Chapter 8 - The Weight of the Trap
The jolt threw me backward off the armrest, sending me crashing hard against the bulkhead wall.
Outside, the roar of twin jet turbines suddenly spooled up to a deafening whine, vibrating the very rivets of the fuselage. The emergency red lights flickered, fought for stability, and then snapped back into harsh, brilliant white overhead illumination as the primary electrical grid kicked back online.
I scrambled to my feet, shaking off the impact, and looked up at the ceiling panel.
The crawlspace was empty. The saboteur had slipped deeper into the narrow maintenance duct running the entire length of the fuselage toward the rear galley.
"Ryan! Are you alright?" Captain Vance rushed down the aisle, her service flashlight still gripped like a baton, followed closely by Arthur Parker, who had safely secured Noah in the locked cockpit with the co-pilot.
"I'm fine," I gasped, wiping a smear of dark grease off my forearm. "They went toward the rear. They were tapping directly into the primary avionics trunk line."
Arthur’s face turned grim as he stared up at the dangling, sparking wires. "They weren't trying to blow up the plane, Captain. A bomb would have been crude. They were uploading a malicious firmware override to spoof our altitude and GPS coordinates the moment we cleared Seattle airspace."
Captain Vance stared at him in horror. "To make the aircraft disappear off civilian radar... and route us where?"
"Into restricted military air corridors over the Pacific Northwest," Arthur said coldly. "Handled by an automated ghost-routing protocol. Once the plane crossed the ridge, it would have vanished from civilian tracking entirely."
Before either of us could process the terrifying scale of the conspiracy, the main cabin telephone at the forward galley began to ring with a shrill, uninterrupted electronic shriek.
Ring. Ring. Ring.
It wasn't an inbound call from ground control. It was an internal intercom extension originating from seat 34E—all the way in the very last row of economy.
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I exchanged a hard glance with Captain Vance, gripped the heavy service screwdriver tighter in my hand, and started walking down the aisle, ignoring the terrified stares of the passengers.
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