She was learning now, in the walk up a dark aisle, that she had been wrong, that the clarity was simply hers, a thing she carried, available the instant she stopped refusing to use it.

Chapter 5 — The Cockpit

The flight attendant worked the lock and the cockpit door swung inward, and the smell hit Maya first, hot electronics and old coffee and the sharp ozone tang of a flight deck under strain, a smell her body knew before her mind named it.

Captain Mark Davis sat in the left seat with his jaw set and his eyes moving fast across his instruments, a man holding a great deal very still.

In the right seat the first officer slumped against his harness, unconscious, an oxygen mask strapped over his slack face, his hands fallen open in his lap.