Corbin’s presence left the mind space. Ben slipped into the bubble of the pilot’s mind and found himself in the cockpit, looking at the control panel through the pilot’s eyes. He was in the left seat, so this pilot must be the captain. He could sense the anxiety and indecision rumbling around—and fear maybe. Not intense, but there. He scanned through the man’s eyes, willing them to move across the cockpit panel, which they accommodated, and spotted his objective—the cabin pressure control subsystem.

Ben formed the compulsion, an intense desire in himself to manipulate the cabin pressure, and pushed it into the headspace he shared.

At first nothing happened; the pilot didn’t react.

The cabin pressure is too high, Ben thought and pushed it hard.

The hand reached out, coming into view, but then hesitated. The eyes cut right, and Ben saw the copilot, arms crossed on his chest, staring down at a moving map on a tablet in his lap. He felt the pilot’s fear and this time understood. The copilot was a Dark One and at some visceral level the pilot understood the danger and the malice.

Ben took a slow, deep breath with the pilot’s body he occupied and tried again.

He saw the pilot’s right hand reach for the panel and felt a sense of peace and satisfaction. The hand found the control panel and landed on the knob in the center of the panel marked Mode Select, currently pointing to Auto 2, and twisted it to Man, which transferred the pressurization to manual control.

“What the hell are you doing?” the copilot snapped.

The eyes ticked over and Ben saw the faint, amber glow in the other man’s eyes.

“Resetting the cabin pressure,” their voice said without needing prompting.

“Isn’t it in auto?”

“Yeah,” the voice said, “but this unit is finicky. I have to cycle in and out of manual sometimes. Why don’t you put a note in the maintenance log for me ?”

The copilot grumbled something but pulled a thin gray binder from beside him and took a pen from his short-sleeved uniform shirt.