Chapter 9 - THE PASSENGER WHO REFUSED TO LEAVE
I hit airport carpet hard enough to knock the breath out of me.
Lily cried against my chest.
People screamed.
Not ghosts.
Real travelers.
Real airport employees.
Real security officers who had just watched dozens of terrified people emerge from what appeared to be an empty jet bridge.
I rolled over.
The doorway behind me showed Flight 237's rear galley.
Arthur stood inside.
"Arthur!"
I scrambled up.
The opening flickered.
He was dragging Daniel away from it.
"GET OUT!"
Arthur looked toward me.
For once, he didn't look tired.
He smiled.
"Tell Margaret I tried."
"She's dead!"
His smile widened.
"I know."
He shoved Daniel backward.
Then ran.
The doorway began collapsing.
"Arthur!"
He jumped.
For one second, his body crossed halfway.
Then Daniel caught his coat from behind.
Both men fell.
The doorway turned black.
Gone.
A solid wall stood at the end of the jet bridge.
I screamed Arthur's name until security grabbed me.
"Sir!"
"Let go!"
"Sir, calm down."
"There's someone in there!"
"There's no aircraft attached to this bridge."
I stopped fighting.
"What?"
An airport worker stood by the window.
Outside Gate B7 was empty pavement.
No plane.
No Flight 237.
Nothing.
Behind me, survivors collapsed across the carpet.
Some wore modern clothing.
Some wore clothing decades out of date.
One man had a pager clipped to his belt.
The little girl still held her stuffed rabbit.
Her mother clung to her.
Hannah lay ten feet away.
I carried Lily to her.
She pulled her child against her chest.
The sound she made wasn't quite crying.
It was twenty-seven years of love finally reaching its destination.
Mara sat beside the wall, staring at her hands.
They were changing.
Wrinkles appeared.
Gray entered her auburn hair.
"Oh."
I knelt.
"Mara?"
She laughed.
Her face aged year by year before my eyes.
"I guess time remembered me."
Within seconds, the twenty-something flight attendant became a woman in her early fifties.
Still Mara.
Still recognizable.
Just finally twenty-seven years older.
Hannah stared at herself.
She wasn't aging.
"Why not me?"
Mara looked at Lily.
"You were physically trapped on the original flight. Maybe the Hold preserved both of you."
Hannah touched her face.
"I don't understand."
Neither did I.
Sirens approached.
Police.
Paramedics.
Airport officials.
The scene became chaos.
People asking names.
Dates of birth.
Flights.
One paramedic took Lily and checked her.
"Healthy female infant," he said.
Hannah began sobbing again.
I sat on the floor.
My phone buzzed.
For the first time, normal notifications flooded the screen.
Thirty-seven missed calls.
Emily.
Mom.
Hospital.
I called Emily.
She answered instantly.
"Garrett?"
Her voice broke.
"Where the hell are you?"
"I'm at Denver airport."
"Denver?"
"I know."
"Your flight left hours ago."
"I know."
"Mom collapsed."
My stomach twisted.
"Is she alive?"
"Yes."
I closed my eyes.
"She's awake?"
"She woke up ten minutes ago."
Ten minutes.
Around the time we escaped.
Emily started crying.
"She kept saying your name."
"I need to get to her."
"Garrett..."
Something in her voice changed.
"What?"
"Your airline says you never boarded."
I looked toward the survivors.
Airport police had begun separating them into groups.
"What?"
"Your boarding pass was scanned, but the airline says Flight 631 left Gate B7 tonight."
My heart stopped.
"Not 237."
"No."
I looked at Mara.
She had heard.
"Garrett," Emily whispered. "What happened?"
I couldn't answer.
Not yet.
An FBI agent appeared within twenty minutes.
Then Homeland Security.
Then people who refused to identify which agency they belonged to.
The orange flight recorder caused the biggest reaction.
One older investigator stared at its faded logo.
"Where did you get this?"
"Flight 237."
He looked at me.
"Don't play games."
"I'm not."
He turned the recorder.
Read the serial number.
His face went pale.
He walked away immediately and made a phone call.
By midnight, the terminal section was closed.
Survivors were transported to hospitals.
Authorities compared fingerprints.
Dental records.
Missing-person databases.
The impossible became documented fact.
Margaret Dorsey, the retired teacher, had disappeared in 1999.
Caleb Morrow had disappeared in 2012.
The businessman from row thirteen had disappeared only forty minutes earlier from an airport restroom in Phoenix.
People from different years.
Different places.
All brought onto the same flight.
Hannah's identity created panic inside the investigation.
Her fingerprints matched records from 1999.
Lily's hospital bracelet, still around her tiny ankle beneath the yellow blanket, carried a birth date from twenty-seven years earlier.
Mara's identity matched a former North Atlantic Airways flight attendant who had vanished from her apartment in 2001.
Arthur Vance was listed as missing since 2015.
Arthur.
I couldn't let it go.
At 2:13 a.m., while investigators questioned Hannah, I found Mara sitting alone outside an examination room.
"You said the breach happens once."
She nodded.
"Every cycle."
"When is the next cycle?"
She looked at me.
"Garrett."
"When?"
"Don't."
"Arthur is alive."
"Maybe."
"He sacrificed years trying to help everyone."
"I know."
"Daniel is still there."
"I know."
"So when does it open again?"
She studied me.
"You've been home less than three hours."
"I'm not home."
"You escaped."
"Arthur didn't."
"And going back could trap you permanently."
"How long until the next breach?"
Mara closed her eyes.
"Twenty-four hours."
I stood.
She grabbed my wrist.
"You can't board from the same place."
"Then where?"
"The Hold chooses."
"How did you board voluntarily?"
Her silence answered the question.
She knew.
"Mara."
"I nearly lost my mind learning how."
"Tell me."
"Your mother would kill me."
"My mother helped write the rules."
"Because she wanted you out."
"I am not leaving Arthur there."
She stared at me for a long time.
Then she reached into her torn uniform pocket.
Pulled out a cream-colored piece of paper.
One final rule was written on it.
RULE EIGHT — A PERSON WHO ESCAPES FLIGHT 237 MAY RETURN ONCE.
ONLY ONCE.
TO FIND THE DOOR, GO WHERE YOUR GREATEST REGRET BEGAN.
Mara looked at me.
"Do you know where that is?"
I did.
My grandmother's old house.
The kitchen window.
The peach cobbler.
The day I had seen my mother crying and chosen not to ask why.
But there was another regret.
Bigger.
More recent.
My father's funeral.
I had left early to answer a work call.
I hadn't stayed with Mom.
Hadn't stayed with Emily.
I had spent fifteen years running from grief by convincing myself responsibility was the same thing as love.
"I know."
Mara's eyes filled with fear.
"Then understand the rest."
"What rest?"
She turned the paper over.
There was another sentence.
IF YOU RETURN, THE HOLD WILL NOT LET YOU LEAVE THE SAME PERSON.
At that exact moment, the hospital lights flickered.
Once.
Twice.
My phone rang.
Unknown number.
I answered.
Static.
Then Arthur's voice.
"Garrett?"
I stood frozen.
"Arthur?"
"Don't come back."
A scream echoed behind him.
Daniel.
Arthur whispered quickly.
"It knows Lily escaped. It's opening doors everywhere."
"What does that mean?"
"Garrett..."
His voice broke.
"It's coming for your family."
May you like
The call ended.
And three floors above us, every newborn baby in the hospital began screaming at exactly the same time.
