As dawn broke, Nana's indicator light turned from red to green, and she was the first to stand up, her voice completely calm: "The water level has dropped by ninety percent, and the external environment is stable."
Chen Hao lay on the ground, his eyelids still closed. He wiped his face with his hand, touching a mixture of mud and rainwater. He rolled over, and his bones creaked.
"Does that mean we can go out now?"
"yes."
"Then let me lie down for another five minutes."
"You have been lying here for thirty-seven minutes."
Susan sat against the wall, her hair plastered to her face, and gave a soft hum upon hearing this. Carl was wiping the mud off his feet with a rag; the soles of his shoes were long gone, and his socks had a hole in them.
Nobody moved.
The room was quiet for a while. The rain stopped, the wind died down, and only the sound of dripping water from the roof could be heard, drip, drip, drip.
Finally, Chen Hao propped himself up and sat up, patting his stomach with a muffled thud. "I'm hungry," he said, "but first I'll go back and see if our old hideout is still there."
No one objected.
They packed their backpacks and bundled up anything usable. Nana walked in front, carrying the scanner, her arm joints humming slightly. Carl followed behind, carrying the toolbox. Susan walked a short distance, leaning against the wall. Chen Hao glanced at her, said nothing, and simply slowed his pace to wait for her.
The land outside has changed.
The original path was covered in mud, making it feel like walking on tofu; you'd sink right up to your calf. The trees along the roadside were leaning, some even broken in mid-air, and a bunch of utility poles had fallen, their wires dangling on the ground.
They used metal rods to probe the way, poking at each step. Nana would stop every so often to scan the area, and the thermal imaging would unfold before her eyes, marking the still-standing wall structures.
“The load-bearing walls of the warehouse area on the left are still standing,” she said. “The living quarters on the right have completely collapsed.”
Chen Hao nodded and pointed to a pile of ruins ahead: "Then let's go to the warehouse first."
On the way, they passed a puddle with bloated cardboard and plastic bags floating on the surface. As Carl went around it, he missed a step, swayed, and almost dropped the box he was carrying. After regaining his balance, he caught his breath, looked down at his feet, and saw that his shoes had completely fallen apart.
“These shoes have been with me for three years,” he said.
"It can be considered a heroic sacrifice," Chen Hao said.
Carl looked up at him, and the two stared at each other for two seconds before smiling.
Upon arriving at the warehouse district, the scene before them brought the laughter to an abrupt halt.
Half of the original corrugated iron roof had collapsed, crushing the shelves. The wooden frames were all toppled; the boxes were broken and rotten, and the waterlogged grain had turned into a black clump of mud. The calendar hanging on the wall was still there, but it was crooked, and the date was stopped the day before the flood.
"Let's begin the inventory," Chen Hao said. "We'll split into two groups."
He and Carl were in charge of rummaging through the rubble, while Nana took Susan to inspect the equipment at the energy station.
The two men squatted on the ground, rummaging through the broken planks and sheet metal with their hands. A box was pressed under a beam; Chen Hao couldn't push it, but Karl used a crowbar to pry it loose a few times before it came to rest. Inside, they found a half-full box of compressed food, the packaging bulging and covered in mold.
“We can’t eat it,” Carl said.
"Let's keep it to feed the rats," Chen Hao said, tossing down the box. "We don't have any rats anyway."
They unearthed several toolboxes, one of which was well-sealed and contained wrenches, pliers, and several rolls of wire. Chen Hao hugged it to his arms as if he had found a treasure.
“There’s still hope,” he said. “At least the screwdriver didn’t drown.”
On the other side, Nana squatted beside the generator, her fingers inserted into the interface of the control panel, data flowing back through her body. Susan stood beside her, holding a notebook, her pen trembling slightly.
"The main circuit is short-circuited, and the cooling system has failed," Nana said. "It's beyond repair."
"What about the spare one?"
"If the outer casing is deformed and the turbine is stuck, it will also be scrapped."
Susan wrote these two lines, paused for a few seconds, and then asked, "Where's the water purification system?"
"The outer casing is damaged, the filter element is submerged in water, and the control system is burnt out. It is deemed unusable."
She closed the notebook and looked down at her hands. Her nails were cracked, and her fingertips were white.
"We can't even produce clean water anymore."
Nana glanced at her, said nothing, and turned to walk towards the next testing point.
At noon, the four met up by the collapsed wall.
Nana pulled up the data and projected it onto a intact cement slab. The charts showed that two of the three main buildings were completely destroyed, the energy system was paralyzed, more than 70% of the grain reserves were lost, only one-third of the tools were recovered, and the stock of medicines was unknown.
Chen Hao stared at that string of numbers for a long time.
"In other words, we're so poor now that we only have one pair of underwear left."
“To be precise, we also have pants, shirts, and some underwear,” Nana corrected.
"You actually responded."
Karl sat on the ground, taking off his last good sock; his feet were covered in blisters. "What can you do with this little bit of stuff? Rebuild the base? Or leave a trace for future archaeological teams?"
No one laughed.
Susan hugged her knees, her voice soft: "The first-aid kit only has two doses of fever reducer left, most of the bandages are used up, and the disinfectant is gone. If someone gets injured..."
The words were left unsaid, but the meaning was clear.
Chen Hao stood up, walked to the projector, picked up a charcoal pencil, drew a thick line in the "intact" column, and crossed it out.
"Deleted."
He turned to the remaining two items: "Now just look at 'Available' and 'Under Repair'."
He circled "usable" again: "Even if there's only one screw left, it's still part of our possessions."
Then he squatted down and faced the three of them: "The next three steps. First, clear the area—move away the dangerous wreckage to make room. Second, take inventory—classify and register everything that remains, leaving nothing out. Third, plan—repair what's missing, starting with the most critical parts."
Karl looked up: "For example?"
"Electricity and water," Chen Hao said. "Without electricity, Nana's scanner has to be used sparingly. Without water, we can't even collect enough urine to drink."
Susan gave a slight smirk: "You're quite honest."
"If I'm not honest, who is?" Chen Hao stood up, patted his pants, and said, "Lying down and crying won't solve anything. Moving around will at least lift your butt off the ground."
Carl slowly stood up and kicked his worn-out shoes aside. "I'll take care of moving the rubble."
“I’m organizing the medicines,” Susan said.
"I modeled and deduced the repair sequence," Nana said.
Chen Hao nodded, looking at the distant pile of ruins. Sunlight shone on the twisted steel bars, reflecting the light.
"Then let's get started."
They split up and acted separately.
It was three in the afternoon, and the sun was so strong it made you dizzy. Chen Hao and Carl were cleaning up a collapsed partition wall; bricks and cement blocks were mixed together, making it difficult to move. Nana was marking the locations of recyclable materials, while Susan was rummaging through the remaining cabinets in the medical room, trying to find any medicines that hadn't been damaged by the water.
Chen Hao bent down and lifted a cement slab. With a snap, his waist cracked, and he straightened up, wincing in pain.
"How many more days can your body hold out?" Karl asked.
"Hold on until you find new shoes."
"Then you'll have to hold on a little longer."
They cordoned off the cleared area with a safety belt and piled up usable materials in one place. Wires, metal pipes, intact plastic buckets, and still-usable batteries—everything was categorized separately.
Nana's scan results showed that some sealed boxes in the underground storage room of the living quarters may still be uninfested, but the entrance is blocked by more than two tons of concrete, making excavation impossible for the time being.
"Write it down," Chen Hao said. "We'll dig again when we have the strength."
As the sun was setting, they pieced together the final list on an overturned desk.
Chen Hao held a pen and checked each item one by one. Nana stood beside him, calling out the numbers in a steady voice.
"The building damage rate is 68 percent."
"All energy equipment was destroyed."
"Food reserves are insufficient for two weeks of demand."
"The water purification system is no longer usable."
"No signal from communication devices."
Chen Hao finished writing the last line and put down his pen.
The list on the desk was densely packed, and the parts circled in red were alarming.
But he didn't sigh or curse.
He simply folded the list, stuffed it into his inner pocket, and then reached for the shovel on the ground.
"We'll clear the ruins on the east side first tomorrow," he said. "There's an open space there that can be used as a temporary storage area."
Carl nodded and flexed his wrists.
Susan closed the notebook and hugged it to her chest.
Nana's indicator light flashed, switching to low-power mode.
When the last ray of light disappeared on the horizon, the four people were still standing in the middle of the ruins.
Chen Hao raised his hand, wiped the dust off his face, and opened his mouth as if to say something.
At that moment, Nana suddenly turned her head and looked to the west.
Her scanner emitted a short beep.
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