Vancouver, BC / Toronto, ON: Wednesday, August 20
Jason’s first twinge of unease comes after he clears airport security. I must have slept funny last night, he thinks, picking up his carry-on. Long hours at St. Paul’s have made him no stranger to back pain. Without Margo, he can’t access the more comfortable frequent traveler lounge, so he makes his way to the gate where he stretches and rubs the muscles in his right lower back before taking a seat.
It’s no use. He can’t get comfortable. He stands instead. By the time he lines up at the gate to board, the left side of his back aches, too.
Jason puts his carry-on down and does a few last-minute stretches. It wasn’t bothering me when my shift ended yesterday morning or when I woke up today. What could have messed it up? He looks down at the beautiful leather weekender bag that he uses for short trips, his final birthday gift from his mother. It’s not that heavy.
On board, he checks his seat assignment and sighs. He’s got the middle seat in a group of five, right in the centre of the plane. That’s what I get for booking a last-minute flight to Hamilton when Pearson Airport’s closed. Jason stores his carry-on in the overhead bin, ramming it against someone’s backpack to make it fit. He drops into the faux leather chair and lets his head fall back against the headrest.
He takes deep breath after deep breath as he and all his medical school classmates were taught years ago in an emotional intelligence elective. Taking his time, he thinks deliberately of each muscle group, clenches each one tightly and then releases.
It doesn’t help. Jason’s never liked planes. Anna’s not wild on them either. He’s not sure why they bother her. His own fear is grounded less in the sensation of turbulence and more in the utter loss of control. When their parents took them to China on a family vacation the summer after they finished high school, both twins flew medicated. Neither of them slept. He has vivid memories of holding Anna’s hand during the worst of the turbulence over the Pacific, wondering if she longed for the reassurance of xhen as deeply as he did. Kalos had been gone a mere four months then, but they’d already agreed to stop talking about him.
Or, more accurately, he’d made Anna agree to stop bringing him up.
Relax, he tells himself, as the plane taxis back from the gate. It’s fine. You’re fine.
Yet, as the airplane climbs into the sky toward Toronto, Jason’s back begins to prickle. At first, he experiences tiny flickers of heat. When the in-flight map displays the plane clearing the Rocky Mountains west of Calgary, the sensation blossoms into a dull, familiar ache on either side of his back, deep in his kidneys. Jason inhales sharply, his nose filling with the scent of sixteen-year-old dust. Xhen.
No. It’s muscle pain. He retrieves two liquid gel painkillers from his carry-on bag and swallows them without water. He leans back in his seat, closing his eyes. It’s in your head. Let the drugs take care of it. Sleep.
Another hour passes as he fidgets, then two. Jason’s tired enough to know just how badly he needs rest. Every time he gets close to nodding off, his back seizes with a fresh spasm. It’s psychosomatic, he tells himself. You’re stressed about flying. Your brain’s interpreting it as back pain. You’ve observed this kind of thing a thousand times in the ER. Stop reinforcing it.
“Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking,” says a deep baritone voice as the route map freezes on Jason’s in-flight entertainment monitor. “We’re about twenty-five minutes outside of Hamilton . . .”
“Thank God,” Jason breathes, trying to knuckle his back without elbowing the people beside him. The woman on his left offers a sympathetic smile.
“. . . begin our descent. Weather in Hamilton today is sunny with clear skies and a ground temperature of—”
The airplane’s loudspeaker clicks off. Jason grunts as a fresh wave of heat pierces his kidneys, like something’s trying to burn a hole through his spine from the inside out. Around him, the passengers exchange baffled looks, waiting for the pilot to continue.
Without warning, the plane banks hard to the right, making a sweeping turn. Several people cry out. Two of the flight attendants, who had been moving through the aisle to collect trash, clutch at nearby seats to stop themselves from falling. A warning ping sounds as the emergency seatbelt sign flashes on, seconds too late to be useful.
“Attention, passengers! This is your captain.” The man’s voice shakes on the last word. “We will be making an emergency landing at Pearson Airport. The flight attendants are trained for this situation. Please remain calm and follow their instructions.”
Alarm spreads like wildfire through the cabin as the flight attendants scramble to get seated, clinging to their veneer of calm with fixed, too-wide smiles. Fresh sweat breaks out on Jason’s forehead, accompanied by another bone-crushing spasm.
“Look!” a woman screams on the cabin’s left side, several rows ahead of his seat.
Straightening his back, Jason cranes his head high enough to see that she’s pointing out the window.
“There!”
More people begin to panic. Adrenaline surges like a freight train through Jason’s chest, just like it used to when Kalos took them out to hunt. His breath is short and fast as his stomach churns. No, no, no, he thinks, unable to deny the burning in his back for what it is and equally unable to recall how to summon xhen. I can’t fail again, not here in the sky!
There’s a shuddering lurch. The plane’s wing dips to the right. Jason catches a flash of something dark against the windows. The screaming takes on a new intensity.
“The wing!” someone cries in a ragged voice. “There’s a monster on the fucking wing!”
Another flash of movement draws his eyes to the porthole window on the plane’s left side. Turning in his seat, Jason stares into a non-human eye: split-pupiled orange with an inner ring of startling purple against black scales. It fills the window, radiating malice.
The eye vanishes. Jason glimpses large violet tentacles before a roar shakes his seat. The burn in his back is now scorching, climbing his spine to strike across his head, accompanied by ear-splitting pain. Someone nearby has lost control of their bladder. I’m going to die in this seat, Jason thinks as his nostrils fill with the smell of urine. We’re all going to die.
The light in the airplane’s cabin darkens as though a shadow has been thrown over his vision. It’s so quickly there and gone that Jason’s mind cannot process it. An instant later, there’s a hole a metre wide in the cabin ceiling five rows ahead.
The airplane depressurizes. Panels fall open. Breathing masks tumble loose. Jason grabs for his mask out of reflex, pulling it to his face and filling his lungs with oxygen. Ahead of him, a seat row breaks free from its moorings and slams up toward the gash in the plane’s ceiling. Only the massive tentacle pushing into the cabin through the hole stops the passengers, strapped to their chairs, from being sucked out into the sky.
Jason gulps air, feeling time slow exactly as it used to when he was in the operating room during his residency and the surgery was going well and it felt like he had all the time in the world. He rides the bubble of calm, prepared to face death with perfect clarity as the tentacle-like appendage strikes blindly through the cabin. Each flail brings it inexorably closer to him.
The airplane tilts toward the ground, momentarily halting the monster’s advance. Wind howls too loudly for Jason to hear screams. Overhead bins spring open. Suitcases and bags bounce free, some landing on people’s heads. Others are struck by the monster’s grasping tentacle. It makes no difference. After all of Jason’s doubts, all of his denials, he knows exactly whom the monster has come to claim.
As it roars a second time, Margo’s beautiful face fills his mind. There’s no way he can reach for his phone in time to say goodbye. I should have told you everything. Forgive me.
Her face vanishes, replaced by Anna’s. Pinned to his seat, unable to summon xhen, Jason suddenly hates his sister more than he has ever hated anyone in his entire life. They came for you and now they’re coming for me and I’m going to die and it’s all your fault. He starts to close his eyes, but the movement of a faint shadow on his right forestalls him.
Turning his head, he stares into Kalos’s serene face. There is no time. Take my hand, child.
Jason reaches for his teacher.