[s9e5] Leave Your Emotions At - The Cabin Door

Behind them, in the galley, the lead flight attendant, Sarah, was doing the same. A passenger in 4B was hysterical, screaming about a mechanical sound he thought he’d heard. Sarah didn't comfort him with a hug or a soft word. She stood over him, her expression unreadable, and gave him the only thing that would save him: a set of precise, icy instructions.

“Airspeed’s decaying,” his co-pilot, Miller, whispered. Her knuckles were white on the yoke. This was her first trans-continental flight since her father’s funeral, and Elias could see the tremor in her hands. [S9E5] Leave Your Emotions at the Cabin Door

When the wheels finally chirped against the tarmac in Santiago, the silence didn't break immediately. It lingered until the engines began their low, mournful whine down to a halt. Behind them, in the galley, the lead flight

For twenty minutes, the aircraft was a metal tube of absolute, practiced coldness. No one cried because no one had the permission to. They were all holding their breath, suspended in a vacuum where emotion had been surgically removed. She stood over him, her expression unreadable, and

In the cockpit, the alarms were a choir of chaos. Elias didn't flinch. He didn't think about his wife waiting at the gate in Santiago or the fact that this was his last flight before retirement. He was simply a machine of muscle and memory. He adjusted the trim, felt the engines roar in protest, and forced the nose down to regain speed.

Captain Elias Thorne watched the altimeter drop with a sickening lurch. Outside the cockpit glass, the sky over the Andes was a bruised purple, flickering with lightning that looked like cracks in the world.