Chapter 1
September 22, 2004
Oceanic Airlines flight 815, en route to Los Angeles
Brandon McDaniel stretched out his legs, enjoying the unaccustomed luxury of his first-class seat. He'd finished the job in Sydney ahead of schedule, tracking down the problem in record time and designing a truly elegant hack to fix it. He'd probably saved his company's whole multi-million dollar account with Widmore Industries in the process. His bosses back in Dallas had been pleased enough to spring for a first-class ticket on the trans-Pacific leg of the flight. And, in a true stroke of luck, seat 4A next to him was empty. He had all the room he wanted to stretch out and relax. Airline travel was usually torture for him; his 6-foot-4-inch frame was uncomfortably cramped in an ordinary coach seat, and never mind that all of the airlines had been cutting back on in-flight service to coach customers the past three years. But Oceanic Airlines, at least, still gave first-class treatment to its first-class passengers.
He glanced out the window at the Pacific Ocean thirty thousand feet below. There was no land in sight, nothing but a seemingly endless expanse of blue water. They'd be past Fiji by now, he guessed, somewhere near the equator, if not across it already. Although the pilot surely would have told them if they'd crossed either the equator or the International Date Line…
Brandon's thoughts were abruptly cut off by a low booming noise and a sudden shudder that passed the length of the aircraft. The left wing dropped and the plane lurched, and a woman who had been passing by him in the aisle stumbled, lost her footing, and fell into his lap. Brandon caught her, and held on to her until the turbulence stopped and the plane righted itself.
"Are you OK?" he asked, helping her back to her feet.
She looked at him and smiled, blushing slightly. She was a petite woman in her late twenties, Asian in coloration and features, dressed in a white blouse and a gray wool skirt. "I'm fine, thanks. Just picked the wrong time to go to the bathroom," she said in a southern California accent, straightening her clothes. And then, with a slightly impish grin, she added, "Nice catch."
"My pleasure," Brandon said, grinning back. "I think…"
The plane hit another pocket of turbulence, and the woman grabbed the back of Brandon's seat, managing to keep her balance this time. Seconds later, a stewardess came on the intercom and instructed everyone to return to their seats and strap in.
"Here," Brandon said impulsively, unbuckling his belt and sliding to into the empty seat to his left. "You might not make it back to your seat before it happens again." What the hell, she's cute, he thought.
"Probably not," she agreed, grinning at Brandon's transparent ploy to get her to sit next to him. But she slipped into the seat he had just vacated, reaching for the belt. "Besides, how could…"
She never completed the sentence. The plane seemed to drop beneath them, and, since neither of them had finished fastening their belts, they both flew up towards the overhead compartments. Brandon took the impact on his shoulder, then fell back into his seat. The young woman struck headfirst, and then fell on top of Brandon, dazed. Brandon threw one arm over her to hold her down, and desperately searched for his seat belt with his free hand.
The plane began descending at a sharp angle, pinning Brandon to his seat. He abandoned the hunt for his seat belt and grabbed the woman with both arms, bracing his feet against the back of the seat in front of him. There were panicked screams from the rest of the cabin, and cries of "Oh my God!" and "What's happening?"
And then there was a loud whoosh and a fierce wind, all loose objects flying towards the rear of the plane, and what looked like sunlight behind them. "The tail's gone!" Brandon heard someone scream. We're crashing, he thought, paralyzed with the shock of it.
A violent shaking, a tearing of metal, and he saw blue sky overhead. His seat dropped away from beneath him, the air seemed to tear the woman from his arms, and he felt himself falling, tumbling through the air, blue sky and white clouds above, blue water below, and – something else. Land? He couldn't tell. All he could think was, I'm falling I'm falling Oh God I'm falling, and, I'm going to die.
He stopped tumbling after a few seconds, and found himself falling face-down, the air trying to push his arms and legs together behind his back. He saw dark green, and brown – it was land. But where? As far as he knew, they shouldn't have been anywhere near land, and for some reason he wanted to know the name of the place where he was going to die, which would be in only a few minutes. How high had be been when the plane broke up? And how long did it take to fall that far? Stray thoughts flashed though his mind and were gone: Never did get to see Alaska and Mom's going to be mad that I never gave her any grandkids and Damn, I'm glad I divorced Arlene. And, I spent my last minutes of life flirting with a cute stranger. There are worse ways to go…
Falling, falling, and then the ground was coming close, and his final minutes ticked down to seconds, and he made what peace he could with his imminent death. But one question wouldn't go away: Why? There was no answering it, and no time, because the treetops were rushing towards him, and something else, something like a black cloud boiling upward out of the ground: What the hell? he thought.
Then the blackness surrounded him, seemed to grab at him, knocked the air from his lungs, and for a time his thoughts vanished and he knew only darkness.