I pushed the door open and stepped back inside.

I pulled it closed and locked it because I was just that type of person. The click of the lock carried farther than it should have, but that could also be because I was currently the center of attention of fifteen men.

And not one had moved since I walked in.

I looked over my shoulder, just to see if a zombie had followed me in, but no... there was nothing there.

Apparently, the elephant in the room was me.

Commander Li was still by the window with his rifle in his hands. The rest of his men hadn’t moved far from where they’d been, spread through the room in the same positions they’d taken during the fight, But they were moving slower now, like everything that they knew had just been disproven and they couldn’t take it anymore.

Not a single one of them had put down their guns, like they didn’t understand that the threat was no longer there.

They had a glazed look in their eyes that I had seen in a lot of people. They were shell shocked, and my men weren’t much different.

Chenghai stood closest to me, his fists still clenched, blood dripping from his knuckles like he hadn’t noticed yet. Zhenlan was by the window, watching me instead of outside, his face pale but starting to come back. Lingyun leaned against the wall by the stairs, looking relaxed if you didn’t know him well enough to see through it, and Yuche was near the kitchen doorway with his arms crossed, quiet, focused, not even pretending he wasn’t paying attention.

Every single man in the house was watching me like I was a ticking time bomb.

They didn’t ask any questions, they didn’t demand answers, they just looked at me like I had grown three heads and were about to eat them.

"So," I said, my voice cutting through the silence loud enough to cause some of the men to flinch. "Anyone have any food?"

I walked past them and dropped onto the couch like nothing had happened and this was just another day. The cushions dipped under my weight as I leaned back, stretching out my legs just enough to get comfortable and looked around for my phone.

I wasn’t tired, wasn’t winded, and I really didn’t feel the need to explain anything to anyone in the room.

The silence stayed.

Luo Xin stepped out from the hallway with his medical kit, his movements steady even if he was walking toward me like I was a bomb about to detonate.

He set the kit down on the coffee table in front of me and opened it without a word.

"Are you hurt?" he asked, finally breaking the silence. "I need to look at the wounds before they cause infection. There is still some concern about whether or not the injuries from the animals would cause humans to turn into zombies."

I snorted at that idea. "Not according to the anime," I replied with a shrug. "In fact, it is the norm to assume that, in anime, if you have superpowers, you don’t need to worry about ever turning into a zombie."

Lin Xin froze, his hands stopping just above my arm as he looked at me. "Anime?"

"Just go with it," sighed Commander Li, pinching his brows.

It was like that one sentence, that one move completely crushed the oppressive atmosphere in the house.

The men let out a quiet sigh and started to move like normal.

"At some point in time, that isn’t going to work," warned Yuche as he walked over to where I was sitting and sat down beside me.

"It will," I assured him as Luo Xin moved from me to Chen Minghao. "Because that is the only way you get answers to the questions dancing around in that head of yours."

"You seem so sure," replied Chenghai, clearly overhearing the conversation between me and Yuche.

I nodded my head. "That’s because I am."

Neither man spoke as Zhenlan moved away from the window and sat down in his chair. Lingyun moved to the other end of the sectional and laid out. "So," he grunts, picking up the controller and turning on the gaming system. "Zombie cats."

I nodded. "Yup," I agreed. He really should be grateful that there was no such thing as zombie spiders, or ants, or... bugs... I shuddered at that thought.

I had personally killed a lot of spiders, and if all of them came back to life?

Yeah, I was burning down the world and moving to Mars or something.

I pulled my phone out of my pocket and unlocked it, scrolling through until I found the drama I had been watching earlier.

The episode was still paused, but when I checked for the next one, there wasn’t anything new.

Of course there wasn’t.

I stared at the screen for a second, then shrugged slightly to myself and backed out of the app.

That was fine. I wasn’t in the mood to sit through cliffhangers and drawn-out arguments anyway.

A movie would do.

I scrolled for a moment before settling on something familiar and hit play. The opening sequence of Mortal Kombat filled the screen, the sound cutting through the quiet room with a level of confidence the people around me didn’t have anymore.

"Where’s Meilan?" Lingyun asked. He didn’t sound concerned, just noting the absence like it had finally registered.

Zhenlan’s gaze moved around the room once before he answered. "Gone," he said. "She left during the fight, I assume. None of her team is here either. They probably snuck out the back while we were... busy."

"Huh," Lingyun grunted after a moment, his tone dry. "That tracks."

Commander Li finally turned away from the window. He lowered his rifle and set it down on the table beside him, his movements controlled, deliberate. His eyes moved over his men first, then over mine, and then landed on me for a fraction longer than the rest before shifting away again.

He didn’t ask anything.

He didn’t need to.

I leaned back further into the couch and adjusted the volume on my phone, letting the sounds from the movie fill the space. The opening fight scene played out across the screen and even those who couldn’t see my screen knew what was going on.

I reached forward, grabbed the bag of chips from the coffee table, and bit into it.

A smile crossed my face when Yuche let out a long sigh and Chenghai and Zhenlan started to plan their next move.

But I had my movie, my snacks, and that was all I needed.