Eight hours before the crash, the four members of the Brooklyn Science and Tech robotics club, Team Killbot, are on a flight to the Robot Soccer World Championships in Tokyo, Japan. Javier “Javi” Perez, an anxious first-time flyer, is accompanied by team leader Molly Davis, teammates Anna Klimek and Oliver, and their adviser, Mr. Keating.

To distract Javi from his fear, Molly quizzes him with engineering trivia about the airplane. She eventually reassures him by stating that the airline, Aero Horizon, has a perfect 40-year safety record with zero crashes. As the plane’s doors close for takeoff, Molly asks one last question about what flight attendants call the chaotic event of oxygen masks dropping from the ceiling. She reveals that the slang term is a “rubber jungle,” an image of panic that leaves Javi feeling uneasy once again.

Aboard the same flight, Yoshi Kimura, a teenager traveling alone, dreads his arrival in Tokyo, where he faces severe punishment from his father. Nine months earlier, he stole his family’s priceless 400-year-old katana—a national treasure of Japan—and fled to New York. The sword is now in the cargo hold as he returns home. Tormented by his uncertain future and feeling like an outsider in both countries, Yoshi puts on noise-canceling headphones and wishes the plane will never land.

Hours later, the plane is flying over the Arctic. Molly wakes up and looks out at the endless snow and ice below. With her teammates asleep, she feels bored and lonely. As she drifts back to sleep, she has a vivid dream of a powerful, angry consciousness on the ice reaching up to grab the plane. In the dream, this force tears through the aircraft’s wiring and alters its course before turning its attention directly to her. Molly awakens with a jolt to find the plane shuddering violently. The cabin lights are flickering, smoke is filling the air, and alarms are shrieking as oxygen masks drop from the ceiling.

As the plane falls apart, a strangely calm Anna puts on her oxygen mask and helps a panicked Oliver with his. The top of the cabin is suddenly ripped away, exposing them to the freezing sky and a powerful wind that sucks out all loose debris. A spider-like electrical energy moves through the cabin, probing Anna’s mind with what feels like a series of logic tests. When the energy being lets go of her, she sees that Mr. Keating and his seat are gone, replaced by a hole in the floor. The lightning then strikes another passenger, whose seat is torn loose and thrown from the plane. Believing that it must be a dream, Anna watches most of the other seats and passengers disappear before the plane scrapes to a halt. When she looks up, she sees that they have crashed in a forest.

In the sudden silence after the crash, Javi awakens in the tilted, open-roofed cabin. He discovers that nearly all the seats and passengers are gone, with only Team Killbot—Molly, Anna, Oliver, and himself—remaining. At Molly’s urging, they evacuate down an emergency slide. They find themselves in a hot, humid jungle, a stark contrast to the Arctic landscape they were flying over. The plane is severely damaged, with its tail section and cockpit missing, yet Molly notes that its straight landing path suggests a controlled crash. Oliver hopes that the other passengers aren’t there because they went for help, but Anna bluntly states that they were taken.

Anna explains that a strange electrical force took the other passengers, a phenomenon that Molly also witnessed in her dream. To avoid panicking Oliver, Molly directs the group to survival tasks like gathering supplies from the plane. Their search is interrupted when another emergency slide deploys and three more survivors appear: two young Japanese girls and an older teen boy. Molly sends Anna and Oliver to help them. She and Javi discuss their impossible location, concluding that they’re thousands of miles off course. They then hear a noise from the damaged cargo hold and enter to investigate. Inside, they find another passenger, who asks for help finding his sword.

Yoshi is relieved when Molly and Javi help him recover his family’s katana from the cargo hold. Outside, the group of survivors now totals eight. The older teenager, Caleb, tries to take charge, but Molly quickly shuts down his idea to build a signal fire near the leaking jet fuel. After introductions are made, the two Japanese girls are identified as sisters Kira and Akiko. They don’t speak English, so Yoshi, who’s bilingual, interprets. Caleb suggests building a shelter, but Molly argues that it’s impractical and unnecessary: They’re not in danger of hyperthermia, which is primarily what rudimentary shelter prevents. When Oliver becomes distraught over the missing passengers, Yoshi takes command. He grabs a radio and a canteen from a survival kit, straps on his sword, and announces that he’s going into the jungle alone to find a water source.

While taking inventory of salvaged supplies, Anna teaches Kira and Akiko the English words for various items. The group discovers that their compasses are useless, spinning aimlessly. Javi gathers water bottles from the plane, but they calculate that they only have a three-day supply. Meanwhile, Akiko finds a strange, donut-shaped device with two rings of symbols among the wreckage. As Anna examines it, she twists the rings, causing two symbols to align and glow. The device trembles and feels weightless in her hand. At the same moment, Javi, who has been bouncing on an inflatable slide, is launched high into the air as the force of gravity suddenly weakens around them.

Floating almost weightlessly, Javi realizes that Anna’s device has altered gravity. He uses the slide to launch himself above the treetops for a better view. He sees the plane’s long straight path of deceleration along the ground and concludes that some force must have protected it from completely breaking apart. He also spots a glimmering shape on the horizon and hears a sound like a distant waterfall. As he descends, a flock of aggressive, razor-beaked birds attacks him, slashing his skin and clothes. Anna yells at him to use Newton’s third law of motion and throws the plane’s heavy emergency door upward. Javi catches it and hurls it away, propelling himself rapidly toward the ground and narrowly avoiding the birds’ next pass. Just as he lands, Anna deactivates the device, and gravity returns to normal. The emergency door plummets from the sky, embedding itself in the ground just feet away.

Molly and Oliver emerge from the plane to find Javi wounded and one of the slides deflated. Anna dubs the flock “shredder birds”; Javi is slightly miffed that he can’t come up with a better name. Molly insists that they must find Yoshi, who’s vulnerable to the dangerous birds, but Caleb argues that it’s too risky. When the others try to explain what happened with the gravity device, Caleb dismisses their story as fantasy. To avoid conflict, Anna pretends that the device is now broken. Caleb, asserting leadership, declares that he will scout the immediate area while the others devise a way to make a loud sound to guide Yoshi back. Once Caleb is gone, Anna reveals that she lied and that the device still works; she just doesn’t trust the self-important Caleb with its power. The team decides that Molly, Javi, and Anna will use the device to travel through the treetops toward the waterfall that Javi heard, hoping to find Yoshi. Oliver will remain behind with the sisters to work on rigging an alarm system.