Departure by A. G. Riddle

necessary now will have lasting consequences after rescue. There are risks and benefits to both courses of action. You need to decide. You have fifteen minutes to think about it, while I make the rounds and prepare.”
    She leaves, and I slump back into the chair. Decisions.
    My nemesis.
    Minutes pass like hours. Vanity or survival? Is there even a chance of survival now?
    Through my fever haze, I’m barely able to follow what happens next. The outer door flies open, and people pour in, survivors from the lakeside. The first is hurt, covered in blood. What happened? A lightning strike? A fallen tree?
    One by one, more people limp in, some bleeding, some coughing, others hobbling along for no apparent reason. Unharmed survivors guide them, shouting for help.
    They’re looking for Sabrina frantically, but they can’t find her. Shehas to be here—I just saw her, and the exit’s been closed the entire time. Did I pass out again? I don’t think so.
    There’s only one place she can be: the cockpit. I try to tell them, but my voice is so weak that I can’t even hear it myself over the storm and the commotion. I reach for a man rushing by, but he brushes past, ignoring me.
    Finally I rise and limp toward the cockpit, steadying myself on the galley wall. I’m about to knock on the closed steel door when I hear voices—faint but combative—inside.
    â€œI want to know everything you know.” Sabrina.
    â€œI’ve told you everything.” It’s a man’s voice, but I can’t place it.
    â€œYou knew.”
    â€œThat the plane would crash? Sabrina, you think I would board a plane that I knew was going to crash?”
    â€œYou knew something would happen.”
    â€œI didn’t!”
    â€œWhy were you going to London?”
    â€œI don’t know. They said I’d get instructions when I arrived, same as you.”
    â€œWhere are we?”
    â€œI swear, I don’t know!”
    â€œCan you contact them?”
    â€œMaybe . . .”
    â€œTry, Yul. You have to.”
    â€œAre you crazy?”
    â€œWe’re out of food and medications.”
    â€œWhat if they caused the crash?”
    â€œThen we’re already at their mercy—it makes no difference. Contact them. It’s our only option.”
    The cockpit door opens suddenly, and I’m staring directly at Sabrina and the young Asian guy.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Harper
    SABRINA MARCHES PAST ME LIKE NOTHING’S AMISS, HEADING down the aisle to the right, where she begins to work feverishly, treating the injured passengers coming in.
    I stand there, frozen to the spot. Yul—that must be the trim Asian guy’s name—moves out cautiously and faces me, as if he’s waiting for me to comment.
    My first instinct is to say, “I didn’t hear anything,” but I bite off the words in time, thank God. Nothing says “I heard every word” more loudly and clearly—I might as well say, “Hey, so I hear you might be connected to whatever caused the crash, and part of an ongoing conspiracy. Care to comment?”
    I settle for looking guilty and a barely audible “Hiya.”
    Yul walks down the left-hand aisle without a word. When he gets to his row in business, he glances back at me for just a little too long before sliding into his seat.
    I slump against the cockpit wall, taking the weight off my rightleg, and press my burning forehead against the cool surface. It feels good. So does the cold wind blowing in through the door. Since they moved me to the plane I’ve swung between chills and fever, but now it’s only fever, burning relentlessly inside me. I know what my decision has to be, if I want to live. And I do want to live.
    When I glance up, the shock of what I see consumes me. Am I hallucinating? Sabrina’s gotten the first few incoming patients cleaned off. They’re . . . old. I recognize some of these people, from the lakeside,