Chapter 118: The First Week

By the seventh morning, no one waited for Xiling’s main entrance to reopen.

In the first two days, everything had still felt temporary.

Suitcases remained partly packed, personal belongings stayed inside the rooms assigned to them and every conversation included some version of what they would do once the roads became usable.

By the end of the week, the suitcases had disappeared.

Shichen established a maintenance schedule covering the cooling system, generators, water filtration, ventilation and security barriers. He assigned two people to every inspection because a mistake noticed by one person could be corrected by the other.

Zeyu objected when he discovered that his name appeared beside the wastewater system.

"I built an amphibious command vehicle," Zeyu reminded Shichen as he examined the schedule attached to the kitchen wall. "There must be something mechanical I can inspect that contains fewer contributions from everyone in this room."

Shichen continued recording the morning generator readings. "You wanted a useful responsibility. Wastewater is useful."

"I wanted something impressive," Zeyu countered.

"You can impress us by preventing sewage from entering the living quarters," replied Shichen, his face dropping as he stared at his friend.

Zeyu looked around for support and found none. Even Qinghe avoided his gaze as he finished measuring everyone’s blood pressure.

The medical checks had become another part of their mornings.

Qinghe monitored hydration, sleep and weight while recording symptoms that could indicate problems with air quality or nutrition. None of them enjoyed submitting to the routine, but no one refused after he explained that a preventable illness could become dangerous once outside medical care stopped existing.

Zhiyi tolerated the examinations because Hanchuan did.

She tolerated the exercise schedule for the same reason.

Qinghe had converted one of the empty workrooms into a small fitness area using equipment stored in Xiling. Every morning, the six of them spent 45 minutes preventing the physical decline that would otherwise follow years inside a confined shelter.

Zhiyi approached exercise as another calculation. She completed every required movement with exact repetition, stopped when the assigned number ended and showed no interest in doing one more than necessary.

Hanchuan remained beside her throughout the session.

When Qinghe increased the resistance on her exercise bike, Hanchuan checked the setting. When she reached for her water, he opened the bottle before she touched it. His attention earned an amused look from Zeyu, but Hanchuan ignored him.

When he went to sleep at night, he could still see the thinner version of Zhiyi who had divided food into portions too small to sustain her. He would never regard her health as something safe enough to leave unattended.

Their meals followed a schedule built around using fresh food before it spoiled.

Frozen supplies came next, followed by shelf-stable ingredients and long-term storage only when the earlier categories had been exhausted.

The system was sensible.

Zeyu considered it oppressive.

On the fifth evening, he stood before the locked inventory display and complained that Shichen’s meal plan had assigned them steamed fish twice in one week.

Shichen looked up from the vegetables he was cutting. "The fish was thawed when we transferred it from the vehicle. We either eat it or waste it."

"I’m not objecting to the fish," Zeyu explained as he opened the seasoning cabinet. "I’m objecting to the steaming. We own two ovens and live beneath a mountain. The heat produced by one roasted fish will not destroy civilization."

"The ovens remain off-limits," snapped Shichen, not willing to budge on the issue.

"Civilization has already been destroyed. Your argument is outdated," hissed back Zeyu.

Zhiyi sat at the dining table reviewing the government’s latest population figures. Without looking up, she informed Zeyu that civilization still existed outside their borders. "Civilization as a whole hasn’t been destroyed. Just our world," she continued with a shrug.

Zeyu closed the seasoning cabinet and pointed toward her. "That was unnecessarily cruel."

Hanchuan placed a bowl of prepared fruit beside Zhiyi’s tablet. "She’s adapting."

The others laughed before Zeyu could object.

Laughter came more easily by the seventh day.

It didn’t mean they had forgotten what was happening outside. Public shelter reports remained available through the government network, and the casualty total increased every morning. The number had become too large for individual deaths to retain meaning.

The government stopped describing the Heat as a short-term emergency.

Water distribution shifted to permanent rationing. Fuel was reserved for protected infrastructure, food transport and medical facilities. Citizens were ordered to remain wherever they had found stable cooling instead of attempting to return home.

Director Han Zhiming appeared during the evening broadcasts to explain which shelters had been consolidated and which districts no longer had functioning emergency services. He looked older than he had during their call, even though less than a week had passed.

The relocation plan Zhiyi created had prevented the national shelter network from collapsing at once.

It hadn’t saved everyone.

No plan could.

Jingwei reviewed Rong Security headquarters twice each day.

His father had divided the 87 people into work rotations, while Manager Zhao enforced water restrictions inside the converted training center.

The underground garage remained empty. Those who had refused to leave eventually departed when the temperature inside their vehicles became unbearable.

The main shelter and training center were stable.

Their supplies had fallen to eight days.

Jingwei no longer stared at the report continuously, but the remaining number haunted him through every meal and conversation. Hanchuan didn’t offer reassurance. Eight days were eight days. Pretending otherwise would make the ninth no easier.

Zeyu’s family moved from the hotel into the apartments he had secured. Their daily calls became an accepted part of the shelter schedule.

Tang Meixiu asked every evening whether the airports had reopened. Song Guowei continued insisting that international pressure would force the government to permit departures. Yinuo stopped asking when Zeyu would join them, which was worse than hearing the question.

Outside their windows, foreign streets remained crowded and ordinary.

Inside Xiling, there were no windows.

The distinction affected everyone differently.

Qinghe watched foreign medical reports and became frustrated when hospitals abroad discussed sending assistance that could not cross the border. Shichen studied international weather data, searching for patterns that might explain why one country burned while the neighboring region remained untouched.

Jingwei stopped watching foreign news entirely.

Hanchuan treated the unaffected world as another inaccessible supply depot. Its existence mattered only if something could travel from there to Zhiyi.

Nothing could.

Zhiyi showed the least emotional response. She recorded the new information, adjusted her probability models and returned to the problems within their reach.

On the seventh afternoon, Hanchuan found her at the workstation calculating the likelihood that the Heat’s geographical boundaries would shift.

He stood behind her chair and read the incomplete model. "Does this change anything we need to do?"

"No," Zhiyi answered after checking the variables again. "There isn’t enough data to predict movement. Our safest option remains staying inside Xiling."

Hanchuan closed the model.

Zhiyi looked up at him. "I wasn’t finished."

"You were," he assured her. "You answered the relevant question."

He drew her away from the workstation before the uncertain variables could consume the rest of her day. Zhiyi resisted for less than a second, then followed him toward the kitchen because he had already placed her afternoon snack on the table.

Their life developed around those small repetitions.

Morning inspections. Exercise. Meals. Government reports. Calls with people they could not reach. Movie nights selected through arguments no one won. Hanchuan checking Zhiyi’s water before his own. Zhiyi correcting calculations the others didn’t realize were wrong.

The routines didn’t make the Heat less dangerous, but they did make four years imaginable in pieces small enough to survive.

That evening, Shichen updated the shelter log and entered the date beneath Xiling’s arrival record. The system automatically calculated the time elapsed since the first emergency alert.

DAY 7 OF THE HEAT

His phone vibrated before he could close the record.

The message came from his older sister, Liang Shuyun. She hadn’t called or written since the Heat began, although Shichen had confirmed through the family security network that she, their parents and her daughter remained inside Qingsong Residence.

Shuyun had attached a photograph of the building’s underground mechanical level.

Several men were pressing insulation panels across the fresh-air intakes. Expanding foam already sealed the edges of two vents, while rolls of plastic waited beside the remaining openings.

A message appeared beneath the photograph.

The residents say outside air is making the building hotter, so they’re sealing the ventilation system. You designed Qingsong. Will this keep the heat out?

Shichen enlarged the photograph.

The residents weren’t sealing out the Heat.

They were sealing more than 300 people inside an airtight building.

Shichen reached for the call button.

"No."