Sound of the Engine

POV: Clayton

Day four. The air in the truck feels different today—colder, despite the Kauai sun. Zia is quieter, too. She’s started looking at me not as a stranger, but as a book she’s trying to read in the dark.

I don’t drive toward the beach or the mountains today. I head toward Lihue, toward the chain-link fences and the sound of jet engines. When I pull into the airport perimeter road, away from the main terminal, Zia sits up straighter, her eyes darting to the planes taking off.

"The airport?" she asks, her voice small. "Did we... did we travel a lot?"

"Sometimes," I say, my throat feeling like it’s full of dry sand. I kill the engine. We’re parked near the end of the runway, where the smell of jet fuel hangs heavy in the humidity. "But that’s not why we’re here. This is the fourth pinnacle, Zia. This is the spot where you finally let me in. All the way in."

I turn in my seat to face her. "The first time I brought you here, you were twenty-one. You’d been acting out—drinking too much, picking fights, being 'rebellious' just to see if the world would push back. We sat right here in this truck, and you finally told me why."

Zia’s hands are trembling in her lap. She looks out at a Hawaiian Airlines jet taxiing toward the runway. "What did I say?"

"You told me about the flight," I say softly. "The one from seven years ago. The one you were supposed to be on with your parents, coming back to the island."

I watch her face. I see the flicker of a memory—not a clear picture, but a feeling of heat and noise.

"The flight didn't even take off yet," I continue, my voice steady for her sake. "You told me you’d been tired. You saw the doors close and noticed the back of the plane was nearly empty. You wanted to sleep, so you moved from your seat next to them all the way to the back row."

Zia’s breath hitches. Her eyes are fixed on the tarmac, but I can tell she’s seeing a different day.

"Then the engine under the wing exploded," I whisper. "Multiple explosions. It hit right where they were sitting. You were hurt—you have the scar on your shoulder to prove it—but you were far enough away to survive. They weren't. You told me you felt like you’d traded your life for a nap in the back of a plane."

The silence that follows is deafening, punctuated only by the roar of a plane taking off nearby. Zia doesn't cry—not yet. She just stares at the runway, her face pale.

"I remember the smell," she whispers. It’s the first real memory she’s voiced since the reset. "I remember the smell of the smoke. It smelled like... like burnt metal and ozone."

I reach across the console and take her hand. Her fingers are ice cold. "That’s why you were a rebel, Zia. You weren't trying to be 'cool.' You were trying to outrun the guilt of being in the back of that plane."

She finally looks at me, and for the first time, I see the twenty-five-year-old woman behind her eighteen-year-old eyes. The pain is too deep to belong to a teenager.

"Is that why my brain does this?" she asks, her voice cracking. "Is it trying to go back to before the engines exploded? To when they were still here?"

"Maybe," I say, squeezing her hand. "But I’m here now. And I’m not going anywhere."