As our footsteps neared, Reid's chair spun toward us. He'd been studying twenty screens with numerous readouts on each. His abilities when it came to technology and multitasking were truly unmatched. There was nothing he didn't or couldn't understand. If he found something unfamiliar, he learned it.
When I asked him questions or for clarification, he could rattle off verbatim definitions or complete manuals. What took others days or weeks literally took him hours. He wasn't the world's best conversationalist, but when you were hunkered down in a bombed-out school waiting to kill or be killed, having a quiet partner with a mind assessing every possibility was better than someone with the gift of gab.
Patrick and I'd learned that while Reid's words were often few, the ones he spoke were
