Day 1: TUESDAY, August 8, 2028, 3:15 p.m. EST

Noirin’s body was forced back into the seat as the jet engines roared, thrusting the plane forward. Her spine pressed into the seat’s foam, an equal and opposite force, a kind of resistance: her body telling her it didn’t want to go. Didn’t want to do what she was about to do. Didn’t want to live this life anymore. The plane bumped over tiny imperfections in the runway. Barreling now. Faster. To her left, long yellow grass whipped past in parallax against the distant terminal, glass flickering reflections of the afternoon sun. Diagonal paint stripes cut across the black tarmac. Then—hangars, oil containers, parked planes—and the bumping ceased. The plane tilted upward. Rotate. The ground fell away. Airport access roads curled in loops, parking lots striped with cars, then, wetlands— or what used to be wetlands, now shallow pools of brown water dotted between dry brown vegetation and cracked mud. All of it shrinking away. She breathed deep. Two hundred miles per hour, thundering towards something she didn’t want to face. No way to fly backwards. On the horizon, the hazy air hung like a black cancer. She’d smelled the wildfire smoke in the air for days, felt a mild burning sensation in her eyes, but now, she could see it. It was not like a cloud. It was just a darkness slung low, consuming the edge of the earth, making the world feel small. For a moment, the engine noise diminished and Noirin’s body tensed. She gripped the armrest. Checked the flight attendant’s face. She was sitting directly in front of Noirin in the jump seat. Her burnt umber uniform was perfectly buttoned, her serene gaze well-practiced, communicating to anyone watching: everything is going to be okay. Earlier, the flight attendant had asked for her verbal confirmation: was she willing and able to operate the emergency exit? Noirin had looked at the door, at its arcing red arrow and the word OPEN. Was she confident? Not at all. But would she rather be the one to open the door instead of anyone else? “Yes,” she’d said. “Yes, I will, yes.” The airline had upgraded her—because, at the last moment, she’d mentioned her reason for flying. Death, she thought, should’ve warranted business class, at least. But she took what she got. It didn’t mean much. Economy plus was just economy from a few years ago, before they shrank the seat-to-seat distances again. An inch of difference. She should have been grateful, meaningless as it was. But it had been a tough day, a tough week, and she wasn’t sure there was any positivity left. To her right, a blonde in cashmere clasped her hands together. Noirin had seen her in front of her in the line: a neat bun, pearls, a leather travel bag, the gold logo plate glinting with the letters of a designer label. They’d had a brief chat as they settled into their seats, after the captain’s curt news of a delay. “It’s actually a surprise these days if a flight’s on time,” Noirin had said, opening up the conversation. “Have you been to Ireland before?” the woman had asked, in a distinct brogue. “I’m actually from there. Headed home,” she’d said, thinking quietly to herself that she barely knew where was home anymore. “Oh,” said the woman. “I didn’t hear an accent.” “I get that a lot,” she said. “We moved around a lot. North, south. I tend to blend in.” “Do you get back often? Still have family there?” And there it was. Five sentences in and Noirin was stumped. She should have known not to open the door to conversation. What was the answer? The only real family I had is travelling with me, just not in the seat next to me…in a box in the cargo hold? So I don’t really have any family left to visit no. Unless you count the stiff cold one beneath us. “Yeah,” she’d said and pretended to be distracted by the view of the aircraft marshaller outside. Now Noirin could see the woman’s perfect biscuit-colored nails, a delicate gold bracelet on her thin wrist. One hand clutched the lap bag she’d been told to stow for takeoff. She’d nodded to the flight attendant, made as if she was standing to reach the overhead bins, but she hadn’t stowed it. She’d sat right back down with it in her hands. Shameless. And worse, the stewardess had said nothing. Noirin was curious what her story was, where she was going, but if she continued the conversation now, she might be stuck talking to this woman for seven hours, and worse, might have to reciprocate with more information on her own life which she most certainly did not want to discuss. Couldn’t, without ending up in sobs in this stranger’s shoulder. The last months had been without doubt the worst time of her life. And now that it was over, she couldn’t imagine a future. There was nothing left to continue. Everything had ended and now the question of how to restart loomed, another dark cloud on the horizon that she could barely acknowledge. Her whole body jumped at the sound. A deafening bang. The woman beside her let out a stifled scream. Lights flickered once. Twice. Went out. She gripped the seat, her heart pounding. The aisle lit up, floor lights glowing like a runway. Tiny arrows pointed to exits, pointed right to the door she’d promised she could open. Then, for a moment, silence. The kind of silence you don’t want to hear. Silence like the engines are no longer running. Bang. She jumped again, and the sound was followed by a loud droning noise, like a propeller. Noirin turned, looked through the porthole at the wing, the engine slung below it. No smoke. No fire. She let out a breath, realizing she had not breathed since the first bang. The engine’s mouth was barely visible, and oblique circle, but she could see blades still turning. Turning. Slowing. Slower. The plane banked left and the view of the water surface filled the entire oval. Dark blue. Tiny white wave crests. Then it banked right, and she saw only sky. The intercom cracked. “Brace for impact,” the voice said. Calm. Still the same voice as the one used to welcome them aboard, to apologize for the delay on the taxiway. No further words. Her brain spun, ejected itself from the reality of the situation to the detour she’d made to the Emergency Room this morning, the unplanned doctor’s visit that had made her almost miss the flight. “It’s just a tick,” she’d protested. “I could just burn it off with a cigarette…if I smoked.” When the doctor finally plucked it out with a custom tweezer, she barely listened as he droned on about tick physics: “At first, the little bugger bores in—it’s not that bad. Sure, they suck your blood, engorge themselves, but the real issue starts when you try to remove them. That’s when they barb in deeper. Worse—they vomit into you. That bile carries the Lyme. Deer blood, infection, the whole cocktail flushed into you.” “I haven’t been in the countryside,” she said, as if her disbelief would make a new reality in which no tick was buried in her skin. “These days, ticks are everywhere. Warmer summers, milder winters, longer active periods, time to evolve into urban habitats.” “Like city parks?” “Like everywhere. Bus seats, clothing, buildings.” “Nowhere is safe,” she said, nodding, envisioning a black hailstorm of ticks descending on the city. That was when her phone had buzzed in her bag with the notification. Flight delayed. Good. She’d fished the smartwatch, out from the bottom of the bag, strapped it to her wrist. Bulky, black, basic. Noon, it read. Plenty of time. The traffic on the Belt Parkway was the usual, the noxious smell of gasoline just visible, rippling upwards in the hot air. And today was unbearably hot. Record temperatures the news said. It made New York City less patient: cars honking, drivers gesticulating, sweat bleeding through clothes. She was snapped out of the memory as a chorus rose from the flight attendants: “Brace, brace, heads down, stay down! Brace, brace…” The stewardess that she could see was shouting with her whole face, her tone military, transformed from her dainty expression into a fierce protector. But her face had gone ghost white. The woman beside Noirin curled over, one hand on her head, one on her bag, holding it like a pet. Noirin folded her body onto her thighs, hands over head, unsure of the correct posture, wishing she’d taken a moment to consult the safety brochure, wishing she’d paid attention to the safety briefing. But it was too late now. The leaflet was out of reach in a pocket tacked to the bulkhead wall, too far to stretch. She glanced sideways, made brief eye contact with her neighbor. Her eyes were wide with terror, but she said nothing. The plane leveled. Noirin glanced out the window again. The tops of buildings. Trees. Closer. Closer. Tiny, unimportant details suddenly stood out. The tiny circular breather hole drilled into the inner pane. Between the double panes of the acrylic, tiny beads of water quivered, each nodule reflecting in miniature the horror of view outside the window: the ground approaching. “Put your head down!” a maternal voice in her head screamed at her. Commanding. Fierce. She did, and in the moment she had, she whispered prayer in the form of a correction to herself. I said I didn’t want to live this life, not that I didn’t want to live. Then, the crack of impact.