We forget. We sit in our cozy, pressurized cabins, insulated from sound and wind and cold, and it slips our minds that that’s the sky, out there. Air so thin you can’t breathe, so cold it freezes your lungs. A place humans can’t survive. And now, suddenly, the sky was right there, twenty feet away, reaching in through the gaping hole to claw everything warm and living out into the blackness.

I’d wound up on my back in the aisle, my head towards the hole. My hair was streaming out, sucked so hard that the roots screamed in protest. My airline pajamas were rippling in the wind, the fabric snapping and jerking as if a giant was plucking at it. The air was getting thinner and what little there was was rushing past so fast, it was hard to snatch a breath.

All around me, anything not bolted down was tumbling across the floor and shooting out of the hole. Life jackets, newspapers, pillows... a coffee cup flew across the cabin, clipped a seat and shattered, raining down fragments. There was a flash of silver as a fork shot past, missed the hole and embedded itself in the bulkhead like an arrow.

But I didn’t move an inch. Because he  was pinning me to the floor like a rock on a leaf. He was taking some of his weight on his forearms, so as not to crush me, but he had enough of his muscled form—

I swallowed. On me...that I wasn’t going anywhere. His chest was pressed to my chest and god, it was like rock, not an inch of fat on him. My fingers and toes were already going numb from the cold, but the front of my body, where it touched him... that was so warm.

Everything my mother had always told me to fear: a commoner and a huge, brutish one, more beast than man, with his threadbare clothes and dirty boots, pushing me down on the ground. Her voice in my head, men like that only want one thing—

I looked up into his eyes and I saw it there. He did want that. And I wasn’t ready for the answering flush that started in my face and went right down through my body, a need I hadn’t even known I had, suddenly awakened. But that wasn’t all he wanted. Those blue eyes were burning as he glanced between me and the assassin who’d tried to kill me.

He wanted to protect me. A different kind of warmth flooded my body. I reached up and instinctively clung onto his shoulders and it was like tethering myself to a sun-warmed rock. As long as I stayed there, I knew I’d be alright.

Movement made me glance towards the hole. The assassin took three running steps towards it and then flung himself through. Just as he jumped, he looked right at me. That glare of pure hate again: I was nothing, an inferior species. Then he was gone, lost in the blackness.

“Just hold on!” The man who’d saved me had to yell over the howl of the wind. “It’ll get easier as we go lower!”

I nodded. He was right: we were descending, the floor tilting at a steeper and steeper angle. The pilot was taking us down to where the air would be thick enough to breathe. One assassin was gone and Emerik and Jakov had the other pinned to the floor. Just another few minutes and we’d all be alright—

A scream split the air. I looked over my rescuer’s shoulder and my stomach lurched. Caroline, my maid, was clinging onto the top of a seat, her body entirely horizontal in mid air, flapping like a flag. And her grip was slipping. As I watched, her fingers failed and she shot past us, straight towards the hole. No!

One of her feet clipped an overhead luggage bin and she spun sideways... and jerked to a stop. Her leg had wedged between two seats. But the wind was sucking at her, clawing her free, and her leg was sliding between the smooth leather. First her hip was gripped, then only her thigh, and she was slipping faster and faster. “Kristina!” she screamed, terrified.

Caroline is twenty-two, the same age as me, and she’s been my maid since we were both teenagers. We’ve grown up almost like sisters. When I was fifteen and someone spiked my drink with vodka at a party, it was Caroline who got me out of there safely. When she was sixteen and knocked over and chipped a Ming vase on a visit to the French President’s house, I lied and said it was me. She’s the one person who tells me things straight, who doesn’t bow and scrape. She’s my only true friend. And now she was going to die because someone wanted to kill me.

I started to wriggle out from under my rescuer. He looked down at me, horrified, and grabbed my shoulders. “No!”

I twisted, breaking his grip and slithering out from under him. Immediately, the wind clutched at me, threatening to grab me and suck me straight out. I grabbed hold of the nearest seat and checked Caroline. Oh God, her leg was slipping between the seats: they only gripped her calf, now. Very cautiously, I got to my knees.

That was a mistake. The suction got ten times worse. For one horrible second, my knees actually lifted off the ground.

I slammed myself face-first, flat on the floor, heart thumping. Then I started to wriggle down the aisle towards Caroline. When I glanced back, the man who’d saved me was trying to crawl after me. “No!” I yelled over the ear-splitting screech of the wind. “Stay there! I’ll pass her to you!”

He stared at me, face taut with worry, then reluctantly nodded. He’d realized the same thing as me: the suction got worse, the closer you were to the hole. He needed to stay where he was, so he could haul Caroline to safety: I’d never be able to pull her and fight the wind.

I checked Caroline again and my stomach lurched. Her leg had slid through the seats to the ankle. Only her foot wedged her in place. I moved as fast as I could, but the air was thinner here: I could feel myself getting light-headed and every movement felt like an Olympic effort.  Oxygen masks had dropped from the ceiling, but they hung tantalizingly out of reach. If I risked standing to grab one, I’d likely be sucked out. I gritted my teeth and kept going, bracing feet and hands against the seats, trying not to think about the howling, sucking hole or how it would only take one slip—

There. I’d made it. I reached for Caroline’s leg—

The wind twisted her slightly and her foot slithered through the gap—

I screamed and shot forward and suddenly all I could see was the back of a seat. I was mashed up against it and I couldn’t see Caroline at all. I’ve lost her!

Then I became aware of the burning pain in my fingers. My arm was buried between the seat backs, right up to the shoulder, and I couldn’t pull it back. Something was pulling on my hand. Two of my fingers had curled tight around something thin and soft that bit into my skin. I gripped it even tighter and then braced my knees on the seats and heaved.

My arm gradually emerged. And when it reached my hand, I saw that I’d hooked my fingers around the ankle strap of Caroline’s shoe. Using both hands, I grabbed her foot and pulled her in, then wrestled her over the seat and down to the floor where the wind was tamer. We lay there for a moment, panting. If I hadn’t reached for her right then. If she’d been wearing different shoes….

I helped her out from between the seats and up the aisle until my rescuer could grab her wrist and pull her to safety. When she was safely behind him, I let out a huge sigh of relief. Then I started pulling myself towards him, bracing myself on the seats so that I didn’t slip backwards. I was shaky and exhausted but I could do it. His outstretched hand was only a few feet away.

And that was when the pilot must have decided we weren’t descending quickly enough, and pushed the nose down into a steeper dive.

The floor tilted crazily under my feet.

I grabbed for a handhold, but my oxygen-starved muscles were weak and slow. I fell backwards, tumbling head over heels. The wind grabbed me.

And I was sucked out through the hole and into the dark sky.