The World Ends In 27 Days

"Who the hell is your stepsister?" Zeyu demanded, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. He might have had more girlfriends than everyone else in the room combined, but he was pretty sure that he had never slept with a woman that looked like Zhiyi.

"Qiao Meilin," she replied like she hadn’t just sent him spinning.

He waited for a moment, trying to put a face to the name, but the name apparently provided no useful information.

"She commissioned a life-sized pillow printed with a photograph of you that she chose," Zhiyi explained between bites of her sandwich. "You aren’t wearing a shirt, and your pants are unfastened."

Qinghe covered his mouth, but his shaking shoulder gave away his enjoyment of this conversation.

Shichen passed Zeyu a box of tissues. "You should clean the table before she provides further details."

"I don’t want further details," Zeyu denied, his face turning several different colors before landing on white. "I think I’m scarred for life."

"You asked why she was staring."

"That was before I knew there was a pillow with my face on it in some random’s room."

"She sleeps with it every night," Zhiyi added with a shrug.

Zeyu stared at her. "How could you possibly know that?"

"The fabric showed compression consistent with repeated use."

Jingwei’s attention moved over Zeyu’s open collar. "Why does that photograph exist?"

"It was advertising."

"For what?"

Zeyu pulled several tissues from the box. "A clothing campaign."

"You weren’t wearing clothes."

"I was wearing pants."

"They were unfastened," Zhiyi reminded him.

"I remember."

Qinghe finally gave up trying to hold back his laughter and it burst from him.

Shichen moved the tissue box out of Zeyu’s reach before he could crush it. Jingwei remained focused on the more important question of why the photograph existed, while Zeyu insisted that an advertising contract had prevented him from controlling how it was used.

"You agreed to be photographed with your pants open," Jingwei said slowly like he was trying to understand the situation.

"I didn’t agree to become someone’s bedding."

"Those events are causally related," Zhiyi replied.

Zeyu pointed a damp tissue at her. "You aren’t helping."

"I wasn’t attempting to."

Hanchuan waited until Zhiyi had eaten half the sandwich before ending the discussion.

"Secure the room."

The amusement disappeared immediately.

Jingwei moved first.

He closed the office door and engaged the internal lock before taking a small device from his pocket. He crossed the room slowly while its screen responded to the active electronics around them.

"Phones."

The other three placed theirs on the table without asking why. Hanchuan added his.

Jingwei looked at Zhiyi.

"Hers stays," Hanchuan said. "I checked it yesterday."

Jingwei’s attention remained on him for half a second before he accepted the answer. He collected the other devices and placed them inside a shielded case retrieved from a cabinet near Hanchuan’s desk.

Shichen lowered the privacy panels over the glass separating the office from Assistant Lin’s workspace. Hanchuan touched a control beside his chair, turning the windows overlooking the city opaque.

Jingwei completed another circuit of the room.

"No active transmission beyond the building systems," he said. "The internal cameras are disabled."

"No one enters," Hanchuan ordered.

Jingwei sent a message from the office console to Assistant Lin, then disconnected the system from the network.

The office became silent.

Zeyu’s energy drink remained beside the damp tissues, but the amusement had left his face. Shichen returned Zhiyi’s notebook to the edge of the table without opening it. Qinghe sat opposite Hanchuan, his earlier concern still visible in the set of his mouth.

Hanchuan waited until Zhiyi finished the water and took another bite of the sandwich.

"The world ends in twenty-six days," he announced like there was something new to invest in and he wanted his friends to be involved. His voice was calm, authoritative, and completely unwilling to accept anything less than full obedience.

No one interrupted him.

"The first temperature spike begins before dawn on the twenty-sixth day. By midday, most of the electrical grid will have failed. The heat lasts four years and kill more than half of the world’s population."

Hanchuan’s hand remained around Zhiyi’s waist while he spoke.

"Two years of flooding will follow it. The water reaches above the thirtieth floor in parts of the capital. After that, the temperature continues falling until the remaining water freezes. The cold lasts four years."

His voice was still completely devoid of emotion, but Jingwei could see Hanchuan’s thumb rubbing the woman’s hip like he was seeking... comfort.

Hanchuan didn’t seek comfort. And definitely not from strange women they had never met.

"And then?" Qinghe asked. It was hard to read the expression on his face.

"The heat returns."

Shichen’s gaze moved toward the opaque windows as though the city beyond them might already have changed. "You’re describing more than ten years."

"Ten years before the cycle began again," Zhiyi corrected him, unable to stay silent. "We died before we could determine whether the second heat would also last four years."

Zeyu looked between them. "You died."

"Yesterday," Hanchuan agreed, looking over at Zhiyi and tightening his arm around her.

There was no hesitation in his answer.

"We both woke up and it was ten years earlier."

The silence that followed was different from the one Hanchuan had created by securing the office.

That silence had contained attention.

This one contained disbelief.

Qinghe leaned forward, his expression becoming clinical again. "Did either of you suffer a head injury recently? Maybe met at the same place and experienced a trauma?"

"No," Hanchuan answered, his eyes fixed on Zhiyi as if he was scared that if he looked away for even a single moment, she would disappear and he would never find her again.

"What about medication?"

"No."

"Loss of consciousness before these memories began?"

"We died," Zhiyi said slowly, cocking her head to the side. "Loss of consciousness occurred after cardiac function stopped, but I don’t know whether that’s medically relevant to your question.