With These Eyes (22 page)

Ralf looked at her perplexed. "What's ball
lightning?"

Knowing the answer to that question was what
would decide the fate of humanity. Isabelle's attention had shifted
to the many doorways along the perimeter of the marble atrium. Most
of them were large enough to fit a tractor, a few looked like
office doors. Isabelle walked to one of the smaller ones. The
stylized leaf-glyph was posted on a marker by the door jam. Ralf
followed Isabelle inside where they found seed containers from
various nations that looked exactly like the ones in the seed bank.
Stacks of the green plastic crates filled one side of the area.
Isabelle examined the many containers.

"These look like the crates that have been
coming through the port on their way to the seed bank," noticed
Ralf.

Isabelle wondered, "if you were shipping them
to Spitsbergen, why are they here?"

"If they're here, what went to Spitsbergen?"
Ralf asked.

Isabelle looked around. By another wall were
several workstations with bags of grain. The bags contained cereal
crops from corn to wheat and all were marked
Genetically
Enhanced.

Ralf was looking at a clipboard with shipping
manifests. "Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Angola. There are grains here from
every nation on the planet."

In a cupboard above the workstation, Isabelle
found seals for the crates manufactured by Apophis. She added, "and
the seals to repackage the crates."

This made little sense to Ralf. He had to ask
the obvious. "What if a nation withdraws their seeds because they
need them after a disaster to rebuild their agriculture?"

Isabelle saw the problem. "One season and the
farmers would be left with nothing."

"Sounds like a sure way to get caught robbing
your own bank," said Ralf.

"Unless you don't expect anyone to make a
withdrawal." Eager to quench her thirst for knowledge, Isabelle
exited the room, Ralf a few steps behind.

In the marble atrium Isabelle noticed one
particular doorway with a bright glow shining through its cracks.
She walked towards it, Ralf followed hesitantly. Isabelle opened
the door and revealed a stadium-size hall. Bright lights on the
cavern's ceiling illuminated a huge wheat field that covered the
ground. A few potted trees sat on pallets near the doorway. The
field seemed to continue forever into the hollowed-out ground.

"Looks like these walls were meant to
withstand more than the pressure of the sea above," said
Isabelle.

Ralf walked over to the pallets of trees. A
spicy-sweet smell, reminiscent of the winter holidays was in the
air. He smelled one of the trees’ branches and commented, "These
things smell like cloves."

This was something Isabelle remembered from
the past. She walked over to Ralf and looked at the trees. Isabelle
rubbed one of the leaves between her thumb and index finger and
took a whiff. "These are choji trees."

"What?"

"Cloves, Ralf. I remember this well. The
jungle village where my mother worked had these growing throughout.
Before it was destroyed by lightning."

Without warning, the field's overhead
irrigation system came to life with the force of fire sprinklers.
Isabelle and Ralf were getting soaked to their skin as they rushed
to the atrium.

Meanwhile, Tasha's hovercraft continued its
course to the Copenhagen seaport at the west bank of the bay. The
Trooper had notified Danish authorities that Isabelle, the
international terrorist and kidnapper, was expected to land
shortly. Her Troopers were preparing to invade the town to assure
Isabelle's capture. Tasha was basking in confidence. She saw no way
out of her trap for Isabelle. In her smugness, Tasha thought it
appropriate to finally take the tour of the craft that the Captain
had been offering since their departure from the Arctic island.
Together, they climbed down the metal stairs to the engineering
deck. The Sea Captain acted like a child who was boasting to his
friends about a new toy.

"This ship is the first of its kind. No
chemical or nuclear fuel."

Tasha looked at him with an expression of
disbelief. With a tone of condescension, she replied, "That's
impossible. Even a kid knows you need fuel to make energy."

"A kid raised in the current school system.
Let me show you something."

He opened the entrance to the hovercraft's
generator room. The doorway passed through 50 cm of graphite. The
entire room was shielded from the rest of the ship in this manner.
The walls were mostly barren, aside from a few gauges and panels.
Its center was occupied by a device approximately the size and
shape of a large household refrigerator. A bindingly-bright light
was shining from a circular window in the center of the device.
Tasha looked surprised. She had been sure she knew about all
technology employed in Apophis' fleet of surveillance vehicles.
This was very intriguing to the young warrior.

The Sea Captain boasted, "Powers everything -
propulsion, navigation, your little room. It even provides an
unlimited supply of hot and cold drinking water from the sea
underneath us."

"What is it - some kind of nuclear
reactor?"

"No, it's a quantum energy generator."

The Captain grabbed two sets of goggles off
the wall and handed one to Tasha. He put the other pair over his
eyes. The old salt directed Tasha towards the glass on the machine.
Behind the glass was the device's reaction chamber. Tasha's dark
goggles allowed her to cut the bright glare inside and distinguish
some of the details. A glowing sphere hovered in the chamber
between two metal electrodes. A tungsten rod that lead to the
chamber's wall was the only item in contact with the luminous orb
which resembled what Isabelle had encountered in her visions.

The Captain added, "It's ball lightning in a
bottle."

Tasha prided herself on her up to date
knowledge of technology, but at that moment, she was looking at
something completely alien to her.

"Is it solid? Looks like an electric Mylar
balloon."

"It's hollow. Even the skin has practically
no mass. It's basically a super-atom, comprised of millions of
nuclei. The glowing skin is the electron cloud that surrounds any
atom's nucleus."

Tasha was clambering to understand. She
remembered from chemistry class that every atom had a nucleus, then
a lot of empty space and somewhere in that empty space was the
other part, the electron. So she figured, the Captain's machine
made a giant atom out of many normal-sized ones. This defied so
many things she had learned.

The Captain continued. "When we turn the
machine off, everything returns to normal. The super-atom turns
back into the nitrogen it took from the air. No dangerous waste,
yet it's a billion times more powerful than any nuclear
reaction."

"Does that include Chernobyl?" asked
Tasha.

"And Hiroshima."

The Captain's answer made Tasha realize this
could be used for causes other than peace on earth. It would bring
absolute power to those who possessed the knowledge. What she
didn't realize, built as a bomb, a quantum device could destroy the
entire solar system in a few minutes' time. With visions of swift
wars on her mind, Tasha looked at the Captain.

"The military has this?"

The Captain shook his head. "No one has this.
Imagine what they would do with it?"

Tasha was doing exactly that.

He continued. "It would also be the end of
the Tefis Corporation. Who'd pay for energy if everyone knew they
can power their cars and houses on their own?"

This conversation was interrupted when one of
Tasha's Troopers rushed in. "Ma'am, the package has gained access
to the Öresund facility."

Tasha looked angry. To let her prey slip away
was a blow for which she hadn't been prepared. Much worse though,
was the fact that Isabelle had entered one of the company's secret
installations. The firm had many across the globe, their respective
functions were only known to the personnel of each site. Tasha
didn't question the purpose of any of Apophis' underground
structures. She was, however, sworn to protect their covert status
at all cost. Gene would be extremely unpleasant unless she put an
end to Isabelle, once and for all. As long as Isabelle was
trespassing in secrecy, she would once again be easy to eliminate
without a trace. Tasha's anger gave way to a burning
blood-lust.

"That's too bad for her. Shut her in, prepare
for battle!"

"Yes, ma'am."

The Trooper rushed back to the control room.
Tasha turned to the skipper, who was waiting to finish his speech
on quantum energy and photon bombs.

"Make way for the island at the tunnel
entrance!"

Disappointed, the Sea Captain stepped out of
the shielded room to get to one of the ship's squawk boxes where he
relayed Tasha's orders to the bridge. Within a moment's time, the
heavy craft came about and forged across the bay, capsizing several
smaller boats in its turbulent wake. The Trooper who had brought
Tasha the news of Isabelle's advance, had returned to the ship's
surveillance room. He repeated her new directive.

"Close the door to the Öresund facility."

"Aye, Aye," replied one of the Troopers at
the console whose attempts to shut Isabelle and Ralf in were less
than successful.

"Sir, the door isn’t reacting."

The other Trooper sat down in the room's
center seat to try his luck with the main gate. Both were
struggling with Ryan's override. The panel's screen showed a
schematic of the atrium. The Trooper tried to slide the
padlock-shaped icon back over the graphic of the entrance. After
each attempt, the symbol would slide back into the corner of his
touch-sensitive display. "Someone's overriding the system - find
the source and neutralize it." All three of the Troopers in the
control room were working feverishly to trace the reason, but
remained unable to close the main entrance.

The source of their difficulties was sitting
in his seat onboard Apophis' elite jet. Ryan had his hands full
with the digital pad. His systems administrator's screen mirrored
the Trooper's display. Each time Tasha’s team moved the lock into
place, Ryan pushed it back to the side. Ryan knew it wouldn't be
long before the command was rerouted or he was discovered.

Below the ocean floor, soaking wet Isabelle
and Ralf continued to explore the secret farm. Isabelle's puzzle
was beginning to form a grim picture of Gene's activities. "The
wind farm across the bay is about the right size to light the field
and heat the ground sufficiently for plant growth and to make the
sea water outside suitable for irrigation."

Curiously, Ralf opened another one of the
doorways in the atrium. Beyond the gate laid a cavern, identical to
the last one, except it was dark and the earthen ground laid cold
and barren. Ralf and Isabelle opened several other doorways, all to
vacant fields when he commented, "Each field could grow enough
grain to fill an entire train load. If all these fields were in
use, this farm could feed a small country."

Isabelle looked at Ralf, there was an
important factor he had overlooked. "It would take an enormous
amount of energy to grow crops on all those fields."

Isabelle's conversation was, once again,
about to be cut short. Ryan's attempts to continually override
Tasha's Troopers came to an end when his uplink to the company
satellite was discovered. Tasha had returned to her surveillance
room and was impatiently waiting for the farm's blast door to
close. Her Trooper reported success. "Ma'am, the override came from
somewhere over the Atlantic. We've shut it down."

Isabelle and Ralf saw the heavy door
gradually beginning to close. There was only a few seconds' time
before the colossal slab of tungsten would seal the secret cavern
off from the outside. The two ran towards the narrowing gap of the
exit. With his shoes still wet from the sprinklers, Ralf slipped
and fell flat on his face when his ankle gave. Isabelle, who had
almost gotten to the door, heard his yelp and ran back to Ralf. She
helped him off the ground and let him brace himself by putting his
arm around her shoulder. Together, Isabelle and Ralf hobbled
through at the very last moment, just before the enormous door
slammed shut. The buzzing sound of the hydraulics echoed across the
loading dock as thick steel cylinders extended into the rock.

At this point, the hovercraft was nearing
the artificial island's small port. In a whirlwind of water, the
enormous ship thundered across the docks and onto the adjacent
truck parking-lot. The rotor wash from the powerful craft equaled
that of several helicopters landing. Seagulls scattered in all
directions. A few garbage cans toppled and their contents were
strewn across the cement square. The craft's pressure wave turned
several empty beer bottles left there by infrequent dock-workers
into projectiles. A nearby maintenance truck's window shattered in
the blast of bottles and dirt. Tasha’s troops were assembled on the
main deck. The hovercraft's gigantic rotors were spinning down. The
amphibian ship set down and immediately, two dozen clandestine
Troopers and their angry leader stormed the island. This time, the
strike force was armed to their teeth, ready to kill. A Trooper
nearing the fire ship called out. "Ma'am!"

Tasha trotted to him to see what he had
found. "That bitch!" she exclaimed when she saw the icebreaker's
bright yellow submersible moored between the harbor's tug boat and
the fire ship. The sight of the vessel Isabelle had used to evade
her carefully laid out trap fueled Tasha's fury. The hunter felt
like her prey was mocking her. The chase had become so much more
than just another job. Isabelle had destroyed Tasha's success rate
and she had now become a threat to the entire commando. Tasha's
ability to dispose of undesirables relied heavily on the fact that
many of her attacks were done in hiding. She had to finish Isabelle
off to protect her own existence. The woman she sought had come
back into reach. Tasha froze. For a split second, it was as if she
could feel how close Isabelle was to her. Tasha glanced across the
rail yard - there it was: The tunnel that would lead her to what
she was seeking. Tasha didn't have the patience for an assault on
foot. She had a better idea and headed towards the truck parking
lot.