Isabelle pushed the black curtain aside and walked inside when a mother and her child were briefly illuminated by the flash of a strobe. The wall opposite the light was coated in green phosphorous. The pair cast stark shadows onto the greenish wall. Their outlines remained glowing bright green everywhere the wall had been exposed to the flash of light. The luminous image slowly faded. The duo walked off. Isabelle remained in the pitch-black booth. She placed her right hand against the phosphoresced wall. For a few beats, the wall was illuminated where her skin had made contact. Isabelle had actually caused the phosphorus to glow. Aside from the photons in a beam of light, radioactivity could have such an effect. The strobe flashed and the entire wall radiated green light, washing out the luminous outline of her hand.
Isabelle wasn't too surprised, she had always had faith in Tonati's judgment. Few people would have ever noticed being tagged by a radioactive marker. In so many ways, Isabelle had an edge over most who Tasha hunted without even having to try.
While Isabelle felt like she was getting a step ahead with her relentless pursuer, Tasha and her Troopers were busily working on their trap. The commander’s orders emanated from her Troopers' earpieces and cell phones. "Purple 17 and 23 you're a German couple on vacation and your daughter has just gone missing. Let's create records for a family of three. Report to command post in costume on the double!"
Minutes later, the two Troopers entered the garbage truck's interior through a door concealed by a recycling poster. "Passports of the von Strauss-family are in the printer, DNA of the package is in the fridge," barked one of the Troopers by the console. The Trooper dressed as the fictional child's mother produced a small vial out of the vehicles mini-refrigerator. It contained Isabelle's blood from the dentist's office in Los Angeles. The other Trooper who was sporting a Tyrolean hat, complete with feather, removed three German passports from a printer. He handed the female Trooper one with her image and one with the computer-generated picture of a small girl, whose facial features were a composite of the two make-belief parents. The privatization of European Union passport offices had made it easy to create or delete digital records. After all, Apophis ran each nation's passport authority. An identity created here would be, as far as the authorities could tell, an absolutely real person.
"This is what the suspect was wearing."
Tasha handed each Trooper a list of clothing items that another female Trooper was seen wearing on the museum's security cameras. The Trooper captured on-screen wore an English, bola-type hat that was a few sizes too small and sat on top of her head in an almost comedic manner. She was dressed in tan snow-pants, a red-plaid lumberjack shirt and a rugged-looking dark green jacket. The covert woman was handing out candy and stuffed animals sporting the Pin the Ponytail-logo to some youngsters who had come without their parents. One of the parents saw his daughter taking a chocolate bar from the oddly-dressed woman and ran towards the Trooper, who hurriedly slipped out the door. The father yanked on his daughter's hand causing her to drop the gift bear. He fell into a lecture about not accepting gifts from strangers. Moments later, the Trooper stole through the command post's secret entrance. Tasha barked, "Have the costume ready to ship on the double!"
A brief "Aye!" signaled compliance. Within a few moments, the clothes in which the Trooper had been captured on the museum's security cameras were in a bag. She was dressed in a new outfit from one of the truck's compartments. The Trooper's dark-brown hair looked just like Isabelle's for the moment. A head of red hair was revealed when the Trooper pulled off, what went into a compartment labeled Package Wig.
"I'll take your post."
The Trooper that had disguised herself in hat and Isabelle-wig tapped the shoulder of her brother-in-arms working at the console. He rose and exited the truck as she took his station. The female Trooper’s face could not be seen again at the museum. The parking space to the right of Isabelle's car was occupied by Tasha’s fake family-roadster. The two Troopers had arrived at their car. The false husband pushed a button on his key-ring remote and a few seconds later, the power locks on Fuji's SUV popped up. The female Trooper opened the door to her car and took out a teddy-bear that looked exactly like the ones the other Trooper in the bola hat had given to the children earlier. With a sharp twist of her wrist, the Trooper tore the toy's head off and chucked its body on the ground between hers and Isabelle's car. A few candy bar wrappers from her pocket followed. The Trooper hid the bear's head under Isabelle's passenger seat together with some more candy wrappers. The male Trooper reached into his pocket for the vial of blood that the phony dentist had robbed from Isabelle's gums. He snapped the cap off the little plastic tube and poured its contents into the open door of Isabelle's car and on the ground beside it. A few red splatters formed a trail across the body of the headless plush toy by his feet. The trail of droplets continued up a few inches against the Trooper's car. Any judge or jury in the world would have found compelling evidence in even one of these items to condemn Isabelle, the terrorist. Tasha had been watching the two Troopers via their hidden cameras, his in the Tyrolean hat and hers in a button on her thick jacket. It was easy for Tasha to set her ambush unnoticed in the unsupervised parking lot. Gene’s politics of fear hadn’t brought the need for increased security to the remote island. The trap was set. It was one typical of Tasha’s style. The hunter gave her prey a visible enemy and a way to escape. That was the dark genius of her plan. If the police were to capture Isabelle, she'd be sure to spend the rest of her life in prison. Tasha would see to it that Isabelle knew this. Fuji and his spaceplane posed likely candidates for a getaway. The complete lack of customs or immigration formalities would surely entice Isabelle to utilize this mode of transportation. From there, the blood-thinner would do its job.
Isabelle was still inside the museum, on her way to the exit. From the railing of the mezzanine, she could overlook a canvass painting which depicted the history of Norse agriculture. The work of art stretched the height of the lobby, from the ground floor to the level where she was standing. Isabelle did not know how to read the inscription of Viking runes. She did, however, recognize one of the characters she saw on both tablets. It was the leaf-glyph from the seed bank. The same symbol appeared in pairs of the two-story painting before her. Each pair was stealthily nestled among intricate patterns. Fortunately, Fuji had taught Isabelle to see the world with different eyes.
She studied the mural-size canvas for a while. Several parts of the painting that depicted a variety of historic scenes were the same shape.
Isabelle's years of chanting and studying with Fuji had elevated her mind to a level where she was cognizant of her consciousness. She had gained the ability to access some of the hidden thoughts and information within it. In her mind, she pictured the three areas layered over one another. The detail hidden within each of the shapes provided separately the outline, texture and color of another, hidden scene. Several of the leaf-glyphs formed a row, diminishing in size towards infinity. Another moment and Isabelle’s mind blended the images together into a moving sequence,. The image from the three shapes together with the illusion of movement made a three-dimensional animation appear before Isabelle's eyes.
The people of the world starving on barren fields. Agony filled humanity's face. The world was occupied by a dark entity that bore a striking resemblance with Gene. The entity had the people of the world pushed to one side of the planet which was shrouded in darkness. Next to the evil entity hovered a luminous orb. The brilliantly-bright orb was locked in a tungsten cage. Like a lantern, it illuminated its surroundings. It was Gene’s enormous shadow that cast darkness over the world.
The luminous orb seemed strangely familiar to Isabelle. It reminded her a little of the Apophis-logo, but it was more than just its appearance. Isabelle knew the orb was of great importance. Her concentration broke away from the painting. Isabelle was reminded of her surroundings when she took in a nose-full of smoke from a failed experiment at the pizza exhibit below. A guy walking past
her with a large hat looked a lot like the gentleman who was waiting at the dentist's office. Isabelle rarely forgot a face, it was a sign for her to forge ahead. She had too much to find out. She could see the scale on which her opponent operated. All of the dark army's efforts though, dwarfed in comparison to the epic significance of her vision. Thousands of people must have passed this canvass since it had been chosen to adorn the museum's atrium. All these people must have looked at the ancient art and it seemed Isabelle was the first one to recognize the prophecy embedded within. “Why was it there? It must have been meant for someone to find, but for whom?” Isabelle wondered. The familiar-looking man with the hat was still facing her direction. He wasn't moving around very much. She had learned more than expected at the museum. Isabelle turned towards the nearby stairs.
Inside her converted garbage truck, Tasha and her Troopers were watching a close-up of Isabelle, courtesy of the camera in the Trooper's hat on the mezzanine level. "She's going to the car. Purple 13, stand by to make your call." Tasha's level of excitement was rising. Finally, the mouse followed the maze she had built for it. Tasha watched Isabelle walk across the lobby on the feed from the museum's security cameras. A sensor in the automated teller-machine in the lobby registered increasing levels of radioactivity as Isabelle approached. She exited and radiation levels dropped abruptly as the door closed behind her. Troopers with cameras hidden in hats, bags, glasses and one just out like a tourist, provided Tasha ample video coverage of Isabelle's journey. Isabelle pulled out of the snowy parking lot. The sun had just risen above the horizon where it would soon disappear again and make room for the arctic February night. The Trooper in the Tyrolean hat made a panicked call to the police. He reported his invented daughter missing from the museum after seeing her with a stranger in a funny-looking hat.
The rising sun reminded Isabelle of exercising with her puma. She could tell a lot of stress had come to Tonati because they were on the run. His instinct made the jungle cat aware that there was a clear and present danger to both their existences, regardless whether or not he understood the technology involved. Isabelle had great empathy for her furry companion. Tonati had been part of the family since her childhood in the jungle and his happiness mattered to Isabelle as much as that of her father. She felt appreciation for Tonati. He had found the radioactive marker on her. As long as she had that on her body, it would be very difficult to hide from her pursuer. Like a fluorescent ball in Tasha's pinball machine, Isabelle travelled back to Fuji's retreat. She drove along the icy road. The sun was rising for its hour-long journey along the horizon and bathed the Arctic landscape in its golden light.
On her way, Isabelle encountered a battalion of police cars racing towards the museum.
20 OF LEMMINGS AND EAGLES
The sun was setting. Isabelle, Fuji and Tonati were enjoying nature's unedited beauty during a walk. The mentor and his disciple strolled atop an icy cliff that descended steeply from Fuji's property towards the rest of the island. Fuji and Isabelle were comfortably warm in their thermal clothing, despite the brutally cold temperatures. Tonati, for whom nature had intended to live in the jungle, was truly an unusual wildcat. To him, few things seemed as exciting as snow. His thick fur provided him with ample insulation, and he generated plenty of heat because bounding in and out of shoulder-deep snow was the height of entertainment for him.
"You look like a dolphin," shouted Isabelle from across the ice garden. Tonati stopped for a moment and looked at her. A puffin fluttered across their line of sight and Tonati immediately broke eye contact to chase after the bird, who eventually flew off. Isabelle looked reminiscent. "There was a cliff like this in Alaska." She looked down the steep, rocky drop and continued. "Every year these ground hogs, the lemmings, would get into a frenzy and jump off the cliff."
Fuji was familiar with this strange phenomenon. He nodded and looked at Isabelle. "The lemmings-run."
Isabelle enjoyed her talks with Fuji, he shared a frame of reference with her on every subject. She went on. "Every lemming they pass joins the heard, thinking the herd knows best. They run until they reach the cliffs that line the Arctic Ocean."
A behavior Fuji had seen in many fans of Pin the Ponytail. He added, "The lemming follows the masses to his own demise. An eagle rises high above the world. Now that you know there lays a cliff ahead, you'll continue to think like the eagle and never run with the lemmings again."
Isabelle felt a bit overwhelmed by all she had to face and how far away civilization was from her. She gave Fuji a look of despair. "Some eagle, I can't even fly on a plane."
Fuji had an answer for this, too. "The blood-thinner should wear off in a couple of days' time. You'll be safe here." He gave Isabelle's shoulder a reassuring squeeze and left her with Tonati to contemplate his wisdom.
There had been many moments in the past when Isabelle played in the snow with her puma, before they lost everything. Anchorage and her field trips to the icy bush had been like this in many ways. It was the Arctic frost where Isabelle had cut her teeth as an investigative journalist. Tonati was bouncing around the snow just like he did in those days. Isabelle could hear her father's warning still ring through her head. It played in her mind with every decision she had made in life since. Isabelle remembered the morning he called her into his office.
Her own father, the managing director of his chain of television stations, wanted to discuss content. A true journalist always puts the story first. The truth - that’s was what her father had taught Isabelle and it was the reason he had hired her. She stood there in Lionel's office. Isabelle had looked up to him her whole life. His passion for the news, and moreover his principles of integrity were, in her eyes, the reasons he had prevailed in his endeavor. Lionel had achieved his goal to bring news independent from political agendas to the people of an entire state. He had stood behind his daughter every time one of her controversial newscasts brought him the wrath of a leader of industry or politics. Every time; but this time he had asked her to kill what was a story of enormous proportions. Isabelle wasn't just going to stand there and break her principles.
"Dad, it's my biggest story ever. I need to tell the people of this country the truth about what's going on. It's my duty as a journalist."
This was difficult for Lionel. In her need to remain steadfast behind her principles, Isabelle hadn't noticed the fear that was welling deep in her father's eyes. He had faced a lot of enemies and competition, none ever slowed his progress, but Isabelle was looking at a man who had met his match. With a hint of desperation that has haunted her ever since, his plea to her rang out.
"Isabelle, listen to me, please. Do you really believe that someone as big and powerful as them would let you tell the whole state that they were illegally robbed blind?"
"They have no choice. I believe in the fact that there is freedom of the press. I chose this profession to do my part in making sure that truth always prevails. You made me news director so please, let me do my job."
Isabelle's father sat back in his chair. He was exhausted.
"I'm telling you, there are some stories you cannot run."
Isabelle returned from her daydream, she heard Fuji calling from the window. There was something he wanted to show her. Together with Tonati, Isabelle went inside. Kato was sitting by the television. He had put tea and cookies on the table. Isabelle poured herself a cup with milk and sugar. On TV, a news report described the kidnapping of a little girl from the museum earlier.
"Weren't you there this morning?" asked a concerned Fuji.
Isabelle nodded slowly and listened to the anchor give a description of the suspected wrongdoer. The individual sought by the police was a woman about Isabelle's age, weight and height. She was said to have been dressed in khaki pants, lumberjack shirt and a rustic green jacket - the clothes the candy-giving Trooper had worn. The screen was filled with a police drawing that looked an awful lot like Isabelle. The woman in the phantom drawing was sporting a bola hat that sat on top of her head
funnily because it was too small. Isabelle saw this wasn't just going to blow over. Her pursuer had committed too many acts of aggression to simply ignore.
"I think it's time to get going."
21 A DIFFICULT GOOD-BYE FOR ISABELLE
In the arctic frost of Spitsbergen, Isabelle was getting ready to pack her bag. She opened the heavy wooden wardrobe she had stocked with her clothes just the day before. Isabelle reached for some of her garments when she noticed a cardboard box in the middle of the cabinet that hadn't been there before. Peeking prominently from the box's opening was the hat Isabelle had seen in the police drawing earlier. Out of curiosity, she put the hat on her head - it was too small and looked just as out of place as the one on TV. Inside the box were the clothes the Trooper wore while dispensing candy to unattended children at the museum. She discovered the green jacket, lumberjack shirt and tan snow pants, exactly what the news had described the kidnapper was wearing. Isabelle knew she had to move fast. She thought it best to forego packing and to get on her way. A few moments later, Isabelle was in the retreat’s mud-room where Fuji and Tonati were watching her put on snowboarding boots.
"Tonati, make sure Fuji is safe while I'm gone."
The puma growled nervously. She gave him a loving look. Tonati glanced at the door in anticipation. Isabelle used to take him to the top of secluded slopes in Alaska so he could run next to her when she rode her snow board.
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