Chapter 2

Before the news anchor's words about "drought and doomsday" had even completely faded from the living room, I threw down the remote, grabbed my car keys, and rushed out again.

Before this news fully takes hold and disrupts social order, I may only have a dozen minutes to seize the initiative.

I ran red lights the whole way, and fifteen minutes later, the screeching sound of brakes echoed outside a large supermarket on the street corner. I kicked open the distorted glass door, but the air was no longer filled with the smell of cold air; only the nauseating stench of blood remained.

I was still a step too late.

"Bang!"

A heavy baseball bat struck the supermarket loss prevention officer on the head. Blood splattered, and the riot escalated instantly.

"Get out of my way! This case of water is mine!"

I jerked to the side, dodging a man whose face was covered in blood as he lunged at me, and clutched tightly the only box of mineral water and electrolyte drinks I had managed to snatch.

This is no longer a supermarket; it's a meat grinder.

The shelves were overturned, the floor littered with crushed cookies and filled with desperate howls. Two white-collar workers in suits were tearing at each other like wild dogs, fighting over the last bottle of purified water.

Ignoring the screams behind me, I used my superhuman physical resilience to forcefully carve a bloody path through the crowd.

Pushing open the distorted glass door of the supermarket, a wave of 45-degree heat hit my face like a wall.

Just as I was walking briskly toward the parking lot, I caught a glimpse of a blindingly pale white in the corner of my eye.

"Help...help me..."

Beside a silver SUV, a heavily pregnant woman slumped limply onto the scorching asphalt. Her lips were cracked like old tree bark, and her eyes were beginning to roll back.

Even more deadly, a homeless man wearing a baseball cap was quietly approaching, his hand already reaching for her dropped car keys.

This malice made the fibers in my body tighten instantly.

Without hesitation, I rushed over and kicked the homeless man in the ribs. With a dull thud of a cracking bone, the scumbag screamed and scrambled away.

The pregnant woman's breathing was extremely weak; severe dehydration was draining her and her baby's lives.

Without any hesitation, I tore open the box of water that I had risked my life to get.

"Open your mouth!" I unscrewed a bottle of electrolyte drink and carefully poured it down her throat.

The cold liquid awakened her instincts; she gripped my wrist tightly as if grasping at a lifeline and gulped it down. One bottle wasn't enough, so I unscrewed another bottle of mineral water and poured it on her forehead to cool her down.

"My child...my child..." She regained a sliver of consciousness, her voice terribly hoarse.

"I'll take you home." I picked her up and put her in my car, turning the air conditioning up to the maximum.

Following the navigation on her phone, I sped all the way and dropped her off at a bungalow in the suburbs.

Her husband rushed out when he heard the engine and broke down in tears the moment he saw his wife's terrible condition.

"Oh my god! Susan! Where have you been?!"

I unloaded the remaining half-case of water, along with the electrolyte drinks, from the car and placed it heavily at his feet.

"She's severely dehydrated. Drink this water sparingly and make sure she doesn't go out again." I turned and opened the car door to leave.

"Wait! Brother, wait!"

The man rushed up to me with red eyes, grabbed my arm tightly, and shoved a card into my hand.

"This is a fifty-dollar bearer card! You must take it! If you don't, I'll never have a clear conscience for the rest of my life!"

Looking into his bloodshot yet extremely sincere eyes, I couldn't resist this uniquely human, fervent emotion.

"Okay, I'll take it." I nodded and put the card in my pocket.

The engine restarted. I didn't notice that a Tesla across the street was flashing red in Sentry mode, recording everything that had just happened down to the second.

The train carriage was deathly silent on the return journey, with only the hissing sound of the air conditioning vents.

I had just parked my car downstairs at the apartment building when my phone suddenly started vibrating incessantly.

It was a link sent by my colleague Emily: "OMG! Nolan, you're trending on Nextdoor! Everyone's sharing your video!"

I clicked the link, and it showed the dashcam footage of me giving the whole case of water to the pregnant woman. The comments below were refreshing at a rate of ten per second, all praising the "doomsday saint."

I turned off my phone and opened the car door.

The scene before me, however, struck me like a heavy hammer blow.

The fire hydrant downstairs in the apartment building was forcibly broken open, indicating that the city's water supply system has clearly begun to implement extreme rationing.

A dozen or so neighbors were shoving and jostling around the fire hydrant like madmen. What was flowing out wasn't clear water at all, but rather muddy, rusty yellow water!

"Don't fight! Let us take it first!"

A 70-year-old woman living in apartment 3B was violently shoved to the ground by a young man, and the cheap plastic bucket in her hand was instantly crushed to pieces. The old woman lay on the scalding ground, watching in despair as the muddy water seeped into the soil.

I stood there, my hand instinctively reaching for the fifty-dollar cash card in my pocket.

I looked down at my empty hands.

I gave all the water I desperately managed to collect to the pregnant woman. In this apocalyptic drought, my actions were undoubtedly suicidal.

But a ridiculous yet incredibly clear thought suddenly struck me like lightning.

I don't need water.

Or rather, I don't need to consume large amounts of water every day to survive like these fragile mammals.

The plant cells within me possess a drought-resistance mechanism that is incomprehensible to most people. Whenever I wish, I can enter a state of dehydration and dormancy to survive the long dry season.

But these elderly people and these children, they can't make it through.

This place will become a living hell this afternoon alone.

This realization made my blood—no, my juices—completely boil.

I strode into the elevator and headed straight for my apartment.

Pushing open the door, I saw dozens of cases of bottled water neatly stacked in the living room, along with piles of compressed biscuits and canned goods. These were the last supplies I had stockpiled before the water was cut off, based on my intuition.

To others, this is a gold mine.

But in my eyes, it was just a pile of meaningless heavy objects.

I took out my phone and opened the community Facebook group with more than 500 members.

The group chat is currently filled with desperate pleas for help, curses, and messages about black market transactions related to skyrocketing water prices.

My fingers flew across the screen, typing out a line of text:

“I’m Nolan from 4A. Tomorrow morning at 10 a.m., I will be distributing all my drinking water and food for free in the open space downstairs. No money required, first come, first served.”

Without any hesitation, I pressed the send button.

Almost instantly, the once noisy group chat fell into dead silence, as if its neck had been snapped.

Immediately afterwards, my phone notification sounded like a bomb exploding.