Chapter 7 - The Downward Spiral
The G-force hit my chest like a physical blow, pinning me back against the seat as the altitude tape spun downward at a terrifying velocity—nine thousand feet, eight thousand, seven.
"What did you do?!" I screamed over the blaring warning klaxons, fighting the control yoke with every ounce of upper-body strength I possessed. The flight controls were locked out, overridden by the malicious code pulsing through the navigation terminal.
"I didn't touch anything!" Tyler yelled, bracing himself against the instrument panel as his face turned the color of ash. "The drive must have triggered automatically the second it connected with the local interface!"
"Manual override! Pull the circuit breakers for the secondary bus—now!"
Tyler scrambled blindly across the floorboards, his hands shaking so violently he dropped his silver lighter twice before finally jamming his fingers into the electrical panel beneath the copilot's seat. He yanked the red-capped breakers with a sharp snap.
The blaring klaxons stuttered and died, replaced by the heavy, trembling roar of twin engines fighting to stabilize.
I hauled back on the yoke with both hands. The heavy transport shivered, groaned, and leveled off just three thousand feet above a jagged expanse of dense pine forest in the Catskills. Sweat dripped down my forehead, stinging my eyes. My heart hammered like a piston against my ribs.
"Status!" I barked, my hands flying across the auxiliary switches to reboot the manual flight management system.
"Engines stable," Tyler panted, wiping his brow with a trembling sleeve. "We're... we're flying level. But look at the navigation map, Claire. Our flight plan has been completely rewritten. We aren't heading to the Mojave anymore."
I looked down at the glowing tactical display. The destination coordinates had shifted from a secure military base out west to an isolated private airfield tucked deep inside the private estate boundaries of Richard Vance’s family property in upstate New York.
"They hijacked our transponder," I realized, a cold wave of realization washing over me. "Vance didn't just want the merger to succeed. He needed an active military asset to vanish over civilian airspace so he could pin the entire defense breach on a rogue pilot."
"What do we do?" Tyler whispered, staring at me with wide, terrified eyes. "Do we bail? Is there a parachute?"
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"There's one parachute in the cargo hold, and it's rated for a single pilot, not a pair of cowards," I snapped, keeping my eyes locked on the horizon as the outline of the private airstrip cut through the mist ahead. "We aren't jumping, Tyler. We're landing."
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