Chenghai did not sleep that night. Or the night before that. In fact, he had yet to sleep since waking up in a place that he was finally realizing was his old home.

Not that anyone seemed to notice his lack of sleep.

The mansion remained strangely calm despite the constant stream of information pouring through the radios spread across the dining room table. Static crackled softly through the room while he continued making notes across several maps and notebooks he had gathered from around the house.

Supply routes.

Evacuation corridors.

Military fallback positions.

Safe zones.

Or what passed for safe now.

The problem was that he didn’t remember any of this. It didn’t line up with what he knew and he hated that.

Before all... this.... he and Zhenlan had gone with the military when they went door to door. They had fought tooth and nail to become as powerful as they had. They survived what would have killed most people.

They had died.

And now, it was like they were in some sort of alternative universe where the apocalypse did happen... it just wasn’t effecting them.

That was the part that he was having the most trouble wrapping his head around.

Well, that and the fact that he could now see out of both eyes.

One of the radios crackled suddenly, pulling him from his thoughts.

"...repeat, vegetation growth has completely blocked Highway 4 southbound—"

Static interrupted the transmission briefly.

"...engineering teams unable to clear root systems safely..."

Chenghai wrote the information down automatically.

The roads were collapsing faster than they should have been. Or were they? It wasn’t like he could ask how many years into the apocalypse they were in.

That alone bothered him more than he wanted to admit.

In his last life, the plants had existed, but not like this, and not until after the first year.

But they weren’t this aggressive and they definitely didn’t grow this fast.

Another transmission broke through a different frequency.

"...all civilians are advised not to burn infected plant growth. Repeat, fire appears to accelerate—"

Static swallowed the rest.

Chenghai’s eyes narrowed slightly.

That was new too.

Across the room, Zhenlan stood beside one of the windows silently watching the jungle outside while absentmindedly reorganizing supplies inside another crate.

Neither man had spoken much since breakfast.

There wasn’t really anything to say.

The world was wrong.

The timeline was wrong.

And somehow the safest place either of them had seen in years belonged to a woman who should already be dead.

One of the radios crackled again.

"...northern checkpoint refusing additional refugees due to food shortages—"

A long pause followed.

Then quietly:

"...there are still children outside the gates."

Silence answered the transmission.

Eventually the frequency died completely.

Chenghai slowly leaned back in his chair.

The pattern was familiar.

Civilization wasn’t collapsing all at once.

It was fraying apart one decision at a time.

Food shortages.

Closed checkpoints.

Road failures.

Lost convoys.

People always thought the end of the world would happen loudly.

Most of the time it happened quietly while everyone was too exhausted to stop it.

Movement near the living room caught his attention.

Rouxi laid sprawled across the couch with one leg hanging over the armrest while Netflix played quietly in the background. A baby vine remained curled lazily around her stomach while Wei Lingyun sat nearby scrolling through something on the iPad.

Jian Yuche was asleep in one of the armchairs with his arms crossed loosely over his chest.

Relaxed.

Actually relaxed.

Chenghai still couldn’t understand how either of those men could sleep this deeply without someone standing guard.

Then again, maybe they trusted the plants.

The jungle outside shifted slightly in the darkness beyond the windows.

Watching.

Waiting.

Protecting.

The entire mansion felt less like a survivor compound and more like the center of a predator’s territory.

Which honestly made it even more dangerous.

"You should sleep."

Chenghai glanced toward Zhenlan.

"I’m fine."

"No, you aren’t."

That earned him a look.

Neither pushed further.

One of the emergency frequencies crackled violently.

"...containment teams sent into Sector Nine have not returned—"

Static screamed through the speaker.

"...repeat, the vines are inside the walls—"

The transmission cut off abruptly.

Silence filled the room again.

Rouxi looked up briefly from the couch. "Are the killer plants winning?"

Nobody answered immediately.

"...probably," Lingyun admitted eventually.

"Huh. I should have put more money on them. No one seems to take them seriously until they are eating someone."

She popped another piece of popcorn into her mouth before looking back toward the television.

That should not have been a normal response.

Chenghai stared at her for several long seconds.

No fear.

No panic.

No concern about the world outside collapsing.

Just complete confidence that nothing would touch this house.

It was irrational.

Dangerously irrational.

Which meant he needed to start fixing it before reality caught up to them.

"This place needs actual defenses."

Rouxi didn’t even look away from the television.

"The plants already eat people."

"That isn’t enough."

Now she looked at him, the amused smile on her face completely gone. If this was a different Rouxi on a different timeline, she would still have had no idea that the apocalypse was coming. So why was she always this calm?

"And what exactly are you expecting?" she asked slowly. "A zombie army with tanks?"

"Perimeter patrols. Rotating watches. Defensive fallback positions."

The silence after that felt almost offended.

Lingyun looked up from the iPad.

Yuche opened one eye from the chair.

Even the baby vine lifted its head slightly from Rouxi’s stomach like it was personally insulted.

Then Rouxi frowned.

"...Why? We don’t need fallback positions. We aren’t leaving the house. Period."

Chenghai stared at her.

Because people attacked safe places.

Because desperation made humans dangerous.

Because compounds fell every day.

Because safety that wasn’t defended eventually disappeared.

All of those answers stopped in his throat the second movement outside caught his attention.

A zombie stumbled out of the darkness near the edge of the property.

The plants reacted instantly.

Vines exploded upward from the ground before spearing through the infected from three different directions. The zombie barely had enough time to moan before the jungle dragged it beneath the vegetation entirely.

Gone.

Silence returned almost immediately afterward.

Rouxi pointed lazily toward the windows without even looking away from Netflix.

"See? Problem solved."