The World Ends In 27 Days

Zeyu watched the final minute disappear from the countdown clock.

The six of them had gathered in Xiling’s common room shortly before midnight.

Hanchuan sat on the middle sofa with Zhiyi beside him, his arm resting behind her shoulders. Qinghe and Shichen occupied the chairs nearest the communications wall, while Jingwei stood where he could see both the display and the residential entrance.

Zeyu, on the other hand, remained on his feet.

The large white numbers changed with every passing second.

00:00:37

00:00:36

00:00:35

Nothing on the external monitors appeared unusual. Xiling’s weather station reported 29°C. The wind had weakened, and the cameras showed an empty service road, wet concrete and the dark hillside surrounding the archive.

The lightning storm had finally moved east that afternoon. Fires continued burning around Luming, but the danger remained more than 40 kilometers away.

The countdown reached ten seconds.

Zhiyi fixed her attention on the display. Hanchuan watched her rather than the numbers, his fingers moving slowly against her shoulder.

When the final second disappeared, the screen displayed six zeros.

Everyone held their breath...

But nothing happened.

The lights remained steady. Air continued moving quietly through the vents. No alarms appeared on the system panel, and the exterior temperature stayed at 29°C.

Zeyu waited another minute before clearing his throat. "Is there a grace period before the world ends? I’m not complaining. I’d just like to know whether I can go to bed."

Zhiyi didn’t smile. "The temperature didn’t increase everywhere simultaneously last time."

Zeyu glanced at the unchanged weather reading. "Where did it begin?"

"In the south. The first reports appeared shortly after midnight, but no one recognized the pattern until morning."

Shichen leaned forward to study the external sensors. His expression remained thoughtful rather than frightened. "Then the absence of a local increase doesn’t prove anything yet."

"It also doesn’t prove that anything is coming," Zeyu remarked.

No one contradicted him.

That was the uncomfortable part. They had followed Zhiyi’s timeline through 27 days of preparation. The lightning storm and forest fire had justified leaving early, but both remained explainable natural disasters.

Now they were six people sitting beneath a mountain, watching a clock that had reached zero without consequence.

Zeyu moved to the security controls and cycled through Xiling’s exterior cameras. The administrative entrance appeared abandoned. Another feed showed the reinforced service lane. The western camera provided an excellent image of several rocks.

He changed to the next view and found more rocks.

"We spent a ridiculous amount of money on surveillance," Zeyu complained, wrinkling his nose at the empty hillside, "and all I can see is concrete and rocks."

Jingwei looked at him with the patience normally reserved for an irritating child. "The cameras are intended to show anyone approaching the property."

"No one is approaching the property." Zeyu gestured toward the useless images. "I want cameras in the outside world."

"There are," Zhiyi stated.

She reached for the tablet resting on her lap. Hanchuan released her only long enough for her to connect it to the communications wall.

A municipal website replaced the rocks.

Yunzhou City Traffic Camera Network

The city logo appeared above a map covered with hundreds of camera icons. Major roads crossed the display in colored lines, while markers followed downtown intersections, bridges, expressway ramps and transit corridors.

Zeyu stepped closer. "Anyone can access these?"

"Yes." Zhiyi selected a camera near the university, and the map changed to an image of a downtown intersection. "The city uses them to monitor traffic. The public images refresh every five to 15 seconds."

A bus moved through the intersection. Several pedestrians waited at the crossing while storefront signs illuminated the sidewalk behind them.

Zeyu looked from the ordinary city street to Zhiyi. "How did you know about this?"

"I use the cameras to check road conditions." She enlarged the street information beneath the image. "This intersection is part of my bus route. If traffic is delayed here, the arrival time shown by the transit application is inaccurate."

The five men stared at her.

All of them owned multiple vehicles. None of them had ever needed to investigate whether a bus was trapped in traffic.

A small smile appeared on Zeyu’s face. "You had access to hundreds of city cameras because you didn’t trust the bus schedule?"

"The schedule is frequently wrong," she shrugged. Why wouldn’t she use the resources provided to her?

"That wasn’t criticism," Zeyu assured her. "I’m genuinely impressed."

Zhiyi selected another downtown camera. An operator had angled it toward a collision blocking two lanes. Police lights flashed between stopped vehicles, and drivers waited impatiently while officers redirected traffic.

Yunzhou looked... normal.

Zeyu moved through the map, choosing places he recognized. The financial district remained active despite the late hour. Delivery trucks occupied the road behind one of his company buildings, and several pedestrians crossed beneath the decorative lights outside a shopping center.

The camera feeds showed a city continuing without them.

News broadcasts had spent the day discussing the lightning storm, fire damage and delayed transportation. Businesses expected to reopen in the morning. Government officials assured residents that the weather emergency was ending.

If Zhiyi was wrong, Zeyu could drive out of Xiling tomorrow and return to a world that would never know why he had left.

He wasn’t sure whether he wanted that.

The apocalypse was a terrible reason to feel useful, but preparing for it had been the most interesting work he had done in years.

He had built a vehicle no sensible client would commission, reorganized transportation networks and helped stock nine shelters against disasters most engineers would consider impossible.

Playing the apocalypse had cost him money, but it hadn’t cost him anything he would regret losing.

A tone sounded from Zhiyi’s tablet.

She immediately returned the communications wall to the national weather service. A map of the southern regions filled the screen, with current temperatures displayed beside official monitoring stations.

One station showed 36°C.

As they watched, it changed to 39°C.

"That’s a faulty sensor," Shichen commented, although his narrowed eyes remained on the number.

"No." Zhiyi’s fingers tightened around the tablet. "This is where it began before."

A second station increased from 34°C to 38°C. Another followed less than a minute later.

The news channel beside the map continued discussing storm recovery. No warning accompanied the rising temperatures because no one had noticed them yet.

Within 20 minutes, the first station reached 43°C.

Zeyu’s amusement disappeared.

More readings began changing across the south, forming a widening line of red markers. The temperatures north of it remained normal, but the boundary advanced each time the map refreshed.

It wasn’t in Yunzhou.

Not yet.

Zhiyi stared at the approaching red line. "The Heat has started."

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