The warmth of the sunlight cast over the bed felt like something from a dream, and when Lu Hao woke, alive and whole and without Hong Sheng in his arms, nothing seemed real anymore.

He stood at the balcony, the last snow of March melting at his feet. The bone-piercing chill seeped through his skin. As he took in the idyllic bustle of the city in front of him, the world only truly became tangible when the call to his mother went through, and he heard her voice saying, “Little Hao? What is it?”

It was the 26th of March, 2017, and Lu Hao had his second chance.

A thousand things had to be done, and all of them had to be finished before the apocalypse happened again. Of course, he’d rather believe that he had somehow come alive again in another world that wouldn’t face the horrors he’d once lived through. But if the clock had only been rewound, the timer on doomsday’s approach reset, then he would never let things happen the same way they did in the past.

The first thing Lu Hao did was look for Hong Sheng. He tried the old phone number, and then checked the internet for traces of Hong Sheng’s existence. Neither of them worked.

Hong Sheng was far too low-key. All Lu Hao knew was that Hong Sheng was still in F City. It wasn’t much, but it was enough. Lu Hao sent emails to three private investigators to have them take on the job of uncovering Hong Sheng’s whereabouts, and one more for another purpose.

This time around, Lu Hao had to find Hong Sheng early. He couldn’t let him be alone at the start of the apocalypse. Hong Sheng didn’t have an ability, or any weapons; how he’d survived in those early years alone was proof of his ingenuity and good luck. But Lu Hao couldn’t let Hong Sheng go through all that again.

He’d protect him.

So Lu Hao first had to find him, and bring him home to the villa, where they could prepare for the apocalypse together.

Second, Lu Hao had to take care of his parents. He had the chance to make preparations for them and try his best to get them through the horrors unscathed. At the very least, he didn’t want them to go through the same fate they’d experienced the first time.

And last—he had to get revenge.

In the meantime, Lu Hao got dressed and drove to his parents’ house.

He had to convince them to prepare for the apocalypse with him. Lu Hao in this timeline was just barely becoming an adult; there were a lot of things he couldn’t do, mainly out of financial restrictions.

The best way for him to proceed was to get his parents’ support. There were a number of ways he could do this.

He could make up an excuse, find a way to trick them into preparing for the apocalypse. He could bring them to the villa before the start, and keep them under his protection. He would have to be careful to make sure his father, who was certain to turn into a zombie, stayed ‘alive’ until a cure could be made.

But Lu Hao had never been one to deceive his parents, and he had never doubted their intelligence and tenacity. Lu Hao might’ve been an idiot, but all of the good things about him had been inherited from his parents.

So when he sat his parents down, having mulled things over along the drive, he decided to tell them the truth.

“Mom, dad. What I’m about to tell you is going to sound insane. But even if you think I’m crazy, you have to humor me, alright?”

As Lu Hao spoke, he couldn’t help the small smile on his face. Seeing his lovely mother and gentle father seated in front of him, a sliver of joy rose in his overly calm and steady gaze.

Now that the clock had wound back, Lu Hao was no longer the 27-year-old man he had once been. He was only 18, a fresh-faced youth out of high school, baby fat still clinging to his cheeks. He should have been preparing to start his first year of university, with Spring Semester around the corner in March.

But now the soul of an older man, battle-weary, with countless tragedies worn on his shoulders, sat on the soft plush couch. The grime and dirt in his heart made him feel like a sharp edge about to tear through the softly knit world of his parents’ home.

His parents, seated across from him, had changed from the people who protected him to people who needed to be kept safe. They were completely defenseless. His mother was a thin and beautiful woman who had aged gracefully in her 40s, and his father was a handsome, broad-shouldered man who looked similar to Lu Hao, but with more wrinkles. They had the peaceful aura of people who had never seen combat, and Lu Hao wished so much that they could stay that way.

This was a warm and safe world where people could go outside without a second thought. Teenagers filmed stupid videos on the streets to share on the internet; elderly neighbors went to the park to exercise to the radio; people walked to the grocery store and wondered what brand of the dozens of varieties they should pick… it was a fantasy otherworld. These people didn’t belong in his reality. His reality was the fine line between survival and death, the struggle against starvation, the responsibility of thousands of lives that he had failed haunting his back.

But in front of his parents, he was a child. He was the 18-year-old Lu Hao who had only just last week excitedly moved out to his own apartment, ready to go to university and start his new life.

“Five months from now, a global epidemic is going to strike. The symptoms of the disease cause people to go rabid, and it’s highly infectious. There won’t be a cure for a long time. In my memory, I lived to 26 before everyone around me was infected. I died at 27.”

The sudden declaration of his death made his parents look at him in stunned concern. “Little Hao, is this… a dream you had?” his father ventured, hesitation clear through the concerned hunch of his body. Lu Hao gave a small smile.

“It might be an extremely vivid hallucination. I won’t know for sure until the time limit has passed. If the day the epidemic in my memory comes and goes without anything happening, I’ll accept that that I’ll need mental counseling. There are five months to that day. Can you humor me for these five months, and prepare in advance with me?” He didn’t hesitate to stab in a knife: “In my memory, dad was infected. He wasn’t able to control himself and hurt mom. By the time I got there, mom… you said your last words to me. I had to bury you both myself.”

These were ruthless words. Hearing that their child had to bury them was enough to drive any parent into a panic. Mother Liu tightened her grip on his father’s hand. She might have been getting ready to try and coax him into counseling, take a vacation. Maybe they’d thought that preparing for university had made him snap. But when she opened her mouth, sudden loud thud struck the window.

His mother and father flinched at the startling sound, and all three of them looked to the side. A bird slid down the pane. Lu Hao had barely given a visible reaction, just a slight shift to his eyes to assess the threat. Seeing this bird, he stood without a word to open the window and check the bird’s condition.

Luckily, the bird seemed fine, just stunned. After Lu Hao gave it a light assessment for injury, the bird hopped a few times before flying off on its own.

With a bit of a laugh, Lu Hao said, “How many times does this happen? The windows are too clear; they still think they’re flying through the sky.” He sat back down, casually crossing a leg. His body language shifted to a mature, languid steadiness that looked strange against his young form.

The look in his parents’ eyes changed the more they watched him. Lu Hao didn’t mind. He just gazed back steadily, and took a sip of tea before continuing to speak.

“I’ve thought of two options to best guarantee your safety, if the memory in my mind becomes reality. The first is that the two of you stay with me, and I try my best to keep you alive. The second is that the two of you take refuge in a place with a very low population to wait out the epidemic.”

In other words, take a long vacation far from the evolved, destructive zombies that would arise in China.

Though he didn’t know whether the situation overseas fared much better, Lisa Xi had once said that before global communications had shut down, the stronghold in Iceland had held steadiest. And there had always been the theory that zombies would be restricted in the cold.

Lu Hao’s parents didn’t believe him easily, but as he went through step by step on the preparations he intended to take, and the requests he had of them, his mother and father quietly listened. “Even if we did this, I don’t feel comfortable leaving you on your own,” his mother said. “Even if you want us to go to Iceland, why wouldn’t you come with us?”

“Because Hong Sheng is here,” Lu Hao said. “I would also be best suited to coordinate an effort toward the creation of a vaccine by staying in F City. I have a lead that I can only follow up on here.”

“Then let us stay with you here.”

Lu Hao drummed his fingers. “I wouldn’t be at ease. With dad becoming one of the infected, he would easily become a target to be killed before the vaccine can be made. We need to keep him isolated from others and under the care of someone who can guarantee he won’t harm or be harmed by others.”

His mother wrinkled her brows. “So you want to banish your father and I to live all by ourselves for however many years it would take for that vaccine to come out? Little Hao, your father can barely hold a conversation as is. How am I to live if even that gets taken away from him?” Beside her, Father Lu looked chagrined.

“There are people I know who can stay with you and help protect you and dad. I’ll just need to contact them first,” Lu Hao answered. Some of the SG members had been ex-military and mercenaries, and should be willing to be hired as bodyguards in the current time. He only planned to contact the ones with the highest integrity. Now that there wasn’t any bond of loyalty from being part of the SG between them and him, he had to go by his own judgment of character.

Though his parents didn’t seem happy with this plan, at least, Lu Hao’s father agreed to help him obtain the resources he needed to stockpile, and to look into building the ‘vacation home’ in Iceland that would serve as their safehouse.

Lu Hao stayed for dinner, a sumptuous and mouthwatering feast that nearly brought tears to his eyes. Each bite filled him with heat in both the tongue and the heart. His gaze drifted over to one side of the table, where a chair sat empty.

When they were children, Hong Sheng used to sit there.

After Lu Hao left to return to his apartment, Mother and Father Lu shared a gaze of concern and confusion.

What their child had told them was far past the border of insane. Memories of the future, a zombie apocalypse, the destruction of the world—none of that could possibly be real.

And yet.

The man that had shown up today was unlike the Lu Hao they knew in nearly every way.

Their child, Lu Hao, was a bright and sunny boy who lit up every room he was in. He had an easy confidence that bordered on brash, yet his charisma and charm made him seem lovable rather than arrogant. He was a little sun that shone on everyone, an infectious sparkle and love of life in his eyes.

The Lu Hao they had seen was completely different.

He walked like a sharp knife, economical in his pace. The moment he walked through the door, his gaze flickered across the room as if assessing for threats, exits, details. His eyes were piercing, yet shared nothing. When he sat, his body poised in false relaxation; he pretended to be settled, yet at any second, he was ready to leap into action.

When the bird struck the window, the loud and sudden noise would startle anyone into flinching. Yet Lu Hao had barely reacted in the manner of someone who had been through so many tense situations that he could handle anything with complete calm.

He was terrifying.

The Lu Hao they saw was not the ordinary teenager they knew.

He was a stranger. A stranger who looked them in the eyes and said he buried them nine years ago, five months into the future.

Mother and Father Lu spoke softly to each other. They held hands, sharing warmth along the touch of their skin, and talked about what they would do if one of them truly became a monster on that day in July, and the other was left alone to survive, waiting for a cure.