CHAPTER 32

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 14

TYLER

They let us back into the US. It’s nuts. I never thought that they would and it took endless battles with lawyers and whatever but we were declared whistleblowers or something and allowed to go back home. I hated the aftermath. The news. The Twitter shitstorm that Peanut and Alpha unleashed the second they thought I was dead. They did great. Who needs the New York Times when you have friends like them?

The trials. So many months of just torture. The endless reels of tape and of my mission and of grainy pictures of Rick and me together taken on my webcam and then the video from those guys in Canada that seemed to play nonstop on like every news channel ever.

Something inside me hurt when I saw Rick’s face on the news under the banner WANTED. Ached. Just a little. I know he cared. If he didn’t he would have shot me in the head. It’s not like he hasn’t killed people before. He knows how it’s done and he chose to shoot me in the back, out through the chest. High enough so he wouldn’t snag my heart, off to the right to miss the trachea. He knew what he was doing.

He’s MIA, still. Knew they wouldn’t catch him. Ani’s trying, following some kind of money trail, but he’s been at this kind of stuff for so long that if anybody knows how to disappear, it’s Rick.

Althea didn’t know. At least they say that they didn’t know. Just like Tidewater disavowed any knowledge of what exactly its subsidiary Haranco was really up to. Haranco declared Rick a “rogue agent” and swore he worked alone on this. Ani believes that. She also believes her friends over at Althea. Which is fine. The country, JSOC, Congress, everybody seems to believe all of them, too. Except for me.

Not that I’m trying to be a dick, but how do you own a company and not have any idea what it does? It just doesn’t make sense, is all.

 

Ani’s back in school. Yale wouldn’t drop her. Apparently, they have fellowships for kids who are partway through school and can’t pay. We’re back in Connecticut. Mom’s here, too. Gets nervous now if I leave her sight for too long. She’s in counseling. I go sometimes, too, when she gets on my case about it. I can’t take the drugs for the ADHD. I tried, I just flake out and don’t remember so it doesn’t do me any good, anyway. It’s cool, though. Ani has me running whenever my thoughts won’t clear and it’s better.

The Air Force wanted me. Crazy. Turns out Rick’s assessment was true. It does take three pilots to fly a single drone. Althea created a great system, just like the sim, and I let them hire me as a consultant, show them how to use fewer pilots to fly more drones. They really want me to fly them for real, though. But I’m done with that.

I’m back in school, at a community college, and during the day, well, I’m a firefighter. I hooked up with a division of fire and rescue that flies actual planes over forest fires and keeps watch. Sucks sometimes, when nothing is happening or when we’re called out to an accident, when people don’t make it. And it’s not as cool as flying fighter jets or anything, but hell, it beats jail. Or Canada. The people were awesome but it was really freaking cold.

Do I miss B? Every day. Some days it hurts so bad, with the guilt, with thoughts of him alone in that house, that I can barely function. But other days are OK. Days when I try to cook something for dinner that doesn’t taste like ass or when Ani and I just go for a run that lasts forever or days when we just sit by the pool in the sun are good. Really good. B is still there, still with me, in my head and in his favorite movie lines or whatever.

But finally, for the first time I can remember, my life is moving forward. I jump as Ani slams the door behind her. Is she back from class already? Throwing down her bag, she comes over to sit next to me on the couch. She leans her head back, sighs. “Ready to get schooled at Skyreach?”

I grab two controllers. She’s dreaming. I own that game. “Hell yeah.”