Chapter 99: He Was Warned

The remote-access request remained on the communications wall while Zhiyi isolated Jinhai Tower from the rest of their shelter network.

Hanchuan stood behind her chair with one hand resting against her shoulder. He didn’t need to know who had reached the upper floors or why they wanted access.

The answer was still no.

Jingwei opened the security feed.

A man in a sweat-soaked dress shirt stood inside the private elevator vestibule.

Emergency lights illuminated the locked shelter entrance and the service stairwell behind him. The elevator display remained dark, and the temperature inside the vestibule had reached 48 degrees.

Zeyu enlarged the image. His usual humor disappeared when he recognized the man. "That’s Jinhai’s facilities director. I met him when we purchased the tower," he announced. But just because he had seen him before didn’t mean he knew why he was there now.

The man wiped his face with his sleeve before pressing the request button again.

Jingwei reached for the intercom controls, but Hanchuan stopped him.

"Disable the panel," Hanchuan instructed, his eyes never leaving the screen.

His four friends turned toward him with varying degrees of confusion. Zhiyi wasn’t confused. She continued isolating Jinhai because she agreed with him.

Shichen glanced toward the facilities director. "That man maintains the tower. If Jinhai develops a mechanical failure, someone inside could complete repairs we can’t perform remotely."

"He won’t enter alone," Hanchuan replied.

Qinghe studied the empty stairwell behind the man. "We don’t know that for sure."

"I do." Hanchuan’s fingers tightened slightly against Zhiyi’s shoulder. "I know exactly what will happen after we open the door."

He remembered another shelter and another group of people promising that they only needed one room for a single night.

He and his friends had admitted a family because one of the children could no longer walk. The family brought relatives to the entrance the following morning. Those relatives told other survivors, and every person outside believed their need was more important than the supplies inside.

They begged until begging failed, and then they attacked.

By the time Hanchuan accepted that the shelter couldn’t be shared, blood covered the entrance and two storage rooms had been emptied.

Mercy hadn’t satisfied anyone. It had taught them that the door could open.

He had learned that lesson before he met Zhiyi. This time, he had spent 27 days ensuring she would never stand on the wrong side of a shelter door.

Zeyu looked from Hanchuan to the unused rooms displayed beside the security feed. "Jinhai is empty. They could stay there until the Heat ends, and we could replace whatever they consume before the Flood."

"With what?" Hanchuan asked.

Zeyu frowned at the question. "We bought everything once," he replied with a shrug. Buying things was easy when you had all the money in the world.

"We did," Hanchuan agreed, nodding his head before his face turned completely blank. "Before the roads melted, the factories closed and the farms died."

"The Heat won’t destroy every supplier," Zeyu argued, although some of his certainty had disappeared. "Four years is a long time. Some industries will recover."

"No, they won’t," Hanchuan replied with the confidence of someone who had already watched them fail.

Money had become useless within months.

It hadn’t mattered how much remained in his accounts when no factories produced replacement parts, no trucks delivered food and no employees were willing to die for a salary they couldn’t spend.

But his friends hadn’t lived through those ten years.

They still believed every loss could be replaced because enough money had always provided another building, another vehicle or another shipment.

An unused property appeared disposable when they could imagine purchasing more later.

But there was no later.

His nine properties provided almost 30 years of protected food and essential supplies, with additional margins covering the uncertain transitions between disasters.

It looked excessive only if every property survived.

"The Flood lasted two years before," Hanchuan said as he indicated the Jinhai building on the monitor. "That place contains everything we need to reach it early, survive those two years and remain if the transition lasts longer than Zhiyi and I remember."

Shichen examined the other two properties assigned to the Flood. "We still have two other Flood shelters."

"We had three Heat shelters yesterday," Hanchuan reminded him. "The fire blocked Luming, and Xiling’s western entrance failed this morning."

Shichen looked toward the damage reports and fell silent.

"Redundancy disappears one property at a time," Hanchuan continued. "Open Jinhai, and we lose one-third of our Flood preparations."

Qinghe’s attention returned to the facilities director. "It may save people now."

"Ture, but that will kill us later," Hanchuan replied.

The facilities director entered an employee code into the access panel only for it to be quickly rejected.

Zeyu watched the man try again before turning back to Hanchuan. "There has to be a compromise."

"There isn’t," Hanchuan assured him.

"We’re talking about leaving people outside an empty shelter." Frustration entered Zeyu’s voice as he gestured toward the unoccupied rooms.

"It isn’t empty." Hanchuan met his anger without raising his voice. "It contains two years of Zhiyi’s life."

The words silenced the room.

Hanchuan looked between his friends. "You still believe we can buy more later. There is no later supplier. Everything stored inside those nine properties is everything Zhiyi will ever have, and no one is reducing it by even fucking granola bar."

Zhiyi reached up and covered the hand on her shoulder. Her expression hadn’t changed during the argument because she understood the calculation.

Thirty years was a finite number, and opening one door made it smaller.

"Disable the panel," Hanchuan repeated.

Jingwei shut down the exterior controls. The screen went black, leaving the facilities director staring at his reflection.

Qinghe continued watching the man struggle to breathe in the heated vestibule. "He’ll die if he stays there."

"Then he should return to the lower levels," Hanchuan replied, unimpressed.

Qinghe turned toward him, his concern sharpening. "They may not be any safer."

"They aren’t," Hanchuan acknowledged. His hand remained beneath Zhiyi’s. "But those levels—and the people inside them—aren’t ours."

The blunt boundary unsettled the men more than his refusal had.

They knew the executive who destroyed competitors and removed anyone obstructing his decisions. They didn’t know the survivor who had killed people for approaching his water or climbing through the windows of his shelter.

Zhiyi knew him.

She had slept beside him after the nightmares and accepted every ugly thing he had done before finding her.

"The facilities director has access to the ordinary mechanical floors," she said while opening the building schematics. "He may attempt to reach the shelter through a service corridor."

Shichen moved beside her and expanded the maintenance routes. "He can reach the exterior side of the independent cooling rooms, but the service doors are reinforced and fail secure."

Hanchuan studied the three approaches. "Can he damage them?"

"Not quickly," Shichen assured him.

"Not quickly doesn’t mean can’t," the other man replied.

Shichen’s mouth tightened at the correction. He checked all three approaches before responding. "The private elevator has been disabled, and two reinforced barriers protect each stairwell entrance. Every route remains locked."

Jingwei expanded Jinhai’s security controls. Reinforced shutters could compartmentalize the vestibules, while cameras monitored every approach. Crowd-control dispensers were concealed in the ceilings outside the protected doors.

The dispensers released an incapacitating irritant intended to blind attackers and force them away.

At 48 degrees, exposure could be lethal.

Jingwei reviewed the system status before looking at Hanchuan. "The defensive system is active."

"Set it to automatic."

Zeyu turned sharply toward him. "There could be children outside."

"There were children outside shelters last time," Hanchuan said without hesitation.

The answer left Zeyu staring at him.

"You’ve done this before," he realized.

Hanchuan held his gaze. "Yes."

Zeyu swallowed before asking, "How many people did you kill?"

Hanchuan shrug his shoulders and a cold smirk appeared on his face. "I stopped counting," he said to his old friend.

And he had.

There were countless people who thought their lives were more important than anyone else’s. He just removed a significant amount.

None of his friends spoke as they stared at him in horrified silence.

He nodded toward the security controls. "Anyone who tries to breach the shelter receives one warning. If they continue, stop them." His words and tone were absolute, leaving no room for questions or arguments.

Jingwei held his gaze for several seconds before activating the automatic defenses.

On the camera, the facilities director stepped away from the dead access panel. The stairwell door opened behind him, allowing more people to crowd into the vestibule. Some wore office clothing, while others carried children or supported older relatives.

They had followed the facilities director toward the only floors in Jinhai Tower that remained cold.

A recorded warning played through the ceiling speakers.

"Restricted area. Return to the public levels. Any attempt to damage the entrance will activate defensive measures."

The crowd fell silent.

A man in a suit pushed through them and demanded that the facilities director open the door. When the director shook his head, the man shoved him against the wall and struck the access panel with his fist.

The warning repeated.

Someone disappeared into the stairwell and returned carrying a fire axe.

Jingwei watched the security system identify the weapon. "If he swings it, the system will deploy."

On the screen, the man raised the axe above his shoulder.

Hanchuan didn’t reach for the controls.

"Then he was warned."