Flashlight, batteries, food bars, knife, radio, matches, and fire starters. Whistle, flares, signal mirror, water purification pills, canteen, compass, and first-aid kit. It’s all here.”

Anna put the list back inside the survival kit and sat back. Putting everything they had scavenged from the plane into piles made her feel better, somehow. As if every problem had a solution.

As if the world still made sense, and Mr. Keating and five hundred other people hadn’t just disappeared.

The two sisters sat before her. Kira—the one with the bleached white streak in her hair—was sketching everything. Her pencil made little skittering sounds above the buzz of insects. Akiko still seemed stunned from the crash, and when Kira murmured to her in Japanese—or sometimes what sounded like French—she didn’t answer.

Anna picked up the survival knife. One side of its blade was serrated, like a saw. Or was that for cleaning fish?

“Knife,” she said.

Kira didn’t look up. She was busy drawing the Aero Horizon logo from the survival kit’s cover. But Akiko looked up timidly.

“Naifu,” she repeated.

“Mirror,” Anna said, pointing at the signal mirror.

“Mira,” Akiko said.

Anna nodded, remembering to smile. But the mirror was probably worthless. A passing plane would never spot the flash of a three-inch reflector through the dense white cloud overhead. The sky seemed endless and formless, impenetrable.

On top of which, she hadn’t heard any engine noises since the crash. Even stranger, the compasses didn’t work—their needles just spun in lazy circles. Anna found herself wondering if they’d landed on an entirely different planet.

She’d heard of alien abductions of people, but never of a whole airplane.

Of course, there were those airplanes that just vanished …

She shook off the thought, which made the numbness descend on her again.

Which tools were the most important for the two Japanese girls to learn the names of? There were so many, all representing different ways to die—dehydration, disease, injury, starvation.

She pointed. “Food bar.”

“Fudoba,” Akiko said.

“Close enough,” Anna said with a shrug. If they were stuck here long enough for the girls to learn fluent English, they were all in deep trouble.

Akiko picked up the radio.

“Radio,” Anna said carefully.

Akiko repeated the word, then turned on the radio and said Yoshi’s name into it. For a moment, they all listened for a response.

Nothing but the hiss of static.

“He’s probably not dead,” Anna said to herself. “Just too far away.”

“Nineteen more!” Javi called from the wing, his arms full of water bottles. He jumped onto the escape slide and zipped down.

As he added the bottles to the water pile, Anna did the math aloud.

“That’s eighty-one. Ten bottles per person, plus one. Enough for two days, maybe three.”

“That’s not very long,” Javi said.

“It isn’t,” Anna said. “There’s a rule about how people die. Two minutes without oxygen. Two days without water. Two weeks without food.”

“Um, you’re doing that thing,” Javi said.

Anna frowned. Molly and Javi always said she was too blunt, especially when talking to people who weren’t engineers.

“But it’s just you,” she said. “The girls don’t speak English.”

“Yeah, but I’m freaking out, too!” A shudder went through Javi. “We just were in a plane crash.”

“I know that,” Anna said.

“Yeah, well, that’s on the list of things that make me not an engineer. Right now I’m just a freaked-out regular person!”

“Okay. But it seems like having only five days before we die of dehydration is important information.”

“True.” Javi sighed. “But we’re not going to die. We’ll get rescued, or it’ll rain, or Yoshi will find water out there. Something has to go right eventually.”

His voice cracked a little at the end, so Anna nodded reassuringly.

Yoshi had the right idea, looking for a source of water. Maybe he’d been a little too dramatic with his exit, not taking a flashlight, food, or any water—just an empty canteen.

But at least Yoshi wasn’t afraid to do something.

And he’d certainly looked impressive with that sword on his back.

She hoped he was okay.

“Can I see the knife?” Javi asked.

Anna handed it over. “Don’t lose it. There’s only one per kit.”

They’d found three survival packs in the plane. According to the crew manual that Oliver had discovered, a fourth kit had been in the missing tail section. Which had to be somewhere nearby …

Or did this jungle simply swallow things?

Anna remembered the passengers being lifted out of the crashing plane. Mr. Keating sitting right next to her, then gone.

She squashed the thought down. Focus on what’s in front of you.

“That’s one for each of us in Team Killbot.” Javi made a swiping motion. “I don’t trust Caleb with a knife, and Yoshi’s got that baller ninja sword.”

Anna looked out into the jungle. It was growing darker, the insects louder. Yoshi’s sword wouldn’t protect him from getting lost.

“Find any more food?” she asked.

“Just nuts and fruit, and some cheese. The meals were still frozen, and this heat is turning them into airplane food slush.”

“Gross,” Anna said. “Also, food poisoning.”

“Almost barfed.” Javi looked up at the plane. “Are Molly and Oliver still in the front?”

“No, they finished. They’re in the luggage hold now.” Anna frowned. “Oliver keeps saying he shouldn’t be here.”

“Oh, crud.” Javi swallowed. “You know his mother wasn’t going to let him come to Japan. Molly talked her into it.”

Anna nodded. “But Oliver talked Molly into talking his mother into it. He wanted to come.”

“Yeah,” Javi sighed. “But maybe he’s changed his mind for some inexplicable reason. Did they find anything useful in the plane? Like, three hundred miles of wire?”

Anna pointed at the pile: backpacks, blankets, plastic bags, soap and shampoo from someone’s carry-on, and a handful of phones—no signal, but maybe they’d be useful as flashlights. Also two of the Killbots, which Molly had salvaged first from the cargo hold.

“Soccer-playing robots. Super useful,” Javi said. He started to hand the knife back to Anna, but Kira reached up and plucked it from his hand.

“Naifu,” she said solemnly, then placed it on the ground and began to draw it. Her Aero Horizon logo was finished—a nearly perfect copy, Anna noticed.

Javi pointed at the trees. “So do your biology thing. Is there any food we can eat out there?”

“Of course,” Anna said. “The problem is, we’re food out there.”

He glanced at Kira and the knife. “We can protect ourselves.”

Anna shook her head. “Nature’s full of stuff that isn’t afraid of knives. Like poisonous plants, bloodsucking insects, parasites that eat you from the inside.”

Javi gave a dramatic sigh. “You’re always so comforting, Anna. And just so you know, I’m being super sarcastic.”

Anna had known, and sometimes Javi’s sarcasm was funny, but not now. She still felt that numbness that had overtaken her after the crash. Too many things didn’t seem real about this. The missing passengers. The weird jungle. Even the darting birds sounded wrong.

Of course, the birds were probably edible. But how to catch one?

A clunk came from the pile next to the water bottles. Akiko was rummaging through it, taking a closer look at everything.

“What’s all that junk?” Javi asked.

Anna shrugged. “Stuff that the girls found in the wreckage behind the plane.”

Akiko held up something questioningly. Black plastic straps woven together.

Anna frowned. It looked like something designed to keep luggage from bouncing around in the hold. “Cargo webbing?”

Akiko repeated the words haltingly, then picked up another piece of wreckage.

Anna took it from her, peering closer. “Huh. I don’t know.”

The device was donut-shaped, a little too big and heavy to be a bracelet. A set of symbols went around the outside of the ring, another on the inside. Anna didn’t recognize any of them.

Was it aircraft equipment of some kind? An antenna? A transmitter?

Now that would be useful.

Anna looked for a switch to turn it on. Nothing.

“Probably just a toy,” Javi said. He was bouncing on the bottom section of the inflatable slide, making the plastic squeak.

“Probably.” Anna looked up at his bouncing. “You know if you puncture that slide, Molly will kill you, right?”

“I’m testing its strength,” Javi said, still bouncing. “And it’s not like we need a life raft.”

“We could collect rainwater with it.” Anna turned back to the unknown device. There was a groove along the inside. If she could twist it open and see its guts, maybe she could figure out what it was.

But when Anna twisted, the device didn’t open—its outer symbols slid clockwise, each aligning with one of the inner symbols.

“Hmm,” she said. “Looks like some kid’s secret decoder ring.”

Javi laughed. “An essential part of every jungle survival kit!”

“Yeah. Unless it has some kind of batteries we can …” Her voice faded. Two of the aligned symbols—one outer, one inner—lit up, pulsing for a moment.

“That’s funny,” she said.

“Funny ha-ha or funny strange?” Javi asked, still bouncing.

She pressed the symbols, and they stayed lit. The device began to tremble in her hands. “Funny … scary?”

“That’s not a funny.”

“It is now,” Anna said. Her head went light and fuzzy, and then she realized something really weird.

The object wasn’t heavy anymore.

A moment ago, it had felt like metal in her hand. But now it weighed no more than hollow plastic.

“Um, this is odd,” Javi said.

She looked up at him. “What is?”

Javi opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out. His expression turned to queasy astonishment as he descended—way too slowly—back down onto the inflatable slide.

His next bounce carried him high into the air.