Rift Pilot
After surviving three years on an impossible island, an airline pilot must protect her newfound supernatural abilities from government agencies while preventing reality-altering rifts from spreading through her hospital ward.
Airline pilot Emma Lambert survives a mysterious crash only to spend three years on an island that defies the laws of physics. When finally rescued, she brings back more than just survival skills - she's developed supernatural abilities that allow her to manipulate reality. Confined to a hospital ward for observation, she discovers her powers are growing stronger and creating dangerous rifts in reality similar to those on the island. While evading government agencies and a mysterious researcher who seems to know too much about her condition, Emma must learn to control her abilities with help from her similarly gifted teenage nephew. As reality breaks down around them, she realizes the island crash was no accident, and the phenomenon that transformed her is spreading. With time running out and the hospital becoming ground zero for a dimensional crisis, Emma must choose between protecting her secret and saving reality itself.
CHAPTER 1: AWAKENING
One-twenty beats per minute. The cardiac monitor's rhythm penetrated Emma Lambert's consciousness like a navigation beacon. Her eyes remained closed as she ran through the familiar checklist: heart rate elevated but stable, respiration normal, orientation returning. Twenty years of flight discipline didn't vanish, even after three years marooned.
The fluorescent lights struck her retinas like solar flare when she finally opened her eyes. Institutional ceiling tiles formed a precise grid overhead: twelve across, eight deep. Emma found herself mapping coordinates in the geometric pattern, a habit born from tracking the island's shifting position using impossible stars. The methodical order of the hospital room both soothed and unsettled her pilot's instincts.
Her throat burned where they'd removed the intubation - the pain surprisingly welcome after years of supernatural sensations she couldn't quantify. The discomfort grounded her in the familiar world of cause and effect, of physics and measurable quantities. A world she no longer fully inhabited.
The memories assembled with the precision of a pre-flight sequence: final mayday call at 0300 hours, catastrophic instrument failure, controlled descent turned desperate, impact, then... phenomena that violated every principle she'd studied for her aerospace engineering degree. Her heart rate spiked to one-forty. The monitor didn't just alarm - it detonated, components scattering across the room with the force of explosive decompression.
"Steady, Captain Lambert." The voice carried professional authority layered with genuine concern. "Let's get those vitals stabilized."
Dr. Torres - Emma's fragmented memories supplied the details: psychiatric specialist, initial evaluation yesterday, mid-thirties with the focused gaze of someone who cataloged patterns for a living. The doctor checked Emma's pulse manually while studying the destroyed equipment, her expression neutral but eyes sharp with analytical curiosity.
"Third unexplained electronic failure in this room since your arrival," Torres noted, making precise notations on her chart. "Engineering's running diagnostics on the system."
Emma's fingers found her throat, tracing the topography of scars that no crash could explain. The room's temperature plummeted ten degrees in seconds. Frost crystallized across the window in patterns reminiscent of the strange geometries she'd documented in her survival journal.
"The island," Emma managed, her voice rough but controlled. "Search and rescue results?"
"No other survivors located." Torres delivered the news with gentle efficiency. "They found your shelter on the northwestern beach. However, the coordinates from your last transmission don't align with any known location in the search grid."
Emma had expected this. The island defied conventional navigation, its position shifting like a quantum particle under observation. She'd tracked it using celestial bodies that shouldn't exist in Earth's sky, developed theories about dimensional barriers and reality overlaps - the kind of concepts that would ground a commercial pilot permanently.
The overhead lights fluctuated in a sequential pattern matching the approach lighting system she'd last seen failing during the crash.
"Dr. Torres." Emma chose her words with the same precision she'd once used filing flight plans. "I need your professional assessment of my psychological status."
Torres met her gaze directly. "Physical condition matches extended survival scenarios. Technical knowledge remains intact - you've been reciting emergency procedures in your sleep. Initial psychiatric evaluation shows remarkable stability given the circumstances." She paused. "However, there are complications."
"Explain."
"Your blood work reveals unidentifiable anomalies. The crash site coordinates conflict with all known mapping systems. The NTSB investigation team has escalated their inquiry, and..." Torres hesitated, her pen hovering above the chart. "Dr. Marcus Webb from the National Research Institute has specifically requested oversight of your case."
Emma's muscles tensed instinctively. The temperature dropped another fifteen degrees. Ice crystals formed across her water glass in the same impossible patterns she'd observed in the rift zones.
"Captain Lambert," Torres said quietly, "what exactly happened during those three years?"
The door burst open as Jackson entered, her nephew's gangly teenage frame somehow both familiar and startlingly changed. But his eyes - they registered immediate recognition of something he shouldn't be able to perceive.
"Aunt Emma-"
Their hands connected. Every light in the room exploded simultaneously, plunging the space into darkness broken only by auroral patterns identical to the phenomena she'd meticulously recorded. The energy that had transformed her on the island now flowed between them like a completed circuit, defying the laws of physics she'd once thought immutable.
Through the darkness, Emma heard Torres's sharp intake of breath, the scratch of pen on paper. The truth crystallized with the clarity of a flight path emerging from storm clouds: she hadn't escaped the impossible phenomena that had altered her.
She'd become its pilot, guiding it into a world unprepared for what followed in her wake.
The frost patterns on the window pulsed with soft light, spelling out coordinates to a place that shouldn't exist.