Thirty minutes after communication with the special forces team was lost, Shawn looked out of his window and saw tanks in the road.
A voice came up through a loudhailer, ordering him to hand their people over immediately or force would be used.
Min heard the noise and got up and went to the window like every other resident in the building, but Shawn asked all of them to stay in their rooms. He would settle this himself.
He walked out through his own gate.
"Their people broke into my house in the middle of the night," he said. "Would they like to explain themselves?"
"We saw everything that happened at that church," the officer said. "It seems the rumours about people with abilities are true. Superpowers are a rare resource, particularly in times like these. If he agrees to cooperate with our military research, we can forget everything that happened here tonight."
"You want to lock me in a laboratory," Shawn said. "I'm not interested."
The officer did not look at all surprised. "I don't need his opinion. I'm informing him."
"I don't repeat my answers twice."
The commander raised his hand, and the tanks fired.
It is not very clever to use guns like that in a street like that, and to be standing that close to them while you do it. Shawn turned every one of the strikes around and sent them back, and the men in the helicopter died in the air.
"Next time," he said afterwards, "I'll aim at people." As though he had not already put a good number of them in the ground.
The white flag went up fast.
"He should know," the officer called, "that the weather service report has already been released. The previous heat wave was only the beginning. The next one will be far more severe."
"I know."
"When that time comes, we will need people like him. It could be said that the survival of humanity depends on men like him."
"I'm no saint," Shawn said — and we know it — "and I'm certainly not some great saviour. I live for myself. And this world is about to enter an era with no law in it at all. I'm not afraid of the army, or of anybody else." He looked at the ruined road. "But if the officer is willing to make a deal, I might be able to help a little."
"If he cooperates with us for a few days," the officer said carefully, "we're ready to make a deal."
"Then I want the army's resources," Shawn said, "and I want my home turned into a doomsday fortress."
And so, the following day, the military and their scientists assembled to dance to Shawn's tune.
Since some of the installations involved classified military technology, the engineers explained, the main modules would be prefabricated off-site and delivered here for assembly.
One of the soldiers noticed a small figure watching them from a stairwell and asked who that was.
"She's a resident of the building," Shawn said, and the man let out a shout.
And with that, the fortress modernisation project officially began.
Point one: heavy-load solar installation. More than ten times the structural strength of the original array, with energy storage efficiency and heat conversion three times higher than standard panels.
Point two: military-grade backup generator. Capable of maintaining full power to the entire building through several consecutive overcast days. Detailed specifications attached.
Point three: external walls reinforced with composite armour panels. Bulletproof, fireproof, thermally insulated. A rampaging monster would have hesitated in front of that wall. The soldier presenting it began to laugh with such delight that the others looked at each other and wondered why he was more excited about this than the people who were going to live in it.
Point four: enhanced access control and explosion-proof systems.
Point five: automated target recognition for perimeter security.
Point six: independent satellite communications module.
In the medical bay they were reading Shawn instead of the building. Body temperature, heart rate, cellular activity — all of it profoundly different from an ordinary person's. It was as though his body were constantly adapting to some extreme external environment.
Their current hypothesis, the doctor explained, was that this disaster was not simply an unusual heat wave. It was abnormal solar activity combined with unknown magnetic disturbances in low Earth orbit, and that anomalous energy was now acting on the entire biosphere. Under the pressure of that environment, a proportion of the human population had begun to display adaptive mutations.
"In other words," the officer said, "what people are calling the awakening of abilities." He thought about it. "So in the future it won't only be human beings that mutate."
Then he turned round and watched Shawn's face and asked whether he looked surprised. Whether he looked frightened.
"I'm not the only awakened one," Shawn said.
"He means he knows of others?"
"There's no harm in telling you. There's an organisation of awakened people who call themselves the Ark. From the look of it they're recruiting." He shrugged. "I wasn't interested, so I declined their invitation."
While Shawn was talking about the past, the technician reviewing the recordings noticed a face she knew. She zoomed in on it, and then she sat back, because the man on that screen was a former soldier who had served alongside them.
"Cellular activity is still increasing," the doctor reported.
"That's enough, isn't it?" Shawn said.
"The data was collected ahead of schedule," the officer agreed. "The tests can be concluded at this point."
Shawn was already standing up when a call came through, and the officer listened to it, and then asked him to wait a moment.
He put a photograph on the table. "Does he recognise this man?"
Min, in a military uniform, looked so unlike himself that Shawn stared at it for a second.
It's Min. He looks completely different.
"I won't beat around the bush. This man is a high-priority military fugitive. We have evidence that the two of them have been going in and out of that apartment block together. Min is living in his house at this moment, isn't he?" The officer leaned in. "Hand him over. I'll take care of the rest. I guarantee it won't touch him or his friends."
"Does the officer think that's possible?"
"I don't want to fight him." The man's voice did not change. "But it's a direct order. I have to deliver this man. Otherwise he isn't going anywhere today."
Shawn had other plans. He opened a portal and stepped through it, back to his own building.
"Sir — what do we do?"
"Stop the fortification project," the commander shouted, thoroughly irritated. "Mobilise all armed forces."