Eric sat back down, closed his eyes, and let his body relax, deciding a short nap wouldn't hurt. He stopped thinking, one thought at a time, until there was nothing left to hold onto, and sleep came quickly after that.
The boarding announcement woke him almost an hour later. He blinked slowly, a few times, before his eyes fully focused on the terminal around him.
He turned his head left and found Ruby asleep against his arm, her breathing slow and even. On his right, Max had slumped over with one hand resting heavily on Eric's shoulder, snoring faintly. And past him, leaning against Max's other side, Zoe had dozed off too, her head tucked against his arm the way it probably ended up most nights whether either of them meant it to or not.
"I seem to have started a chain reaction," Eric thought, almost amused, before gently shaking Max and Ruby awake.
All three of them stirred, stretched, and stood, gathering their things while Eric filled them in on the announcement.
"Finally, we can start anew!" Max exclaimed, arching his back with a satisfied groan.
Zoe only stared at him through droopy, half-closed eyes. She had long stopped trying to quiet him down. No matter how many times she tried, she had never once managed to stop him from turning even the simplest moment into an entrance.
"Just make sure to get a room with a big TV," Ruby said calmly, looking at Eric.
Eric gave a small nod in reply.
He reached out and gently ran his hand through her long, silky kelly-green hair. With a faint smile and a polite tone, he said,
"Don't worry. I already rented a room that matches your preferences before coming here. We won't need to stop at a hotel. We can go straight there."
Ruby's expression softened into a sweet smile. Even though Eric rarely showed much emotion, he always considered her preferences and prepared everything in advance. He was reliable, thoughtful, and always made the smart decision. She truly couldn't ask for more.
Zoe glanced sideways at her husband, who was staring at a sweet shop's window, practically drooling, and felt a small stab of envy. She wished he were half as smart and responsible as Eric. Instead, he was lazy, irresponsible, and never lifted a finger around the house.
And yet, no matter how often she yelled at him or tore into him, she loved him fiercely. Where others saw a plain face, she saw something cute, something only hers to find endearing. She hadn't married him for his looks — she'd married him for his bravery, his kindness, the reckless way he'd throw himself in front of danger for the people he cared about. That willingness to protect his friends was what had made her want him in the first place.
As far as she knew, Eric could help them find a place to rent. Truth be told, half of why she screamed at her husband wasn't really anger — it was embarrassment, frustration, the particular exasperation of loving someone who could be so annoying.
They turned toward their respective jetways, folding into the slow current of passengers ahead and behind, and made their way onto the plane without incident.
Max and Eric found row four on the right side, Max claiming the window seat before Eric could even set his bag down. He pressed his face close to the glass, watching the ground crew move around the tarmac below, and despite having flown more times than he could count, he still couldn't sit still. Eric settled in beside him, already reaching for the seatbelt.
Behind them, in row five, Ruby took the window and Zoe slid in next to her.
The rest of the passengers filed in around them, and the plane slowly filled with the small sounds of a flight settling in: the click of overhead bins, someone's quiet cough, a child asking a question somewhere near the back.
The pilot boarded last, a little out of breath, murmuring an apology to the air hostess for the delay. He was a chubby man with a warm, easy face, thin lips, and a low-set nose. Fine wrinkles gathered at the corners of his eyes and mouth, and white had crept into his sideburns, giving away his age. His eyes, though, held none of the tiredness his face suggested — not boredom, exactly, but the quiet flatness of someone who had done this so many times that the nerves and thrill of flying had long since worn away. These days he flew on habit more than feeling, his mind already drifting toward the recruits waiting for him back home and the retirement he kept promising himself.
The air hostess leaned in and murmured something to him, nodding toward his mouth. He blinked, startled, and swiped at the corner of his lips with his sleeve, brushing away a few stray breadcrumbs.
"Sorry about that," he said, a little sheepish, before stepping into the cockpit and pulling the door shut behind him.
A soft chime rang through the cabin, and a moment later the pilot's voice followed — warm, a little worn at the edges, with just enough hoarseness to sound like a voice that had done this a thousand times before.
"Good morning, ladies and gentlemen." A pause. "And the cute little children too, if any of you are listening."
A few quiet laughs rippled through the cabin.
"This is your captain, Patrick Forgoness, speaking. Welcome aboard SUV124, flying out of Vnukovo International Airport." He let that settle a beat before continuing. "Our destination today is Paris — and I have a feeling most of you are already picturing the Eiffel Tower. I promise you, it's worth every bit of the trip."
The engines hummed steadily beneath his words, a low undercurrent to the announcement.
"We'll be cruising at ten thousand metres, at a speed of around eight hundred and fifty kilometres an hour. If all goes well like it usually does. We should be touching down in Paris by four in the afternoon."
He paused again, and when he spoke next, there was a faint smile in his voice.
"I know it's cold out there this morning, same as always. But don't worry. By the time we land, the sun will be waiting for you, high and bright over Paris."
A brief rustle of the intercom, as if he'd shifted in his seat.
"Please keep your seatbelts fastened whenever the sign is lit. If you need anything at all along the way, the air hostesses are there to help — don't hesitate to ask. Thank you for flying with us today." A short silence. "I wish you all a wonderful flight, and an even better life."
The intercom clicked off, and the cabin settled back into its quiet hum.
Eric glanced at his watch. 12:02 a.m. He did the math slowly in his head, working out just how long they'd be in the air before Paris finally came into view.
The air hostess stepped in front of the cockpit and bowed to the cabin before beginning her safety demonstration, her hands moving through the familiar motions — seatbelts, oxygen masks, the nearest exits. Eric didn't bother watching. His attention drifted instead to Max, who sat with his face nearly pressed to the window, eyes bright with the same wonder he always seemed to carry onto a plane, no matter how many times he'd flown before.
Eric glanced back over his shoulder. In the row behind, Zoe and Ruby had their heads bent together, whispering something too quiet to catch. He let his gaze pass over the rest of the cabin, one row at a time, before finally settling forward again, his expression smoothing back into its usual stillness.
Then, without warning, a single drop of golden liquid welled up from the back of his right hand, resting on the armrest. Tiny yellow particles swam within it, catching what little light filtered through the cabin. For less than a second, it simply sat there. Then it vanished in a small, silent spark.
"There is danger in Paris, Max," Eric said, the words forming only in his mind. "Be careful when we get there."
Beside him, Max's excitement dimmed by a degree, though his eyes never left the window. A moment later, a drop of golden liquid rose from the back of his own left hand. This one flecked with orange and disappeared the same way, with the same quiet spark, as he sent his answer back.
What kind of danger? he asked Eric, confusion clear even in a voice that existed only in Eric's mind.
"I do not know." Eric's reply came just as clearly. "We will have to investigate before we find out what it is. But one thing is certain. This danger is massive, unlike anything we have faced before."
Max did not press further. He simply gave a small nod, a quiet sign that he understood and would stay alert.
To anyone else on the plane, nothing about him had changed. But Eric could see it plainly. Max's expression remained the same as always, easy and unbothered, yet something in his posture had shifted. He had grown careful, poised, ready to move the instant something went wrong.
The plane began its takeoff, engines rising into a steady roar as it lifted off the ground and climbed into the sky. It pierced through the clouds a few minutes later, and a soft chorus of gasps rippled through the cabin. Every child on board pressed toward the windows, eyes wide at the sight unfolding beneath them, an endless field of white stretching out below like something out of a dream.
Eric's lips curved into a small smile as he watched their reactions.
He had already worked out his plan for what would come after landing in Paris, so for now, he let himself relax. The nap he had taken earlier meant sleep wasn't calling to him, so he chose a movie instead, settling in while Zoe and Ruby carried on their quiet conversation behind him and Max kept his eyes on the window, still watchful beneath his easy expression.
Two hours passed that way. Most of the older passengers had drifted off to sleep by then, their heads tilted against seats or shoulders. The younger adults and the middle-aged passengers filled the time differently, some watching movies like Eric, others simply staring out at the clouds, lost in their own thoughts the way Max was.
Zoe had settled on a romantic film, fully absorbed in it, while Ruby watched a tutorial on Parisian pastries for a while before her eyes grew heavy and she slipped into sleep partway through.
Eric had just finished a detective movie and was considering closing his eyes for a while when his body went rigid. His premonition flared, sharp and sudden, and his eyes snapped toward the cockpit door.
It only took him a moment to understand why.
He forced his body to still, letting the tension drain from his shoulders until he looked calm and unhurried once more. Another drop of golden liquid, flecked with yellow, welled up from the back of his hand and vanished with its quiet spark as he sent his warning to Max.
"This plane is going to crash."
Max caught the words in his mind, and his reply came a moment later, steady despite the weight of the question.
"How?"
To him, that was the only thing that mattered right now. Knowing how the plane would go down was the only way to stop it from happening at all. If it had just been the two of them on board, he wouldn't have worried much. He trusted that he and Eric could survive almost any crash. But their wives were sitting only a row apart, and that thought alone was enough to close off any careless option before it could even form.
Eric answered him without hesitation.
"The chubby captain is going to suffer a heart attack." Eric's reply came steady and certain. "I noticed it earlier, when he boarded. His breathing was heavier than it should have been for someone just walking down a jetway, and there was a faint tremor in his left hand when he wiped the crumbs from his mouth. A man that age, carrying that much weight, with a heart already under strain. It would not take much to push him over the edge. When it happens, he will faint at the controls. The trainee beside him is inexperienced and will panic. Without anyone steady to guide him, he will lose control of the plane. Most of the people on board will not survive the crash."
"So what do we do?" Max's reply came fast, edged with urgency. "I hope you remember I don't know the first thing about flying a plane. If you hadn't told me, I would be sitting here with no idea any of this was coming."
"It is all right," Eric answered. This will happen within the next five minutes. "Let's start by warning the air hostess. If we act now, the crash itself can still be avoided without us using our powers."
Eric raised his hand and called the air hostess over. When she arrived, he offered her a faint, almost hesitant smile, his voice calm and unhurried.
"Hello, miss. I'm sorry to trouble you, but would you mind checking on the captain? I just want to make sure he's feeling all right."
The air hostess tilted her head, a flicker of confusion crossing her face. "I don't mind checking on him at all, sir. But may I ask why?"
"I'm a doctor," Eric said, keeping his voice low and easy, the kind of tone meant to reassure rather than alarm. "I noticed your captain when he boarded. There were crumbs around his mouth, likely from something sweet, and given his build, that raised a concern for me. Sudden sugar intake right before a long flight can be risky for someone with diabetes, especially at altitude. I don't mean to overstep. I would just feel a great deal more at ease knowing he's stable."
The air hostess studied him for a moment, her eyes flicking briefly toward Zoe and Ruby, both fast asleep and offering no contradiction. Whatever hesitation she had didn't last long. She nodded.
"I'll go check on him now. Thank you for letting me know, sir."
She turned and made her way toward the cockpit, knocking once before letting herself in.
"Captain, there's a doctor on board who noticed something and asked me to check on you." Her voice carried the practiced warmth of someone trained to sound calm no matter the situation. "Are you feeling all right?"
The captain glanced back over his shoulder, already forming the beginning of a reassuring smile.
"I'm fine, don't worry, I just had a little something sweet before—"
He never finished the sentence.
A sharp, searing pain tore through his chest, stealing the words right out of his mouth. His hand shot up and clamped over his heart, fingers digging into the fabric of his uniform as his breath caught somewhere between a gasp and a scream. His face twisted, color draining from it in an instant. For one terrible second, he tried to steady himself against the console, but his legs gave out beneath him, and he crumpled to the floor of the cockpit with a heavy, sickening thud.
Beside him, the trainee froze. His eyes darted from the captain's convulsing body to the controls in front of him, his hands hovering uselessly in the air as the weight of what was happening crashed down all at once. His breathing turned ragged. His grip on the yoke tightened and loosened without purpose, and the plane gave a sudden, sickening lurch as it began to drift out of his control.
The plane jolted hard, a sudden violent lurch that threw drinks off tray tables and sent loose bags tumbling from overhead bins. Every sleeping passenger snapped awake at once, disoriented, gripping their armrests as their eyes darted around the cabin for an explanation.
For a moment, nobody spoke. There was only the low groan of the plane shifting beneath them, and the sound of dozens of heads turning toward the cockpit at the same time, as if staring hard enough might tell them what had gone wrong.
Then the plane dipped again, sharper this time, and any illusion of calm shattered.
A woman near the front gasped and grabbed the arm of the man beside her. Somewhere in the middle rows, a child let out a thin, frightened wail, and within seconds it spread, one crying child after another, small hands fisting into their parents' sleeves, faces buried against shoulders. Adults who had managed to stay quiet a moment ago now began whispering urgently to each other, their voices climbing in pitch as the whispers turned to open panic.
We're going to crash.
The thought didn't need to be said aloud. It moved through the cabin anyway, passed from face to face, visible in every wide eye and white-knuckled grip.
The air hostesses moved quickly down the aisle, hands raised, voices pitched to carry over the rising noise.
"Please stay calm, everyone. Please remain seated, we are working to resolve the situation."
Their words did little. No matter how steady they tried to sound, no matter how many times they repeated themselves, the reassurances were swallowed up by the swelling panic around them. The plane tilted again, more violently this time, and that was enough to break whatever composure remained. Screams erupted from every direction at once, sharp and overlapping, filling the cabin entirely.
Zoe's eyes were squeezed shut, her scream tangled with Ruby's as the two of them clutched at each other, fingers digging into fabric and skin alike, neither willing to let go.
Amid all of it, only two passengers remained still.
Max sat with his jaw tight, eyes fixed on the seat in front of him, his earlier ease long gone, replaced now with quiet, focused readiness. Beside him, Eric hadn't moved at all. His expression stayed calm, almost distant, the same stillness he always carried, as though the screaming around him belonged to some other flight entirely.
Amid the chaos, Eric slowly raised his right hand from the armrest. No one was watching him closely enough to notice, not with the screaming and the frantic scramble of air hostesses filling every inch of their attention. He turned his palm upward and let it open.
A thick, pink liquid welled up from his skin, denser than the golden fluid he had used earlier to speak with Max. Fine black particles drifted within it, swirling slowly, almost lazily, despite the chaos surrounding him.
The liquid slipped free from his hand and fell, but it never touched the floor of the cabin. It passed through the metal beneath his feet as though it were nothing more than air, vanishing from sight in an instant.
Outside, high above the clouds, the liquid reappeared. For a moment it hung suspended against the pale morning sky, and then it began to shift, condensing in on itself, reshaping until it had taken the form of a small sparrow. The bird dove without hesitation, cutting through the wind, and struck one of the plane's landing tires. On impact, it lost its shape entirely, dissolving back into liquid and sinking into the rubber.
For a few seconds, nothing seemed to change. Then, gradually, the violent shaking that had gripped the plane began to ease. The tremors softened, then stopped altogether, and the aircraft leveled out, gliding back onto a smooth, steady path as if it had never faltered at all.
Inside the cabin, silence fell first, heavy and disbelieving. Passengers stared at each other, at the ceiling, at nothing in particular, trying to process what had just happened. Even the air hostesses stood frozen for a moment, and somewhere near the cockpit, the trainee let out a shaky breath he hadn't realized he was holding.
Then the silence broke.
Someone laughed, a startled, relieved sound, and it seemed to give everyone else permission to feel the same. Passengers turned to each other with wide eyes, some laughing, some crying, some simply pressing a hand to their chest and breathing for what felt like the first time in minutes. Here and there, quiet prayers rose up, murmured thanks offered to whatever had spared them, and slowly, that fear that had gripped the cabin gave way to something warmer, a flood of relief so sudden and complete that it left several passengers in tears all over again, this time from gratitude rather than terror.
Even Max managed to look appropriately stunned, though the effect was somewhat undercut by how quickly he recovered from it.
Zoe and Ruby, finally remembering they had husbands to cling to, turned to hug them and found only empty seats. Two empty seats, two seatbelts still neatly buckled, and no explanation in sight. Ruby stared at the space where Max should have been like it might apologize for its emptiness.
By then, Eric and Max were already at the cockpit, where the scene was somehow both dire and faintly ridiculous. The air hostess was hunched over the captain, delivering chest compressions with the grim determination of someone who had clearly practiced this in a training seminar exactly once. The trainee sat frozen at the controls, pale as a sheet, staring at the yoke in his hands like it had personally betrayed him and then, just as personally, forgiven him. Now that the plane had leveled out on its own, he looked less like a man who had survived a crisis and more like a man who had won the lottery without buying a ticket.
"It's flying," he mumbled to himself, flexing his fingers on the controls in disbelief. "It's actually flying. I didn't even do anything."
He said this with the sort of dazed joy usually reserved for surviving a car crash unscratched, seemingly untroubled by the fact that a man was dying on the floor two feet away from him.
Eric stepped forward and, with the confidence of someone who had definitely never done this before, gently shouldered the air hostess aside.
"I've got it from here," he said, already dropping to his knees beside the captain with the brisk authority of a television doctor. He pressed two fingers to the man's neck, nodded seriously at nothing in particular, and began CPR with theatrical precision.
The air hostess blinked, stepping back. "Wasn't that... exactly what I was just doing?" She glanced between Eric and the captain, unsure whether to be grateful or mildly offended that her lifesaving efforts had just been narrated back to her as if they were his idea.
She didn't have time to dwell on it. Eric kept his expression locked in a mask of intense medical concentration, brow furrowed, jaw set, every bit the picture of a man who had definitely gone to medical school. In reality, the compressions were mostly for show. The real work was happening where no one could see it. Pressed flat against the captain's chest, his left hand let a thin trail of golden liquid seep out, dotted faintly with drifting yellow particles, slipping straight through fabric and skin alike as though neither existed.
Eric pulled his hands back and rose to his feet, brushing them off as though he'd just finished something perfectly ordinary. The air hostess opened her mouth, already forming a question about equipment, oxygen, anything else the young doctor might need.
She never got the chance to ask.
The captain's eyes flew open. He sat bolt upright with a gasp, looking every bit like a man waking from a nap rather than one who had just collapsed mid-cardiac event, and pushed himself to his feet before anyone could stop him. He stood there for a moment, blinking, visibly trying to piece together how he'd gone from the floor of the cockpit to standing on it.
He glanced down at his hands and went still. The old scars that had lived there for years, faint white lines he'd stopped noticing decades ago, were simply gone. Not healed. Gone, as if they had never once existed. He pressed a hand to his chest next, half expecting to find the pain still lingering there, but there was nothing. No tightness, no ache, no memory of the attack that had just dropped him to the floor.
He looked up, and standing over him was a tall, striking young man with an expression so calm it bordered on unreadable.
"Are you feeling all right, Captain?" the air hostess asked, hovering nearby, her earlier confusion buried under fresh concern. "You should really get checked at the hospital once we land."
"I'm fine," the captain said, and he actually laughed, patting his own chest like he was checking it was real. "Better than fine, honestly. I feel like even my diabetes packed its bags and left."
"So he really was diabetic," Eric thought, keeping his face perfectly neutral, inwardly rolling his eyes. "Lucky guess. I was one hundred percent making that up."
The captain turned to Eric and bowed, low and genuine, the kind of bow that came from someone who understood exactly how close he'd come to not walking off this plane at all.
"Thank you," he said, his voice still a little unsteady. "I don't know what you did back there, but you saved my life. I mean that."
Eric offered a small, polite nod, the picture of modesty. "I only did what any doctor would have done, Captain. I'm glad I could help."
The captain held his gaze a moment longer, as if there were more he wanted to say but couldn't quite find the words for, then straightened and turned toward the cabin. He made his way down the aisle himself rather than leaving it to the crew, stopping every few rows to speak with the passengers directly, his voice carrying just enough for those nearby to hear.
"I want to personally apologize for what happened today," he said, again and again, the words worn smooth with repetition by the time he reached the back of the plane. "That should never have happened, and I take full responsibility. The airline will be reimbursing every one of you in full, along with a formal letter of apology. I'm deeply sorry for the fear I put you through."
Most passengers waved him off with tired, relieved smiles, more interested in the fact that they were alive than in any compensation. A few older passengers patted his arm as he passed, murmuring that these things happen, that health scares can't always be helped, that he shouldn't be so hard on himself. The captain took each response with the same tight, grateful smile, though the guilt in his eyes didn't fully fade.
Behind him, back in the cockpit, Max had made himself entirely at home.
He'd wandered in some time ago and never quite left, poking around at the instrument panel with the unbothered curiosity of a child let loose in a toy store. The trainee, still pale and shaken from everything that had just happened, hovered nervously beside him, torn between telling him not to touch anything and being too rattled to actually stop him.
"What does this one do?" Max asked, hovering a finger over a switch.
"Please don't," the trainee said weakly.
"What about this?"
"Sir, I really need you to step back from the controls."
"Relax." Max grinned, tapping a random dial without pressing it. "I'm just looking. You looked like you were about to have your own heart attack a minute ago. Somebody needs to keep this cockpit entertained."
The trainee let out a long, exhausted breath, clearly deciding it was easier to simply wait Max out than argue with him.
By the time the plane finally touched down in Paris, it was almost exactly four in the afternoon, just as the captain had promised hours earlier, weather and near-catastrophe notwithstanding. As passengers filed off, the airline staff stood near the gate handing out reimbursement slips along with stacks of apology coupons, murmuring apologies on repeat to every single person who passed, their voices growing more hoarse with each one.