Chapter 5 - Corporate Panic in Chicago
On the thirty-fourth floor of the AsterJet corporate tower in Chicago, the executive boardroom was bathed in the dim, anxious glow of computer monitors.
Chief Operating Officer Marcus Vance—no relation to Arthur Vance at the FAA, but sharing the same ruthless ambition—stared at the incoming telemetry data from Flight 417 with a look of sheer disbelief.
“Are you telling me that a veteran flight attendant threw away a federally protected clinical trial medication, and the captain just turned a transcontinental Boeing 777 around over Utah?” Marcus demanded, slamming his palm onto the mahogany conference table.
The head of corporate legal counsel, a sharp-faced man named Richard Vance (no relation either), adjusted his glasses nervously. “That is correct, Marcus. Furthermore, the father of the child is David Carter—the lead bio-statistician for Helixor Therapeutics. And the document he presented bears the personal signature of FAA Director Arthur Vance.”
The room went dead silent. The name Arthur Vance carried immense weight in the aviation world. He was the man who oversaw safety certifications for every commercial carrier in the United States. If Arthur Vance had personally signed an emergency transport protocol for David Carter’s son, it meant the federal government had a direct, vested interest in the secure delivery of VTX-7.
“If this leaks to the press,” Richard said quietly, “AsterJet will face immediate federal grounding of our wide-body fleet for safety compliance review. The stock will plummet fifty points before the closing bell.”
Marcus stood up, pacing across the plush carpet as his mind raced to calculate damage control. He wasn't thinking about the sick seven-year-old boy in row twenty-two, nor was he thinking about the terrified flight attendant who had triggered the crisis. He was thinking about profit margins, shareholder value, and corporate survival.
“We need to control the narrative before that plane touches down in Salt Lake City,” Marcus said decisively. “First, contact station operations in Salt Lake. Have a secure medical transport team waiting at Gate B12 with a fresh, emergency-grade replacement dose of VTX-7 sourced directly from the local Helixor research lab branch.”
“And Susan Reynolds?” Richard asked.
Marcus’s eyes hardened. “Susan Reynolds is an administrative liability. She acted outside of standard operating procedure by destroying passenger property without supervisor clearance. We need to cut her loose immediately.”
“Cut her loose? You mean fire her?”
“I mean erase her footprint,” Marcus corrected coldly. “Scrub her name from the active crew roster for Flight 417. Replace her digital flight log entry with a training observer. If anyone asks why an unassigned flight attendant was on that aircraft, she was dead-heading as a passenger taking a personal leave. We distance AsterJet from her actions entirely.”
Richard blinked, realizing the sheer scale of the cover-up Marcus was proposing. “Marcus, falsifying flight manifest logs to obstruct an FAA investigation is a federal offense—”
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“It’s only a crime if we get caught,” Marcus interrupted, leaning over the table. “Get our IT security team to access the internal crew database. Modify the digital stamp for Flight 417. Right now.”
As Richard hurried out of the room to execute the cover-up, neither man realized that David Carter was already steps ahead of them. David wasn't just a grieving father; he was the primary data architect of the VTX-7 clinical trial. Every single vial, every barcode, and every digital inventory log was securely backed up on a decentralized, encrypted server that AsterJet’s corporate IT department could never touch.
