The engine exploded midair—flames tearing past the window, metal screaming like it was trying to rip itself in half—and while people were screaming, praying, or frozen stiff, I was already counting the seconds between falling and dying.
We hit the Andes hard, and those of us still breathing dragged ourselves from the wreck, straight into something worse: a survival cult run by a smooth-talking fraud who turned trauma into power and let a boy die to keep control.
But I didn’t survive a crash just to play along. And before it was over, every lie he built would snap under the weight of cold, hard proof—and someone like him would finally answer for what he did.
A Thin, Cold Silence: The Unraveling Sky
The groan of the wings was the first thing that felt wrong. It wasn’t the familiar, reassuring hum of a machine doing its job. It was a sound of protest, of metal under a strain it was never meant to bear. I’m an archivist. My world is one of carefully preserved paper, of cataloged history and the quiet, predictable decay of organic materials. I understand stress points. The sound vibrating through the floor and up my spine was a stress point.
David, my husband, was asleep beside me, his head resting against the cool plastic of the window. His mouth was slightly open, a picture of serene trust in the physics of flight. I envied him. My own hands were clenched around the armrests, my knuckles white. I stared at the back of the seat in front of me, at the small, pixelated map showing our little airplane icon suspended impossibly over the jagged peaks of the Andes.
Then came the lurch. It wasn’t turbulence. It was a fall. A sickening, stomach-climbing drop that stole the breath from one hundred and twenty passengers in a single, unified gasp. David snapped awake, his hand immediately finding mine. His eyes were wide with a question I couldn’t answer. The lights flickered, died, then came back on, casting the cabin in a sickly yellow emergency glow.
A flight attendant, her face a mask of practiced calm that didn’t quite reach her eyes, was gripping the back of a seat. “Please remain calm,” she said, her voice a thin thread against the rising tapestry of fear. But the groaning had become a shriek, a high-pitched scream of shearing metal. Outside David’s window, I saw it. The engine, engulfed in a ball of angry orange flame, trailing black smoke like a bleeding wound in the brilliant blue sky.
My archivist’s mind, the part that craves order and documentation, started a frantic, useless inventory. One failing engine. A rapid descent. The Andes mountains. These were the facts. The rest was just noise—the babble of prayers, the sharp cry of a child, the frantic scrabbling for oxygen masks that hadn’t dropped. I squeezed David’s hand, the simple, solid feel of it the only data point that mattered. The world tilted violently, and the screaming of the metal became the only sound on earth.
The White Nothing
Silence. A thick, profound silence that was somehow heavier than the noise that came before it. Cold was the first sensation. A deep, penetrating cold that seeped through my coat and jeans, making my teeth ache. I opened my eyes to a world of impossible white. Snow had burst through a rupture in the fuselage, blanketing everything in a clean, soft layer that belied the horror beneath.
“David?” My voice was a croak. I pushed myself up, my ribs screaming in protest. A jagged piece of metal was sticking through the seat where I’d been sitting. Had I not been thrown forward, it would have gone right through me.
He was a few feet away, half-buried in snow and debris, a dark gash on his forehead. But he was breathing. The relief was so sharp, so absolute, it felt like a second impact. I crawled to him, my hands shaking as I brushed the snow from his face.
Around us, the silence was slowly being replaced by the sounds of survival. Moans. Cries. A man’s voice, clear and commanding, cutting through the haze of shock. “Everyone who can move, get over here! We need to help the others! Stay positive! We are alive!”
I looked toward the voice. A man in an expensive-looking ski jacket stood near a large, torn section of the plane’s belly. He was handsome, with the kind of practiced charisma you see on corporate retreat posters. He was already gathering the walking wounded, his words a balm on their raw nerves.
My focus remained narrow. David first. Then, inventory. My training took over, a strange, cold comfort in the midst of chaos. The galley must have survived; emergency supplies. The cockpit; the radio, the black box. I started to mentally catalog the wreckage, my eyes scanning the mangled metal not as a tomb, but as a potential archive of life-saving materials. While the charismatic man was building a congregation, I was planning to build a shelter.
The First Law
We were lucky. If you can call plummeting from the sky and slamming into a mountain lucky. A large section of the fuselage had remained mostly intact, a broken metal tube that could, with work, become a shield against the wind. I had found it, my mind automatically seeking the most structurally sound piece of wreckage. I had helped David, who was conscious but dazed, and a few others drag the injured inside before the sun began to sink and the true, brutal cold of the Andes night descended.
Then, he appeared. The man from before. His name was Julian. He strode into our makeshift shelter as if he owned it, his smile bright and incongruous in the gathering gloom.
“Excellent work, everyone!” he boomed, his voice echoing in the confined space. “I had a vision of this very spot, a place of safety for us. Our collective positive energy led us right here!”
A few people nodded, their faces full of a desperate, searching hope. I said nothing, focusing on the small stack of supplies I’d salvaged: a handful of water bottles, some bags of peanuts, and a precious first-aid kit. I was already calculating rations, my mind a quiet abacus of calories versus survivors.
About the Author
