“Now that you all have your personal assignments,” he announced, “you have forty five minutes to complete them.”
Max stopped in his tracks, whirling around to look at the monitor nearest to him.
The Deppart Airlines flight path map appeared on their screens, little aeroplane icon showing their position relative to the European landmass.
“As you have already deduced, this plane is bound for Oslo,” Alligator stated casually, “Where your journey will end as you crash into the All2gethr.com headquarters…”
Shock and disbelief resonated around the cabin, all colour drained from the passengers’ faces.
“What the hell…?” Max began.
Alligator’s voice betrayed no sign of any emotion. “You will all die, along with everyone in the building.”
“No, no, no! Wait, please don’t do this — you don’t have to do this!”
Jo grabbed hold of her monitor screen, fingernails scraping against the artificial warmth of its plastic casing.
Gwen looked punch-drunk, leaning against the arm of her chair, head reeling.
“This isn’t real… it’s just a game… just a game…” she murmured, her voice trailing off into silent terror.
The plane lurched, losing altitude in a pocket of air, and Gwen cried out in fear.
They each caught their breath as the jet righted itself with a discernable whine of its engines.
“That sinking feeling,” Alligator quipped.
Dave’s face was red with rage. “Listen you prick, this joke stops now! Right now!”
“On the contrary Dave, ‘this joke’ starts now.” The Alligator sounded on the verge of laughter, enjoying himself. “Are we having fun yet?”
Max shook his head in abject frustration, before dropping his head into his hands.
Gwen glanced across at him, seeing the tears he was trying so desperately to hide. But there was no room to hide such things in the brightly lit confines of the tiny jet. Gwen began to cry too, despair seeping from her eyes.
“Hold it together, please!” Jo said.
She clenched her fists, pushing her arms down each side of her body. It was the only physical act of control left to her. Raising her head to the ceiling, she shouted at Alligator.
“You can’t do this! What about my baby girl? What about…”
Dave regarded her with an impatient look. “Banging on about your kid again. You think that just because you’ve got a daughter, we’ve got less at stake than you?”
Jo’s voice faltered. His words were harshly spoken, but true. They all had someone special to lose from their friend list. Her thoughts turned to Maddie. The last she’d heard of her sister, via a collect call to Dawn, she was in Thailand. Jo hoped she was safe. She should be — Maddie was possibly the only human being alive not to be an All2gethr user. Hell, she didn’t even own a mobile phone.
“Nothing can save you now,” Alligator said, as calm, firm and clear as an onboard safety announcement. “But you do have a chance to save your loved ones’ lives. Discuss your assignments and they will die. Fail your assignments and they will die. Complete your assignments successfully, to the letter, and they will live. You each have your instructions. No conferring.”
The screens fizzed with digital noise, distorting the Alligator’s jaws into a vile gash, before snapping off again. His words hung in the main cabin like a sickness, their weight bearing down on the frayed sanity of the passengers.
“What do we do now?”
Jo looked around the cabin in panic. Dave fixed her with a look, catching a glimpse of guilt in her eyes as she looked away.
“What choice do we have?” he asked, “We have to do what we’re told don’t we? Or else…”
“Why me, what have I done to anybody?” Gwen sobbed.
“Why any of us?”
Dave’s question was loaded at Jo. That flash of guilt in her eyes was the real thing; he hadn’t imagined it. What was she up to?
Jo shifted her weight from one foot to the other, feeling Dave’s gaze bearing down upon her.
“What did he say to you, in there?” he asked, his voice lowered but pregnant with accusation.
“Nothing.”
“Rubbish. You’ve been acting weird since you came out of the bathroom. What did he say?”
Dave closed in on Jo, intent on an answer. She turned her back on him, leaning on the bar again for support, a sea of alcohol inches from her nose. Dave grabbed her wrist, pulled her arm forcing her to face him.
“Get off!” Jo wrestled free from his grasp, rubbing her wrist. “Keep away from me, you have no idea what I’ve got at stake.”
“We all have,” Dave said, “If you’ve got the impression that I don’t care about my fiancée, then you’re dead wrong!” Rage crept into the blacks of his eyes.
Jo swallowed. She’d seen anger like his before, been on the receiving end of a man’s uncontrollable temper — never again.
“He’s got my little girl,” she protested, her voice choked with emotion, “She’s just a baby…”
Jo’s eyes filled with tears.
Dave glared at her coldly, as if assessing her feelings and checking they were genuine.
“No, no, no, no!” Gwen made a fist around her scarf, tugging at it in frustration. “We shouldn’t even be talking about this, don’t you see? He said no conferring.”
Dave ignored her wild eyes. “He said we can’t reveal our tasks, that’s all.”
His eyes bore into Jo’s again. “What did he say?”
Jo slowly shook her head in defiance. “Nothing,” she snarled.
“Bollocks! I don’t trust you.”
Jo took a step back from Dave’s sweaty bulk. Then it struck her.
“You know what I think? You’ve got something to hide and you’re trying to cover up by pointing the finger at me.”
Gwen tried to be the voice of reason. “Guys, please, we should be thinking about how we can get of this…”
Engrossed in their argument, they didn’t notice Max retreat quietly to the crew prep area behind the curtain.
Max bit down on his lip as his eyes scanned the little metal cupboard compartment doors. It had to be there somewhere. He looked again, and saw it, high up above the others. Recalling Alligator’s grim words in the bathroom, Max reached out and popped the catch on the metal door. It read: ‘EMERGENCY USE ONLY’.
Back in the cabin, Dave’s mood had escalated. He looked desperate, cornered by Gwen and Jo who were both trying to reason with him, to make sense of their predicament. But Dave could only see as far as his own concern for Sarah.
“We’re rats in a cage here!” he yelled. “We are fucked! And if we don’t play by his rules, a lot of people we know will be too!”
Jo levelled her gaze. “You give up if you want. But I for one am not dead yet…”
Max burst through the dividing curtain, back into the cabin, with an angry roar.
Jo and the others recoiled.
Max was brandishing an emergency crash axe, swinging it above his head like a berserker charging into battle.
Bang!
He smashed the heavy metal blade into Gwen’s touch screen. It broke away from the cabin wall, showering Jo and the others in sparks.
They all backed off as Max continued smashing with the axe, not stopping until the screen was shattered and its wiring severed like an umbilical cord.
“Jesus!” Dave exclaimed.
Max looked up them, panting. He looked crazed clutching the crash axe, eyes red from stinging tears.
Jo looked at the axe — the main blade formed a ‘P’ shape, with an ice pick protrusion at the back. It looked lethal.
“Where… did you get that from? Jo asked.
“He told me where to find it…” Max moved toward Jo’s touch screen. “Stand back!” he commanded.