“Any ideas?”

Gabriel glanced at August, steadying himself on the arm of his chair. His usually upbeat expression had morphed into the same extraordinary focus August had seen back in the alleyway. “Johann, cover your ears.”

Johann bristled, scrambling to keep his balance in the careening aircraft. “Shut up, loser, I’m not covering my ears. We’re about to die.”

“Just say it. My privacy doesn’t mean much if I’m dead.”

Gabe sighed. “Have you ever tried levitating yourself?”

Johann gaped at them both “What the —” 

August smiled just a little, in spite of himself. “This is already getting pretty hare-brained. I can. Though not for particularly long, and I need a reference point.”

Gabe was laser-focused in his rapid assessment. “Do you have a weight limit?”

“Yes.” 

August slipped past him and gestured for Gabriel to follow him to the front of the plane, ignoring Johann’s weak protests. They pushed a few panicking students out of the way, August moving the ones he could telekinetically. 

They didn’t have much time. He spoke while they walked. “The more massive the object, the shorter my limit. Something like a plane I can sustain for maybe five, ten seconds? But I can only do one or the other: keep it from colliding with trees and other debris, or slow its descent. I need all the focus I can get for one job for an object this substantial.”

“I can stop it from moving forward.” Gabriel stopped beside the faculty, snapping his fingers to catch their attention over the blaring alarms echoing in the cabin. “We need you to open the latch! We can fix this.”

Their professor, watery eyes shining bright with panic, blinked. “You can? None of our flight-based Guardians have the strength. How is Mr. Wright going to help…?”

“Don’t ask questions! We need the pilot to unlatch the door.”

A beat of silence. “The pilots are dead.”

“Then the flight attendant.” Gabriel’s voice was commanding. Self-assured and clear. Focused and directed. “Sir,” he pointed at the flight attendant nearest to them. “Open the latch.”

“That’s not…”

“Open it!” Gabriel turned to August. “I need you to force it closed behind you to reduce the change in pressure for the other passengers. Can you do that?”

August nodded. “I should have enough time.”

The scary truth of being a Guardian was that most of the time, your plans were tenuous at best. You didn’t have time to think through things rationally. You usually had seconds to act. On any normal day, August would’ve objected to Gabriel’s snap decision-making. As it was, they didn’t have that luxury. Gabe had a plan, and that meant they had a chance.

Hare-brained was better than certain death. 

Gabe turned to him. “I assume you’ve figured this out, but try to use as much time as you can to slow the free-fall before you need to protect yourself from the impact. I’m going to climb the aircraft and drop in front to try and slow the forward momentum.”

“Can you survive that kind of fall?”

“We have no choice. I think I can. Can you, if you attenuate your impact?”

“I don’t know.”

Some days, things just didn’t work out for a Guardian.

But sometimes, just sometimes, you got lucky.

“Let us help.”

Twins. Identical. No time for names. They must've been two of the flight-based Guardians the faculty had mentioned.

They joined Gabe and August beside the latch with matching grimaces. “We can keep you airborne. We can’t stop the plane, but we can stop you from hitting the ground at a high velocity.”

Not long ago, August had been napping. Resting serenely in one of the seats mid-aircraft. Now they were making life-and-death decisions for an entire generation of Ifran Guardians-in-training.

The door unlatched. August took a deep breath, grabbing and squeezing Gabriel’s hand.

“I need you to live,” he said.

Gabriel looked at him, jaw set.

“You too.”