The moment the autopilot dropped off, she felt it: the aircraft's true state coming through the side stick like a conversation. The nose wanted to drop; the left wing wanted to fall. The trim was set slightly nose-down from the captain's weight episode, and the system hadn't corrected it yet. It wasn't violent; it was insistent. It was a plane that wanted to go somewhere she didn't want it to go, and her job was to talk it out of it.
She applied back pressure: steady, controlled, not fighting. Her left hand found the trim wheel on instinct, and she rolled it, feeling for the neutral point, watching the attitude indicator.
The nose came up. The left wing lifted. The vertical speed indicator slowed in its downward movement, steadied, reversed. The aircraft leveled.
Not perfectly—there was still a slight left bank tendency, and the left engine instruments were not reading well—but the uncontrolled descent had stopped. The master warning tone dropped from its highest register to a lower, steadier one: still alarming, but the difference between everything is wrong and some things are wrong.
In the cabin, she heard the change in the ambient sound: the shift from sustained panic to something less certain of itself. The screaming had stopped. The crying hadn't, but crying was manageable; crying meant people were still capable of feeling something other than pure terror.
The engineer was staring at the instruments, then at her. "You stopped the descent," he said.
"Temporarily." She didn't take her eyes off the attitude indicator. "The left engine is degrading. I have a fuel imbalance building—left tank is feeding unevenly—and I don't know the trim fault source yet, which means if it gets worse, I'll feel it get worse." She paused. "I need radio contact with ATC. Who has the radio?"
Gerald had the radio. He handed it across. Static.
She keyed the mic. "Any ATC, any frequency, this is—" She stopped. She didn't know the flight number. She looked at the instrument panel, found the transponder, read the squawk code. "Any ATC, squawk 7702, we have a pilot incapacitation emergency. Both flight crew down. Aircraft is under control. I need a center frequency and priority handling."
She released the mic, waited. Static.
Then a voice—male, professional, slightly sharp with urgency: "Aircraft squawking 7702, say again your situation, over."
"Both pilots are incapacitated, unconscious. I have the aircraft. We are level at—" she checked "—16,400 feet, maintaining approximately heading 270. Left engine degrading. I need vectors to nearest suitable airport, and I need medical information on pilot incapacitation causes. Over."
A longer pause this time. The engineer was watching her; she could feel it without looking.
The radio came back: "7702, confirm who is flying the aircraft right now."
She'd expected the question. She'd half expected to have to fight it. "My name is Zariah Washington. I'm 12 years old, and I'm in the first officer seat. I have approximately 400 hours on a professional-grade flight simulator for this aircraft type, and I have successfully stabilized the aircraft from an uncontrolled descent. I need vectors, and I need them now. Over."