Passion and Power

Chapter 67

"Hanni!" Minji watched in horror as she hit the back of her head and slumped forward. Minji raised Hanni's chin and her eyes cracked slightly open. Hanni's face was a mask of pain and confusion.

Minji felt the plane pull out of freefall but it was clear the pilot was still struggling. She jerked Hanni's shirt over her head then searched for her pants.

"Baby, I'm sorry but I've got to get you to a seat. Karina needs me in the cockpit." Minji helped her get her legs in and Hanni began to pull them on with difficulty. Hanni winced in pain as she worked to get them on while Minji yanked her own pants on just as the plane hit another rough patch. She grabbed Hanni's arm and wrapped it over her shoulders and pulled her to her feet. They moved down the aisle, lurching several times with the movements of the plane, but eventually she got Hanni to her seat and strapped her in.

"Everything will be fine. No matter what happens - please don't leave this seat! Keep your belt on!"

Hanni was having trouble finding words but she nodded urgently to tell Minji to go. Minji rushed to the cockpit and found a frantic pilot trying to regain control.

"Minji - please help, I can't...control it..." Karina looked at her in panic. "We hit an air pocket...or something. I tried to take it off the auto-pilot as we started to dive..."

Minji pulled on a headset and slid into the other seat as her eyes flashed over the many indicators lighting up across the control panel.

"I'm taking control..." Minji said as she began adjust a few levers. "We have to lean into it..."

As she tried to take control she suddenly understood what Karina was telling her - they were powerless to control the aircraft. It was stuck on auto-pilot.

"What the...?"

"That's what I'm telling you - we've lost control!"

"This isn't possible..." But suddenly Minji flashed to early days, flying with Taehyung on trips to Europe and even to the family's island when she was very young. She was afraid of flying and Taehyung would torture her by telling her things that could go wrong to make the plane go down. At first it was silly things that were easy for her to look up later and convince herself that he was wrong or just making up. But every now and then it was something that actually could cause the plane to go down, so she could never convince herself to just ignore him. Eventually she educated herself on everything about planes and Bernoulli's principle, just to keep herself calm and ahead of him. In the end it led to her becoming passionate about planes and flying. She insisted on lessons as soon as she was legally allowed.

Once she knew enough to stay calm, Taehyung got frustrated. He thrilled in terrifying her, so once she stopped reacting in fear to his teasing, he moved on to coming up with ways someone could sabotage the plane. He came up with simple to elaborate scenarios. That moment in the cockpit Minji flashed to a method that would cause the auto-pilot to jam and stay on after the plane hit any turbulence, which would ultimately make it impossible to land. In theory it would cause the plane to stay in the air until it burned through all the fuel, then it would simply drop from the sky from whatever height it was at when it malfunctioned.

"It's OK, I know what to do." She popped a small hatch for storing tools and went to work removing a panel to access the mechanism controlling the auto-pilot. Once she had it open she could see immediately what had been done and then it became an easy fix. Karina watched closely, completely flabbergasted. Moments later Minji stopped working and pulled back.

"OK, see if you can turn it off."

Karina tried to disengage the auto pilot for the 20th time and she and Minji both held their breath.