Departure(84)

Yul Tan. Q-net. That meeting. The entire time I felt a nagging sensation. His voice echoes in my head.

It works with quantum entanglement. Particles encounter each other and become linked. After that, their states become dependent upon each other. I use that quantum phenomenon to transmit data across space and time.

His research is the key.

Key to what?

Q-net.

No. That’s not right. It’s not about Q-net.

What’s happening to me? I rub my eyes.

Yul’s voice is in my head again. I’ve had some interference the past few days, like static on the network. I was worried, but it just stopped.

It just stopped.

But something started for Yul after we met. He was sick too. Just like me. He felt something, like we had met before. Memories he couldn’t reach.

The next attack: the flight to New York. But it wasn’t as bad. Wasn’t the same.

Breakfast. The orbital colonies. The pitch that was wrong.

Shaw knew it was wrong. The way it was presented was wrong. But the idea was right.

The whole time with Shaw, everything was right.

Sabrina.

When I touched her hand, I was gone, on a hard, cold table, staring up. The lights. She was there.

She knew. I saw it in her eyes.

The touch was the key.

The woman on Facebook. The biographer. The sensation when I saw her. Sabrina looked at her too. Knew her.

I focus on my laptop. My eyes catch on the open window, on Flight 305, and a strike splits my head, sending me reeling back.

That’s a flash point. Flight 305. What does it mean? Is it because the flight from London was total agony?

My eyes closed, I find the Windows key, hold it down, and press M, minimizing all the windows. I open a new browser and navigate to Harper Lane’s Facebook profile.

The instant I see her face, chills run through me, growing stronger, numbing my body.

I replay the moment we met. On the plane. In the aisle. It was dark, and half the plane was gone.

No. Wrong.

Our plane was whole, sitting on the tarmac at Heathrow.

The tarmac at Heathrow. A sea of grass.

I shake my head. That’s impossible.

Planes overturned, crumbling.

Not right.

Our plane was whole, sitting at the jet bridge. She was there, in a first-class seat, waiting to get off. I stood up, helped her with her bag. She peered up at me, her beautiful eyes wide.

I blink and she’s trapped in the seat, her leg caught.

Water all around her.

She’s scared, can’t get free.

No. Impossible. A flooded plane at the jet bridge?

Focus.

I scan the screen.

There’s a new post on her profile.

Harper: Indecision 2014 Update. Finally slept for a few hours and dreamed I was on sinking plane after it crashed. I was pulled underwater and couldn’t get out :(

She saw it too. How is that possible?

Sweat springs up on my forehead. I feel the memories slipping away, the two versions of reality separating again, a kite I can see clearly at first, carried away by the wind, drifting up until it’s just a tiny speck and then invisible, as if it were never there.

I reach for the remote, intending to turn the TV off, but the words from a new report stop me cold. “Authorities say if the plane did crash into the water, that makes it much harder to find and decreases the chances that there will be any survivors—”

A new wave of numbing spasms battles with the surging pain in my head.

I close my eyes.

The plane did hit the water. But they lived. Some of them.

I tried to save them.

How could a plane hit the water without disintegrating? It would be like hitting concrete at six hundred miles per hour.

The answers are in my head—how, I don’t know.

Facts emerge, as if answering my unspoken question.

The plane slowed down after the turbulence. The pilots deployed the landing gear to further slow it down. It broke apart and the tail section spun and dragged against the trees, which also decreased its speed. It hit the lake backwards, tail first. Something—the landing gear or the engines, maybe—was dragged down under the plane, propping it out of the water, like a seesaw. I can almost see it now.

I feel dizzy. I’m going to throw up. I grip the table, then push myself up. I stagger to the sink, push the handle back quickly, and watch the water pour out, gushing down the drain, which has a single bar across a round circle. The water flows in, like water into a sinking plane, a plane torn in half.

For a second I don’t see the sink drain. I see a plane in cross-section, a jagged dark circle.

Then it’s gone.

I splash more water on my face. It’s so cold, but . . . it helps. I remember the feeling. Cold water on my face, numbing it as I swim. I turn the faucet all the way to cold, cup my hands until my fingers tingle, start to burn, then go numb. With each second it hurts more, but I can feel less. As the burning, numbing sensation creeps up my hand, my mind becomes clearer. I splash the water on my face and inhale, shivering.

I’m running through the woods. A dozen points of light bounce in the dark forest before me. My breath flows out, white steam against the beads of light.

Then I’m back in my hotel room, the water flowing from the sink, the TV silent in the background.

I’m giving a speech. On the lake bank in the dark. No one will save those people if we don’t. Their lives are in our hands. . . .