Chapter Twenty-Five

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Today

Scott slammed his laptop closed, wondering if the air supply on the GO train could have been infected with the same airborne contaminant that had affected the Digi-Life building.

No, he figured, taking a quick look around at everybody else on the train, including the other by-law officers. That couldn’t be it. Nobody else on the train that he could see was behaving out of the ordinary.

Well, no more than the way people tend to behave in that fidgety “I’m not guilty” manner when a bylaw enforcement officer was checking for tickets, or the way that people tend to sit up a bit straighter and put both hands on the wheel when their vehicle comes into proximity with a police cruiser on the road.

So the good news was that this hadn’t become a train filled with a mob of zombies out to get Scott.

No, it was just the single officer, and she was striding purposefully toward him.

Scott slipped his laptop into his bag, hopped out of the seat and proceeded to head to the back of the train, slid the heavy door opened and stepped out into the enclosed section where the trains connected. Despite being fully enclosed it was louder and breezier in that small three foot by three foot space. Looking through the window into the next car, he couldn’t see any bylaw officers there, and so he pulled that door open and stepped into the car.

Then he quickly walked across the mid-level section and down the flight of five stairs to the lower section. He could hear the door separating the cars slide open behind him, and he rushed a little more quickly down the center aisle across the train.

As he reached the bottom of the stairs at the other side, he glanced back and saw the bylaw officer heading down the aisle. She was gaining on him. He hoofed it up the stairs and down the mid-level aisle toward the next set of connecting doors.

This time he moved through them quickly, not pausing to see if there was anybody on the other side before opening the doors to the next car.

He rushed inside, then down the stairs and along the lower-level aisle again, picking up speed.

As he raced up the stairs, he could tell that he had gained a few feet on his pursuit from the officer, as she was just rushing down the stairs on the opposite side as he was rushing up on his side.

He moved more quickly through the mid-level area, through the passageway connected to the next train, and through the next car. This time, he was already at the next set of doors when he could see, looking along the upper section, that she was just coming through the doors on the far side.

Good. He was still gaining.

He went through the next set of doors to the following car, and then the one after that.

It was feeling good. He was evading her. He only hoped that he would be able to stay ahead of her long enough for the train to stop at Union Station and he could rush off.

Except, he figured his luck wasn’t going to hold up.

Because as he rushed up the last set of stairs, instead of an entranceway connecting to another car, it was a car with a conductor booth on it; one of those cars in which there was a conductor to operate the train when it was heading in the opposite direction of where the engine was.

“Oh shit!” Scott said, stopping in his tracks.

He turned, spotted the officer across the opposite side coming in through the opposite doorway and heading purposefully toward him.

“So much for my great lead,” he gulped, standing there and feeling a cold sweat trickle down his face.

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