Panic Button

Eleven

Max looked on as Gwen returned to her seat in the cabin. Her hands were shaking as she tried to wipe the torrent of tears from her face. Jo and Dave sat in stony silence, lost in whatever dark thoughts Alligator had provoked with his one-on-one ‘chats’.

Whatever it is, it isn’t insurmountable if we stick together,

Max thought, chewing on the knuckles of his right hand. He’d made a fist without realising it. They would be good for the fight if they could just operate as a team.

Max looked around at his fellow ‘team members’. Dave looked borderline psychotic; Gwen and Jo ready to top themselves. Yay, go team, Max joked to himself bitterly. He cleared his throat. Someone had to say something. Might as well face it — it was going to be him.

“Whatever’s going on, we’ve got to stick together. We can’t let them beat us, okay?”

Gwen looked at him with swollen eyes. She looked like she was trying her best to believe his words. Jo avoided his gaze, however, staring at the floor with a guilty look. Dave just shook his head, troubled, taking no solace from Max’s words of encouragement.

“Max. You’re next,” Alligator boomed.

Max stayed stubbornly where he was. Jo glanced up at him, nervous, as he remained sat in his seat.

Dave let out a pained sigh. “Look mate, just fucking go will you?”

Max looked to Gwen for support, finding only regret in her eyes.

Outvoted, Max tousled his hair, headed for the bathroom — and prepared for the worst.

He sees me, thought Max.

The Alligator’s face looked somehow more sardonic in the close confines of the bathroom. Its computer-generated skin and white-fanged sanguinary smile were reflected in the glass of the shower cubicle, the chrome of the taps and the mirror above the sink. Reptilian forms multiplying into a legion of reflected orange eyes, their black slits watching Max from every possible angle within the cloying, clinical space.

Max glanced at his own reflection in the mirror. He could tell Alligator his secret, right now — throw a spanner in the workings of his twisted game. He rehearsed the revelation in his head, his methodical mind mapping possible outcomes if he were to utter the words. Perhaps it would it be better to wait, until he had no other option. And what if their captor already knew — what then?

“I have a very special assignment for you.”

Alligator’s voice penetrated Max’s ears. It felt like the reptile was burrowing through the headphones into his very thoughts.

“Failure to complete it will result in the death of Mike, your brother…”

Max glared at the Alligator on the screen, then looked up at the mirror again.

He sees me,

thought Max, but he doesn’t know me.

The engines droned on, sounding louder than ever, the winners rooted to their seats in dread contemplation. Dave’s eyes darted across the cabin as Jo got up out of her seat suddenly and marched across to the bar area. She turned her back on him as she leaned her hands on the bar, glasses and bottles twinkling in the bar’s built-in mood lighting.

Jo and Dave looked over at the bathroom door as it burst open. Max swayed back into the cabin, tight-lipped. Gwen sat still in her seat, grimacing as the computer screens flickered to life again with the Alligator’s face grinning at them, all white teeth.

“Now that you all have your personal assignments,” he announced, “you have forty five minutes to complete them.”

Max stopped in his tracks, whirling around to look at the monitor nearest to him.

The Deppart Airlines flight path map appeared on their screens, little aeroplane icon showing their position relative to the European landmass.

“As you have already deduced, this plane is bound for Oslo,” Alligator stated casually, “Where your journey will end as you crash into the All2gethr.com headquarters…”

Shock and disbelief resonated around the cabin, all colour drained from the passengers’ faces.

“What the hell…?” Max began.

Alligator’s voice betrayed no sign of any emotion. “You will all die, along with everyone in the building.”

“No, no, no! Wait, please don’t do this — you don’t have to do this!”

Jo grabbed hold of her monitor screen, fingernails scraping against the artificial warmth of its plastic casing.

Gwen looked punch-drunk, leaning against the arm of her chair, head reeling.

“This isn’t real… it’s just a game… just a game…” she murmured, her voice trailing off into silent terror.

The plane lurched, losing altitude in a pocket of air, and Gwen cried out in fear.

They each caught their breath as the jet righted itself with a discernable whine of its engines.

“That sinking feeling,” Alligator quipped.

Dave’s face was red with rage. “Listen you prick, this joke stops now! Right now!”

“On the contrary Dave, ‘this joke’ starts now.” The Alligator sounded on the verge of laughter, enjoying himself. “Are we having fun yet?”

Max shook his head in abject frustration, before dropping his head into his hands.

Gwen glanced across at him, seeing the tears he was trying so desperately to hide. But there was no room to hide such things in the brightly lit confines of the tiny jet. Gwen began to cry too, despair seeping from her eyes.

“Hold it together, please!” Jo said.

She clenched her fists, pushing her arms down each side of her body. It was the only physical act of control left to her. Raising her head to the ceiling, she shouted at Alligator.

“You can’t do this! What about my baby girl? What about…”

Dave regarded her with an impatient look. “Banging on about your kid again. You think that just because you’ve got a daughter, we’ve got less at stake than you?”

Jo’s voice faltered. His words were harshly spoken, but true. They all had someone special to lose from their friend list. Her thoughts turned to Maddie. The last she’d heard of her sister, via a collect call to Dawn, she was in Thailand. Jo hoped she was safe. She should be — Maddie was possibly the only human being alive not to be an All2gethr user. Hell, she didn’t even own a mobile phone.

“Nothing can save you now,” Alligator said, as calm, firm and clear as an onboard safety announcement. “But you do have a chance to save your loved ones’ lives. Discuss your assignments and they will die. Fail your assignments and they will die. Complete your assignments successfully, to the letter, and they will live. You each have your instructions. No conferring.”

The screens fizzed with digital noise, distorting the Alligator’s jaws into a vile gash, before snapping off again. His words hung in the main cabin like a sickness, their weight bearing down on the frayed sanity of the passengers.

“What do we do now?”

Jo looked around the cabin in panic. Dave fixed her with a look, catching a glimpse of guilt in her eyes as she looked away.

“What choice do we have?” he asked, “We have to do what we’re told don’t we? Or else…”

“Why me, what have I done to anybody?” Gwen sobbed.

“Why any of us?”

Dave’s question was loaded at Jo. That flash of guilt in her eyes was the real thing; he hadn’t imagined it. What was she up to?

Jo shifted her weight from one foot to the other, feeling Dave’s gaze bearing down upon her.

“What did he say to you, in there?” he asked, his voice lowered but pregnant with accusation.

“Nothing.”

“Rubbish. You’ve been acting weird since you came out of the bathroom. What did he say?”

Dave closed in on Jo, intent on an answer. She turned her back on him, leaning on the bar again for support, a sea of alcohol inches from her nose. Dave grabbed her wrist, pulled her arm forcing her to face him.

“Get off!” Jo wrestled free from his grasp, rubbing her wrist. “Keep away from me, you have no idea what I’ve got at stake.”

“We all have,” Dave said, “If you’ve got the impression that I don’t care about my fiancée, then you’re dead wrong!” Rage crept into the blacks of his eyes.

Jo swallowed. She’d seen anger like his before, been on the receiving end of a man’s uncontrollable temper — never again.

“He’s got my little girl,” she protested, her voice choked with emotion, “She’s just a baby…”

Jo’s eyes filled with tears.

Dave glared at her coldly, as if assessing her feelings and checking they were genuine.

“No, no, no, no!” Gwen made a fist around her scarf, tugging at it in frustration. “We shouldn’t even be talking about this, don’t you see? He said no conferring.”

Dave ignored her wild eyes. “He said we can’t reveal our tasks, that’s all.”

His eyes bore into Jo’s again. “What did he say?”

Jo slowly shook her head in defiance. “Nothing,” she snarled.

“Bollocks! I don’t trust you.”

Jo took a step back from Dave’s sweaty bulk. Then it struck her.

“You know what I think? You’ve got something to hide and you’re trying to cover up by pointing the finger at me.”

Gwen tried to be the voice of reason. “Guys, please, we should be thinking about how we can get of this…”

Engrossed in their argument, they didn’t notice Max retreat quietly to the crew prep area behind the curtain.

Max bit down on his lip as his eyes scanned the little metal cupboard compartment doors. It had to be there somewhere. He looked again, and saw it, high up above the others. Recalling Alligator’s grim words in the bathroom, Max reached out and popped the catch on the metal door. It read: ‘EMERGENCY USE ONLY’.

Back in the cabin, Dave’s mood had escalated. He looked desperate, cornered by Gwen and Jo who were both trying to reason with him, to make sense of their predicament. But Dave could only see as far as his own concern for Sarah.

“We’re rats in a cage here!” he yelled. “We are fucked! And if we don’t play by his rules, a lot of people we know will be too!”

Jo levelled her gaze. “You give up if you want. But I for one am not dead yet…”

Max burst through the dividing curtain, back into the cabin, with an angry roar.

Jo and the others recoiled.

Max was brandishing an emergency crash axe, swinging it above his head like a berserker charging into battle.

Bang!

He smashed the heavy metal blade into Gwen’s touch screen. It broke away from the cabin wall, showering Jo and the others in sparks.

They all backed off as Max continued smashing with the axe, not stopping until the screen was shattered and its wiring severed like an umbilical cord.

“Jesus!” Dave exclaimed.

Max looked up them, panting. He looked crazed clutching the crash axe, eyes red from stinging tears.

Jo looked at the axe — the main blade formed a ‘P’ shape, with an ice pick protrusion at the back. It looked lethal.

“Where… did you get that from? Jo asked.

“He told me where to find it…” Max moved toward Jo’s touch screen. “Stand back!” he commanded.

“What the hell are you doing?” Dave asked.

“Cutting them off. These things are rigged. Webcams, microphones… so I’m de-rigging them.”

Seeing Dave take a step towards him, Max held the axe aloft.

“I said stand back!”

“Don’t…” Gwen started.

As Max glanced at her, Dave used the opportunity to step forward, blocking Max from attacking Jo’s touch screen.

“For fuck’s sake, sit down,” Dave said. He sounded almost weary.

“No!” Max protested, “If they can’t see or hear us, then the game’s over.”

Careless of the axe, Dave pushed his face right into Max’s.

“Don’t you give a shit about anyone other than yourself? Sit down, now, or I’ll knock you out you little prick!”

Max swallowed dryly, Dave still right in his face.

“I can’t do this…” he muttered, “My task…”

Gwen covered her mouth with her hands.

Jo shook her head. “Don’t say it…”

“That sick fuck told me…” Max went on, “I’m supposed to kill whoever he tells me to — when he tells me to.”

Gwen wailed, hysterical — this was too much for her to bear.

“Don’t you see?” Max said, “He doesn’t just want us dead, he wants to punish us! You think they’re going to let your loved ones go because you followed the rules? You’re idiots if you trust him….”

“Yeah, but he’s got the upper hand here,” Dave said, “We have to do what he says.”

“I don’t,” Max said.

As if in answer to Max’s challenge, the Alligator reappeared on-screen.

The animation glitched momentarily and his smiling face juddered, grotesque slit eyes stretching across the screen like dark chasms.

“Yes you do Max.”

For the first time during their voyage, there was a trace of anger in the Alligator’s voice.

“Put the axe down and return to your seat, otherwise someone else will face the consequences of your stupidity. And we both know who that is, don’t we? Your brother — Mike…”

The remaining screens flickered and a video window popped up on each of them.

Dreading what was to come, the passengers looked at the screens.

Mike, in his early twenties and dressed in a smart white shirt and dark slacks, was tied to a kitchen table. Pots, pans and broken crockery lay strewn on the worktops and floor around him — he’d put up a struggle before they got him. His mouth was taped shut with thick gaffer tape. He made terrified whimpering sounds as the cameraman’s gloved hand moved into frame, making a show of a huge razor-sharp machete. The unseen assailant brushed the flat of the blade across Mike’s cheeks, smearing the polished metal with his tears. The cameraman removed the blade slowly and Mike tried to cry out through the tape again. But he choked on his breath as his attacker lifted and swung the blade without warning, severing his right arm below the elbow. Blood cascaded from the eviscerated arteries across the kitchen table. Mike writhed in agony, his pitiful cries stymied by the thick tape gag.

Gwen wept openly, unable to quite process the horror she had just witnessed as Max, Jo and Dave watched Mike on the little screens.

He was bleeding out, helpless.

“If I take his other arm,” Alligator said, “he’ll bleed to death in minutes. Are you ready to say goodbye to your flesh and blood?”

Max looked at the video window anxiously. “Wait, wait!”

“Then put the axe down and return to your seat,” Alligator commanded.

“I’m not who you think I am. Whoever that guy is — he’s not my brother! Please… don’t do this.”

“Max, just please do as he says!” Jo pleaded.

The screen flickered, showing a close up of Mike’s contorted face. Tense silence fell across the cabin. Max hurled the crash axe onto the bar, shattering glasses and tipping over a bottle of champagne.

“There! Now listen to me!” Max went on, “I’m telling the truth! I don’t even have a bloody brother. Whoever that guy is, he’s nothing to do with me. Please, help him…”

A ghost image of Alligator’s predatory face appeared on the screens, superimposed over Mike’s. With a crackle, the image flickered again and cleared to reveal the killer was moving around to Mike’s other side. Holding onto Mike’s wrist with one gloved hand, the killer brought the machete blade hammering down, severing the other arm. The cameraman stepped back to survey his handiwork through the cold glass of the camera lens. Mike’s torso spasmed in shock as more blood gushed from the open wound where his other arm used to be.

Exasperated, Max punched the hull in frustration. “I’m not going to do a single thing you say — you hear me? Not one single thing.”

Alligator fell silent for a moment. The speakers crackled with static. It sounded like anger, and chilled the very air in the cabin.

“How noble,” Alligator purred, voice controlled once more, “Sit back, do nothing. The mantra of the Internet Generation. Doing nothing is what you are best at, after all.”

The screens went blank, leaving them to consider his words as the engines droned louder.