Behind the counter, Brenda looked as though the floor had tilted beneath her heels. The haughty tilt of her chin, the practiced sneer, the fifteen years of untouchable arrogance she wielded over travelers at her desk—all of it collapsed in an instant. Her hands gripped the edge of the black granite counter until her knuckles turned white.
"No," Brenda whispered, shaking her head so hard her fluffed blonde bob brushed her gold hoop earrings. "No, that's—he walked up in a polo shirt with a home-printed pass! He didn't show an executive badge! How was I supposed to know?"
"You weren't supposed to know who I was," Marcus said.
He didn't raise his voice, and there was no gloating in his eyes—only the calm, unyielding weight of accountability.
"You were simply supposed to do your job, Ms. Halstead," Marcus continued. "You were supposed to scan the boarding pass in front of you, check my passport, and treat a paying customer with basic human respect. Instead, you looked at my skin and my clothes for two seconds, decided I couldn't possibly belong in Seat 2A, and screamed across a crowded terminal that I was a criminal holding a fake ticket."
"I—I thought there was a system error!" Brenda pleaded, tears of humiliation and panic suddenly springing to her eyes as she looked desperately at Arthur. "Arthur, tell him! You know my numbers! I’ve been at this desk for fifteen years!"
"Don't take her word for it, Mr. Pendelton," Marcus said calmly, gesturing toward the glowing computer monitor that Officer Frank Miller was still guarding. "Look at the screen yourself. And read the last three days of override history under her login."
Arthur stepped up to the terminal. His glasses slid down his nose as he leaned over the keyboard. He didn't just look at the active Command F8 displacement screen where Brenda had tried to bump Marcus for Richard Sterling; with trembling fingers, Arthur tapped two keys to pull up the station’s weekly seat-reassignment audit log.
As the lines of data scrolled down the monitor, Arthur’s face grew grimmer by the second.
There it was in black and amber: Thursday evening, Flight 418—Seat 1C manually voided at forty-six minutes prior to departure, reassigned to a non-revenue acquaintance. Tuesday evening, Flight 104 to Paris—Seat 3A marked as "Document Failure" without a single passport scan logged in the optical reader, reassigned twelve seconds later. And right at the top of the screen, Marcus Vance’s full-fare reservation—with zero barcode scans recorded—sitting in an active override window for Richard Sterling.
Arthur looked around the counter toward where Richard had been standing, only to see the camel coat disappearing hurriedly toward the escalator.
When Arthur turned back to Brenda, any trace of personal friendship or professional protection was gone. If he tried to cover for her now, in front of the Senior Vice President, a terminal security officer, and twenty witnesses with cell phones, his own twenty-year career would be over before Flight 418 left the gate.
"You didn't scan his pass once," Arthur said, his voice hollow. "You didn't even open the verification window. And you’ve used the manual security-hold override four times this month to clear front-cabin seats without revenue authorization."
"Arthur, please—" Brenda’s voice broke, her hand trembling as she reached toward his sleeve. "Richard is a friend of the station! You went to dinner with him last month! I was just taking care of VIPs!"
"By humiliating paying passengers and calling security on our own Senior Vice President?" Arthur snapped, stepping back from her touch. He reached out and flipped the physical security switch on the side of her terminal, locking the screen to a blank login prompt. "Take off your supervisor lanyard, Brenda."
Brenda froze, staring at him in horror across the brightly lit counter. "What? Not out here—Arthur, people are watching—"
"You didn't mind people watching when you shouted Across Concourse B that this gentleman had a fake ticket," Arthur said coldly. "Unclip your supervisor badge and your terminal keycard right now. You are relieved of duty pending a formal Human Resources termination hearing and a corporate revenue-protection audit."