The cargo bay smelled of fuel, heat, and something Jason could not immediately identify.
Kneeling beneath the dim emergency lights, he stared at the rows of eggs stacked carefully inside reinforced crates. For several long seconds, his brain refused to process what his eyes were seeing. Outside, the deafening cries of circling birds still echoed across the humid night sky, their violent attacks against the aircraft now feeling far less random than they had only moments earlier.
Everything suddenly connected.
The aggressive swooping.
The shattered windshield.
The relentless flock refusing to leave the plane alone.
This was not chaos.
It was protection.
Jason felt a wave of nausea as realization settled heavily into his chest. The “routine cargo flight” he had accepted without question was not routine at all. Somewhere between manifests, signatures, and sealed containers, he had unknowingly become part of something far darker: a smuggling operation moving stolen wildlife through hidden routes under the cover of ordinary transport.
The eggs in front of him were not products.
They were living futures.
And the birds outside had known it long before he did.
For years, Jason had trusted schedules, paperwork, and the quiet repetition of his work. Pilots were trained to follow procedures, not investigate every shipment loaded into the hold. But standing there in the dim cargo bay, surrounded by fragile shells stolen from nests somewhere far away, he understood how dangerous blind routine could become.
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