With These Eyes (21 page)

Isabelle gave Ralf a grateful look. She knew
he was taking a great risk. "Thanks, it'll be our little
secret."

Ralf didn't seem worried, he was taken by
Isabelle's presence. The train slowed to a stop. It appeared the
short side-track had ended. "Better hide from the scanner," she
heard Ralf say as he pointed towards the windows by her face.

Isabelle ducked quickly. Ralf leaned over her
so his face would reach the biometrics reader outside. The smell of
burning Bakelite yielded to the sensuous aroma of lavender. Ralf's
attention was drawn in by Isabelle. The cab of his engine never
quite smelled this pleasant before. Isabelle couldn't help but
notice his well proportioned body while she waited for the scanner
to finish. Isabelle was cognizant of the attraction Ralf felt for
her and she was taken with him. She found the selfless act of
risking his livelihood to be Ralf’s most attractive quality, not to
mention the fact that he let her drive his train. Isabelle pulled
her thoughts back to her mission, which had to take precedence over
personal desires. Not a moment too soon, the green light from the
signal was shining into the train's cab. Isabelle re-emerged from
below. She saw that the wall of the tunnel tube's dead-end was
actually a door. The enormous concrete disk rolled aside into a
utility room just off to the right.

"Go ahead, quarter speed," said Ralf.

Isabelle moved the throttle to the
slow
mark with her right hand. The train moved forward and
down a second decline. Isabelle and Ralf failed to notice a
night-vision camera that was hidden in the dark of the secret
entrance. Isabelle's image was captured automatically and checked
against the list of Apophis' undesired individuals. She had moved
to the top of the list. This meant that images captured globally
were checked against her biometrics before anyone else.

Gene and Tasha had the ability to instantly
identify Isabelle when she would show up on any of the world's
networked cameras.

26 THE DRAGON SLAYER AND THE SERPENT
BEAST

Gene and Tasha, however, weren't the only
ones interested in finding Isabelle. While the defender of truth
was busy deep below the ocean floor, Ryan was speeding towards
Berlin high above the clouds. The new day's sunrise bathed the
luxury airliner's cabin in an eerie red light. Ryan was doing his
best to blend in with board members and lawmakers on the upstairs
lounge deck. A buffet comprised of meat from endangered species and
50 year-old champagne was popular with many of the travelers. When
Ryan realized the buffet served gorilla-steak and leopard, he
struggled to contain his outrage. As wrong comment could have
landed him on the least desired list, not a good place to be at
30,000 feet. Ryan's mind was clambering to comprehend the
atrocities Apophis was committing on a steady basis when his train
of thought took a turn. He was wearing liquid-crystal video glasses
so he could monitor his global search for Isabelle discretely. Ryan
was startled when his field of view was filled with a night-vision
image of Isabelle at the biometrics scanner. He mumbled to himself,
"What are you, some sort of super-hero?" Ryan hadn't noticed
Senator Yubellow standing by his side who had overheard him.

The crooked politician turned to Ryan.
"
Super-hero
is a bit much, but thank you. You can still call
me
Senator
. I didn't make the virus, just the law."

Ryan realized what the senator was saying.
Monkey flu had been created as a weapon. Ryan was adjusting his
belief system to the awful information that had streamed in his
direction on the flight alone. He pushed his glasses up as he
watched Yubellow speechlessly. The dark senator reached for an hors
d'oeuvre. With a sinister grin, Yubellow bit the head off his
appetizer. This was too much for the young man’s stomach.

With a green face, Ryan excused himself and
returned downstairs to his seat where he made friends with his
airsickness bag.

27 AN OCTOPUS' GARDEN

The train was taking Ralf and Isabelle deep
below the ocean. The two had descended several hundred meters when
they reached an underground loading dock. The area resembled a
subway station. The platform was occupied by several pieces of
heavy equipment. Among them were a cargo crane and
futuristic-looking transporter with room for several cargo crates.
Isabelle stopped the train in front of the red signal at the end of
the platform. The secret underground facility had sparked her
curiosity. The cargo crane began its process of lifting crates off
the train and onto the vehicle on the platform.

"The transporter moves them into the facility
after the train has cleared the platform."

Her new friend's statement didn't give
Isabelle much information. She climbed off the train. Ralf had
always stayed in his cab in accordance with company regulations
during the unloading process. Since Isabelle was looking around, he
felt compelled to follow. Both walked past the enormous
transporter. The automated loading process of its cars continued.
Ahead of the large cargo mover was the facility's main entrance. It
resembled the door of a large bank vault and was made entirely out
of tungsten, a tremendously rare and expensive metal. A golden door
would have cost far less to manufacture. There was no visible gap
between the door and the rock into which its opening was carved.
The installation showed no lock or biometrics panel.

What Isabelle didn't know was that Ryan was
about to help her on her mission. He had come to the realization
Apophis' intentions were far from honorable. Ryan had let go of his
airsickness bag and was holding a digital tablet on his lap.
Several data and video streams filled the screen that was about the
size of a magazine. A web-crawler was deleting files that showed
any recently captured images of Isabelle. This was reducing the
success rate of Tasha's global search. Another portion displayed an
image from a security camera on the loading dock below the ocean
floor. Ryan saw Ralf and Isabelle standing in front of the
vault-like door. An icon shaped like a padlock was superimposed
across the door's center. A title on the top identified the
location of the camera.

Öresund Landing Dock - Level 13 Clearance
Require
d.

Ryan held down several of the pads
soft-keys
for a moment. The message
Maintenance Mode
appeared on the edge. Ryan pushed the lock icon to the side. A new
message appeared in place of the security warning.

Main Entrance - Maintenance Access

Isabelle and Ralf heard the hissing of
hydraulic cylinders. A mechanism retracted the giant cylindrical
latches that extended from the circular door into the rock like the
rays of the sun. Ralf jumped back. He felt the need to warn
Isabelle, although he must have realized she would have heard the
same noise. With a smile, Isabelle stepped back and together with
Ralf, she watched the enormous silvery door swing open as if
someone was inviting them in. At least that's how Isabelle took it
when she saw the lights come on inside. She walked through the
impressive doorway that would have been big enough for a truck to
pull through unhindered. She briefly turned back to Ralf.

"C'mon."

He had frozen in his tracks. The Apophis
Corporation had made itself a name for dealing brutally with
suspected spies through their
data gathering
subsidiary AGC.
Ralf had diligently followed protocol in the past, but what kind of
a man would he have been, had he not followed Isabelle, a woman,
through the door. Ralf ran a few steps to catch up with Isabelle.
His jaw dropped in amazement as he stepped beyond the armored
doorway. Isabelle and her new-found friend were standing in a
brightly lit atrium, several stories in height. The walls, floor
and ceiling of the enormous hall consisted of polished marble.
There wasn't a single seam, it appeared the entire structure had
been carved into an underground marble deposit. The precision and
megalithic proportions of this construction were only rivaled by
the Bosnian pyramid complex.

Doors along the walls on each side indicated
there was much more to be found. The floor at the center of the
grand hall was occupied by a solid-gold inlay in the shape of the
sun. The golden disk was surrounded by a ring of rays, a slightly
smaller design of Gene's helipad in Los Angeles. Near the sun
towered a marker. It was made up of four carved stone tablets,
which immediately sparked Isabelle's interest. She crossed to the
middle of the room, Ralf remained in awe, just inside the large
entrance. The tablets were covered in writings from three major
civilizations long gone. Isabelle recognized the text had been
written separately in Egyptian hieroglyphics, Viking runes and
Sanskrit. All three languages incorporated a character that
resembled the stylized depiction of an orb, as if they were telling
the same story to many people. Isabelle looked back towards Ralf
who was getting curious about all the closed doors. She saw him
cautiously moving towards a row of the mysterious doorways.

"These people know a lot most others don't."
said Isabelle and turned her attention back to the stone
tablets.

Ralf's curiosity drove him to join Isabelle
at the stone tablets. Somehow the writings in ancient symbols had
caught her attention. Although she had never learned how to read
any of these old symbols, the tablets didn't seem completely
foreign to her. Something was telling her to keep looking. Rather
than trying to decipher each symbol individually, Isabelle took a
step back and viewed the overall design of each of the four
tablets. She took in the pattern that emerged in the grouping of
the symbols. Each of the four tablets was sectioned into three
horizontal portions of a different language.

The marble's rosy tint and colorful swirls of
green and blue gave it a very exquisite appearance. The carvings
had been chiseled out at a very precise angle, much like the marks
someone would leave with a V-shaped arrowhead in soft clay.
Isabelle took a few steps to her left so the inside wall of each
carving was obscured by the tablet's surface. She was looking at
the tablets at the angle of the chisel-marks of each character. A
new pattern emerged. She noticed a similar overall shape on each of
the stone slabs. Within that carved shape, the colorful streaks of
the marble formed incomplete elements to something greater.
Isabelle thought back to her experience at the museum. Her
consciousness applied the same technique when it assembled parts of
the mural into what became Isabelle's vision of the rise of
darkness over humanity.

Isabelle was concentrating, looking at all
four tablets at the same time. Something was registering in the
young woman’s mind. She could feel that something was there that
she understood.

Fuji had taught Isabelle all levels of
consciousness were part of her spirit. If she was just aware enough
of her spirit as a whole, then she should be able to access all its
levels, even those that lay buried. Isabelle let her mind go to
follow the path of what laid hidden. Her consiousness accepted the
four images were truly one. Suddenly the lightbearer’s
consciousness allowed her to be aware of what it had already seen:
The static, two-dimensional carvings of all four panes had all the
elements needed to unite into a three-dimensional animation. This
was just like what Isabelle had experienced with the Viking
painting in the museum. Ralf saw little other than writing in
foreign symbols. Isabelle's eyes on the other hand, were letting
her see the hidden message. Right before Isabelle's eyes the image
of two ancient desert settlements appeared.

Her vision took Isabelle to a time 2,500
years earlier. Two communities, Sodom and Gomorra laid isolated in
the Middle Eastern desert. Happy banter and laughter echoed through
the streets and alleys of both communities. People were going about
their business when a glowing orb appeared in the sky. The sphere
looked a lot like the one she saw in her first vision, where it had
been captured. The luminous orb was as bright as a lightning bolt.
It was only about the size of a basket ball. It appeared to have a
skin made of light and an orange-yellow glowing nimbus that covered
its entirety. The phenomenon accelerated swiftly towards the little
town of Sodom. On its way, it made a few jagged turns, like a
balloon would in a windstorm. The orb passed through the
window-shutters of one of the houses. Moments later, it shot out
through the window on the other side of the small dwelling. The
shutters lit up in flames the instant the orb passed through their
solid structure. The house's door flew open and a man came running
outside, the flesh burnt off to the bone on his arm and the side of
his face. The orb continued its destructive path into another
house. Several more spheres appeared in the sky and rained down on
both towns. Destruction and suffering spread throughout. The
burning cities vanished and now Isabelle stood before a depiction
of ancient Rome.

This time a single one of the fiery
phenomenon appeared out of a lightning storm and descended on the
imperial capitol. On its way through town it left a trail of fire
and burning people until it crashed into a stone wall and shattered
into hundreds of smaller pieces that eventually fizzled out.

The image disappeared, Isabelle's vision
returned to normal. By now she had figured out what she saw was
ball lightning, the very mystery that had brought so much turmoil
to her life. The influence of ball lightning on human history was
becoming clear to her. She looked at Ralf.

"Sodom and Gomorra, the Roman legend of the
Chariots of Fire, they were all just ball lightning. Each time
those who understood what was truly behind these calamities blamed
divine intervention and kept the masses in fear. The results were
wealth and power over those who lacked understanding."