Prologue

Some nightmares do come true.

Maria’s nightmares about being on the verge of a plane crash had ceased a few years ago. But this was not a dream. It was as real as death. This time, contrary to her dreamworld-horror- trips, the plane would not vanish into thin air as she woke up breathless, sweating in her bed at home. This time when she woke from her coma it would be with 3 broken ribs, black-and- blue, bruised, battered, beaten, a metal pipe through her left thigh. Somewhere, nowhere, deep in the Alps.

**360 seconds to impact **

This time her two daughters, little Eva and teenage Joana are next to her. Sebastian, her lover, best friend and husband, is in the cockpit trying to immobilize the pilot, wrestling the handles away from him. Little does he know Maria had already dreamt it all: that he will lose the match with a bullet to the back, and that the plane, fully boarded with heads of state and their families, kings, queens, a dozen princes and princesses, is on its final descent into those snowy mountains in the middle of nowhere. Some of these passengers will die in exactly six minutes. First time in several years that Cryptopunk Silva was not there with her, on that plane. Maria was in full warrior mode, there is no way she was going to allow her two precious babies to become corpses.

60 seconds to impact

All the royal children on board are already fortified in their anti-crash-chambers. One chamber is still empty, it belonged to the little prince who was not on board as planned due to food poisoning. The pilot bombards through the chaos, grabs Eva from Maria’s hands while violently smashing the handle of his handgun into the mother’s forehead. She drops, dizzied into disorientated desperate panic. The pilot manages to secure his target, the chosen one, Eva, in the vacant chamber, just in time, he bolts it shut, caps it, locks it, seals it, marks it.

22 seconds to impact...