The hangar dimmed, still lit by the interior work lights. The cabinet was there. And then it vanished.

“Wow,” said the duty officer.

The foreman paused the video. He was confounded too.

Eph said, “There is a gap. A cut.”

The foreman said, “No cut. You saw the time code.”

“Go back a bit then. A bit more…right there…now again.”

The foreman played it again.

And again the cabinet disappeared.

“Houdini,” grumbled the foreman.

Eph looked at Nora.

“It didn’t just disappear,” said the duty officer. He pointed out the other luggage nearby. “Everything else stays the same. Not a flicker.”

Eph said, “Back it up again. Please.”

The foreman ran it yet again. The cabinet disappeared yet again.

“Wait,” said Eph. He’d seen something. “Step it back—slowly.”

The foreman did, and ran it again.

“There,” said Eph.

“Christ,” exclaimed the foreman, almost jumping out of his creaky seat. “I saw it.”

“Saw what?” said Nora, together with the duty officer.

The foreman was into it now, rewinding the image just a few steps.

“Coming…,” said Eph, readying him. “Coming…” The foreman held his hand over the keyboard like a game show contestant waiting to press a buzzer. “…there.”

The cabinet was gone again. Nora leaned close. “What?”

Eph pointed to the side of the monitor. “Right there.”

Just evident on the wide right edge of the image was a black blur.

Eph said, “Something bursting past the camera.”

“Up in the rafters?” said Nora. “What, a bird?”

“Too damn big,” Eph said.

The duty officer, leaning close, said, “It’s a glitch. A shadow.”

“Okay,” Eph said, standing back. “A shadow of what?”

The duty officer straightened. “Can you go frame by frame?”

The foreman tried. The cabinet disappeared from the floor…almost simultaneously with the appearance of the blur in the rafters. “Best I can do on this machine.”

The duty officer studied the screen again. “Coincidence,” he declared. “How could anything move at that speed?”

Eph asked, “Can you zoom in?”

The foreman rolled his eyes. “This here ain’t CSI—it’s Radio-fucking-Shack.”

“So, it’s gone,” Nora said, turning to Eph, the other men unable to help. “But why—and how?”

Eph cupped his hand over the back of his neck. “The soil from the cabinet…it must be the same as the soil we just found. Which means…”

Nora said, “Are we formulating a theory that someone got up into the overhead flight crew rest area from the cargo hold?”

Eph recalled the feeling he had gotten, standing in the cockpit with the dead pilots—just before discovering that Redfern was still alive. That of a presence. Something nearby.

He moved Nora away from the other two. “And tracked some of that…whatever swirl of biological matter in the passenger cabin.”

Nora looked back to the image of the black blur in the rafters.

Eph said, “I think someone was hiding up in that compartment when we first entered the plane.”

“Okay…,” she said, grappling with that. “But then—where is it now?”

Eph said, “Wherever that cabinet is.”