Chen Mo recognized the two flight attendants immediately.
The older one was the chief purser—both women had stayed remarkably calm during the entire ordeal, soothing passengers, checking seat belts, and guiding everyone through emergency brace positions.
Only after the captain's final command—"Prepare for impact"—did they return to their seats and strap in. True professionals to the end.
Seeing that they'd made it out alive, Chen Mo felt an unexpected sense of relief.
But their progress was painfully slow, while the flames were spreading fast. The plane could explode at any moment. Without help, those four wouldn't make it clear in time.
The other survivors—some injured, some terrified—kept their distance. The three foreign men who had first escaped stood far down by the beach, watching but making no move to help.
Cowards.
Chen Mo frowned. He couldn't just stand by and watch them die.
His plan to stay hidden hadn't changed: as long as no one saw his face, his identity would remain secret. Helping them wouldn't compromise him—it would just make the rescue later a bit more troublesome. Nothing beyond his control.
Besides, his "stay hidden" plan had always been about caution, not fear.
He took a step forward—then froze.
Something unexpected happened.
"Don't go! It's too dangerous!"
The voice came from the business-suited woman beside the old man—the one Chen Mo had noticed earlier.
Ignoring the protest of the burly bodyguard next to her, she ran straight toward the burning wreck. Without hesitation, she grabbed one of the injured men from the flight attendants, throwing his arm over her shoulder.
"Thank you!"
The two flight attendants gasped in relief. They knew better than anyone how dangerous a burning aircraft could be.
With the woman's help, their pace quickened—but before they could reach safety—
BOOM!
A massive explosion erupted behind them. A blast of searing heat and pressure surged outward, throwing them all face-first into the dirt.
For a moment, the world turned white and red.
Luckily, they'd already made it some distance away. The shockwave had knocked them down, singeing their hair, but not killing them.
When the roaring flames subsided, the five women and two wounded men scrambled to their feet, staggering farther from the wreck. None of them dared to look back.
The nearer they were to the ocean, the safer it felt.
Up close, the chief flight attendant's companion—bloodied and pale—was clearly the captain himself. His once-white uniform was soaked crimson, his face masked with dried blood.
The other injured man was worse: a deep gash along his leg still bled freely.
With their rescuers' help, the group finally reached the others waiting farther out, where the elderly man sat weakly on the ground, catching his breath.
"Su Wan, are you all right?"
The old man's voice trembled with worry.
"I'm fine, Chairman," she said, brushing back her smoke-scorched hair. "Just a little shaken."
Su Wan, the calm, intelligent woman, was the old man's assistant—or more likely, his executive secretary. She helped him stand as the rest of the survivors gathered around.
There were only a dozen of them left.
Out of more than three hundred passengers, only twelve had survived—including the crew.
They stood in silence, gazing at the blazing wreckage on the distant beach. No one spoke. The air smelled of salt, smoke, and death.
But there was no time to mourn. Two people were still badly injured.
The captain's condition was relatively stable—his head wound was bleeding heavily, but he was conscious, and the concussion seemed mild.
The middle-aged man with the leg wound, however, was in danger. The gash was too deep. With no proper medical tools, the flight attendants could only tear strips of cloth to wrap it, and use a belt as a makeshift tourniquet.
Every half hour, they'd have to loosen it—or risk losing the leg entirely.
The man had already lost too much blood. His face was gray, his eyes glassy, and he drifted in and out of awareness.
The group could do little but pray.
While the attendants worked, Su Wan checked on the old man again. Seeing his color return, she sighed in relief, then turned toward the two young girls Chen Mo had saved earlier.
They'd regained consciousness after the explosion, but what greeted them was a nightmare—flaming wreckage, dead bodies, an unfamiliar island.
The two clung to each other in fear, trembling.
Their names were Zhang Xin and Xu Qing—recent high school graduates who had planned to study abroad together. They'd joined a tour to Los Angeles to celebrate their freedom, never imagining it would end in disaster.
They had fainted when the plane began to tear apart. By the time they'd woken inside that hellish cabin—screams, blood, fire—they had passed out again from shock.
Now, stranded on an unknown island, the two girls could only hug each other tightly, eyes wide and wet with terror.
Then Su Wan approached—calm, elegant, her gray suit torn and dirt-stained but her posture still composed. Her presence alone brought a faint sense of order to the chaos.
By dusk, the fire in the wreckage finally began to die down.
The twelve survivors—captain, attendants, passengers, and the old man with his aides—gathered together in the fading light.
They had endured the crash, escaped the flames, and washed up on a nameless island in the middle of nowhere. But now came the harder part: surviving the night.
The sun hung low on the horizon. Soon, darkness would fall.
The burning wreckage was too dangerous to approach. The open beach was cold and exposed to the sea wind.
After a brief discussion, they chose a spot halfway between the forest and the beach—the stretch of scorched earth the plane had carved open during its landing.
There, they built a campfire.
Charred debris from the explosion and fallen branches from the forest served as fuel. When the first flames crackled to life, a thin warmth spread through the group, easing the chill in the air and the fear in their hearts.
The survivors sat in silence around the fire, staring into the flickering light. No one spoke. Only the sound of popping embers filled the air.
Somewhere behind them, the shattered fuselage hissed and burned, its glow reflected faintly in their eyes.
Twelve lives out of three hundred.
The odds were cruel.
And worse—no one knew where they were.
The captain had already explained that the plane had deviated far off course before the crash. Even if the black box survived—buried now under the waves—it might take weeks or months to locate.
Its distress signal had a range of only a few hundred kilometers and a lifespan of barely thirty days. If rescue didn't come before then…
They might never be found.
And as the sun finally dipped below the horizon, casting the island into deep blue twilight, an uneasy truth settled over them all—
They were alone.