Chapter 112: A Different Door

Rong Jianfeng kept his hand above the shelter release.

On the exterior camera, Manager Zhao struck the reinforced door again. The people crowded behind him had nowhere to retreat without returning to the upper floors, where the temperature continued to rise.

"They’re our people," Rong Jianfeng repeated, his anger giving way to urgency. "I will not leave them in that corridor."

"If you open the main shelter, you lose control of the entrance," Jingwei warned as he accessed the headquarters security system. "Nineteen people become 87, and everyone inside learns that hitting the door is enough to make you unlock it."

Manager Zhao leaned toward the exterior intercom. "Chairman Rong, my granddaughter can’t breathe. Please open the door."

The camera shifted when he lifted a young girl into view. Her face had become red from the heat, and her head rested limply against his shoulder.

Su Lihua covered her mouth. "Jingwei, she’s only six."

Jingwei saw the child.

He also saw the adults pressing closer behind her, the emergency bags hanging from their shoulders and the open fire door at the far end of the corridor. Nothing prevented more people from following the same path underground.

Hanchuan had seen another child outside another shelter.

Jingwei finally understood why that memory hadn’t changed his answer.

"Don’t open the main door," Jingwei ordered as he locked the release from his administrator account.

Rong Jianfeng pressed the control. When nothing happened, he turned toward the camera with open fury. "You overrode me."

"Yes," Jingwei confirmed without apologizing.

"You are not inside this building."

"That’s why I can still make the decision." Jingwei opened the underground plans beside the camera feed. "You’re looking at the child. I’m looking at every entrance connected to the corridor."

Rong Jianfeng struck the useless control with the side of his hand. "Then what do you expect me to do? Watch them die?"

"No." Jingwei highlighted a service passage running behind the loading bays. "I’m opening a different route."

The training center occupied the eastern side of the underground complex. Its fire shutters had already closed, separating it from the surface entrances, while the first portable cooling unit approached through the warehouse connection.

Jingwei unlocked a maintenance door 40 meters behind the group.

A green light appeared above it.

He activated the corridor speakers and addressed the people outside. "Manager Zhao, turn around. The maintenance door behind you will take everyone into the underground training center."

Manager Zhao looked toward the green light but didn’t move. "The training center isn’t a shelter."

"It will have cooling, water and filtration equipment within 20 minutes," Jingwei explained, keeping his voice level despite the child in the man’s arms. "The door in front of you will not open."

Several employees immediately moved toward the alternate entrance. Others remained behind Manager Zhao, waiting for him to decide whether they trusted Jingwei’s instructions.

Manager Zhao tightened his hold on his granddaughter. "Your parents are inside the real shelter."

"My parents entered before it reached capacity," Jingwei replied, refusing to let guilt alter the limit. "The training center is the protection available to you."

The distinction sounded like Hanchuan.

Jingwei hated that he understood it now.

Manager Zhao looked at the child in his arms before turning toward the green-lit door. "If the cooling equipment isn’t there—"

"It’s already moving," Jingwei interrupted, his patience breaking beneath the urgency. "Carry her through the door before you waste more time arguing about which room you deserve."

Manager Zhao obeyed.

The remaining people followed him into the maintenance passage. Jingwei watched each person cross the threshold before locking the route behind them.

Only then did he reopen the audio connection inside the main shelter.

Su Lihua released the breath she had been holding. "You saved them."

"I moved them," Jingwei corrected while adding 19 people to the training-center population. "That isn’t the same thing."

The new calculation appeared beside the shelter inventory.

The combined supplies would last nine days.

Xinyi read the number over her brother’s shoulder. "It was 12."

"It was," Jingwei confirmed as he reassigned the auxiliary water tanks.

"And if more people arrive?"

"Then it becomes less."

His sister looked toward the sealed door. "Would you leave the next group outside?"

Jingwei didn’t answer immediately.

He could convert storage rooms, loading bays and parts of the garage. Every expansion would require more cooling, more water and more power. Saving additional people today meant exhausting every protected area sooner.

Nine days wasn’t survival. It was time purchased at a price he hadn’t calculated yet.

Hanchuan remained beside Zhiyi, neither offering advice nor interfering in the decisions that Jingwei was making.

He had already told Jingwei where the boundary existed. Everything belonging to Rong Security remained Jingwei’s to spend.

Zeyu examined the underground loading network. "You have two more portable cooling units after the first four reach the training center. The warehouse also contains field cots and packaged meals."

"Those were assigned to domestic disaster deployments," Jingwei replied as he opened the inventory.

"Domestic disasters have arrived," Zeyu pointed out, his sarcasm subdued by the people visible on the feed.

Jingwei redirected the remaining equipment.

Inside headquarters, Rong Jianfeng watched the orders appear on his tablet. His anger hadn’t disappeared, but it had lost some of its certainty.

"You knew where the alternate routes were," he said, his tone accusing Jingwei of an absence that extended beyond the current emergency. "You knew how to control every system in this building, yet you weren’t here when we needed you."

"I built the security network," Jingwei reminded him. "I can operate it from where I am."

"That isn’t what I meant."

Jingwei understood what his father meant. Remote instructions didn’t replace a son standing beside his family when the world ended.

He refused to apologize for remaining alive.

"The equipment will reach the training center in 16 minutes," Jingwei said instead. "Move 44 people out of the main shelter now. Waiting until the other group is settled will create another argument over who belongs where."

Rong Jianfeng stared at him before turning away to carry out the order.

Xinyi remained near the camera.

"Big brother, are you alone?" she asked, her voice quiet enough to exclude their parents from the question.

Jingwei looked around the table.

Hanchuan’s hand rested against Zhiyi’s chair. Zeyu monitored the cargo movers, Shichen controlled the fire shutters and Qinghe watched the child’s condition through the training-center camera.

"No," Jingwei answered, although the word didn’t ease the guilt in his chest.

Xinyi followed his glance toward the others. "Are they why you didn’t come back?"

Jingwei considered denying it. The truth was more complicated than choosing his friends over his family, but every explanation ended with him sitting inside a prepared shelter while she stood in one that would fail within days.

"I stayed because this is the safest place available to me," Jingwei told her, forcing himself not to soften the answer. "I won’t leave it."

His sister nodded once, but hurt remained visible across her face. "I don’t think I would leave either."

The admission disturbed him more than anger would have.

A new alert opened beside the underground cameras.

Vehicles had begun entering the headquarters parking garage.

One arrived first, followed by three more. People climbed out carrying bags, water containers and children. Several wore Rong Security uniforms, but many were relatives Jingwei didn’t recognize.

Zeyu checked the arrival records. "Manager Zhao sent 14 messages after you opened the training center."

On the camera, another vehicle descended into the garage.

Then another.

Jingwei watched the number of people seeking shelter rise past 100.

Hanchuan didn’t remind him that he had predicted this.

He didn’t need to.