“Be with you in a moment, Dauphine. I just want to make sure autopilot’s running smoothly. A robot takes over for most of the flight from now on. A very smart one.” There it was. That accent again. The man from Security! The man with the sexy British accent! The air left my chest and the pressure squeezed my lungs. Feeling tantalised and terrified at that same time had a bad effect on my stomach. I slapped both hands on the curved walls of the cockpit to steady myself as the plane rose and straightened. The pilot faced a wall of lights and levers that seemed to blink and shift on their own. Then he finally turned his chair around, aviators off, brown eyes on me. I gasped. “Don’t worry, we’re on automatic, but we’re not going to be alone in here for long, so I apologise ahead of time for the furtive nature of our interlude,” he said, loosening the top button of his uniform. “But I need to know, before we continue with our tutorial on the safety of flight: Do you accept the Step, Miss Mason?”