Independence Day: Resurgence: The Official Movie Novelization Read Online Free PDF Page B

accountants. As he followed after Catherine, however, he heard Floyd call out.
    “Wait! Where are you going?” He was cut off as one of the guards stopped him and demanded his papers.
    Good
, David thought.
That’ll keep him off my back for a while. Maybe long enough to get the real scoop out of Catherine.
    Once she was done being angry with him, at least.
    They’d met at a conference in French Guiana, too soon after Connie was killed in a car accident. That was the problem, the timing. Catherine was an intoxicating, very intelligent, and quite beautiful woman. David liked to think he had a certain charm himself. They spoke, got interested in each other’s research, and later got interested in each other. Intimately.
    After that, David had realized that his wife’s death was too fresh. He wasn’t ready for anyone else in his life. The alien invasion had brought him and Constance back together, and far too quickly she’d been taken away from him again.
    David had been angry about it. At the universe, God maybe, everything. Out of the massive tragedy and destruction of the invasion, their marriage had been reborn, and then of all things—a car accident. Completely random. David raged at the randomness of it, the blind stupid chance.
    Realizing he had a long way to go before he made any kind of peace with it, he never called Catherine as he had promised to. Looking back on it, he knew he should have handled the situation better, but the past was the past. Now that she had made her point maybe Catherine would be ready to forgive and forget.
    David put this theory to the test when he caught up to her. She was climbing a hill just inside the border station, and he fell into step next to her.
    “So why does Umbutu Junior need a psychiatrist?” he asked. “Unresolved daddy issues?”
    She ignored his little joke—which wasn’t all a joke. Anyone with Dikembe Umbutu’s history would in fact have enough father issues to keep busy generations of therapists.
    “His people fought a ground war with the aliens for an entire year,” she responded. “Their connection is the strongest I’ve ever seen. It’s like they’re tapped into the alien subconscious.”
    “Oh, yeah,” David said, recalling some of the conversations they’d had at the conference. “Your obsession with the human–alien psychic residue.”
    “You, calling
me
obsessive?” Catherine shot back. “That’s cute.”
    Maybe, David reflected, he should have said something more professional.
Oh well.
He’d never been particularly good at couching his thoughts in the right phrases. It was part of the reason he’d refused the ESD directorship for so long, allowing himself to be sidelined as the research coordinator so the government could take advantage of his brains, but ignore his policy recommendations.
    He had known they were moving too fast with the hybrid fighter program, and endangering the lives of pilots and researchers alike, but they’d been hell-bent to get a working model ready for a July 4 celebration back in 2007.
    When it mattered, only one person associated with the hybrid program would listen to David, and that was Steve Hiller. After David had laid out his reservations, Hiller had done the kind of thing you’d expect him to do. Instead of endangering the life of another pilot, he had taken the prototype on its shakedown flight.
    It had cost him his life.
    While the smoke still hung in the sky from the explosion that killed his friend, David was already acting. Connie was a senator then. Between her influence and David’s obvious suitability, he’d been able to force his way into the ESD directorship. Originally he hadn’t wanted the job, but after Steve Hiller’s death he had bowed to the inevitable. It might be too late to save Steve, but at least he could make sure the hybrid program would proceed at an appropriate pace.
    Three years later Connie died, and David was alone with his directorship. Life hadn’t gone the way he had