Chapter 36 - An Unlikely Ally
As Ava emerged from the conservatory into the bustling northern colonnade of the Palais, she noticed a woman in her late forties pacing nervously beside the marble fountain.
The woman was dressed in a worn, functional navy wool blazer and heavy boots, holding a battered leather briefcase clutched to her chest like a shield. Her dark hair was pulled back in a severe, no-nonsense bun, and her sharp hazel eyes darted anxiously toward every passing security guard. When she saw Ava and Marcus Bennett approaching, her breath hitched, and she stepped forward with sudden, desperate resolve.
"Miss Carter?" the woman whispered in accented English, her voice trembling slightly. "Please... one minute of your time. My name is Dr. Elena Rostova."
Marcus Bennett instantly stepped between the woman and Ava, his hand resting near his jacket lapel. "Ma'am, Miss Carter is due in the general assembly in twenty minutes—"
"Wait, Marcus," Ava said gently, touching his arm. Ava looked at the woman’s weathered hands and the faded identification lanyard hanging from her pocket. The plastic badge bore the crest of the European Air Safety Directorate, marked with an official red stamp: Suspended Pending Administrative Review.
"You're the chief materials engineer who conducted the stress tests on Helios Flight 802 last month, aren't you?" Ava asked, recognition flashing in her eyes.
Dr. Rostova let out a shaky, disbelieving breath. "You... you know my work?"
"I read your preliminary technical report on titanium shear stress while reviewing the Geneva hub files last night," Ava explained softly. "You recommended grounding the entire Helios cargo fleet on November 4th. And twenty-four hours later, your department was dissolved, and your security access was revoked."
Tears welled in the engineer’s eyes. "They told me I was insane. Vincent Sterling’s lawyers threatened to sue me for commercial sabotage. They said if I leaked my testing data to the press, they would destroy my family and ensure I never worked in aviation again. I was terrified, Miss Carter. I watched my superiors sign off on falsified safety waivers, and I stayed silent because I thought I had no power to stop them."
Dr. Rostova reached into her briefcase and pulled out a heavy, encrypted titanium flash drive bearing the master seal of the Swiss Federal Aerospace Laboratories.
"I watched the broadcast of what you did on Flight 402, and what you did on the tarmac in Chicago," Dr. Rostova said, her voice shaking with profound emotion as she pressed the drive into Ava’s hands. "You stood up to men who had terrorized everyone around them for decades. Inside this drive is the raw, unedited telemetric black-box data from Helios Flight 314—the cargo freighter currently inbound to Geneva from Milan. Its secondary hydraulic circuit began cavitating forty minutes ago. The pilots don't know it yet, but their primary flight controls will experience partial hydraulic lockout upon touchdown."
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Marcus Bennett gasped, grabbing his phone. "That flight is scheduled to land on Runway 23 in less than thirty minutes!"
Ava tightened her fingers around the cool metal drive. "Then we don't have twenty minutes to waste. Marcus, alert Swiss air traffic control. Dr. Rostova, you're coming with us to the podium."
