Last night was the first night in a while where I actually went back to my room to sleep.

Normally I would pass out on the couch, surrounded by the guys, but they were still working away on the military equipment when I decided to go to bed. Sleeping on the couch without them around was....

I didn’t like it.

I let out a long sigh as I stared at the fabric canopy overtop of my bed. Do I get out of bed to lay down on the couch to watch my dramas or stay in bed?

Honestly, it was a really hard choice.

Closing my eyes again, I finally picked up on what had woken me up.

The entire mansion was... humming.

Not metaphorically.

Literally humming.

A deep mechanical sound vibrated faintly through the walls while cold air drifted lazily through the vents overhead. For one horrifying moment, I thought the house was finally trying to become sentient and murder us all in our sleep.

Then I remembered the idiots spent all night messing with military equipment.

Now I was more worried that the humming was the precursor to something blowing up.

Needing to make sure that the guys were not about to blow up my house or set it on fire, I quickly left my room and went downstairs.

I went straight to the living room and picked up my phone from where I had accidently left it last night.

I started trembling as I hurriedly blinked back the tears in my eyes. Chenghai was probably cutting onions or something. But what I was was three bars.

Three beautiful bars of internet.

Wanting to make sure that I wasn’t still dreaming, I clicked on the first icon I could find. My internet loaded almost instantly and I felt my eyes widen slightly.

"...Holy shit."

Civilization had returned.

I immediately closed that app and opened Netflix.

The homepage loaded on the first try.

No buffering.

No freezing.

No suffering.

Tears almost came to my eyes again.

Maybe humanity deserved a second chance after all.

I was about to fling myself back down on the couch and settle in for some serious binging, but then a sound somewhere deeper in the house caught my attention.

It sounded like a radio crackling softly before static swallowed the voice entirely. But that was impossible. When did we get working radios? Did I do that?

Grumbling under my breath, I went in search of the guys and the sound that shouldn’t be in my house.

The dining room looked completely different now.

Cables ran neatly along the walls while battery packs sat stacked beside several radios and blinking communication equipment that looked expensive enough to explode if someone touched the wrong button.

Which honestly meant Lingyun probably already had.

Chenghai sat at the table with a notebook open beside him while several radios quietly hissed and crackled around him. He wasn’t lounging half asleep with coffee like normal. He wasn’t making be breakfast and forcing me to eat ’actual food’

He was focused.

So focused that I didn’t know if he had heard something alarming through the radio or he was just constipated and in pain.

A map had been spread across the table with several locations already marked in black pen beside times, notes, and military symbols I didn’t recognize.

I stared at it for a second.

"...Why does it look like you’re planning a hostile takeover?"

Without looking up, Chenghai replied calmly, "I’m organizing information."

That sounded fake. Why did we need information on other bases when we weren’t leaving this one?

One of the radios crackled again. "...evacuation convoy delayed due to road collapse—"

Static swallowed the rest but Chenghai still wrote something down on his notepad.

Okay.

That was mildly concerning.

Yuche sat near the back doors slowly turning a satellite phone over in one hand while Lingyun leaned against the kitchen counter drinking coffee like the world outside wasn’t currently being consumed by killer plants.

At least two of the three men in the room looked normal. Maybe I was still asleep and this was all a dream.

Zhenlan walked in from outside carrying a toolbox under one arm before setting it down near the wall beside one of the generators.

He moved differently too. Not enough that I could actually explain it, but I really don’t think I liked it.

It was like someone had quietly replaced my housecat with a tiger overnight and expected nobody to notice.

Which was ridiculous.

Zhenlan noticed me watching him and raised an eyebrow slightly.

"What?" he snapped in a very un-Zhenlan way.

I raised an eyebrow at him as Lingyun brought me over a cup of coffee. "Nothing. You just look crankier than usual."

Lingyun snorted as I wrapped my hands around the hot cup.

"See?" I pointed immediately. "It’s not just me. Did you not sleep well? Do you need to use the bathroom? Is it food? Are you hangry?"

Zhenlan ignored both of us completely before crouching beside one of the battery systems to check something on the side panel.

Again.

Weird.

I walked farther into the dining room and glanced around at everything they had apparently managed to set up overnight.

Generators.

Battery banks.

Solar equipment.

Radios.

Satellite communications.

Actual functioning internet.

I frowned slightly. "Wait. Why are we using generators?"

Yuche looked up from the satellite phone. "Because they work."

"Yes, but eventually they are going to run out of fuel and we are going to have to feed those things." I pointed toward the windows dramatically. "The giant murder jungle outside seems very anti-gas station at the moment."

"...Fair point," Lingyun admitted with a nod.

I pointed toward the solar equipment next. "Why aren’t we using more of those?"

Zhenlan stood slowly before answering. "We are. The generators are backup power for nighttime and bad weather. The battery systems store excess energy during the day."

I blinked once.

"...How the hell do you know that?"

Silence.

Then Zhenlan answered with a completely straight face.

"Youtube."

I narrowed my eyes slightly. "So YouTube worked perfectly last night but my dramas barely loaded?"

Lingyun immediately started laughing.

"Your priorities are incredible."

"My priorities are correct."

Chenghai adjusted one of the radio frequencies slightly while continuing to write notes down beside the map.

More compound locations maybe.

Military checkpoints.

Evacuation routes.

I didn’t really care enough to ask.

The second people knew this place existed, they would start thinking they deserved a piece of what was ours.

Food.

Power.

Internet.

Warm beds.

Safety.

People always wanted things that belonged to someone else.

Honestly?

That sounded exhausting.

One of the radios crackled again. "...northern shelter requesting immediate medical—"

Static.

Silence returned.

Nobody answered.

Good.

I walked over to the fridge, put down my empty coffee cup, and grabbed a yogurt drink. When I was content, I pointed toward Chenghai without looking at him. "You aren’t allowed to answer any of those."

"I know."

His response came too quickly.

Too flat.

Another weird thing.

At this point maybe everyone in the house had just collectively decided to become strange while I was sleeping.

Honestly?

Rude.

There should have been a memo or something in the very least.