“Maybe you should go check!” Jack yelled to me, as Claude took the upper hand and thrashed him back on his side, atop the long table.

  “I’m not leaving you!” I yelled back, falling to me knees in search of a weapon...anything really, that I could use to help Jack. Besides stacks of papers that now lay disheveled across the carpeted flooring, I found nothing.

  Continuing on, I crawled underneath the table, in greater pursuit of a long lost artifact to aid in my quest to save Jack.

  An intertwined blob fell past me and landed on the floor hard. THUD!

  I was rattled as the two struggled off to my side, while I scrambled onward.

  “Just check the cockpit,” Jack growled, fighting back against his assailant in an obviously drugged and weakened state.

  “I’ve got this!” I shouted triumphant, before seeing a fist land squarely on Jack’s chiseled jaw. Jack returned with a head butt as the two inched in a daze away from each other for a moment.

  I continued on down my path and came to the other end of the table, where another door stood. Rising, I gripped the handle proper and worked it with all my might. Locked.

  Finally, I’d encountered something that was off limits on this flight, untimely as it may be.

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  Arms suddenly clenched around my waist and pulled me back.

  “Jack!” I screamed! Not my proudest moment, as I wriggled violently, trying to escape the grasp of Claude who breathed haggardly into my ears.

  Immediately, Jack was upon us and threw a headlock around Claude, the perfect sleeper hold, which took a few long moments to really kick in.

  At last, Claude’s hands fell limp from my waist and he slumped back with Jack onto the table and I stumbled forward to the floor, breathing profusely. I heard Jack doing the same.

  “Are you okay?” Jack asked from atop the table.

  I nodded my head, as if he could see me. “Yeah, thank you.”

  Jack rolled Claude off of him and immediately searched for credentials, but only found fake identification.

  “You should’ve just went to the cockpit,” Jack reaffirmed. “I had this handled.”

  “Did you?” I hissed back. “You don’t seem to be moving too urgently to the cockpit yourself!”

  “Someone must be flying it,” Jack said, leading me back through the doors, toward the front of the plane.

  Jack stopped on his way, noticing the pilot, who was on the floor and had fainted at his own shock. Kneeling, Jack tried to wake him up, shouting and shaking him, to no avail.

  I raised an expectant brow at him, but said nothing. Passive aggression at its finest.

  “What?” He said.

  “Nothing,” I fired back.

  We both couldn’t help but relinquish tiny smiles at that, even in a terrible moment.

  With that, I was following Jack to the cockpit door. Upon reaching it, Jack tried to slide it open, to no avail.

  “Okay,” Jack said, gripping the door with all his might and yanking it almost off its hinges. As the lock snapped, the door slid right open and landing loud along its tracks. “Oh,” Jack said, his voice dripping with tension.

  “Oh?” I said, mine laced with bewilderment, and not the fun kind.

  Jack sidestepped to give me a look inside.

  The controls sat empty, as darkened skies loomed beyond the barren cockpit, millions of blinking lights flashing effervescently from a vast array of separate control panels, yet no one manning them in the tiny two seats before us.

  I felt my stomach knot, twisting and churning as a familiar feeling sank in.

  “Oh.”