Storm Riders

(Part 1)
The roar of the engines always makes me feel more alive. There’s something about strapping yourself into a four-engine beast, knowing you’re about to fly headfirst into a swirling, screaming monster of a storm, that gets the blood pumping. Most people think we hurricane hunters are crazy. Maybe we are. But someone’s gotta be the one to fly headlong into the belly of the beast.
I’ve been chasing storms since I could drive a stick. Grew up in the Panhandle where hurricanes are just part of life. Every summer, it was a waiting game, watching the Gulf churn, knowing sooner or later, something big would come roaring in. I’d be out there, too, in the thick of it. Probably with a beer in hand and some half-baked plan to "ride it out." Typical Florida man stuff, I know. But we’re all a little crazy down here. Maybe it's the heat.
I joined the Navy as soon as I was old enough. Served for over 20 years, ended my career with the rank of lieutenant commander, flying early warning, reconnaissance missions—over the Persian Gulf.
After I left the Navy, I needed a new rush, something that made me feel the way those missions did. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration was hiring, and hurricane hunting was about as close as I could get to flying into the unknown again. It's not exactly the same, though—storms don’t fire missiles at you. But hell, the way this one’s growing, maybe it’ll be the first.
The storm came out of nowhere, a tropical depression barely worth a second glance yesterday morning. By lunchtime, NOAA was calling us in, saying this thing had blown up into a Category 5 faster than anything they'd ever seen. No name yet—didn't even have time to slap one on before it started heading towards Tampa.
I glance over the controls in front of me, my hands moving automatically across the switches and dials. Thunderchild, our P-3 Orion, is an old bird, but she’s seen more storms than all of us combined. She’s loud, she’s rough around the edges, but she gets the job done. Just like me, I suppose. I run my fingers along the edge of the throttle, feeling the hum of her power vibrating up through my palm. This is home.
I lean back in my seat, cracking my neck from side to side, bracing myself. There’s a certain stillness right before you take off, right before you commit to punching through the kind of storm that chews up fishing boats and spits out rooftops like confetti. That’s the moment when you remind yourself just how thin the line is between brave and stupid.
"Alright, Jax," comes a voice from the seat beside me, "you good to go, or you just gonna sit there and fondle the throttle all day?"
That’s Kat, short for Katrina—a fitting name for a hurricane hunter, though she'd probably slug me if I said that out loud. She’s our navigator, always sharp, always one step ahead of the storm. Her dark brunette hair is pulled back tight, like she means business, and she always does. Especially today. We all know something was off about this one.
I give her a grin. "Just savoring the moment, Kat. You know how it is."
“You Navy guys always gotta get so sentimental about everything,” she says, shaking her head.
I shoot her a side-eye. “Hey, at least I got to fly with the big boys. You were too busy getting your Civil Air Patrol wings pinned on by your grandma.”
Kat doesn’t miss a beat. “Better than being stuck on a ship, praying to Neptune every night.”
“Touché,” I shake my head, chuckling.
Behind us, the plane creaks as Gonzo, our flight engineer, squeezes his way into the cockpit. If you ever need a guy who can duct tape a plane together mid-flight, Gonzo’s your man. A native of Miami, he’s built like a linebacker, all shoulders and arms, with a bushy mustache that twitches when he’s concentrating. The guy has more certifications than I have bad habits. He slaps a hand on the back of my seat and leans forward between Kat and me.
"All systems good to go, cap," he grunts, his voice like gravel. "Engines look solid, fuel’s topped off. If she falls apart, it won’t be my fault."
"Comforting," I say, flashing him a grin. "That’s why we keep you around, Gonzo. To remind us who’s fault it is."
"Yeah, yeah," he mutters, squeezing himself back out of the cockpit, mumbling something about flyboys always blaming the wrench-turners when things go sideways. Kat doesn’t look up from her charts, but I can see the smirk tugging at the corner of her lips.
A quiet voice crackles through my headset. "Hey, guys, I’ve double-checked the radar. It doesn’t make sense… It looks like the eye just grew another 20 miles in the last half hour. We’re flying into something big."
That’s Sami, our meteorologist. She’s the youngest on the crew, fresh out of FSU with her master’s and eager to prove herself. Sami’s always got her nose in one of her monitors, pushing her glasses up her freckled nose every few minutes. She may be green, but she has a good head on her shoulders. Her corner of the plane is a digital fortress—screens, computers, and enough data feeds to give you a migraine.
I can hear the nerves creeping in. I don’t blame her. The numbers coming through don’t make any damn sense.
"Twenty miles in thirty minutes?" Kat repeats, looking over at me, eyebrows raised. "That’s not possible."
"Yeah, well, tell that to the storm," Sami says, her voice a low hum over the static.
I don’t like that. Hurricanes have patterns—they may be destructive, but they’re predictable, at least in some ways. This thing? It’s like it’s playing a different game, and we don’t know the rules.
"Well, we’re not getting any answers sitting on the runway," I say, reaching up to flip the last couple of switches. The engines roar louder, and I feel Thunderchild vibrate beneath me, like a racehorse at the gate.
The wheels of the plane rumble beneath us as we taxi toward the runway, her engines spooling up with that deep, gut-rattling growl. Out the windshield, the sky is already starting to bruise—a purplish haze hanging low over the horizon, like the storm has sent an advance warning. Winds are kicking up little clouds of dust across the tarmac, swirling like tiny previews of the chaos we’re about to dive into.
Kat shoots me a glance. “You ever get tired of this, Jax?”
“Nah,” I say, grinning. “What else would I do? Retire and play golf?”
She doesn’t respond, just gives a half-smile as her eyes flicker back to the controls.
Most people think we’re just a bunch of adrenaline junkies with a death wish, but they don’t get it. They don’t understand what we’re really doing up here. It’s not about getting the thrill of a lifetime. It’s about saving lives. The data we collect—it’s not just numbers. These missions are essential for tracking and predicting the behavior of hurricanes. It’s the difference between a mass evacuation and a body count in the hundreds.
“MacDill Tower, this is NOAA 43, ready for departure,” I say into the headset. “NOAA 43, MacDill Tower copies, you’re cleared for takeoff. Happy hunting, storm riders,” the voice from the tower crackles in response.
Before the real fun starts, there’s one thing I always do. Call it a superstition or a ritual, but I’m not about to break tradition now.
With one hand still steady on the yoke, I reach into the pocket of my flight suit with the other, fishing out my phone. A couple of taps later, and the opening riff of "Rock You Like A Hurricane" by Scorpions blasts through the cockpit’s speakers.
Kat glances over at me, her eyes rolling. "Really? Again?"
"Every time, baby," I reply playfully. "You know the rules. No rock, no roll."
"One of these days, you're gonna piss off the storm gods with that song."
"Hasn’t happened yet."
I push the throttles forward, and the familiar, deafening roar fills the cockpit. As the plane races down the runway, the world outside blurs—a streak of tarmac and dust disappearing under the wings, her weight pressing me back into my seat.
As soon as the wheels leave the ground, the familiar weightlessness hits—just for a second, like stepping off the edge of a cliff. Thunderchild surges into the sky, and Tampa starts shrinking beneath us, the city quickly becoming a sprawling patchwork of highways, buildings, and water.
The Gulf stretches out to the west, a dark, endless expanse, the edges blurring into the storm like ink soaking into paper. Already, the clouds ahead were twisting in on themselves, building towers of black that scraped at the heavens. A storm doesn’t look so bad from a distance—just a smear of gray and black, a ripple in the sky.
The roar of the engines faded to a low hum as we climbed higher, pushing through layers of cloud. I eased off the throttle just a touch, settling into a steady ascent.
We leveled out at cruising altitude. Outside, the sky was a deep bruise, the kind of dark that made it hard to tell where the ocean ended and the storm began.
I flip a switch on the console, activating the external cameras mounted on Thunderchild’s fuselage, their lenses already pointed into the heart of the storm. Might as well give the folks at the Weather Channel some cool footage.
After about an hour of flying, the air grows thick, heavy with the scent of ozone and something else I can’t quite place—a metallic tang that makes my skin crawl.
I check the instruments. Altitude, speed, pressure—all normal. But the hair standing up on the back of my neck screams wrong.
Kat has her eyes glued to the radar, frowning as the green blips on the screen swirl in a way they shouldn't. “The eye’s growing,” she says, her voice calm but tight.
“Another 15 miles. That's impossible. No storm grows this fast.”
Sami’s voice comes through the comms from her data corner in the back. "I’m seeing it too, Captain. The wind speeds are spiking in ways I’ve never seen before. Gusts hitting 200 knots in bursts, but it’s like they’re… localized."
“Localized?” I repeat, glancing at Kat. She just shakes her head, clearly as stumped as I am.
“Yeah,” Sami replies, her voice dropping a notch. “Like something’s controlling them.”
I open my mouth to respond but stop. The clouds ahead are shifting—no, parting. They move with a strange, deliberate grace, like something’s pulling them aside, revealing the eye of the storm in the distance. It isn’t the typical calm center I’ve seen dozens of times before. The eye is massive—easily twice the size it should be, maybe more—but what really twists my gut is the color.
It isn’t the usual pale blue or eerie gray. It’s black. Not the kind of black you see at night or in a blackout. This is deeper, like staring into the void, like something is swallowing the light and bending the sky around it. My stomach lurches.
I shake my head, forcing myself to snap out of it. Now isn't the time to let some optical illusion mess with my head.
"Alright, riders," I say, my voice steadier than I feel. "Let's do what we came here to do. Gonzo, prep the dropsondes. Kat, get us a stable flight path through the eye wall."
"Roger that, cap," Gonzo calls through the comms, already moving to prep the dropsondes. Those little cylindrical probes are the bread and butter of our mission, the things that give us the real-time data on pressure, temperature, wind speed—all the stuff that make up the guts of a storm. We’ll drop them from the plane into the beast below, and they’ll send back their readings as they free-fell through the storm.
I bank the aircraft slightly, adjusting our approach to the eye. Even from this distance, the clouds feel like they’re watching us, swirling in tighter, darker spirals, with streaks of lightning flashing in the distance. That weird metallic taste in the air hasn’t gone away. If anything, it’s getting stronger, clawing its way to the back of my throat.
Kat's voice cuts through the silence, calm but with an edge. "Adjusting course to 015. This thing's unstable, but we’ll punch through the eye wall right about... there." Her fingers trace the radar screen, plotting a course with the precision of a surgeon. The way the storm is shifting, it feels like trying to thread a needle through the windows of a moving car, but if anyone can find us a path, it’s Kat.
"Copy that," I mutter, my grip tightening on the yoke as we line up our approach. The plane jolts slightly as the first gusts hit us, little teasers compared to what’s coming. "You’re up, Gonzo."
"Are we really doing this?" Kat asks, her eyes fixed on the swirling abyss ahead.
"We don’t really have a choice, Kat," I say, eyes locked on the swirling nightmare ahead. "You know what’s at stake. There are lives depending on us getting this data back. We turn around now, and we’re leaving people in the dark."
She glances at me, her expression serious, but she doesn't argue.
“Yeah, you’re right,” she finally says, her voice barely above a whisper."Let's get this done."
I flick on the comms. "Gonzo, dropsondes ready?"
"Locked and loaded, cap," he grumbles, sounding like he was bracing himself for impact.
"Good," I say, adjusting our course slightly. “Launch them!”
"Alright, we’re hot," Gonzo announces "First sonde away in five, four, three…" I hear the faint clunk as the drop chute deploys, sending the first probe tumbling into the heart of the storm. For a few moments, everything is routine. The sonde transmits data as it falls, its signal showing up on the screen next to Sami. The numbers tick up—pressure, wind speed, temp—everything normal…
Until they aren’t.
“Uh… guys?” Sami’s voice is high-pitched, shaky. “I’m getting some… really weird numbers over here.”
“What kind of weird?” I ask, my eyes scanning the instruments. The plane shudders again, this time more violently, as we hit another pocket of turbulence.
“The temperature just dropped twenty degrees in five seconds.” Sami’s voice is taut with confusion. “That’s not normal, Captain. We’re talking about a shift that would freeze a surface in minutes. And the pressure’s spiking, then plummeting. Like it’s bouncing between two different storms.”
“Two storms?” Kat shoots me a look, brow furrowed. “We’re in the middle of one of the biggest cyclones on record. There’s no way there’s another one out here.”
“Yeah, well, tell that to the dropsonde.” Sami’s voice cracks with nervous laughter. “Look at this—gusts of 240 knots, but only in specific pockets. Like the wind’s being funneled.”
I don’t like this. Not one bit. “Alright, keep dropping the sondes,” I say, forcing calm into my voice. “We need more data. Maybe we’re just seeing some freak anomaly.”
The second dropsonde tumbles into the abyss, and that’s when everything started going haywire. The moment it leaves the chute, the plane lurches hard to the right, like an invisible hand has slapped us from the side. The controls buck in my hands, and I grit my teeth, forcing Thunderchild back into line. The turbulence hits like a freight train, throwing us around like we’re a toy plane in a kid’s hand.
Then the instruments go berserk.
It begins with a slight flicker. Just a twitch in the altimeter, a little blip in the airspeed indicator. At first, I think it’s the turbulence playing games with the sensors. But then the twitch turns into a spasm. Every gauge on the dash starts to jump around like they’re possessed. Altitude? 25,000 feet one second, 10,000 the next. Airspeed? It can’t decide if we're cruising at 250 knots or hurtling through the sky at 600. The compass spins slowly, like it’s searching for north but can’t remember where it left it.
The yoke jerks under my hands, and the plane groans, metal protesting against forces it isn’t built to handle. I wrestle with the controls, muscles burning, as the storm seems to close in around us.
But it isn’t just the turbulence—it’s something else. A pull, like gravity flipped its switch and is dragging us sideways into the belly of the beast. I can feel it in my gut, that sickening sensation you get when you’re falling too fast, except we aren’t dropping. Not really. It’s more like we’re being sucked in, like the storm is a living thing and it decided we’re its next meal.
"Kat, what's our heading?" I shout over the blaring alarms.
"Fuck if I know!" she snaps back, smacking the compass with her palm. "Everything's gone nuts!"
"Cap, we're losing control!" Gonzo's voice crackles through the comms. "Engines are at full throttle, but we're still being sucked in!"
"Shit!" I swear under my breath, slamming a fist onto the console. The alarms are a cacophony of shrill beeps and wails, each one screaming a different kind of trouble. I grab the radio mic, knuckles white. "Mayday, mayday! This is NOAA 43, callsign Thunderchild, experiencing severe instrument failure and loss of control! Position unknown, altitude unknown! Does anyone copy?"
Static.
"MacDill Tower, do you read? Repeat, this is NOAA 43 declaring an emergency, over!"
For a heartbeat, there’s nothing but the hiss of dead air. Then, a sound oozes through the static—a low, guttural moan that resonates deep in my bones. It isn't any interference I've ever heard. It’s... alive. A chorus of distorted whispers layered beneath a deep, resonant howl, like a thousand voices speaking in unison just beyond the edge of comprehension. Beneath it, I think I hear something else—a faint echo of laughter, distorted and twisted.
"What the hell is that?" Kat's eyes are wide, pupils dilated against the dim glow of flickering instrument panels.
The yoke vibrates under my grip, the controls sluggish as if wading through molasses. Gonzo's voice comes over the intercom, strained and barely audible. "Jax, we've lost hydraulics! Backup systems aren't responding!"
"Keep trying!" I bark back, fighting the urge to panic.
Kat is frantically tapping on her touchscreen, trying to bring up any navigational data. "Everything's offline," she says, her voice a thin thread. "GPS, compass, radar—it's all gone."
"Switch to manual backups," I order, though deep down I know it won’t help. The plane shudders again, a violent lurch that throws us against our restraints.
"Just hang on!" I shout, wrestling with the yoke. The nose dips sharply.
The instant we cross into the eye wall, it feels like the world folds in on itself. One second, the storm is raging, pelting the outside of the cockpit windows with sheets of rain and wind battering us from every angle. The next, it’s quiet—eerily quiet.
The storm outside disappears, swallowed by the blackness that stretches out in every direction, a void so complete it feels like I’ve gone blind. The only thing anchoring me to reality is the dim glow of the cockpit lights, flickering weakly as if struggling to stay alive.
"We’re... we’re not moving," Kat says, her voice barely more than a whisper now. I glance at the speed indicator. Zero knots. We’re hovering, suspended in midair, with nothing below us, nothing above us—just hanging in the void like a bug trapped in amber.
And then, the weirdest sensation hits me. Time… stretches. That’s the only way I can describe it. Everything slows down—Kat’s breathing, the faint flicker of lights on the dash, even the low hum of the engines. It feels like minutes pass in the span of a single breath, like we’re stuck in a loop where nothing moves forward.
I check the clock on the dash—14:36. Then the clock rolls backwards to 14:34. "What the…?" I mutter under my breath.
I look over at Kat, expecting her to crack some sarcastic remark, but her face is a mask of confusion. She opens her mouth to speak, but the words come out backwards, like someone had hit the reverse button on her voice. “Gnin-e-pah stawh?”
Then, just as suddenly as it starts, everything snaps back to normal. Time lurches forward, catching up all at once. The clock jumps to 14:38. Kat lets out a gasp, her hand flying to her chest like she’s just been pulled out of deep water.
“That… that wasn’t just me, right?”
“No,” I say, shaking my head. “It wasn’t just you.”
I grab the mic, toggling the switch. “Sami, Gonzo—you there? What’s your status?” Static buzzes back at me, a high-pitched whine cutting through the white noise. I tap the headset, hoping it’s just a glitch. “Sami, Gonzo, you copy?”
Nothing.
I glance over at Kat. Her face is pale, her dark eyes wide as they dart from the flickering gauges to me. She doesn't say anything, but I could tell she felt it too—the creeping dread that something was way, way off.
"I’ll check on them," I say, unbuckling my harness. "Take over for a minute." "Sure you want to leave me alone with this thing?" She tries to joke, but her voice is strained, almost shaking.
"Yeah, you’ll be fine," I say, forcing a smile. "Just don't break her while I'm gone."
The moment I stand, the weightlessness hits me again. It’s subtle, like the gravity is lighter back here, or the plane itself isn’t fully grounded in reality anymore. I shove open the cockpit door. I have to steady myself on the overhead compartment before stepping into the narrow corridor that leads to the back of the plane.
I move down the tight passage, the dim red emergency lights casting long shadows that dance across the walls with every slight shudder of the plane. The deeper I go, the more the familiar hum of Thunderchild feels… distant, like the noise is coming through a wall of water, muffled and distorted.
The corridor ahead seems to stretch longer than it should. I swear it isn’t more than thirty feet from the cockpit to the operations bay where Sami and Gonzo are, but as I walk, the distance keeps growing. The further I go, the narrower the hall becomes, the walls almost closing in. My hand brushes against the metal wall, but it isn’t cool to the touch like it should be. It’s warm, clammy, like the skin of something living.
I reach the bulkhead door that leads to the operations bay, or at least I think I did. The label above it reads "Operations," but the letters are jumbled—backwards, upside down, like some kind of twisted anagram. I blink hard, rubbing my eyes. Just fatigue, I tell myself.
I reach for the handle, but the moment my fingers wrap around the cold steel, the door ripples. Like actual ripples—waves spreading outward from where I touch it, distorting the surface like the metal has turned to liquid. I yank my hand back, stumbling a step, my heart hammering against my ribs.
"Jesus…" I mutter under my breath, taking a second to steady myself. "Get a grip, Jax."
I grab the handle again, this time ignoring the way it seems to pulse under my grip, and pull the door open.
The moment it swings wide, I’m hit by a wave of cold air. I mean freezing. It’s like stepping into a walk-in freezer, and it knocks the breath out of me. The temperature drop is instant, sharp, like it’s been waiting on the other side of that door. My breath puffs out in front of me in little clouds, swirling and hanging in the still air longer than they should.
I step into the operations bay, and the first thing I notice—besides the bone-chilling cold—is the flickering lights. They cast weird shadows that twist and dance along the walls, like something out of a bad dream. But the real kicker is Gonzo and Sami. They’re… glitching.
I don’t know how else to describe it. One second they’re there, solid, standing at their stations; the next, they blink out of existence, like someone is flipping a switch on and off. Gonzo is halfway through running some kind of diagnostic on the dropsonde systems, but his hand keeps phasing through the control panel like it isn’t even there.
​​"Sami?" I call out, my voice sounding muffled in the icy air. I turn, searching for her in the shadows at the far end of the bay.
Sami is staring at her screens, her brow furrowed, but her entire body flickered like an old TV signal, half-translucent, half-present. I blink hard, thinking maybe it’s a trick of the light or the cold messing with my head, but it isn’t. It’s real. Too real.
“Sami? Gonzo?” My voice sounds small, too small for the dead quiet pressing in on us. No response.
I edge closer to Sami. She’s still, just like Gonzo, her body flickering in and out, like a bad hologram. I reach out, my hand shaking just a bit, and touch her shoulder. My fingers pass straight through her.
I yank my hand back like I’ve touched a live wire.
I notice the temperature beginning to rise, fast. Too fast. The frost on the floor melts in seconds, turning into small puddles of water that trickle toward the back of the plane. The warm air rushes in, filling my mouth and nose with what tastes like copper dust.
And then, just like that, Sami and Gonzo are back. Solid. Still pale and motionless, but no more glitching. No more flickering. Just… there.
“Gonzo?” I try again, my voice steadier this time.
He blinks, slowly, like he’s waking up from a deep sleep. He looks at me, then down at his hands, flexing his fingers like he’s making sure they’re real.
“Cap?” he utters, his voice rough and gravelly like usual, but there’s something underneath it—something like fear. “What just happened?”
I’m about to answer, when Sami gasps, loud and sharp, like she’s just been pulled out of water. Her head snaps up, her eyes wide and wild, darting around the cabin. Her chest heaves as she sucks in air, her whole body shaking like she’s just run a marathon.
“Sami, you okay?” I ask, moving toward her, but before I can get close, she lets out a strangled cry, her hands flying to her sides, gripping the armrests of her chair with white-knuckled intensity.
She’s sinking.
Her seat—no, the floor beneath her—starts to warp, the metal bending and rippling like it’s turning into liquid. Sami’s legs are already halfway into the deck, her boots disappearing into the floor like she’s being swallowed by quicksand.
“Captain!” She screams. “Help!”
I lunge forward, grabbing her arms, trying to pull her free. My boots slip on the wet deck as I yank with everything I have, but it’s like she’s stuck in concrete. No matter how hard I pull, she keeps sinking, inch by inch, the metal rippling around her like water.
“Hold on, Sami!” I grit my teeth, sweat beading on my forehead despite the rising heat. I glance back at Gonzo, who’s just standing there, wide-eyed in terror. “Gonzo, get your ass over here and give me a hand!”
Gonzo snaps out of his daze the second I shout his name, and he rushes forward. His boots pound against the slick deck as he slides in next to me, his big hands wrapping around Sami’s arms. He gives me a quick nod, and we pull together.
"On three," I growl, bracing myself. "One… two… three!"
We pull as hard as we can, as Sami’s screams cut through the low hum of the plane, sharp and raw. She’s waist-deep now, and the metal around her legs shimmers like a black, oily liquid.
Gonzo and I lean back, using every ounce of strength we have left, but it feels like trying to pull a tree out of the ground with bare hands.
Sami’s face turns white, her eyes wide with terror as she claws at the air, desperately trying to grip onto anything. The fear in her voice rattles me. “I don’t wanna die!” she sobs.
“You’re not dying today!” I growl through clenched teeth.
Then, just as her torso starts to disappear, there’s a loud pop, like the sound of air being released from a vacuum. Sami jerks upward, and Gonzo and I stumble backward, nearly falling over as she comes free from the deck with a sickening squelch.
We crash into the bulkhead, Sami landing on top of us, panting and shivering, her whole body trembling. I glance down at the floor, expecting to see the warped metal still trying to pull us in, but it’s solid again, like nothing ever happened.
"I've got you, kid," I assure her.
"Kat, what's your status up there?" I grunt, still catching my breath. Sami is huddled against the wall, her body shaking, tears streaking down her face. But at least, she’s alive.
“Jax, you need to get back here. Now!” Kat’s voice crackled over the comm, shaky but insistent.
“You two good?” I ask, keeping my voice low. Sami gives me a weak nod, though her eyes are still wide with shock. Gonzo doesn’t say anything, just grunted, rubbing a hand across his face like he’s trying to wipe away whatever the hell just happened.
“Stay with her,” I tell him, getting to my feet. “I’ll be right back.”
When I shove the cockpit door open, I see Kat hunched over the controls, her face pale, her dark hair falling loose from the tight bun she had earlier. She doesn’t even look up when I come in, just motions toward the windshield.
I follow her gaze, and that’s when I see it.
There, in the middle of the inky black sky, is a lightning bolt. Except it’s just hanging there, frozen, a jagged line of pure white cutting through the void. It doesn’t flicker or flash; it’s like a photo taken mid-strike. The air around it shimmers, pulsing slightly, and the hairs on my arms stand up like I’m too close to something electric.
And worse? We’re being pulled toward it, like some invisible current has hooked the plane and is dragging us straight into the heart of it.
“Kat,” I utter, not taking my eyes off the thing, “are we moving?”
Her fingers dance across the control panel, tapping useless buttons. “Not by choice,” she says. “Engines are still dead. We’re getting sucked in like a bug down a drain.”
I grip the yoke, not that it does any good. "Kat, any ideas? Can we override the system, get some manual control?"
Her voice is shaky but focused. "I'm rerouting power where I can, but electromagnetic interference is off the charts. It's scrambling everything."
"Alright, enough of this Twilight Zone bullshit," I snap, grabbing the intercom mic. "Gonzo, I need you to run a full diagnostic on Thunderchild. Whatever's going on, we need our bird back in working order. Think you can work your magic?"
His voice crackle back, a mix of determination and frustration. "Cap, I've been trying. Systems are going insane down here—it's like she's got a mind of her own." "Well, convince her to cooperate," I say. “I don’t know what’s going on. But I’d rather not be sitting ducks.”
The frozen lightning bolt doesn’t budge, just hanging there in the sky like some kind of freakish scar against the black void. It isn’t like anything we’ve ever seen before. We’re getting pulled toward it—slowly but steadily—and there isn’t a damn thing we can do about it. Kat and I have tried everything from running power from the backup systems to doing a hard reboot of the entire plane. Nothing works.
So, for the next couple of hours, we do the only thing we can: observe the anomaly and try to figure out what the hell we’re dealing with.
Every time I check the instruments, they’re still flickering, the compass still spinning like a drunk on a merry-go-round. The altimeter is useless, and our speed readouts keep jumping between 150 knots and zero. We aren’t actually flying anymore; we’re drifting. It feels like something is holding us in its grasp, pulling us closer to whatever that thing is ahead of us.
I stand up, stretching my legs and cracking my knuckles, and head toward the back. Sami is still sitting there, white as a ghost, eyes fixed on her screens. The glitching has stopped, thankfully, but she hasn’t said much since we pulled her out of the floor.
“Sami,” I call as I step into the operations bay. She doesn’t look up. “Sami.” Finally, she blinks, her head snapping up like she just realized I’m there. “Yeah, Captain?”
I sit down across from her, giving her a second to collect herself. “I need your opinion,” I say, my voice steady. “What are we looking at here?”
She swallows hard, glancing back at her screens, then at me. “Honestly? I don’t know. It’s like nothing I’ve ever studied. I mean… a lightning bolt doesn’t just freeze in midair, and it definitely doesn’t pull a plane toward it.”
I nod, waiting for her to continue.
“And the wind patterns, the temperature drops, the pressure spikes? It’s like we’re in the middle of some kind of… rift.”
“A rift?” I raise an eyebrow. “Like a tear?”
Sami nods, her fingers trembling slightly as she types something into her console.
Most of the displays are blank, flickering in and out like they can’t decide whether to give up or hold on. The only screen still showing any data is the one linked to the dropsondes. Even that’s glitching, numbers jumping around, freezing, and then rebooting.
“Look at this,” she points to one of her screens. “The data from the dropsondes we launched before everything went bonkers—it’s all over the place. But there’s one consistent thing: everything around us is bending. Gravity, time, electromagnetic fields—they’re all being warped, stretched like taffy.”
I frown. “You’re saying we’re flying toward some kind of tear in the fabric of the universe?”
She shrugs, pushing up her round rim glasses. “I don’t know how else to explain it.”
I lean back in my seat, letting that sink in. A tear in the universe. It sounds insane, but then again, nothing about today has been normal.
I'm mulling over Sami’s words, when a low rumble vibrates through the floor. For a split second, I think we’re about to hit another turbulence pocket, but then I hear a soft, familiar hum building beneath the noise.
The engines.
I’m on my feet and moving toward the cockpit before my brain even fully registers what’s happening. "Kat, tell me you’re seeing what I’m hearing."
She spins in her seat, her expression somewhere between disbelief and relief. "Engines are spooling back up, Jax. I don’t know how, but we’re getting power back."
I grab the yoke, feeling the weight of it in my hands again. There’s still resistance, like something’s dragging us, but it’s lighter now. Less like a black hole sucking us in and more like we’re breaking free of its grip.
"Come on, Thunderchild," I mutter under my breath, "don’t let me down now."
The controls slowly start to respond, the dials flickering to life, though they’re still twitchy, like the plane’s waking up from a bad dream. I glance over at Kat. She’s tapping away at the navigation console, eyes darting across the flickering radar.
"We’ve got partial control," she says, her voice edged with hope. "Not full power, but the instruments are stabilizing. Altimeter’s reading 18,000 feet. Airspeed’s climbing—200 knots. Compass is still scrambled, but we’re getting somewhere."
I flick the intercom switch. "Gonzo, what the hell did you do? Because whatever it was, I owe you a beer."
His voice crackles through the speaker, loud and triumphant. "Just gave her a little love, Cap. Had to reroute some systems, bypass a couple of fried circuits, but we’re back in business—for now, at least."
"For now" wasn’t exactly comforting, but I’ll take it. We’ve been drifting in this bizarre limbo for hours, and any progress feels like a godsend.
"Good work, Gonzo. Let’s hope she holds," I say, gripping the yoke tighter. I look over at Kat, who’s scanning the radar with a sharp focus. "Can we steer clear of that... whatever the hell that thing is?"
She shakes her head, biting her lip. "It’s still pulling us in, Jax. I’m giving her everything we’ve got, but it’s like we’re caught in a current. We can steer a bit, but we’re still moving toward it."
I exhale through my nose, staring out the windshield at the frozen lightning bolt, still hanging there like some kind of cosmic harpoon. The weird shimmer around it pulses, and for a second, I swear I see something moving inside it. Not a plane, not a bird, but… something. A shadow? A shape?
Category:Science