I was already late, already sweating, already half-annoyed at the universe for making airports feel like a test of character.
SeaTac was waiting on the other end—my brother, Caleb, in his ancient Subaru, probably parked in short-term pickup like he owned the place. I was trying to text him don’t circle, I’ll be there in ten, while the jet bridge swallowed me into that familiar tunnel of stale air and fluorescent light.
The line moved fast until it didn’t.
A flight attendant stepped into my path like she’d been waiting for me specifically.
Her name tag read PATRICIA in all caps, the kind of clean airline font that looks friendly until you notice the person wearing it doesn’t.
She didn’t smile. Not even the polite “welcome aboard” mask.
Instead she looked straight into me with eyes that seemed too old for her face—eyes that had seen something and kept seeing it, even when they were open.
“Did you say goodbye to everyone important?” she asked.
I blinked, still looking down at my phone. “Uh. What?”
The line behind me nudged forward. Somebody sighed. A wheelie bag bumped my heel.
Patricia reached out and grabbed my wrist.
Not gently. Not the “sir, please move along” kind of touch.
Her fingers clamped down hard enough to make my skin sting.
“Did you say goodbye to everyone important?” she repeated, slower this time, like I’d failed a quiz and she was giving me a second chance.
I tried to pull away out of reflex. Her grip tightened.
My stomach dropped. “It’s just a three-hour flight to Seattle,” I said, confused and instantly irritated. “You’re— you’re hurting my arm.”
For a second, her expression flickered. Not apology. Not embarrassment.
Something like… grief.
Then she released me.
But before her hand let go, she pressed something into my palm—small, folded, papery. Like a secret passed in church.
“Sat 23F,” she whispered, leaning in close enough that I caught the smell of coffee and something medicinal on her breath. “Watch the man in 23F. And whatever you do—don’t volunteer for anything.”
Then her face snapped into place. A bright airline smile like she’d flipped a switch.
“Welcome aboard!” she chirped to the next passenger, as if she hadn’t just bruised my wrist and turned my blood to ice.
I stumbled forward into the plane, heart hammering like I’d run a sprint instead of boarded a flight.
My seat was 14A—window, economy, nothing special. I shoved my carry-on into the overhead bin, sat down, and unfolded the paper.
It wasn’t a note.
It was a photocopy of a news article. Grainy. Yellowed. The kind of clipping you’d expect in a true-crime documentary.
The headline read:
SEVEN MISSING AFTER FLIGHT 447 EMERGENCY LANDING — INVESTIGATORS BAFFLED (1987)
Seven passengers vanished after “severe turbulence over Montana.” No bodies. No explanation. Airline called it an “unfortunate incident.” Authorities shrugged like the sky had eaten them.
My throat went dry.
“Heavy reading for a flight,” said the woman sliding into 14B.
She was mid-sixties, silver hair pulled back in a low ponytail, wearing a University of Washington sweatshirt like she’d been born under gray skies.
“I’m Ruth,” she said, offering her hand.
I shook it automatically. “David.”
My eyes kept drifting down the aisle toward row 23.
A heavy-set man in a wrinkled business suit was squeezing into seat F. Even from here, I could see sweat shining on his forehead like he’d sprinted through the airport.
He kept wiping his face with a crumpled napkin. He looked… terrified.
As the rest of the passengers boarded, I watched Patricia move through the cabin like she was on a mission. She checked boarding passes, leaned in, asked certain people something that made them flinch—then moved on.
A young woman in military fatigues.
An elderly priest with hands folded like he was already praying.
A teenager dragging a skateboard by the trucks.
A woman in a crisp business suit.
Each one looked shaken after talking to her, like she’d held up a mirror they didn’t want to look into.
The captain’s voice came over the intercom.
It wasn’t cheerful.
“Ladies and gentlemen, this is Captain Morrison. Welcome aboard Flight 447 to Seattle.” There was a pause that felt too long. “We’re aware of the unique conditions today. Crew, please prepare for Protocol Seven.”
The cabin went quiet in a way airplanes never do. Even the toddlers seemed to sense something.
I looked at Ruth. She was frowning hard, like she was trying to remember a word.
“Protocol Seven,” she murmured. “I’ve been flying for forty years. Never heard of that.”
Before I could answer, the plane lurched forward with unusual urgency.
We pushed back like the ground crew couldn’t wait to get rid of us.
Through the window, I saw two ramp workers step back fast, one of them crossing himself.
My mouth went numb.
Twenty minutes after takeoff, cruising at thirty-five thousand feet, everything tried to pretend it was normal.
The drink cart rolled down the aisle. People scrolled, slept, read. The engines hummed steady. The sky outside my window was a clean, empty blue.
My brain did what it always does when something is too weird to hold: it tried to file Patricia under unstable employee, tried to toss the article under creepy coincidence.
Then the temperature dropped.
Not gradually. Not “we flew into a cold front.”
Instantly.
Like someone opened a freezer door on reality itself.
My breath fogged. Frost began forming on the inside of the window, spidering outward in white veins.
The plane shuddered.
Not turbulence.
Something else.
Like we’d hit an invisible wall.
The lights flickered once—twice—and died.
Emergency lighting snapped on, casting everything in a sickly green glow. Shadows jumped across faces.
People screamed.
Somebody’s carry-on thudded as it fell from an overhead bin.
Up ahead, the man in 23F stood up so suddenly his seatbelt clattered. He was shouting, voice cracking with panic.
“Not again! I won’t do it again!”
Patricia sprinted down the aisle and shoved him back into his seat with surprising strength.
He started sobbing. “Not again,” he kept saying. “Not again. Not again.”
The captain’s voice came through the intercom—steady, but strained like he was gripping the yoke with white knuckles.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Captain Morrison said, “we’ve entered what we call a temporal pocket. This is the eight-hundred-forty-seventh time Flight 447 has encountered this anomaly.”
The cabin froze.
I swear even the engines sounded different—like the hum had a sharp edge that hurt my teeth.
“We need seven volunteers,” the captain continued. “Or we all repeat this loop forever.”
A man in first class stood up, voice loud with disbelief. “This is insane. You can’t be serious.”
Patricia walked straight to him with an iPad, turned the screen toward his face.
Whatever he saw made him drop back into his seat like his bones turned to water.
Patricia moved down the aisle, showing the screen to specific passengers—like her device was leading her.
Each one who looked reacted the same way:
Horror.
Then resignation.
Ruth leaned toward the aisle, voice shaking. “What happens if no one volunteers?”
Patricia turned to face the whole cabin.
Her smile was gone. Her eyes looked hollow.
“Then we crash over and over,” she said. “We’ve been through this loop eight hundred and forty-six times. Each time, if seven don’t sacrifice themselves, we reset to takeoff and do it again.”
My hands clenched on the armrests. “Sacrifice themselves?”
Patricia’s voice was flat, like she was reading safety instructions. “Everyone on board retains their memories of the previous loops.”
Somebody laughed—high and broken. “That’s not possible.”
But the air felt wrong. Thin. Brittle. Like if you pushed hard enough, you could rip it.
The frost on my window spread faster, forming patterns that looked almost like… faces.
I swallowed hard and forced myself to breathe.
The man in 23F stood again, calmer now, like panic had burned out and left only truth.
“I’m Marcus Henderson,” he said. His voice carried. “I’ve been on this flight seventeen times trying to work up the courage.”
He looked straight ahead, past everyone, like he could already see the door.
“I embezzled eight million dollars from a children’s cancer charity. Three kids died because they couldn’t afford experimental treatments.”
A sound went through the cabin—not a scream, not a gasp. A collective recoil.
Marcus stepped forward.
The elderly priest stood up next.
“Father Timothy O’Brien,” he said quietly. His face was pale, but his voice didn’t shake. “I protected pedophile priests for thirty-seven years. Moved them to new parishes. Silenced families.”
He exhaled like he’d been holding that confession his whole life.
“I’ve been riding this flight for six months,” he added. “Knowing eventually I’d be chosen.”
Ruth grabbed my arm hard enough her nails dug in. “David,” she whispered. “This can’t be real.”
But the wrongness in the air didn’t care what we believed.
The teenager with the skateboard stood, jaw clenched, eyes wet.
“I set the fire,” he said, voice cracking. “The apartment building fire in Portland. I was high. Thought it would be funny to light some trash on fire.”
His shoulders shook. “Eleven people died.”
A woman in a tailored business suit stood up like she’d made peace with gravity.
“Miranda Chen,” she said. “I knowingly sold contaminated baby formula in Southeast Asia. Hundreds of infants got sick. Dozens died.”
She didn’t cry. She didn’t ask forgiveness.
“I’ve been running from this for three years,” she said, almost tired. “I’m tired of running.”
Four down.
The cabin was silent except for quiet sobbing and the unsettling harmonic of the engines.
I found myself doing mental math on my own life like guilt was suddenly a currency.
The hit-and-run in college, clipping a cyclist and driving off.
The time I’d stolen money from my grandmother when her dementia was bad enough she wouldn’t notice.
The affair that blew up my best friend’s marriage.
My mouth tasted like metal.
A young woman—mid-twenties—stood up trembling so hard her knees looked unstable.
“I’m Jennifer,” she said, crying. “I was texting and driving. I hit a family of four.”
Her voice shattered. “The kids were twins. Three years old.”
She wiped her face with shaking hands. “Their names were Emma and Ethan. I think about them every day.”
She walked forward anyway, each step like she was dragging herself through mud.
Patricia glanced down at her iPad.
“Two more,” she said.
Her device—whatever it was—seemed to pulse. When she passed certain passengers, the glow brightened like it had a hunger of its own.
She paused at row 31, held the screen up to a man in a doctor’s coat.
He stood immediately, like the video was a trigger.
“Dr. Paul Reeves,” he said with a bitter laugh. “I’ve been selling organs. Taking them from patients who aren’t quite dead yet. Saying they died on the table.”
He shrugged like it was a joke that had finally stopped being funny.
“Fifteen people over five years,” he said. “Bought a yacht with the money. Named it Second Chance.”
He walked toward the front without looking back.
One more.
Patricia’s device went wild now—lighting brighter, vibrating like it had found what it wanted.
She moved down the aisle, past the soldier in fatigues.
The soldier shook her head, voice low and fierce. “I killed in war under orders. That’s not the same.”
Patricia didn’t argue. She moved on.
The device led her to my row.
For a split second I thought it was pointing at me.
My lungs locked.
But the screen angled past me.
Toward Ruth.
Ruth’s face crumbled instantly. “No,” she whispered. “No, I’m— I’m a grandmother.”
Patricia tilted the iPad toward her.
I caught a glimpse of the screen.
It showed Ruth—young, in a nurse’s uniform—injecting something into an IV.
Then another image.
And another.
Dozens of them.
Ruth’s breath hitched like she’d been punched.
“Ruth Morrison,” Patricia said quietly. “Thirty-seven counts of medical murder over twelve years. You called yourself an angel of mercy. But you just liked the power.”
Ruth shook her head, tears streaming. “They were suffering,” she whispered. “They wanted to go.”
“Some of them,” Patricia said, voice hardening. “But not all.”
She tapped the iPad. “The device doesn’t lie. It reads guilt. Actual guilt. Not rationalization.”
For the first time, I really saw Ruth.
Not the friendly grandma in a UW sweatshirt.
Someone who had played God in quiet hospital rooms when nobody was watching.
Ruth stood slowly, joints creaking.
“Will it hurt?” she asked.
Patricia’s face softened for a fraction of a second. “No. It’s like stepping through a door. On the other side is nothing… or everything. Reports vary.”
Ruth laughed, a sound like breaking glass.
“I always wondered what came next,” she said.
She walked toward the front.
Patricia opened what looked like a service door.
There should’ve been explosive decompression.
Wind. Screaming. Oxygen masks.
Instead, there was nothing.
Not sky. Not earth.
An absolute void that hurt to look at, like staring into a place your brain wasn’t built to process.
“The anomaly requires payment,” Patricia announced to the cabin. “Seven souls with sufficient weight of guilt. It’s the only way to break through.”
One by one, they approached the void.
Marcus first, shoulders squared, face wrecked.
Father O’Brien with his hands clasped, lips moving in a prayer.
The teenager clutching his skateboard like it could save him.
Miranda in her perfect suit, eyes empty.
Jennifer, sobbing so hard she could barely stand.
Dr. Reeves, jaw tight, walking like he deserved this.
Ruth paused at the threshold.
She turned back to the cabin.
Her eyes found mine—sharp, wet, human.
“For what it’s worth,” she said, voice quieter now, “I really did think I was helping them. Most of them.”
Then she stepped through.
And she was gone.
The moment the seventh person vanished, the void snapped shut with a sound like thunder inside a bottle.
The plane lurched.
The emergency lights flickered—and the regular cabin lights surged back on.
The frost on the window melted so fast it left streaks like tears.
The sky outside was clear blue again.
Captain Morrison’s voice returned over the intercom, cheerful like a sitcom reset.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we’re beginning our descent into Seattle. Weather looks perfect for landing.”
No one spoke.
The seats of the seven sat empty.
Marcus’s coffee was still steaming in its cup holder.
Ruth’s crossword puzzle was half finished.
Her reading glasses lay folded on the tray table like she’d just gotten up to use the restroom.
Patricia rolled a cart down the aisle—not snacks. Documents.
“The airline requires all passengers to sign these NDAs,” she said briskly. “Refusal will result in placement on a permanent no-fly list. You’ll also receive compensation of fifty thousand dollars for your discretion.”
She said it like she was offering pretzels.
Routine.
Practiced.
When she reached my row, she paused.
I looked at her—really looked.
Up close, her haunted eyes made more sense.
Like she’d watched that door open too many times.
“How long has this been happening?” I asked.
Patricia hesitated, like she was deciding how much truth I could carry.
“Every Flight 447 since 1987,” she said finally. “Same route. Same requirement.”
“Why warn people?” I pressed. “Why ask about goodbyes?”
Something cracked in her expression—exhaustion slipping through.
“Because sometimes the chosen ones have young children,” she said. “Dying parents. People who need them… despite what they’ve done.”
She lowered her voice. “The goodbye question helps identify those with strong anchors to this world. Sometimes that’s enough to shift the selection.”
She handed me the papers.
“Sign,” she said quietly, “or don’t. Either way—you can never speak of this publicly.”
I signed.
What else was I going to do—stand up in the aisle and announce I’d just watched seven people step into nothing?
We landed in Seattle under a sky that looked too normal.
A thin drizzle streaked the terminal windows like the city was politely crying.
As we deplaned, I passed the empty seats again.
A small placard sat on each one:
PASSENGER DEPLANED DURING SERVICE
Like they’d gotten off early.
In the terminal, men in suits waited and guided us into a private room like we were witnesses to a crime scene—which, in a way, we were.
A lead attorney introduced herself as Ms. Crawford.
She spoke with clinical detachment, like she was explaining baggage fees.
“What you experienced was a localized temporal anomaly that requires biological payment to traverse,” she said. “Think of it as a toll booth between dimensions.”
Someone scoffed. “Volunteered? They were coerced.”
Ms. Crawford didn’t blink. “They were selected based on guilt signatures. But the final choice was theirs. They could have refused.”
“And if they refused?” Ruth’s empty seat flashed in my mind.
“Then seven others would have been selected,” Ms. Crawford said. “And so on. Until the required payment was made… or until the plane crashed, triggering another loop.”
She clicked a remote. A map appeared. Red lines traced routes.
“Flight 447 is not unique,” she continued. “There are seventeen known anomaly routes worldwide. Each has its own requirements.”
A man in the back asked, voice thin, “Why not stop flying them?”
Ms. Crawford clicked to the next slide—a graph.
“The anomalies are growing,” she said. “If we don’t feed them regularly, they expand. The last time we attempted to abandon a route, the anomaly consumed an entire airport terminal.”
Her eyes flicked over us. “We maintain the schedule and manage the cost.”
Manage the cost.
Seven people, every time.
On the drive home, Caleb complained about traffic and airport pickup like nothing had happened.
I told him the flight was fine. Just some weird weather.
He didn’t notice my bruised wrist.
He didn’t notice my hands shaking.
That night, I didn’t sleep.
Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the door opening into the void.
I saw Marcus’s face. Jennifer’s tears. Ruth’s last laugh.
I went down an internet rabbit hole, searching for “Flight 447 1987 missing passengers.” I found fragments—old forums, conspiracy posts, archived local news blurbs that didn’t quite add up. Always the same pattern: missing passengers in odd numbers. Airline records that looked cleaned. Families paid off and silenced.
A week later, Patricia called me.
I didn’t know how she got my number. The fact that she did felt like proof of how deep this ran.
“You’re looking into things you shouldn’t,” she said without preamble.
“I’m trying to understand,” I said.
There was a long exhale on the line, like she’d been holding her breath for twelve years.
“Meet me at Pike Place Market,” she said. “Noon tomorrow. Come alone.”
I found her in a coffee shop overlooking the Sound, wearing a hoodie and jeans like she was trying to blend in with tourists and commuters. She looked older off the plane, like the uniform had been holding her together.
She didn’t order anything. Just sat there with a cup of black coffee she barely touched.
“I’ve been flying that route for twelve years,” she said quietly. “I’ve selected one thousand four hundred twenty-eight people for the void.”
My stomach clenched. “Selected.”
“I remember every one of their names,” she said. “Every confession. The look in their eyes when they realize they’ve been chosen.”
“How do you live with it?” I asked, and the question came out rough.
Patricia laughed softly, no humor in it. “I don’t. I exist with it.”
She stared out the window at the water like she could drown in it without moving.
“I tell myself I’m saving one hundred eighty people each flight,” she continued. “That the seven I choose are guilty of terrible things.”
She turned her eyes back to me.
“But guilt is complicated, isn’t it?”
I didn’t have an answer.
Patricia slid a business card across the table. No logo. Just a number.
“Passengers who survive Flight 447 and show curiosity rather than trauma get flagged,” she said. “The airline needs people who can handle the truth. Who can make hard choices.”
She stood.
“When they call,” she said, “remember that saying no is also a choice. Just… not one without consequences.”
Two weeks later, the call came.
The offer was framed like a dream: salary triple what I made as a software developer, insane benefits, “special routes division,” vague job description about “passenger safety assessment” and “anomaly management.”
I laughed once and said no.
They called again, increased the offer. I said no again.
Then Caleb called me, panicked.
“Dude,” he said, “they bumped my ticket. I’m on Flight 447 next month.”
My heart stopped.
He kept talking. “And they upgraded me to first class for free. Said I’m a ‘valued customer.’ I’ve flown them twice.”
The message was so clear it felt like a hand closing around my throat.
I called the airline back.
“I’ll take the job,” I said.
Training happened in a facility outside Amarillo, hidden as a corporate retreat center that smelled like disinfectant and coffee.
There were twelve of us in the program—survivors of different anomaly routes. People who’d watched the void open and didn’t collapse. People whose minds kept turning the horror over until it became something like purpose.
Dr. Elizabeth Kaine ran the training.
She was brilliant and cold, like she’d decided compassion was a luxury.
“The anomalies are measurable,” she told us, tapping a device that looked like an iPad but didn’t behave like one. “Your job is not to judge. You are not a jury.”
One trainee argued, “But this isn’t justice.”
Dr. Kaine nodded once. “No. It’s not. We’re garbage collectors. We identify and remove the worst of the karmic pollution to keep the system functioning.”
She walked past us, heels clicking like punctuation.
“If you want justice, become a lawyer,” she said. “If you want to keep planes from disappearing into temporal loops, stay here.”
We learned the device read what they called causal shadows—ripples left in reality by harm. Stolen money, broken bones, shattered lives. The device translated distortion into data.
It didn’t care about excuses.
It didn’t care about context.
It didn’t care if someone was sorry.
My first assignment wasn’t Flight 447. It was Flight 923 to Denver—an anomaly route that only required three.
I shadowed a veteran attendant named Michael.
“The trick,” he told me, “is not to look at them as people. Look at them as problems.”
But they were people. I could see it in their hands, the way they held coffee cups, the way they stared at the seatbelt sign like it might save them.
On my first selection, the device lit up for a young mother traveling with an infant.
My stomach turned.
Michael scanned deeper, his face tightening. “She killed her first baby,” he said quietly. “Postpartum psychosis. Drowned him in the bath.”
The infant in her arms blinked up at her like she was the whole world.
I felt sick.
When we approached her, she didn’t deny it.
“I knew this day would come,” she said softly. “I’ve been waiting for judgment.”
She kissed her baby’s head, handed him to another passenger, and walked to the door without a fight.
The anomaly took her.
The flight smoothed.
We landed like nothing happened.
That’s when I understood the worst part of the job:
The world stayed normal.
The sky stayed blue.
People checked their phones and complained about baggage delays.
And someone—somewhere—had just been erased.
Three months in, I started noticing patterns the device couldn’t explain.
The same names showing up near anomaly routes, always just below selection thresholds. People who seemed… guided.
I brought it to Dr. Kaine.
She didn’t look surprised.
“There’s a group,” she admitted. “People who know about the anomalies and use them for disposal. Vigilantes. They identify targets with high guilt signatures and manipulate them onto anomaly flights.”
My skin crawled. “And you allow it?”
Dr. Kaine’s gaze was steady. “Because they’re doing us a service. They’re sending us people who need to be removed anyway.”
“Who decides that?” I snapped.
Dr. Kaine didn’t answer.
Six months later, I met one of them.
Victor was an older man with tired eyes and hands that looked like they’d built things and broken things.
He’d lost his daughter to a drunk driver who walked free on a technicality.
“I’ve sent thirty-seven people through various anomalies,” he told me over coffee like he was talking about donating blood. “All of them deserved it. All of them escaped conventional justice.”
He showed me his list—names crossed off like chores.
“I’m not a killer,” he insisted. “I just ensure karma finds its targets.”
I should’ve reported him.
I didn’t.
Part of me hated him.
Part of me understood him.
A year into the job, I was assigned permanently to Flight 447.
Patricia was gone. Nobody said if she quit or if the void had finally called her name.
I took her place.
My first flight as lead, the device highlighted seven passengers like it was picking fruit.
A CEO who sold defective medical devices.
A man who ran a trafficking ring.
A nurse who poisoned patients for inheritance.
A drunk driver with multiple deaths on his record.
A therapist who drove patients into suicide.
Each one had a story. Each one had a face.
I made the selections. I watched them walk.
Afterward, I stood in the empty galley and tried not to shake.
Patricia had looked haunted because this job doesn’t just show you monsters.
It shows you how normal monsters look.
Two years in, I made a mistake.
The device marked an elderly man—ninety-three—traveling to meet his great-grandchildren. He reminded me of my grandfather so much it hurt.
The scan showed his guilt signature was massive.
A guard at a concentration camp. Active participant in executions.
But my heart did something stupid.
I skipped him.
I selected someone else with a lower reading.
The anomaly rejected the substitution.
Reality fractured.
The plane jolted—and suddenly we were back at takeoff.
The loop had begun.
The old man remembered immediately. He looked at me with a strange calm.
“You have to choose me,” he said. “I’ve been running from this judgment for seventy years.”
It took three loops before I could do it.
Three takeoffs. Three failures. Three times watching passengers’ eyes go wide as they realized they were trapped in repetition.
By the third loop, people were confessing out loud in the cabin, desperate to make meaning out of terror.
Finally, I selected the old man.
He walked to the door with dignity.
“I was eighteen,” he told the cabin, voice steady. “I thought I was serving my country. I was wrong.”
He stepped through.
The anomaly accepted him.
The plane stabilized.
After that, I started requiring confessions before the door.
It was cruel, but it worked. The anomaly fed smoother when the chosen owned what they’d done.
Confession became part of the toll.
Then Dr. Sarah Kim came into my life like a storm.
She was a physicist who’d been studying anomalies from the outside. Her husband had been taken on Flight 923.
She didn’t come to me with grief.
She came with data.
“The anomalies aren’t natural,” she told me one night, sliding a folder across a table. “They’re harvesting operations.”
I stared at her. “That’s—”
“Insane?” she finished. “Yeah. But look.”
She showed me patterns—growth direction, timing, convergence. The anomalies weren’t random tears.
They were fishing lines.
“Something is feeding on human guilt,” she said. “Not metaphorically. Literally.”
My mouth went dry.
“What’s on the other side?” I asked, though part of me didn’t want to know.
“A prison,” she said softly. “Or a zoo. They’re collecting humans with specific emotional signatures. Guilt is just the easiest to measure and harvest.”
Sarah’s calculations suggested that within fifty years, the anomalies would converge into one massive rift.
When that happened, the toll wouldn’t be seven.
It would be millions.
“We’re not preventing catastrophe,” Sarah said. “We’re training for it. Teaching humanity to accept selection. To walk voluntarily into the void.”
The idea cracked something inside me.
The job wasn’t just logistics.
It was conditioning.
We tried an alternative—volunteers. People dying anyway, people who wanted out, people looking for meaning.
The airline called it humane.
It felt like exploitation.
The anomalies accepted volunteers, but the passages got rougher. Like the void was eating junk food and still hungry.
Then the volunteers’ voices started coming back through Sarah’s communication system—fractured, crackling, aware.
They weren’t dead.
They were trapped.
And the worst part?
Without guilt to process, without confession to anchor them, they existed in pure emptiness.
“This isn’t salvation,” a voice whispered during one passage. “It’s forever nothing.”
The volunteer program collapsed overnight.
The anomalies adapted again.
They wanted guilt back, but deeper. Stranger. Worse.
Selections got harder.
Loops became more frequent.
And then—Flight 447’s anomaly breached containment.
It manifested earlier, lasted longer. It wasn’t confined to one door.
Reality tore ragged across the cabin like a wound.
Passengers were pulled toward different thin places, not based on guilt—based on proximity, panic, randomness.
The device screamed uselessly in my hands.
I grabbed a child and shoved her back into her seat as the air itself seemed to tug at her bones.
Then I heard it.
Not through my ears.
Inside my mind.
A voice vast and alien and amused.
The contract is void. You failed to feed us properly. Now we feed ourselves.
The plane shuddered.
Reality snapped back.
And we landed in Seattle like nothing happened.
But something had.
Every passenger on that flight was marked now—traceable, tugged by the anomalies like bait on a line.
Within a week, people began disappearing from their homes. No struggle. No sign. Just gone.
The airline and government tried to contain it. Tried to feed the anomalies through secret programs, funneling the guilty into containment zones like human offerings.
It worked—sort of.
Until new rifts began appearing in places saturated with emotion: hospitals, funeral homes, wedding venues.
Not just guilt.
Grief.
Joy.
Love.
Sarah and I built one last thing in secret.
A broadcast.
Not a weapon.
A message.
We used the anomalies themselves—using the fear and pain and confession that fueled them—to send a signal through every rift at once.
We are prisoners. We need help. Please.
Three days later, every radio, every television, every computer on Earth crackled at the same time.
A different voice answered.
Still alien.
But warmer.
We hear you. We have fought the collectors before. Hold on.
For the first time in years, I felt something I hadn’t allowed myself to feel on a plane:
Hope.
Now, I still fly Flight 447.
Seattle to Chicago. Chicago to Seattle. Same route. Same thin place in the sky.
The anomaly is smaller again—watchful, cautious, like it senses something coming.
Every time I stand in the jet bridge, checking boarding passes, I feel the weight of every name I’ve ever sent through.
Every confession.
Every empty seat.
And every time a passenger looks up at me with annoyed airport eyes—too busy, too distracted, too sure the world is normal—I ask the question Patricia asked me the first day.
Not because it’s policy.
Because it’s mercy.
“Did you say goodbye to everyone important?” I ask, quietly enough that only they can hear.
Some laugh it off.
Some frown.
Some pause—just for a second—and you can see them remembering someone they love.
You can see them anchoring themselves to this world.
And sometimes, when I ask, the device in my pocket pulses faintly like it’s listening.
Like it’s measuring.
Like it’s waiting to point at me.
Because Patricia was right about one thing:
The selection always comes eventually.
The only question is whether you’ll be ready when it does.
END
