Her scream was swallowed by the hiss of the decontamination mist.

  No one moved.

  Not even Scott.

  They stood, naked, fog enveloping them, making them disappear from each other's sight.

  No one spoke. No one dared to breathe.

  The mist was perfectly tempered—luxuriously warm—and carried the faint scent of lavender and eucalyptus.

  As the jets stopped, the scented mist dispersed and they could see each other clearly. In the sudden silence, Carmen's screams pierced through the walls.

  Then the jets started again, drowning out her voice with warm air.

  They passed through another door, one after another. The chamber registered it was empty and the door slid shut automatically.

  In the next room, twelve sets of clothes waited on chrome benches. Louis Vuitton pajamas, silk tops and pants, cashmere socks. Jackets lined in monogrammed fleece. Designer slippers. Even the shoes were luxury. Balenciaga, Dior, Saint Laurent.

  Piper’s voice cut through the silence. “There are only twelve suits,” she said, pointing. “And four of them are for children.”

  “It’s okay,” Madeleine said coolly. “This is just for arriving. There will be more sets of clothes inside.” She wanted to add, 'Did you think the rich Heinleins would wanna survive the apocalypse with only one set of clothes?' but didn't say it, because she wanted to avoid prompting questions she'd then have to answer."

  She needed to be strategic. With what she did. With what she said.

  “But what about our clothes?” Piper protested.

  "The bunker's decontamination cycle runs for two weeks, that’d kill most pathogens, even antibiotic resistant bacteria."

  Piper snapped her head toward her. “Two weeks? We’re going to spend two weeks in here?”

  “You can leave now,” she said dryly. “But put that top down. Clothes are for those who stay.”

  Piper went quiet.

  One by one, they stepped forward, picked up clothes and began to dress in silence.

  Twelve sets of luxury clothes. Four of them for children. Thirteen bodies that needed to be dressed.

  They shared. Socks were split. Jackets buttoned over bare skin. Some wore only silk tops, others only pajama tops. And some had to put up with children’s clothes.

  Justin pulled on a child’s pajama set with a golden LV print stretched tight over his wiry limbs. The sleeves stopped at his elbows, the pants were so tight they looked painted on. He managed to produce an uncomfortable grin.

  For a second, the sight of him almost broke the silence. A choked breath. A stifled laugh. Then nothing. The mood snapped back into place.

  Scott, wearing a complete set of clothes, tilted his head and gave Madeleine a challenging look. “So, an explanation, finally?”

  “What about my sister?” said Lillian. Sounding apathetic. “And my mother. And my grandmother. My cats,” she looked at her hands as if counting all the people and pets important in her life.

  “What about Carmen?” snapped Piper, interrupting Lillian’s apathetic counting “You forgot her out there? Or did you already forget about her? We need to go back, get her out.”

  “Yes.” Two boys, Axel, and another guy Madeleine didn’t even remember his name, sided with her, “Let her out.”

  Madeleine knew this was a crucial moment. Her mother had researched crisis psychology, she had put what she found in the prologue of her book. Specific fracture points in group dynamics were moments when collective decision-making either solidified or collapsed. Right now, Madeleine was facing not one potential breaking point, but two: the grief response - they would ask what happened to their families and the authority challenge – they’d question her life-or-death decisions.

  Humans were emotional.

  That was literally why they were in a bunker right now, while the world outside burned.

  The world outside. Madeleine looked up. That’s it!

  There was only one place from where they could see the world outside

  “Follow me,” she said, leading them deeper into the bunker.

  They passed by rooms that had signs on them like Wine Cellar, Home Theater, Game Room, Bar, Spa. There was a Gym, Dining Hall and several other rooms. No library.

  Madeleine walked past all those doors, heading straight for the control room.

  They would bombard her with questions about their families, about what happened outside, about whether they needed to follow her orders to survive.

  Instead of answering, she'd show them.

  The moment they entered the control room, a dozen screens flickered to life, showing views of the outside.

  This didn't have the desired effect.

  Through the cameras, from different angles, they saw the glade, the hill, trees—it looked like a scene from Bambi. Not at all the fire and doom she'd expected them to witness.

  They turned to stare at her, now more than ever demanding answers.

  Scott stepped forward with a mocking grin. "You know, with all this talk of doomsday and the world ending we've been hearing for months, has anyone considered—oh my god, this could be a movie idea. A really stupid movie. Stupid kids led by a stupid leader spend years in some shitty bunker in a forest, thinking the world ended, while everyone outside is just wondering what the fuck happened to class 3A."

  A few nervous laughs rippled through the group.

  Madeleine felt heat rise in her chest, but she didn't waver. She knew it was real. This was at least a regional catastrophic event, no, it was bigger than that. She’d followed the news. Continental, maybe global. No doubt.

  Before she could raise her voice to defend herself, something caught her eye.

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  Madeleine's gaze locked onto the feed showing the forest entrance—the very place they'd emerged from.

  Something was happening out there.

  The grass flattened in a perfect circle, wildflowers and saplings bending under invisible pressure. Everything streamed away from some point in the sky, like hair under a massive blow dryer. Something was coming from above. Something the cameras didn’t see yet.

  Then the helicopter appeared. First one. Then a second.

  One bore the logo of the company Madeleine’s mother had worked for – Apex Lux, back when she was still alive: an athletic silver man throwing a disk.

  They were drones—remotely operated, no cockpit, no pilots.

  People spilled out, and surprisingly, they looked more annoyed than afraid. Three men. Three women. Two teenagers. Six children, ranging from toddlers to ten or eleven. All of them belonging to the Heinlein family.

  A familiar gasp, coming from Lillian: “That’s Lucy Heinlein!”

  Three, four voices chimed in. “And Preston! The kid in the brown sweater—my sister gave him piano lessons! He came to our house!”

  “What are they doing?”

  Madeleine exhaled, slowly. A whirlwind of emotions rising in her chest. She tried to breathe slowly, deeply.

  First, this meant whatever happened out there was real. Serious.

  Apex Lux made no mistakes. Together with its partner companies, they made up the world’s largest early-warning system: the rich and powerful knew before anyone else when shit hit the fan.

  Second, what would happen next would not be for the faint of heart. Make no mistakes, Madeleine. Don’t. Falter.

  She focused again, on the screen, watching three generations of curated perfection running around, their annoyance morphing into confusion, when no door magically hissed open for them.

  Two of the men argued, pointing at the mound that hid the entrance blast door. They looked as if they realized that that the outline of the bunker door was visible now, and deduced correctly that someone had come before them.

  Knowing that that shouldn’t have been possible.

  One of the women joined them.

  Next, they all pulled out their phones. It had become instinct already. Don’t know what to do? Phone. Confusion? Phone. Fear? Phone.

  When the phone didn’t work?

  Panic.

  But not yet. They were people used to things going their way. Used to blaming others even for their own mistakes. In their case, anger came before the panic.

  Suddenly, one of them was walking to the tree, the one that was hiding the panel.

  Madeleine didn’t even remember if she had closed it. She couldn’t see it from the camera angle.

  The man was pounding his fists against the tree.

  It didn’t really matter if she’d closed it or not. It was deactivated now. The bunker was full. The system had shut down the entrance. Energy was limited, oxygen calculated. Once internal sensors registered full capacity, the door locked for good.

  It was one of the cruelest default settings these bunkers were designed with.

  If the doors could be reopened, someone would try to show mercy—let in a stranger, a neighbor, a friend. Just one more soul. How bad could it be?

  Very bad. Not because the ones inside would overexert the system and reduce their collective survival chances. That would also happen, but technically, the system could handle one more person.

  This was about money.

  When you signed up with Apex Lux, you signed a contract for life. And you paid for every single member. To avoid people becoming Samaritans and saving their whole neighborhood, Apex Lux made it very clear that their systems would detect over-occupancy—and would not shut up until the extra person was taken care of.

  How? Nobody asked. Apex Lux made sure their clients understood the policy without dwelling on the details. No extra person.

  Another cruel default setting was this: the external turrets and sentinel guns would shoot autonomously. At anything that moved.

  Madeleine expected them to fire at any moment

  The family outside were focused on their phones, stabbing frantically at phone screens, calling numbers that would never answer. They had no idea they were being watched.

  Mrs. Heinlein pushing her husband away from the tree, as if her hammering at the tree bark or the panel would make a difference. They were all shouting now. Children started to cry.

  No sound came in from the outside.

  But those inside the bunker could tell the exact moment of each explosion by the way everyone flinched simultaneously. Twelve bodies recoiling as one. If you'd put music on now, it would look like they were dancing.

  The explosions themselves were barely visible. Like lightning in the far distance.

  They could see it in their faces—this wasn't annoyance anymore. It had already passed the stage of confusion, and was about to pass the stage of anger. One by one, they were descending into the last feeling that came before blank panic: fear.

  And even the thickest bunker walls couldn’t keep that feeling out.

  “We have to let them in!” someone yelled.

  Others joined in, voices high and breaking.

  “You’ll just let them outside? Madeleine, you are fucking crazy!”

  “Open the door!”

  At least half of those in the control room were now shouting at Madeleine.

  “No,” Madeleine said, cold as a blade.

  Just as the collective anger in the room was about to boil over, something happened again, on screen.

  The helicopters started spinning up again. One of the men—Lucy’s father, judging from Lucy’s reaction—ran to leap for the skids. When he managed to catch them, Lucy screamed, her body shaking.

  The helicopter vanished from the frame. And so did the man, dangling from the skids.

  For a moment, it was the Bambi forest again. Twelve people stood in a perfect circle, arms raised, as if about to perform some sun greeting ritual or ancient dance.

  Then the man returned. Without the helicopter. Falling across the screen.

  His body hit the ground like a sack of meat.

  This was it. Finally, fear had turned to panic. The family outside fractured.

  Lucy broke down over her dead father. Sobbing.

  Inside, the group began to mimic the panic. Again, even through blast doors and thick metal walls, empathy found its way. In this case, it was about to do more harm than good.

  “He died! He died!" Justin sobbed. Some cried without saying a word.

  Others curled in on themselves, clinging to each other, finally understanding that this was real. That this could've been them.

  That this could've been…

  True horror set in when they grasped what this meant.

  This was their families, pets, friends.

  Somewhere, they were screaming for help that would never come.

  Or maybe, they weren’t screaming anymore.

  Everyone.

  Dying.

  Like on cue, almost all of them started to cry. To break down and sob. To wring their hands and pull their hair.

  Madeleine wasn't crying. She had been through this already. Had been doing nothing else but crying for more than a year. She'd become a pro at grief.

  She turned away. Let them grieve, she thought.

  Then, one girl started to scream in her face, “Let me out! I wanna at least try to save them.”

  Then the screens showed her why that was impossible.

  The first scarlet flower began to bloom on Mr. Heinlein’s shirt. He looked down, confused, then collapsed, his face hitting the dirt. Then, the family scattered like spooked deer, their movements almost graceful. Mrs. Heinlein dropped next, her silk scarf fluttering as she fell, a second bloom kissing her throat mid-fall.

  Then—the children. Little Preston clutched his stomach, his tiny fingers pressing against the red seeping through his sweater. For a moment, he looked puzzled, as if wondering why his hands were wet. Then he too folded like a paper doll.

  One by one, they fell.

  Lucy was the final one standing.

  She reached for her brother’s bloodied hand, trying to lift him up. Then flinched as crimson bloomed across her own wrist, her hand hanging lifelessly. She paused and tilted her head.

  Did she look into the camera?

  For a second, Madeleine felt as if they locked eyes across the screen. Through the lens hidden in the foliage, Lucy appeared to be staring straight at Madeleine.

  Then the turrets found her.

  A rose in a gale, petals torn away, till nothing was left but a cloud of red mist.

  “You let them die,” whispered Chef. He wasn’t looking at Madeleine. He was looking through her.

  “Yes,” Madeleine said.

  She looked around at the stunned faces of her classmates – the same ones who’d spent two years pretending she didn’t exist.

  “I did.”

  Mate, who’d never really spoken a word to her before today, began to stare at her with something new in her eyes. Not fear.

  Recognition.

  “How did you know this place was here?” she asked. “How did you know the code?”

  Madeleine hesitated. The others were looking at her now, waiting.

  She pulled the bag closer to her chest. “That,” she said quietly, “is a long story.”

  A moment of silence.

  “Can you tell us?”

  She met their eyes and she remembered what her mother meant when she told her she shouldn’t be afraid of the world ending—but of other people surviving it.

  “I can’t,” she said. “It’s a secret.”

  The others didn’t press her. They were too busy staring at what, just a few minutes ago, was family.

  She stole herself out of the room. Nobody followed. They were too shell-shocked. Good.

  Having studied those first bunkers so much, she knew the outline without even having to stare into her mother’s book. As she ran down a hallway lit by blue, sharp light, she was drawn to one particular room. “Find the core. There, you will find me.” The lines written by her mother flashed in front of her eyes.

  She slipped down another hallway, past storage units, past another spa area, past a door with the sign reading Entertainment Room.

  Left. Right. Third door. Her fingers brushed the keypad. The code came to her like it was muscle memory.

  The door hissed open. She entered what was the secret core of a bunker. Walls lined with servers, terminals, keyboards, all flashing into activation as she entered.

  All doomsday bunkers had one room like this. And usually, only one occupant—the leader—was supposed to know about the very existence of such a room.

  This was the place to disable turret guns. To open gates and locks – and to close them.

  Who controlled this room controlled the bunker.

  But this wasn’t why she came.

  She entered another password. Again, muscle memory.

  A holographic screen appeared in front of her, the room came alive with maps and numbers, none of which she could understand.

  Then, a voice recording was playing. Tears filled her eyes, the moment she recognized it.

  “Hello, Maddy. You being here can only mean that something terrible has happened to the world. I hope you’ve managed to bring some companions. There won’t be any tutorial. No intro game. The first few bunkers will be the hardest, and moving in between them will be the hardest part. In the beginning. Until you’ll have built your own bunker, a mobile one. The instructions for it will follow. But first, you have some other tasks to do. Remember: whenever you conquer a new bunker, find the secret core—there, you’ll find me. Do me a favor, speedrunner.

  Survive.”

  Madeleine’s hands shook. "Mom?"

  Silence. Then, new text appeared.

  “But… what does that even mean?”

  Another instruction flashed before her eyes.