The Letter Malik Mentioned

"Get her supervisor on the radio," I said to Malik, quiet enough that only he and Fiona could hear it. "Or check the manifest yourself, right now, in front of me."

Malik looked at the scanner still glowing green in his hand, then at Fiona, and something in his face shifted, a decision forming that he clearly didn't want to be making. "Fiona, I have to log this if I override a clean scan without a reason."

"You don't have to log anything," Fiona said. "Just tell her to move."

"I need a reason," Malik said again, and his voice had gone careful, the voice of a man building a paper trail for himself in real time.

Fiona's jaw tightened. She reached past him and grabbed the intercom handset off its cradle on the wall. "Captain, I need you out here. We have a passenger refusing to sit down."

Malik exhaled, set the scanner down on the drink cart, and looked at me for the first time as a person instead of a problem. "Ma'am, I'm sorry. She's been off all week. Ever since some letter came for her, she's been this way."

"What letter?" I asked.

He shrugged, already regretting he'd said it. "I don't know. Personal stuff. Not my business."

Fiona spun around. "Malik."

"I'm just standing here," he said, holding both hands up, the scanner still on the cart between us, still glowing green, still telling the truth that nobody in this galley wanted to act on.

I filed the word away. Letter. Personal stuff. It didn't fit anything yet, but it didn't need to fit. It just needed to sit there until it did.

"Captain Reyes is coming forward," Fiona announced, hanging up the handset with the particular satisfaction of someone who believes reinforcements are about to arrive and settle everything in her favor.

Cordelia smiled into her mimosa glass, the picture of a woman certain the system was about to remember whose side it was built for.

I looked at my watch. Seven forty-two. If we didn't push back soon, I'd land with no room left before the 12:30 meeting, and today's incident would already be twenty minutes into becoming the reason my report got questioned instead of read. I put the thought away where it couldn't reach my hands or my voice.

The cockpit door clicked. A tall man in a captain's uniform came through into the galley, taking in the spilled mimosa, the stained folder in my hand, Fiona's flushed face, all of it in one unhurried sweep.

"What's the problem here?" Captain Reyes asked.