Chapter 37 - The False Escape
The aircraft rolled forward without anyone touching the controls.
Samuel pulled the emergency fuel levers.
Nothing happened.
The engines continued increasing power.
Martin opened the lower console and searched for the mechanical cutoff.
“This system has been altered.”
“You said it had no network,” Victor shouted.
“It doesn’t.”
Ethan listened to the engines.
The turbines were not receiving digital commands. The fuel controls were being moved through hidden hydraulic lines beneath the floor.
Someone had converted the supposedly manual aircraft into a remotely operated trap.
The hangar doors began opening.
Outside, military vehicles blocked the taxiway, but the aircraft accelerated toward them.
Samuel grabbed the steering column.
It resisted like solid metal.
Ethan crawled beneath the copilot console and followed the hydraulic vibration through the frame.
A narrow pipe ran toward the cargo bay.
He opened an access panel.
Inside was a secondary control box stamped with Evelyn Mercer’s circular symbol.
“She planned for us to use this plane.”
Samuel looked back.
“Can you disable it?”
“Not before we hit the vehicles.”
Ethan removed a wrench and struck the main hydraulic regulator.
The aircraft suddenly turned left.
Its wing clipped a maintenance cart, sending tools across the floor.
The military vehicles scattered as the plane broke through a temporary barrier and entered the taxiway.
Martin stared at Ethan.
“You didn’t disable it.”
“I changed which line has pressure.”
The remote system believed it was steering right, but Ethan had reversed the controls.
Samuel turned the wheel left.
The aircraft moved right.
“Everything is backward,” he said.
“Only until I can isolate the box.”
The aircraft gained speed.
Ahead, a passenger jet was being towed across the taxiway.
Victor shouted a warning.
Samuel pulled left.
Ethan redirected pressure.
The plane swerved right, missing the passenger aircraft by only a few feet.
Inside the magnetic chamber, the artificial Ethan struck the wall repeatedly.
A muffled voice came through the intercom.
“Open the chamber.”
Samuel ignored him.
“Open it!” the artificial boy repeated. “The fleet is not controlling this aircraft.”
Ethan looked toward the control box.
“Then who is?”
The chamber door bent outward.
The artificial Ethan forced it open and stepped into the cargo bay.
His eyes flickered with incoming data.
“The aircraft is following a stored mechanical sequence.”
“A preprogrammed route?” Martin asked.
“No.”
The artificial boy turned toward Samuel.
“It is repeating a flight that already happened.”
The navigation display changed.
A ghost route appeared across the screen.
Seven years earlier, Hangar Twelve’s aircraft had departed Westbridge on the night Samuel’s workshop exploded.
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Its pilot had been Victor Lang.
And its destination had been the island.
