The captain’s calm voice had been doing the most important work on the airplane in that moment, holding three hundred people one notch back from the edge by sheer tone, buying time with composure, and she had recognized the technique because she had once been trained to produce it, and she had known, hearing the strain underneath it, exactly how much it was costing the man to keep it up.

Maya kept her eyes closed for three breaths.

She knew that tone, knew the shape of what sat behind it, because she had lived inside that shape in a cockpit of her own a long time ago: the spike of urgency held down hard under procedure, the fear that a trained voice swallows so the people behind it will not taste it.

She could have gone on pretending to sleep.