With These Eyes (11 page)

With all the anesthesia and tools in her
mouth, the best response Isabelle could muster was a distorted
smile of relief.

"Enola, please go ahead and mix the
compound."

The assistant combined an off-white powder
and a clear liquid to make the filling. Unseen by Isabelle, Monahan
placed one of the spheres into each of the two cavities before he
sealed them with the compound Enola had mixed. A few moments of
ultraviolet light from a special tool and the fillings were
hard.

"There you go, as good as new."

Doc Monahan's voice boomed from the speakers
in Tasha's command post. On the main viewer, a close-up of Isabelle
revealed that the dentist's glasses concealed one of Tasha's many
surveillance cameras. Another screen displayed a message:

Package Blue-Sphere Connection Active.

Isabelle responded to the suspicious-acting
physician. "Thank you, Doctor. That wasn't so bad."

Her voice sounded clear as it came over the
speakers. As each word rang out inside the bottle truck, it
appeared in a written transcript on-screen. A satisfied smile
spread across Tasha's face. "Now you're mine," she whispered under
her breath, gently running a finger down the cheek of Isabelle's
image on the monitor.

Isabelle was on her way back to the reception
where Aetna had finished with her nails and moved on to plucking
her eyebrows. "Do you think I could use the phone for a moment? My
cell phone hasn't worked all day," she asked the rather bubbly
person with tweezers.

"Of course, right over there."

Aetna's hand stopped tweezing long enough to
waive her depilatory tool in the direction of a side table in the
waiting area. Isabelle walked past the two Troopers who were
pretending to wait for their appointments. She picked up the
phone's receiver and dialed her father's home number. Instead of a
ring or an answer, a recording played over the line.

Due to quarantine in the area you are
calling, your call cannot be completed as dialed. Please try your
call again later.

Isabelle could feel the blood flushing from
her face and land in her stomach. She had little concern facing
whoever this new-found enemy was herself, but she knew they were
too much for her father to be victorious. That much aggression
directed at Isabelle and her father at the same time could not have
been a coincidence. She knew there was a common thread. Barely
acknowledging the receptionist's good-bye, she went outside.
Isabelle was sunken in deep concern. She took a seat on her bike
and with her helmet on, she rode off.

Tasha's dark platoon and command post took
pursuit of the young lightworker.

13 LION CAGE

After a brief stop at home, Isabelle had
reached her father Lionel's neighborhood. Tasha and her Troopers
loosened their noose of surveillance enough to stay unnoticed. The
water-bottle truck and its 12 undercover cars swarmed out and
populated the side streets to keep a low profile. After all, Tasha
knew Isabelle would try to get to her father, and that in itself
was going to draw plenty of attention.

The neighborhood was eerily quiet. Isabelle
was used to seeing people in their yards or walking their dogs, but
this day even the birds were gone from the trees. She approached
her father’s street. She saw the reason for the unusual silence. A
row of dark SUVs and an armored personnel carrier reinforced a
roadblock hurriedly cobbled together with wooden barriers and a
double-helix of barbed wire. A sign warned:

Monkey Flu Quarantine

Several Troopers dressed in black combat
uniforms and armed with machine guns stood in threatening poses in
front of the barriers. Isabelle rode up to the roadblock.

A Trooper raised his weapon and shouted,
"Quarantine area - no stopping!"

Isabelle opted to voice her intentions. "My
father lives over there. I've been trying to reach him. I must see
him."

Another Trooper cocked his gun and took aim
at Isabelle while barking, "Communications with quarantinees are
not permitted. Phone calls could be used to encourage others to
evade proper health protocol. Keep moving or be fired upon!"

Isabelle closed the dark visor of her helmet
and sped off. She wasn't leaving, though. Instead, she rode to the
fire-access road that lead up the hill behind Lionel's house.
Isabelle and her father had often gone for walks there. Lionel
enjoyed being on that road because the hill obscured the city and
left him a view of nothing but trees and the back of his house.
Isabelle could see the dining room window. Inside, Lionel's
grandfather clock struck noon. The table was set for supper for
one. She saw her father enter the room. He looked weak and ill. Her
perspective didn't allow her to see his face grimace a groan as he
took his seat at the table. Isabelle pointed the bike's headlight
towards him and flashed the high-beam on and off. Lionel took note
and a smile came to his face when he recognized his daughter on the
hill outside. She pulled her reporter's walkie-talkie out of the
saddlebag. Its weathered chassis bore the beacon of truth. Three
words at the base of the symbol’s torch identified it as part of
Lionel’s lifetime achievement.

Alaska News Network

Isabelle saw the joyous expression on her
father's disease-stricken face. She waved the two-way radio in the
air next to her smiling face. Lionel didn't take long to catch on
to Isabelle's idea. He signaled "O.K." by touching the tips of his
index finger and thumb together and left the dining room.

Lionel went to his study, a room clad in dark
cherry wood and mahogany. Journalism awards just like the ones in
Isabelle's home and office filled various shelves. An entire wall
was covered in plaques and framed photographs of the de Fleur
family before the separation between Gemma and him. On the floor
beneath the decorated wall was Lionel's old reporter's chest - a
trunk where he kept the tools of his trade from before they had
become digital toys. He pushed the lid open. Among the items inside
were his first newsman's typewriter, note pads filled with
interviews of world leaders and the item he came to get: a tabletop
two-way radio. Lionel grabbed the transceiver with its attached
microphone and hurried back to the dining room best he could.
Lionel's breath was short and labored. Beads of sweat were forming
on his forehead. The virus had taken quite a toll on his health.
Isabelle's father placed the device on the side table under the
window. He saw Isabelle's face light up when she spotted the radio.
When Lionel plugged it in, he had his doubts whether he'd be able
to talk to Isabelle at all. The transmitter required the use of a
rooftop antenna to function. He flipped the old-fashioned power
switch to the
on
position. The frequency dial glimmered
yellow. Lionel turned the selector to channel 23, which he and
Isabelle had often used when she was following a hot story. He held
the microphone in front of his face and keyed the
talk
button with his thumb.

"Isabelle!"

Her voice came crackling over the speaker.
"Dad - are you okay?"

"I've got the flu. Some of Apophis' goons
gave me a shot and ordered me to stay home."

"I'll get you out of there!"

"They killed the Weavers' dog and took the
whole family with them." Lionel sneezed, sweat covered his face. He
was weakened so much from the illness that he pulled a chair over
from the dining table and sat down.

It made Isabelle suffer to see her father who
had withstood foes and disease all his life be too ill to stand up.
This bothered her more than the night with the water heater or
Tasha's attempts to intimidate her. Isabelle kept up the front of a
smile and keyed her radio. "I'll go on the air with this," she said
with a tone of certainty, but Lionel knew that wouldn't help the
situation.

"Remember what happened with your story in
Alaska? This is much bigger than you can take on alone. If you air
this, they will definitely come after you. Don't worry about me,
I'll be fine."

The transmission ended abruptly. Without an
antenna for the radio waves to go to, their energy fried the
transmitter's delicate electronics. Sparks and a puff of smoke left
little doubt about the radio's condition.

"Dad? Dad!"

The darkness of silence filled the channel.
Several black SUVs appeared at the bottom of the hill.
Heavily-armed Troopers in black combat uniforms were riding on the
vehicles' step boards. The militaristic off-road vehicles tore up
the gravel that covered the small fire-road on their way towards
Isabelle. She saw her father's eyes looking at her with love.

"I love you, dad!" she shouted and jumped
back on her bike.

A smile came over Lionel's face. He felt the
love and admiration Isabelle had for him. The warm midday sun
illuminated a man behind his window who knew more about all this
than he liked. He also knew his daughter, the journalist. The SUVs
had come half way up the incline. Isabelle broke eye contact with
her father to put on her helmet and start the engine of her
enduro
. Without waiting another beat, she sped off. Isabelle
reached the pinnacle of the hill where the road terminated in a
fire-department helipad. The large concrete area was lined on one
side by a row of bright red hydrants. Isabelle loved the top of
this little mountain. The plateau overlooked the Silverlake, which
until a year ago had been a drinking-water reservoir. She looked at
the avocado grove that covered the west face of the hill. It had
been planted in a deal that gave Apophis permission to drain the
lake and harvest underground oil reserves. Silverlake had been
deemed hazardous to human health from a non-permitted test drill
during Christmas weekend a few years prior.

Isabelle raced down through the many avocado
trees. She recognized that humans were very much a part of the
nature from which they sprang. The way Isabelle saw it, Mother
Nature looked out for those who protected her. This would be no
different. It didn't seem odd to her at all that when she needed
it, she found the protection of a forest that shouldn't exist. It
was as if it had to come into existence for a greater plan to take
place. The SUVs had reached the cement platform at the crest of the
hill. Isabelle caught a glimpse of them in her rearview mirror and
saw the convoy turning back. She had only one thought: to save her
father.

Inside the water-bottle truck, Tasha watched
in fascination as her prey evaded the convoy of Troops. She so
rarely encountered a worthy opponent. She loved to challenge
herself as a warrior.

"Let me see a close-up of the package from
the bird."

The pilot of the remote-control helicopter
made a few changes and the image zoomed in until Isabelle's face
filled the main view-screen of her spy truck. The noise of the
engine and of avocado branches whipping against Isabelle's helmet
covered the sound of Tasha's drone. Tasha's command post and
platoon were on their way to the other side of the hill. It was a
slow drive. The roads were jammed for miles with traffic on its way
to the
Hollywood Bowl
. The doors to the amphitheater had
opened for an evening of fireworks and classical music as part the
week-long celebrations of the Apophis merger.

After a relatively swift ride, Isabelle
parked her bike and walked over to a pay phone in a parking lot at
the bottom of the avocado grove. The drone's imaging system had
been programmed to follow the position of Isabelle's tooth
transmitter. Her picture remained framed with the precision and
relentlessness of a machine. Isabelle found a dollar in change in
her pocket, just enough for a local call. She picked up the
receiver and dropped the shining coins into the phone's slot. As
she punched in the number, it appeared on one of Tasha's screens.
Isabelle dialed the last digit and Tasha's display read:

Call to Fuji Satori - Call Screen Active.

A computer voice announced: "No one is
available right now. Please leave a message after the tone."

Isabelle's words appeared on the tooth
monitor as she spoke them.

"Fuji, things have gotten worse. I need to
speak to you in private. Could you please meet me where we used to
watch the whales? I'll be there at sunset - look for the
Jungle
Gem
."

One of the Troopers typed on his keyboard. He
cross-referenced
Jungle Gem
with Isabelle's dossier. "That
would be the SS Jungle Gem, package holds registry to the vessel.
GPS confirms the ship in her berth at Marina Del Rey." A few more
keystrokes and the Trooper continued. "Cell phone and credit card
records indicate only seaside location where both parties met at
regular intervals to be the
Falafel Frigate
located on the
Santa Monica pier." Tasha wasn't the kind of hunter who liked to
chase after someone. She enjoyed that her technology enabled her to
know where Isabelle was going to be so she could be waiting there
well-prepared. It gave Tasha the home advantage; "Release the
call," was her command to the Trooper who transferred Isabelle's
message to Fuji's voicemail.

With the click of a mouse, Fuji had an
incoming message displayed on his phone.

14 JUNGLE GEM

Isabelle took the freeway to change up her
travel pattern. This was a day when she welcomed all the traffic
around her which appeared to have taken the place of Tasha's
Troopers. After a tedious ride in traffic that shared many
qualities with taffy, Isabelle arrived at the marina. As soon as
she took her helmet off, the buzzing of the drone overhead
confirmed that she still wasn't alone. Isabelle unlocked the
gridded door to the dock. She could feel the stare of her pursuer’s
electronic eye boring through her as she walked to her ship's
mooring place.

The 'Jungle Gem' was a stunning 40-foot
sailboat with enough amenities to circumnavigate the globe. A tall
mast rose to the heavens from its teak deck. Below, a well-equipped
galley was part of a large multipurpose area connected to ample
state rooms in the bow and stern. Isabelle opened a dockside locker
and pulled out a toolbox. With it in hand, she boarded her vessel.
Isabelle took out a cordless screwdriver and, starting with the
pilot's station, made a sweep of the entire vessel removing
electronics. It didn't take Isabelle long - the lockbox on the dock
was brimming with sonar, radar, GPS, the ship's radio and anything
else that might have provided an opportunity to be tracked or
watched by an outsider. She hadn't carried a watch or phone since
the day before. Isabelle extended her arm towards the sun which was
nearing the horizon over the pacific. Two fingers width was left
between sun and ocean which meant to Isabelle 20 minutes until
sunset. That was how long she needed to reach her rendezvous with
Fuji. Isabelle was in the rhythm of the universe. She closed up the
lockbox and turned to untie her boat at the stern when Isabelle's
eyes caught her name. She had named the ship in honor of her
mother. Gemma had vanished in the firestorm that destroyed the
jungle village where she worked on her research. The only time when
they had all lived as a family was during the years right after
Isabelle was born. She had been too young then to understand what
her mother's research was about, but Isabelle's childhood gave her
a fun familiarity with natural sciences. It was this familiarity
that had kept her interested in physics and chemistry all her life.
Her mother had so often told her that understanding was the key to
a greater life. Often, Isabelle wondered if her mother had solved
the mysteries of the universe before she perished. A flock of
seagulls swarmed around Isabelle's head and shook her out of her
daydream. It was time for the
Jungle Gem
to cast off. It
took Isabelle just a few moments to remove its blue rain cover and
hoist the main sail before she was on her way out of the
marina.