Danny Farrell wouldn’t just be a tool for spreading promicin, though.”

At this, Jordan’s eyebrows went up. He wasn’t sure what to make of all this, and it was certainly not coincidental that whoever was making this older version of himself appear immediately after Maia Skouris warned him not to retaliate.

“Danny Farrell would be able to send a message to those who deserve to die because they resist the ability to sacrifice for their brethren,” said the old Collier, and he fixed Jordan with a steely look. “Because of their selfishness, they lose the option to choose.”

Jordan didn’t like what he was hearing, but it made sense. Damn him, he always seemed to make sense to himself. And if Maia foresaw this, it was likely that he was supposed to choose this path, whether Maia liked it or not. But something certainly didn’t click with him.

“This all sounds fair,” Jordan said, clasping his hands together. “But you must tell me, since I’ve never had a schizophrenic episode or a hallucination of myself or other psychotic reaction of that nature, who are you? Are you part of someone’s ability?”

The old Collier smiled. “I am a part of you, Jordan, the part that died when Kyle shot you. I’ve been dormant while you took over, but, much like Danny Farrell must do, I came back to life to help you. Now that it’s more than just the 4400, you have the ability to do some real good in this world, Jordan. You can save the world, and they will respect and cherish you.”

Everything that the old Collier said seemed so easy, so superficial. Jordan couldn’t believe it, that whoever was conjuring up this old version of himself thought he was so easily tricked. Even in his most narcissistic moments he had never wanted world conquest for himself.

“Okay,” said Jordan. “You can go, I’ll get to work on finding a way to bring Danny back.”

“Oh don’t worry about that,” said the old Collier, seemingly convinced that Jordan’s word was good. “Danny’s return to life is gonna drop right out of the sky.”

Jordan turned back to his work, trying again and failing to concentrate on what he needed to do. When he looked over his shoulder, the image of himself had gone. Jordan nodded to himself and figured it was probably a good idea to heed Maia’s advice. Someone was definitely trying to get him into a lot of trouble.

---

With great difficulty, Alicia took another step down on the ladder. She tried not to think about how high up she was. Below her, her brother Reese was chiding her, trying to get her to move faster.

“Come on, you’re only like eight feet up,” he said. “It takes a second, just come down!”

“I’m scared of heights, okay?” Alicia said, and she took a breath. The world seemed miles below her, though she knew her brother was probably right; it was only eight feet down. A light wind blew by her and she tightened her grip on the ladder quickly. She still couldn’t open her eyes. As she began to lower her next foot onto the next rung, the wind returned and she replaced her foot on the safety of the rung she was already on. “Can’t you come get me?”

Reese looked at his sister with an impatient expression, but she couldn’t see him. “You know I can’t lift your fat ass,” he said. “You’d think with your promicin ability you’d have lost weight or something. Shit, I knew this promicin stuff was stupid.”

“You’re not giving me very much incentive to want to continue helping you,” said Alicia, trying to work up the nerve to go down another step. She had been overweight since youth, and had a very difficult time of it. She, like her brother, had hoped that taking promicin would help her lose weight. It hadn’t, and then her entire family had caught promicin from the epidemic. Now her entire family was dead, and as far as she and Reese were concerned, it was Jordan Collier’s fault.

It was Reese who had noticed that Alicia had the ability to block electronic signals, and it was Reese who decided to try to use it to make Jordan Collier look bad. So he had insisted that she climb up on several different rooftops and do her stuff. This morning he had decided that it was time to take down the signal barricade and find out what the world thought of Jordan Collier now.

Only Alicia couldn’t get down off of the ladder.

“Screw you, I’m going inside,” Reese said, and he began moving for the back door.

“Wait!” Alicia shouted, but Reese was gone. She opened her eyes for a moment and her world spun. She felt very high off of the ground. “Reese!”

From inside the house, Reese ignored his sister’s frantic cries for help. He looked around for the remote control to the massive HD TV that was mounted on the wall. He loved using other people’s homes after they were dead. It was his favorite part about what Jordan had done.

After tearing the sofa apart, he spotted the remote was sitting on the dining room table in the adjacent room. He grabbed it and turned on the television. It was already on CNN, and he could see the president.

“What has happened in Seattle is an atrocity,” said the president, slamming his fist down on the podium dramatically. “It is a terrorist attack worse than any in United States history, and the leader of these terrorists, Jordan Collier, will now feel the noose tighten. Seattle will be reclaimed in the name of its mother country. All of the hostages that Collier has taken will be released, safely, to their respective families.

“We have word that Collier is collecting people who have not taken the promicin shot and forcing it upon them, leading to massive numbers of dead people. This is why he has blacked out communication, to stop anyone from calling for help. For the past week, the national guard has been moving in on Collier’s so-called “Promise City,” but he efforts to break into the heart of Promise City have thus far been fruitless.

“We are working on the safest and most effective solution to this problem. I will not see my country torn in two over this. I urge you, American citizens, if you have taken the promicin shot, turn yourself in to the proper authorities so we can verify that you are not one of Jordan Collier’s radicals. We will continue to treat you with the proper respect and civil rights that every American deserves, and law enforcement agencies will not discriminate against any promicin-positive individual who turns themselves in.

“God bless America,” the president finished and the room he was in filled with questions. Reese was satisfied, and turned to look out the sliding glass door where he could see his sister was down to her last three steps. He went to see her.

“Everything worked perfectly according to plan,” said Reese. “The president has Seattle surrounded by National Guard, and it won’t be long before they work their way in and kill Jordan Collier.”

Alicia looked as though she were still having difficulty with the last three steps. “That’s great, Reese. As long as I don’t have to climb any more ladders, I don’t really care anymore.”

“No more ladders,” Reese said. “Next time, we’re going up stairs. Come on, let’s see if they left behind their car keys.”