Chapter 2 - The Captain's Dilemma
Captain Arthur Vance was sixty-two years old, with twenty-eight years flying wide-body jets across international lines. He knew every protocol, every union regulation, and every flight attendant on this regional hub by heart. When he walked down the aisle, his expression was a mask of grim professional duty.
The hysterical flight attendant—whose name tag read Brenda Miller—latched onto his arm immediately, playing the victim with practiced theatricality.
"Captain! Thank God!" Brenda sobbed, gesturing wildly toward Simone’s row. "She attacked me! I tried to enforce standard cabin safety and relocation protocols due to a disruptive odor, and she physically grabbed my wrist, bruised me, and refused to move!"
A murmur rippled through the cabin. The businessman in the third row immediately stood up. "That is an absolute lie, Captain! I recorded the whole thing. She grabbed her first!"
Captain Vance raised a single gloved hand, silencing the cabin instantly. His eyes swept over the passengers, lingering for a fraction of a second on the phone held by the woman across the aisle, before shifting entirely toward Simone.
Simone hadn't moved an inch. She sat with her legs crossed, her tablet resting casually on her lap, looking up at the captain not with fear, but with an expression of quiet, supreme evaluation.
"Ma'am," Captain Vance said, his voice deep and raspy from decades of bad coffee and cockpit air. "I'm going to need you to gather your personal belongings and accompany these officers off the aircraft."
Brenda smiled—a smug, triumphant smirk that she tried to hide behind her clipboard.
Simone didn't blink. She slowly pressed the lock button on her tablet, letting the screen fade to black, before looking up directly into the captain's eyes.
"Captain Vance," Simone said, her voice carrying an eerie, melodic cadence that made the hairs on the back of Arthur's neck stand up. "Before you ruin your career, your pension, and the operational license of this airline, I strongly suggest you look at the device I am holding right now."
Arthur frowned. "Ma'am, this isn't the time for games. Step off the plane."
"I am not playing games, Arthur," Simone replied, using his first name with an easy, terrifying familiarity. "Look at the routing number on your cockpit terminal right now. Check who authorized the emergency aviation subsidy renewal that cleared your fleet for international transit yesterday morning."
Captain Vance froze. The name Arthur combined with the specific mention of the federal subsidy renewal hit him like a physical blow. Only three people in the federal Department of Transportation had direct signing authority over that grant.
And none of them were passengers on a domestic hopper to Chicago unless—
Simone reached into her bag, pulled out a small, heavy black leather folder embossed with the gold seal of the United States federal government, and laid it open across her tray table.
Brenda scoffed, leaning over. "Oh, please, what is that? Some fake ID—"
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Captain Vance’s face went completely, horrifyingly white. He slapped Brenda's arm down so hard she gasped, stepped past the security officers, and stared down at the document.
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