Val had become a Marine pilot because of her grandfather.

“I flew cause I loved it,” he’d told her once. “Cause I wanted to look down and see the world like an old patchwork quilt. But I fought cause that’s what I had to do. I had to serve.”

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Their job was ground assault and street warfare, but Val’s unit had picked up a nickname for their ability to take down enemy aircraft. The Hellhounds. Val had been happy to share the name with the others, but she was the one who had earned it.

5 17

Though her eyes burned, Jessica couldn’t drift off. Her mind wouldn’t stop spinning with fragmented images. Antonio floating in his artificial uterus. Mel, the proud mother, smiling at him through the glass bubble that mimicked her womb.

1 10

“I do love you,” he said. “But when I get home, I’m going to try to work things out with my wife.”

Wife.

The word felt like a sliver of ice sliding down her throat––the kind that gets caught in your gullet and cuts like a knife until it melts.

0 23

They had left the windows open, and the idea that someone might hear them that night had made their lovemaking all the more delicious. How young she had been then, even after the experience of war in the Middle East.

1 12

Lifting his glass to his lips, his hand shook. Not much, just slightly. Just enough to remind him that his body was beginning to break down.

3 13

Val put a bullet into the gunner’s knee, sending a splash of blood flying. Firing another burst of rounds toward the woods, he screamed and collapsed into the water.

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ねぇねぇ中の人ぉ?
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ガンズとかバンヘーレンとかボンジョビとかモトリーとか、なんかソレ系の有名どころぢゃないチョイスで| ᐕ)⁾⁾🤘🏻

0 6

Looking at Val flying the Dragonfly, Jessica felt soft. Inadequate. Val was born to sit in a pilot’s seat. Born to be a fighter. Born to stand up to a world that had gone wrong.

4 21

Bowen poured another glass of bourbon, put the pill on his tongue, and looked across the room at Morgan. The robot stood in her charging station, lights blinking under her translucent skin.

He lifted his glass to her.

“Cheers.”

3 24

The drones whirred near the top of the tunnel. Four props kept them in the air. Black and gray bodies housed instruments and sensors. Cameras protruded from their fronts like insect eyes.

1 12

His lips brushed her jaw as she reached back with her right hand and laced her fingers into his hair. With her left, she moved his hand to where she wanted him to touch her.

Billie crooned from the stereo. “Mama may have, papa may have . . .”

0 8

He’d kill for some fentanyl or morphine, but he had to be able to function. So he settled for hydrocodon. He threw back a couple of pills, dressed in pajama pants and a tee shirt, and staggered toward the door.

“I’m coming,” he groaned.

4 25

“Welcome to Artemis,” the hologram said. “Here aspiring parents can seek help with every possible form of parenthood they would like––from natural gestation in one of our next-generation artificial wombs to cloning and genetic modification.”

0 2

He put his hand on the back of her head and pressed his lips to hers. It was desperate. Pleading. Almost frantic. Like the first time he had kissed her.

Val drew away and slapped him. The sound—crack—echoed off the cinder block walls.

0 11

The combination of Tolbert’s raptor-like glare, flushed red skin, and walrus mustache reminded Bowen of his father, who had been a neurosurgeon with the bedside manner of an IRS auditor.

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