Foster screamed and Tate put his arm around her, pulling her against him, trying to keep her safe.
“It’s going to be okay!” He had to shout over the screams and sobs of the terrorized passengers. He glanced at the flight attendants and his heart dropped like the plane. They looked scared. Really scared. One of them even had his eyes closed as tears leaked down his cheeks.
“No!” Foster screamed. The plane lurched to the left and yellow plastic oxygen masks released from above them. Foster’s huge green eyes found Tate’s. “We’re going to die,” she said through lips blue with fear. “We’re going down.”
Tate didn’t have time to answer. Over the loudspeaker came another voice. “This is your co-captain. Our landing is going to be rough. All passengers need to brace for impact!”
Tate watched a flight attendant with trembling hands reach up and switch on the intercom. “Passengers, the brace-for-impact position is when you bend over, put your hands behind your head and your face between your knees. Do it! Now!”
The plane bucked and tilted as the passengers screamed and cried, and took the brace-for-impact position. All of the passengers except for Tate. He smelled vomit and blood. The plane’s nose plunged downward, thrusting him back against his seat and making his stomach roll and pitch as the jet’s huge engines whined dangerously.
We’re going down. We’re really going to crash!
For a moment Tate’s mind was numb with panic. He almost buried his face in Foster’s hair and just gave in to the end.
But at that moment Foster lost it. She undid her seat belt and tried to stand. “I’m getting the hell out of here!” She fell against Tate as the plane took a dive to the right. Her body shook and her breath came in big, panicked gasps. “Open the fucking door! I want out of here!”
“Foster! We’re in the air! You have to sit down and buckle up!” Tate had ahold of her, forcing her to stay in her seat.
She struggled against him. “No! I have to get out! I have to get out! I can fucking fly, and I’m not going to die in this metal coffin!”
And just like that, the panic cleared from his mind and Tate could really think again. Instantly, he knew what he needed to do. No, what they needed to do.
“You’re right! This isn’t happening. Not to us. Not today.” Foster didn’t seem to hear him, and she kept struggling to get away—to get into the aisle while her shoulders heaved with her hysterical sobs. “Foster! We are not going to crash. Not while air is on board!” When she still didn’t seem to hear him, he grabbed her shoulders and shook her. Hard. “Foster! Listen to me. We can fix this. Air can fix this!”
Foster blinked at him. Her eyes were glassy and her face was so white she looked transparent. “We’re going to die.” The words trembled from her lips.
“No! Like you said, you can fly! We can fly! Snap the hell out of it! You have to help me!” He shook her shoulders again, making her head bob around and her hair fly crazily.
She frowned at him and the glassy look in her eyes cleared. Then the frown changed to a relieved grin. “Air! We can control air! And we can fly!”
Foster
“Stand up!” Foster gripped Tate’s forearms, stumbling over him as she pulled him into the aisle behind her. “Do what I do.” She spread her feet until the sides of her legs braced her between the rows of seats, and watched as Tate followed her lead.
“Sit down!” Foster barely recognized the female flight attendant’s voice through her strangled sobs. “And seat belts on!”
Foster’s vision blurred with tears as she craned her neck to look back at the woman who clutched tightly to her co-worker’s hand.
“Please, God! Please!”
Those last cries weren’t meant for her, but Foster felt them bore into her chest and hatch sixty-eight reasons to succeed. That’s what she’d seen on the screen as they entered the Jetway. Sixty-eight seats taken. Sixty-eight souls aboard, including her own.
The plane dropped again, and Foster squeezed Tate’s arms to keep from falling. This was when her life was supposed to flash before her eyes, but Foster didn’t see her end. She saw sixty-seven others. But she could change that. She was powerful. And no one had to die today.
Taking a deep breath, she slid her hands up Tate’s shoulders and clasped her fingers around the back of his neck. She blinked the tears from her eyes and forced herself not to cry again as the plane shook and bounced like it was nothing but a toy and they were just made-up people in a child’s playtime.
“Hey,” she whispered, lifting herself on her tiptoes to press her forehead against Tate’s. Her stomach clenched and the muscles in her legs tightened as she struggled to hold herself steady. “How do you feel about saving some people?”
Tate’s hands combed through her hair before resting on her lower back. “I think it’s what we were born to do.”
Shrieks and sobs tumbled through the cabin, bouncing off the walls, deepening the pit in Foster’s stomach.
“We have to be calm,” Tate whispered, pulling her closer until his breath seeped between her lips. “Be calm.”
Foster swallowed the scream clawing at the back of her throat and closed her eyes, focusing on Tate’s pulse steadily, calmly beating against her palms. It set the slow, sleepy pace of the melody as Foster began humming the first few lines of the strong, soulful lyrics.
Foster felt Tate’s forehead lift with a smile as he sang aloud where she’d left off, his baritone vibrating against her hands.
“It’s a new dawn, it’s a new day, it’s a new life for me, ooooooh,”
Foster took a deep breath, the burbles of panic settling as she swallowed.
“And I’m feelin’ good.”
“Foster, look!” Foster’s eyelids snapped open.
Her breath caught in her throat as she followed Tate’s gaze around them, beneath them at the shimmering air currents. But these weren’t the panicked, wavy bursts coming from the mouths of the passengers, these were the currents outside of the rapidly descending aircraft.