Madam President ✓

105. Countdown

Tanya

"I'm sorry what... excuse me?" I manage to stutter out. I try to tell myself I don't know what he's talking about. Ignorance is bliss, so they say.

  Tears stream down his face and he refuses to look at me for even a second.

  "I couldn't stop them." He says. "T-they were so fast and then they were... showing me pictures of the inside of my house and my wife and I.... I'm sorry."

  "Sergey..... who is 'they'?"

  "I DON'T KNOW!" He yells. "They were wearing janitor's uniforms but they could've been stolen or replicated for all I know, the security for this place is kinda shit oh god I never should have agreed to fly this damn thing-"

  "Sergey Focus. What did they do?"

  A sickening feeling fills the pit of my stomach. Please god, for once don't let my intuition be right-

Beep.

  Beep.

  Beep.

Maybe if we close our eyes and put our fingers in our ears, we can pretend we heard nothing.

  I don't know what makes me turn towards the source just over my shoulder, attached to a cockpit support beam- but it makes me wish I'd just died along with everybody else in 2021. Surely that would have been easier.

  Different colored wires stick out of what appears to be a small black box with a regular clock face in the top right corner- tied to the beam with a regular rope.

  At first glance the technology seems almost primitive, like it belongs in the forties or fifties- but with a single step closer things come together.

The yellow, red, and purple wires run into a different part of the box than the black and orange ones. I can't tell what's going on inside without breaking it apart, so I look at the clock face.

  All color drains from mine immediately. I tell myself I must be reading it wrong, that I should really think about going back to college when we get out, but then Alex is suddenly pulling me back so I know I'm not delusional.

  4:27

4:26

4:25

  "Sergey.....get as close as possible to the ground and.... fly in circles." She doesn't bother yelling at him like I'd expected her to.

  "Okay-" He chokes out, cut off by his own tears running down his throat- nowhere else to go because of how hard and fast the rest are streaming down his face.

I freeze, not wanting to imagine how those on the other side of the curtain feel. I just barely register a phone being shoved in between my right ear and shoulder.

  "T-tell Darrel I love him-"

"No you idiot, I'm not going to do that. Tanya- the president instructed me to follow your movements the second you left the country. Can you point the phone at the device? NOW would be great." The familiar voice says. I almost cry- but for different reasons than Sergey.

  3:49

3:48

  Somewhere in the fog, my brain understand the simple thing he's asking of me so he can do the hard work. I follow his instructions, listening to what's going on on the other end. Madelyn and Phillip sound like they're in a screaming match while Jeremy rapidly types away, and a small amount of some liquid drips on his main keyboard. I consider the very likely possibility that it could be sweat.