arm, but Derek ignores the gesture, pointedly turning away. Experience has made him bitter and untrusting, I realize, and I feel a sharp tug of solidarity toward him. Our reactions are shaped by the people around us, by the way they behave toward us. I think of Adam and of all the bitterness I’ve felt, and I feel it begin to peel away. I don’t know if I can forgive, but I think I can forget.
If I’m given the chance.
“Tough times,” Rowan says, a little uncertainly. He glances at me, and I give a tiny nod, trying to convey that I understand—that he’s simply trying to help. I don’t think anyone can help Derek now: he’s determined to get out his story, to catalogue his descent to a place where life was no longer worth living.
Derek looks at Cesca. “I just felt…useless—you know? No, not just useless. Pointless.”
Alice has gone back to her phone, bored by the story.
“I decided I’d take the flight anyway and visit my brother in Sydney, and then I’d lock myself in a hotel room with as much booze and pills as I could take, and that would be that. I was looking forward to it, in a funny sort of way.”
“And now…” I don’t finish, but he nods, a bitter smile at the corners of his mouth.
“Ironic, isn’t it? I suppose it focuses the mind rather, being faced with death. Turns out I’m not so keen on the idea after all.”
“None of us is,” I say grimly. I stand, looking toward Ganges and Zambezi, raising my voice to make sure they hear. “You didn’t know, did you? You didn’t know she was planning this.”
Ganges looks over his shoulder toward the flight deck, then across to Niger, who puts up his hands to fend off a passenger who has clambered out of his seat and down the aisle, still doing his job, despite this turn of events. They’ve been radicalized, I realize—so effectively that even now, they’re reluctant to stop doing Missouri’s bidding.
I see Paul Talbot put baby Lachlan in his wife’s arms and urge her toward the vacant seat, but before she can move, Jason Poke leaps into it, belting himself in and assuming the brace position.
“We have to do something,” I say, as much to myself as anyone else.
“Do what?” A passenger in the front row screams the question at me, his mouth twisted in fear. “There’s nothing we can do!”
Ganges takes a step back, then forward again. He’s not sure what to do, where to go now that his leader has gone. This is our chance, surely? I turn to Cesca and the others. “We need to get into the flight deck.”
“But the explosives…” Rowan starts. “The second we get close, she’ll…” He clenches his fingers into a ball, then opens his fist in a sudden starburst.
“And if we don’t,” Derek says, “she’ll crash into the Opera House.”
The pregnant woman is listening. “Either way, we’re fucked.”
“If she triggers the bomb now…” I swallow, hardly able to put words to what I’m thinking “…it’s just us. The plane will break up, and okay, there might be casualties on the ground, but there might not be. Whereas if we let this happen, we know people are going to die.”
“She’s right.” Cesca stands up. “There are thousands of innocent people heading for the Opera House right now. We can’t let—”
“What about the innocent people on this plane?” comes the voice from across the cabin. There’s a clamor of agreement, angry voices shouting across one another. Rowan looks at me, two lines deepening at the bridge of his nose.
“You think we should give up,” I say.
He closes his eyes for a second, as though seeking strength from within. When he opens them, they’re dark with despair. “No. I think we’ve already lost.”
Farther back in the cabin, a woman in a pink top stands up, as though she’s about to offer her seat to someone. I steel myself for more shouting, more arguing, but when I look more closely, I feel calmer: it’s the doctor who responded to our call for assistance. She puts her hands on the back of the seat in front of her, like a preacher in the pulpit. I wonder how it feels to be unable to save someone’s life. If it haunts her, or if she’s seen enough death to be numb to it.
“All the talking!” Her face is creased in irritation, and the cabin falls silent. I remember how reluctant she was