The World Ends In 27 Days

Zhiyi opened the temperature records she had reconstructed from her previous life’s experiences and placed them beside the current data.

The archived reports documented regional temperatures, grid failures and mortality estimates from the first Heat. She had studied them while preparing for the apocalypse, but she had never expected to compare them against events as they occurred.

The two graphs no longer matched.

In her previous life, Yunzhou had reached 61 degrees shortly before sunset. The temperature had remained there for almost three hours before falling to 58 overnight.

This time, it reached 63 degrees six minutes after passing the previous maximum.

"The rate of increase is accelerating," Zhiyi stated.

Shichen moved to the environmental controls and examined the readings from Xiling’s exterior sensors. "The temperature at the air intake is 54 degrees. The difference is caused by our elevation and the rock surrounding the sensors."

"It still wouldn’t remain that large," she countered, shaking her head.

The Heat had crossed the region faster this time, and the temperature continued rising even though smoke from the forest fires had hidden the sun. Zhiyi couldn’t determine whether the lightning, the fires or some other change had intensified it.

That was the part she disliked most.

She remembered the sequence of disasters. Heat, Flood and Freeze. She knew their approximate durations, the regions that would become uninhabitable and the failures that would kill the greatest number of people.

The lightning had already proved that the sequence could change.

Now the Heat was proving that its scale could change as well.

Hanchuan pulled a chair beside hers and sat without asking her to stop working. He rested one hand on her thigh beneath the table while he studied the mismatched graphs.

"What happens at 63 degrees?" he asked.

"More people die."

His expression tightened. "I meant what happens to the city."

"That is what happens to the city," Zhiyi told him.

On the communications wall, the municipal camera map had lost nearly half its markers. Some cameras had disappeared when their districts lost power, while others refreshed irregularly as the network struggled beneath the demand.

Zhiyi selected a downtown intersection.

Three vehicles had been abandoned across the road. The asphalt surrounding their tires looked black and wet despite the absence of rain, and one tire had collapsed outward as its softened sidewall pressed into the road.

Several people sheltered inside the recessed entrance of an office building.

When the camera refreshed, a man had left the entrance and reached the middle of the sidewalk. Five seconds later, he was on one knee. The next image showed him lying facedown with one arm trapped beneath him.

The people inside the entrance didn’t move.

"They can see him," Zeyu said, all trace of his usual humor gone.

"They can’t reach him without leaving the shade," Qinghe explained quietly. "At this temperature, even a short period of exertion will raise their core temperatures. The pavement may cause contact burns through their clothing."

The camera refreshed again. The man’s hand had changed position, but it remained still in every image that followed.

Zhiyi changed the feed.

Yet another woman stood beneath a bus shelter, this time with a child pressed against her chest. The advertising screen had gone black, but the metal frame continued absorbing heat. The woman shifted from one foot to the other because the soles of her shoes were adhering to the softened pavement.

A bus appeared at the edge of the next image and remained there through three refreshes. Its front door eventually opened, but no one emerged.

The woman carried the child toward it.

She made it halfway across the road before falling.

Qinghe stepped toward the communications wall before stopping himself. The camera refreshed, revealing the child moving beside the woman. Five seconds later, a gray error screen replaced the image.

Zeyu turned away. "Why are the cameras still operating if no one is helping them?"

"The cameras are automated," Jingwei told him. He stood against the wall with his arms folded tightly across his chest. "Emergency services aren’t."

The banner beneath the remaining feeds changed to 67 degrees, and a new warning advised residents not to open exterior doors under any circumstances.

The earlier instructions had told them to remain indoors. The revised warning admitted that going outside had become immediately lethal.

It still didn’t tell them that the Heat would last four years.

No one outside Xiling knew that.

Another section of the municipal map disappeared while Shichen expanded Xiling’s system display.

The primary cooling loop was operating at 46 percent capacity. The secondary loop remained available, and the residential temperature held at 21 degrees.

"The mountain is absorbing most of the difference," Shichen explained. "The underground structure is stable."

"For now," Zhiyi corrected.

Shichen looked toward her. "The system was designed for exterior temperatures of 70 degrees."

"The city has reached 67," she replied.

"Xiling hasn’t," he countered.

Zhiyi understood the distinction, but it didn’t reassure her.

The next hour passed beneath the artificial daylight of Xiling’s residential level. All six of them remained around the communications wall while Yunzhou disappeared in pieces.

Residential towers went dark from the upper floors downward. Traffic signals stopped changing. A camera outside a hospital showed people pounding on the locked glass doors until several collapsed against them.

When the city reached 71 degrees, the airport cameras failed. Their final images showed passengers crowded beneath the private terminal canopy while heat distortion bent the outlines of aircraft sitting uselessly beyond them. The runway had softened until departures became impossible.

Money had carried those families to the airport.

It couldn’t carry them any farther.

At 74 degrees, the marina vanished from the network. Before the feed disappeared, one yacht burned at its dock while people pushed smaller boats into the harbor. The water offered no visible relief. It reflected the white sky while abandoned luggage covered the emptying docks.

By the time Yunzhou reached 77 degrees, only eight municipal cameras remained.

Zhiyi arranged the feeds across the communications wall. They no longer resembled views of a functioning city. Cars remained wherever their engines had stopped. Darkened towers stood above empty intersections, and bodies remained where people had fallen because anyone still alive had learned not to retrieve them.

The downtown convenience store camera continued operating.

Its glass doors had cracked, and the refrigerated cases inside were dark. Meltwater, spoiled food and broken containers covered the floor. A person crawled through the open entrance and reached the curb before collapsing.

When the image refreshed, skin remained on the pavement where his palm had been.

Qinghe closed his eyes as the feed was replaced by an unavailable-camera notice.

The remaining cameras failed one after another. Eight became seven, then five, and finally two.

The last functioning camera overlooked an empty highway outside the city. Heat distortion rolled across the lanes until the guardrails appeared to bend. An abandoned vehicle stood with its doors open and its deformed tires flattened beneath it.

The image stopped refreshing.

A moment later, the communications wall went black, leaving only the municipal temperature banner visible.

YUNZHOU TEMPERATURE: 80°C

No one spoke.

Zhiyi stared at the number that had never existed in her memories. The last Heat had killed billions of people, destroyed governments and rendered entire regions uninhabitable.

This one was already worse.

The municipal date and time continued advancing beside the temperature, measuring a disaster the outside world had expected to end within several hours.

Hanchuan reached across the table and closed his hand around hers.

Zhiyi opened the countdown she had built before their wedding. It had reached zero when the Heat began, but she had programmed it to change modes once the remaining time disappeared.

The numbers were counting upward now.

THE HEAT

DAY 1

ELAPSED TIME: 14:08:37

They had spent 27 days preparing for the end of the world.

Now they just had to survive it.

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