Chapter 3 - The Cargo Manifest
I didn't wait for the elevator. I bolted up the service stairs, taking them two at a time, my lungs burning as I burst through the door onto the fourth floor and sprinted down the hallway toward Room 412.
The door to my room was ajar.
A strip of yellow light spilled out onto the dark carpet. My heart hammered against my ribs—not from physical exhaustion, but from the terrifying realization that Vance’s warning had come too fast.
I kicked the door open wide, my hands raised. “Dileia—stop—”
She was standing by the window, her back to me, holding a heavy manila envelope she had pulled from the side pocket of my open duffel bag. She spun around at the sound of the crash, her eyes wide with a mixture of terror and betrayal.
“You lied about everything, Alden,” she breathed, her voice shaking as she clutched the papers. “The name, the job... and now this?”
“Dileia, put that down. Listen to me very carefully,” I said, holding my hands out in a placating gesture, taking slow steps toward her. “You are in danger. I am in danger. That man on the plane—Arthur Pendelton—wasn't having a normal heart attack.”
“I know who he is,” she interrupted, her voice breaking. She dropped the manila envelope onto the bed. The contents spilled out: a printout of the flight manifest for Flight 412, with three names circled in heavy red ink—including mine, and hers.
I froze. “Where did you get that?”
“It was in my crew locker when I got back to the base hotel ten minutes ago,” she said, tears finally spilling over her lashes. “Along with a note telling me that if I want my flight certification renewed next month, I need to keep my mouth shut about what happened in Row 11. But that’s not the worst part, Alden.”
She picked up a single sheet of thermal paper—a copy of the aircraft’s maintenance dispatch record.
“My brother, Leo, is a junior avionics engineer for Meridian,” she whispered, looking up at me with absolute devastation. “He signed off on the hydraulic pressure valves for that exact Boeing 737 two days ago. And when I called him to tell him about the crash... his phone went straight to voicemail, and his apartment manager says he hasn't been seen since noon.”
The room seemed to tilt on its axis. The core story promise—two strangers colliding in a moment of intense crisis—had suddenly fractured into something infinitely more dangerous. It wasn't just an isolated medical emergency anymore. It was a conspiracy that had deliberately snared both of us, weaving our lives together long before our seats had even been assigned in Row 14.
“We need to find him,” I said, my voice dropping all pretense of professional detachment.
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“We can't,” Dileia said, backing away toward the door as a heavy thud echoed from the hallway outside. “Because someone is already in the corridor.”
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