RIGHT NOW, PLANE WITH MORE THAN 244 ONBOARD JUST CRASH…

On the radar, the blip for 882 wasn't holding altitude. It was dropping. 8,000 feet. 5,000 feet.

Through the tower’s sweeping windows, the ground crews were already moving. The dark tarmac lit up with a chaotic parade of flashing red and yellow strobes as every available fire engine, foam truck, and ambulance roared out of their bays, tearing down the perimeter taxiways toward the end of runway nine.

"We can't hold the nose up," the cockpit audio cut in again, static tearing through the words. "We're coming in short. We're going to touch down before the threshold—"

The radio went dead.

Marcus stood up, his chair scraping violently against the floor. Every controller in the tower fell utterly silent, their eyes locked on the dark horizon past the edge of the airfield.

A mile out, past the perimeter fence where the marshlands met the runway approach, a massive shadow cut through the low-hanging storm clouds. Flight 882 was visibly struggling, its wings tilting violently as the pilots fought the dying aircraft through the crosswinds. The left wing dipped too low, clipping a line of high-voltage transmission towers.

A blinding, sapphire-blue arc of electricity lit up the night sky, followed a second later by a muffled, concussive boom that shook the glass of the control tower.

The massive aircraft slammed into the soft earth of the marshland just short of the concrete runway. Mud and debris erupted into the air like a geyser. The fuselage fractured, the tail snapping away as the main body of the plane skidded wildly across the sodden ground, its momentum carrying it through the boundary fence before finally coming to a grinding, agonizing halt on the gravel overrun area.

For three seconds, nothing moved. Smoke poured from the ruptured right wing, but the torrential downpour was working in the survivors' favor, suppressing the sparks before they could ignite the remaining fuel.

"Go, go, go!" the tower supervisor barked into the emergency comms.

The flashing line of emergency vehicles arrived at the broken fuselage within ninety seconds of impact. Even from the tower, Marcus could see the forward emergency slides deploying, unfurling like yellow ribbons into the rain. Figures began cascading down the slides—panicked, disoriented, but moving.

Inside the tower, Marcus slowly sat back down, his hands trembling against the edge of his desk. The radar screen where Flight 882 had been was empty now, replaced by the reality unfolding on the tarmac below. The battle against gravity was over; now, the battle to get 244 people out of the dark and into the safety of the flashing red lights had just begun