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extensions of herself. MAVs were something she could control, unlike people. If the public knew the kind of things they could do with these little gems, would they be fascinated? Or horrified?
    “Well, you know what they say,” Tye said.
    “What’s that?”
    “A pilot’s first love always has to be their ship.”
    “What do
you
know about being a pilot?”
    “My dad was one. For a little while at least. Before he left me and my mom. But that’s a long story.”
    She set the drone down again and turned away for a moment, embarrassed. She felt disarmed sometimes by his candor.
    “Me, I’d rather be being face-to-face with someone, looking them in the eyes.” He smiled at her from across the room.
    This was the man she owed her life to, but there was a part of her, she had to admit, that sometimes wished he hadn’t been so heroic, that wished she’d died in the crash along with Skyles.
    Her long recuperation and the counseling that went along with it had been painful and slow. She’d been left to pick up the pieces of what was left of her life and the inevitable self-questioning about what she might have done differently. Now here Tye was, suddenly, improbably, back in her life. Come to rescue her again? Rescue her from what?
    “I guess robots will never truly think and act like humans,” she mumbled, half to herself.
    For now, Williamson had assured them, their MAVs were strictly surveillance platforms. But it didn’t take much of an imagination to realize that these little flyers were bound to be weaponized, sooner or later. And when it happened, there would be few places an assassin, or counter-terrorism team for that matter, couldn’t penetrate. Counter-measures, along with the drones themselves, would become huge business. For all she knew, maybe they already were.
    “Let’s hope not.” Tye laughed. “Otherwise, we’re all doomed.”
    Staff Sergeant Tye Palmer had seen two tours in Iraq and another two in Afghanistan. His special technical expertise, he jokingly claimed, was functioning as a homing device for trouble.
    “You had breakfast?” he asked, stretching and yawning.
    “No, I–”
    “You got any eggs and bacon around this place? I fry a mean over-easy.”
    “Sorry, I haven’t had time to shop.”
    “Okay. We both need some fuel in the tank. Why don’t I slip back over to my apartment and jump in the shower. I’ll be back in a jiff and we can head out and find something to eat.”
    “Sounds like a plan.”
    He lingered in the doorway for a moment.
    “Oh, and thanks,” she said.
    “For what?”
    “For checking on me.”
    “Somebody’s got to do it, Chief.”
    For an instant, she was sure she was looking at the ghost of Captain Skyles. She glanced down at the drone on the desk in front of her again, wondering if, with all of the technological wonders happening these days, someone somewhere in the world was actually developing a workable time machine. But when she looked back at the doorway, Tye was gone.

7
    A couple of hours after daybreak, Raina stepped back into the apartment, closing the door behind her. She tossed the van keys onto the desk next to her computer, laying her cell phone next to them, and sighed.
    She and Tye had gone out to breakfast at a local diner where they’d eaten bacon and eggs and good hot coffee and alternately shared pages of a daily newspaper. This was their day to get all of their planning and preparations together before Derek Kurn’s frat party tomorrow night, but Tye had said little while they ate. Maybe he was just hungry; at times he didn’t seem to be much of a conversationalist.
    She’d dropped him off at a Wal-Mart a half-mile down the highway from the apartment complex where he said he needed to pick up a few things. He said he would walk back to the apartment and they would meet up again in an hour to finalize their plans.
    Moving awkwardly across the room on her prosthetic, she turned and flopped down on the couch to think. Lucky for