people wearing poppies, can you believe it?!
—Did you see that bint in the paper? Accepted drinks all night then cried rape?!
—International Women’s Day? When’s International Men’s Day, then?!
He grabbed each one and ran with it, confirming my suspicion that he had no thoughts left of his own, that years of gaming had dulled his mind to such an extent that he now needed opinions fed to him, like a patient on a drip. Slowly, I filtered the content until my prompts were purely environmental, until it was him, not me, who introduced them.
When I was confident he was one of us, I went in for the kill.
—Friend of mine’s looking to employ gamers—some software company needing to test how robust their systems are. Interested?
Of course he was.
For a year, I “employed” him, tasking him with hacking the levels on an FPS game, then sending the exact same game, saying the security had been tightened.
—You’re amazing! I told him when yet again, he beat the system. I don’t know what I’d do without you.
It cost money, of course, but our income was good. The starving polar bear image—such a hit on our Household Hacks pages—resulted in a regular stream of donations. People who give money “for the environment” don’t ask how it will be used.
Moving Amazon from shooting games to flight simulations was a struggle (Where’s the fun if you can’t kill people?) but by then, he was conditioned to accept whatever work I gave him. I sent him up and down the country to try out actual flight simulators until he felt as comfortable in a flight deck as in his gaming chair, then booked a series of lessons in light aircraft—never at the same airfield twice.
—The instructor said I was a natural! he messaged after his first go.
I took a moment to reflect on how far he’d come in such a short time. I’d never met Amazon in person, but I imagined he was standing a little straighter, holding his head a little higher. The same had happened for Zambezi, who was a far cry from the battered wife I’d picked up from the floor. Our work—our important, world-altering work—was transforming people’s lives closer to home too.
It takes around sixty hours of flying to get your private pilot license, and Amazon must have clocked up thousands of gaming hours that year alone. By the time he stepped onto Flight 79, he had a private license and dozens of hours in Boeing 777 simulators. More than enough for what I had in mind.
After all, how much training do you need to fall from the sky?
THIRTY-THREE
5 HOURS FROM SYDNEY | MINA
The screams have given way to a silence laden with fear and disbelief. Derek Trespass has made all the passengers move away from Carmel, across to the left-hand side of the cabin, roaring, “Show some respect!” when nobody responded. Erik, Cesca, and the man in the gray sweatshirt are on the floor in the aisle with me, Carmel lying between us.
“It is slowing down,” Erik says. The spurts of blood that have covered us all are less regular, less forceful. The man with the glasses is still pressing around the wound in Carmel’s neck, blood bubbling up around his fingers. The corkscrew is from the bar, a simple metal twist with a wooden handle. It seems barbaric to leave it sticking out of her, but the hole it would leave would make the blood loss even worse.
The decision is academic.
“It isn’t slowing,” Cesca says grimly. “It’s stopping.”
We watch Carmel’s life ebb out of her, the convulsions slowing as her organs fail and she loses consciousness. Her eyes roll back in their sockets, the skin around them clammy and tinged with blue. Her rescuer takes his hands from her throat and slumps back on his heels. He pulls off his glasses, rubbing sweat and blood across his brow, his face racked with horror.
I touch his arm, and he flinches, still locked in the nightmare we’ve just lived.
“You did everything you could.”
“I could have held the wound firmer maybe, or—”
“You did everything you could.” My voice breaks on the last word.
“Stupid girl.” Like the rest of us, Missouri is splattered with Carmel’s blood, but unlike us, her face is impassive.
I stare at her. “How could you?”
“That’s what happens when you ignore instructions.”
“She did nothing wrong, and you killed her!”
“It wasn’t—”
I scramble to my feet, sickened by the excuses. “You’re a monster.”
“Shut up, Mina, for God’s sake!” Erik snaps.
I round on him. “You’re a