A Night Flight

Cass opened her eyes and glanced at her watch. She had only been asleep for about 20 minutes. Cass always had a hard time sleeping in-transit. Usually that was no problem. She enjoyed the experience of traveling and keeping one eye on the window as the sights came and went. On an airplane, there were fewer sights to be seen once up in the clouds, but the novelty of being aboard an aircraft usually kept her occupied. Sometimes, though, the travel times lined up poorly or some snafu or another wore Cass down. Frequent fliers are going to have the occasional trip from hell, and that's just a fact of life. Tonight, it would have been nice to use the two and a half hours to catch some "z"s.

She was seated at the rear of the plane, in the window seat on the right. It was pretty empty toward the back. Most of the passengers had settled near the front and exit rows. Cass had the three seats on her side of the aisle to herself, as did a young woman in the window seat opposite her. The girl was buried in an oversize hoodie and leaning against the window. Tinny music could faintly be heard from her earbuds. Cass straightened in her seat to survey the rest of the cabin. The crew had dimmed the lights so the passengers could try to sleep, and judging by the lack of backlit screens and overhead lamps, most of them were doing just that. Nearly all of the window shades were pulled down. There was nothing to see in the dark of night while flying over the ocean.

Cass settled back in and woke the touchscreen on the seat in front of her. The map application showed a little plane aimed at Florida with a little trail leading back to Puerto Rico. Every few seconds a new piece of air travel trivia cycled onto the screen. None of it was very interesting. She had memorized them all on the flight out, anyway. Cass watched the little plane scoot forward one millimeter closer to home. Then she turned the screen back off. It was too bright, anyway.

She turned and stretched her legs out over the empty seats beside her. She felt pretty lucky - this much leg room was practically first class. Cass booted up a game on her phone. It was an idle game where tiny cats and dogs ran around a restaurant engaging in their furry little capitalism. While in the air, Cass was able to avoid advertisements, thus circumventing the actual capitalism the developers intended.

At some point Cass noticed a new source of light beyond her screen. She switched her phone camera on for a covert peek. The girl across the way had pulled her tray table down and set a few electric tealights around the perimeter. Weird, but it also seemed kind of soothing. She was tossing something, probably dice, into an ornate wooden dice tray lined with thick red velvet. The dice throws were so gentle, Cass hadn't heard them until she knew to listen for them. Cass smiled and returned to her game. She was always glad to see the "creepy nerd" vibe alive and well. Now that she had given up on a nap, sleep found her.

When she opened her eyes the first thing Cass noticed was an eerie glow illuminating the cabin. It was an odd combination of red and green that blended into one color, then separated again. Cass felt around for her phone. She retrieved it from the floor and activated the flashlight.

"Turn it off!" came a shrill hiss in her direction. Cass sat up and began to look around with her light.

The girl in the hoodie lunged at Cass and covered the phone's light with her hand.

"Extinguish. It." Cass obeyed.

Still blinking the sleep from her eyes, Cass searched for the source of the glow. The colors caught on a wisp of vapor. The vapor poured from the tray with the circle of tealights. Hoodie-girl returned to the tray and peered into a paradoxical opening on the surface of the tray. She breathed a sigh of relief.

"Cool, I don't think they saw it." She consulted a notebook full of writing that Cass couldn't read.

Cass stood up to look over the rest of the cabin again. No heads turned. No phones lit up. Complete silence. Either every single passenger was asleep or something spooky was afoot. She slowly made her way across the aisle.

"So... what'cha doing over here?" Cass asked, trying not to sound concerned.

Hoodie-girl didn't look up. "Incoming lore-dump. Ready?"

"... What?"

"My name is Raine. That is a void. My buddy got stuck in this void. Also stuck in the void: some nasty, incomprehensible beings. They like the kind of light we have out here. You would not like to meet them. I suspended time inside the cabin. You were too close to me and thus were not suspended. It's midnight-ish. We're over the Bermuda Triangle-ish. I opened a void portal and we're gonna grab my buddy in a fly-by rescue like Matt Damon in 'The Martian'."

"Neat! That's really... rad." Cass processed the information slowly. "Can they hear us?"

Raine was focused on some calculations she'd scribbled in the margins of the notebook. "Nah."

"Cool, cool." Cass was starting to think she might still be asleep, but she kept it to herself. She didn't want to risk pissing off a person who can open void portals. "Can I help?"

She stopped reading for a moment but still didn't look up.

"Actually, yeah. Could you open the window shade over in your row?"

Cass was more exited than the situation called for. "Sure! What for?"

"Reasons."

"Right, reasons."

Cass crawled back across her seats and reached for the shade. At that moment Raine pounced on her, smothering her with a damp cloth. Cass only had enough time to wonder how long chloroform takes to work. Whatever chemical Raine had smuggled past the TSA worked a lot faster than that.

The next time Cass awoke there was a flight attendant standing over her.

"Ma'am? We need you to sit up and fasten your seat belt for landing."

"Yep, on it." Cass's whole body felt heavy. Everything looked perfectly normal. Maybe she'd been dreaming after all. Cass made a face as she reflected on how she tried to be cool and useful to the hoodie-girl. The "Hello, fellow kids" energy just made her feel old. She turned her head to check on her neighbor across the aisle.

The left side of the rear row now had two occupants. There was a hoodie-guy to go along with the hoodie-girl. Had he been there before? Maybe he'd been in the bathroom during the brief time Cass was awake. She didn't have the brain-power to spend on that question after a long day of travel and a restless sleep. As the plane descended, Cass began counting down the minutes until she could curl up in her own bed and let her mind wander into the void of sleep.