CHAPTER 1
"I know you don't want to talk about it Olivia," Harrison started "but you can't avoid this forever. We've been away for three days now and the whole thing is not going to die down on its own. Once we step out of that plane, you're gonna have to deal with it."
"I know," Olivia sighed. She looked at the clouds out the plane window for a while before turning to face Harrison and sharing in a rare moment of openness. "I just don't know how to deal with it. I thought with some time and space I would figure it out and I would find a solution, some kind of answer about what I wanted to do but there's no good solution. Either way, I'm going to hurt him, you know? And I don't want to do that. I never wanted to be the one to hurt him."
"You know that no matter what happens, we'll have your back right?"
"I can't ask you to do that. The press falling-out might be bad. I'll be called any name under the sun," she scoffed "Cyrus will make sure of that if I ruin Fitz's chances to elected."
"You don't have to ask us," Huck intervened from his seat on the row behind them. "Over a cliff, remember?"
Olivia had a small smile, thinking about how grateful she was for the amazingly loyal people she had in her life. Suddenly, a storm broke out and the plane started to shake. The lights above her were blinking and some bags and suitcases flew out of their lockers above the seats, landing on passengers. Olivia gripped her armrests and looked at the others in distress. The plane swayed to the right before shaking some more, alarming beeping sounds were coming from everywhere and bags were moving around in the cabin. The steward and stewardess were trying to reassure the passengers it was only some turbulence when the lights went out completely and people started screaming for good.
Everything seemed to still for a couple of infinitely long seconds and Olivia held her breath before it all went to hell. Lighting-bolts got closer and closer to the plane, lights pouring out the plane's windows for a brief second each time, allowing Olivia to see the terrified faces of all the passengers by flashes. They were now in the eye of the storm. The plane had another jolt, then Olivia felt as though they were in free fall and she held on for dear life onto her seat, certain she was about to die, but with one last sway of the plane, the lights were back on and everything went back to normal. The beeping sounds stopped, people quit screaming, the plane wasn't shaking anymore. They were out of the storm.
"Wow, terribly sorry folks," the captain said over the PA. "That was extreme turbulence resulting from a sudden weather surge that was not on the radar. Rest assured engine controls are okay but please keep those seatbelts fastened."
Olivia turned to Harrison and Alexis, making sure they were okay before turning around to check on Huck. Everyone seemed a bit shaken up but alright.
When his co-pilot announced they were only a few minutes away, the captain sighed in relief. It had been a close one and to say he was glad to land was an understatement.
"Air approach," he called over the radio "Delta Air Lines 828, level 1, 5,000."
"This is Washington approach, hum... repeat your callsign please."
"Yeah, DAL 828."
There was a pregnant pause.
"Repeat, Delta Air Lines 828, Atlanta to Reagan National, copy that?"
Another long pause and the captain and his co-pilot exchanged a confused look.
"Can I get your name, captain, and the number of passengers and crew on your manifest?"
"Hum... this is captain Dale Henson, we have 191 souls on board, all of whom would love to touch down on one of your runways."
Weirdly, he was then asked to divert to another, more secluded, airport just outside of DC. No matter how much he insisted on knowing the reason why, he did not get a clear answer from his correspondent on the radio.
Olivia was relieved when the plane touched down even though it was in the wrong airport, she would just have to warn Abby and Quinn that they needed to be picked up over here instead.
There was a scatter of applause before the stewardess announced:
"Yes, we did people. Welcome to Washington DC where the local time is 11:49 pm. On behalf of your flight crew, we'd like to thank you for flying with Delta Air Lines."
Olivia picked up her phone to text Abby but there was no service. One look at Harrison and Huck taught her they were having the same issue. She sighed - this flight really wasn't a success.
"And the inconvenience continue," the captain announced. "We've been asked to deplane right here on the tarmac."
A child in front of her seemed excited about it but to Olivia, it was just one more aggravation.
She heard lots of sirens in the distance getting closer and she frowned - that was unusual. They grabbed their stuff and got out of the plane on the tarmac where they were asked by some security agents and policemen to wait on one side, the captain and crew on the other.
More police officers arrived in numerous patrol cars, followed by ambulances and army trucks. As if that wasn't enough, a dozen of black SUVs arrived and parked around the plane. About fifty men and women wearing FBI and NSA coats got out of the cars and posted themselves around the plane and passengers. Those who seemed to be the leading agents directly went to the captain and the crew, taking over from the discussion they were having with the police officers already present on scene.
Alexis turned away from the heated discussion that seemed to be happening and asked Olivia, "When do they do this? Is it like a training exercise?"
"No," she answered. "They never do that."
Harrison, Huck and her exchanged some loaded and worried looks. This didn't feel good, something was happening.
The discussion between the captain and the federal agents got more heated and the captain took a step back, running his hands in his hair, clearly frustrated with what he was being told.
Olivia stepped forward and called "Excuse me? What exactly is the problem?"
One of the federal agents moved towards her and the rest of the passengers and watched them carefully for a few seconds before answering.
"The problem, ladies and gentlemen, is your plane departed Atlanta, Georgia on July, 12th, 2014. Today, is August, 4th, 2019." There was a stunned silence before the passengers all started to whisper protestingly. The agent continued. "You've all been missing, presumed dead, for over five years."
At that, noises of outrage spread across the nearly two hundreds passengers. Olivia and her team looked at one another questioningly, not knowing how to respond to such an impossible statement.
Olivia raised her head as Harrison returned to their tent in the hangar where all the passengers were being confined. There were some sorts of camping beds in lines inside the tents. They had already been there for a while and everyone seemed exhausted, yet unable to sleep. All the passengers were sitting huddled in groups on the beds, waiting for their turns to be called and brought into the interview area.
Olivia arched her eyebrow questioningly at Harrison, waiting for him to tell them what had happened after he'd been called by one of the agents. He sat next to her feet, at the end of her bed where she was holding Alexis close while Huck was standing beside them, constantly looking around the tent, observing the soldiers' patrolling patterns. Olivia had tried to convince him to sit down with them and rest for a while but he had categorically refused.
"They're interrogating people on the other side of the hangar," Harrison explained in hushed tones so as to not be overheard by the soldiers patrolling among the passengers. "The captain and the rest of the crew are all being kept separated from the passengers and there are even more federal agents than before if you can believe it."
"This is crazy," Alexis murmured. "They can't be serious about this!"
"Oh they're very serious, believe me," he replied. "They kept asking me where we landed before coming here, where we went, what we did during those five years... When my answers didn't seem to please them, they asked me to tell them about everything that has happened from the moment the plane left to the moment we landed here. I did and they didn't seem to believe me."
"This is either the most elaborated prank ever," Olivia said, "or we're going crazy."
"I'm leaning towards governmental experiment right now," Harrison answered.
Huck, as often, remained silent.
When Olivia's turn was up, she was more than ready to get some answers. They had been kept in ridiculous conditions for over two days and under constant surveillance like some kind of terrorists and she was done with it. However the agents interrogating her didn't seem willing to share and were determined to get her to answer their questions as many times as possible.
"I already, told you. We left on time, we were in the air for about twenty minutes when there were some pretty intense turbulence, then it stopped, and an hour later we landed. That's it! Nothing more happened, it was a 1H30 flight!"
"Except it wasn't, Ms Pope," the female agent said.
"Oh for fuck's sake, you're not gonna start again with your five years nonsense!"
"Ms Pope, can you tell us where you landed before landing here?" the male agent asked.
"As I, and I'm sure every other passenger on this plane, have already told you: we did not land anywhere but here."
"Ms Pope," the female agent said in a soft tone, getting closer to her "no matter what happened, you won't be punished for it, you can trust us. You can tell us what really happened."
Olivia sat back, moving away from the agent, and sighed.
"This has to stop, I want to speak to someone in charge, I want some answers!"
"Ms Pope, please calm down and answer our question. What happened-"
"No," she cut him off. "I want to know when you are going to let us go, this charade has to stop now. You don't have any legal right to detain us. I want to speak to someone in charge." She paused, then added "And I want to speak to my husband."
At the mention of her husband, the two agents exchanged loaded looks from the other side of the table.
"Thank you Ms Pope, that'll be all, please return to your seat," the woman told her with a tense face, clearly dismissing her.
Olivia sighed once more and got up - she wouldn't get any answers out of these two. Escorted by two agents in uniform, she went through all the plastic walls that had been installed all over the hangar and went back to her team.
The NSA director stood on a platform above the plane, observing the dozens of agents analysing, photographing and bagging all and any evidence from the plane.
"Director Rosen," one of his colleagues called, joining him on the platform "we interviewed every last one of them. Nothing. And we still haven't come across a single substance dating from any time between the day the flight took off and when it returned. It's as if the plane never left the sky."
"Do I have to say out loud that that's impossible?"
"Director, no one on that plane aged a day. I think we've taken impossible off the table."
The Director sighed, thinking about what he was going to have to report to the White House. His first report had been tense enough...
A few hours earlier...
Cyrus sat in his chair, frozen at the news they had just been given. It was impossible. It was absolutely impossible. He slowly turned to Fitz and saw that he too had frozen.
They had received a call a little earlier, informing them of the approach of a plane which claimed to be DAL 828 but it wouldn't have been the first time they had a false alert and until this moment, Cyrus was convinced it was just one more.
During the past five years, Fitz had lost so much of himself and Cyrus had been forced to assist to his disintegration, unable to do anything to stop it. He watched a strong, vibrant and powerful man turn into a shallow version of himself, a man who was barely alive - simply going through the motions, as though waiting for real life to come back to him. On the inside, he was destroyed but, politician until the end, in public he was still doing everything right, what was expected of him and it had paid off in the end but even though the politician remained, the man was long gone.
But looking at him right then, Cyrus thought Fitz looked like a man waking up from an awful nightmare - a man trapped in those confusing few seconds when nightmare and reality blend in to the point where he is unable to distinguish one from the other.
Everyone in the Situation Room watched the President, waiting for him to say something, give his orders, give them all something to do - a mission, a solution - but Fitz remained frozen, his eyes unfocused.
Cyrus reached out and touched his arm.
"Mr President?" he called.
It took another couple of seconds before Fitz moved. He turned to the video-conference screen where the NSA Director was waiting for an answer.
"Can you repeat, please?" Fitz asked.
He didn't look like a man who had not heard, he looked like a desperate man terrified of having misheard and not letting himself hope just yet.
"Of course, Mr President. I can now confirm that Delta Air Lines' flight 828 is back, sir. I have a whole team on scene processing as much evidence as possible but everything seems to match the data we have on DAL 828. All the passengers are accounted for, as well as the flight crew."
"All the..." Fitz cleared his throat. "All the passengers are accounted for?"
The NSA Director seemed confused.
"Hum, yes, sir. As I said, all the passengers and crew on the manifest are accounted for."
Fitz' whole body sagged and his head fell into his hands, trembling for a few seconds. Cyrus was afraid he was going to have to get him out before he crumbled in front of everyone but Fitz lifted his head back up and took a deep breath and Cyrus could almost see life being injected back into his body.
So sorry for the late update, I haven't been feeling great and found it difficult to write! Hope you enjoy and do not hesitate to leave me a review, they always make my day! Thank you very much to everyone who favourited, followed, and reviewed the first chapter! Thanks for reading