A man with authority over the airplane’s maintenance and paperwork.

A flight computer that had turned traitor.

A pilot poisoned and a thermos vanished.

And that same man now at the door, invoking his rank, insisting the crisis needed him inside the one room where a person could finish what the sabotage had started.

It didn’t require proof.

It required only that I stop pretending the pieces belonged to three different accidents.

They belonged to one man, and the one man wanted through that door, and there was exactly one correct response to that.