Breakout (Alex Knight Book 1)

by C. G. Cooper

  Another article came with a headline that called for all intellectuals to beware. It listed a group of radical political activists who were meeting in secret to discuss the ways in which the hybridized intelligentsia could be isolated from society. These radicals wanted to prevent hybrids from infecting the natural population with their tainted genetics. They talked about setting up concentration camps for the gifted.

  Knight shuddered as he read. It all sounded very Third Reich. The super-intelligent would be held like beasts of burden. Their abilities were to be used to aid the wider society in whatever direction said society deemed appropriate. It was outlined explicitly that the intelligentsia should not dictate what direction society, government, science, or art be developed; rather, that all hybrid intellectuals should be made to serve the needs and wants of normal human society. They would be tools not catalysts.

  Something about the words tugged at Knight’s subconscious. Memories sprouted.

  Knight had always experienced a degree of ambivalence from his peers. Throughout high school and college, he had always had those friends who were keen for him to review their work or for him to give a thumbs-up and a suggestion for a little improvement. These same people would often snicker at him for being a geek or a nerd when they thought he wasn’t listening. He’d gotten used to it. It became his normal.

  The article had nothing to do with him.

  His mind skittered down another path.

  From a young age, Knight had a hard time filtering information. The whole world seemed to stream directly into his consciousness, like a million points of light assaulting his eyes. There was no fragment of information lost on his psyche. He could build pictures of events from minuscule scraps of information by combining several seemingly unrelated pieces to produce a complete masterpiece. When he had told his peers about it, he was called paranoid, a freak. He was left isolated and humiliated.

  It had only happened once in high school and once again in college. He was a fast learner but had been slower when he was young. He’d walled off that part of himself and moved on.

  He was no freak.

  Knight had, however, always been different. He’d learned to embrace his unique abilities even if pigs like Stone sought every advantage over Knight’s genius.

  He was no slave.

  But this article detailed a whole new level of coercion. It spoke of control and imprisonment. It was a new kind of segregation being advocated by this anti-intellectual group. They discussed how to corral and manipulate anyone with a gifted intellect. It was a discussion borne out of fear for a group who could view the world in a new way, a way that challenged strongly-held beliefs. But Knight read between the lines.

  This was about power.

  It was only a short step from fear to hatred and then persecution and possibly...

  Knight shuddered to think of it. It was only another short step to plotting the annihilation of the world’s most intellectually gifted, or, as the group put it, intellectual hybrids.

  It couldn’t be real, just a story concocted by this Mina and her hacker cohorts. Just a stupid story.

  He felt a little unnerved by what he had read about concentration camps for the intelligent, the echoes of past atrocities in the name of social betterment.

  Knight clicked the next article with a shiver. What was he going to find next?

  The next article was an account written by a self-proclaimed product of engineered intellect. It was an account of a former scientist who had discovered a wonder drug that would enhance concentration and cognitive abilities. He was offering drugs for sale on web auction sites and advertised them as exam-busting enhancements. It was claimed that with minimal preparation time and a single dose of the drug, any average college student could achieve a top grade in any test on any subject.

  The author of the account had researched the story and conducted his own investigation. He’d somehow done it without drawing any attention from the police or the press. His deduction was precise. He stated that the scientist had stumbled across a set of special vaccines and discovered, through a bit of re-engineering, that the substance provided a limited boost to concentration and brain power. The author had further deduced that the special vaccine only produced a permanent and full-blown effect when administered to adolescents. Adults could only acquire a reduced effect for a limited period, but it was enough to make a difference in limited settings like college exams.

  The scientist had sold his wonder drug to a few dozen college students before he was found dead, killed by a massive overdose of heroin.

  Heroin again, Knight thought.

  The police investigation concluded that the scientist was pedaling heroin and that any perceived benefits from his wonder drug were simply a feeling of contentment derived from the effects of the illicit drug. There was no enhanced ability, merely a relaxed attitude to failure. The police also discovered that all the students who had purchased the wonder drug had also died of heroin overdoses, never having taken the exams they were preparing for. Case closed.

  The author of the account concluded that the scientist had been murdered and all the students who had bought the drug had also been murdered. Heroin had been used as a cover story to hide the fact that the scientist had accidentally discovered the existence of a special vaccine.

  There were more articles, and Knight read until his eyes ached. Mrs. Blunt entered his office, and Knight realized it was almost dark outside. He had spent the entire day reading one unbelievable article after another. Mrs. Blunt asked Knight if there was anything he needed her to do before she left work.

  Knight rocked back in his chair and shook his head. He sent Mrs. Blunt home, rubbed his eyes. and clicked on another article.

  It couldn’t be real, yet he read on.

  21

  Special Agent Childs leaned back against his desk and looked at the large cork board that dominated one wall of his office. It was a spider’s web of brightly colored string wound around pins that held photos, small maps, and printed documents to the cork. At the center of it all was a picture of Alex Knight. This was an investigation into a web of intrigue. There were no answers yet. First, he needed to find a question. He was sure the question was going to include words such as stem cell research, lab technicians, retired scientists, and murder. Whatever the question was, Special Agent Childs had a gut feeling that the answer would be Dr. Alex Knight.

  It had all started when Childs received the tip-off that a young hacker Mina claimed to have sent. She told him about the huge amount of data being collected on stem cell research, and that the research was happening smack dab in the middle of Knight’s lab in the city. Childs had been suspicious at first. Why would a kid hacker bust a lab server? It might have been, as she’d said, because a computer with that much encryption was just begging to be hacked. And having cracked the machine purely for the challenge of it and discovered that there was obviously a crime being committed, she had done what she thought was the decent thing and sent all the data to the FBI.

  That hacker had triggered Childs’s involvement, but who had started Alex Knight on his criminal path?

  Knight’s funding came from the National Institutes of Health. A red string traveled from the pin on Knight’s photo to a printout of the NIH federal seal, and next to that, a photo of the department’s head, one Professor David Stone. A snapshot of the young technician with a death certificate next to it was pinned with a string leading to Knight. There were various pieces of information regarding Knight’s old lab, including blueprints, lease information, receipts for various pieces of laboratory equipment, and a plastic bag containing a small, high-capacity external hard drive containing all the stem cell data the lab had collected.

  Child looked at that little bag. It held all the evidence needed to convict Knight, but since the data had come to him from an illegal source, he knew he could not proceed with a case for prosecution. Any third-rate lawyer could blow the whole case out of the water by attacking the key
piece of evidence. Childs could well find himself up on charges of illegally obtaining government-owned data.

  The string wound around photos of Knight’s apartment, Knight’s motorcycle, Knight’s current office and its small staff, along with records of trips taken in the staff car: times, durations, and destinations. All information had been logged as standard operations for a government agency staff car and was freely available to any and all, including a curious FBI agent.

  Childs reached behind him and picked up his coffee mug emblazoned with the legend “Old cops never die; they just lose their beat.” He took a sip and grimaced the stone-cold coffee.

  Somewhere in that mess of information was more than a scientist performing illegal stem cell work. There was too much going on here for a simple crime. Childs couldn’t work out exactly what it was. He didn’t even know if he was close, but he had a nose for this sort of thing. He was going to find out more about this Dr. Knight. He was going to discover the truth, no matter how bizarre or unlikely the answer might be.

  Simonson opened the door to Childs’s office. His tie was loose around his unbuttoned collar, his sleeves were rolled up to the elbow, and a piece of paper was held in his hand.

  Childs looked the young agent in the eye, barely concealing his annoyance. “Yes?”

  “We got something you might be interested in.” Simonson handed him the paper.

  Childs read. It was brief, to the point. And brutal. A young administrative assistant who worked in Alex Knight’s office, Sarah Hansen, was dead. The young woman had been found strangled in Lane Park, an area not far from Knight’s apartment building.

  “Thank you, Agent Simonson,” he said.

  He stared at the paper then at the board, pursing his lips. He carried the report over, picked out a pin, and stuck the paper next to the photo of Knight’s office in the bad part of town. He took a piece of string and wound it around the pin in Knight’s picture and connected it to the pin in the new sheet and then to a photo of Sarah Hansen, the young secretary who had recently spent an evening at Knight’s apartment.

  Childs stepped back and leaned against his desk, picked up his mug, took another sip of the horrible cold coffee, and studied the board.

  Somewhere amid all these names and places was a question involving a growing list of crimes. And, whichever way Childs looked at it, the answer to this deadly puzzle was Alex Knight.

  22

  When Knight pulled up to his office the next morning and saw the police cars parked outside, he found himself dreading the rest of the day.

  What now? he thought as a uniformed officer approached him.

  Not long after, and for the second time in as many months, Knight found himself sitting in a police interview room. The door opened, and a pudgy man in a brown suit entered gut-first. His skin was pasty, as was the case with someone who spent a great deal of time indoors. He held a cup of coffee in his hand with no steam coming off it.

  “Morning, Dr. Knight, I’m Detective Patron. How are you doing today?”

  “I’m peachy.”

  “Uh huh,” said the detective, taking a seat opposite. The chair edged backward with a screech to accommodate the man’s belly in the confined space between chair and table.

  “I just want to go over a couple of things with you this morning. As you may or may not know, we’re investigating the disappearance of a young lady who works for your office. Sarah Hansen?”

  “OK.”

  “Were you aware she was missing?”

  “I was.”

  “I just want to let you know, you’re not under arrest. You’re free to walk out that door anytime, all right? But we would like your help in finding out what happened to this young girl. First of all, when was the last time you saw her?”

  “She left my apartment two days ago. It was the morning. Maybe six, six-thirty?”

  “OK. Would it interest you to know that that morning was the last time anyone reported seeing Miss Hansen?”

  “Interesting isn’t the word I’d use.”

  “You seem to be getting a little defensive,” Detective Patron said mildly.

  “I’m not getting defensive, I’m getting irritated.”

  “Irritated?”

  “Make that frustrated,” Knight said, his neck tensing.

  “How so?”

  “I just don’t like all this beating around the bush. Has something happened to her?”

  “That’s what we’re trying to find out.”

  “By interrogating me. Because I just happened to be the last one who saw her.”

  “Relax, Doctor. No one is saying you’ve hurt her.” The detective crunched the small plastic cup, bending and warping it so it made an irritating crackling sound.

  “I know no one is saying it. I’m reading between the line, detective. I’m suspicious because I was the last guy to have seen her.”

  “Where did you go that morning?”

  “I went to work.”

  The cop titled his head. “Did you?”

  A sudden jolt of memory seized him. “No, wait, I’m sorry, that’s not true. I went for a ride on my motorcycle. For an hour or so. To clear my head.”

  “Is that so? Where’d you ride?”

  “Around. I like to go through the city when it’s not jam packed with traffic.”

  “Like where?”

  “Broad Hollow.”

  “Really? That winding road that goes up and around that hill over on the north side of town?”

  “Yeah.”

  “OK. You see, the problem is, Doctor, we have no way to prove that you were there. There aren’t any cameras in that area. So, you can see—being an intelligent man and all—how we find it very difficult when someone presents a story that is unverifiable.”

  “I don’t know what to tell you.”

  “How about the truth?”

  “That is the truth,” Knight said through gritted teeth.

  “A minute ago, you stumbled over your story. You said you went straight to work. Then, when I pressed you about it, you reversed and said you had gone for a ride. You see how that might raise a red flag on my end?”

  Knight clenched his fists, focusing his frustration in his palms. “I can see that, yes. But I’m telling you the truth. I answered too quickly before. I’d forgotten that I’d gone for a spin before work.”

  “You go to work every day?”

  “Yes.”

  “Uh huh. You see, I can understand, Doctor, if you went out on your bike before work most mornings. But this was a rare occurrence. That’s what you’re telling me. You see how that’s an issue?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “You’re getting irritated.”

  “Damn right, I am.”

  And at that moment, there was a knock at the door, followed by the door opening and Special Agent Childs entering. He carried a cardboard tray with two cups of coffee. The fat detective rose without a word, and Childs placed the tray down on the small interview table. He sat in the chair the fat detective had just stood up from and smiled at Knight.

  “Hello, Doc. Mind if I have a word?” And then, without looking away from Knight, he said, “You can leave us, Detective Patron. Thank you.” Then he turned to Knight. “Coffee, Alex?” Childs slid one of the cups across the table.

  The pasty detective stormed out and pulled the door behind him, grumbling something about jurisdiction. Knight took the coffee and pulled off the lid.

  “It’s black,” said Childs. “I didn’t know how you take it.”

  “Black’s fine.”

  “Alex, we’re trying to figure out what’s happened to Sarah Hansen.”

  “Yeah, no shit.”

  “I’ve been watching the detective interview you. You did stumble over the question of whether you went straight to work or went for a ride.”

  Knight responded with an exasperated sigh.

  “What do you think happened to her, Alex?”

  “I don’t have any idea.”

>   “Well, we need your help. You’re a smart guy. Some say a genius. We need help in figuring out what happened. So, could you give us an idea?”

  Knight couldn’t suppress a chuckle.

  “What’s so funny?” Childs asked.

  “Just that you’re about as transparent as a piece of cheap cellophane,” said Knight, blowing over the rim of his coffee cup and taking a sip.

  “Well, I’m sorry to be the one to have to tell you this, Alex,” Childs said, his gaze fixed firmly, “but she’s dead.”

  Knight felt his stomach constrict and his heart went heavy in his chest.

  “She’s dead, Alex,” Childs repeated.

  “How? How... ?” Knight said, failing on this one very rare occasion to be able to finish a sentence.

  “I think you may already have told us how.”

  “No...” The room began to blur as Knight’s thoughts clouded over with the realization of what was happening. “I didn’t...”

  “She was murdered, Alex. Were you close?”

  Knight sat back, unable to cry or scream or do anything beyond stare blankly. He saw the way Childs was looking at him, studying him as the news was given, looking for a flicker of guilt or some tell-tale sign that he, Knight, was the killer.

  “Do you think it was me?” he asked quietly.

  Childs sat back in his chair and studied Knight for some time before taking a deep breath and saying, “I don’t know what I think yet. But I know that detective has a theory. You were the last person to see her alive. And you stumbled over a simple question regarding your whereabouts the morning she disappeared. Police tend to think everyone is guilty, I’m sure you know that. And sometimes, Alex, it only takes one thing, one simple little thing like a screw-up of words, to reveal what’s going on inside a person’s head.”

  Knight picked up his coffee. The mug shook uncontrollably and he spilled the hot liquid over his hand, scalding himself. He returned the mug heavily to the table, cursing and wiping his now sore hand.