Chapter 2 - THE BABY IN ROW TWENTY-ONE
My phone said 9:31 p.m.
Twelve minutes too early.
The baby's scream cut through the cabin with such raw terror that every muscle in my body locked.
It wasn't an ordinary cry.
I had been around enough children to recognize hunger, exhaustion, discomfort, even the breathless rage toddlers could produce when denied something ridiculous.
This was different.
This sounded like fear.
Pure, desperate fear.
For several seconds, nobody moved.
The engine noise hummed beneath us. Overhead vents whispered cold air. Somewhere near first class, a man slowly lowered the business magazine he had been pretending to read.
The scream came again.
Longer.
Higher.
And then stopped so abruptly that the silence afterward felt violent.
I looked down at the paper.
Rule Two.
IF A BABY STARTS CRYING BEFORE 9:43 P.M., DO NOT TRY TO COMFORT IT.
Do not turn around.
Do not acknowledge the mother if she asks for help.
No matter what she says, she is not asking you.
A chill moved down my spine.
I read the final line twice.
At 9:43, the situation changes.
I folded the note halfway, suddenly conscious of the people around me.
Every face had turned forward again.
Too quickly.
Like they'd all practiced it.
"Excuse me."
The voice came from behind my right shoulder.
A woman's voice.
Young.
Shaking.
Every instinct I had told me to turn.
I didn't.
"Sir?"
Closer now.
"Please."
My hands tightened around the paper.
"Please help me."
I stared at the seatback in front of me.
A safety instruction sticker showed a smiling cartoon passenger calmly fastening an oxygen mask.
My breathing became shallow.
The woman stepped closer.
I could hear fabric moving.
Could smell baby powder.
"My daughter isn't breathing."
That did it.
I started to turn.
A hand shot across the aisle and grabbed my wrist.
The man in 14D had seemed asleep since boarding. Gray hair. Expensive coat. Mid-sixties. I hadn't even heard him move.
His fingers clamped down hard enough to hurt.
"Don't," he whispered.
I looked at him.
His eyes were open now.
They were terrified.
"You got one too," he murmured.
I didn't answer.
He glanced toward the paper.
"The rules."
My stomach tightened.
Before I could ask how he knew, the woman behind me spoke again.
"My daughter is dying."
The older man's grip tightened.
"Keep facing forward."
"She's asking for help."
"No, she isn't."
"What the hell does that mean?"
His expression changed.
Not confusion.
Grief.
"It means the first time I was on this flight, I turned around."
The cabin lights flickered.
I forgot how to breathe.
"The first time?"
He released my wrist.
Behind us, the woman began crying.
Quietly at first.
Then louder.
"Please, Garrett."
My blood turned cold.
I hadn't told anyone my first name.
The flight attendant had called me Mr. Garrett because she'd apparently mistaken my surname, or so I'd assumed.
My actual full name was Garrett Cole.
"How does she know my name?"
The older man stared straight ahead.
"Because they always know."
"Who are they?"
His mouth tightened.
"We have eleven minutes before you can look."
The baby began screaming again.
This time the sound seemed to come from directly beside my ear.
I flinched so hard my shoulder hit the window-side passenger, except there was no passenger there.
Seat 14B was empty.
I checked my phone.
9:33.
Ten minutes.
"Tell me what's happening," I whispered.
The man swallowed.
"My name is Arthur Vance."
"Okay, Arthur. What is happening?"
"I don't know what this place is."
"This place?"
"This airplane isn't where you think it is."
I almost laughed.
"We're thirty thousand feet above—"
"No."
His answer was immediate.
"We're not."
The overhead seatbelt sign blinked twice.
Arthur glanced upward.
His face drained of color.
"Rule Three."
I unfolded my paper.
RULE THREE — IF THE SEATBELT SIGN FLASHES TWICE WHILE THE CAPTAIN IS SILENT, CLOSE YOUR EYES FOR THIRTY SECONDS.
Whatever happens, do not open them.
Especially if someone you love speaks to you.
The seatbelt sign flashed a second time.
I shut my eyes.
Almost immediately, the temperature dropped.
The engine noise disappeared.
Not faded.
Disappeared.
One second we were inside a commercial jet roaring through the sky.
The next, there was nothing.
No engines.
No vents.
No vibration.
Absolute silence.
I began counting.
One.
Two.
Three.
At seven seconds, someone whispered my name.
"Garrett?"
Emily.
My sister.
Impossible.
I hadn't heard her voice in three days, but I knew it instantly.
"Garrett, where are you?"
My chest tightened.
Ten.
Eleven.
"Please open your eyes."
It sounded like she was standing directly in front of me.
"You promised you'd be there."
Fourteen.
Fifteen.
"I can't get married without you."
My throat burned.
Then another voice joined hers.
A voice I had not heard in fifteen years.
My father.
"Son."
I nearly opened my eyes.
He had died when I was nineteen.
Heart attack in our kitchen.
I had spent years wishing I could hear him say my name one more time.
"Garrett."
I pressed my fingernails into my palms.
Twenty-two.
"You should've come home sooner."
Twenty-four.
"You always work."
Twenty-six.
"You always think there'll be more time."
Tears pressed beneath my eyelids.
Twenty-eight.
"Look at me."
Twenty-nine.
A hand touched my cheek.
Thirty.
I opened my eyes.
The engines returned with a violent roar.
I gasped.
Arthur sat beside me, pale and sweating.
Across the aisle, a businessman in row 13 had opened his eyes too early.
At least, I assumed he had.
Because he was no longer sitting in his seat.
His seatbelt remained buckled.
But the man was gone.
His laptop was still open on the tray table.
A spreadsheet glowed on the screen.
No one reacted.
"Where did he go?"
Arthur stared ahead.
"You don't want to know."
"Someone just disappeared."
"Keep your voice down."
"This is insane."
"Yes."
The baby screamed again.
I checked the time.
9:39.
Four minutes.
I turned the paper over.
Another rule.
RULE FOUR — AT EXACTLY 9:43 P.M., YOU MAY LOOK AT THE BABY.
If the baby has blue eyes, stay seated.
If the baby has brown eyes, go to the rear galley immediately.
If the baby has no visible eye color—
I stopped.
The sentence continued beneath a dark smear of ink.
—THE FLIGHT HAS ALREADY BEGUN TO RESET.
I looked at Arthur.
"What happens at a reset?"
His face went still.
"Everyone forgets."
"Everyone?"
"Almost."
"Why don't you?"
He opened his coat.
Pinned inside the lining were dozens of tiny scratches.
Tally marks.
Hundreds of them.
"I've been trying to get off Flight 237 for eleven years."
I stared at him.
"That's impossible."
"Not here."
The cabin lights dimmed.
9:42.
The woman behind me whispered again.
"Please."
The baby whimpered.
Arthur looked toward me.
"At 9:43, you turn around once. No sooner. No later."
My phone changed.
9:43.
I turned.
Row twenty-one looked impossibly far away despite being only seven rows behind me.
A young woman sat alone in 21A.
Dark hair clung to her sweaty face.
Her shirt was stained with something dark.
Blood.
In her arms was a baby girl wrapped in a pale yellow blanket.
The mother's eyes found mine.
She looked human.
Terrified, exhausted, desperate.
The baby slowly stopped crying.
Her face turned toward me.
And her eyes opened.
Brown.
"Go," Arthur said.
I unbuckled.
The instant I stood, every passenger in the cabin turned their head toward me simultaneously.
I froze.
Arthur whispered, "Don't look at them."
I started down the aisle.
Ten steps.
Fifteen.
The baby watched me.
Her mother mouthed something.
I couldn't hear it.
Then, as I passed row eighteen, a man reached from his seat and caught my sleeve.
His skin was gray.
His eyes were completely black.
"Sit down, Garrett."
I jerked free.
The flight attendant appeared at the rear galley.
The auburn-haired woman.
Except she was no longer smiling.
"Faster," she said.
I ran.
The moment I crossed into the galley, the lights behind me went out.
Not dimmed.
Went black row by row.
Twenty.
Nineteen.
Eighteen.
Seventeen.
Like darkness was swallowing the cabin.
The young mother stood from row twenty-one with the baby against her chest.
"Run!" I shouted.
She tried.
Something grabbed her ankle beneath the seats.
She screamed.
The baby wailed.
I lunged out of the galley, but the flight attendant caught my chest with both hands.
"No!"
"She's being pulled under!"
"You cross that line now, we all reset."
"I can't leave her!"
"Then follow the rule."
"What rule?"
She shoved open a metal compartment beneath the coffee station.
Inside was an emergency medical kit.
And beneath it, taped to the wall, was another cream-colored envelope.
My name was written across the front.
GARRETT COLE.
I ripped it open.
There was only one sentence.
WHEN THE MOTHER SCREAMS YOUR NAME, TAKE THE BABY.
DO NOT SAVE THE MOTHER.
I looked up.
The woman in row twenty-one was being dragged backward.
Her fingernails tore against the carpet.
May you like
And then she screamed.
"GARRETT!"
