“Hi there, Sis!” Derek called out to Amy from a couch in the center of a large living room. Two laptops were open on a translucent coffee table in front of him. Behind him, near a large wall with an imbedded flat screen, was a standalone console whose contents to Amy’s eye resembled the innards of a small church organ with a small monitor on top.

“Hey, little brother!” she happily greeted her twin. “Whatchya doin’?”

He grinned mischievously. “Looking for the bad guys.”

“Have a seat,” David said to her and the others.

Amy sat next to Derek on the couch and basked in a feeling that had comforted her in stressful times: that they had each other’s backs, no matter what. Watching Alex lean forward in a nearby easy chair and check his phone, she realized that she now felt the same way about him.

Alex looked at David, who had chosen to remain standing while Barb sat in another easy chair facing the couch. “Commercial communications are down. Tell me what you know.”

David folded his arms. “That matches what we see, except as far as we can tell it’s not just commercial, at least in the last fifteen minutes.” Amy gasped. He continued, “It seems to be the result of a sophisticated cyberattack, affecting only Colorado.”

“How do you know that?” Barb asked skeptically.

“Satellites,” he said. “So far, satellite communications are still operational. The outages are strictly ground-based.”

Amy imagined what that meant. “It’s like someone’s saying:  Look what I can do.”

Alex looked at her strangely. “What?” she challenged him.

“That’s an interesting point,” he said sincerely.