Chapter 7 - THE MAN WHO DOOMED FLIGHT 237
Daniel Mercer's face lost all color.
For twenty-seven years, he had apparently existed inside a nightmare built from regret, death, and whatever force had swallowed Flight 237.
Yet five words from Hannah frightened him more than any monster we'd seen.
Tell Garrett what you did.
Daniel backed away.
"I don't know what she's talking about."
Mara laughed once.
Cold.
"Of course you do."
Arthur raised the crash axe again.
"Start talking."
Daniel's expression hardened.
"You think threatening me changes anything?"
"No," Arthur said. "But it'll improve my evening."
I would have laughed under any other circumstances.
Instead, I held Lily closer.
"Hannah said you did something before takeoff."
Daniel looked at the child.
"She was unstable."
"Stop."
"She filled Elaine's head with lies."
"I said stop."
"She was planning to disappear with my daughter."
"Was Lily biologically yours?"
He froze.
That was enough.
Mara turned.
"What?"
Daniel's jaw tightened.
"Hannah had an affair."
The words dripped with hatred.
"She humiliated me."
Arthur stared at him.
"So you threatened an infant."
"She was my wife."
"That doesn't answer the question."
Daniel's eyes moved toward Lily.
"She should have belonged to me."
There it was.
Not love.
Ownership.
I suddenly understood why Hannah had run.
"Who was Lily's father?"
Daniel didn't answer.
Hannah's voice came faintly through the baby again.
"Peter."
Mara inhaled sharply.
"Peter Shaw?"
Daniel lunged.
Fast.
Too fast.
Arthur swung the axe.
Daniel caught the handle.
They slammed against the bulkhead.
Mara grabbed the recorder access panel.
"Garrett, help me."
I passed Lily carefully to her.
Then tackled Daniel.
He hit the floor beneath me.
For a second he felt human.
Solid.
Then his body became ice cold.
Images exploded inside my head.
A woman crying in an airport bathroom.
Hannah.
Daniel gripping her wrist.
A baby screaming.
A maintenance door.
A screwdriver.
Fuel smell.
I jerked backward.
"What did you do?"
Daniel stared at me.
I knew.
Somehow I knew.
"You sabotaged the plane."
Mara went still.
Arthur whispered, "Jesus."
Daniel stood slowly.
"I only wanted to scare her."
"What did you do?"
"I knew aircraft maintenance."
His voice had gone flat.
"My father owned a repair contractor. I understood enough."
Mara's face twisted with horror.
"You boarded early."
"I had access credentials."
"You damaged something."
"I loosened a connection in an electrical access panel."
Arthur looked sick.
"You killed seventy-three people."
"No."
Daniel shouted it.
"I wasn't trying to crash the plane."
"But you did."
"The pilots could have landed."
"They never had the chance."
Daniel's face twisted.
"I wanted Hannah frightened. I wanted her to understand she couldn't leave me and expect life to stay easy."
Mara lunged.
I caught her.
"You murdered them!"
"I said it wasn't supposed to happen!"
The airplane shook violently.
The confession seemed to affect the Hold itself.
Panels rattled.
A deep groan traveled through the fuselage.
Arthur looked upward.
"It's reacting."
Mara stared at Daniel.
"Because the lie has been holding this place together."
Daniel backed away.
"No."
I understood.
"Everyone thought the disappearance was unknowable."
Arthur nodded.
"Unfinished."
Mara whispered, "A mystery with seventy-three dead people trapped inside it."
Daniel shook his head.
"You don't understand."
I stepped toward him.
"Then tell us."
He looked at Lily.
"I damaged the electrical bus connection. But something else happened."
"What?"
"After takeoff, I tried to fix it."
"From the cabin?"
"There was an access point."
Mara's eyes narrowed.
"Near the rear service area."
Daniel nodded.
"I opened the panel. I thought I could reconnect it."
"And?"
"The lights went out."
He started trembling.
"I heard Hannah screaming."
For the first time, his fear looked genuine.
"I reached into the panel."
His voice dropped.
"And something grabbed my hand from the other side."
Silence.
"Other side of what?"
"I don't know."
The compartment lights flickered.
Daniel looked terrified now.
"It pulled."
He lifted his right sleeve.
His arm from the elbow down was blackened.
Burned.
"I saw somewhere else."
Arthur whispered, "The Hold."
"Thousands of planes."
Daniel's eyes widened at the memory.
"Ships. Cars. Rooms. Places where people died terrified and didn't understand why."
Mara swallowed.
"You opened a breach."
"I think the electrical fire gave it a path."
"And it took the aircraft."
Daniel nodded.
"The pilots never crashed."
I thought of my mother.
"Hannah figured that out."
"Eventually."
"Why couldn't she escape?"
Daniel's gaze shifted toward Lily.
"Because the Hold requires balance."
Mara's face changed.
"The exchange."
"One out. One in."
"So Elaine offered herself."
"Yes."
"But it rejected her because she was pregnant."
"Yes."
I looked at Lily.
"Then why can Lily leave now?"
Daniel smiled.
"She can't."
My blood chilled.
"My mother said—"
"Your mother has spent twenty-seven years believing Hannah's theory."
"You know otherwise?"
"I've watched hundreds of people try."
Arthur stepped closer.
"Hundreds?"
"Flight 237 picks up new passengers whenever the breach opens."
I remembered the nearly empty gate.
People boarding silently.
"People from different years."
Daniel nodded.
"Different airports. Different flights. Same door."
Mara whispered, "And they become passengers here."
"Until they reset enough times to forget who they were."
Arthur looked around as though seeing ghosts.
"That's what happens to them."
Daniel smiled.
"Eventually they stop fighting. Then the Hold uses their faces."
I looked at Arthur's tally marks.
"Why are you still yourself?"
He touched the inside of his coat.
"Margaret."
His late wife.
"I write her name every reset."
Mara reached for the access lock again.
"We're wasting time."
She pushed the brass key deeper.
This time it turned.
The bulkhead panel released with a hiss.
Behind it sat a bright orange flight data recorder.
Real.
Scratched.
Old.
Stamped with the faded airline logo from 1999.
Arthur laughed.
"We found it."
Mara reached in.
Daniel suddenly smiled.
"Yes."
I saw it too late.
A thin black wire was wrapped around the recorder.
It snapped tight around Mara's wrist.
She screamed.
The compartment wall opened.
Not broke.
Opened like a mouth.
Darkness swallowed her arm to the shoulder.
I grabbed her waist.
Arthur grabbed me.
Daniel stepped backward, calm again.
"The Hold doesn't care about my confession."
Mara screamed as the darkness pulled.
Daniel pointed toward the recorder.
"It cares about that."
I pulled with everything I had.
Mara's fingers brushed the orange casing.
"Garrett!"
"What?"
"Take Lily!"
Arthur grabbed the baby as Mara shoved her toward him.
The darkness pulled harder.
My shoes slid across the metal floor.
Daniel walked toward the ladder.
"At 11:17, you'll learn the final rule."
I shouted after him.
"What final rule?"
He looked back.
"Someone still has to stay."
Then the darkness yanked Mara from my hands.
She vanished into the wall.
The bulkhead slammed shut.
And from inside it came Mara's voice.
"Garrett, don't let Arthur sacrifice himself."
Arthur and I looked at each other.
May you like
His expression told me everything.
He had already planned to.
