There's more than one?!

"Haaa!" I yelled out. I began to pull one of the handles upwards and turn a control wheel as I got ready to execute a flip. "You might want to hold onto something and take a deep breath."

"Why?" Andres asked as the plane began to rise. I felt like I was falling off my seat as the plane began to rise at a steeper angle. Andres grabbed the handles on his protector.

The plane suddenly went upside down and I began to feel the effects of gravity. I felt my blood stop traveling to my legs and pool up in my head. It was uncomfortable yet adrenaline-inducing. It felt like a roller coaster with longer loops.

But the real excitement came when we started to descend again. The nose of the plane began taking a straight dive down as I felt my stomach drop. If it weren't for the protector over our chest, I would've fallen straight down out of my seat.

"Fuck! Shit! Fuck!" Andres cursed aloud. His high-pitched voice was imbued with both fear and excitement.

As suddenly as the jet began rising, it began to level off. We were both pushed back into our seats and our heads bobbled. I felt blood began to start circulating again. It was pumping at a rapid pace, and I felt every single contraction my heart did. I was taking in fast and deep breaths as my body began to stabilize. I had a smile of pure elation.

"Ha, we should do that at above Mach 1," I said in between breaths. I looked over at the speed on the dashboard. We were at about Mach 0.8, the average speed of commercial flights.

"This thing can go faster?!" Andres asked, completely surprised.

"Oh yeah, it can easily go 3 times our current speed," I answered casually. "You see the number on the right? That's how much Machs we're going."

"Machs? What are those?" He asked while staring at the number.

"Sound travels at a certain speed. It's why sometimes it takes a while to hear an explosion if you're far away," I began. "Mach is just how much times the speed of sound we are going. Mach 1 is 1 times the speed of sound, 2 is 2 times, et cetera."

"So we're going," Andres began as he squinted his eyes. "Mach zero eight?"

"Mach zero point eight," I corrected. "Actually, watch what happens when we reach Mach 1."

I pulled on the handle that controlled our throttle. I moved it up slightly and our speed began to increase.

Mach 0.9

I was staring at the number, watching it go up.

Mach 0.95

The anticipation of breaking the sound barrier began to build up. I felt a level of excitement in my body as the number began to rise slowly and slowly.

Mach 0.99

'Come on, almost there!' I thought as it stalled. It felt like an eternity as I stared at the same number before it finally rose up.

Mach 1.1

Turning back, I saw a big and circular patch of air near our tail. Instantly, the sound of the engines ceased. The cockpit was eerily silent, yet we still felt the vibrations on the floor and in our seats. All the sounds the engine makes were now happening behind us.

"What just happened?"

I faced Andres with a proud smile and began laughing manically. "We are now traveling faster than sound."

Andres didn't fully understand exactly what that meant, but just by hearing it, it sounded unbelievable. I mean, this was a world without technological advancement. Traveling faster than sound seemed impossible, and I just told him that we did.

He saw the smile that I had on my face and expressed the same expression. He gave a quieter laugh as he didn't quite share my enthusiasm.

"So what now?" He asked. "Do we go faster than light or something?"

I laughed at his question. "No, going faster than light has too many problems."

"Oh," He mumbled softly.

"You want me to do more tricks?" I asked as I cracked my fingers.

"Are you sure that this is safe?"

"Well, we're about as safe as you can be flying in the air trapped in a tin can," I replied. I began to push the throttle all the way to the top. We were thrown back onto our seats. It felt like an invisible force was pushing me against my chair.

I looked over at the screen until the number began to stop rising at Mach 2.9. The feeling of being pushed back began to stop as our speed stabilized.

"Round two baby," I said as my hands went for the controls. I began leading us into a turn while still going full speed ahead. The jet began to rise at a steeper angle. Gravity began to feel heavier as we went more and more to our side. Our breathing and heart rate became faster and faster.

As our angle got shallower and we began to start dropping again, our stomachs dropped. We were being thrown to the side of our seats. Andres was cursing profusely.

When we were about to level off, the entire jet began to shake and we were thrown forward. It felt as if we collided with something. When I looked back, my eyes widened as I caught a glimpse of what looked like broken glass falling from the sky.

"What the hell was that?!" Andres yelled out.

"I'm figuring it out!" I yelled back as I looked over at the dashboard. The jet was still shaking, but it was beginning to level off. The data made no sense. It said that we had experienced the force of colliding into a mountain, yet there was no debris on the jet.

"What in the world?" I said in frustration as I began to press buttons on the jet's computer. I navigated through a series of menus to look at even more data, hoping to find an explanation for what just happened.

"That sounded bad!" Andres said distraught. "Was that supposed to happen?"

"No," I answered. I opened the last menu on the computer and skimmed through the data. It was all normal, except for one number. Mana levels. It was high, way higher than normal. Somehow, the jet gained extra mana. How did this happen?

The laws of nature for this world were completely different from ours, so was this due to breaking the sound barrier? Or something else?

"There's a compartment to your right. Pull on the handle and hand me the map" I told Andres. I stuck my hand back ready to grab the map. He did as instructed, albeit a bit clumsily, and handed me the map.

"So we started at 37 degrees, 59 minutes north 23 degrees, 44 minutes east," I said, thinking aloud. I ran my finger across the map to where I thought we were. "Estimating our speed, we should be around 31 degrees, 15 minutes, 15 seconds north 24 degrees 15 minutes 30 seconds east."

On the map, it was just the ocean. Yet looking ahead, I saw signs of civilization. No, not just a civilization. An advanced one. One with grand buildings like skyscrapers and factories.

On the horizon, there were small objects that appeared to be getting closer and closer to us. I squinted my eyes trying to get a clearer view of the objects. They were jets.

"Shit!" I yelled out immediately. "We have to leave now!"

"What? Why?" Andres asked rapidly.

"That thing we broke through, it was a barrier to fucking Atlantis!"

Atlantis always stayed hidden from the rest of the world and closed its borders. The only people allowed to leave were diplomats.

If you're thinking, 'Oh, wouldn't the citizens hate that? Being trapped in?' You need to keep in mind that Atlantis is technologically advanced. Would you leave our world to go back to the time of cavemen? No, you wouldn't.

Anyway, getting away from my info dump and back to our dire situation.

"We're in Atlantis?" Andres asked as I began turning the plane to go back. We were easily going faster than the jets they had, but I was more concerned about their weapons. I didn't design this for warfare but for entertainment.

"If you look on the bright side, we're either going to escape together or die together," I said attempting to lighten the mood with some dark humor. "Do me a favor and tell me if you see anything start flying towards us rapidly."

"Uh, can you be a bit more specific?" Andres asked.

"Trust me, you'll know when you see it," I answered as I turned back. The planes were close as I had lost speed turning back. I saw the pilots talking into a radio, which would've been great if I had built a radio system.

I maxed out the throttle and we reached Mach 3.3. The moment we reached this speed, Andres spoke up.

"There's something coming towards us," Andres said in a distressed yet confused voice. I turned back to see fucking missiles heading towards us.

I started to pull the jet into a vertical position and we started to move up like a rocket ship. I moved my head to look out the bottom left of the window and saw the missiles fly past us. I began to roll the plane back to a flat position. Looking back, I saw even more jets joining the fleet.

"We need to land," I declared as I looked around for a good spot.

"We need to leave!" Andres protested.

"They have too many ships. We can go faster than them, but eventually, their weapons will hit us," I explained. "Landing means surrendering."

"We'll die if we do that!"

"We haven't attacked them yet, so we're more useful alive than dead," I said calmly. I spotted a good and open area to land and began making my descent there. As I was doing that, they launched another round of missiles.

"Shit!" I said as I began to roll the plane. First ninety degrees to the left, then right, and then flying up vertically. I looked at the dashboard and saw that we had narrowly missed an impact. The speed of the missile was enough to trigger one of the pressure sensors on the outside.

"They're going to keep launching missiles!" Andres yelled at me. "We're not going to have a chance to land!"

I turned over to face him. "Just trust me," I told him in a stern voice before staring down at his shirt. It was white.

"Take off your shirt," I ordered as I turned back to continue dodging their weapons.

"No man, I'm good," He responded.

I sighed. "I'm not gay. White represents surrender."

Andres' eyes widened as he caught on to my idea. He took off his protective helmet and took his shirt off as he waved it near the window.

I stopped moving the jet and slowed down to around Mach 1.5 as Andres continued to wave his shirt. The moment was filled with anticipation and worry. At any moment, they could launch another missile and we could die. The moment lasted for what seemed like lifetimes as it went on in slow motion.

Until the jets behind us also slowed down. I turned right towards a big, open green field and began to land the jet.

"When we get out, raise your hands and drop to the floor," I ordered Andres. I turned to make sure he understood, to which he nodded. I pressed a button to open a hatch and the two of us took off our helmets and slowly exited the plane.

I took the lead and left with my hands up, got on my knees, and put my hands on the back of my head. Andres followed exactly what I did.

The other pilots, upon seeing that we were unarmed, left their planes and started approaching towards us with their weapons up.

And what happened next was something I could never expect. Something that shook me to my very core. It was a simple question.

"Are you armed?" A pilot yelled out in British English.

My eyes widened as I felt my heart rate increase even more. I turned to face Andres. He had tears streaming down his face, yet looked at me in confusion.

"No," I responded in American English. "We are unarmed."

The pilot nodded to the other pilots and brought out a pair of handcuffs. "You are under arrest."