Gypsy felt uncomfortable as she mingled with the people at the dinner party she had been invited to. She had come with Prosecutor Ralph Cox as his date. She never thought she would be mingling with such wheelers and dealers. She had gone out and bought an expensive evening dress for the party.

Why she ever agreed to this, she’ll never know. She didn’t think she would be this nervous. She continues to mingle and finally around ten o’clock they leave and head back to Ralph’s place. As they are driving towards his place, a car with bright headlights come up from behind them and bump the rear bumper.

Gypsy turns around and tries to see what the car was. It taps their bumper again.

“Who the hell are they?” Gypsy wishes she had the gauss rifle right now.

“I don’t know.” Ralph steps on the gas and tries to get away.

The car pulls up alongside of Ralph’s car and slams into it several times. Ralph loses control and crashes into a parked car. The airbags go off inside, smacking Gypsy in the face.

The last thing she hears is the squealing of tires as she passes out. When she comes to, she finds herself in the back of an ambulance.

“What happened?” Gypsy was confused and very sore as she watches the paramedic tend to her.

“You were in a car accident, ma’am. We’re taking you to Saint Burgess to be checked out.” Carolyn looks at the young lady as she was laying on the stretcher.

She had a bandage around her head, where the airbag had smacked her in the face. She is taken into the emergency room and checked over. Her right shoulder was hurting her, from being slammed against the door of the car.

She wasn’t hurt too bad. She got banged up and had a few cuts from the airbag exploding in front of her. She was released after a few hours.
Ralph, on the other hand, was in critical condition. Gypsy was told he had a broken shoulder, three bruised ribs, and a concussion. She checks on him, before catching a cab home.

She walks into her apartment and takes her ruined blood-stained evening dress off. She tosses it into her dirty clothes hamper.

“That’s one dress ruined.” She was disappointed. She spent good money buying that dress.

She slips her nightshirt on with a little difficulty with her right arm. There was a nasty bruised on it where she was slammed against the car door. She wonders who was trying to kill her or Ralph.

She lays down in bed and turns the lights off. She’ll have to see if anyone was coming after Patrick tomorrow. She falls asleep and hopes things will be better tomorrow.

Her alarm clock goes off to wake her for work. She smacks her alarm and goes back to sleep. It goes off again nine minutes later. She shuts the alarm off and gets up out of bed. Her body was hurting as she goes about getting dress.

She heads to work first and works on disassembling three bins of electronics. She sets a few items aside for the project. She's finishing her work and as she is leaving. She wonders where Jayson was. As long as she has been working here, he has never missed a day.

Gypsy heads towards the cashiers to pay for her bin of items. As she is standing there in line checking out. She looks towards Joan “hey Joan, have you seen Jayson today?”

“Nope, he hasn’t been by here all day. Normally, he comes in and checks with us to see if we need anything.” Joan was wondering if Jayson was coming by.

“I wonder if he is okay? I have never known him to miss a day of work.” Gypsy reaches into her purse for the amount.

“That will be $55.50, Gypsy.”

Gypsy pulls three twenties from her purse and hands them to Joan.

Joan accepts them and gives gypsy her change.

“Gypsy, if you don’t mind me asking. What do you do with all the junk you buy from here?” Joan and a few others had wonder what Gypsy
does with all the electronics, metal scraps she buys.

“I’m using it in a school project.” Gypsy figures they wouldn’t understand what she and Patrick use the items for.

“Well, I hope your school project turns out fine.” Joan knew Gypsy worked hard to maintain a high grade point average at school.

“Thanks, Joan.” Gypsy takes her stuff to her car and put it on the passenger seat.

She stops by Wendy’s to grab her and Patrick some food. She doesn’t know if he has eaten anything. When she gets to the college, she parks her mustang in a different parking lot after what happened last time.

Patrick was busy closing the control box that maintains all the functions of the environmental systems in the suit. Everything was working within the perimeters they programmed for the suit. He looks towards the door as Gypsy comes walking. She had a bandage around her head and was moving a little stiffly.

“What happened to you?” Pat was concern about his lab partner.

“I was in a car accident last night. Someone ran Ralph off the road last night after we left the dinner party.” Gypsy puts the bin of items she had
bought on her work table.

“I got you some food. I don’t know if you have eaten anything yet.” She sets the food she bought for him on his workbench.

“Thanks.” Patrick was hungry as he dug into the bags. He notices she got him what he liked.

“You’re welcome. Have you heard from Nathan?” As Gypsy starts work on another control module.

“Not yet. Maybe, we should start looking for another test pilot.” Patrick watches Gypsy as she installs the module she was working on in the suit.

“You know, I would love to be able to wear this.” Gypsy runs her hands over the outside of the suit.

“We would have to construct a special suit for you and me.” Patrick would love to wear one as well. He had plans drawn up of two suits that the two of them could wear.

“I know. Still, I would love to know what it feels like to be inside one of these with the jetpack mounted on the back of it.” She picks up the jetpack they designed.

You could wear it without the armor, but you could only fly so high. She goes back to work.

“Hey, I came up with a solution to some of our kinetic energy problem from the bullets. I figure a full figure suit made of kinetic absorbing
material would add an additional protection layer to the wearer. We can place the sensors we need to monitor the wearer vital in the suit. That way we can tie the sensors in with the suit environmental and oxygen control module.” Patrick had gone over the results from the armor testing and came up with a way to protect the wearer.

They finally finish their work for the day. As Patrick and Gypsy are sitting and relaxing, something catches Gypsy’s eyes. She saw it move earlier. She goes over and just as she gets close to the object, it takes flight and flies away from her towards their door.

Gypsy grabs her rubber ball she keeps on her workbench and tosses it at the object. The ball hits and the object fall to the floor. Gypsy walks over and looks at it.

“Well, we now know what Andy and his crew are up too.” Gypsy holds up the ruined drone. The thing wasn’t very big.

“They are making smart drones.” Gypsy hands it to Patrick to look at.

“We could build a jammer to jam their signals.” He takes it over to his magnifying glass to take a closer look at the remains.

“Whoever designed this on Andy’s team, did a wonderful job.” Pat steps aside so Gypsy could look.

“I agree with you. However, why was this one over here watching what we were doing?” Gypsy turns on a signal jammer they have in the lab.

She looks around and spots three more surveillance drones. She grabs her hammer and starts smashing them. Once they were destroyed,
she goes over to the signal jammer and turns it off.

“I am going to destroy their little project.” Gypsy was mad.

“Come on Gypsy, you can always get even latter.” Patrick knew how vengeful Gypsy could be.

“I know.” Gypsy helps Pat lock up everything.

“I’m going to go and see how Ralph is doing.” Gypsy grabs her stuff.

“Alright, I’ll see you tomorrow.” As he walks Gypsy down to her car.

Gypsy watches Pat as he walks towards his car from the safety of her own car. Once Pat was in his car, she heads towards the hospital.