The World Ends In 27 Days

Zhiyi obeyed, but before anyone else could move, Zeyu claimed the chair on her other side. He settled into it with a smile that made it clear the choice had been deliberate.

There was definitely something wrong with him.

Hanchuan would have to deal with it later. For now, he turned the tablet toward Zhiyi and opened the first property file. "I bought two more sites while you were gone."

Her attention sharpened immediately. The exhaustion didn’t disappear, but it retreated behind something more focused.

Buildings were a defined problem, and defined problems gave her somewhere safe to put her mind.

"Where?" she asked, already diving into the new problem in front of her. Her shoulder’s dropped, and both Hanchuan and Zeyu let out a quiet breath of relief.

"The first is thirty-eight kilometers northwest of the city," explained Hanchuan.

He enlarged the satellite image before adjusting the angle so Zhiyi could see it easier.

The property occupied nearly fourteen hectares surrounded by forest, with a private access road winding through the hills. The main structure had been built into the slope rather than on top of it, and several secondary buildings stood farther down the property.

Zhiyi leaned closer to study the image. "Elevation?"

"Seven hundred and twelve meters," Jingwei replied.

"Groundwater?"

"Private wells. Shichen is verifying the yield and depth," nodded Hanchuan.

"And its grid dependency?"

"Currently high," Shichen replied with a sigh. "But it won’t stay that way," he assured her.

Zhiyi’s fingers moved over the screen, enlarging the topographic map, and Hanchuan watched as bit by bit she continued to relax until she was completely back to normal.

This was a language she understood. Here, every question had a measurable answer and every weakness could be corrected.

"The second property is east of the reservoir," he continued after a moment. He switched the files, and then looked up to study Zhiyi’s reaction. He didn’t think she would like this one, but he didn’t know for sure if she even knew what she was looking at.

The moment her fingers stopped against the screen, Hanchuan knew she had recognized it.

The photograph showed an old private retreat enclosed by a stone wall. The main house was broad and low, with a service building behind it and several acres of land descending toward the reservoir. The structures had been renovated repeatedly over the years, but the central layout hadn’t changed.

It was the place where the others had survived the first few months of the heat.

It was also the place where all four of them had died.

Zhiyi stared at the screen for several seconds before she spoke. "Absolutely not."

It was the first thing she had said about either property that wasn’t a question, and the finality in her voice erased Zeyu’s smile.

Across the table, Shichen looked at Hanchuan, but Hanchuan remained still.

He had expected the refusal from the moment he chose to purchase the property. Expecting it didn’t make the fear beneath it any easier to hear.

"We’re keeping it," he said, making sure to keep his voice soft so he didn’t stress her out any more than she already had been today.

Zhiyi’s fingers withdrew from the tablet as though the image had become something she could feel beneath them. "Hanchuan."

"I know."

"That place almost killed all four of you."

Silence settled over the conference table. Zeyu slowly leaned back in his chair, his earlier satisfaction disappearing as he looked at the building on the screen.

Until now, the safe houses had existed only in the bits and pieces that Hanchuan had been willing to give them.

All four men knew how they had died during the first heat. They even knew the order in which it had happened and enough of the circumstances to understand which failures couldn’t be repeated.

But Hanchuan had never turned their deaths into a story told for the sake of telling it. He gave them the information they needed and kept the rest to himself.

Zhiyi had known all of it.

She continued staring at the photograph, and Hanchuan found himself seeing the property as it had been rather than as it currently stood.

He remembered Shichen arguing over the placement of the barricades and Zeyu dismantling equipment in the garage because he was convinced he could make it useful somewhere else.

Jingwei had checked the perimeter every night after the temperature dropped enough for him to go outside, while Qinghe rationed medical supplies that had never been sufficient for the number of people depending on him.

Hanchuan remembered too many days measured by the temperature and too many plans that had failed one by one. More than anything, he remembered the house gradually emptying and the day he had finally crawled out of it, his legs completely useless.

But none of those memories changed the value of the property. Especially now that they had the opportunity to fix the faults before hand.

"The location didn’t kill them," he reminded her. "The failures did."

Zhiyi finally looked at him. "There were multiple failures."

"Yes," he agreed, nodding his head. He knew that she would have to work through everything before she would be willing to settle on what he already knew.

And that was fine. She always saw things he didn’t.

"The cooling capacity was insufficient for the occupied area, and the western wall absorbed heat throughout the afternoon," she continued, her eyes glazing over as she remembered everything that he had ever told her in their last life.

"It won’t this time. We’ll rebuild the wall and increase the cooling capacity," he assured her, nodding his head though to agree.

Her gaze returned to the image. Hanchuan could see her mind moving through the building now, finding each point where their survival had broken down. "The backup ventilation failed."

"We’ll replace the entire system."

"Water storage was inadequate for the number of people inside."

"I promise that it won’t be this time."

Zhiyi’s attention moved between him and the photograph, but the resistance hadn’t left her.

She wasn’t objecting because she believed the property had somehow caused their deaths. She was objecting because she knew precisely what it had cost them, and right now, all she could see was the four men dying inside it.

Hanchuan reached across the table and closed his hand around hers. Her fingers were cool against his palm, but she didn’t pull away.

"We aren’t rebuilding that safe house," he told her.

Zhiyi went still beneath his touch. "We’re putting the mountain hotel there."

Her eyes narrowed slightly as she considered what he meant. "The structure isn’t the same."

"The structure doesn’t need to be."