Chapter 22: No Outsiders
Jingwei moved three warehouse locations onto the shared map.
"These are suitable for initial acquisition and distribution. All have private loading areas, internal surveillance and enough distance between them that no employee will connect the shipments."
"We shouldn’t store completed supply packages in city warehouses," Zhiyi said. "They’ll be looted during the first month."
"They won’t remain here. My personnel will distribute them to the shelter sites before the heat."
"Without knowing what the sites are for?"
"Yes. One team transports sealed containers. Another receives them. Neither opens the inventory."
"And the people modifying the shelters?"
"Shichen’s contractors will work under separate companies. Security personnel will control entry and prevent contact between crews."
Shichen placed three property files beside him. "The workers will still remember the locations."
"That can’t be prevented," Jingwei said.
"It can be reduced," Zhiyi replied. "Use different crews for mechanical systems, structural reinforcement and interior construction. House the most important supplies behind walls completed after the other contractors leave."
Shichen considered it. "False service corridors."
"And rooms absent from the plans."
A new expression entered his eyes.
Not trust so much as professional interest. "I can do that," he agreed
Hanchuan signed another authorization and pushed it toward Jingwei. "Acquire the warehouses."
Jingwei read the amounts before signing beneath him.
The project moved from discussion to execution with two strokes of a pen.
By noon, the map contained three underground heat shelters and four smaller emergency sites.
The unfinished hotel became their primary shelter for the first year. The government archive formed the first alternate. A decommissioned mine outside the capital would be reinforced as the third.
None of them shared a water source.
None depended on the same road.
They added supply caches between them, concealed inside ordinary storage facilities that could be abandoned without exposing the larger network.
For the flood, Shichen identified two towers anchored to bedrock and a mountain hotel built above the confirmed waterline.
The first tower had fifty-eight floors. Supplies would be distributed between the thirty-eighth and forty-sixth floors, leaving distance between the water and their living space. The second stood twenty kilometers away on the opposite side of the basin.
The mountain hotel wasn’t tall enough to survive the flood at its current location, but its upper structures could be sealed while boats remained docked against the lower levels.
"The glass stays," Zhiyi said when Shichen began calculating replacement costs.
"It needs reinforcement."
"Yes, but it doesn’t need to be removed."
He adjusted the estimate.
The freeze shelters required more distance.
Shichen found the existing geothermal station near the dormant volcanic field. The company operating it had been losing money for three years and already intended to sell.
"Buy the entire facility," Zhiyi said.
Shichen’s gaze moved toward her.
She waited for him to repeat his earlier observation about whose money would be used.
He didn’t.
Instead, he opened the geological survey attached to the sale file.
"The current plant includes two production wells and one reinjection well. The eastern ridge is outside the mapped lava and lahar zones, but construction hasn’t been approved there."
"Approval is irrelevant if we own the land and complete the excavation before anyone can stop it," Hanchuan said.
Shichen looked briefly offended by the treatment of building law.
Then he enlarged the ridge. "I’ll need geological engineers on-site today if we want to accomplish it."
"Send them," Hanchuan replied with a shrug.
"The alternate shelter must be outside the geothermal field," Zhiyi added. "An earthquake or gas event could affect the entire region."
They selected a pumped-storage hydroelectric station built inside a mountain ninety kilometers south. The third option remained unresolved. Shichen marked two railway tunnels and an abandoned military facility for inspection.
Every destination received a primary route and two alternatives.
Every route contained a point where they would stop, assess the shelter remotely and divert before coming close enough to be trapped.
Jingwei added surveillance systems, concealed cameras and independent transmitters to each site.
"Transmitters will eventually fail," he said. "We’ll also use mechanical indicators at the approach points. If a door has been forced or a route occupied, we’ll know before reaching the structure."
"If survivors are already inside?" Qinghe asked.
"We determine whether they can be removed."
"No," Zhiyi said.
Jingwei looked at her.
"We determine whether removing them costs less than using the alternate."
"They would have our supplies."
"Supplies can be abandoned."
"People who steal from us may follow."
"Then prevent them from following. That doesn’t require fighting for the building."
Jingwei’s expression remained cold.
Hanchuan spoke before he could argue. "She decides whether a shelter remains viable. You secure the withdrawal."
The division of authority was immediate.
Zhiyi assessed the equation.
Jingwei executed the defensive response.
He didn’t appear pleased, but he nodded once. "Understood."
The office continued changing around them.
Property files formed separate stacks beneath each phase of the timeline. Zeyu covered the wall display with vehicle dimensions and propulsion systems. Shichen drew the first concealed chambers into the underground hotel. Qinghe organized medical supplies by temperature, shelf life and destination.
Hanchuan stood at the center, converting every conclusion into an order, contract or purchase.
Zhiyi watched the five men occupy the structure she had only written as a list.
The plan no longer depended on one person calculating every answer or another person executing every physical task.
It had six parts now.
Jingwei reviewed the construction schedule and set down his tablet.
"The timetable remains the greatest weakness. We can use compartmentalized crews during preparation, but once the heat begins, six people won’t be enough to defend multiple sites, maintain the vehicle and control the shelter network."
"We won’t control the entire network after the heat," Hanchuan said. "Only the location we occupy and the next destinations."
"Then we need enough people to protect those locations."
"No," replied Zhiyi, her tone absolute. There could be no one outside of the six of them. If there were, the calculations would be off and the probability of them dying would increase.
Jingwei’s gaze hardened. "My closest teams have worked for me for more than a decade. I can select twenty people who won’t question the orders and relocate their immediate families before the grid fails."
The number opened outward.
Twenty employees.
Spouses. Children. Parents.
Other relatives they wouldn’t abandon.
Each connection created another person who might reveal a shelter, consume supplies, resist movement or refuse Zhiyi’s decision to leave an occupied site.
The core unit stopped being six.
It became a settlement without a final boundary.
Jingwei continued. "They can maintain rotating watches, secure the construction equipment and protect the supplies while the rest of us—"
"No outsiders."
Zhiyi’s voice met Hanchuan’s without either of them looking at the other.
The words entered the office at the same moment.
Same answer.
Same certainty.
Jingwei stopped.
Zeyu turned away from the vehicle plans. Shichen’s stylus became still against the tablet. Qinghe looked from Zhiyi to Hanchuan as Hanchuan moved behind her and rested one hand on her shoulder.
Neither of them had needed to ask what the other would choose.
They had already made the decision while dying.
"No outsiders," they repeated. Together.