Red dots crowded the large screen. Fitz held an electronic tablet, rapidly checking latitude and longitude, his stylus tapping sharply against the screen. Suddenly, his wrist stopped in midair, and he rubbed his dry eyes.
In northern New York State, near the edge of the Adirondack Mountains, several red dots that had been flashing in a cluster went dark without warning.
"Huh?" Fitz tugged the glasses down his nose, his face almost pressed against the display. "Weird. Is the equipment malfunctioning? That shouldn't happen."
Simmons leaned in too, her fingers rapidly entering code at the console. "I just checked the underlying algorithms three times. Its interference resistance is military-grade. How could it simply lose the signals?"
Banner pulled his large hands out of his lab coat pockets and bent down to check the energy circuits and satellite interface. A hint of scrutiny appeared on his usually mild face.
"There's no hardware overload, and the gamma pulse feedback channel is completely clear." Banner scratched his messy hair and pointed at the large area beside it that was still lit up. "Look, the markers in the other districts are fine. They haven't been affected by any electromagnetic pulse. Only this little patch has gone blank. That really shouldn't happen."
Lucian walked up to the screen.
The patch that had gone dark stood out sharply amid the screen full of red light.
If the machine had broken, an entire sector should have failed, rather than just a few specific coordinates being erased. Could these alien lizards actually anticipate the radar frequencies?
Lucian pondered this. Gravik had died unwilling to accept his fate, still shouting before his last breath that the Infiltration Plan was going into full operation. Did this so-called Peaceful Faction really have some special means of avoiding directed radiation?
Since he