Yeah, one hundred per cent geek. That’s what you are,Maddy.

A geek-ette… something of an oddity; a female into messing around with circuit boards,tricking-up her PC, hacking her iPhone to give her free internet access… a girl-geek. Agirl-geek who got the screaming terrors everytime she boarded a plane.

She unlocked the door, popped it open and stepped out. Her eyes glanced up the central aisleof the plane at a sea of headrests and the bobbing forms of several hundred heads.

She felt a hand on her shoulder and spun round to see an old man standing beside the bank oftoilet cubicles.

‘Uh? What?’ she said, removing small hissing headphones from her ears.

‘You’re Madelaine Carter from Boston. Booked into seat twenty-nine D.’

She stared at him, bemused. ‘What? You want to see my ticket or — ?’

‘I’m afraid you’ve got only a few minutes left to live.’

She felt her stomach lurch, getting ready to eject another torrent of half-digested food. Aphrase like ‘a few minutes left to live’ was the last thing a nervous flyer likeher needed to hear right now. It ranked alongside words like ‘terrorist’ and‘bomb’ as something one should never utter on a packed passenger planemid-flight.

The old man had the harried look of someone running late to catch a train.

‘In a few minutes everyone on this plane will be dead.’

She figured there were only two types of person who might say something like that: a completewhacko in need of medication or…

‘Oh my God,’ she whispered, ‘you… you’re not at-terrorist?’

‘No. I’m here to rescue you, Madelaine,’ he spoke quietly, then cast aglance at the sea of heads either side of the aisle, ‘but only you, I’mafraid.’