Runway Mirage

The desert air convulsed with heat, rippling as a living membrane between silence and thunder. Evan Knapp’s breath clouded faintly against the eyepiece, though the night was warm. On the camera body, his knuckles whitened, the tremor of exhaustion and adrenaline fusing in his hands. He adjusted focus, following the silver bulk of RAT55 as it tipped on its wing, a ghostly predator caught in a fleeting surrender.

“Not tonight,” Colonel Harrow rasped, words ground flat by tobacco and years of command. His uniform clung in all the wrong places—creased, sweat-stained at the collar, and fabric steeped with the metallic scent of old gun oil. Over the radar console he leaned, eyes reflecting green pulses of light that refused to anchor the jet’s position. His hand twitched toward the comm switch, then curled back into a fist, veins rising like cords along his wrist.

The engines of Saber 98—code sign for the RAT55—wailed, a scream knifing into the valley, then fell away as the jet rolled into the cavernous mouth of Hangar 18. Against the horizon loomed the hangar, a tomb carved for titans—windowless, lightless, its black aperture gaping wide enough to swallow history whole.

In the control tower, Technician Maisy hunched against the glass, breath fogging the pane. “Something moved,” she whispered, her voice breaking as though the words had been dragged from her throat. In the glass, her reflection trembled—pale skin slick with sweat, pupils dilated, lips parted in some hidden instinct of flight. Her finger pressed against the scene below, tracking the curve of the fuselage. “Under the belly. Crawling.”

The radios coughed with static, and then silence. Lights on the consoles flickered and died, leaving the fading glow of instruments bleeding into the dark. Harrow’s jaw clenched, a tic at the corner of his mouth betraying a lifetime of discipline unraveling.

Evan lowered the camera, heart clawing against his ribs. In the small, blue-lit display, the footage replayed before him. Grain by grain, frame by frame, the jet descended. Beneath it shimmered the runway, dust rising in ghostly veils—yet the landing gear never touched ground. The plane hovered, an obedient illusion.

His throat tightened, words unspoken pressing against his teeth. In the tower, Maisy turned, her eyes wet and wide. Harrow did not look at either of them; he stared into the night, where the desert swallowed the sound of engines and the hangar’s door sealed shut, as though it had never opened at all.