Mayhem || B. Bradshaw

Chapter 17

     LIZBETH AWOKE TO THE unmistaken sound of beeping in her ears, and her eyes slowly slid open to the sound of Maverick calling her name in terror.

     "Mayhem! MAYHEM!"

     Lizbeth used a second to blink, a confused thought emptying her mind of common sense as she wondered how Maverick had come into her home. And how was she even in her bedroom? She couldn't remember going to sleep the night before.

     The unmistaken sound of the automated voice telling Lizbeth to pull up made her eyes shoot open, and her heartbeat spiked as she watched the ground close in on her.

     Her eyes flickered around as her hands flew to the cockpit's sides, and her mind finally managed to comprehend where she was.

     She was in the air.

     She was about to crash.

     "MAYHEM!"

     Maverick's distressed voice fueled Lizbeth to grab a hold of her control stick, pulling it back at all her might. Her heartbeat thumped in her ears as she felt the plane slowly following her orders, and the imaginitive images of her crashing replayed in her head.

     She barely managed to level out and turn up her wings before she flew right over a sand dune, and into the air.

     Chapped breaths escaped her lips heavily, widening eyes staring at her plane's nose. She wasn't in her bed. She wasn't even in her apartment. She was flying. She had G-LOCed.

     She had almost died.

     "Mayhem?"

     Lizbeth took a deep breath, fighting the tremble in her fingers by clutching her control stick.

     "Mayhem, you okay?!" Her mind finally registered Maverick's terrified voice. "You okay?"

     "Y– yeah," Lizbeth croaked out, biting her quivering lip before swallowing. She forgot that she had cried just a moment before, and brushed away the remaining tears on her cheeks. "I'm good," she breathed. "I'm okay."

     Lizbeth panted as she flew upwards, pressing back resurfacing tears. She could've died.

     "Good. Good," Maverick's trembling voice made Lizbeth purse her lips. He sounded horrified. "That's enough for today."

     "That was close. Mayhem, don't ever do that again," Phoenix's voice quivered and Lizbeth watched her fly up to sideline with Maverick. "You scared me to bits."

     "Sorry, Phoenix–" Lizbeth began and looked up at the two other planes, but gasped when she spotted a tiny cloud of black figures. "WATCH OUT!"

     "Bird strike!" Maverick confirmed, startled. "Bird strike!"

     "Bird strike!" Phoenix yelled simultaneously, and suddenly the sound of beeping echoed through Lizbeth's radio, and she watched Phoenix and Bob's engine falter.

     "Phoenix, left engine's on fire!" Bob shouted panicky.

     "Climbing!" Phoenix responded correctly according to protocol, and ascended her plane's nose. "Throttling back. Shutting off fuel to left engine. Extinguishing fire."

     "Right engine is out!" Bob cried out.

     "It's still spinning," Phoenix said. Lizbeth watched with her heart in her throat and suddenly noticed erupting flames from the right engine. Don't restart– "Try to restart it."

     "Phoenix, it's on fire, don't start–" Maverick tried, but it was too late.

     "Throttling up," Phoenix said, but the plane suddenly broke a hard left, and started descending dangerously fast.