Free Panic Button by Frazer Lee Page A

anger in recycled oxygen. He glanced over Jo’s shoulder at the others. Gwen looked dreadful, her face pale and drawn after her ablutions. Dave seemed more on edge than ever - his clown’s facade had slipped and gone.
     

    “Got to keep our heads...” Max whispered.
     

    Jo nodded her silent agreement.
     

    Blink, blink, flash . Something beyond the darkened porthole window nearest Max caught her eye.
     

    Jo moved toward the glass, zombie-like and numb, peering outside. Her quick breath fogged the window. Through the haze she saw distant lights, glittering in the dark beyond the clouds.
     

    “We’re close to land,” she realised .
     

    “What ?! ” Max turned sharply.
     

    Dave and Gwen moved to the window nearest them, on the same side of the plane as Jo, peering out, curious.
     

    “We should be over the Atlantic now. But we’re not. Look - there’s land, over there.”
     

    “What does that mean?” Gwen asked.
     

    Max answered. “Whatever our destination is...”
     

    “It’s not New York,” Jo finished.
     

    “So where are we going then?” Dave asked. “Jesus.”
     

    They all looked to one another, mortal fear in their eyes. Alligator’s games had diverted all their focus onto the victims of their forfeits. It hadn’t occurred to them that they themselves might be in danger aboard the jet - until now.  

     
     

    Max turned and looked at the flat panel TV screen on the wall at the front of the plane. Maybe, just maybe, he thought.The thing had been inactive for the duration of the flight so far. He approached the screen, tapping the power button a couple of times. Dead, totally dead - yes, maybe.  

    His fingertips found the groove behind the screen’s casing. He pressed with his fingers, working them down into the gap, and pulled. The wall bracket moved, only a centimetre or two, but enough for him to get a purchase on it. He twisted and pulled with all his might, wrenching the bracket back out of the cavity wall. The screen tipped forward into his arms, heavy all of a sudden, and he crouched, dropping it to the floor.
     

    Gwen looked horrified. “Don’t! You’ll piss Alligator off and he’ll...”  

    But Max was intent on his newfound task. “No power cable,” he said, excitement in his voice as he checked both the hole in the wall and the cable ports in the back of the TV.
     

    “What are you doing?” Dave asked.
     

    “This screen should show our flight path, ETA, weather systems, all that stuff...”
     

    His eyes, sharpened with purpose, darted around the cabin and settled on Dave’s touch screen.
     

    “The lead,” Max said.
     

    Dave looked dumbfounded.
     

    “Disconnect the lead,” Max clarified. “Pass it to me!”
     

    Dave disconnected the power lead from the back of his screen and tried to hand it Max. It didn’t quite reach.
     

    “I said don’t! You shouldn’t be doing this,” Gwen said, her voice laden with dread.
     

    Ignoring her pleas, Max wrested the monitor from its bracket and dragged it across the floor, closer to the power cable. Still a couple of inches too far.
     

    Dave yanked at the cable, snapping it away from its wall housing, pulling with all his might until he could plug it into the monitor. The screen fizzed into life, the Deppart Airlines logo appearing briefly before dissolving to a computer-generated map display.
     

    “What?” Max said, as a GPS flight path marker appeared over the map, a little pixelated plane showing their position.
     

    “Where the fuck are we?” Dave asked.
     

    “We’re over Denmark,” Jo said.
     

    Max nodded. “According to this we’re bound for Oslo. What the hell is in Oslo?”
     

    Jo cut in. “All2gethr headquarters are in Oslo.”
     

    “Why are they doing this to us?” Gwen asked, lip trembling.
     

    “I don’t think this is All2gethr,” Max said.
     

    “What?” Dave snapped.
     

    “You think a social network is doing this? No, it can’t be them,