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She nodded, and held her hand out for the toy.
The boy looked to his father for permission and, once granted, passed the machine over to Célia.
* * *
It felt strange having a drone in her hands again. Strange, exciting, sad...a heady combination as she placed the lightweight black body on her lap and scrolled through the controller to switch the language from Greek to French. She was familiar with the cheap mass-produced brand—a family favourite that entertained children and adults alike. Checking that the drone was powered up, she scrolled to the status bar to find the compass setting. She had already checked the aircraft battery was above eighty per cent, so she was pretty sure that recalibrating the compass should be all that was needed. Looking for the solid clear light at the back of the drone, she put the controller aside, and picked up the body of the machine, turning it in her hands three hundred and sixty degrees until the light ran green. Pointing the nose downwards, she turned the machine again until the green light started flashing. Which was just as it should be.
She looked up at the boy, smiling, and passed him back the drone and controller after switching the language back to Greek.
The boy took it from her gingerly, placed it on the ground and experimentally started the drone up. It jerked upwards, startling some passers-by, and the boy let out a cry of joy, before guiding it up and into the air, running a short way after it.
For a moment, she indulged. Indulged in her own childhood memories. The hours she had spent playing with similar toys, and then later, the years she had spent studying, working towards more and more complex designs, GPS systems, loving the way that binary numbers combined with computer chips and the smell of a soldering iron. As her interest in the mechanical had turned into the way that signals could be sent and received to identify locations, the possibilities that could be achieved with such information had set her brain alight with wonder and excitement. The thrill of having an idea and of making it—
‘What was wrong with it?’
Loukis’s question cut through her thoughts, drawing her attention back to the
present, back to him.
‘The father wants to know, in case it happens again.’
‘The compass needed to be recalibrated. It’s a fairly common problem for that particular brand. He can look it up easily enough.’
It was only when she looked up at Loukis that she realised her mistake. Because how on earth would she explain how she had known that? His eyes didn’t leave hers as he translated what she had said to the father. They didn’t leave hers as the father proclaimed effusive thanks, tried to pay for their coffees—an offer that was dismissed by Loukis with a wave of his hand—and ran off after his happy son. No, it was Célia that broke the connection, unable to bear the scrutiny.
Over the past five years, only Ella had known about her drastic career change. She had been the only person to stick with her after her life had changed. Faces and so-called friends ran through her mind from that time ‘before’. Hopes and dreams of trying to be seen by her father, be considered valuable, or even worthy in his eyes. But then he had taken her plans for agricultural drone technology for use in drought-affected areas of Africa and warped it, changed her good intentions in the most horrible way. Took them from her and used them for his true love: his own company.
She had spent the summer interning and impressing the research and development department in Paquet Industries as a way to try to be closer to her father. To impress him somehow. She’d inherited her father’s genius, they’d all said. At the time she’d been pleased, so, so pleased. Only Ella had grumbled about being a genius in her own right. But Célia hadn’t cared. Finally pleasing her father had been her only focus. Until someone had seen the technical specs she’d been working on as part of her degree over lunch one day. Closer and closer they had looked and once they’d realised what she’d done, they’d whisked her up to see her father. Her drawings, her ideas, had been pored over and over. At first by the manager, then by her father, then by other advisers and ultimately by lawyers.
God, she’d been so naïve. At first she’d been thrilled, excited, hopeful even. But then suddenly everything went quiet. People stopped talking about the project, behaving as if it had never happened. Her father became too busy to see her, to answer her calls even.
She’d wondered if perhaps they’d found something wrong with her designs and that had scoured her insides, devastating her in what she’d hoped to be ‘the final’ way, the ‘only’ way her father might find use or value, or even love. Three weeks after the internship had finished and she had returned to university, returned to Ella, who had comforted Célia in her bewilderment, she discovered what had happened. In the newspaper. The article had revealed a major deal between her father’s company, Paquet Industries, and one of France’s leading firearms manufacturers, proclaiming the revolutionising of drone technology as its key motivation.
What she was working on—designs to help agriculture in drought-affected areas, to allow better crop production, rapid identification of pest and fungal infestations, information on irrigation and so much more—had been used instead for murder. Justifications like war on terror and border defence and the little-known discipline of Measurement and Signature Intelligence had done nothing to assuage her guilt.
That her designs, her hopes and dreams had been so vilely abused had shocked her to her very core. Only Ella knew of the devastating guilt that had torn through Célia. That had seen her nearly drop out of college altogether. That had given her nightmares for months and months.
Her father had simply refused to speak of it, as if pretending it hadn’t happened. Her mother had stood by him and, in Célia’s mind, chosen his side. She hadn’t spoken to her father in five years, her mother in three. And it still ached and twisted in her chest.
‘Célia?’
Once again she had become so lost in her thoughts she had missed what Loukis had said. She brushed the hair that had fallen in front of her eyes aside, noticing how the green sapphires glinted in the sunlight, bringing her back to reality with a bump.
‘Are you okay?’ Loukis asked, a frown marring the near perfect features looking up at her.
‘Yes. Sorry, what were you saying?’
‘That we probably need to leave if we’re going to make lunch.’
‘Lunch?’
‘Yes, you have an appointment.’
‘An appointment?’
He nodded. ‘One that would probably benefit from something more than you repeating my every word.’
Loukis stood from the table, but Célia remained on the chair.
