Skyborn The Divine

22: Villain

Alice tensed. "Are you sure? Can't I just..."

"We can't risk him hurting the passengers. Even if you knock him out, there's no telling how long it will take to take the others and land the aircraft. He might wake up and retaliate."

Alice wanted time to think it over.

Am I ready?

"Go now!" Athena shouted.

Alice started, hesitated, then pushed the access hatch open. She just caught sight of the crowded seats in coach and a man in the aisle turning suddenly to face her. The cabin lights reflected off the dull, hollow eyes of an antiquated gas mask.

Alice burst from her crouch in the tunnel and shot through the air like a bullet, both of her fists in front of her. She was a streak of brown leather through the air, clashing with the man's chest as he brought up the dull, black pistol in his hand.

There was a cracking noise, and Alice felt something break under the pressure of her fists. She realized as she came to a stop on top of the man's crumpled, motionless form, that it had been his breastbone.

He's dead.

Alice stared at him, wondering if time had somehow stopped in its course. She felt unable to move, no more mobile than the motionless, sprawled figure between her feet. She looked up from the floor, seeing for the first time the faces of the passengers, quiet as the dead, surrounding her. She imagined them stuck with her and the fallen man in some sort of time bubble, unable to join the moving, living world outside.

She blinked, as though waking from a dream. There was a smell, a sort of acrid, pungent odor that stung her nostrils like campfire smoke. She continued to scan the faces around her, taking in their myriad colors, shapes, and sizes. One old man had eyes that seemed as wide to her as tennis balls. Across the aisle from him, a woman stared at the man on the floor with red, puffy eyes. Her nose was running, and her cheeks shone with the faint glow of drying tears.

She noticed the smell again, and she realized that it bothered her. She was sure it was smoke. Her eyes rested on the pale, orange glow of the no smoking sign above the woman's head, and she saw it repeating across the ceiling of the cabin down every row.

"Meta Six, did you finish him?" hissed Athena's voice in her ear.

Alice looked down again at the man on the floor, her eyes becoming glued to the mask he wore. It was a murky, dark shade of green she was used to seeing on military equipment and vehicles. Parts of it bulged out, giving the wearer the look of a creature with alien face parts, like suckers on the mouth of a massive bottom-feeding animal. The fogged, scratched goggles bulged like a fly's eyes, almost concealing the open, glassy, staring eyes beneath.

The smell was really starting to get to her. She wished someone would turn on a fan or open a window.

"Yes," she mumbled. "He's dead. I killed him. Just like you said."

"I heard a gunshot. Was anyone hurt?"

Alice blinked again. Her eyelids felt heavy and stupid as her eyes wheeled around, finally resting on the gun still clenched in the man's fist. The barrel was smoking. The sleeve of his arm had ridden up, and she caught a glimpse of a tattoo, of scripted words that read, "No Gods".

Alice wheeled in a circle, looking for anyone that might have been hurt. There were children with fists full of their parents' clothes. There was a man in a suit trying to conceal the dark, wet fabric of his pants where he'd peed. There was a woman about her mother's age, her eyes shifting between the man on the floor and Alice.

"Thank you," mouthed the woman without a sound.

No one seemed to be wounded.

Alice looked down at her own body. She realized how numb and cold she felt, as though the blood in her entire body had simply stopped. Her jacket and face and arms seemed untouched, but she saw a dark, gray smear, like soot, on her hip. The brown color was tarnished where a bullet had struck it, flattened, and fallen away.