Anna tried not to stare at the passenger in the seat next to her, but it was difficult. She had seen the young woman's face on social media after the girl had saved a young child from a semi-truck a few months ago. Nadia Lund. She remembered the girl's name clearly.
It was easy to believe Nadia had performed such a miraculous feat—there was a powerful presence permeating the space around her that a blind person would have noticed.
She wasn't the only one trying not to stare. Half of the passengers on the plane had recognized Nadia, resulting in a steady wave of turning heads throughout the airplane cabin.
They were nearly halfway across the Atlantic and many of the passengers were asleep. Anna would have tried to sleep as well, but sitting right next to the supercharged young woman made sleep impossible.
Nadia had been silent throughout the entire flight, staring straight ahead, her eyes far away. She looked like she was in some kind of trance. She was tall, nearly two meters, with brilliant blonde hair and crystal blue eyes.
Anna gripped the armrests tightly as the plane suddenly bucked on a pocket of turbulence. A small whimper escaped her mouth as increasingly violent turbulence caused the plane to lurch around the sky like a malformed kite. She was terrified of flying.
As the intensity of the turbulence increased, the flight attendants hurriedly buckled themselves to their seats. The captain's voice warned everyone to remain buckled in their seats as bolts of lightning began flickering through the skies around them. Where had the storm come from? It had been clear skies just moments ago.
"They're here," Nadia suddenly muttered, her eyes suddenly glowing with intensity.
Anna nearly forgot her fear of flying as she felt the sudden influx of ethereal power charge the young woman next to her. Small green and red arcs of light danced around Nadia as she turned to stare out the window.
Anna let out a small scream as the oxygen masks suddenly popped out of the ceiling and the plane began a deep dive.
"PAUE!" Nadia bellowed in a voice of ultimate authority.
The plane suddenly came to a complete stop, dangling in the middle of the air in complete defiance of gravity. There was a deafening shriek of metal tearing as the roof peeled away from the plane and soared away into the raging storm. Without the roof blocking the sky, Anna could see a host of glowing orbs rotating counterclockwise in a giant vortex.
Nadia raised her arms to the sky and a stream of complete darkness shot out of her hands, striking the vortex with a deafening roar. White light surged around the darkness and undulated toward the plane like a liquid blob.
"I see the Analysts have arrived," a voice from behind her spoke conversationally.
Anna jerked her head around and found a tall young woman with dark hair standing in the aisle next to her.
"So it appears," Nadia agreed in a voice tight with concentration. "Care to lend me a hand?"
"Of course," the tall stranger answered in a cheerful voice.
Anna clapped her hands over her ears as a deafening static buzz charged the air around them. The sky above suddenly burst into bright auroral colors as some kind of pressure began pushing away from the new arrival, wrapping itself around the glowing orbs. The orbs began shrinking as the buzzing intensified, until a sudden popping noise signaled their destruction.
As soon as the orbs vanished, the howling gale dissipated, leaving the floating plane in an eerie silence.
The buzzing had stopped as soon as the orbs vanished. Before Anna could survey their surroundings, everything blurred out of focus. A moment later, everything came back into focus. She blinked in astonishment. The plane was sitting on the tarmac at an airport somewhere.
Anna stared at the other passengers around her in shock as she heard emergency vehicles approach. Everyone was watching Nadia and the young woman who had materialized out of nowhere.
"The Destroyers are a lot easier to take down, aren't they?" Nadia noted thoughtfully. "These Analysts are a lot tougher."
"That they are," the other woman agreed. "They have to be—the Destroyers don't know what they are dealing with until they get all of the intel back from the Analysts. The Scouts are a lot worse, but they won't be out in force for a little while yet. You ready to go?"
"More than ready," Nadia replied with an amused glance at the shell-shocked passengers.
There was a deafening inverted boom, and the two young women vanished.
A man several rows in front of her suddenly clutched at his chest and began spasming. As he fell to the floor, the guy next to him jumped up and began performing chest compressions while shouting for someone to call an ambulance.
There was another inverted boom, and the dark haired young woman reappeared. She plunged an insubstantial hand into his chest, and he gasped. He stopped convulsing and slowly sat up, panting heavily as he stared at her in astonishment.
Boom. She was gone.
"What the fuck just happened!" a guy across the aisle demanded in a shaky voice.
"Who was that other person?" a woman asked weakly.
"Thousand buck says that was Heidi Rockwell," a stocky man with a goatee declared confidently.
Everyone recognized the name. Heidi had been all over world news for weeks after allegedly putting an entire school to sleep to prevent a mass killing. While the mainstream news had lost interest in the story, Heidi was still one of the number one topics in alternative media.
Anna shook herself as the first wave of emergency crews arrived. The next hour was a blur as the passengers exited on a stair-car and were inspected by emergency service responders. They were bussed to an empty terminal and instructed to wait while authorities began debriefing them.
"Where are we?" she asked one of the emergency responders.
"Salt Lake City," the man replied, watching her curiously. "Any idea how you got here?"
"No," Anna shook her head slowly.
"We got teleported here by that Heidi Rockwell girl," the man with the goatee informed the emergency responder. "She and that other girl from Denmark, Nadia Lund."
"Seriously?" the EM asked, his eyes wide. "What happened to the plane?"
"No idea, man," goatee man shrugged. "We hit a pocket of turbulence over the Atlantic, and then some kind of cyclone with glowing lights appeared. Nadia and Heidi destroyed whatever it was, and then we were teleported here."
"That's odd," the EM said with a frown. "I thought Heidi was playing at a concert tonight."
"Considering she can apparently teleport, she might still be," goatee man said with a shrug.
Before anyone else could say anything, dozens of soldiers entered the terminal, led by several officers and men in suits. The soldiers all lined up, forming a blockade to prevent anyone from leaving the terminal. Anna swallowed, feeling a growing sense of unease.
"My name is General Frankfurt," the most highly decorated officer announced loudly. "This incident has been deemed a matter of national security. Acting in accordance with article four of the ICCPR, everyone in this terminal is forbidden to discuss any of the events that transpired on flight 1192 today. Anyone found leaking information regarding the events of this incident will be dealt with harshly."
Anna shook her head at the stupidity of the injunction. The majority of the people present had already sent out texts, videos, and other communications to dozens of parties. There was no putting the cat back in this bag.