Apology in advance for the lack of Lati activity in this chapter. I couldn't think of a way to progress AND include her that much in this scene. Enjoy :)
Mac woke with a jolt. Not 'sitting bolt upright' jolt. But a kind of jerking movement as all his joints responded to his brain switching on. He kept his eyes closed though, enjoying the good feeling of being awake after a short nap.
He could hear a noise though. A "cooing" kind of noise that sounded hopeful. Like his wakening had cheered something up, and not something human. It was familiar too. Mac struggled to remember what would make that noise. It sounded like some sort of animal. Like a bird crossed with a wolf.
And why was he asleep anyway? Where was he asleep? If he was at home on his mattress, it wouldn't be as solid as the thing he was on now. Nor would it smell of aviation fuel.
Mac groaned and the cooing noise sounded even louder. Slowly, his memory returned.
"YOU'RE OKAY!" Latias squealed as Mac grudgingly opened his eyes, her snout barely a foot from his face.
Mac was startled by this; Latias was very loud, very close and in some aspects, very intimidating. But once she stopped squealing, she removed a hand from the side of her levitating body and offered it to Mac, who warily took it and used it to lever himself into a sitting position, with a bit more grunting. It was getting dark, the sun starting to set behind Latias, casting a shade of red almost as deep as her feathers.
"Where are we?" He asked, the question seeming relevant even if the answer was blatantly obvious.
"Airport!" Latias announced both psychically and out loud. She was quite proud of herself, really. With Mac knocked out and the police closing in, she'd make the tactical decision to fly away carrying Mac. Except, with his arms in a non-rigid state, she'd had no option to bite around the closest thing she could think of to his scruff - the back of his hoodie's collar. You could bite Latios' scruff all day long and it wouldn't do anything. And when you were meant to pick up any pokemon pup, Latias had learnt that mothers always bit them by the scruff. But humans were too weak to do that, so she'd settled on the collar. She recalled their plan and decided the airport would be the best place to go.
From what she understood, the airport had various flying things coming out from it.
From there she'd just looked for a place that matched her assumption of what an airport was. She found it soon enough, giant metal tubes making scary roaring noises around her as she flew there and landed on the roof, closest to the road-like-thing that the airplanes took off from. Mac would have called the 'road' a 'runway' and the building, a 'terminal'. Not that Latias knew or would understand any of that.
Then she'd laid down and waited for Mac to wake up, prodding him with her snout every so often.
"The airport?" Mac asked, a bit of a dumb question considering the loud roaring noise of four jet engines powering an A350 into the sky in the background.
"Yeah. Come on, you're impressed!" Latias projected.
"Yes, I'm thrilled" Mac mumbled under his breath, not really amazed at Latias managing to navigate to a place less than a mile away. But then another thought creeped into his head which was a lot more urgent than mere annoyance. Concerning something that had happened while they were escaping.
"Latias...did you kill that person?" He asked in a hushed and somewhat angry voice. She knew what he was on about instantly.
Latias backed away from Mac and looked ashamed. She had, and couldn't really deny it. Not with an attack that large, Mac was bound to remember. As proven by him asking. She slowly nodded her head and whimpered, before ducking down and pushing her head against the tarmac roof, hiding her face.
"Yes."
Mac felt sorry for her, really. All she wanted to do was get home to her family, and really she was only using animal instincts in attacking. But then again, she had killed someone...
"Don't be upset, look. Listen." - Latias raised her head - "Okay? I don't blame you, you were just doing what you needed to survive. But in the future, when it comes to defending yourself? Non leathal. To humans. Unless it's urgent."
Latias did another nod in response. Then a silence fell between them, pierced only by the incessant whine of jet engines. Eventually, Latias had to ask.
"What do we do now?"
Mac considered this before jumping to his feet, wandering over to the edge of the roof.
"First, Latias, We're going to check the coast is clear." - he moved the sleeve of his hoodie and checked the time. "Quarter past four. I wasn't asleep for too long then. Lets hurry. They shouldn't have posted police here, they'll be expecting us to try something less obvious and a bit further away. Once the coast is clear, we're going to get off this roof, you're going to turn invisible and follow me through security and then we board the plane and 'BOOM!' it's homeward bound."
Latias liked the sound of that last bit.
"Of course, the police that there are here will need distracting..."
Latias didn't like the sound of that part.
Mac walked into the departure hall, seemingly alone. In actual fact, Latias was floating invisibly not 1 meter above him, looking around for any threats. She'd briefed Mac on how he could communicate with her via his thoughts - so long as she was listening - and right now he was asking her about security.
"Can you see anything?" His thoughts asked.
There shouldn't have been in many special police at the airport, Mac reasoned. They should all be responding to the panic alarm going off at the London stock exchange. Not Mac's fault. Nothing at all to do with him hacking the system. Nope. There was no way the alarm would be traced to a virus he'd put on a memory stick in the car park of the trade centre and left to be installed two years ago, to be activated with his mobile as they were climbing down from the terminal roof. Nope.
While Mac was almost grinning with his own genius, Latias could indeed see many somethings. A man with a Mexican hat on. A woman with a ridiculously cute baby. Another man who looked like some kind of movie star, what with his glasses and expensive looking suit...
And several men with guns standing either side of an entrance to a doorway marked 'DEPARTURES'
"Four men with guns...over by the yellow sign" She beamed back, as Mac looked for the travel agents. Airports always had one, and this one was no exception. Mac never personally saw the point, who booked a holiday AT the airport? No-one, they always booked in advance. But the travel agent would come in useful now...
He thought a thought for Latias. "That's it? Routine patrol then, not specially out for me. We'll just need to stay low profile as we go past them"
Mac kept his hood up as he walked towards the travel agent's desk. People would still be on the lookout, but until the shift change at 5 o'clock, no one who'd seen his picture on the news would be working at the desks. He hoped.
He didn't need to wait in line, just walk straight to the desk, where a bored looking woman with too much makeup was staring at a screen. Until Mac arrived, at which point she put on her best fake smile. "How can I help?"
Mac acted like a stressed out professional type person, which was difficult to do when you're wearing a hoodie and backpack, not a suit and briefcase.
"Yeah, hi, thanks, listen, how quickly can you get me on a flight to Hong Kong? Only, my boss says there's a BIG crisis at our plant an-"
The teller sensed a rant was immanent and silenced him by putting her two palms forward and pushing them away from herself, the universal expression for 'calm down' . "That's perfectly okay mister, we'll see what we can do..."
She tapped a few buttons on her computer and Mac acted stressed out as much as possible, fidgeting with his watch and phone. Considering he was being hunted down by police, it wasn't difficult to act stressed.
"Okay we've got a non-stop to Hong Kong, China, departing in three quarters of an hour. Normally we don't sell tickets this close to the departure time but you look like you've had a bad day so I'll book you on that now if that's okay?"
Mac breathed a half real, half over dramatic sigh of relief. "Oh thank god yes, How much?"
"Four-two-zero". Mac wasn't surprised, it was late notice after all. And he had the money. Time to crank the stress into overload.
"Phew, yes that's fine, only, you see, I've barely got dressed, see, so I've got cash only, but no card, is that..."
"Sir that's okay so long as you have the money."
Mac threw his bag of his shoulder and dramatically counted out four hundred and twenty pounds worth of twenty pound notes. The woman blinked when he handed it over, but didn't say anything else. People rarely paid in cash, and it was about to be made illegal, but the poor guy looked a right state! She gave him the benefit of the doubt, printing off his boarding pass and handing it over in exchange for the money, which she moved into the safe at the back after telling Mac that "If you didn't have any hold luggage you can go right through to security over there..."
Mac walked towards the security hall as Latias followed slightly above, mystified by the whole process. Couldn't he just pay on the airplane?
Mac was surprised that he'd managed to buy a ticket for a flight that soon, but was still worrying about security. The trick was to not look suspicious and to not make it look like your trying not to look suspicious. Look confident, so much so that people don't bother challenging you, but not too confident, because security guards hate arrogance...
All the same, he picked up his mobile and wrote out a specifically worded text as he entered the security hall. He joined the queue for passport control, before tapping the cell number of the plastic box he'd left on the train into the 'to' field, then pressed enter.
The text message was sent through the air and reached the box in the train in five seconds. It took the box another five seconds to generate a reply, before sending another text back to Mac's phone that took another five seconds.
As mac waited in the rapidly dwindling queue to have his passport checked, he tried to look relaxed even though on the inside he was on full-panic. If the police had searched the train, they might have found the box. It was a possibility. Or the battery could have ran out. Or the signal dropped. Or any other number of things...
When he received the reply text fifteen seconds later, he felt a blast of concealed joy, holding off his mental celebration until he read the contents.
"GSM READY TO SEND. TX PASSWORD TO CONTINUE"
Mac bashed out an eight letter password but held off sending it until he was third in the queue. People were being put through the four booths at about one every ten seconds, so if Mac activated it when he was in third he should be the first person at one booth who's passport wouldn't scan.
The moment he was third, he pressed the SEND button, and waited fifteen seconds.
There was no alarm. No siren. No spontaneous failure of the power grid, sparks, red lights, PA announcements, or even a shout. What Mac did observe, was that the officer at the desk of the person who'd just been called up, was apologising to the person who's passport he was checking.
"Sorry, it won't scan. Just wait a sec, I'll try again... "
The next two people ahead of Mac both got called forward by two people who'd scanned passports before Mac had sent the system down. Mac stood where he was as the queue ground to a halt. None of anyone's passports were being scanned, the system being overloaded by requests from the computers Mac was controlling via the box.
"Er... Connection error? Time Out? What does this mean?"
"Database file exception? Not seen that before...just wait a second, I'll sort this..."
After about a minute of apologising by the passport checkers, a man in a suit burst through a door behind the passport checking booths, and unlocked the door to the first one, motioning the officer to listen. The officer listened intently, nodding his head. The man in the suit then did the same to the remaining three tellers, before disappearing back through the door, slamming it so hard it almost fell of its reinforced hinges.
The first passport officer started talking to the woman waiting to go through.
"Yes, er, sorry. Yes you can go." He motioned his hand for the woman to continue through to the bit where they scanned all of the hand luggage.
The woman blinked, surprised that her passport hadn't been scanned, before moving on.
Mac walked up to replace her space, slightly reassured by the knowledge that if security got to him, Latias would be a meter above, ready to help. What if the suited man was telling them to look out for him?
The customs officer spoke to him as he arrived, happy that he would - in a mere thirty-five minutes - be off his shift.
"Hello, sorry about the delay, bit of a technical issue. Can I have your passport, boarding pass and reason for travel?"
Mac slid his passport under the polycarbonate shield, a blast of ultimate terror coursing through him the entire time. "Travelling on urgent business".
The passport official's manager had told them to just verify the picture was the person they were letting through and note down the passport number by hand until the electronic clarification system started working again. He hunted for a pencil while explaining to Mac the situation.
"Ah right, sorry, I'll get you through as soon as possible, but the system's down so I need to just write a few travel details down..."
Mac could deal with that. So long as the list the man was making was checked after he got on the plane, there wouldn't be much they could do about it.
It was odd that the passports wouldn't scan at all though. It looked like he'd made the box bombard the main passport system while the airport was updating their list. So it'd corrupted their data too, and it wouldn't restore until the other server started working again.
The official started writing down Mac's details on a table he'd hurriedly drawn out.
'MAC SIMMONS, 38275372, HONG KONG, , 16:36.'
"Thank you Mac, you can go now..."
Mac showed no emotion as he took his passport back, but on the inside he was joyous. Of course, there was still the x-ray scanners to go through, but Mac - as always - had a work around for that.
Instead of joining the queue of people waiting to go through security, Latias watched from above as Mac walked across to a woman in a green jacket like the one Mac made her wear when they were near the red vans. It looked like she was just there to monitor the queues for security. To say he was meant to be sneaking through, he was making himself quite obvious. Latias listened in to his conversation with the lady.
"Can I help you?". Judging from her tone, Mac guessed the answer was probably no. But he acted irritable to just so they had some common ground.
"Ugh, sorry about this. My boss has called me out because of an issue with an AOG with a faulty 02 mod on a 700 that needs fixing ASAP. Looks like it's causing some SBI that's interfering with the EWAC. The guy at security said I needed to go through passport control before I can step onto the tarmac."
Mac did indeed service aircraft for a living, and had tried adding as much jargon in an attempt to confuse the woman. AOG was Aircraft On Ground, 700 was a make of jet engine, tarmac was the nickname for the actual runway area and 02 was the module number of the big fan on the front of the jet engine. All this was made up though, just a guise to get through the scanners without being stopped and the police finding the smoke grenades, sharp tools, electronics stuff etcetera...
The woman stared blankly like he hadn't even said anything. "And?"
"And I've got my bag of tools and technical drawings here. Which I can't take through the barriers because they're banned and one of the documents is restricted circulation, so I can't open the bag around anyone else. Now can you please direct me to the tarmac so I can fix this damn plane!"
This provoked the woman to actually do something, which was to be even more angry. "Listen here. It's almost the end of my shift, I don't need this and you don't look like no bright spark who makes planes for a living. Piss off and join the queue like everyone else."
In response, Mac pulled out his work pass from his pocket. It was always useful, he got discounts in shops and most of the time it was documentation enough to get on any plane under the premise of fixing it. He showed the woman, who raised her eyebrows.
"Here. Is this proof enough for you?"
The pass was simple enough, a square of plastic with a few details, but the most convincing factor was that it bore the name of the jet engine manufacturer most airlines used.
"And before you say it, no. It's jet engines." Mac couldn't stand it when they said they built ships or cars or planes. It was just the engines.
The woman reached for a walkie talkie, which wasn't what Mac wanted. He was hoping she'd just waive him through security. But if she was calling for security to remove him, he'd be stuck, and Latias' death ray thing wouldn't be useful with the amount of public that could be damaged. There were armed police near the scanners, and if his identity was discovered, the manure would hit the rotating object, and boy would it make a mess. A mostly bloody one, consisting mainly of his own bodily organs.
"Call for Karen?"
A few seconds of static, then a response, albeit a crackly one.
"Karen receiving."
"Hi, there's a kid here who says we've got an airplane that's broken and needs fixing. What do I do?"
Through the radio, Mac and Latias heard a crackly sigh.
"Does he have an ID?"
"Yes."
"Has he been through passport control?"
"Yes." The woman in the bib was starting to look a bit dumb.
"Well then put him through the scanners and then direct him to the tarmac."
Mac was getting sick of the three sided conversation, and gestured for the woman in the bib to let him speak through the radio. She shrugged and passed it to him, clearly bored with her responsibility.
"Hello...this is the person in question." He spoke unsurely. From here on in was not part of the plan. It was entirely ad-lib. The reply was not happy.
"Have you taken her radio?"
Mac decided the offensive would be the best position.
"No, she gave it me. Listen, I've had to drag myself from my night shift bed to fix this engine that desperately needs fixing," - he said desperately with the most sarcastic voice he could muster - "and I've got my own tools so your guys won't let me through security, because for some reason people think that you can hijack a plane with nose tweezers and a 12 mil bihexagonal ANSI torque wrench. You either let me through or get a bollocking from your supervisor when he realizes you let the only guy who could fix that plane go home." Mac thought he'd overdone it a bit, and waited anxiously for the response.
The radio crackled to life. "Okay. I've just asked Kev. He says they do have an AOG and that we can skip security for you so you can use your own tools"
Mac handed the radio back to the woman in the bib. The woman raised it to her lips and spoke. "Thanks Karen."
It wasn't really surprising that there was an aeroplane that needed fixing. Most airports have at least one, Mac had learnt. So it was just a case of persuading security that he was the one sent to fix it, and they'd let him through, most not even bothering to escorting him to said plane.
The bibbed woman was no different, and walked him past the line for security and - after a brief chat with the security people - let Mac past the scanners.
After that, she took him over to a door set in the wall, another steel one. She swiped a pass through a reader on the door and then pulled the handle, a cold blast of air hitting Mac as she did. The door led into a corridor, with no obvious way to the tarmac. There certainly weren't any signs, other than green FIRE EXIT ones. Not that Mac wanted to go to the tarmac, or the fire exit.
"It's down here, second left, then a right and there's a big door with a push bar. Just push that open and you'll be outside, it ain't alarmed or owt. Then you can just walk your way to the hanger. Can't miss it. Stay inside the blue and yellow lines, stay clear of ingestion zones, yadda yadda etcetera... "
Mac didn't have any other option, and walked into the corridor, saying "Thanks" to the woman even as she closed the door on him. Which it did, with a clang and a 'click' as the bolt locked it.
He turned around and faced the door. A voice in his head piped up, Latias'.
"Mac!? Where did you go? This door won't work! Mac? I didn't get through! MAC! Help!"
Latias could hear his thoughts, so he just thought what he needed to say and Latias would receive it, as long as she was listening.
"Calm down, and stop trying to open the door. It's locked from that side."
"How will you ge-"
"I said locked from THAT side. This side's got a button."
With that, Mac reached for a domed green button with "PUSH TO EXIT" written next to it. The area he was entering was less restricted than the one he was in, so it didn't need a card to open it. The magnet holding the door shut switched off, the bolt clicked open and Mac was able to push the door back out. Latias had already flown up, and was relieved to see him. She was invisible though, so Mac couldn't see the expression on her face.
"Oh!"
"Oh indeed. Now come on, the flight starts boarding in five minutes."
Latias didn't fully understand his sentence and had to mull it over. Boarding? She knew that when people got on a ship it was 'boarding', so it must be the same, just with an airplane. So if they could get on the airplane in five minutes...then there'd be nothing stopping her from getting back to Latios! And Bianca!
Latias felt a burst of happiness inside her, realisation that she was actually going to get home! And see her family! For the first time, she believed they were truly going to make it. 100 percent. But she had to contain her excitement, lest someone wonder why thin air was making loud cooing noises.
She resolved to make her first words when she got to Latios be something along the lines of "Will you be my mate?"
Mac, meanwhile, was dealing with the much less romantic task of trying to locate the departure gate.
London international had recently had another runway put in, which also messed around with the gate numbers. Logic dictated that 32A should be somewhere between 32 and 33. But for some reason it was on the direct opposite side of the terminal building. Mac was adamant not to ask for help or remove his blue hood. He was so close now to leaving the country, it would be a shame to be shot by some lowly airport security guard who got word from another last minute traveller who'd seen him on the news.
Mac eventually found the gate indicated on his ticket, to find a large queue for the check in desk, which had only just started accepting boarding passes.
The queue easily surpassed 100 people, and Mac got a blast of raw nerd excitement when he realized what plane they'd be flying on, queueing up next to a terminal window with a view to the behemoth that would take them half the way around the globe.
This was no budget-travel, four seats in a row, seven year old plane.
The A350 was a brand new airplane, with seating for up to 845 people and enough tech to make a nerd basicly die with awesome on the spot. Powered by 2 XWB turbo gas turbine jet engines (from the same company Mac worked for), the plane would take little over seven hours to fly them to Hong Kong. Mac could recite the engine specifications from heart, it was what he'd spent that last few years building. The top speed would be something like 500 miles an hour, and, thanks to a reduced air intake compressor ratio, the ride would be 30 percent quieter and more fuel efficient. Which meant no refuelling stops. Perfect.
Mac made a mental note of the airplane's tail number so he could find out the specifics of the exact engines he was flying on. Down to the name of the person who'd fitted the IP compressor blades. Odds were he knew them.
As the queue got down to it's last 50 people, Mac decided to remind Latias exactly what she had to do. He thought as loudly as possible to communicate with Latias without speaking.
"Latias? When I talk to the girl at that desk we're all waiting for, I want you to fly about a meter ahead of me, but not touching the person in front. Go down the corridor until you get to a place with some seats. Carry on past the seats and fly up the first set of stairs on your left. Then there should be a toilet. Go in there, transform, and get out. I'll be waiting on a seat about five rows after the toilet. I will get up and let you have the window seat, so when I stand up, you sit in the seat one on from where I was sat. I'll point too. Okay?"
As well as knowing about the engines, Mac also knew the exact internal locations of this particular plane, because he'd been to the factory where they were made.
He was worried that Latias had flown elsewhere or lost him in the crowd, but she had stayed following him in his hoodie that was a really attractive shade of Blue, and had received the entirety of his detailed instructions.
"Sure thing Mac! Is there food on the airplane?"
Mac sighed and almost laughed. It was like taking a small child on the airplane. Although it was a large, invisible, death ray of fire breathing dragon of a child.
"Yes, Latias. There will be plenty. No raw meat though".
"Oh..."
Eventually, with ten minutes to go before departure, it was Mac's turn to board.
"I'll keep instructing you, stay close" He thought to Latias as he smiled for the woman at the desk. He didn't need to fake this smile. He was genuinely happy.
The girl on the desk was young. Looked about Mac's age, but a lot prettier. But Mac didn't let himself be fooled. The check-in girls were actually smarter than most people (Mac didn't know of any other occupation that required controlling hundreds of humans to do things, without assistance. They also assisted the pilots with take-off speed calculations, which looked very difficult), and Mac respected them as such.
Mac hadn't put away his work pass, and the woman smiled back when she saw him.
"You build this plane?" She asked in a genuinely interested voice, as Mac gave her his boarding card.
"Well, just the engines." Mac said sheepishly, secretly entertained by the fact this intelligent, pretty girl was talking to him.
This was ruined by a thought from Latias. "Keep it in your trousers!"
Mac tried to ignore Latias, but when the voice appeared in your head, well, that was difficult to ignore. He blushed slightly but the girl was too professional to point it out.
"Oh that's soo smart! I bet you like that kind of techy thing. I'll have a word with the pilot, he might let you in the cockpit. You can board now". She handed back his boarding card and Mac set off down the flyover into the plane, with a grin on his face. Best escape from the police, ever.
"Keep going" He thought to Latias, as they reached the articulating curve of the passageway to the plane. A short walk later and they passed through the plane's exterior door and into the heated cabin. Where another pretty girl was there to direct him too his seat, which she did with a wave of her arm. "Down there, up the stairs on your left, Sir."
Mac did as he was told, 'verbally' ushering Latias along with his thoughts.
Latias saw so many interesting things. A child with a screen in his hand. Lots of buttons on the ceiling. Color changing lights, the view through a window into a rainbow like puddle.
But she was being ushered along too quick to appreciate anything. One thing was sure, this metal 'airplane' was definitely too big to fly. So what would actually take them home?
Latias saw the stairs at the same time that Mac had a thought for her to read. "There they are. Turn left and fly up them."
Latias did as she was told and found herself on the floor above the one she was in before. Directly in front of her was a door with 'WC' in white on a blue background.
"That's the door. Go in there, transform into that girl and walk back out. I'll be sat on the window seat five rows ahead. We'll swap places."
Luckily, the upper seating area was deserted, so no one noticed the toilet door seemingly open itself. Latias must have used psychic on the door, because Mac couldn't see how her claws could have got a grip on the circular handle.
Mac walked five rows ahead and sat down on the left hand side, one seat behind the emergency wing exit. Nothing Mac did was irrational, and he'd learnt that, aside from the hostess' seat, this was statistically one of the best places to sit in event of an emergency.
Just as Mac started to glare at the safety card in the pocket of the seat in front, the toilet door opened, and Latias - in her human form - stepped out, looked around for a bit, saw Mac, and started walking to him. He stood up and let her sit down next to the window, before sitting next to her.
The moment he sat down, he reached forwards for the airplane guide, telling Latias why he was so interested.
"One of my co-workers will have built the engines on this airplane. I've probably had something to do with it's construction at some point."
"I want to take a different airplane." Latias' telepathic voice worried in his head. Mac just laughed.
"They won't fail. When we get in the air, I'll bring up the database and we can get the live statistics on them. If there's something wrong with them, we'll be first to know". Using an Internet connection on board an airplane was highly illegal, even for satellite receivers. But Mac - as always - had a work around.
He turned to give Latias a reassuring smile, and was alarmed when her face was barely a centimetre away from his. Latias remained still, like it was completely normal for her to be so close.
Mac spoke outloud, there wasn't anyone but Latias to hear him.
"Er... Latias... Personal space?"
Latias blinked before moving her head slightly further away. She apologised in Mac's head.
"Sorry. Bianca says I've got to stop doing that too. It's because nothing smells as strong in her form as it does mine, so I was leaning in to smell better."
"Okay. So what do I smell like now? Wait...'her form'? What do you mean by that?"
Latias tried to chuckle, but it didn't work. She would have fun teasing Mac, pretending to be Bianca, when they got to the garden. To avoid ruining that, she only answered his first question.
"Male. And worry. You smell like a worried male. I'd be able to say more in my normal form - as you know - but my nose isn't as good as I am now."
Mac gave knowing nod, secretly wondering what worry smelt like, and if Latias was smelling everything she went near. It made sense, but still. For something that could communicate in English, it seemed awfully... Simple...
Once again, Kudos and danka to Obiten for doing the editing on this chapter!