"Hard to say from here. Fuel flow looks... actually, fuel flow looks slightly low for the thrust setting." He leaned forward. "Could be a fuel control unit issue. Someone might have introduced a restriction."
Another deliberate failure. Timed to come online slowly, invisibly, during flight.
"Okay," she said. She adjusted the thrust on the left engine down slightly. Counterintuitive, but reducing demand on a struggling powerplant sometimes extended its life. "I'm reducing left engine thrust. We'll lean on the right engine more. It'll create a yaw tendency; I'll need to stay on the rudder."
"You sure?"
"I'm sure." She pressed her right foot against the rudder pedal, feeling for the balance point. The aircraft straightened. "See?"
Warren let out a slow breath. "Yeah," he said quietly. "I see."
In the cabin, it had been 40 minutes since the oxygen masks had dropped and the world had rearranged itself. The masks had stopped being necessary—they were at a pressure altitude where the cabin was managing—but most passengers were still wearing them, gripping the armrests, watching the flight attendants for information.
Danielle had moved to the center of the cabin. She didn't have a script for this: she'd spent her adult life in medical billing administration; she was good with spreadsheets, good with people in a professional context, good at untangling complicated insurance claims. Nothing about that had prepared her for this.
But she was Marcus Washington's sister, and Marcus Washington had been the kind of person who walked into difficult situations and made other people feel less afraid simply by being present. And somewhere underneath the terror she was managing from the inside, she found that quality in herself and held onto it.
"I need everyone to listen to me," she said. Her voice carried. "The aircraft is under control. I know this is hard to believe right now, and I know you're frightened. I'm frightened, too. But the person at the controls knows what she's doing. I have watched her fly this aircraft away from a situation that none of the adults in that cockpit could handle, and I'm telling you: we are going to land."
From the back, a man's voice: "Who is she? Who's flying?"
"Her name is Zariah Washington. She's 12 years old. She has been studying aviation and flight systems her entire life. And right now, she is the most qualified person on this aircraft to do what she's doing. What I need from every single one of you is to stay in your seats, keep your belts fastened, and let her work."
A silence. Then Mr. Callaway, from his aisle seat, his voice stripped of its earlier authority: "She really knows what she's doing?"
Danielle looked at him. "She stopped the plane from crashing," she said simply. "What do you think?"