Alex didn’t reveal where they were going until they were half-way there. He sat in the back seat of the car, with Barb in front as Amy drove. “You know the rest of the way to David’s house,” he said.

“Your cousin?” she asked, surprised.

“Yes. He might have some ideas about what’s happening.”

Barb turned to look at him. “Are you serious? The whole government’s probably got it figured out by now.”

Amy saw him smile in the rear view mirror. “Have you noticed that there aren’t any patrol cars on the road?”

“Yeah!” Barb said. “They’re probably getting their orders, like you should.”

“Maybe, or maybe not.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“A big part of my job is to find my own answers,” he said patiently.

“But what about your partner?”

“It’s a partnership of convenience, obviously.”

“Why do you think there aren’t any patrol cars?” Amy asked him, wondering what his original point was.

“The attackers might be setting a trap.”

“What?” Amy and Barb asked simultaneously.

“In the military, the most important thing I learned in order to stay alive was to anticipate and be prepared for worst case situations.”

Amy thought about that in light of her own recent experience. “You didn’t expect Mark to leave,” she said. “That’s very unusual, isn’t it?”

“Yes. He was also scared. That’s unusual too.”

Barb said, “So you lied before.”

“No. I’m talking about the first time, at the table, when I mentioned my experience. I think it changed how Mark thought about the situation. Leaving me behind could have been his choice, for tactical reasons.”

Amy recalled his advice in the coffee shop. “It would be easier to contact people if they headed downtown. You told them to go home because that might not be safe.”

He smiled approvingly at her through the mirror. “They would be an easier target there, that’s right.”

“Oh, my God,” she gasped. “Derek!”

“I wouldn’t worry about your brother,” Alex said. “He’s probably hanging out with David.”

They were quiet for the rest of the way, with Barb staring ahead, rigid with fear. Amy wanted to comfort her, but couldn’t imagine how to do it.

Amy was relieved to see Derek’s car in David’s driveway as Alex had predicted. She parked on the street and rushed to the front door ahead of the others, wishing she still had her windbreaker as the mountain winds whipped up.

David opened the door after her first knock. “Hi, Amy!” he said, smiling.

“Hi, David.” She smiled back, noting from his tee shirt and jeans that he must not have left the house. “Alex wants to see you.”

“I know,” he said, and looked beyond her. “Hey, Alex!”

“What do you mean?” Amy asked him.

“I called David before I heard from you,” Alex explained, joining her. To David, he said, “I got a little delayed.”

“Where’s your partner?” David asked him.

“He’s more than delayed.”

“What’s going on?” Barb asked from behind Amy.

Amy stepped aside so they could see each other. “Barb, this is David Nichols. David, this is my friend Barb Johannson. I don’t know if you’ve met before.”

“I’ve heard about you,” Barb told David. “I don’t keep up with Derek’s friends, but you definitely made an impression with Amy by introducing her to Alex.”

“Come on inside,” David suggested.

“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.

“Any idea who’s responsible?” Alex asked David.

Derek answered, “We’re just in the early stages of tracking that down, and so is everyone else.” He pressed a key on one of the laptops and the wall screen behind him lit up, showing a set from one of the major cable news channels with four pundits discussing what was happening.

Amy turned to watch, even though the same scene was playing on the laptop. At the bottom of the screen, a banner displayed the headline COLORADO SILENT: TERRORIST ATTACK? followed by a clock showing elapsed time.

“That can’t be right,” she observed.

“No,” Derek said, still looking at the laptop, “that matches what we know.”

Amy faced Alex, whose intent expression told her that he saw the same thing. “How much did you tell David about what happened?” she asked him.

“Nothing,” Alex answered, “I just asked him to be on the lookout for any sign that someone might be trying to sabotage communications and electronic infrastructure.”

Derek turned off the cable feed’s sound and stared at his sister. “What happened?”

Amy recounted the main events, beginning with the drone attack, with guesses about their timing. Alex nodded occasionally when she described what they had been through together.

“That’s impressive,” David said.

“That’s Amy,” Derek said, with a crack in his voice that made her shiver, “a mind like a calendar.” He turned to Alex. “What did the Air Force tell you?”

“They asked a lot of questions,” Alex replied, “and basically told me what they told Amy, that we’re under attack. No specifics about what to expect, probably because they didn’t know.”

David asked Alex, “Did you notice anything odd after you called me, when you got to work?”

Amy looked sharply at Alex. She had assumed that he called later than that.

“They knew something was up. There were reports of random power outages, malfunctioning traffic lights, and dropped 911 calls. But when I told them about the drone attack and what we were told, they were oddly dismissive.”

Amy turned to Barb. “You said 911 wasn’t working when they called in the fire.”

Barb nodded. “It wasn’t, but someone must have gotten through.”

Alex looked pensive. “Mark and I were specifically told to follow up on a tip about an emergency in that area. We assumed it came through 911.”

Derek began tapping furiously on one of the laptops and said, “I’m surprised we didn’t see any of those power outage reports.”

“How would you find out about them?” Barb asked him.

“They’re posted on the Web,” he said. “I archived outage info along with a bunch of other stuff before the comms went down. Oh, there it is.” He tapped a few more keys and a map appeared on the wall screen, with no outages appearing. Eight more versions followed, in ten minute increments, with no change.

“How did they find out about the outages?” David asked Alex.

“They would have gotten calls from people who were worried about the impact on the security of their houses and businesses,” Alex said, staring at the map.

Amy turned to Derek. “It’s more of the same. ‘Look what I can do.’”

He rolled his eyes. “That sounds like some people I know.”

“I’m a little confused,” Barb announced. “Aren’t there a lot of people with satellite TV, radio, and internet? Why can’t they just share the news until somebody fixes everything? Isn’t that what you guys are using?”

David smiled at her. “Those are commercial. Companies are providing them, and we think those companies and their equipment have been hacked to cut off specific customers.”

“What we’re using here isn’t sold anywhere,” Derek added.

“Yet,” David said, still smiling.

Amy was following along, and had one question for Alex. “How did you know to come here?”

“It was an educated guess,” Alex said.

Barb picked up on what she was implying. “That’s a pretty good guess! You said ‘commercial’ before we knew what it meant. You just happened to be called to the fire at the restaurant, and you were conveniently left behind by your partner so you could come here with us. That’s a lot of luck.”

“Hang on!” Derek said. “That’s borderline conspiracy talk.”

“And that’s coming from someone who’s prone to suspect conspiracies,” David said earnestly.

“Yeah, that’s my thing,” Derek added. “Look, everything that happens is connected to a chain of events that made it a hundred percent likely.”

Barb looked at him as though he was crazy. “So?”

“They’re not the only events, and not the only chains, that could have been connected to it. They just happened to be the ones that were.”

She looked even more convinced he was crazy. “That sounds like a whole lot of B.S. to me.”

Amy turned to David. “You said before that it’s not just commercial communications that aren’t working now.”

“Right,” he said, “since about fifteen minutes before you got here.”

“That was when we left the coffee shop,” she said, looking at her watch to confirm her first impression. “What else were you talking about?”

Amy noticed Derek shift nervously. David answered, “We’ve got access to some government assets, let’s say, and they experienced a major dropout.”

“What does that mean?” she asked.

“That’s all we can tell you,” Derek said, turning to her. “What are you thinking, Sis?”

“Can we see the news channel again?” Amy asked Derek. She looked at the call log on her phone to confirm her suspicion.

“That clock started right after I called Alex from the coffee shop. Not before, when we lost signal at the campground, or when 911 stopped working while we were in the fire at the restaurant. It didn’t happen after, when everyone’s phones stopped working, and when the police radio conveniently stayed working just long enough to force Alex to have me drive him here. And when we left the coffee shop, not before and not after, government communications began to fail.”

She took a deep breath, thankful that Derek was following along without obvious judgment. “Everyone except you has been hacked, with the purpose of getting us all together here.”

Amy expected her brother to challenge her, or for Barb to accuse Alex of arranging it all, or for David or Alex to offer some more logical explanation. But instead, the lights went out.

“How did you do that?” Barb asked Alex. Before he could answer, the lights turned on.

“Backup generator,” David explained. “Any surges?” he asked Derek.

Derek shook his head, tapping the laptop in front of him. “Everything here’s still up, but we lost our link.” An error message appeared on the other laptop, while the screen behind them glowed light blue.

“I’d say that proves we’re not very special,” David said to Amy.

Derek added, “And besides, no technology exists that can control you and everything else like that.”

“There’s only one explanation left, then,” Amy said. “It must be God.”

“What do you think, Alex?” Barb asked, still focused on him.

He had leaned back in the chair, appearing as if he was just taking in everything that was happening. “I wouldn’t rule out anything at this point.”

“Spoken like a detective,” Derek said. Amy couldn’t tell if it was out of respect or derision.

“I still think you know more than you’re saying,” Barb insisted.

Alex sat up and stared at her icily. “That will always be the case.”

Amy watched him, impressed and a little excited as Barb meekly said, “Okay.” He turned to David and asked, “What else can you do?”

“We can crank up Big Boy.”

“Do you think there’s enough power?” Derek asked David.

“Enough for a basic sweep before it gets dark.” David walked to the standalone console and pressed a switch hidden from Amy’s view, causing the color of the wall screen to turn white.

Amy and the others got up and stood facing the screen. “Say hello to Big Boy,” Derek announced, standing beside Barb to the right of the console. On its left side, Amy watched transfixed as the screen displayed an array of antennas at the top of a mountain, and felt a tingle as Alex reached around her back and rested his hand on her waist.

“What does it do?” Barb asked.

David said, “It automatically controls and gets data from a network of specially designed drones nesting near strategic sites around the city. Typically we need to get special permission to use them, but that’s not possible now.”

“How did you…” Barb began.

“We tend to bring a lot of work home,” Derek interjected.

“Where is it you work, again?” Barb asked him.

“A little company you may have heard of: ServoBiome.”

The view of the antennas shifted on the wall screen, occasionally zooming in on the nearby buildings. “Nothing unusual there,” David said.

“Do you have a view of downtown?” Alex asked him.

“Already on it.” Another window appeared on the screen, showing what Amy instantly recognized as the city government buildings viewed from above some clouds. “We’re taking photos that can be reviewed later at a total of thirty locations.”

Amy felt herself tense up as Barb asked, “Can you get below the clouds?”

“Those aren’t clouds,” Alex said. “That’s smoke.”

It was clear while the drone dived through toward the street that smoke was coming from several buildings, including police headquarters.

“You were right,” Amy told him as the hand on her waist balled into a fist. “It was a trap.” She saw that the parking areas were full, recognizing his car in one of them.

“You knew that was going to happen?” Derek challenged Alex angrily.

“It was a possibility,” he said. “I need to get over there.” His tone reflected a mix of anger and sadness rather than determination.

“You might want to wait,” David said, opening a new window on the screen.

Amy gasped as a close-up of a helicopter appeared. It looked just like the one that had been blown out of the sky at the campground. Beside her, Alex stood rigid, arms now at his sides, and she imagined him experiencing the same sense of dread.

“Where is that?” Alex asked David, his voice emotionless.

David glanced at one of three small monitors that newly occupied the operating space in front of him. “Three miles north of the city offices, closing fast on that position.” He opened a fourth window on the screen, which showed a map of the city and several slowly moving multicolored dots. “The blue dot is the helicopter and the red dots are the observer drones.”

The window showing the fire panned toward the direction of the helicopter, and showed in detail that the streets around the fire were totally filled with motionless cars. Lights flashed several blocks away, which Amy suspected were coming from fire trucks stuck in the gridlock.

“Do you think the people in the helicopter spotted the drone?” she asked Alex.

“And if they know it’s friendly,” he said, anticipating her concern. “We’ll find out soon enough.”

Barb asked David, “Can you at least try calling them?”

“We’re kind of doing that already,” David replied. “There’s an identifier signal being sent by all the drones, which they should be able to recognize if their onboard recognition software hasn’t been hacked.”

“‘Should’ is the operative word,” Derek said.

“Am I right that one of your drones is at the power station?” Alex asked David, gazing at the map on the screen.

“Yes,” he said a few seconds later. “There’s one taking photos as we speak. Why? What are you thinking?”

“Just how someone might set a fire remotely. Natural gas, a power overload, something like that.”

“Let me pull up the feed,” David said. Another window opened on the screen and the others changed size to make room for it.

Amy’s attention was focused on the view near the fire. The helicopter had arrived and appeared to be circling the area, oblivious to the presence of David’s drone. Recalling what happened at the campground, she imagined that the helicopter was on the lookout for the enemy drone that shot the other one out of the sky. Of all the places that must be in trouble, she wondered, why was it there?

Barb interrupted her thoughts. “Isn’t the power out all over the city?”

“We don’t know if that’s true,” Derek said.

“You’ll be able to tell when it gets dark, if people’s lights don’t go on. That’s like in an hour.”

“She’s got a point,” David said.

“The drones will have to be back in their nests by then,” Derek countered. “They need solar power to keep going, and daylight to take the photos we want.”

“Geeks!” Barb spat, prompting Amy to giggle. “Just go outside and look around!”

Amy’s memory flashed forward to her experience at the store, and suddenly she knew what was going to happen next. “They’re going to put out the fire!” she exclaimed.

“What?” David asked.

“I’ll bet another helicopter is on its way,” she added, “once they make sure the enemy drone isn’t around.”

“I think you’re right.” Alex locked eyes with Amy, and a flash of a smile told her that he already had a plan.

“Why…” Derek began.

Alex interrupted, “If they’re expecting friendly company, then they can communicate and so can we.” He turned to David. “Tell me you’ve got more than transponders and command and control.”

“Sorry,” David said, “Any modification to their communications would take hours in a lab and direct access to the drones.”

“How far are you on your sweep?” Alex asked.

“Pretty much done.”

“So you can spare all the drones?”

“Spare them? For what?”

The smile returned. “Some good old-fashioned visual communication.”

While Alex conferred with David and Derek, Amy watched with relief as cars were finally moving out of the way of the now advancing fire trucks. There would normally be plenty of space, but it seemed most of the city’s population had converged on the downtown area when the communications stopped. She hoped that at least the people Alex warned at the coffee shop were somewhere else.

“Hey,” Barb said, joining her.

“Hey,” Amy said back, noting that the helicopter was now gone from view.

“Looks like your boyfriend’s plan worked.”

That got Alex’s attention. He stared at the screen, a surprised look on his face. “We didn’t do anything.”

“Nothing?” Amy asked, assuming he was being modest. “How do you explain that?”

He walked up to the window showing the buildings. The smoke was already starting to dissipate, even though the fire department was just arriving.

“No, not that.” She pointed at the map. “That.”

The dots representing the drones had formed a perfect circle with a giant “B” inside.

“That’s not what I had in mind,” he said hoarsely.