“Airspeed’s decaying,” his co-pilot, Miller, whispered. Her knuckles were white on the yoke. This was her first trans-continental flight since her father’s funeral, and Elias could see the tremor in her hands.
The plane hit a pocket of dead air, dropping five hundred feet in a second. Screams erupted from the cabin. Oxygen masks tumbled from the ceiling like yellow plastic ghosts.
When the wheels finally chirped against the tarmac in Santiago, the silence didn't break immediately. It lingered until the engines began their low, mournful whine down to a halt.
For twenty minutes, the aircraft was a metal tube of absolute, practiced coldness. No one cried because no one had the permission to. They were all holding their breath, suspended in a vacuum where emotion had been surgically removed.
Miller swallowed hard, took a jagged breath, and nodded. She stared back at the horizon, her face turning into a mask of cold stone.
“Airspeed’s decaying,” his co-pilot, Miller, whispered. Her knuckles were white on the yoke. This was her first trans-continental flight since her father’s funeral, and Elias could see the tremor in her hands.
The plane hit a pocket of dead air, dropping five hundred feet in a second. Screams erupted from the cabin. Oxygen masks tumbled from the ceiling like yellow plastic ghosts.
When the wheels finally chirped against the tarmac in Santiago, the silence didn't break immediately. It lingered until the engines began their low, mournful whine down to a halt.
For twenty minutes, the aircraft was a metal tube of absolute, practiced coldness. No one cried because no one had the permission to. They were all holding their breath, suspended in a vacuum where emotion had been surgically removed.
Miller swallowed hard, took a jagged breath, and nodded. She stared back at the horizon, her face turning into a mask of cold stone.