“Audrey Parker’s Come and Gone” is episode three of season four of The 4400.
An elderly woman is narrating as a nurse is giving her a morphine shot for her hands. The woman says that all she’s been left with are frivolous memories and her life had become a tedious string of days. Until she decided to do something about it. Which was take promicin. Her consciousness can now leave her body and she’s young again, though others can’t see her. She can go anywhere in the blink of an eye. She sees an art opening at a gallery, then a man she saw with the artist, Vanessa, telling another young woman how he can help her as well. The elderly woman now has a new will to live.
She’s writing this in a blog that is effectively painting a good picture of using promicin and Doyle is reading it to Diana and Tom. The blog is anonymous and every time it’s taken down it goes up some place else. Diana says it’s well written and makes her tempted to take the shot. The writer doesn’t sound radical; she sounds like someone’s aunt. She also doesn’t sound like a threat. Tom points out that promicin is both illegal and potentially fatal. Doyle says that not everyone will be as nice; they need to find the author and find out what their intentions are.
Tom and Diana head to a public library from which the blog was uploaded and speak to the volunteer manager who deals with that side of things. Who just happens to be the author, Audrey Parker. They want a list of those who used the terminals at the specified time. Audrey asks if they have a warrant. Not yet; they were just hoping she’d cooperate. She wouldn’t if she didn’t think it would make trouble for the library. People have a right to privacy. Audrey hands over a list, quoting what Diana recognises as Benjamin Franklin speaking on freedom and security as she does.
Shawn arrives at the Arnold Sinclair Institute where Heather Tobey is volunteering; the only place she could get after the 4400 Centre closed down and she can’t use her powers. Shawn wants to restart his healing foundation and he’d like her to help with the children.
Kyle is at home when Cassie, revealed to be the manifestation of his powers in the previous episode, “Fear Itself”, speaks to him. She wants him to go back to a house and study a book she showed him. One that says Jordan Collier will be their saviour and Kyle will help.
Audrey confronts Vanessa’s agent, Philip Delacroix. She knows who he really is; a conman with outstanding warrants. Leave Vanessa alone or she will report him to the police.
Tom reports to Doyle, then asks if everything is alright. She says yes, then no. She ends up explaining that her father has Huntingdon’s for ten years and now pneumonia. No cure. Until Shawn. She asked DC if she could speak to Shawn. They said no; she has to set an example. To keep her job, she has to let her father die.
Diana arrives home to find Ben and Maia there. Diana was hoping it was only going to be a short trip.
At work the next day, Diana reads Audrey’s blog to Tom. There’s a quate from Benjamin Franklin. They realise Audrey wrote it. Audrey is currently projecting when she clutches her chest. She returns to her house to find many NTAC agents there. Her body is dead – looks like a morphine overdose – but her astral self is still there.
Tom and Diana discuss it. The ME thinks the OD was accidental; Diana thinks it might have been intentional. They were closing in on her and, given Audrey’s age and condition, she couldn’t have coped with prison. Audrey is shouting she didn’t kill herself. No-one can hear. But then they get static on all their devices.
Audrey thinks Philip Delacroix killed her – she did threaten him, after all – but people can’t hear her saying she was murdered. However, she is causing static on various devices when she tries to communicate, which means that maybe something is getting through. But she’s fading. Shawn is planning to go against the government’s laws on using 4400 abilities to see if he can get away with it. And Kyle is being told things by Cassie.