Evasion (15 page)

“Yeah, I remember that.”

“Think about the way you’d described those items. What do they make you think of when you’re also considering the idea that your father could have been living a double life?”

Scott sipped at his coffee, put the cup down on the table and pursed his lips together.

“James Bond. Secret agent. Those objects looked very much like spy gear. At least, my impression of what spy gear might be.”

“Exactly,” Prescott said. “It’s improbable, but the most likely of all the things we spoke about.”

“And it would explain so many of those odd moments, conversations and things about my Dad that I simply didn’t understand.”

“Still,” Scott said, shaking his head. “My Dad. A secret agent? A spy?”

Prescott nodded. “Just think about it.”

“But he wasn’t in great shape. He had a beer belly, he walked with a limp.”

“I’m not suggesting that he was ever involved in high speed car chases, skiing down mountainsides firing ski pole machine gun weapons, scaling skyscrapers and performing Jason Bourne style jujitsu moves.  Consider your own skills, abilities and aptitude, Scott. Your father might be a valuable asset more because of his brain, his mind, his ability to blend in and seem unobtrusive.”

“Okay,” Scott said. “Okay. I get that. And, when you think about how highly Dad regarded his father and how proud he’d been of the fact that he served his country so well, it might make sense.”

“Sure. Your father could be operating for CSIS or some other secret government agency, working on something important, something critical.”

“Dad did dwell long and hard on the respect for those who put their country’s needs ahead of their personal ones, those service people who served their country first; who put the good of our society ahead of their own needs, their own interests. 
That
makes complete sense to me.”

“So the real question is – what could he have been involved in that was so intense, so top secret, that he had to fake his death and deceive you and your mother in the process?”

Today
 

There was, at least according to Scott’s interpretation of what he could hear, a single person on the other side of the locked door, trying, unsuccessfully, to get in.

Scott knew, based on the hive mentality of the others he had encountered, that the rest of them; Herb, the security guard, Gary, if he was again awake, and any other employees who had already showed up, would already be aware, through whatever telepathy they employed, of Scott’s location; and they would descend upon the locked door and either break it down by sheer force, or perhaps unlock it with the security guard’s master key.

So he picked up the metal and plastic chair that was facing the executive desk, and, lifting it over his head, took a deep breath before swinging it in an overhead arc toward the glass.

Geez
, he thought as the chair bounced off the glass, leaving a giant spider-web crack on it with a few pieces in the center shattered out completely, leaving a gap in the glass of more than an inch square.
I’d never broken a single pane of glass my entire life. Yet this morning, in the span of less than half an hour, I will have smashed through three windows. And, not only that, but I’m getting damn good at this.  I almost smashed through in a single try.
 

He threw the chair against the window, breaking through the glass completely.  Then he pulled a framed print off the wall and used it to scrape the broken edges from the bottom of the window pane before climbing up onto the window sill and jumping out.

Outside, he found himself in an ally on the east side of the building that led back toward Fraser Avenue.

He ran down the alley, comforted by the simple fact that nobody had either broken or opened the locked office door yet, so, unless somebody was on an upper floor and looking down into this alley, nobody would be able to see which direction he was heading.

His car was parked in a lot of Exhibition Place, a couple of blocks south of the Digi-Life office.  It normally took him less than ten minutes to walk between the parking lot and the office, because he cut through parking lots and alleys on his way there.

At the speed he was running, however, he figured he’d be able to get to his car in less than three minutes.

That way he could be in the car, get onto Lakeshore and the eastbound Gardiner Expressway and further away from the people who were pursuing him.

There were very few people on the street as he ran down Fraser, cut across the parking lot of the abandoned old Western Bakery building, crossed Mowat Avenue and got onto Dufferin. The few people he had spotted, the closest one walking at least a block away, from their parked cars to a nearby office building, all seemed to be acting normal, as if this were a morning just like any other – and not one in which everybody had designs to kill Scott Desmond.

That made Scott’s theory about the airborne toxin being released inside of Digi-Life’s air system seem to hold a bit more weight and also offered him a sense of relief.  Now that he was putting more and more distance between himself and the building he could begin to feel a bit better that he would be safe.

A bus pulled out of the TTC station heading back up Dufferin.  The bridge itself was still under construction and closed to vehicular traffic, but there was still a pedestrian path allowing foot traffic to cross.  Scott raced down the path, passing a middle-aged male jogger in a red and black skin—tight running outfit wearing ear buds.

The jogger nodded at Scott in a single efficient dip of the head.

Normal behavior, Scott was relieved to see, but he still turned his head to ensure the jogger hadn’t been tricking him and was actually also turned.

It was nice to bump into someone who wasn’t trying to kill him.

Scott was, of course, relieved at the fact the jogger hadn’t been turned, as he highly doubted he’d be able to outrun him if the man came after him.

As he got to the far side of the bridge, he could see his silver Mustang parked near the Medieval Times building, and, standing one car over from his own, a blond man in a grey sport jacket.  Scott slowed down to a walk, relieved to be so close to getting to his car, so close to escape, but leery about the man who was just standing there.

Scott patted down his front pocket, ensuring his car keys were there, before reaching in and pulling the keys out. Still one hundred meters away from the car he triggered the door unlock function.

Previous to the headlights on Scott’s car blinking on and off twice briefly, the man in the gray sports coat had simply looked like he’d happened to be standing there, perhaps having a cigarette before either heading back inside to the Medieval Times building or getting into his car.

But when the lights on Scott’s car blinked as Scott unlocked it, the blond man swung his head around quickly, obviously looking to see who had triggered it.

Damn
, Scott thought. He’s one of them.

When the man turned and spotted Scott, he froze in place, his body became stiff and then he lifted a single arm into the arm and pointed, in that Donald Sutherland
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
manner Scott had become used to.

A fresh chill ran down Scott’s spine.

Because of the wind blowing across the bridge Scott couldn’t hear what the blond man said as his lips moved, but he didn’t need to hear the words to know exactly what the man was uttering.

You won’t get away! You cannot evade us!
 

Two Weeks Ago
 

Nanotechnology? Nanomedicine? Nanorobotics?
 

And all of it somehow related to the operating room Scott’s father had died in.

It didn’t make sense.

Or, at least, it didn’t seem to make sense.

Scott started at the computer screen, trying to figure out what, exactly, he’d been looking at.

Scott had spent some time, when he’d initially been exploring investing his father’s death, looking at every single person who had been on the chart for being in the operating room during the shift that his father had died, but, often finding nothing of value, had left them aside after a cursory glimpse into his life

Tracking the surgeon himself, Dr. Citino, had revealed the mysterious death which ended up consuming most of Scott’s focus. And so, after that, he had pretty much abandoned looking at everyone else who had been there.

After all, Citino had been the one in charge and had also been the one who, like Scott’s father, had died under mysterious circumstances.

So there’d had to be something further there.

Scott started exploring the hospital itself, looking for any sort of connection the hospital might have with Ottawa, and he’d been following as many trails as he could. But it wasn’t until he started looking further into some of the other staff in the operating room that he found an intriguing yet small connection between Citino and the anesthesiologist, a Dr. Mike Nottoff.

Nottoff had been a research assistant at the Ottawa school where Citino had TA’d.

Deep digging revealed that the two could have possibly met, because Nottoff had taken a course in which Citino had been one of the two team leaders. So, while the records of which TA headed which half of the class, there was at least a fifty-fifty chance that the two of them had met more than once.

It was worth Scott pursuing Nottoff a bit deeper.

He’d found an intriguing series of articles that Nottoff had been a key researcher in.

Several of them had to do with nanotechnology.

In one, research was being done on an area that had been worked on by a team of researchers from Australia and the US, of a nanorobots – the engineering and design of designing devices constructed of molecular components in the scale of a nanometer – searching out and identifying certain proteins and delivering targeted drug delivery. 

In another, Nottoff had been a principle investigator in a series of “suicide switch” nanotherapeutic examinations targeting cancer cells – the goal was modeled on the body’s own immune system, where white blood cells patrol the bloodstream, and, when detecting specific cells in distress, are able to bind to them and transmit specific signals allowing them to self-destruct.

Scott became fascinated with the detailed research that Nottoff had been a part of, and followed a series of his published papers, despite the challenge he had of properly being able to understand much about it.

Although, when he extrapolated the nanotechnology techniques, particularly the ones in which the nanorobotic device was programmed to seek out particular types of cells and target specific actions on them, it was similar to the manner by which hacking a computer program in order to seek out particular user actions or subroutines might trigger a particular pre-programmed hacked response.

The concepts behind nanotechnology and its use in medicine intrigued Scott.

And Nottoff, who had been a key researcher into that technology, had written or been a key player in the development of no less than half a dozen similar research projects while he was in Ottawa.  When he left Ottawa, Nottoff spent a year at University of Alberta’s NINT (National Institute for Nanotechnology) before making his way to Laurentian as an anesthesiologist.

It appeared that he had been involved in some sort of research project involving use of nanomedicine in both relaxing and calming techniques as well as in anesthesia.  Nottoff had been particularly concerned with producing an anesthetic that would produce no side-effects, such as the nausea or vomiting that was a common result in as many as thirty percent of patients.  Nottoff had a single reprimand on his record for engaging in research that involved testing in lab animals that had not been approved by CCAC, the Canadian Council on Animal Care. It was six months after that in which he transferred over to Laurentian.

Scott sat in front of the computer for a long time, considering what he had been looking at.

Had Nottoff used some sort of experimental nanotechnology on Lionel Desmond?

Had it been some sort of experimental anesthetic nanotechnology? Had it been the use of the cancer-cell targeting nanorobots Scott had read about?

In either case, something had gone horribly wrong.

And Scott needed to find out.

He needed to learn more about Nottoff and where, exactly he was now.

He needed to speak with him.

And get to the bottom of this.

Today
 

Not another one!

Scott quickly considered his options.  Based on what he understood about these people, there was a telepathic link between them.  This meant that Herb, the security guard and any of the others in the Digi-Life building would know exactly where Scott was.

He couldn’t run back down the bridge that crossed over top of the Gardiner Expressway and East-West train tracks and into the Liberty Village neighborhood.

They’d know, through the blond man in the gray sports coat, exactly what way he was running, and could head him off.

So Scott ran toward the man who was still standing there, his arm raised, his finger pointed at Scott, decreasing the distance between them from about fifty yards to a mere thirty.

And when he got to the end of the bridge, he darted left, into the Exhibition Place grounds on the opposite side of the road of where the parking lot was and picked up his speed.

Scott ran across the field and the empty plaza of buildings to his left that he had only ever seen active and open during the Canadian National Exhibition, which took place the last couple weeks of August each year.  August was still a month away, but already a fleet of metal barricades, all stacked in neat rows, filled half of the park and adjacent parking lot. It took a long time to set up for the annual event that seemed to be the indication that the end of summer was upon the city of Toronto.