The alarm was still going: two tones alternating. Zariah identified it before she'd consciously decided to: master warning. Not a single system—multiple systems flagging simultaneously.
"Ladies and gentlemen, please remain seated, remain calm—" Keely's voice over the intercom cut in and then cut out. The PA made a sharp hissing sound and went dead.
Gerald had already moved to the cockpit door. Zariah could see him from her seat: he was pressing the call button on the panel beside the door once, twice, three times. He had his phone to his ear. His face was professionally controlled, but his body was doing things his face wasn't: his weight shifting forward, his free hand pressed flat against the door like he was trying to feel something through it.
No response from inside. He pressed the code on the keypad. The door's lock light didn't change. He pressed it again, different sequence, still nothing.
"What's happening?" Mr. Callaway was standing in the aisle two rows up, oxygen mask hanging around his neck unused. "Why isn't anyone flying this plane? Someone tell me what's happening!"
"Sir, please sit down and put on your mask!" Keely was moving through the aisle, her own mask on, both hands out.
"I want to know who's in that cockpit right now!"
"Sir—"
The plane lurched. Not a shudder this time, a real movement: a sudden drop of what felt like 200 feet that compressed everyone into their seats and then released them just as fast. And the sound level in the cabin jumped instantly from frightened murmuring to real, full-throated panic. The baby three rows back started screaming and didn't stop. Someone behind Zariah was saying, "Oh God, oh God, oh God," in a rhythm that wasn't prayer, just terror finding its voice. Danielle's grip on Zariah's arm tightened to the point of pain.
Gerald got the cockpit door open.
Zariah saw it from her angle: the door swinging inward, Gerald stepping through, then the quality of his stillness as he stood in the threshold. It was a one-second stillness that said everything: he'd looked inside and seen something that had turned him to stone. He turned back into the cabin. His eyes went immediately to Keely. He made a gesture—small, deliberate—that said, Get up here. Now.
Keely moved past Zariah without looking at her.
Zariah unclipped her seatbelt.
"What are you doing?" Danielle grabbed for her again.
"I need to see." She stood.