Perfectopia - Part #4/9
In an ideal world, YOU are the imperfection.
PART #3 RECAP:
Still jobless, sick, depressed and pissed off at his friends, Gaby and the world in general, Sigmund does something stupid. High on a cocktail of drugs and whiskey, driven by a self-righteous impulse, he steals Gaby’s NRC employee badge and goes back to the lab, where he prints a batch of Neurils. Sobering up and realizing how magnificently stupid and dangerous it is, he starts formulating a way to undo it, but on his way out he’s confronted by the building’s security, making him panic and flee the campus.
Part #4
Same day - December 2029 | Edmonton, Canada
With the last whiff of adrenaline gone, Sigmund aimlessly cruised the streets. He couldn’t go home, that was clear—it’d be the first place they’d look for him in. For a brief moment, Sigmund let himself toy with an idea of the guard being too lazy or too afraid to blemish his service record to call the incident in, then dismissed it as unlikely. If the breach hit the light, the watchman would be in much bigger trouble than being scolded for incompetence.
Not having any specific plan other than to flee the immediate vicinity of the campus, he found himself on Queen Elizabeth II highway, driving south towards the airport. Getting on a plane wasn’t an option, yet he needed time to think and thus a placeholder of a destination.
Edmonton International came and slid past as Sigmund continued pushing south, barely above the speed limit. He was sick, dead tired, out of ideas and in dire need of a good night’s sleep. If he could just put in enough distance, find a place to lay low and rest, get his thoughts in a row, figure out a way to salvage the situation…
Yet, the towns along the way all seemed too small to get lost in, forcing him to keep to the road until, almost three hours after fleeing the NRC, signs for Calgary greeted him.
That’ll have to do.
***
Landon Li cursed. Barely a month into this job, all the other security guards at NRC pulled the seniority shit on him, leaving the new hire manning the undesirable shifts during the holidays. And now, this had to happen.
Following the rulebook, Landon picked up the phone and called his NRC emergency contact, his immediate superior and the police, then went to review the security footage and check-in logs.
Shortly after Sigmund cleared the city limits, head of security had identified him from camera stills, sent to his phone by Landon, and pulled NRC’s director Gagnon into loop, who in turn placed another call to Edmonton Police Service to stress the potential gravity of the situation.
Upon reviewing the report and pulling data on the suspect, the officer in charge of the communication center escalated the incident and issued an APB on Sigmund Roth as well as his registered vehicle to Canadian Police Information Centre for province-wide dissemination.
The communication center in the Calgary Police Service received the data on the suspect at large from CPIC and started issuing notifications to local patrol units.
Barely a few hours after the first report, Sigmund’s face and the registration details for his Honda popped up on the on-board computer terminal in squad car #221. A few minutes later, its ALPR camera picked up the target license plate among the traffic and alerted the officers inside.
***
Sigmund drove through what looked like a predominantly industrial neighborhood, keeping an eye out for a non-descript motel or even an abandoned parking lot he could hole up for the night in, when the interior of his car lit up with a dance of red and blue, accompanied by a siren. His eyes darted to the rearview mirror, revealing a police cruiser signaling him to pull over.
“No, no, no.” He muttered nervously. The Neuril cartridge was still in his pocket—a piece of evidence that would sink him for good. They’d probably stick terrorism charges too. He needed more time before turning himself in.
Almost subconsciously, Sigmund’s foot pressed on the accelerator, lurching away from the pursuing police car. The plan was simple: cut the line of sight, lose the tail for enough time to dump the vehicle and take off on-foot. The moment when it seemed the tactic was working was short lived, though. The pursuers, caught off-guard, fell behind at first, but quickly caught up and refused to be shaken off.
Sigmund weaved through the streets, deliberately choosing places where there was more traffic in hopes to use other cars as an obstacle for the cops chasing him. He made another sharp turn in the thickening vehicle flow, then slammed on brakes as a huge lit up building came into view, the street leading up to it car-jammed to a standstill.
A screech of the tires and a swirl of red and blue behind announced that the trap had sprung. There was nowhere else to go, unless… Sigmund jumped out of the car and took off running towards the mall, ‘CF Chinook Center’ in huge letters beckoning him. A flicker of hope of getting lost in the anonymity of the crowd kept his exhausted body moving.
He burst inside, almost slamming into a bored security guard, and kept running.
“Hey, watch it!” Yelled the man at Sigmund’s receding back.
Only when he was well into the interior with a wall of holiday shoppers shielding him from the entrance, Sigmund allowed himself to slow down and take a peek back. Two police officers—presumably ones that chased him here—were at the door, talking to the same guard he nearly rammed into. The mall cop was pointing at Sigmund’s general direction with his one hand, the other one holding a walkie talkie to his face.
Resisting running, he turned away and walked deeper into the shopping center, looking for signs for another exit or at least a bathroom.
A crackle of a radio sounded to his left. Instinctively, Sigmund swiveled his head towards the noise, locking eyes with another security guard, recognition dawning on the man’s face.
“Sir, stay right there!”
His anonymity cover blown, Sigmund bolted into an unobstructed walkway. A former star of the high school’s track team, he could certainly outrun a random uniform. A few seconds was all he needed to discreetly dump the cargo somewhere, anywhere.
The huffing guard started to fall behind. As soon as Sigmund would round the corner, he’d break the line of sight, maybe slip into a store, let the guard pass, then backtrack. He dashed into yet another shopping alley.
The ground slid from under him, sprang up and slammed into his chest with brutal force. Gasping from the impact, pinned to the floor by a massive body that reeked of tobacco, Sigmund watched how the container hurled out of the pocket of his parka, then rolled in a slow mocking arc to settle in front of his eyes, painfully close, yet out of reach.
“Got him!” Shouted the tackler, as heavy footfalls started converging from all directions. The crowd of bystanders moved in closer, lured by the commotion.
***
A husband of the U.S. Consul General for Alberta stood mesmerized a couple of meters away, two toddlers clutching his hands on both sides.
A French businesswoman who spent the few hours before her Paris flight shopping for the last minute gifts, dropped her bags and rose on her toes for a better view.
A kindergarten teacher, carrying a month-worth of art supplies, approached a security guard to ask what was going on.
A flock of high-schoolers, having just been disgorged from a movie theater, whipped out their phones and moved in closer for a footage that will make their classmates jealous.
Parents and kids, men and women, old and young alike, all stopped to watch, their human nature incapable to resist a spectacle.
A loud pop followed by a forceful hiss startled the people gathered around a handful of police officers and security guards, towering over a handcuffed man on the floor.
“Uhh damn!” Said one of them, looking down. “I seem to have stepped on something.”
I, for one, welcome our new Neuril overlords.
It's only taken two months for me to get back to this, but here we are!! Man, Sigmund has some baaad luck.