Page 89 of Radar

“You followed me?” Elyssa asked. “Not just tracking me?”

“I got in my car as soon as I could and tried to catch you. Should your car have stopped, I would have been just behind you to help.”

“I have a lot of questions about that,” Elyssa said. “But I’m here to give you answers. I’m assuming that since you know about the kidnappings, you’ve saved Eddie and Paca, and they’re okay.”

“No, Elyssa,” Finley said. “That’s not what happened. Eddie and Paca were flown to Russia, and we believe they are now on a flight to Singapore.”

“How does that make any sense? Why? Eddie prints meat, and Paca studies squirrels. No one is kidnapping Eddie and Paca for their science. No one is kidnapping them for money. Research scientists make little despite their high level of education.”

“We don’t have those answers,” White said. “We think we know why they tried to kidnap you, though.” White put a pile of pictures in front of Elyssa.

Elyssa picked them up and fanned through them. They were all pictures of her in gardens and parks.

She put them down and looked at Xander for a long time, then flicked her attention back to White. “There are only pictures of me. Orest didn’t take them. Who was taking my picture?” She spun on Xander. “Was it you?”

“I met you in Lumberjack,” he said evenly. “It was by happenstance. I knew nothing of you until that moment.”

“You have these pictures, so someone you know took them?” Her gaze didn’t waver from his. “But why?”

“Because,” Hiro said with an edge to his voice that she hadn’t expected, “you saw things without knowing the significance. Our guy, who took the pictures, knows what you know, but he’s non-responsive in a hospital bed, so you, whether you like it or not, might just be the person standing between life-goes-on and nuclear winter.”

“Stop it,” Xander’s voice was low and controlled, but no doubt there was a knife’s edge in the base. “There’s no need to frighten Elyssa. And given her medical situation, it’s dangerous as hell to scare her.” He lowered his voice, but Elyssa could still hear. “What if she ends up in the hospital like York? Then what would we do?”

“AI can’t find this?” Elyssa asked, feeling like the room was sliding sideways. If humanity were picking a superhero to leap in and save the day, and somehow the spin of the dial had landed on her, well, the Fates made a pretty shitty choice.

Her body drooped forward.

“Elyssa?” Xander put his hand on her arm and lifted her from the chair, kicking it out of the way and guiding her body to the floor. “Give me a signal, paramedic?” He was steady as a rock.

Elyssa managed to shake her head. She hated the circus that came with public episodes.

Xander lowered himself behind her, letting her rest against him.

White came around and pulled Elyssa’s legs out to lie more comfortably in front of her.

As soon as White finished that task, unbidden, Radar came and sprawled across her lap, acting like a weighted blanket that helped push her blood up toward her heart.

Xander lifted a hand, and White reached for an electrolyte drink from the table and passed it over.

After a few minutes, Elyssa felt well enough to speak if she stayed in Xander’s arms with Radar on her legs. “Can I have the pictures, please?”

Elyssa could feel Xander’s disapproval of her pushing herself, but he said nothing as White handed her the stack.

She switched to the next photo. “I was asking about AI searches?”

“It’s a picture of you and a tree, Elyssa,” White said. “We don’t have the digital photos with embeds. There’s no data on the prints.”

She put her hand down on Xander’s thigh. “You know who took these pictures.”

“I believe so,” he said. “And that person is the reason I went to Alaska. Again, Orest Kalinsky, traveling with Claude Burns, was my target. After Orest went to sleep, I went to the lodge to see if I could meet Claude, who is Paca, and there I met you. And you came over to speak to me, then Eddie and Paca came in.”

She turned to the pictures.

“Elyssa, as a group, do these photos tell a story of some kind?” White asked. “What do these images have in common?”

“My uncle— This is surreal. I’m having trouble believing this is happening right now. What do these have in common?” She laid the photos beside her and knitted her fingers together. “Orest Kalinsky has an apartment in Paris. He told me that there was a convention in Paris, the topic of the conference was world cuisine and the new things we can anticipate in the next decade. I knew about it because Eddie was going to discuss 3D-printed meat. There are also cheeses that can be lab-made, under-ocean farming, and GMOs that allow food to grow in a new environment where the air is saturated with moisture, but the ground is dry. It’s a new phenomenon that I anticipated and wanted to overcome with my own research of community vertical farms that could exist in any climate and survive anycataclysmic weather event, making them useful as emergency shelters as well.”

“Orest told you about the conference,” White said. “Did he attend?”

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