The roar of her jet brought everyone out onto the tarmac, but Bob had been there already. Waiting.

Sixteen days of nothing. No comms, no updates, no “she’s fine.” Just classified silence and a black mark on the briefing board where her name used to be. He hadn’t slept right in over a week. Just stayed in the hangar. Sat in her jet when no one was looking. Read the same two lines of the flight manual over and over without registering a single word.

And now—there she was.

Her jet glinted low over the horizon, angling in sharp from the east. He could tell it was her from the first tilt. She always landed with a slight left lean before she corrected—fast and precise, like she had something to prove. Even from far away, her technique was surgical.

The wheels kissed the pavement. Flaps down. Nose dipped. Engines cut.

Perfect.

Except the canopy didn’t open.

Bob stepped forward, out past the hangar’s edge. Someone called his name behind him. He didn’t care.

She was still in the cockpit. Too still.

The second he saw the med-transport scramble from the side hangar, his heart slammed into his throat.

“No—” he muttered, already jogging. Then faster. “No, no, no.”

He’d barely crossed the tarmac line when two Humvees came screaming up the runway, medics leaping out before the wheels had even stopped turning. A gurney unfolded mid-stride. They were yelling something to one another—codes, maybe, he didn’t catch a word. The moment the canopy popped, hands reached in—

Her body sagged. Limp.

“Hey!” Bob shouted, sprinting.

She was barely out of the cockpit when he caught sight of her—helmet off, blood down the side of her face, neck brace already being strapped in place. Her flight suit was half unzipped, wires and pads being stuck to her chest. No one was even looking at him.

“HEY, that’s my pilot! Let me through—let me through!”

A body slammed into his chest—Lieutenant Ramirez, always first to intercept.

“Bob, stop. You can’t interfere with med ops—”

“She’s hurt—she’s hurt and they’re not even telling me what—!”

“She’s breathing,” Ramirez said, but it sounded like a guess.

She was gone before Bob could argue. Gurney loaded. Ambulance doors slammed. He barely caught a flash of her fingers—blood-streaked, unmoving—as they drove away. The sound of the siren receded into the wind.

He stood there, breathless, like something vital had been torn out of him mid-flight.

When he made it to Medical, they wouldn’t let him in.

“Sir, she’s under restricted care.”

“She’s my girlfriend,” Bob hissed, palm flat against the sealed glass. “I’m her WSO. She flies better when I’m there, I land her, I—”

“Sir, step back.”

“She needs to hear my voice!”

The nurse’s eyes flickered. But protocol was protocol.

The doors stayed closed.

He backed off. Stumbled out into the hallway and sat down hard against the wall. His helmet slid out of his lap. He didn’t reach for it.

His hands were still shaking. They’d steadied her ejection twice in the last year. They’d pulled her out of a dive in Guam. They’d steadied the back of her neck during turbulence over the Mojave, when she laughed like they weren’t plummeting.

And now he couldn’t even touch her.

Couldn’t know where it hurt. Couldn’t know if she’d opened her eyes. Couldn’t know if she was still in there.

His voice cracked against the quiet. “Just… stay with me, sweetheart. Please.”

The hallway echoed back nothing.

And for the first time since she took him as her backseater—he wasn’t in the jet. Wasn’t behind her. Wasn’t with her.

Just grounded. Just waiting. And terrified out of his damn mind.