With These Eyes (14 page)

Access Denied

The lockout-message flashed across the screen
by the entrance. Isabelle wasn't surprised since she didn't work at
the seed bank. Even without her new-found difficulties, it would
have been unusual for her to be granted access. She remembered
Ryan's gift to her. Isabelle reached into her pocket and pulled out
the holographic key he had given to her at the office. Isabelle
turned the device on and its projection appeared in the perfect
image of an eyeball. Isabelle held the eye made of light up to the
biometrics reader. The word
override
appeared on the reader
and, unseen by Isabelle, across Tasha's windshield.

To Tasha's dismay, she watched the image of
Isabelle activating the blast door that lead to the seed vault's
interior. Tasha's bewilderment turned into blood lust. The mouse
had seen the cheese and gone into the trap. The seed bank was built
into the frozen ground and there was no other exit. A suspected
terrorist caught breaking into a company facility to destroy
humanity’s food supply - no one would have questioned the use of
lethal force. The world would thank Tasha for protecting its
survival. The fact that Isabelle evaded her so cunningly and now
the break-in were all the proof Tasha needed to condemn Isabelle as
a terrorist. It was time to utilize a classic Roman attack
formation, with the General leading her troops.

"She's sabotaging the seed bank. Platoon,
assume V-formation."

With the helicopter overhead and her squadron
of Troopers following, Tasha pushed her cat to the limit in a
charge towards the seed bank. The machine's broad steel-belts
kicked the crisp, dry snow high into the air as the wedge of
destruction forged down the mountain in their aggressive maneuver.
Thick smoke billowed into the Arctic air from the powerful diesel
engines. The spy helicopter's rotor-wash swirled the smoke back
onto the ground. A trail of soot and flattened topography marked
Tasha's way.

Isabelle depressed the handle of a steel door
that had been revealed when the cement cover had rolled aside. She
opened the door and walked through to the bank's main corridor. The
level directly above her housed compressor and back-up generator
for the facility's cooling system. The upper level faced the light
sculpture to the outside and cooling pipes towards the inside.
Stainless-steel tubes carried the coolant from the compressor to a
grid in the floor of each of the three vaults at the end of the
main corridor. It was a tunnel big enough for one lane of traffic,
a car could have fit through the steel double-doors behind her.
Isabelle was standing on concrete ground, the walls and ceiling
formed a long arch encased in corrugated metal.

She followed the corridor for about ten paces
to the entrance of the operations office. Isabelle opened the door
and walked in. To the right, an interactive wall-panel displayed a
schematic of the entire facility with temperature readings for each
section and the controls for the cooling system. An event history
list showed that all three vaults had been opened just two days
prior. The last run of the cooling system dated the day of the
grand opening three years earlier. Isabelle thought it to be
strange to have a cooling system for a place that had been built
into the permanent frost. She took her digital camera and, a few
hits of the trigger later, she had taken shots of the entire room.
To the left of the wall-panel, a horseshoe-shaped desk snaked
around the back portion of the underground room. Several computers
covered its surface around one corner. The last section was vacant.
Empty shipping crates filled another corner of the room.

Isabelle took a closer look. The crates'
points of origin were in India, Syria, Sudan, Ethiopia and many
other world nations. She took pictures of the shipping manifests
that laid in two stacks on the desk beside them. Wheat, corn,
alfalfa, spelt, rice - every staple-food was represented from
nations around the globe. The world governments had shifted their
seed stock from which their cultures had lived for millennia into
the vaults of Gene's seed bank. Many nations were now using
Apophis' gene-spliced seed stock, which did not produce plantable
seeds for the following season, Gene's marketing ploy of darkness.
Without their agricultural heritage, earth's nations would be
dependent on purchasing Gene's seeds every planting season.
Isabelle wanted to investigate further and left the operations room
for the vaults. She walked through the metal tunnel. At its end,
another hallway ran perpendicular and connected to the three
storage vaults. Outside, Tasha's platoon had reached the base of
the mountains with several miles of icen desert to cross before
they would reach the seed bank. The strong solar winds were causing
incredibly bright Northern Lights to stream across the night sky.
The intense ionization had reached low altitudes. A sudden magnetic
disturbance whipped one of the bands into the light sculpture on
the roof of the vault.

As it happens occasionally, the magnetic
field lines that continuously stream from earth's two polar regions
overlapped like the ripples by Fuji's waterfall and caused an
increase in their magnitude. Together with the strong influx of
charged particles from the sun, the atmosphere became a playground
for the forces of the universe. Isabelle found out when all the
lights turned off and a strange hum suddenly filled the air. Green
bands of light were arcing all across the metal-clad hallway. One
of the ribbons shot through Isabelle's jaw. The flow of current
shorted out the listening-device in her teeth. A few sparks shot
out of her mouth right as she cried out, more in surprise than in
pain. Her attention was quickly drawn away from her teeth. Ryan's
holographic key and her camera were smoldering and gave off white,
corrosive-smelling smoke in her bag. Before Isabelle had a moment
to deal with the small fire she was carrying, the power outage had
activated the enormous blast door's self-closing mechanism. She
sprinted towards the narrowing gap between the concrete slab and
the rock. Isabelle managed to slide through with little room to
spare, but her smoldering bag got caught and stayed sealed in
behind the massive concrete seal.

A frustrated Tasha was looking at a
signal
lost
message on her windshield. Spearheading her armada of
darkness, she forged across the distance of snow and ice that
separated them from their prey. There was a bigger problem,
however, than the lost signal. The stream of charged particles had
passed through the helicopter on its way to the light sculpture and
caused mayhem with its avionics. Onboard alarm bells sounded while
the crew could hear Tasha complain about her lost video feed over
the radio. The helicopter had gone into a violent tail-spin. The
uncontrolled move catapulted the Trooper who had earlier shot
tranquilizer darts into the snow. The platoon's pilot managed to
regain enough control over the large rescue-type helicopter to set
down on some solid ice. Unfortunately for him, he failed to see
that he angered more polar bears. A few Troopers in snow cats broke
formation to help the crew of the crash-landed helicopter.

The dark-blue paint of Tasha's snow cat's cab
glistened against the colorful sky. She was getting close to being
in firing range. A well-placed shot with her sniper rifle could put
a quick end to this affair, but the combat knife on her thigh told
another story. She did not fly across the globe to let her prey get
away unpunished. A bullet would have been the lazy way for Tasha to
end this hunt. She wanted Isabelle to see who was killing her in
one-on-one combat. This had become personal for Tasha. The
clandestine commander was reaching the height of the chase. Soon
she would pounce on her prey. Tasha was going to make Isabelle
suffer, she was going to enjoy this.

Tasha's plans changed when her snow cat's
engine shut down abruptly and her momentum threw her forward
towards the dashboard. The windshield projection turned into a
close-up of an impatient Gene, his voice boomed from the cab's
speakers. "This time she's gone too far. It's time to take her out
for good." The projection shut off. Tasha cringed, she could have
done without Gene's kill-order. She had made that decision long
ago.

In a plume of black exhaust, Tasha restarted
her snow cat's diesel-engine while she watched Isabelle get in her
electric four-wheel drive and speed off.

18 ISABELLE'S HANDS GET TAGGED

The next morning, Isabelle woke up in her bed
at Fuji's retreat. She had no recollection of going to sleep the
evening before. Her head was buzzing and she felt like she had been
unconscious, rather than asleep. Isabelle had barely gathered her
faculties when she noticed four scratch-marks running the length of
her wrist. Regardless, it was time to look after her puma. The
Arctic wasn't exactly a natural environment for the jungle cat.
Tonati had seen snow before, he used to love playing in it when
they lived in Alaska. Isabelle never considered how unusual Tonati
and her relationship with him were.

Dressed in sweats and a T-shirt, Isabelle
walked into the room where Tonati had spent the night. Fuji had set
it up with all the necessities for him. The puma came running to
Isabelle when she entered and nuzzled her with his large nose.
Isabelle fed him some meat she had grabbed from the kitchen on her
way. Tonati was hungry and ate everything. Isabelle pushed the
foot-pedal on the trashcan that sat near the door so she could
throw away the packaging from Tonati's breakfast. The bin was full
to the top, so Isabelle reached in to push down what appeared to be
little more than loose tissue-paper. She didn't notice the lid of
an open can that was obscured by the tissue and cut the palm of her
hand open.

Isabelle rushed to the bathroom and rinsed
her hand under cold water in the sink. She found a pack of adhesive
bandages behind the vanity mirror. Her cut was relatively small but
it continued to bleed. Isabelle remembered she might have germs on
her hands from the meat and thought it best to wash up with the
antibacterial liquid soap from the dispenser on the counter. A
swirl of red and white foam spiraled into the drain. Isabelle
splashed some water on her face and dried her hands and face with a
towel. She placed a stick-on bandage over the cut and headed off to
see Fuji.

Fuji had unlocked Tonati's room. Kato had
asked for the rest of the day off to take care of some personal
business and Fuji knew the puma since he was a cub. Tonati
considered him part of the pack. To expose the cat to more familiar
surroundings, Fuji had taken him to his winter garden, a
magnificent greenhouse that connected to the house's central area.
Isabelle saw her two confidants in the garden and proceeded to join
them. It was as if she had stepped into her yard but she was still
indoors, in the Arctic no less. Fuji noticed the blood-soaked
bandage on Isabelle's hand and the cuts on her wrist.

"Whoever gave you those scratches used them
to introduce a blood-thinner into your system." Before Isabelle
could even react to Fuji's statement, Tonati came bounding to her.
He growled at her hands and face. Isabelle wasn't used to this kind
of behavior from her cat at all. Fuji continued, "He sees something
on you."

"His vision works differently from ours. He
can see a whole different spectrum."

Isabelle remembered from one of her reports
that the world of espionage used radioactive isotopes as markers.
Such a tag would be extremely difficult to wash off and make
someone stand out on satellite images with little chance to hide or
blend into a crowd.

Fuji agreed with her. "Their methods are
serious business. The anti-coagulant is designed to keep you from
getting away on a plane."

Isabelle realized how lethal a trip by
aircraft might become. "The low pressure could cause a brain
hemorrhage."

Fuji nodded. "It would look like a stroke to
someone on the outside. Someone who's been near radioactive
materials is suspicious to most. You must take care in your
actions." Fuji gave her a look of genuine concern. "Isabelle, you
stand before something monumental."

"I'm beginning to see the common thread in
all the good and all the evil in the world."

The pivotal concept in Fuji's teachings to
Isabelle had always been that everything in the universe was
connected. He had been waiting a long time to hear her say the
words she had just uttered. Isabelle was ready. Fuji pulled a pouch
made of gold-colored fabric from the pocket of his smock. He handed
the glimmering satchel to Isabelle and watched her take out the
contents, a set of brilliantly shining Buddhist beads. Isabelle
held the strand of faceted labradorite and citrine beads. She
watched in fascination as they glistened purple and yellow in the
sunlight.

"Your mother and I spent many hours chanting
together. These were her beads. They carry her energy and will
protect you on your journey." Isabelle recognized the importance of
this gift. She didn't have a lot of memorabilia from her mother.
She felt safe, almost as if she could feel her mother's presence.
Isabelle was ready to fight. She felt like the young warrior who
was given her first weapon. For the first time, Isabelle knew there
was a way to defeat her pursuers and she would find it.

This was going to be the most difficult
opponent she ever had to face, but it was a battle worth
fighting.

19 AT THE SCIENCE MUSEUM

To shake off her pursuers, Isabelle first
wanted to find out what Tonati had seen all over her hands and
face. If it was radioactive, a Geiger counter would be the way to
find out. Isabelle reasoned a place that might have such a device
where she wouldn't raise suspicion might be a science museum. Fuji
loved the resourcefulness of his protégé. He gave Isabelle
directions to the town’s Science and Natural History Museum. It had
been built a decade earlier to help create incentive for mining
families to move to the island with their youngsters. Shortly after
the museum's construction, the mine collapsed under mysterious
circumstances and the area became little more than an Apophis
research outpost. The museum remained open for the children of
Apophis' scientists and had undergone major remodeling to adapt to
the digital age.