December 1999

It had been a very weird night.

Angela DuPre flopped down on the bed in her apartment and closed her eyes. Maybe when she opened them, she would find that her entire first day working for Sky Trails Air had been a dream. That was most likely the case. Everything that had happened was so weird, there was no way it really could have happened.

Angela kept her eyes closed for a couple minutes, trying to go to sleep. But the events of earlier that day kept coming back to her.

The plane appearing out of nowhere.

The dark cockpit.

The changing logo.

The babies. Rows and rows of no one but babies, filling every seat on the plane.

The entire airport buzzing with government agents and officials of every kind.

The brigade of airport employees, including Angela herself, carrying a total of thirty-six babies off the plane.

The entire plane disappearing into thin air.

It had to be a dream. Had to be.

The FBI officials had swarmed onto the scene. Angela had had to re-tell the story of what she'd seen, over and over and over again. She knew what she had seen. But every time she re-told the story, the officials' faces had started looking more and more skeptical. Monique Waters, her supervisor, who'd been working next to Angela and had also seen the plane disappear, had insisted that Angela was crazy. Then the FBI had run around trying to convince everyone that everything was under control, that they had towed the plane away and were in the process of examining it to find out where it had come from.

It was all a lie. The plane—the entire plane—had disappeared as soon as the employees had finished carrying the babies into the terminal. Angela had seen it. She had told everyone who interviewed her the truth. But nobody had believed her.

Or at least, nobody wanted to admit that they believed her.

And now, because of that plane and because Angela refused to lie about what she had seen, Angela was without a job. She fought back a lump in her throat as she thought back to just twelve hours earlier. She'd been so excited for her first real job at an airport. That was why she'd moved to Liston in the first place—to work at the Liston airport, the first airport that had offered her a job. She remembered checking her reflection over and over in the mirror. Do I look the part of airline customer service representative? How does my uniform look? It's not wrinkled, right? Do I look professional?

Angela hadn't had to fake her big, welcoming smile—at least not at first. She had just been so excited to finally be working at an actual airport. It was a small step, but it was one step closer to her goal of becoming a pilot.

Could people still become pilots if the official government documents said they were mentally unstable and prone to hallucinations?

The FBI and Sky Trails Air had made everyone sign confidentiality statements, saying they would never talk about the incident again. Angela had refused. She'd stuck to her story—the truth. Then Monique—who'd seen the plane disappear just like Angela had!—had fired her and filled out all sorts of documents about how Angela was too mentally disabled and crazy to work for an airline.

And just like that, Angela had lost her job.

Everyone would be so disappointed in her. What was she supposed to do now? She'd moved a hundred miles away from the town she'd grown up in to take this job. What would her parents say if she came back and told them she'd lost her job after only one day?

It was easier to believe it had all been a dream. A nightmare.

But for some reason, Angela couldn't seem to wake up.