Blinding Lights: Despite Everything GeminiFourth

*40* Pure madness...

The last two days have been pure madness, only now I can sit down calmly and describe everything.  It started innocently and calmly with the four of us sitting in first class on a Thai Airways Airbus A330 plane, the flight number will probably always be in my dreams at night, I repeated it so often: THA661.

Is there anything else that might surprise me?

What happened certainly surprised and terrified us all at the same time.  We were getting ready to go to sleep, Fourth ordered me to drink some water before falling asleep and it was at that moment that he was covering me with a warm, soft blanket that I bought in Japan, when an injured man came out of the cockpit, or rather almost crawled out.  He didn't say a word, his eyes suddenly became strangely blank, and he fell to the floor.

On our plane, the first class seats are separated from the rest to give us a little better comfort during the flight, so only a small number of passengers saw this, but it was enough to make someone scream.  Two flight attendants stopped next to me in the aisle and one of them said that the plane was currently flying on autopilot without a real human pilot.

Can you imagine hearing something more absurd and terrifying?

Everyone would probably be shocked and in disbelief if they heard something like that after an hour of flight at an altitude of about 10,000 meters above the ocean surface.  Me and Fourth were downright terrified, but I quickly felt a rush of adrenaline.  I honestly don't know what compelled me to volunteer to fly an aircraft.  And such a big one at that, after all, it was a large-sized passenger Airbus.

The women didn't trust us, but I insisted.

As we entered the cockpit, I wanted to turn my head away and close my eyes so I wouldn't see what I was seeing.

There were still two men in the captain's and co-pilot's seats, dressed in appropriate attire, but it was certain beyond any doubt that they were dead, their hands were limp, one had his eyes closed, the other's open, but without any spark of life.  The one I thought was the captain had a gunshot wound to the temple (suicide? That was my first thought: extended suicide), the co-pilot had two wounds to the chest.

I ordered the guys to remove the bodies and Fourth and I took the pilot's seats and then I declared a Mayday.

I didn't really know whether I should report a Mayday in such a situation, as the plane was still flying and undamaged.  It just suddenly ran out of real pilots.

The lady from the air traffic control tower was professional and helped us with everything.  At one point I noticed clear signs of panic in Fourth.  And I remembered what Gun said.  Fourth was very strong, but had occasional breakdowns.  Having to pilot a large passenger jet with 300 people on board was certainly very stressful, and Fourth still hadn't fully recovered from the story with that damned Slovenian ski jumper.  I saw that his hands were shaking, I saw that a muscle was twitching in his face, I saw how nervous he was, and I could only make one right decision: to ask him to give up his seat to Chen.

“Please, Fourth…”

He agreed, but I could tell he wasn't happy with it.  Unfortunately, I couldn't worry about that at the moment, I had something more important on my mind.  Something as important as piloting a damn Airbus.