Free THE 4400® WELCOME TO PROMISE CITY by Greg Cox

you’d better get started,” Tom said.

    He and Diana exited the office, with Grayson trailing anxiously behind them. As it happened, there was a memorial service going on in one of the adjacent viewing rooms. Curious eyes turned to look at the agents. Tom felt a twinge of guilt for causing a disturbance, but they could hardly leave and come back later; that would give Grayson a chance to dispose of any incriminating evidence. They would just have to try to be discreet.
All the more reason to begin downstairs,
he decided.

    Bypassing the public areas, they headed for the rear of the house. A tasteful EMPLOYEES ONLY marked a staircase leading down to the basement. A locked door greeted them at the bottom of the stairs.

    Tom turned to Grayson, who was standing directly behind him on the steps. “The keys?”

    “Forget it,” the man snarled. He held out his hands, as though offering to be cuffed. “Arrest me if you want to, but I know my rights. You’re not going to get away with this.”

    Was that a threat? Once again, Tom wondered if Grayson was expecting Collier or his proxies to intervene on his behalf. That could happen, he realized, if the mortician was given a chance to contact his glorious leader.
Which is why we need to get past this door now.

    Calling Grayson’s bluff, he pulled out his cuffs. “Watch him,” he instructed Diana as he shackled the man’s wrists behind his back. The middle-aged undertaker appeared to be unarmed and outnumbered, but who knew what strange ability he might possess. Bernard Grayson was not listed among the 4400, but that didn’t mean much. Thanks to fifty/fifty, there were plenty of unregistered positives in Seattle these days. For all they knew, he could spit poison from his eyes or set them on fire with a thought.

    Instead, he merely glowered as Tom frisked him for the keys. An encouraging jangle gave away their location. Tom claimed the keys and unlocked the door. “All right, let’s find out what you’re so determined to hide from us. On principle, of course.”

    Tom had never been behind the scenes at a funeral home before, but he imagined it couldn’t be too different from the morgue back at HQ. A quick scan seemed to confirm his expectations. Partitions divided the basement into three or four interconnected chambers. Refrigerated vaults kept the mortuary’s customers on ice. A geriatric corpse was laid out on a stainless-steel embalming table. A modesty cloth, draped over the cadaver’s groin, helped preserve its dignity. An embalming machine, filled with a translucent pink liquid, chugged in the background. Metal drains were embedded in the tile floor. Trocars, suture guns, loose tubing, and other tools were scattered atop various trays and counters. Glass cabinets held a variety of chemical concoctions. A white porcelain sink rested against the far wall. Overhead lights glowedbrightly. Whirring exhaust fans struggled to clear the air, which smelled faintly of formaldehyde and decay. Open doorways led to adjacent chambers. Peering through a door on the right, Tom glimpsed a large steel furnace with adjustable temperature controls. A metal trolley waited to convey bodies into the cremator. Air-conditioning kept the basement several degrees cooler than the offices upstairs.

    Everything seemed in order, if somewhat unsettling, so why had Grayson put up such a fuss?

    “Tom,” Diana said urgently. “Over here.”

    She peered though an open doorway into what, at first glance, appeared to be a secondary prep room. He hurried across the chamber to join her. “What is it?”

    “Look at this equipment,” she said, pointing at an array of expensive-looking apparatus. “Centrifuges, test tubes, Petri dishes, electron microscopes, culture incubators, even a state-of-the-art DNA analyzer. Now I’m no expert, but I’m pretty sure this is not standard issue for the funeral trade.” She spun around to confront Grayson, who hovered in the doorway at the foot of the